Cody's Varsity Rush (10 page)

Cody turned and sank to the floor, gulping the disinfectant-laced air. He wondered how long it would be before he heard the catlike yowl of sirens. From his sitting position, he was almost eye-to-eye with the twins. They were both studying him, with a mixture of fear and curiosity. Finally, one of them tugged on his mother's running shorts. “Is that boy sick?” he asked.

Cody and Pork Chop sat in a back booth at Dairy Delight on a Sunday following a morale-sapping 10–8 Saturday afternoon defeat at Lincoln. Coupled with a narrow homecoming win over St. Stevens, Grant's record stood at 2–3. The team's goal of a league title was drifting from the realm of possibility. Chop looked tired. He sported a gash over his left eye. His helmet had been ripped from his head during an all-out blitz late in the St. Stevens game, but he continued to battle, taking on two hard-charging pass-rushers.

But Chop wasn't interested in football. His eyes were intent on Cody. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “So, dawg,” he said, deep-set brown eyes widening. “Tell me what it was like.”

Cody drew in a deep breath. “Well, Dad drives me to the prison. We go to this reception window, kind of like the ticket windows at the movie theaters. There's a tired-looking guy sitting there. He pushes a form to me and says ‘Fill this out.'”

When I'm done, Dad and I pass through a metal detector into this huge room. People are milling around, including a woman with two little boys, who take turns socking each other in the arm—harder each time. A guard directs me to a cubicle, kind of like the ones in the library, only when I sit down I'm staring at a Plexiglas wall. On the other side of the wall is a cubicle just like mine. It's like I'm looking in a mirror, but I'm missing from my own reflection.”

Pork Chop raised his eyebrows. “Trippy,” he said. “Then what?”

“A door opens on the other side of the glass. A line of scary-looking dudes in orange jumpsuits files in. In order, they start filling up the cubicles. The people on my side of the room start pointing and shouting, pushing past each other to get to the right cubicle. Weitz is last in line. I sit opposite him. He looks tired. But he's put on some muscle. Been hitting the weights, I figure. I pick up this phone. There's one just like it in his cube. He says, ‘Hey.' His voice sounds all tinny and faraway, even though he's three feet from me.”

Pork Chop drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “And?”

“He starts to talk, but without looking at me. He mumbles, ‘What do you want?' No apologies. He doesn't ask if I got hurt when he tried to run me down. I ask him if he's okay, and he looks at me for just a second. ‘Well, I'm in jail. You call
that
okay?'” Pork Chop coughed. “What a loser.”

Cody closed his eyes for a moment. “Yeah, I was expecting something more from him. But that's all he's got. He hangs up his intercom phone, pushes his chair back, and walks away.”

Pork Chop took a long pull from the double straws he had plunged in his chocolate shake. “That is one freaky dream, dawg. And you say you've had it twice?”

“Yeah. And it was almost exactly the same both times. The only difference is that the first time, it was my mom who drove me to the prison.”

“So, Code, do you think that's the way it might have gone down—if Weitz had lived and the police had arrested him?”

Cody exhaled slowly. He imagined Weitz regaining consciousness and staggering to the highway. He wondered if it was the injuries or the alcohol—or both—that made him suddenly lurch into the path of an oncoming Peterbilt semitruck. “Maybe,” he said sadly. “I was hoping he could turn his life around. Be a different kind of person. You know, I told him to pray—when I went up to his truck after the wreck. I've wondered a lot if he heard me. I hope he did.”

Pork Chop narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“So he could be forgiven.”

“But, dawg, think of how he terrorized us! He tried to kill you. He doesn't deserve to be forgiven.”

“That's the point, Chop. None of us deserves it.”

Pork Chop finished his shake with a long, loud slurp. “I don't know about you, dawg. The stuff you say sometimes, it keeps me awake at night.”

Cody leveled his eyes at his friend. “Good,” he said.

Chapter 6 Nowhere to Hide

W
orld History had quickly become Cody's least favorite high school class. To Cody, Mr. Dellis, with his dark, slicked-down hair and round glasses, bore an eerie resemblance to Dr. Octopus, Spider-Man's arch enemy. In reality, however, the teacher had a different enemy: Christianity.

“I will teach you things the textbooks don't have the guts to report,” he had told his class on the first day of school. “I am going to teach you history as it actually was, not the way certain groups try to spin it. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I am certain that will happen. That's what results when you are committed to giving the unvarnished facts and your unbiased opinions about them. I will make some of you uncomfortable, but that is part of the educational process.”

Cody had nodded approvingly upon hearing these words. “Sounds to me like this class will be cool,” he said to Robyn and Pork Chop after the first class. “I'd kinda like to learn some stuff that isn't in the history books—get the real inside scoop, you know?”

Robyn had narrowed her sky-blue eyes, as if deep in thought. “I don't know, Cody,” she said slowly. “Something's kind of bothering me.”

Cody shrugged. “What could be bothering you, Hart? It was just a bunch of introductory stuff.”

“Well for one thing,” she said, “there is no such thing as an ‘unbiased opinion.' There's a reason they're called opinions, you know.”

Pork Chop smiled at Cody. “She's got a point, dawg. You should listen to her more—that's my unbiased opinion anyway.”

“Thank you, Deke,” Robyn said. “I couldn't agree more.”

Cody rolled his eyes.

