Forever (21 page)

“Amy.” Scott said as he tossed his robe on the bedpost.

“What was up?”

“Well,” Scott said as he pulled on a t-shirt and boxers, “she dumped Mark.”

Roni took the covers and pulled them over her head. “That’s IT! I’m not coming out of here! I AM DONE!”

Scott knew it was probably the wrong time, but this was actually kind of funny.

“You can’t stay under there forever, Roni. You’re afraid of the dark.”

The covers came back down. Roni was staring straight up at the ceiling.

“What the fuck else?
I suppose she wants switched now.”

“Yeah.
But I told her she might just have to suck it up, too.”

“Anything else?”

“She wants to bring a date.”

“Can we just elope?”

“I think that we’re a little past that point.”

“Can I kill Amy?”

Scott crawled under the covers and pulled her close to him.

“I’d prefer not. Is there a Plan B?”

“Let’s just go to sleep. Good night, Footer.”

“Good night, Killer.”

Scott awoke around 9:00 the next morning to the sound of hammering coming from outside the dormer windows.

“What the hell?...” he said to himself as he crawled out of bed and walked to the window. He opened the curtain and hopped back in surprise as Jack grinned in at him.

“Oh, hell you are home!” Jack said with a laugh.
“Didn’t answer the door when I knocked. Sorry ’bout that!”

“It’s OK, Jack. What are you doing?”

“Putting up Christmas lights!”

“On the16th of November?”

“Yep! Do it about now every year!”

Scott shook his head and laughed. “How many head wounds did you have, anyway?”

“Two or three. I can’t rightly remember anymore.”

“Well, get down and let me get dressed. I’ll come out and help you.”

It took the two of them until noon to hook everything up. Well, it took Scott that long.

“So you’ve basically just been waiting from some poor E-4 to live here to be your cheap labor, right?” Scott said from his perch on top of Amanda’s house.

“Not at all. Anyone E-8 or below would have done,” Jack said. “Spread those out a little more, would you?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Sir? Don’t call me sir! I work for a goddamn living, boy!”

Scott stared down at him for a moment with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, I used to work for a living. Now I just give orders.”

“That’s what I thought, old man!”

“Seriously, thanks for helping, son,” Jack said. “I’d have been at this all day.”

“No problem,” Scott said. “Why so early, though? We usually don’t put ours up until after Thanksgiving.”

“Well, Mama likes it that way,” he said. “At least she has for the last few years.”

Jack paused for a moment. He looked a little choked up, then collected himself.

“About eight years ago, our oldest boy, Mike, had leave about this time,” he said. “He shipped out to ’Nam right after Thanksgiving. He’d said something to Esther before he left about wishing the Christmas lights had been up before he left.

“A week after he got there, he was killed in action,” Jack continued. “They got him back before Christmas; he’s buried in Arlington.

“Esther never forgave herself,” he said. “Ever since, we put our lights up, our kids put theirs up before Thanksgiving. I think she thinks Mike can see them. It’s her way of making up for it, I guess. After we moved here and bought the houses, we decided we’d take care of decorating them, too. So, anyway, thanks again.”

Scott stood in awe of the man. “Sergeant Major, it was my honor. I think we might just go get a tree this weekend.”

“Esther would like that, son,” Jack said. “Oh, she’d like that just fine.”

Scott helped Jack load his tools in his old pick-up, then headed back to the house to prepare to work out. At least three days a week, he loaded a bag of old footballs his dad had liberated from the high school, his orange Voit kick-off tee, his two-inch block and a tripod he fashioned out of PVC pipe to hold the ball on the block.

He tossed everything into the back of the
Sarge and drove over to Memorial. Once there, he entered through the southeast gate, walked down the track, hefted the ball bag into the front row of the seats and began his stretches.

Both as a wrestler and a kicker, Scott had learned the importance of stretching. His routine took a good 20 minutes. Then he stood next to the stone wall in front of the seats and did 100 leg swings with his right leg. He was surprisingly limber for 6-3 and 175 pounds.

Then jog an 800, run an 800, and finally out on the field.

He devised a pretty good routine. First, kick-offs. He’d tee up a ball on the defensive 40. Then, step off six strides at about a 45-degree angle to the ball. Then, the run-up and kick and a dead run down field to retrieve the ball. Ten kicks, so long as they made it inside the 10, followed by a sprint to the ball and a brisk jog back to the tee.

It was then on to extra points. Twelve balls in a bag. Twelve kicks, provided they all went through (and they pretty much all did).

Next
was field goals. First, six from each hash mark at 20 yards, then back to 25 yards; four down the middle, four from each hash mark. Then 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, and finally 60. Counting the extra points, 120 kicks. The goal each time was to make 75 percent, or 90 kicks.

On this chilly November afternoon, he was on. He made his first 70 before shanking one from 40 yards on the left hash mark. He came back and hit his last one from 40, then hit 11 of 12 from 45.

His first kick from 50 was low and short. “Fuck. What was that?” he said out loud.

He went back to look at where his plant foot landed, when he heard a familiar voice.

“It wasn’t your plant. You hit the ball too high and came out of your tuck too fast. Stay down on the ball.”

Roni was walking across the track toward him. She was wearing a pair of mechanic’s coveralls with her ski jacket over them. She had her mittens on with one of Scott’s old Royals’ caps on her head.

“You get back this far and you get going too fast. Slow down and do it right. I’ll go down and shag.”

In the weeks and months since Scott had really started working out, Roni had become an expert on kicking. Every Saturday and Sunday she watched college and pro games on TV and studied the kickers. She had become Scott’s coach.

