Suitcase City (39 page)

Sizemore said, “Wash the puke off your face, Dyer.”

Before he could stop it, Billy’s hand went to his mouth.

Sizemore’s lips made a kiss, then he mouthed a word.

Pussy.

Billy’s body went rigid. His eyes framed Sizemore, and everything else was gone. His heart flamed with violence, sickness drained from his stomach, and hot rage poured into the empty place. He took a step toward Sizemore, another. Fear leapt into Sizemore’s eyes. Another step. Sizemore stepped back, looked behind him at Rentz. Rentz moved away from him, giving ground to what would happen. And Billy let himself smile. And the voice in his bruised skull said,
Enough. Enough for one day. Go home.

* * *

Holding his head carefully upright and carrying his stinking half-man of stuffed football pants, Billy Dyer walked out of the dim field house into a fiery noon. Behind him, scrubs hooted and moaned in the showers they now had to themselves. The haze above the city was a dark, septic yellow, the color of sputum that lingers in a wracking chest.

He stepped reverently under the Spartan arch and, crossing the practice field, stopped to consider this place empty of sweating, struggling bodies. He was obscurely proud that not one blade of grass grew on these hundred yards of ground. It was a dirt bowl flanked by sagging bleachers, a place of pain, humiliation, exhaustion, rage, and sometimes triumph. It was right that such a place was ugly. Here, he had found mysterious, necessary things in himself. He gazed around at shredded mouth guards, tape, and tatters of bandages, a ripped chin strap. He half expected to see torn flesh and teeth among the trash.

“Hey, Billy.” A girl stepped out of the shadows between banks of bleachers. Billy flinched, shifted the reeking half-man from his shoulder to his side. She seemed pleased to startle him. It was the girl who had waved to him. She held a book in her left hand. “Did I scare you?”

He shrugged. “Uh, it’s okay.” He touched his head and tried to smile. Her eyes went soft and vague in a way that Billy had never seen before outside a moviehouse. Her face was pale, not tanned like most girls’ faces, and not freckled either.
Alabaster.
He imagined her wearing hats in the sun like older women did when they walked downtown.

“Well…” She looked up at him, raised a hand to shield her eyes. “I thought you were great in the game.” Her voice came from some sweet-humming motor deep in her chest. It sounded honest and innocent, but there was something else, something playful, that might make fun of a boy with a bump on his head, walking with his scarecrow of laundry.

He nodded. “Was I better than that book?”

She smiled. “Yeah, it’s pretty dull. So is football, most of the time, but… that was something. Ole Prosser with his foot on Charlie’s head. And he tossed you like a rag doll. You don’t see that every day. You and Charlie are gonna be friends again, right?”

“I don’t know if we were ever friends, but it’ll be all right. Eventually.”

“Well,” she said again, “it was really… something to see.”

He couldn’t tell if she meant to belittle. His head throbbed. Life was all words to girls, notes written in class, chatter, dialogue from movies and songs.

“Seen enough?”

She didn’t like it. Her eyes tightened as though the light were suddenly brighter. He could see her heart beating now at the base of her throat, a mad little tremor in the white skin. She looked around at the bleached pine of the grandstand and the empty practice field. “Yeah, I guess.”

Billy wiped his sweating face with his forearm, which was a rage of bruises, scabs, fire-ant bites, sandspur boils, and hard muscle.

She glanced at it, swallowed, looked up at his face. “Are you okay?” She reached a pale hand toward his head, stopped it halfway.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“My car’s here. I’ll take you home.” She walked ahead of him through the runway to the sandy lot behind the bleachers, turned, and waited. Her car was a new white Plymouth Savoy.

Shame was like a blindside tackle. His father’s battered blue Mercury was parked next to the Savoy. His father sat at the wheel watching Billy and the girl. Billy felt his face taking a liar’s shape. He said, “Oh, uh, no, I can’t do that.” He couldn’t let her take him home. To the shabby house on the crushed oyster shell road in the flat, shadeless grid of streets where he lived with his father.

The thing that shamed him most about his neighborhood was that the shell roads were sprinkled with oil. It was collected from service stations, trucked in, and sprayed to settle dust. It did. Instead of a choking dust that coated trees and whitened the windows of cars, there was a burnt-oil reek. The oil soaked the leather soles of Billy’s shoes. Sitting in classes, he could smell them. Once, a cheerleader, Susie Strickland, had wrinkled her nose and said to everyone, “Pee-eew! What’s that smell?”

