The Heartbeat of Halftime (7 page)

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Authors: Stephen Wunderli

BOOK: The Heartbeat of Halftime
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WHAT LOVE WILL DO TO YOU
N
o one wants to do much on Saturday after you've lost a game. But when we started winning, all that changed. We hung out at the field longer, took our time getting home. And after we had showered, we ended up meeting at Spray Can's, 'cause Ray had a pop machine that cost only a dime. Sometimes Ray was there, under one of the cars. Hours would pass by and all we'd see of him was his feet. But mostly he was gone, chasing down a part somewhere or fishin' the Weber River by himself. When it got too cold to fish, Ray would sit by himself, tying flies. No one said anything to him, and he didn't say much to us. Only to Spray Can. And when he talked to his son, he never even looked at him, just gave him some order or reminded him of a chore that wasn't finished. And if
we were there, we always helped Spray Can get the work done.
So after we beat Cyprus, we were all at Spray Can's. Ray was gone and we sat on this old couch out behind the shop, drinking pops, throwing the cans like footballs, and burping so loud our throats hurt. Taco Bell could get off the loudest burp. It sounded like a bear growling in the woods.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he'd say, holding his arms out like he was conducting an orchestra. Then he'd open his mouth wide, expand his chest, and let it go.
“
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpf
.”
“Too bad Katie isn't here to hear that one,” Bam said.
We all laughed, except for Taco Bell. He just looked at us and didn't say anything.
“C'mon,” Bam said. “I'm jokin' you, man.”
Taco Bell smiled.
“I mean,” Bam continued. “Katie could probably beat it.”
Then Bam burped himself.
“Like that,” he said. “She could probably burp at least that loud.”
That's all it took. Taco Bell charged like an angry bull and tipped the whole couch over. We were all laughing as he threw us around and hit us with the cushions.
“No one makes fun of my girlfriend!” he shouted.
Suddenly we were all quiet.
“Girlfriend?” we all said at the same time.
Taco Bell held a cushion in front of him. “Yes,” he said. “She's my girlfriend.”
“How can she be your girlfriend?” Heat asked. “Did she say so?”
“Yes, she did,” Taco Bell said, hugging the cushion.
Then Bam asked the question we were all thinking but just couldn't find a way to say. It was a question we had wondered about since we first started winning; it was something we would wonder about until it happened to each of us.
“Did you kiss her?”
There was a long silence. We wanted to know everything. How to do it. What gum to chew. Did you have to do it more than once? Would a girl make fun of you if you didn't want to? Did it mean you would have to marry her? And most of all, what did it taste like? We waited for Taco Bell to answer, to answer everything we wanted to know about kissing in this one question.
“Did you kiss her?” Bam repeated.
“No,” Taco Bell said quietly.
We were all relieved. Higher knowledge was put off until a later time, perhaps a time when we would be ready to accept its consequences. After all, kissing a girl would have to mean that you liked her, that you wanted to spend time talking to her
instead of burping with your buddies. That was just too much to give up right then.
“So how can you say she's your girlfriend if you haven't kissed her?” I asked Taco Bell.
“‘Cause she said she wants to be,” he answered.
“You will have to kiss her, you know,” I said as if it were a threat.
Taco Bell got this look on his face like he wanted to say “I will not.” But he couldn't say it. Even he knew the inevitable, that yes, he would have to someday kiss a girl. I think secretly he was looking forward to it. But it would have to wait until after our last game.
THE CRAZY MAN
O
n Monday we ate in peace again. Taco Bell was the center of attention, sitting at the head of the table, talking about his sideburns, wishing they were longer. The more we won, the more he became like Elvis. I was happy to let him have the spotlight. I didn't feel much like talking to anybody anymore. All I wanted to do was play football. Everything else seemed like a waste of time. So I sat there quietly, eating my lunch and looking away from our table. That's when I saw Ed. I don't know how long he'd been staring at me, but it must've been for a long time. When I caught his eye, he mouthed the words “You're dead,” and held up his fist. I wasn't in the mood for his threats, so I smiled at him and tossed a handful of cooked peas at him.
He went berserk.
He picked up all the peas and held them up to the faces of everyone at his table.
“I'll kill him!” he kept shouting. “I'm gonna kill him!”
When he had all his buddies as mad as he was, he stormed over to our table, kicking over chairs as he came. When he arrived, I stood up, shoved my lunch tray out of the way, and stared back at him. They all surrounded me. Taco Bell stopped singing, and for the second time that year, everybody in the whole lunchroom went quiet. Ed was so mad, he was having a hard time finding the right cuss words; so I started the conversation.
“Lose another game, Ed?”
This question, and I guess my willingness to ask it, caught Ed completely off guard. Ed's not real bright anyway. He likes people to back down when he tells them to. It confuses him when they don't. Ed fumbled around his head for the right answer, and all that he could come up with was: “So?”
He shouted, the way he shouts everything, to give it meaning. Before I could say anything else, and before Ed exploded with rage, the janitor stepped up from behind him.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I heard you guys lost again.”
“Who are you!” Ed screamed before turning
around. When he did, he realized what he had done.
