I knew Darren couldn’t have lost much weight in such a short time, but he looked like he’d dropped about fifteen pounds, most of it around his eyes. I walked on into the room and sat in a metal chair beside his bed.
“Guess I don’t look so hot, huh?”
I shook my head. “Not so hot.”
He said, “Tell me about Becky.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what it’s like to be left behind, what happens to the people who don’t die. I’m worried about the people I love.”
No time for anything but the truth. “Well, it hurts,” I said. “A lot. You get angry that you didn’t do every little thing just right when the person was alive, and you get angry at the person for dying. It’s crazy, I know, but you do. And sometimes you hate everybody in the world who isn’t feeling as much pain as you are, and as much as anything you hate God, if you can still believe in Him, for not stepping up and fixing things.”
Darren looked up at the ceiling, and there were tears in the corners of his eyes. “That’s not how I want it to be,” he said.
I remembered Dakota’s words to me and said, “Well, Darren, that’s the way it is.”
He was quiet a minute. Then he looked over at me and took a deep breath. He said, “Louie, would you hold my hand?”
To this day, I hate myself for what I almost said. I almost said no. And it wasn’t because I was afraid I’d get AIDS. It was the other reason. But I love myself for what I did say. I said yes. I said yes, and I reached over and put his hand between both of mine. It was real awkward, and I know he probably felt that; but I did it. And I’m glad because now I don’t have to look back and wish.
It’s funny. It’s almost as if we weren’t in Trout anymore. Nothing inside that room was like anything else in my life. As I sat with his fingers sandwiched in mine, I thought again about what it must be to go through the last part of your life without being touched. Especially if it happened when you were only twenty-five. Becky and I had touched each other all the time. I don’t know how I could live now if we hadn’t.
I told Darren about all the good memories I had of Becky and how I’d get together with her dad once in awhile and just talk about her—how we kept the good things about her alive by mentioning them, how people who die can actually stay alive through the people who cared about them and learned things from them. I told him I still talked to her. And I promised I would talk about him, too.
Then I looked up and saw Carter standing in the doorway. He said, “I saw your car….”
Instinctively I jerked my hands free from Darren’s, but it was too late. Carter grimaced and shook his head, then walked away. Darren opened his eyes in time to see Carter’s back, and I think he sank a little. If there’s one thing I could change about all that happened, it would be that moment.
I saw Darren one more time before they transferred him to the hospital in Boise, though he didn’t see me. I went for a visit; but Dakota was there, and I didn’t want to interrupt, so I stood in the doorway. Dakota was up on the bed with him, his grizzled old arms around Darren’s shoulders, and he was kind of petting Darren’s head with his good hand.
“…really scared, Uncle Gene. Really scared.”
“You’d be damn fool not to be.”
“I wish I could clear things up with Mom and Dad.”
“Some things are just too hard,” Dakota said. “Your daddy just don’t have the heart for it. He’s gonna be real sorry, boy, an’ I’ll sure tell him what you wanted for him.”
“He just couldn’t understand about me being gay. I tried to tell him—”
“I don’t understand it neither,” Dakota said, “but it ain’t the point. The point is you’re blood. An’ you’re sick. An’ you’re a good boy. Somebody oughta rap your daddy one alongside his head, but I don’t reckon it’d do much good.”
“You’ll tell him, though.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Darren shifted a bit to get more comfortable, his eyes still closed. “About Louie…”
Dakota looked up at me in the doorway. He’d known I was there all along. “Louie’ll be fine,” he said. “That’s not a boy you need to worry about.”
Darren relaxed. “See that he gets the camera, okay?”
“Done.”
“Tell him if he gets tired of talking to Becky, he can talk to me.”
Confusion passed briefly over Dakota’s face, but he said, “I’ll tell him.”
“Uncle Gene, I wish I understood this. I only learned I was gay a couple of years ago, and then, before I even got to deal with that, I was sick, and now I’m almost gone. I’ve been a Christian all my life and a pretty good person, I think. I haven’t stolen, or lied more than the next guy, or cheated anyone out of much. There are all these things I was supposed to learn, and it just feels like I need more time to learn them, but I’m not going to be here.”
From across the room I saw Dakota smile. “You’re gettin’ the crash course,” he said. “I think there’s only one lesson if you want the truth. I think we’re just supposed to see how far we can go in whatever time we get. I figure a lesson you learn on the last day of your life is as good as one you learn on your tenth birthday. It don’t much matter when you step up and face things. It just matters that you do. I guess your time’s here for that.”