After watching him since September, she knew his every move, every mannerism. She could detect the smallest change, the smallest abnormality. If he made the kick with the broken routine, she’d correct it after he finished. If he missed, she was all over him.

He made his last two from straight-on 50, then two of four from the left hash and three of four from the right.

Scott made his first kick from 55. His second was dead-on, but short, as was the third.

“Go back and take a couple of leg swings. Get out of your head and kick the ball.”

He set up the ball on the block with the tripod, then went back and took the leg swings. His eyes locked on the ball. Right leg step, left leg step and plant, right leg through,
whup! Head down through the follow-through; he heard Roni before his head even came up.

“Yeah baby, right down the fucking middle!”

He was three for four right hash, two for four left hash, then moved back to hit five of 12 from 60.

“What’s the number?” Roni asked.

“Actually, it was 104 of 120,” Scott said. “We’ll dazzle the NAIA!”

“Not bad, Footer,” she said as she walked the rest of the way to him with the ball bag. She kissed him. “But I’ll take a few more short misses for more deep consistency. C’mon home; I’ll give you a rub down. And, I had an idea.”

“Sex?”

“Photography.”

****

CHAPTER 25

In the middle of the living room, Scott stripped off his purple K-State hoodie, wool long john top and long-sleeved t-shirt, then his sweat pants and wool long johns, leaving on his gym shorts. He threw the big blue blanket on the floor and lay down.

Roni had taken off the coveralls and her jeans and was down to pink Bobby Brooks and a baggy UNC football sweatshirt. She sat straddling Scott’s butt and pulled out a bottle of pink baby lotion that had been heating up in a sink of hot water. She dribbled lotion into her hands and started working it into his shoulders.

“Mmmm…God you have good hands, McIntyre. Golden fucking hands.”

“This is my second favorite part of workouts.”

“Second?”

“First is jumping your shit about staying down on the ball, Footer.”

“Long as I get the rubdown, I’m good with that. So what was your idea?”

“Well…you know what you said last night about it being too bad Maggie was already busy for the wedding?”

“Yeah.”

“What if she wasn’t?”

“Wasn’t what?”

“Busy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if I asked Maggie to be our photographer instead of our matron of honor?”

Scott turned his head around enough so he could see Roni’s face.

“You’re serious.”

“Look, she’s as good as anyone we know. When they came out last month, she just ripped Clarkson’s when we were looking at their pictures. She kept telling me how she’d have done this differently or that differently. She had all these ideas. Footer, she’s a natural.”

“Roni, that’s your call.
Although it leaves us a bridesmaid short.”

“Amanda. I’ll move Brooke to maid of honor.
Then Amy, Kimmy, Mollie and Mandy. Rick can still be best man, then go Kevin, Donnie, Andy and Mark. That solves our problem and Amy’s problem. We already have Todd and Carl and my cousin Tim as ushers.”

Scott shook his head as Roni’s hands moved down his back. “Cowgirl, if that’s what you want, who am I to argue?”

Roni leaned over and kissed him. “I’m going to call her.”

She started to jump up, but Scott grabbed her ankle.
“Uh…AFTER my rubdown.”

Roni climbed back on top of him.
“Big baby. Fine.”

“Oh, and by the way, we’re buying a Christmas tree Saturday. And so are Amanda and Todd.”

Maggie jumped at the chance to be the photographer. After she enrolled in a photo class as a freshman at UNC, she was hooked and really wanted to make it a career. When Roni called her that afternoon after Scott’s rubdown, she was off-the-wall excited.

“I was so pumped to be your matron, but this is even better,” she told Roni. “Are you sure you guys trust me?”

“Of course we trust you,
Mags,” Scott said into the other extension. “We wouldn’t have asked if we hadn’t.”

“Oh my God, I have so many ideas! Roni, I’ll make some notes and call you later tonight,” Maggie said, nearly bubbling over. “Love you guys!”

“Love you too,” Scott and Roni answered together.

Scott came down the bedroom steps in his robe with a towel over his shoulder.  “She’s not pumped or
anything, is she?”

“She’s going to be good, Footer. Really good,” she said pulling off her sweatshirt. “Let’s a get shower; I’m up for pizza. Valentino’s maybe?”

“Yep, let’s roll,” he said as they headed off to the bathroom.

They had barely made it back in the house at 7:30 when the phone rang.

“Hi Mags,” Roni said. “I’m going to take it upstairs. Hang on!”

She tossed the phone to Scott. “This might take a while.”

“I’ll be here,” he said, putting the receiver to his ear. “So, you’re not excited or anything, huh?”

“Shit, Footer! This is great,” Maggie said. “I am so pumped.”

Scott heard a click. “Got it baby!”

“OK, you guys have fun!”

Rockford Files was ending and Quincy M.E. was coming on by the time Roni came back downstairs. She had a steno notebook with a pen sticking out of it.

“OK,” Roni said. “Let’s go over the schedule again. You’re last day before leave is the 23rd, right?”

“Yeah, so we can either leave at 4:00 or wait and get up Christmas Eve morning.”

“No, I want to get back. If we leave by 4:00, we’ll be home by midnight, won’t we?”

“We should. What’s the hurry?”

“There’s a lot we need to get done. Maggie wants to do a walk-through at the church and the ballroom Saturday. Andy and Mollie are flying in Monday night and Todd and Amanda are flying out Tuesday and I am so nervous.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve pretty much been married for the last few months, honey. There’s nothing to be nervous about.”