“Oh, nobody,” the janitor calmly said. “Just the guy who can throw you out of here. Be too bad. You can't play football if you get kicked out of school.”
“He threw these at me,” Ed pleaded, holding up a pea.
“Oooh, that could be dangerous,” the janitor said. “Too bad I didn't see it.” And with that, the janitor turned back to his mop.
“When football is over,” Ed sneered into my face. “So is your life!”
Ed and his buddies walked away like they were going off to prepare for war.
“You are crazy!” Taco Bell said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I am.”
“You're gonna get us all killed,” Taco Bell said.
“You're not sittin' in the garbage dump anymore, are you?” I said back to him. “You wanna spend the rest of your life in someone else's crap, go ahead.”
Taco Bell was quiet then. I think I hurt his feelings a little. But I didn't care. I wasn't gonna put up with it anymore.
“You do have something to prove, don't you?” Bam said, smiling. “It's about time.”
Everybody laughed then, except me. I walked away and stood at a window and watched the cars
drive by in the distance. I know it sounds strange, but I wished my father was there to see what had just happened in the lunchroom. I wished we could talk about it the way we talked about football. “Did you see me throw those peas?” I would ask him. “I don't know why I did it.”
“You stood up to him,” my father would say. “That's good, but be careful.”
“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled into the glass.
“Who are you talking to?” I heard someone say.
I was embarrassed, you know, how you would be if someone caught you talking to yourself. So I didn't turn around very fast.
“Nobody,” I said still looking out the window.
“Oh. I thought maybe you were talking to me,” I heard the voice say.
I turned around then and there she was, Leisl. I hate it when girls sneak up on you like that.
“I was just throwing some peas in there, and well …” It was the only thing I could think of to say, and it must've sounded pretty stupid.
“Peas?” she said. Now she was really confused. First I'm talking to the window; then I tell her about peas.
“Well, there's this guy in there, Ed. Fat Ed and I play football …”
“Football, I know,” she said. “I've watched you in the big hard hat.” She kind of giggled then.
“That's a helmet,” I said. “You must think it's a stupid game.”
I started to walk away then, but when I turned around she said, “I like football.”
“Who are you talking to?” I said, acting surprised.
She laughed and walked toward me. “I would like you to tell me more about football.”
“Okay,” I said.
That day, after school, she walked home with me. I usually walk with Bam, so I had to hide until he gave up on me and went home alone. Then me and Leisl walked the long way, away from the canal and down past the small market. We stopped there for a soda and sat on the curb. Practice didn't start for another hour, so we had time to talk. I found some bottle caps and tried the best I could to explain football to her. It's funny, I never really thought about it. You know, why there is football, why I play. I lined up bottle caps for offense and defense and explained that one team was trying to put the ball in the other team's end zone.
“It's kind of like war,” I said, maybe trying to understand it myself. “Each team has its own territory. They guard it for a while, then try and take ground from the other team. Whoever gets in the other team's territory the most, wins.”
Leisl nodded her head.
“Let me introduce the players to you,” I said.
Then I swept the bottle caps away so I could line them up as they came out.
“And now,” I said in my announcer's voice, “playing left end and weighing ninety-eight pounds, The Flame.”
I moved the bottle cap out to the left and Leisl laughed.
“At left offensive tackle, weighing a massive one hundred forty-two pounds, we have Rhino!”
I made cheering noises and Leisl clapped. Then I introduced the rest of the players. The Grizz playing left guard, Cobra at center, Taco Bell at right guard, Junior at right tackle, Rocket at wide receiver, Bam at quarterback, Heat at fullback, Lights at flanker, and, last but not least, Wing at halfback.
Leisl cheered. I started laughing. She had purple lips from drinking a grape soda. My lips turned orange. We were pointing at each other and laughing. Then she reached out and touched my lips, first to see if it rubbed off. Then she traced my smile.
“You're laughing,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I've never seen you laugh.”
“You've been watching me?” I asked her.
“Some,” she said. “Mostly your face is long, like this.”
She made a scowling face then, a face that I
didn't realize I was wearing until she pointed it out to me.
“My face looks like that?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said.
“No wonder everyone thinks I'm crazy.”
“Your friend says you're angry,” she said.
“Taco Bell?”
“Yes.”
“Does everybody talk about me?”
“Some,” she said. “Whenever they talk about football.”
“I didn't think anybody else in the school cared about our games.”
“They do,” she said. “And they say that you are making the team win.”
“Because I'm angry?”
Leisl didn't answer. She smiled at me and said, “You're not angry now.”
I shook my head.
“Tell me more about football,” she said, looking down at the bottle caps.
“I can't,” I said. “I got practice tonight.”
She looked disappointed. Then she reached down and picked up the halfback bottle cap, the one that was supposed to be me.
“Okay,” she said. “You can tell me later?”
“Sure,” I said.
We stood up and got ready to leave.
“Thanks for the soda,” she said, rubbing her purple lips.
I laughed and rubbed my orange lips. “See you tomorrow,” I said.
I walked home then, rubbing my lip for a while. But the closer I got to home, the longer my face got. By the time I got to practice, I was the angry one again.

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