Darren was strangely quiet then, for what seemed like minutes. Just when I thought he must have gone to sleep, he opened his eyes and looked at Dakota. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s all there is left: to see how far I can get. I need to experience every minute of it, no matter how scared I am.” He was quiet a moment more. Then he smiled. “In that second before I go, I’ll know something almost nobody else knows.” He closed his eyes. “Will you stay with me, Uncle Gene?”
Dakota held him tight, and it’s the only time ever that I saw a tear in his eye. He told me later it was an honor to walk to the edge with a true hero.
Darren silently cried himself to sleep; but he was still smiling, and Dakota stayed. I went to my pickup and drove to the woods.
“Long time,” I said, stepping from the pickup. I reached into the bag in the back and pulled out a football, flipping it to Carter.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You quit throwing for a while?”
He looked right at me. “Nope. Been throwin’ to Mark Robeson some. A little to Boomer.”
“Boomer. You must really be pissed at me.”
“I told you that Darren guy was a fag,” he said.
“I already knew it.”
Carter shook his head. “Now we all find out he had AIDS. I suppose you knew that, too.”
“Yup.”
“Man, Banks, I don’t get you. I thought we were supposed to be friends.”
“We are supposed to be friends,” I said.
“So what kind of a guy hangs out with a homo with AIDS and doesn’t tell his friends? AIDS is serious shit, man. When it’s around, everybody should know it. What if somebody caught it somehow?”
I started to answer. I started to say I wasn’t doing anything that could give me AIDS and neither was Carter so he didn’t have to worry. I started to say how being careful is one thing, but being crazy is another—and to tell Carter what it was like to look a dying man in the eye, how much bigger my heart was. But I didn’t. I didn’t say any of those things because I was getting ready to lose him. “Look, Cart, I don’t have AIDS, okay? Let’s just throw some balls.”
He was steamed, and the first four or five passes came so hard they almost went through me, but I held on to every one, jogging back and flipping him the ball as if he’d just floated another feather onto my fingertips. We didn’t talk anymore, and that was the last time we worked out before leaving for our respective colleges.
I think I passed Carter up that day. All my life I’ve wanted to be like him, be able to throw a football fifty yards through a tire or pop a twenty-five-foot jumper or drive through the streets of Tro
ut leaning back in my bucket seat with an elbow out the window, people on the sidewalk truly believing I owned the town. But that day I was bigger. That was the day, knowing all I had to lose, I quietly turned and stood my ground.
I’m in college now. I made the cross-country team. I’m not the best they’ve got, not the worst. But I’m going to do what I heard Dakota tell my dead friend Darren. I’m going to see how far I can go in the time I get.
About the Author
CHRIS CRUTCHER is the critically acclaimed author of seven young adult novels and a collection of short stories, all of which were selected as ALA Best Books for Young Adults. Drawing on his experience as a family therapist and child protection specialist, Crutcher writes honestly about real issues facing teenagers today: making it through school, competing in sports, handling rejection and failure, and dealing with parents. The Horn Book said of his novels, “Writing with vitality and authority that stems from personal experience…Chris Crutcher gives readers the inside story on young men, sports, and growing up.”
Chris Crutcher has won two lifetime achievement awards for his work: the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Outstanding Literature for Young Adults, and the ALAN Award for a Significant Contribution to Adolescent Literature. He lives in Spokane, Washington.
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Praise for
CHRIS CRUTCHER’S
ATHLETIC SHORTS
An ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults An SLJ Best of the Best in Young Adult Literature
“The real theme is growing—grappling with something tough and finding the courage to carry on. An involving group of stories…thought-provoking.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“If the stereotype of the ‘bonehead jock’ is ever to be defeated, it will be at Crutcher’s hands. He and his athlete protagonists take on such weighty issues as racism. At the same time, the author makes the world of sports compelling enough to engage even the most sedentary readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Will speak to YAs, touch them deeply, and introduce them to characters they’ll want to know better.”
—School Library Journal (starred review)
“Mixes poignancy and humor in just the right proportion.”
—ALA Booklist
ALSO BY CHRIS CRUTCHER
RUNNING LOOSE
STOTAN!
THE CRAZY HORSE ELECTRIC GAME
CHINESE HANDCUFFS
STAYING FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES
IRONMAN
WHALE TALK
Credits
Cover photograph © 2002 by Ali Smith
Cover design by Hilary Zarycky
Cover © 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
“A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune” first appeared in Connections, edited by Donald R. Gallo, published in 1989 by Delacorte Press.
ATHLETIC SHORTS: Six Short Stories. Copyright © 1989, 1991 by Chris Crutcher. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition July 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-196834-1
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Chris Crutcher, Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories
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