Broken Field

by Jeff Hull

  “You’re clearly not fine,” Coach Bury said. “What I’m wondering, after watching that display tonight, is how much your being not fine is going to affect our team.”

  He let her sit in silence for a moment, so she returned the favor.

  “Listen, Josie, sure—yeah, you can embarrass a sophomore from Whitewater. But what’s gonna happen when we play Belt? What happens when we play Chester? What happens when there’s a legitimate threat lined up across from you and you’re out there playing like you hate everybody?”

  Josie had been staring back at him hard, but couldn’t anymore. Nothing he said was untrue. She’d been selfish and stupid and she didn’t see how she could change that, given how she felt.

  Coach Bury reached out and put a hand on her upper arm. “Basketball,” he said, “is sometimes not the most important thing in the world.” He saw her look up and said, “I know I try to make it sound like it is, but it’s not.”

  By now Josie was struggling to not cry openly. Her vision split from the welling of tears in her lower eyelids.

  “Josie, if there’s anything I can do to help you … If there’s anything you need to talk about … maybe there’s something you need an adult perspective on, but you can’t ask your parents … I’m here. And it stays between me and you.”

  He knew her too well, was the problem. Nothing reveals the ragged depths of a personality like sports, and she’d pretty much stripped herself naked in front of this coach over the years, competitively speaking. It was, she thought, very sweet of him to offer.

  But she could never talk to Coach Bury about anything that was happening. There was nobody she could talk to. She’d done this to herself. Or she’d let it happen to her, hadn’t been smart enough to see the way she’d become entangled. The way she’d built her world, the bonds and allegiances she’d chosen to prioritize, they all interwove. And in the center of all of them, criss-crossed and double-braced, stood Matt Brunner.

  * * *

  Jimmy Krock sat at the corner of the L, like he liked to. Brad Martin sat near him, looking oddly tanned for the week before Thanksgiving, and wearing a golf shirt. Greg Hovland huddled over a drink. A dozen farmers and ranch hands and road workers finished out the crowd. An old-timer with a two-foot spill of wiry white beard, Sam Hendricks, sat upright on his stool, sound asleep, arms crossed over his chest. He had the body of a soup chicken. Around it he wore a Carhartt jacket muzzy with a fourth-century kind of funk.

  Tom took a seat between Krock O’ and Greg Hovland. Hovland looked like he’d just come in from feeding cattle.

  “Well,” Krock O’ said.

  “Greg,” Tom said.

  Hovland said, “Coach.” Brad Martin was going to pretend that they were living in different worlds, although he sat fifteen feet away.

  Hal Hartack ignored Tom for long enough to make a thirsty point, then strode down and stood in front of him, across the bar, and said, “You been busy?”

  “Can I get a Jefe?”

  “Sure you can, Coach.” Hal started making the drink.

  “Well, shit,” Krock O’ said. “How’s that dog of yours?”

  “That dog is okay,” Tom said. He wasn’t feeling like bragging up a dog that just failed to find a bird.

  Down the bar, Sam Hendricks woke long enough to reach out and lift the shot glass from the bar in front of him to his lips, drink half of it, then clink it back down on the bar. He re-clasped his arms and went back to sleep. Hal Hartack slid the tequila, soda, and lime juice on the bar in front of Tom.

  “How you feeling?” he asked.

  “How am I feeling?” Tom said.

  “You know, with the long view of time on your side. Are you feeling righteous? Has it all been a terrible mistake? I get curious about the inner workings.”

  Tom felt red hot, but fought to keep it in check. Hal laughed at him or the world, tapped the bar twice with an empty shot glass, then moved away. Down the bar, a cowboy Tom didn’t know was saying to his friend, “She’s like a big bucket of chicken. You didn’t raise the chicken. You didn’t slaughter the chicken. You didn’t cook the chicken. It’s just … there.” Hendricks choked himself with his snoring, jerked awake, looked around as if he was surprised to find himself where he was, then nodded back to sleep.

  “How you doing?” Tom asked Krock O’.

  “I’m so fired up I can’t sit still,” Krock O’ said and sipped his beer.

