The Off Season (25 page)

I thought about pointing out that hiding inside wasn't how captains acted, but I didn't because I'm not that stupid.

E
VERYONE WAS TALKING ABOUT WIN
actually going home for Thanksgiving. Which really is kind of a miracle, a Grandpa Warren hard-work miracle, not the God-is-easy-on-you kind. We had a couple big phone calls with Mom and Dad, organizing a trip back to Schwenk Farm just for Thanksgiving Day, not spending the night because that's months away yet. Maryann even volunteered to go with us to assess the house—that's something they do with every patient although usually not on Thanksgiving, which makes me think that Maryann was making, you know, a special exception. Then again, her family's in Nebraska and maybe she didn't have anything else to do, who knows.

A few days before Thanksgiving, Win got a head cold and I thought that was it. But he recovered before it went into his chest, which would be really bad because the whole pneumonia thing with quads, and now it looked like we were really good to go. Win even had these ceramic turkey candleholders he'd made in art class that Mom would just bawl her head off over.

Wednesday afternoon Dad showed up to stay the night then drive us back, Win and Maryann and me. We kept saying this wasn't necessary, that in fact it was an extremely bad idea because Win needs a special van—he can't just be wheeled onto the pickup bed. But Dad insisted. Then when he showed up, I could see why.

He was driving a new van. I mean, brand new. It was so new it didn't have a license plate even, just a paper form. And a wheelchair lift and everything. Dad climbed out of that van like it was his fifth child. He'd called from the road to make sure I'd be out front when he pulled up.

"That's not ours," I said.

"Oh yeah it is. Just got it." He patted the shiny new paint. It's been a long time since he had a shiny ride. "All we pay for is gas."

"But who—where—"

"That fellow of yours? Well, his father started up a collection with truck dealers, all over Wisconsin I think, and they pooled up and got this."

"
Brian's
father? The one who almost sued the school about me?"

Dad nodded. He looked as surprised as I did, and he'd had time to absorb it. "You just can't tell about some people." He started to cry. "You can't tell what's inside them."

Which I had to agree with, though I didn't have any time to chew this over because Dad right away wanted to see Win, and he started crying even more watching Win wheel himself over to shake his hand. That got the nurses going even. Win showed Dad all over the hospital, me pushing most of the time because he can't wheel for long and it's not so good for his shoulders. Win was pretty much head honcho these days, speaking to new patients, busting guys who weren't working as hard as he thought they should be, joking around with Dennis, who nearly gave Dad a heart attack when he came rushing over to greet him. There was a huge duffel of Win's medical stuff, all these things he'd need and stuff we sure hoped he wouldn't, and I was extremely glad Maryann was coming because there was no way I could have handled that by myself. I couldn't even
identify
most of it.

Dad spent the night with me in the little apartment, and I got to make him French toast for dinner, really late, because that's the only thing I know how to cook, Dad drinking beer, which normally doesn't go with French toast but guess how much he cared.

"You know, I saw Brian," Dad said after a while.

I shrugged, but inside my stomach flipped. I tried to think of what to say: "Oh"..."We broke up"..."Did he talk about me?" But I couldn't think of anything, not without a couple weeks' effort.

"He came by with his dad to drop off the van. Asked me to say hello."

"Oh," I managed to get out at last. "That's—that's nice."

"It is. He's had an easy life, that boy has." There was a long silence, and then Dad held up a forkful of French toast. "You didn't use any cinnamon, I see."

I had to grin. "Couldn't find any."

"Well, they taste perfect like this. Just perfect." He clinked his beer against my glass of milk, and the conversation drifted over to Curtis, how Dad had just about lost his teeth, the fake ones, the first time he saw those rats.

Walking into Win's room the next morning, though, I could tell something was wrong. Just the way he sat staring out the window made me think, Uh-oh.

"Hey there, ready to hit the road?" I said, hoping to bluff my way through.

"I'm not going," Win said flatly.

"So, we've got a van, we've got a therapist—the prettiest therapist, which is nice—we've got Dad ready to pull out a handkerchief for just about anything. We've got the turkey candlesticks. Anything we're missing?"

