Damage - A. M. Jenkins [48]
“Go get some water and hightail it back out here.” Coach’s face is set in tired lines as he turns away. “Dobie,” hear him say. “Get that thing out of my sight.”
That’s when you see the lone empty helmet lying the grass.
Dobie lopes over to it. Coach is already bellowing somebody else. “Baker!” he calls. “This ain’t bumper cars—wrap ’em up, you hear?”
Dobie bends, loops his long fingers through Curtis’s face mask. You watch as he slowly takes the helmet the field.
Nobody you know has ever just walked out of football practice. Failed to show up, yes. Pretended to be sick, Back in ninth grade, Dobie even went to the counselor and got his schedule changed to regular PE. But nobody’s ever just walked out, right in the middle of a drill.
Leave it to Curtis to decide he didn’t like the view from this particular tunnel.
Heather shows up right before the end. The sight of her doesn’t lift you up the way you thought it would.
You wave at her, anyway, and try to smile.
Later, when you come out of the field house clean and dressed in street clothes, Curtis’s car is nowhere to seen. Dobie stands on the sidewalk, shading his eyes, looking around the parking lot.
Poor forgotten Dobie. Stranded here because of you and Curtis. “Need a ride home?” you ask.
Dobie peers at your pickup. Heather’s visible inside it; she’s probably running down the battery by listening the radio. “You sure it’s okay?”
“It’s okay.”
“Well. All right. ’Preciate it, Austin.”
The two of you walk side by side across the parking lot. But when you’re about to reach the cab, Dobie heads toward the bed of the truck.
Good old Dobie.
“Come on up front, Dobe. Heather can sit in middle.”
“It’s okay. I’ll ride in the back.”
“There’s plenty of room.”
Dobie hesitates again, with a glance at the window—at Heather’s blond head. It’s the same look has when he passes the show window of the local dealership, of longing being quickly nipped in the bud. “I’ll be fine back here,” he says with dignity, and puts booted foot on the trailer hitch to hoist himself up.
“We’re giving Dobie a ride home,” you tell Heather as you slide in, and she stares at you for a moment before looking quickly over her shoulder.
“Oh,” she says. “For a moment I thought you’d meant I was going to have to be all squished up next him. The gods of dating are kind, after all.”
“He’s a nice guy,” you tell her.
“Maybe so, but I’d rather walk through Kmart in sponge rollers than have to rub against him around every corner.” She glances at Dobie in the rearview mirror, then gives you a smile. “This way, he can dip tobacco if he wants, and I can be alone with you, and we’re all happy. You are going to take him home first, aren’t you?”
That means a trip out 171 and back, but you nod anyway.
You let Dobie off at the road in front of his house like you always have. You don’t get to say good-bye because he doesn’t come up to the window—he never does—thumps on the fender like he’s dismissing a horse with pat on the flank. Then he goes to check the mailbox before heading up the dirt driveway to his family’s small frame house.
All the way back to her house Heather’s talking you, fooling with the radio. She doesn’t say a word about your phone call this morning. When you pull up in front of her house you don’t get out right away. She scoots closer and nestles against you, talking on and on about how in sixth period Mrs. Henderson hates her and is desperate for a chance to flunk her.
All the while she’s talking, she’s also playing with your right hand, testing its size against hers, tracing the outlines of your fingers.
So finally you give your full attention to Heather, bright and beautiful and curled up against you, and understand that in order to make this connection you going to have to put yourself on the line.
“I wasn’t even enough to make my own father want stick around,” she said. You’ve got the missing pieces to puzzle—you can start by pointing out that she’s been look at her dad with tunnel vision. That she doesn’t see the whole picture. That she can’t take other people’s suicides personally.