Tumbleweeds (21 page)

“You’re what?” he said.

She pulled back to look at him. His eyes were still as glass. Even his voice was expressionless, his lips pale as a mummy’s, barely moving.

“I’m… pregnant, Trey,” she repeated, a tremor chasing through her, the small of her back grabbing, the seat of her pain when she was anxious or afraid. “We’re going to have a baby.”

“Are you sure?”

Her smile flickered. “Yes. Isn’t it… wonderful? I know this has come as a shock….”

“You can’t be pregnant. You’re mistaken.”

“There’s no mistake, Trey. I saw a gynecologist in Amarillo to make sure.”

He pushed away from her as if she’d suddenly become infectious. “I don’t believe it.”

Her mouth had gone so dry, her tongue felt like sandpaper. She moistened her lips. “Believe what? That I’m pregnant? That it could happen to us?” She forced a small laugh. “Well, considering that afternoon you came to the house, you shouldn’t be surprised….”

“I trusted you, Cathy. Even more than John, I trusted you.” His voice collapsed, his gaze burned with what she could only interpret as the hurt of betrayal. He staggered up from the couch.

“Trusted me to take the pill?” she said, astonished. “But Trey, darling, why would I have needed to continue them? You’d broken off with me—”

“Get out,” he said, so quietly and deliberately she hardly heard him through the growing roar of her terror. “Leave. Right now.”

“What?”

“You heard me.
Get out!
” He looked around wildly, and she realized he was searching for her purse. He located it and threw it at her while she stared at him, speechless. “We’re through. Get up!” He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet.

“Trey… What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” His voice crumpled to a whimper. “How could you do this to us?”

“Well, I didn’t do it by myself,” she said, beginning to get angry. “I had a little help, you know. These things happen. A baby isn’t the end of the world.”

“It is for me. Get out!”

“You can’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t.”

He pulled her by the arm to the front door and pushed her roughly out onto the porch. Feeling paralyzed, unable to grasp what had happened, she stood with her mouth agape as he slammed the door in her face and shot the bolt in place.

Mabel woke the next morning to find him gone, his sheets folded on top of the made bed, a note on his pillow. “I love you, Aunt Mabel. I’m going back to Miami. Thanks for everything. Trey.”

Cathy flew to John. Trey had not said good-bye even to him. “Explain it to me, John,” she begged. “Why is having a baby so horrendous to him?”

John was as flabbergasted as she. This time at Miami, Trey hadn’t so much as glanced at another girl. He had been full of his love for Cathy, beating himself up to John over his notion that he could live without her. John had thought that now nothing could separate them. Trey was made of a complex mass of twists and turns hard for John to fathom at times, but he never shocked him. It was Trey’s mode of operation to blast off in a storm of huff when he was angry with those he loved—John, his aunt, Coach Turner—but when his rage blew out he reentered the atmosphere, disarmingly apologetic, as he’d been with Cathy after their one and only separation.

But John had the terrible feeling this time was different.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Wait it out. He’ll change his mind. I know he will.”

“What if he… doesn’t?”

“He will, John. I know him.”

John took her by the shoulders. “If he doesn’t, will you consider marrying me, Cathy? I’m sure you know how I feel about you. I love you. I always have. I’ll love your baby like my own. We can have a good life together.”

She stared up into his handsome face, so like Trey’s they could have
been brothers, which they were except for blood. “I know you do, and I love you too much to let you marry me when you and I both know my heart belongs to Trey—whose
child
belongs to him. He loves me, John. It may take a while, but he’ll come back to me. I’m certain of it. I must be available when he does.”

No word came from Trey in the next two weeks before Cathy was to leave for Miami. Having no idea where he was staying, none of them had a way to contact him. John suggested that Mabel telephone Sammy Mueller, who assured her that Trey had arrived on campus safe and sound and was staying in the athletic dorm. John and Cathy wrote letters and Mabel sent telegrams and left telephone messages, but all went unanswered. Cathy’s world fell black. She and Trey had been joined at the breast, moved to the same heartbeat. She felt as if she’d been torn from his flesh and left with no organs of her own to sustain life.

She and Emma—her grandmother’s face reflecting her deep worry and disappointment—sadly discussed her options. Abortion was never even considered, and Cathy had to wonder why Trey, if he had still wanted her and had been so opposed to children, had not demanded that she have one. That would have been like him, but he also knew she would never destroy their child. There was the alternative of putting the baby up for adoption and going on with her life, but that, too, was unthinkable. How could she give away the child conceived out of love for the father?

John repeated his offer to marry her, but again Cathy refused. “Cathy, do you know what you’re facing? I know it’s the eighties and people don’t look on unmarried pregnant girls like they used to, even on a college campus, but… they will look at you differently. There will still be a stigma. Think of the baby….”

“I am, John.”

“You’re sure there’s no chance that you would marry me?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” she said. “You deserve better, John.”

“There is none better, Cathy.”

The day before John was to leave for Florida in his pickup, he telephoned Sammy Mueller.

“Then you haven’t discussed your decision with your buddy?” the coach asked him.

“I’ll leave that to you, Coach Mueller.”

“We were counting on your coming to us as a set.”

“Trey will do fine as a single.”

“We’ll see. The game is going to miss you, John.”

He gave Cathy his new address. “This is where you can reach me, if you need me,” he said. “Don’t hesitate to do so, Cathy. Promise me.”