  Tom smiled at that. “Staying out of trouble?”

  “If you haven’t heard, you don’t need to know,” Krock O’ said.

  The bar door creaked open and an old-timer walked in and Tom saw it was Randy Bury. His grandson, Karl, coached the girls’ basketball team. Randy went to the bar and sat near the sleeping Sam Hendricks, looked him over, and said, “That dumbfuck couldn’t drive a round stake up a pig’s ass.”

  The glass of whiskey Hal set in front of him clicked when it hit the bar. Randy had it down his throat in seconds. Hal had brought the bottle over to refill it. The second glass Randy sipped at. Snatches of conversation from the cowboys at the bar rose and fell.

  “Let me put it this way. You ever wonder what it feels like to kills someone?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Well you met my ex, you’d at least learn what it’s like to want to.”

  Karl Bury, the girls’ basketball coach, walked into the bar, took a look around, saw his grandfather, and said, “Goddamnit, I got family in here. Ain’t that just about all of it.”

  He pivoted and started walking out.

  “Did you win tonight?” Hal asked.

  “Yeah,” Karl said, and he was back out the door. His leaving proved unfortunate, because no more than fifteen minutes later his grandfather, Randy, tilted his empty glass at his face, stuck it down on the bar and scanned the room. His attention fell on Sam Hendricks, who had woken up for a moment. Without a word, Randy Bury lunged at him, swinging a skinny-armed punch that didn’t land, but hooked Sam and pulled him off his chair. Both men plunged to the floor. Bury got both hands around Hendricks’s neck and squeezed, but he was an old man and his hands could not deliver the intended effect. Everybody in the bar watched what was going to happen.

  Tom slid off his stool and reached down and came up holding Randy Bury’s arms above the elbows. “Are we done?” Tom asked.

  “You better ask him,” Bury said. Appropriate enough, because Sam Hendricks lay back on the floor, lifted a bony leg, and kicked Bury in the knee with his boot heel. Tom dragged Bury toward the door. Hal Hartack came around the bar and picked up Hendricks. He selected one of the cowboys, a Hendricks nephew apparently, and told him he was driving his uncle home.

  Once Hendricks had left, it seemed okay to let Bury back in. Tom went back to his seat, said to Krock O’, “What was that about?”

  Krock O’ laughed. “Oh, hell, that goes back forty years. Bury’s daughter was getting married and he hired Hendricks to slaughter a pig he could cook for the wedding. Only Hendricks didn’t do it. So there was the wedding and no pork.”

  “He just didn’t do it?”

  “I’ve heard different stories. Heard Hendricks couldn’t bring himself to kill his pig. Heard he forgot. They served sides at the meal. Bride was horrified.”

  “They’re fighting over this forty years later?”

  “Sometimes they get on fine. Then they want to kill each other. No way to explain it.”

  The scuffle made less than a ripple in the evening. Cal Frehse came in a half hour later and sat down by Greg Hovland. Krock O’ leaned forward and directed a comment to Cal Frehse. “Heard your daughter went off on Whitewater tonight.”

  Cal grunted.

  “Played like she was mad enough to eat bees, I heard,” Krock O’ said.

  Cal didn’t respond, said something to Greg Hovland. Tom tried to eavesdrop on them, two football dads whose kids played their hearts out that last game. He used to spend a good deal of time talking to Cal Frehse about Jared, and Hovland used to li
ke to hear about the team, the boys. Now it was just a courteous howdy. The two of them were heads-down in conversation.

  Tom heard Greg say, “Well, drinking probably isn’t the answer.”

  And Cal say, “No, but it sure helps you not give a shit about the question.”

  Then one of the ranch hands Tom didn’t recognize said to his friend, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Is it just me, or do battered women sound delicious?”

  What Tom noticed was how quickly Cal Frehse’s head came up. “That isn’t funny,” Cal said.

  “It was a joke,” the cowboy said. “Battered, like, beer-battered? Like fried chicken?”

  “I know what it was,” Cal said. “What it wasn’t was funny. You think I’m wrong, you’re welcome to come down here and stand in front of me and tell me all about it.”

  “Easy, killer. I didn’t know you had such sensitive feelings.”