"I'm not going."

I sat down on the edge of the bed. "Okay."

"People know me here. They know what I look like."

"So you're saying you don't want to go for Thanksgiving, or you don't want to go, period?"

Win didn't answer.

"Because you're going to have to leave the building eventually. They'll kick you out."

"Do you know what people will say, seeing me?" he asked bitterly, gesturing to his wheelchair. "'Oh, look at that crippled guy. Isn't that sad. Isn't he brave.' I
hate
that garbage. I hate it."

That lingered there in the hospital room for a few minutes, those words.

I swallowed. "We've got a little brother," I said, kind of out of the blue, "who's really smart. Which, you know, is not something that comes naturally to us. He's probably going to go to med school or something. And he made this thing—with rats, but still—and it won a huge prize. But he couldn't tell anyone. He got in so much trouble, and so did Sarah, because everyone thought they were fooling around. But having people think
that,
that was easier for the two of them than the truth. The truth that they're smart."

Win didn't say anything, but he was listening.

"And I used to have a boyfriend. Who actually is a really nice guy, and his dad got us that van, which is pretty amazing. But we broke up because he couldn't stand what his friends might think. I might not be the best girl in the world, or the prettiest—"

"You're both those things," said Win.

"Prettier than Maryann?"

"Shut up. Keep talking."

"Anyway, we broke up because he was afraid of what his friends said. And that's kind of pathetic, I think." I sighed. "I have another friend, a
real
friend. She said once—just a couple weeks ago, actually—that you can't control what people say about you. And she should know."

"Was this Amber?"

(I'd told Win about Amber too, which I thought would be a huge revelation but he just laughed and asked me if I'd ever been in a weight room. Whatever that means.)

"Nah, her girlfriend."

Win thought for a moment. "'You can't control what people say about you'...She's got a smart girlfriend."

"Yeah, she does."

"So are you going to help me out of here?"

"I suppose so," I said, giving him a punch in the arm. Not too hard, but hard enough. Hard enough to let him know he couldn't be broken.

So that was the beginning of our big trip home for Thanksgiving, and it would have been the emotional high point probably, if we hadn't driven through Hawley.

Okay, I know I haven't mentioned much about Red Bend football lately, but it turns out Red Bend and Hawley finished the season tied for first, and they were playing each other for the league championship. This was the big Thanksgiving Day game everyone goes to every year.

Which Dad knew, even though he also wasn't paying as much attention as he usually does. So while we were on the road, Dad asked if it was okay if we drove through Hawley. He didn't even mention the game, just said that Jimmy Ott wanted to wave. Which Jimmy did want to do. He'd been so much a part of our family, he and Kathy, that he really wanted, you know, just to acknowledge Win as we drove by, step out of his office before the game started to do that. And so Dad called from his cell phone—oh, Dad has a cell phone now, did I forget to mention that? So he can call the cows in for milking, ha ha—Dad called Jimmy to let him know we'd be passing by.

Anyway, we ended up leaving the hospital a lot later than we'd planned because everything takes so much longer with, well, with everything, and so Dad's big plan to pass through Hawley two hours before the game got all screwed up, and instead he called about fifteen minutes before kickoff when Jimmy was in the middle of his locker room pep talk. And because Jimmy is such a loyal, wonderful person, and also because he thought it might really inspire his players, he made the whole Hawley team come out to the street with him. And when Jeff Peterson heard what was going on, then of course he had to bring the Red Bend players out as well, seeing as he was one of Win's coaches back in high school. And then the cheerleaders joined in because that's what they do, and a whole bunch of Red Bend fans went racing for the gates—especially because Kathy had organized a fund drive for Win before the game, with ladies at every gate collecting money in Red Bend football helmets, which sort of put Win on everyone's minds...