She read the slip of paper in dismay. “You’re not—you’re not—”

“No, Cathy. I’ve changed my mind.”

He had already applied and been accepted into Loyola University in New Orleans. His binding letter of intent to the University of Miami was forgiven only because he would not be playing football for another college. At Loyola his plan was to apply for the Jesuit Candidacy Program with the hope of becoming an ordained priest.

A
t his desk in the Hecht Athletic Center, Frank Medford, the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Miami Hurricanes, chewed gum furiously, disappointment burning a path to his belly. A little while ago he’d been informed that John Caldwell had turned down his scholarship to play football for Miami to enter Loyola University in New Orleans with hope of becoming a priest.

Frank had come close to having cardiac arrest. “He did
what
?” Frank, a Catholic, had yowled to the bearer of bad tidings. “That son of a bitch! Are you kidding me?”

When Sammy Mueller, as shocked and disappointed as Frank, had assured him he wasn’t, Frank had pulled his hair and cursed and stomped around the head coach’s office demanding why the hell they hadn’t known of John Caldwell’s religious predilection before.

“We didn’t think to ask, and he didn’t mention it,” Frank’s boss said, a droop to his normally rosy cheeks. “You got to admit, the kid’s reason to withdraw from the program is one for the books.” He sighed mournfully. “We could have signed the wide receiver from Oklahoma.”

Frank paced himself out and fell wearily into an office chair. He’d had these disappointments before but never one that had so
thoroughly shaken him. “This explains why Trey Hall came back to campus early,” he said. “I knew something was gnawing at him. He’s not the same kid who left here after summer conditioning. But why in God’s name didn’t he tell us that John planned to defect?”

“Apparently, he didn’t know, Frank. You’re going to have to tell him.”

“He must have had some idea what his buddy was up to. What else would explain why Hall’s been in the Dumpster since he got back?” Frank felt his neck grow hot, still rocked to the soles of his Nikes by the news. John Caldwell was to Trey Don Hall what fuel was to a rocket. They’d been best friends since their pabulum days. Could Trey get airborne without him?

“Lots of possibilities when it comes to eighteen-year-old boys,” Coach Mueller said. “I want you to have a talk with the kid, find out what’s going on with him and if you think this blow will affect his playing. Without John, Trey might fold on us.”

His boss had put in words the fear that had now destroyed the high Frank had allowed himself ever since seeing the Kersey film clips of Trey Don Hall and John Caldwell and observing the dynamic duo during summer conditioning. Frank had been in the coaching business a long time and had learned to reserve his opinion of all blue-chip quarterbacks and receivers until they proved themselves when and where it counted. The rookies from the Texas Panhandle—especially Trey Don Hall—gave evidence of becoming one of the rare exceptions to the tried-and-true rule that had spared Frank the kind of grief he was experiencing now.

When they’d arrived for their first tour of the campus, Trey Don had appeared typical of the tall, good-looking, cocky quarterbacks Frank had seen as his duty to shoot down from their high school pinnacles.

“I prefer to be called TD,” he had announced when he was introduced to the coaches, his grin inferring the meaning of the initials.

Frank had drawled, “Around here, you have to earn that moniker before it’s applied. For now, you’re just Trey Don Hall.”

But there was no
just
about TD Hall. It was becoming clear that he might live up to the dazzle of his game clips showing him all gold—arm, feet, hips, and brains. The offensive coaches had been impressed by his focus and conduct during summer conditioning when everybody would have bet he’d be out to the clubs in Coconut Grove every night undoing the day’s physical training, John going along to keep Trey out of trouble. His dedication and abstinence from the frivolities he’d indulged in on his first visit to the campus had surprised them, as had his unexpected reappearance on campus within days of his departure back to the Texas Panhandle. Frank had known right away that something had gone wrong at home when the boy had asked if he could pay for his room and board in the athletic dorm for the remaining weeks before his scholarship kicked in. Since his return, he’d lived in monkish isolation—no girls or nightlife—in complete contrast to the outgoing, sociable kid they’d first met. He hung around his room alone, ate his meals apart at the training table, and turned in early. During the day he studied game films, worked out, and practiced throwing passes at moving targets he hit nearly every time. He drew spectators on those days—never members of the coaching staff, since the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) forbade coaches from any interaction with their players that could be construed as “preemptive instruction” before the season began. But they had watched the perfection of his spirals through binoculars trained on him from office windows and high in bleacher seats and imagined him standing tall in the pocket, effortlessly flicking deep cuts to his wide receiver, John. Their two-man combination was every offensive coordinator’s ultimate fantasy.

Now one half of that fantasy was over and the other may be, too, if Trey Don Hall’s exceptional skills and supreme confidence in his abilities were inextricably linked to John Caldwell’s. Game
films clearly showed their faith in each other and their almost telepathic connection that had powered Kersey High School to win a state championship. Could Trey function as successfully without his teammate?

“You wanted to see me, Coach Medford?” Trey asked from the open door.

“I do. Come in and have a seat.” The boy had come from a workout and was still in his gym shorts and jersey. It was another pleasant surprise that Trey Hall consistently lifted weights. Most quarterbacks did not like to pump iron. They thought weights were for the big linemen and linebackers, but the rookie believed that great quarterbacks had to be strong and fast. At six foot three and carrying close to two hundred pounds of conditioned muscle, he was both. Frank felt another jab of anxiety. What if the kid proved a bust?