Knights of the Hill Country (11 page)

“I helped win some of them trophies,” I said.

She leaned in closer, and the smell of her perfume wrapped clean around my skull like some kind of beautiful poison from one of them deadly exotic flowers they got in the Amazon rain forest. “Well, then,” she said, real soft. “In a way, I guess they belong to you already. All you gotta do is get one back and give it to me.”

I glanced over her shoulder at old Malcolm Hickey Elementary. “I don't know. You mean break in there?”

She poked out her bottom lip. “Don't you think I'm worth it?”

“It's not that,” I said. But then, I didn't know what it
was
neither. I didn't know much of anything right at that second, except how low-cut her sweater was and how sweet her perfume smelled and how her hands seemed to burn my skin where they touched.

“Just one trophy,” she said, so close up her warm breath blew down on my forehead. “I'll never forget it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just one.”

Walking across that playground, I gave a look up at Citronella, hoping maybe Blaine and Rachel would be over there waving for us to come on, but whatever they was doing, they was doing it out of sight. That's how I was, wandering around looking for someone to make up my mind for me. It's like Sara said back in history class that time—if you don't know who you really are, how are you going to know what you think is right?

Misty skipped on up to the dark side of the building first and started checking for open windows. One after the next they was locked down tight, and I said we might as well give up, but she wasn't about to quit that easy. Finally, we got down to about the last two windows. I gave one a push, and it shot up so quick I thought it'd bust right there and spray
broken glass all over us, but it didn't. It just stood there, wide open and dark as the devil's own cave. There wasn't no excuses left now. At least, that I could think of.

“Hey, all right!” Misty clapped her hands like she was about to go into a cheerleading routine. “Go on and climb up in there!”

I wasn't one bit excited about it myself, but I figured she was my date and it was my gentlemanly duty to climb in first. Once I got inside, I asked her if she was coming too, but she said she better stay there and be lookout, just in case. I didn't like that
just in case
business, but it wouldn't have been too gallant to go crawling back out now, not without at least looking for a trophy.

“Hey, Hampton, look at me,” Misty whispered. She'd set her chin on the windowsill there so all I could see was her round little face grinning in at me. “I'm nothing but a head,” she said, giggling.

And she did—she looked like a cut-off head someone done stuck up in the window for Halloween.

“Nothing but a head,” she said again, and added on a haunted-house moaning sound to go with it. “Woooooooooooh!”

Then she pulled her chin off the sill and said, “And make sure you get me a first-place trophy too.”

That Misty. You couldn't help wondering what folks would've thought of her if she hadn't been so good-looking.

Once my eyes got adjusted, the room wasn't so dark. There was one of them glowing red exit signs out in the hall, and the light leaked in through the window in the door, washing up on the maps and the blackboard and the little desks. It was spooky, especially how small them desks was, all lined up
in perfect rows like they was waiting for a bunch of dolls to show up for class. Out in the hall, they had the water fountain hung so low on the wall, I'd have to take a knee just to get myself a drink.

I had to shake my head over all that, wondering how I could've ever been small enough for a place like this. But I sure had been. This was my old school, where I'd grown up from a lost kid whose father run off on him to a first-team football player who's friends with the most popular kids around.

Heading down the hall, I had the feeling I was walking with all the children who come here down through the years. Same thing as when you walk out in an empty football stadium and you can practically see the players who played there and hear the fans cheering around you. Like being in the middle of ghosts, but in a good way. I couldn't help wondering if maybe pieces of people's spirits did somehow linger on behind them as they passed through life.

Funny, now that I done got out of reach of Misty's perfume, I was already starting to think like me again.

Something in the dark creaked and I froze. Probably just the building settling, I told myself, and started back down the hall. The trophy case was at the far end, lit up by the red glow of the other exit-sign light they had down there. The case stood right outside the old gym, and you could almost hear the squeak of kids' basketball shoes on the wood floor and the thump of dodge balls bouncing off the walls. It's odd, ain't it, how full up empty places can be?