Billy looked at the Mercury, his father waiting, watching. “Coach Prosser says we have to walk. For conditioning and things.”

The girl smiled again, but there was a sadness in her eyes that he hoped was not pity. She said, “Some other time then. Well, uh, see you around.”

She got into the Savoy, and he walked to the window. “Yeah, see you around.” He forced himself to meet her eyes. “As they say.”

She started the engine, touched the weird Plymouth push-button drive, crept forward, then accelerated. Her white arm came out waving, and he saw her glance at his fathe

FIVE

When Billy threw his laundry into the backseat, his father said, “Gad, sir, and how are you?” “Fine, sir. And you, sir?”

The Maltese Falcon
was their favorite movie, and this was their greeting. His father said, “How’s that head?”

His father was a tall, long-faced, dark-haired man in gray suit pants and a white shirt with rolled sleeves. His suit coat was thrown over the back of the car seat. He smelled of cigarettes, aftershave, and whiskey.

Billy smiled his best. “It’s nothing. Just got my bell rung.”

“And there was a fight? With Ray Rentz’s son? That was nothing too?” His father turned and looked into his eyes.

Billy looked back. “I didn’t see you in the stands. How’d you know about… ?”

“Ah,” his father said with a wizard smile, “I have my ways.”

Billy gazed across the car hood at the empty lot. He wished his father had seen the scrimmage, all but the last part. Things had gone well for a while.

They did not turn toward home. Instead, his father drove through Monmouth Park, toward downtown, and Billy knew something would happen.

Built in a valley that sloped to a lake, Monmouth Park was the heart of Oleander. It was society, law and medicine, old money, grace, and manners. Mornings at Carr High, the sons and daughters of Monmouth Park turned the crescent drive in front of the school into a parade of good fortune. Rich boys stepped languidly from gleaming Detroit chariots and stretched in the sun in their Oxford cloth shirts, alligator belts, and Weejuns. They slapped notebooks against their thighs and stared at the ordinary kids as though they expected applause. Debutantes dethroned themselves in villager blouses and skirts, gave their bouffants last pats before lifting notebooks to shield their bosoms from lustful eyes. Sim Sizemore and Charlie Rentz lived in Monmouth Park.

Billy’s father drove past houses with tall white columns, blue swimming pools, tennis courts, and maid’s quarters. The branches of ancient oaks embraced above redbrick streets, and Negro yardmen leaned on rakes frowning as the old Mercury passed. The car windows were open, and the air was cool under the trees.

Downtown, they parked in front of McCrory’s Five and Dime. A sign in the window read,
Fountain.
His father said, “Mr. William, what do you say to some lunch?”

“Lunch, sir? Yes, sir.”

They took a booth in the back. Billy ordered a Coke and a cheeseburger, his dad black coffee. A blond woman in a lettuce-green smock delivered their drinks.

His father said, “I spoke to Doc Runkle. He says you’ve had a concussion. Says it’s not like in the movies where our hero gets thumped on the head, goes to dreamland, then wakes up, scratches his noggin, and chases after the bad guys. Your brain swells. Something soft and delicate gets bigger inside a container.” He reached over and gently tapped Billy’s forehead. “Which can’t expand. It’s serious business. He’s benching you for a week.”

“I’ll be all right.” Water came to Billy’s eyes.
A week.

His dad smiled, shook his head. “You are a hardhead, aren’t you?”

Billy looked at him, blinked at the tears. “Yeah, I guess so. Is that good?”

His father laughed quietly. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just an invitation to a short, hard life.” His father turned his coffee cup in its white saucer, pursed his lips, and squinted as though his eyes hurt. “Son, I want you to consider quitting football.”

Billy was on his feet. His father’s hand shot out to catch the Coke sliding for the edge of the table. It was a long walk back to the land of oil-sprayed oyster shells, and Billy figured he’d better get going. He heard at his back, “Billy!” and his father’s black business shoes scraping the tile floor. Behind the counter, the blond woman watched, mouth open, hands holding a half-eaten sandwich. Billy felt a hard grip on his shoulder.

Softly, “Billy, come back and sit down.”

