Making Promises (17 page)

And that was when the phone cut him off, and he felt like a first-class asshole, gibbering like a girl.

He told Deacon about Homecoming, and Deacon looked at him sideways from the hay he was shifting and grunted. “Tell Crick’s old art teacher ‘hey’. She’s gonna be there.”

“Doing what?” Shane didn’t recall the art teachers at his school being all that excited about football.

“Presenting something to the graduates that were in the military.

Gonna be some sort of a memorial for that Fitzpatrick kid too.” Deacon threw another bale of hay that looked bigger than he was and pulled out the hooks, then hopped into the back of the pickup and started throwing another batch out onto the ground.

“Shouldn’t Crick be going to that?” Shane asked, puzzled, and Deacon squinted at him sourly.

“Who says he wants to?”

Shane sucked in a breath. “He was invited, right?”

“Uhm-hm,” Deacon said, “with a whole lot of caveats about ‘can’t guarantee your safety’. Principal always was a fucker. I told him I’d go with him, but he hated high school. He’d be happier at home.” Deacon heaved another bale and then stopped and wiped some hay off his cheek.

“I’m gonna be a while here. If you want to go help Crick with dinner, you know you’re welcome to stay.”

“Where’s Benny?” Usually she was the one working on dinner, but Shane hadn’t seen her around today.

Deacon’s quiet expression let a grin slip. “There’s a dance teacher at the community center. She and Andrew took Parry Angel there in her little tu-tu and all.”

Shane’s laugh was the nicest thing he’d felt on his face all day.

“She’s not even two, Deacon.”

That grin grew and became a doting smile. “Yeah, but she’s in love with that damned dress.”

Shane laughed, shaking his head, and walked inside the house, where Crick had a very different take on why he wasn’t showing up for the farce at the football game.

“Yeah, I was asked. That fucker Arreguin making it sound like I was going to need a fucking National Guard to keep my poor gay ass from getting plastered to the scoreboard. I was gonna go, too—just so I could stand up at the podium and tell the whole town to kiss my poor gay white ass….” Crick trailed off and concentrated on chopping onions to add to the chili.

“Why didn’t you?” Shane asked curiously, and Crick ducked his chin and looked behind him. Deacon was still outside, shifting hay, but they both knew where Crick was looking.

“He had a court appearance this week—I think he lost three pounds just thinking about it, and he hasn’t eaten since.” Ah-ha—hence the chili and the butter beans and the cornbread and the pie that Crick had in the oven. They were trying to fatten Deacon up some more.

“He doesn’t like being in the public eye,” Shane stated, feeling obvious, and Crick shuddered.

“After he graduated, before I shipped out, we’d go to the Homecoming games with Jon and Amy—they’d get up and do the float thing and wave and smile.” Crick threw the onions in and ran the water to wash his hands and the board, and then he wiped his eyes on the shoulders of his shirt because the onions were strong.

“Anyway, you know Amy was homecoming queen, and Jon was the king, and Deacon was the valedictorian, and while his friends were doing the Holy Kingship thing, Deacon would stay seated, right next to me, while the crowd lost their fucking minds.” Crick sighed and checked on the butterbeans, then got out some sliced almonds and some bacon bits to throw in with them. “It was like he’d never been to high school. He was an all-state quarterback, but not once did he stand when they called for alumni.

“We were the ones who knew he spent two days before giving the valedictorian speech throwing up in a cold sweat in the bathroom. His dad was a cat’s whisker from calling the school and having the next guy in line speak up. Deacon told him not to, and he looked cool as a cucumber when he gave the speech, but Jon and Amy passed up a whole lot of parties that night to come back here with me and his dad and make no big deal out of it so he could calm the fuck down. He is that fucking terrified of crowds.

The law suits are fucking killing him, and he hasn’t complained, not one fucking time.”

Shane sighed and put a hand awkwardly on Crick’s shoulder. He was surprised when Crick let it stay there.

