Damage - A. M. Jenkins [8]
But you really don’t want it anymore, so you pour the rest of your breakfast down the kitchen sink.
Becky hurries by on her way to catch the bus. She’s wearing a denim jacket and holding her books over her chest, so you have no idea if she’s wearing the forbidden blouse. She unbends enough to mutter a “Bye,” at you before she scuttles out the door.
“Bye,” you tell her, even though the screen door has already slammed behind her, and you’re alone again.
Okay. After twelve years of school, you can get into the routine, make all the right moves and say all the right words by habit. All the actions from all the years before have embedded themselves in your brain.
So you go brush your teeth, grab a couple bucks out of the jar for lunch, lock the back door on your way out.
Once in your truck it’s down the highway, turn right into the parking lot, straight to the area by the field house where all the athletes park. Get there right as the bell’s ringing. Go straight to homeroom, sit and mess around with your friends till you get your locker assignment. Head to that first class and sit while the teacher wrestles with the roll, with latecomers, with people in the wrong class, passes out a xeroxed sheet of class rules and after everybody’s read it, reads the whole thing out loud anyway. Then there’s stacks of books waiting to be handed out, chalkboards full of words to be copied, more xeroxed sheets filled with more words that nobody wants to read—or hear.
The whole day is like trying to sing a song that’s had all the music drained out.
At lunch it’s the same as all the other years. The athletes eat together off campus at the Dairy Queen. The talk runs to practice, girls, classes.
It’s hot as Hades at the outside tables in the Dairy Queen parking lot, so you and Curtis and Dobie and Brett eat inside. Through the window you can see the First Baptist Church hasn’t gotten around to changing its sign yet. Be joyful always.
Dobie’s only concern is food. You’re forcing yourself to eat; you take a bite and chew and swallow and take another bite. Curtis is quiet like always. But Brett had some kind of private talk with Coach this morning before school, and he’s all fired up. As far as he’s concerned, Coach is second only to God.
Brett’s been talking all the way over, on and on about getting to state, about how to light a fire under the team this year. His mouth is still running like a faucet with the handle broken off, and you notice without really caring that Curtis is starting to throw glances of irritation his way. He always says Brett’s mind is about three years behind his body, and Brett’s mouth is another couple of years behind that.
“…that’s what Coach told me,” Brett’s saying. “He said how back when he was in high school the whole team would dogpile on the guy who screwed up the worst. And I thought: Now there’s an idea. We could do that. Come on,” he urges. “Y’all know it’d work, team spirit and all that. We could take state this year. You’d go for it, wouldn’t you, Dobe, if you were playing?”
Dobie looks up from his half-eaten burger, still chewing. “Hmph?”
But Brett is a man with a mission. His voice gets louder and louder. “I know you got to agree, Hightower,” he says, squirting ketchup in a puddle next to his fries. “Right? Whoever’s got his head up his ass, the rest of us get to pound it out for him?”
“It’s a stupid idea,” Curtis says in a flat voice.
That turns Brett’s faucet off. He drops the ketchup packet. In the sudden silence, Curtis adds, “That’s where they came up with the phrase ‘dumb jock’—because of ideas like that.” He takes a bite of steak finger as Brett’s face goes from tanned to white to red.
You’re tired inside, but not too tired to see that things are heading downhill fast. Brett’s got a temper like a firecracker. And Curtis couldn’t care less that Brett’s built like a Mack truck.
So, once again, it’s up to you. You’re going to have to click on that button. Only it won’t quite click yet. “Don’t be shy,” you tell Curtis, trying to lighten the mood even