His father put an arm across Billy’s shoulders and walked him back to the booth. Face flaming, Billy lowered his head. His father watched the woman in the green smock, smiled, shrugged, called, “The fevers of youth,” and hooked a comical thumb at Billy. The woman blinked rapidly, then turned her back. Billy’s father wobbled his head and said, “She doesn’t get my humor. Well, a lot of people don’t.” He cleared his throat. “And you. Gad, sir. I didn’t get two words out of my mouth before you bolted.”

Waiting for his heart to calm, his face to wash of red, Billy examined his father. Was he a little tired, a little thin, a little shabby in a white shirt soiled at the collar, a loosened tie that had been knotted too often, and with hair that needed cutting? The man he had known before his parents’ divorce was disappearing. And he thought,
Other things have changed. He doesn’t know me now
.
He will never know me unless I want him to.
Billy wanted to be honest with his dad.

“I don’t want to talk about quitting football. I’m not a quitter, and my head isn’t that bad. It’s gonna be fine in a few days, I know it is.”

“I know you’re not a quitter. No son of mine could ever be. But you’ve had a serious injury. I just want you to have some brains left in that hard head of yours when you discover there’s life after football.” His father took a long, slow breath and stared into Billy’s eyes. “I’ve asked you before to be careful, but you don’t seem to know how to do that.”

“Were you careful when you were my age?”

His father considered it, his eyes searching into the long ago. He gave a half smile and shook his head. “No, son, I wasn’t. When I was your age, there was a war coming, and I was pretty sure I’d be killed in it. A lot of guys were. So I wasn’t particularly careful.”

Billy waited for more, but his father shook his head as though to clear the past from his mind. He dug in the pocket of his white shirt for his Winstons, lit one, took a deep drag, and blew gray smoke at the ceiling. “You and Sim Sizemore play the same position?”

“Yeah, but… ?”

“Any chance you’ll beat him out?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I’m better at some things. He’s better at others. I’m gonna try. Do you want me to beat him out?”

His father examined the gray ash at the tip of his cigarette, waved distractedly at the shimmer of smoke between them. “I play golf with Sim’s father, Campbell Sizemore. He’s a member out at Sunrise.”

Sunrise was the oldest country club in the city. Billy had glimpsed the emerald fairways from a car window. He had no idea how his father could afford to play there.

His father continued, “Campbell’s a little full of himself at times. He’s a sleek and happy fellow, because he has everything, or so he believes. You know, the perfect house, car, family… life.” He drank the last of his coffee, watching Billy from under his brows.

“Do you beat him at golf?”

“Oh, yes. And when I don’t, I let him win.” His father winked. “He’s happy to lose because he can afford the wager and he’s happy to win for his pride. And a happy Campbell Sizemore is good for business.”

Billy wondered why his father had led them here. They had been talking about football, not golf. “Dad, are you saying you don’t want me beat Sim out because you win money from his father?” He tried to keep the note of grief from his voice. “Did Sim’s dad tell you I was hurt?”
The men in suits, perching like black birds in the bleachers?

His father smoked, looked over at the lunch counter where the waitress moved her lips as she read a movie magazine. “Yes, he did, and he said it was nothing to worry about, and so did you.”

“I’ll beat Sim Sizemore out,” Billy said with sudden conviction. “He’s a senior, and the coaches want the seniors to play, but I’ll beat him out because he’s a…”
Pussy
. “Because he’s scared. He doesn’t like to hit. When the time comes to stick, he avoids it. I’ll beat him out.” He felt his face reddening, his neck swelling the way it did when a pretty girl caught him watching her in class. He had said too much.

His father drew his lips in tight. Maybe a man who had flown a bomber across blue oceans into storms of flak and fighters did not like to hear his son speak with such confidence. “And you do, Billy? You like to hit?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I don’t know why, but it excites me.”

His father seemed to receive this information with sadness. He stubbed out his cigarette in the coffee cup. “Well, maybe you will beat out the young Sizemore. And maybe it will do us all a world of good if you stay in football.” His father squinted again, rubbed his eyes. He reached across the table and rested his hand on Billy’s forearm, his fingers testing the hard flesh. “Come with me, Billy.”

David Dyer paid for their drinks and the cheeseburger Billy had not touched. They stood on the sidewalk in front of McCrory’s and Billy’s father said, “Look around, son. What do you see?”