  The ranch hand’s friend said quietly to him, “You’re a real asshole sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” Hal Hartack asked.

  The barroom settled down again, but insensitivity was gaining ground as a mode of conversation. A few minutes later, Brad Martin had had enough to drink that he felt fine striding over and standing next to Tom to say, “Saw you at the Absarokee game. Ol’ Slab did a helluva a job. I think we might’ve found our next coach.”

  It sounded chatty, but Tom felt the entire bar grow eyes and swing them at him. Cal and Greg stopped talking and peered.

  “He’d be a damned good one,” Tom said. Tom realized without looking that this was the only interaction happening in the bar now. Brad kept plowing ahead.

  “You’re not gonna apply again,” Brad said, like he knew that.

  Tom said, “Lot of deciding to do before next fall. For a lot of people.”

  “Well, shit, after your fiasco, I don’t think the board would look real favorably on hiring you back,” Brad said.

  Hal Hartack stepped between them on the other side of the bar and said, very quietly, “I wonder if you have as much insight as to what the board will or won’t do as you think, Brad.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You didn’t exactly manipulate that process to your preferred outcome the last time.”

  “Well, we let a bunch of Dotty Lantners get on the board, what do you expect? I mean, sweet bleeding Jesus.”

  Brad drank from his drink and didn’t seem able to stop talking. “This coach here would’ve let Dotty Lantner’s little nephew off the bench last year, none of this would’ve happened.” He scanned the room to see how that played.

  “Dotty’s nephew was a can of lard,” Hal Hartack said.

  “And that’s how stupid the whole thing was,” Brad said. “Just that vendetta.”

  Now one of the cowboys down the bar piped up. “Those boys didn’t do nothin’ the rest of us all didn’t do.”

  “Just ritual,” another said. “A way of belonging. Like in the military. A whole bunch of kids be better off if they went through something.”

  “It’s all stuff we all did,” Brad said. “That’s what kills me. It was good enough to happen to us, but not anymore.”

  “Harmless little rituals. Teach a boy to man up.”

  “Didn’t have to be a goddamned crisis,” Brad said. “Look at what they did to Matt Brunner. They took his career away. No football, no basketball. No school is going to look at him with a scholarship. I wouldn’t give a bucket of shit for that boy’s future. They ruined my boy’s career, too.”

  Cal Frehse sat up a little straighter. He hadn’t turned to the room, still faced the bar, but spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “I don’t know about your boy, but Matt Brunner’s gone a long way to ruin his own future.”

  “What’s that mean?” Brad said.

  The lack of response stretched the tension in the room.

  “You know something I don’t?” Brad asked.

  “I sure as hell hope so,” Cal said.

  That caused a long pause, during which people were unsure if they should laugh. Tom was one of them. He let a little mirth slip out his nose but didn’t open his mouth.

  “I don’t know what crawled up your ass today, Cal, but that boy had his chance to go to college taken away from him,” Brad said. “I mean, he was a sure thing for something. And not to tell tales out of school, but the way his operation is going, I don’t know see Gary Brunner pulling tuition, room and board out of his ass.”

  Now Cal swung on his stool and leaned his elbows back on the bar behind him. “That boy better start unfuckheading his life real quick, or going to college will be the last thing he’ll need to worry about.”

  Brad seemed genuinely puzzled and used that as an excuse to work himself up. “Matt’s a good boy, Cal. You know that. He’s spirited and he does some silly things like we all did at that age, but that boy’s been like a son to you the last few years.”

  Cal stood up, pulled some folded bills out of his pocket, and threw them on the bar. “He ain’t like no son of mine. I got a son that age. He knows how to act.” Cal nodded at Greg Hovland and at Tom and walked out of the bar.

  After a few beats of silence, Hal Hartack said, “There’s a story we haven’t heard all about yet.”

  “No wonder his little girl played so mad tonight,” Krock O’ said.

  “You dumbfucks just can’t help minding everybody’s business, can you?” Greg Hovland said. He went back to drinking like he was all alone in the room.