“He offered to go with me, you know? And I am damned straight not going to tell him that I’ll go but he has to stay home—I might as well rip his heart out with a steak knife. But I can’t imagine anything more awful for him than to be in the middle of that crowd when they’re saying mean 96

shit about me. He can handle it for himself, but not for me. So I’m staying home that night. You say ‘hi’ to Ms. Thompson for me, would you? She’s an awfully nice lady.”

Crick turned toward the mudroom then, and Shane heard him rustling around in the soda fridge they kept there, and he waited thoughtfully for Crick to come back. He thought about how sometimes people’s greatest sacrifices were the ones they didn’t want the world to acknowledge or even to know about. Maybe that’s what made them great.

THE freshman game was all right—Levee Oaks won, because they were playing an easy team, and that was okay too. But the Varsity and JV

games were every bit as bad as Shane expected them to be.

It was strange—on the outside it looked so very innocent, so very middle-America, but that was never the part Shane saw. He saw the kids sneaking in booze and the adults arriving plastered. He saw the ugly shouting at the refs and the posturing by the students and marked all of the boys who were very possibly going to either get their girlfriends drunk or pressure them into sex.

He saw the excitement, it was true—he even saw the beauty of the sport and those young, healthy bodies doing spectacular things in the name of joy. It just didn’t seem as joyful to him with all of the pressure from the crowd. He wondered how Deacon had borne it, and then he watched a wide-receiver make a spectacular catch as he was literally using the guy who’d try to tackle him as a springboard, and he figured that maybe Deacon’s brain had shut out the crowd. Maybe, it had been just like showing horses for him—it had been all about the beauty on the inside of the ring, and the rest of the world had faded away.

At halftime at the varsity game, he saw what they meant when Crick and Deacon called their old principal a fucker.

“You’re going to use the pre-approved speech, right, Judith?” Shane and Calvin were leaning up against their patrol car as it was parked out on the track for visibility, and two other guys were leaning up against theirs as it sat behind them. Shane looked away from the group of kids who were trying to sneak in without paying and saw a pretty woman in her early thirties scowling at a squat man in his fifties with a square pale Making Promises

face and steamed-up glasses. The woman wore a swirl of tie-dyed skirts under a brown cardigan that looked hand-knit to ward off the faint chill in the mid-October air. Her dark hair was pinned up at her crown in some way that let it curl around her face, and the scowl didn’t look like it belonged there. In fact, Shane thought she probably smiled more often than she scowled.

“Of course, Mark,” she said with saccharine sweetness that Shane could hear from where he was standing. Calvin caught his eye and smirked, and Shane thought well, hell—even Calvin knew she was lying.

The guy she was talking to didn’t seem to have a clue, though.

Batting her eyes, the woman walked up to the field and waited as a couple of students hurriedly set up an impromptu podium, and then to be announced by the guys up in the press box who had been calling the game.

“And now, to present an award to our alumni who have served in the armed forces, Ms. Judith Thompson!”

The cheers and applause were heartfelt, and Shane looked at her with renewed interest. So this was Ms. Thompson. Somehow, Shane had pictured her older.

Her speech started out fairly predictably—she honored the three young men in the crowd to much applause, and had a moment of silence for the boy who didn’t come home. Then she smiled gamely at the crowd and rocked Shane’s world.

“But those aren’t the only boys here who have sacrificed for our country in recent years, are they?” she asked the crowd, and there was a sudden, thoughtful silence. “No, I was there when our esteemed principal offered another soldier—one who was wounded for his country—a chance to come here and be honored. Unfortunately, we had to tell the young man that his safety couldn’t be guaranteed.”

There was a sudden murmuring then—Shane could spot the people in the crowd who got it first, and then the ones who didn’t. He could also spot the folks who got pissed off and the ones who felt guilty. He eyed Crick and Deacon’s old teacher with a whole lot of respect.

