Running Loose (7 page)

“Because he isn’t sorry. Asking him to apologize would be asking him to lie, and that’s not my way.”

Silence again. And Norm was in complete control of it.

Finally Jasper said, “There’s one condition.”

“Which is?”

“Louie can’t participate in any interscholastic activities as long as he’s at Trout.”

“I’ll have to think about that,” Norm said.

For the first time I spoke up. “That’s okay, Norm. I’m not going out for any more sports. All I want to do
is do my work and get out.”

Norm nodded, but he turned back to Jasper. “I understand that, but I’m still not sure I’m willing to make that concession.”

They talked about it for another half hour or so, with Jasper saying he thought there had to be some public show of punishment—that my kind of attitude could be damaging to the whole school—and Norm defending my right to stand on principle. They didn’t make a final decision but agreed to deal with it if it came up. I was sure it wouldn’t.

When we walked out, Norm said, “Louie,
never
give anyone anything you don’t have to in these kinds of negotiations.”

“It didn’t seem like a big deal,” I said. “I’m not going out for anything.”

“Then don’t give it up on principle,” he said. “It’s like an admission. Beside, you don’t know what you’ll want to do come spring. You may want to run track. And if you do, you have the right. Always leave your options open. Whatever you do, leave your options.”

The point was well taken, but I couldn’t see myself closing out my high school career running around in circles and then throwing up.

That night after dinner I was pretty much at loose ends. Norm didn’t need me down at the station; he had bookwork to do down there, and there wouldn’t be enough business to keep both of us busy. The team wouldn’t be getting back from Bear Creek until late, so I couldn’t see Becky until Saturday.

I decided to take the pickup out for a little spin and try out the new cassette deck I’d installed during my suspension from school. I got a Waylon Jennings tape out of the glove compartment, cranked her up real loud, and headed west out of town. The pickup was running smooth, the tape deck worked like standard equipment, and I was feelin’ good, bouncing around in the seat, singing “Good Hearted Woman,” and thinking about my life.

Before I knew it, I passed a sign that said “Salmon River—31 miles” and decided why not. In a little more than half an hour I pulled up in front of the Seven Devils’ Café.

Salmon River had played at home that day, so the place was humming. A lot of kids were in the Seven Devils, and the drive-in down the block was packed. It had been almost an hour since dinner, so I decided to go in and have a burger. A few guys looked up when I came in, but if anyone recognized me, they didn’t come over. I sat at the counter and ordered. In the back at a long table a bunch of Salmon River players sat eating burgers and shakes and screwing around. Washington was with them; in fact, he seemed to be the center of attention, telling stories and, at one point, twirling his hamburger around on one finger like a basketball. He couldn’t be
that
great an athlete; he lost the meat.

I wanted to go over and ask how he was doing, but to tell the truth, I was a little afraid to. I’m not sure why; I mean, I didn’t think they’d jump me or anything. Once, when Washington got up to go to the can, I could see that his ribs were bound tightly and he moved real slow and carefully. But he still moved like a jock.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, Sally Larson, who used to live in Trout, came through the door with
a couple of girlfriends. The Larsons moved to Salmon River when it became clear that Trout wasn’t going to spend much serious energy on girls’ sports. Mr. Larson just applied for the same job he had in our mill in theirs. Sally’s probably one of the best athletes we ever had in that town, right up there with Carter and Boomer. Played Little League up through Ponies and went to all kinds of girls’ sports camps in the summers. She’s tall and lean and eats like a horse and is really pretty. I had a horrible crush on her in fourth grade. She beat me up about once a week that year. We got to be pretty good friends in junior high, and we still made it a point to say hi anytime our schools played each other.

She ran over and gave me a big hug. “What’re you doing over here?” she said. “I thought you guys played Creek today.”

I told her I was out of the violent world of football.

“How come?” she said. “Was it over Kevin getting hurt? We couldn’t tell what was going on from the sideline last week, but you looked pretty crazy out there.”

I smiled and nodded. “I guess I
was
pretty crazy out there.”

We sat down in a booth, and she introduced me to her friends, and they all ordered burgers. I figured I could do with another chocolate milk shake,
so I ordered again.

“So did you quit or get thrown off?” she asked.

“I have a feeling that depends on who’s telling the story,” I said. “I quit. Listen, that black kid over there is Washington, isn’t he?”

She nodded. “Want to meet him?”

“No, that’s okay. Good to see he’s still alive, though.”

“He’s supposed to be back out in a couple of weeks,” she said, “soon as his bruised ribs heal.”

I almost felt let-down. My sacrifice had been for a couple of bruised ribs. Washington wasn’t dead or anything. In a couple of weeks he’d be back playing ball like nothing happened. “So what did everyone up here think about how he got hurt?” I asked.