That trophy case was sure something. Beautiful. Trophies going back to the T. Roy days, every different size you'd ever want—loving cups, gold balls, angels holding up gold
torches, little football and baseball and basketball players froze in place, all with that red exit-sign glow settling down on them. Boy howdy. It wasn't just a collection of trophies, it was a whole
town
of trophies.

Then I seen it, that little old gold loving cup, setting way off in the corner gathering dust. It wasn't no more than four inches high, and the lettering on front read
OUTSTANDING TEAMWORK
. I liked that. Team
work
. Not team
spirit,
not
Rah, rah, we're the best and everyone else is a loser
. Not feeling big by looking at other folks like they was small. That's the easiest thing in the world to get tempted into, siding up with the better-than-everyones. I bet even a weed would call hisself a daisy if he could get away with it.

Teamwork, though, that's different. Everybody together, sweating from doing push-ups and running laps, scrimmaging and hitting the sleds, drill after drill, one guy backing up the other guy, going full bore right up till the last whistle and then jogging, all wore out, up the hill to the locker room. And everybody taking turns drinking. Working and working and working, then getting that drink—and it tastes sweeter than blackberry wine.

Trying.
Hard.
Helping each other to do better and better, and then running out on game day together and seeing what come of it.

There wasn't any putting into words everything that meant to me. It was about more than football, even, something that could last on past senior season. Suddenly, I wished Sara was there. She'd understand. She had a way of listening that was like she knew what you meant behind the words you said.

That's the thing. If you don't got someone to listen and
really understand, then it's like that deal about the tree falling in the forest and whuther it makes a noise even when no one's around to hear it. That's how I felt, anyways. There was so much I thought about that I never could tell anybody, and maybe it wasn't real in the first place if no one was around to understand it.

But Sara wasn't waiting outside the window. Misty was and she wanted her a trophy, not the meaning behind one.

Girls. They're a sight, ain't they?

Here I had one of them made me forget who I was, and the other one made me feel like who I really ought to be. I didn't know which was worse.

Now I was back to being confused all over. The smell of Misty's perfume come back to me and clouded up my head, even though she wasn't nowheres close. I started thinking maybe she
would
understand. Not as quick as Sara, but maybe if I just took this one little Outstanding Teamwork trophy out to her and explained about them ghosts in the hall and the low water fountains and short desks, she'd get it. She'd look up at me with them shiny blue eyes, soaking in everything I was telling her, thinking it was the deepest thing she ever heard, her little heart banging in her chest from what she was starting to feel for me.

And there I was. Hypnotized again.

The picture of how it'd be floated right up in front of me. I'd set down in one of them swings, and she'd straddle my lap and we'd kiss a long, head-turning kiss like they do on TV. Then, without me even having to ask, she'd stretch her arms up, and I'd pull that fuzzy pink sweater off over her head and unfasten her bra, and she'd undo the pearly buttons down the front of my shirt.

She'd say even with all them boys she dated from other towns, she hadn't never gone all the way, and I'd say I hadn't neither. I was just waiting for the right girl, I'd say, and then we'd have a first time like no one else ever had. It wouldn't be anything like what the other guys talked about when we cruised the streets in Citronella. Them and their converted basements. Next time they brought that up, all I'd have to do is nod and say, “Boys, you ain't got no more idea what you're talking about than a Sunday-school teacher knows how to cuss a good blue streak.”

The trophy case didn't have nothing but a silver clasp lock to hold the sliding doors shut, so it wasn't no big deal to just pull out my house key and pry that little old thing off there in about a second flat. There was a fair damsel outside waiting, and if she wanted her a trophy, then a gallant knight like me durn sure had to get her one.

Still, I hated to break up that town of trophies, even if I wasn't taking nothing but a dusty four-incher that none of the kids was likely to miss. There was just a kind of spell about it I didn't want to snap. So I rearranged a couple of the bigger ones and clamped that lock back on and stood back and checked it over. I swear, fifteen state troopers couldn't have told the difference if you gave them a search warrant and police dog.