“I’d like to ask this community how it feels,” she continued, “to know that we can’t be trusted with the safety of a man who risked his life to protect ours. When we said we couldn’t guarantee Carrick Francis, we were talking about protecting him from
you
—from every person in the 98

stands who has spread a rumor or talked ugly about or sabotaged two men who have lived in this community all their lives and have done nothing but good.”

From out in the crowd someone shouted, “
Fucking faggots
!” and Ms. Thompson looked in that direction and nodded in grim satisfaction, as though this person had just cleared something up for her.

“And that’s what I’m talking about right there, isn’t it?” she said calmly, her voice suddenly ringing through the brightly lit darkness, over the uncomfortable silence of those massed bodies at the bleachers. “Here we are, giving thanks for the people who went out and protected our freedoms, but we’re unwilling to give our own community members the benefit of being free. So I’m grateful to the young men we’re honoring here—I’m so grateful for their service. I just wish we could serve them better by being worth their sacrifice, that’s all.” With that, she left the podium—and a very uncertain crowd. There was a smattering of applause, and then it seemed to pick up momentum, but Shane was sure he wasn’t the only one who could hear the boos and hisses under the noise as it grew.

Shane jerked his chin at Calvin, and was mildly gratified when Calvin trotted alongside him toward the art teacher as she walked off the football field and down the track toward them.

“Where you guys going?” Mike Williams called from his spot leaning on the other car.

Shane barely spared him a glance. “To do our jobs,” he muttered, and beside him he heard Calvin swear.

“Dumb asshole—he thinks she’s going to be safe after that?”

“Ballsiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Shane said, and he heard Calvin grunt in the affirmative next to him. The boy rose a few notches in Shane’s esteem, and together they walked casually up to the art teacher as she stepped off the field and onto the track and flanked her, one on either side as they made it toward the parked squad cars.

“Hi, gentlemen,” she said softly, smiling with such warmth that Shane didn’t doubt she was a favorite of the students. “To what do I owe this privilege?”

“Deacon and Crick say ‘hi’,” Shane told her, and was rewarded by a look of pleased surprise. She had apple cheeks, a wide mouth, and fine Making Promises

smile lines around her brown eyes now that they were up close, and she had put on fresh make-up—understated, but fresh—before she went up in front of the crowd.

“I’m glad they’re doing well,” she said. There was a crash behind them, and Shane didn’t have to look to know a smuggled beer bottle had just made it to the track. Calvin swore.

“I’ve got it—I saw the fucker, Shane—you get her off the track.” They were to the squad cars by now, and Shane snapped at the two lounging officers who were reacting in slow motion to the beer bottle.

“You two may want to make your presence felt, dammit, and you”—this directed at the principal, who was glaring at Ms. Thompson with wide eyes—“you may want to go stand behind her, or this bunch is going to think the school’s all excited about gay bashing, and that would be a damned shame, now wouldn’t it?”

Mr. Arreguin darted a glance over their shoulder and then took one look at Shane’s glare and rabbited over to the podium. As Shane took the art teacher professionally by the arm and led her past the snack bar, he heard the man redirecting the crowd’s energy to the marching band. They sucked, Shane thought critically, and then Ms. Thompson directed him to the gym behind the football field, opening a door to the coach’s office with keys in a surprisingly steady hand.

“Where are you parked?” Shane asked as he followed her in, watching as she started clicking lights in what looked to be a standard issue P.E. office.

“Other side of the school,” she replied with a wry roll of her eyes, and Shane shrugged. The radio at his belt buzzed and he picked it up, answering Calvin’s query as to where he was with a terse, “In the coach’s office in the gym. If you can pull the squad car around, we can escort the lady to her car.”

“Gotcha, Shane—but the guys got some punks in the back of their car. We need to wait until backup comes to get them before I leave the field.”

“You gonna be okay?” Shane asked. He couldn’t tell from the ambient noise whether or not the crowd had gotten ugly.

“No worries, buddy. Tell Ms. Thompson ‘hi’ for me—and tell her I didn’t grow up to be a fuck-up, would you?”