The burgers came, and Sally took a big bite out of hers and said, “They were pretty ticked off, but everybody knows Boomer Cowans. You don’t want to let him get a shot at you.”

I said, “Boy, don’t I know that.” I started to tell her how Lednecky had set it all up, but then I thought of how Becky said I’d want to keep hashing and rehashing it, so I let it go.

“How’s he get along here?” I asked.

Sally took another bite—about half the burger—
and said, “Great. Everybody loves him. He’s funny and smart, and you’ve seen what kind of athlete he is. He came up last summer from Oakland, California, because his parents thought he was getting in with a bad crowd. Drugs and stuff.”

“What’s he say about that?”

“That he was getting in with a bad crowd. Drugs and stuff. Started ripping folks off; all that big-city crap. Says he’s glad he’s here.”

“Does he take any crap for being black?” It was hard to figure how we’d gotten up so much hate for him at Trout when Sally made it sound like he was getting the key to the city in Salmon River.

“He doesn’t take much crap for anything.” She stuffed the rest of the burger in her mouth. “You hear some things behind his back, but never to his face. I don’t even think he knows it’s going on. If he does, it doesn’t seem to bother him.”

I sat there quietly for a minute, watching the guys at the back table and wondering how Sally had perfected the art of stuffing her mouth to capacity and still articulating like she was in a debate tournament. I mean, she could take that act on the road.

I stayed a little longer; we asked about each other’s folks and talked about our plans after school. Then I
said I ought to be getting back to Trout. Sally gave me another big hug and said she’d get my shake. I thanked her and headed for the pickup.

Driving home, I wished I’d have let her introduce me to those guys, especially Washington. I felt like I had some kind of special connection to him. Besides that, I just wanted to sit at the table, be part of what I’d worked all summer and fall for. That was a part of my life that was gone before I even had a good taste of it.

What the hell, I had Becky.

Most people around Trout who drive pickups—which is most people around Trout—have gun racks behind the seat, and the bulk of those racks have loaded guns in them. I guess a lot of people around here like to kill things. You get a lot of “accidents” due to that. You’d be surprised at the number of times, just in my lifetime, that two guys who didn’t particularly care for each other went out deer hunting and only one came back. Pleading “I thought he was a deer” around here is a lot like pleading “temporary insanity” in other places. And every once in a while one of those guns will “accidentally” go off during cleaning and kill some guy who’s been sleeping with the gun cleaner’s wife. Guys clean their guns in the strangest places.

Anyway, I’ve got a gun rack in my Chevy, too, but I
don’t carry a gun in it. Guns scare me. I carry a huge pepperoni I got down at Smoky Joe’s just outside Boise. Had it custom-made. If I’m ever caught in a blizzard, I may freeze to death, but I sure as hell won’t starve. It would take me three years to eat that thing. I’ve had it almost eight months, and though it’s getting pretty hard, it’s still good. Smoky Joe said it would live longer than I would.

Once it almost got me beat up. Guess who. Right. Boomer asked me why I had it, and when I explained it was my survival kit, he said bullshit, it was because I was too yellow to carry a gun, that I was always doing stupid things to cover up what a wussy I was. When I told him the sheriff made me check my shootin’ iron at the jail when I came into this tinhorn town, he came after me. Did I say the guy’s got no sense of humor? Luckily Carter was around.

Later Carter told me we might have to load up my pepperoni one of these days and hunt that bastard down like a dirty dog. There’ve been times when that didn’t sound like such a bad idea, but it’s so big I’d be afraid to shoot it.

Life was pretty uneventful for me through the rest of football season and into the winter. The hardest part
was not going to the games. I really wanted to watch Carter and some of the other guys—they were tearing up the league—but I just couldn’t stand to be there and not get in on it. So I’d deliver stove oil for Norm or let myself into the Buckhorn to shoot pool and feel sorry for myself. As much pool as I played, you’d think I’d have gotten better.

The season ended just as predicted. Trout won the league, with Salmon River finishing second, and went on to win one more state championship. Washington came back in a couple of weeks, like Sally said, and ran up some pretty fair statistics. There were still times when I wished he’d been put out for the season, to make what I’d done seem worth it, but mostly I was glad he was okay. Oh, yeah, and they named the gym after Lednecky. We’re the only school in the league whose gymnasium has a name. They even put some of those gold letters above the entrance. Somehow some of them keep mysteriously disappearing, so it says
EDNECK
or
LED ECK
or something weird. They just can’t seem to keep them up there. Must be using the wrong kind of glue.