When I got back to the open window, I couldn't see Misty nowhere. “Hey,” I whispered. “Misty? You out there? Wait'll you see what I got you.”

But I still didn't see her when I landed down on the ground outside. She wasn't at the swings neither. I was standing there looking every which way when a giggle come tinkling down from somewhere. “Misty?” I said.

There she was, setting up on the slide on the other side of the monkey bars. “Where's my trophy?” she said.

“Right here.” I held it up high, real proud of choosing the one on teamwork like I done.

She slid back down to the ground and dusted the seat of her britches off. “It's kind of little,” she said.

“Wait'll you read what it says on the front,” I told her.

She took the handle between her finger and thumb, holding it out kind of like she thought it might drip something nasty off on her. “Outstanding teamwork,” she said. “Well, I guess that's better than worst teamwork.”

“See,” I said, “it's like a town full of trophies in there, and there's these little water fountains and desks and—”

“Come on,” she cut in. “Let's get going. I want to get out to the festival before it's too late.”

“Too late for what?” I asked.

“Just too late.” She turned and headed on up the slope towards the parking lot.

When we got back to Citronella, Blaine and Rachel was setting about as far apart as they could. Blaine wasn't wearing his letter jacket now, and both of them's hair was messed up. They looked a little sweaty too, for how cool it was out.

“It's about time you two got back,” Blaine said as we climbed inside.

“What's the matter with y'all?” Misty said, sliding over and leaning against the door.

“Nothing,” Rachel said. “Except I guess Blaine forgot Knights was supposed to be gentlemen.”

“Hey,” Blaine said. “That's only when we got our letter jackets on. It wasn't my fault you skinned mine off me.”

Misty laughed at that one. “That sounds like my kind of
gentleman,” she said. Then she launched off on the topic of what schools had the prettiest letter jackets, and that turned into something about pants. I didn't listen to all she talked about, but there sure wasn't nothing in there about my trophy or teamwork or how it was to look for the meaning behind things.

Later on, we was cruising down Main, heading for the festival, and I noticed the trophy laying on the floorboard with the paper cups and beer cans and other trash. I wished I'd never even taken it out of the case then. I wanted to snatch it up and head back over to Malcolm Hickey and put it right back in with the other trophies where it belonged. But no one else was about to understand that, so I kept quiet and left it where it lay.

Over at Leonard Biggins Park, Wild West Days was in full swing. They had the same old carnival out there they always had with its sorry little merry-go-round and rickety Ferris wheel. On the north side, where we come in, the usual red, white, and blue refreshment stands was selling their pop and cotton candy and corn dogs and them huge brown turkey legs wrapped up in greasy paper napkins. Someone said one booth had fried Oreo cookies.

What that stuff had to do with the Wild West, I never did know. It's kind of hard to picture the Doolin gang riding around robbing trains and eating cotton candy and corn dogs and taking turns at the Ferris wheel. There was a big crowd out, though, and I don't guess they gave a day-old donut what any of it had to do with how wild the West was.

Blaine and Rachel and Misty walked ahead, and I trailed
back a little, swiveling my head this way and the other, on the lookout for Sara. It was a weird deal. I wanted to run into her and I didn't want to run into her at the same time. On the one hand, I always liked seeing her, but on the other, I was still supposed to be with Misty. Even if she didn't seem to much care whuther I tagged along or dropped down a hole, I figured I was obligated to her for the time being, anyways. How I'd explain that to Sara, I didn't know, but I was too big to hide, and something about her turned me too honest to lie, so I was going to have to explain somehow.

On the far side of the park, a good-size crowd done gathered round for the musical entertainment they had up on a bandstand in front of the pavilion. Some was cocked back in lawn chairs, but most was sprawled out on blankets or straight on the grass. We parked ourselves on an empty patch of ground at the back, and I set on the end of the row so I could keep on the lookout for Sara. Still wasn't no sign of her, and I got to thinking maybe her and her family already come and went. That probably would've been the lucky thing, but it was a disappointment to think about anyways.