But we didn't know any of this. Even Dad and Jimmy Ott weren't expecting this. So Dad looked just as surprised as the rest of us in the van when we turned onto the street that runs past the high school and there, all of a sudden, was everyone. All these people lining the road, both sides, and cheerleaders too, and Beaner yelling his head off and jumping up and down, and all the Hawley players, probably Brian even, though I couldn't make him out in that blur of orange uniforms—

They were there for us. For Win. It was like a parade, only he was the only person in it. He sat in the van in his wheelchair looking out at all this, and Maryann leaned over and whispered, "You gotta wave," and she was crying, and I was crying, and the people outside had huge tears running down their faces as they smiled away, and I realized with a start that not being able to control what people say about you sometimes includes their good words too. And Win waved to them with his weak-triceps wave, and they cheered even more because Win is the best football player Red Bend has ever produced, and nothing that happens to him can ever change that.

When we made it to the farm finally, I had another surprise, because Amber and Dale had come back from Chicago to help Mom with dinner. Which Mom kept secret just to see the look on my face. Actually, Amber and her mom were talking again. Lori had come over to cut Mom's hair and after hearing all about Win's problems decided that maybe having a gay kid isn't so bad considering she can still walk. Lori was supposed to come too, but she was late because of her new boyfriend, which surprised no one and didn't bother anyone either.

Guess what Dale made for dinner.

Actually, she and Dad hit it off like gangbusters, which I should have figured out if I'd thought about it for even a second. Whether Dad knows about her and Amber I don't know—sometimes the not-talking thing works out just fine—and he and Dale spent a couple hours outside with beers and her barbecue machine gabbing away about seasonings. She got him all fired up again about organic cheese and said she'd build him a smokehouse even, so that he came back into the kitchen looking like he'd just met Santa.

I went searching and finally found Curtis's science fair trophy stuffed in the back of his closet. I brought it back downstairs, Curtis scuttling over to grab it but I wouldn't let him because it's the first trophy any Schwenk ever won for brains. It actually got pretty rough and I had to use some basketball moves that are illegal, but I insisted we keep it right on the dining room table, next to Win's candlesticks. And I made Curtis tell Maryann and Kathy and Jimmy Ott all about it, Kathy so proud that she cried a little even though rats give her nightmares.

This whole time Mom looked so happy to have Win home finally, and she fluttered around him beaming like her face was going to split in two. She'd spent days getting the house ready, and she'd cleaned out the little office—or made Dad and Curtis clean it—and even got a hospital bed in there somehow so Win could take a nap after that huge exhausting trip. Which he actually did, and her being able to help him like that, you could tell it took away a big chunk of her pain about not being with him in the hospital. She spent a lot of time with Maryann too, showing her around and talking about Win. And Smut, even though she's got tons of enthusiasm most of the time, she crawled up on Win's hospital bed as gently as she ever could, and nestled down next to him like she knew with her good-dog sense that he was hurt, and stayed curled up with him for his entire nap, looking so proud to be there for her man like that.

Right as we were finally sitting down to dinner, Bill and Aaron—or Milkshake and Tink if you want to be that way—showed up, even though Bill had told us he didn't think he'd be able to make it back in time. They'd ducked out of their football game the second it finished so they could race over here. And we all sat down to the best food I have ever eaten, especially compared to all that hospital food these past months, and more than that to the best people I know, and we all bowed our heads in thanks. Even Win.

A
FTER DINNER WE GOT WIN
all packed up and he and Maryann and Mom headed back to Minnesota. Even Dr. Miller said Mom was good enough to go so long as she doesn't try lifting him. I get to stick around in Red Bend with Dad and Curtis, for a while it looks like, as the female head of household, which is a term that always cracks me up because there isn't a household I know that isn't headed by a female, and most of the males in those households wouldn't last two minutes if it was the other way around.

Which meant that the first job I got stuck with as female head of household was cleaning up Thanksgiving dinner, only it turned out to be a blast with me and Amber and Dale and Kathy Ott laughing our heads off, even Kathy dancing to this CD Dale had brought—Melissa somebody—while Amber lip-synched the songs. And Aaron went out to help Bill and Dad and Curtis milk, only he had
them
laughing so hard it's a wonder they got a drop out of those cows.