I couldn’t turn out for basketball, which was fine with me. Jasper went ahead and told everybody that I’d been suspended from further interscholastic activities—
fairly quietly, I noticed—and I didn’t say anything to Norm about it because I didn’t want to raise another stink. I play basketball a lot like I play pool and turned out before only because everyone else did and it was a way to keep in shape. Lednecky’s the head basketball coach, too, so even if I had fought the ruling, I’d never have played a minute in a game. Not being allowed to turn out just took the pressure off.

My relationship with Becky grew more and more amazing. We got closer and closer, and the underlying fear that she was suddenly going to come to her senses and drop me like a hot rock disappeared. After one of the record dances at the school we almost had sex, and it was pretty clear to both of us that it was going to happen. In fact, I did have sex after that dance, but only my undershorts knew for sure. Becky said she wasn’t up for making love in the front seat of a pickup in the company of a giant pepperoni. Seemed like pretty heavy competition to me, too.

But it was moving right along.

Carter and I still found time for each other, too. I don’t know what I’d have done without him. He kept me feeling okay about myself without the help of sports. That’s hard to do. It was like having Clint Eastwood or Kojak or somebody like you. I didn’t
have to prove anything to him.

Still, I wasn’t a favorite among the masses, and there weren’t many teachers I’d have felt comfortable asking for a letter of recommendation from. Unless I wanted to go to college in El Salvador or Iran or someplace.

Snow came early this year, like the
Farmer’s Almanac
said it would. Sometimes you don’t get it until right around Christmas, but this year the trick-or-treaters were decked out in their snow boots, trudging through two or three inches of it and killing each other with snowballs. It was a long, hard winter, weather-wise.

I started cross-country skiing in early November, mostly by accident. I was cleaning out my grandmother’s barn when I ran across this really long pair of wooden skis with nothing but toe straps for bindings. They looked ripe for firewood until my grandmother told me what they were. She said my granddad used to go out for three or four days at a time on them when he was still alive. Survival trips, he called them, and they must have been just that, from what she told me. He came to Trout when it was being settled, and when there got to be about five hundred people, he felt it was getting too big. So he’d head for the hills and try to live
like the Indians did in their time. ’Course they didn’t have cross-country skis, but then he didn’t have as much time to spend in the woods as they did. He’d take a little food just in case; but he hunted with a bow and slept in lean-tos made of branches, and Grandma said she never remembered him having to eat any of the food he took. He never killed more than he could eat, and he had a lot of respect for the country and the animals that lived there, and she wished he’d lived until I was older—long enough to pass that on to me.

I promised her I’d never kill more than I could eat.

Anyway, the skis intrigued me, so I decided to give them a try. They were every bit as unmanageable as they looked, especially with only the leather toe strap to keep your foot in. Dakota informed me, however, that if I’d bother to look around me—at the cross-country skiing boom—I’d see a lot of advances had been made since 1915, so I drove down to Boise to get something a little more modern. I’d saved plenty of money, so I had no trouble setting myself up with all the finest gear.

There really isn’t much to it once you get the hang of making it up the steep hills, and by the middle of November I was spending most of the time I wasn’t working or with Becky whipping through the hills around Trout.

Naturally it proved to Boomer that I was as big a wussy as he’d always said I was because if I had a hair anywhere on my body, I’d be learning to jump, like he would be if basketball practice hadn’t already started.

Carter rented some stuff and went out with me once, but it didn’t take long for us to figure out it wasn’t the sport for him. Man was meant to move his athletics indoors when the snow flies, he said. The Good Lord couldn’t respect a man who would deliberately go out and freeze his butt when he could be in by a warm fire. The Good Lord appreciated intelligence.

Becky went out with me a few times after school, and she liked it a lot. She didn’t have as much time to play around with it, though, because she had music to play and grades to get and more damn irons in the fire than you’d need to brand every cow in your herd with a different brand each. She was always taking a test for some kind of scholarship or some highfallutin summer program being offered to high school geniuses by some highfallutin university like Stanford, which is down in California, close to San Francisco, I think.

It was because of cross-country skiing and because part of the roof of Lednecky Gym caved in from the weight of the snow that Becky and I finally got a chance
to be really alone together. Actually it was because we were both horny, but those things got us to the right place and time.

After the first couple of times we’d gone skiing, Becky decided that when the snow got really deep, we should ski out to their cabin, which is a summer place a few miles off the Warm Lake road that you can’t get to by car in the winter because the county doesn’t plow it out. We could drive to the turnoff and ski the last five or six miles. Imagine the number of trips to the bathroom I made thinking about that.