  Tom already knew something more than a high school breakup had happened, though plenty of those had kept this crowd spellbound through the years. He already knew, without knowing how he knew, that whatever made Cal Frehse so mad had something to do with letting kids like Matt bully their way through life.

  * * *

  After the game, Josie drove home. She tried to find a sad song to listen to, something blued and bottomed-out enough to fit her mood, but she was almost home before she realized her iTunes didn’t have anything nearly bruising enough. She drove down the lane to her house, the shelterbelt rows on either side of her funneling her through the dark.

  The she reached the end of the shelter belt, turned left, and dipped down into the yard—only to see Matt’s pickup parked beside her father’s. She didn’t care that everybody sitting in the family room saw her headlights, knew she was coming. She threw her rig in reverse and sprayed gravel backing out to where she could whip the truck around. She saw the back door open and Matt run out and she paused for a minute, wondering if he could see her staring at him this far away in the dark. She stomped on the gas, heard gravel pinging off the undercarriage of her pickup, felt the truck dip with the torque before it gained speed. The last thing she saw was her father coming outside and putting a hand on Matt’s upper arm as Matt turned for his own rig, and Matt ripping it away and her father grabbing again, harder, pinning Matt against the truck. Let him follow me, she thought.

  I’ll drive all the way to fucking Canada. The bed of the pickup tried to come around as she reached speed on the long gravel drive, and she counter-clocked the wheel and then had to go the other way to keep it under control. But she didn’t lay off the gas. She hit the highway pavement, turned away from town, and roared off. Quickly she realized she had no idea where to go. Beside her in the center console her phone lit up like a Christmas tree.

  But she ignored all that. Then she realized she was driving to the reservoir. She pulled onto the gravel, fought the truck as it slewed and yawed over the snow-slicked ruts. And then she stopped. The silence hit her first. She laid her forehead on the steering and cried. Or thought she would cry.

  Wanted to cry, but didn’t. Instead, she just hurt. Her chest filled like someone had poured molten metal into her lungs. Squeezing her eyes shut felt like the only way to keep her face from bursting. She wouldn’t even know until later how deeply her fingers dug into her palms. Josie shouted, slapped at the steering wheel, threw her head around. And then sat up with her chin on her chest, her hair
streaming down and felt like there was nothing she could feel that could make anything better. She looked at her phone.

  Texts and calls from her mother. From Matt. Lots from Matt. A text from Jared. The usual patter of texts from Britnee and Ainsley, which had nothing to do with anything. And two from Mikie LaValle. She looked at that one and thought, what?

  What could he possibly want?

  The first text said: I saw your game. You were badass. Damn, girl.

  The second text, sent just five minutes before, said: I acted bad. I’m sorry. wish I could talk to u.

  And just because, just because there was no other reason not to, just because she was so far out at the end of her rope, Josie texted back: what would u say?

  The reply was almost instant: I’m sorry. I don’t always do the right thing. But I always wish I could do the right thing 4 u.

  Josie didn’t answer that for a few minutes. Another text came through: I just like talking to u. my favorite thing about this town. Wish it was ok.

  Josie texted back: Always ok to talk.

  Mikie: Not really.

  Josie wrote: Where r u?

  Mikie: Home. u?

  Josie: Reservoir.

  Mikie: y?

  Josie: Need a place.

  Mikie: 4 what?

  Josie: Think.

  Mikie: r u Ok?

  Josie: idk.

  Mikie: Can I come?

  Josie didn’t answer. She put the phone down. More texts were coming in from Matt, and more from Britnee and Ainsley. Her brother. Maybe they’d heard by now that something was going on. She didn’t have the heart to respond to any of it. She was done with responding. That was it. Responses had exhausted her.

  Reacting was her whole life. She was tired of it. And yet on some level she knew that not responding to Mikie would draw him in. Josie opened the door of her truck and stepped outside into the cold night. She wrapped her arms around herself and took a few steps from the pickup, closed the door to smother the dome light. Even in the dark, the snowed landscape seemed to be receding from her with speed. She looked up at the moonless night sky, at the brilliant spray of stars, so close to so much far away. As hard as she watched, none of them moved. It was the universe in a crystal state. Josie wanted one star to fall for her.