As the school days piled up, Mr. Dellis gave more and more of his “unbiased” opinions: “The Bible glorifies war and demeans women.” “The Bible is filled with contradictions.” “The Bible is a second-rate source of history, at best.” “The Bible promotes racism.” “The most horrific atrocities in world history have been carried out in the name of Christianity and other similar religions.”

Midway through the first semester, Mr. Dellis folded his hands in front of him after finishing a tirade about “rightwing politicians and their heinous abuse of power” and asked, “Anyone care to respond? I am open to dissenting opinions—”

Cody saw Robyn's hand shoot up. He knew the moment was coming.
Ah, Mr. Dellis
, he thought,
you
just poked your hand into the lion
'
s cage once too
often
.

“Yes, I have a question,” Robyn said, pushing her Perry Ellis glasses up her nose. Her voice had that slight quake in it that meant she was about one Fahrenheit degree short of a boil over. “Is this World History class—or Intro to Religious Bigotry?”

“Ms. Hart,” Mr. Dellis scolded, “I hardly think that tone is appropriate.”

Robyn arched her thin eyebrows. “But you just said you were open to dissenting opinions. You are open, aren't you?”

Mr. Dellis smiled. “I see I've touched a nerve here. Perhaps I should clarify myself. Ms. Hart, I am not trying to offend you or anyone else in this class who might share your belief system.” Cody was pretty sure Mr. Dellis shot him a glance as he finished his sentence. “My point,” the teacher continued, “is merely to show that Christianity has not been, by and large, a positive force in world history, including American history. I am happy to entertain facts to the contrary. But only facts, not borderline insubordination. Understand, Ms. Hart?”

Cody looked at Robyn sitting in the desk next to his, near the front of the classroom. Her jaw dropped and he could hear her gasp with exasperation. The message was clear: Are you going to help me out here or not, Cody Martin?

Cody turned to the front of the class. He kept his eyes focused on the clock at the front of the room. In nine minutes the class would be over
. This is your
fight, Hart
, he thought
. I
'
m not going to get dragged
into it. I didn
'
t take this class to debate religion with
some guy three times my age. I
'
d just end up looking
like a fool anyway. Mr. Dellis is smart. Oily and kinda
creepy, but smart.

Cody nearly fell out of his chair when Pork Chop, sitting at the desk directly behind his, finally broke the uneasy silence. “I've just been sitting here thinking about what you said, Mr. Dellis,” Chop began, “and I have to disagree.”

Mr. Dellis walked toward Pork Chop's desk. “Can you back up your position, Mr. Porter?”

“I never talk unless I can back up what I say,” came the response. “You know when you said Christianity hasn't been a positive force in American history? Well, what about Abraham Lincoln? I probably wouldn't be sitting here right now if not for him, and he was a deeply religious dude.”

Mr. Dellis smiled dismissively. “Ah, but Mr. Porter, who says that Lincoln's faith had anything to do with his humanitarianism? He was always deeply sensitive when it came to the plights of other people. He possessed an almost innate sense of equality.”

“I'm sorry, sir, but that's simply not true.” Pork Chop's voice rang with genuine respect. “You see, only a couple years before he was elected president, Lincoln went on the record saying that ‘Negroes' shouldn't be allowed to vote, serve on juries, or hold public office. He even said they shouldn't marry white people. But, later on, obviously, he changed his heart. A lot of people believe his faith was the cause of it.” He paused and looked at Cody. “Right, dawg?”

Cody felt his face growing hot. He tried to think of something to say.

Then from the back of the room, Terry Alston, Pork Chop's rival for best all-around freshman male athlete, interrupted. “How do you know all of this, Chop? You're just a dumb lineman.”

“Oh, brother,” Cody muttered to himself, “here we go again. But at least the heat's off me.”

Pork Chop half turned in his chair to face Alston, who was sitting to the left and behind him. Chop let out a short, humorless laugh. “Excuse me, TA.
Dumb
lineman?”

“Look,” Alston said quickly, “I'm not disrespecting you. You know I respect your game. You're a big strong dude. I'm just sayin' it doesn't take a genius to ram into another big guy all day.”

Pork Chop appeared genuinely amused. “Oh really,” he said. He appeared ready to eject from his seat and make Terry Alston's dentist very wealthy.

Mr. Dellis, perhaps sensing a potential battle royal in his classroom, jumped in. “Now, Mr. Porter, let's remember what I said about respecting dissenting opinions. I don't know a lot about football, but I think all that Mr. Alston is saying is—”

“—See, that's my problem, Mr. Dellis,” Pork Chop countered. “You don't know football. Neither does TA. He's just too pretty to play it I guess. If you did, you wouldn't use the words ‘dumb' and ‘lineman' in the same sentence. An offensive lineman has to be one of the smartest guys on the field.”

“You've gotta be kidding,” Alston scoffed.

Pork Chop looked to Mr. Dellis, “May I, sir?”

Mr. Dellis nodded and smiled. Cody's mom had a name for smiles like that: cat that ate the canary.

Pork Chop stood in front of the class as smiling and confident as a gameshow host. “It would take way too long to explain all the intricacies of an offensive lineman's responsibilities,” he began, “so I'm just going to give you a little glimpse into the world of the Midnight Cowboy, lineman extraordinaire. It's a pressure-filled world, because I play left tackle. That means I have to protect the quarterback's blind side every game or he ends up in a body bag.