Luckily no one was in the gym when it caved in or they’d have gotten several tons of snow and wood down on them. It just happened there were no PE classes scheduled for that period. Most of the seniors were in the study hall practicing a skit for the Junior-Senior Variety Show that was supposed to be the next night. We heard this big boom and all went hauling out to see what had happened. Mark Robeson took one look and said, “Who’d have thought the Russians would pick Trout High School to demonstrate their first strike capability?” That’s about what it looked like. I was standing right under “
LEDNECKY
” and looked up and said, “It couldn’t have happened to a nicer gym,” only to turn around and see the Legend after which it
was named standing right behind me. I want to tell you there was a pretty uneasy silence there for a minute.

Anyway, by the time last period had started, we were informed that the basketball game that night and the variety show the next night would be postponed indefinitely, so the weekend was free for both of us. Becky caught up with me at the lockers after school and jabbed me in the ribs. “Hey, big boy,” she said in her best Mae West, “want some candy?”

“Huh?”

“Wanna come out to my place this weekend?”

“The cabin?”

“The cabin.”

She didn’t have any trouble getting permission; she’d already told her dad she was considering going out, though she didn’t say I’d be coming along. He didn’t ask, but I’m sure he knew. He figured she could take care of herself, which was good thinking. I wasn’t so sure Norm and Brenda would be ready to let me hike out into the wilderness to lose my innocence, but I figured if I started with Norm, it might not have to go any farther.

I walked into his office, palms sweating, and asked for the weekend off.

“Sure,” he said. “I think I ought to be able to handle it. What’ve you got in mind?”

“Skiing out to Becky’s summer place,” I said.

“Alone?”

“Not exactly.”

“You’re either alone or you’re not alone,” he said. “You’re not ‘not exactly’ alone. Is Becky going?”

I nodded.

“Does her dad know?”

“He knows she’s going,” I said.

He nodded and thought for a minute. “You know what you’re doing?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I think so.” I didn’t have a clue.

He kind of relaxed and leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the desk. “What’re you going to tell your mother?”

I flinched a little. It wouldn’t be as easy with her as it was with Norm. Not even close. “I thought we might say I was going down to Boise to get those parts for the meter on the truck,” I said. “And staying overnight.”

“You mean lie?”

I thought for a second. “Yeah, lie,” I said.

“And you want to drag me into it?”

“It would sure make it a whole lot easier.”

He made a tent with his fingers below his chin
and stared at me.

“Besides,” I said, sort of smiling, “why would we want to drag her into this sordid mess? She’d only be mad—or disappointed.”

“You’ve got a point there,” he said, looking at the ceiling. “Christ, my kid’s got me lying to my wife. It’s starting. Your grandmother always warned me I’d have kids of my own someday.”

I couldn’t believe he was really going to do it. But we talked awhile longer, and he decided there was no reason to make a big deal out of it. Even though it was the biggest deal of my life, to date, I agreed. We worked it out so he would say he was sending me for parts. Then I would call from there and say I had to wait till early Sunday morning to get them. Of course, he would get the call.

I left early Saturday morning to pick up Becky—before Brenda was up to see me headed for Boise, where there was no snow, with my skis. We stopped at the Chief and had a stack of pancakes with some of the old codgers who get up that early and listened to them talk about the Russians and whether the mill would lay off any more men and who the idiot was that didn’t have the snow shoveled off the roof of the
gym. Then we headed out.

I was pretty quiet most of the way to the turnoff, really having a hard time thinking of what to say. Becky didn’t say much either, just sat close with her hand on my knee.

Finally, just before we got to the turnoff, I said, “Are you sure about this?”

She punched me in the ribs. “What’s the matter? Chicken?”

I nodded. “Yup. I’d say that’s a good description of what I am.”

She squeezed my knee and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Right.”

She asked how I’d gotten permission.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” I said. “Norm’s crazy. He acts like he’s sending me out on a dangerous mission. He’s keeping it quiet, though.” I told her about the proposed trip to Boise.

“Maybe he is sending you out on a dangerous mission,” she said. “Ever think of that?”

“Maybe he is. Hope I come back with the goods.”

There was a little silence. “Actually the only danger is to Norm,” I said. “If Brenda finds out he lied to her, his life ain’t worth a plugged nickel.”

When we got to the turnoff, I turned the pickup around and got it as close in to the edge of the road as I could and unloaded the skis and packs. We threw everything over the snowbank, which was about as high as the cab, and put on our skis sitting on top of it. As we got away from the road, the weekend took a turn for the amazing. The sky was overcast, but it was only spitting snow. The top of the pickup was just a dot peeking over the snowbank behind us and the trees started to swallow us up, and it seemed more and more like we were going where we ought to be. When we were about a mile and a half from the cabin, the snow started coming down heavier; but there wasn’t much wind, and we were dressed for it. The only sound was the skis cutting through the powder and the poles punching in beside them, and the snowflakes hitting the snow, which you can’t really hear, but it seems like you can.