He gave me a little punch in the arm. “I'll tell you what, Hamp, just follow my lead, and I'll have you stringing Misty Koonce along on a leash.”
Now, I didn't care nothing about stringing anyone along on a leash, but setting there in Citronella's backseat, side by side with a girl that looked like Misty, I could think of plenty of things I did care about doing.
The plan was to hit Wild West Days over at Leonard Biggins Park, but we didn't go straight there. Instead, we drove out to the edge of town where Blaine's cousin Jerry worked the evening shift at Big Jim's Little Store.
“A couple six-packs oughta cover us for now,” Blaine said as he opened the door. “You got a five on you, Hamp?”
Truth be told, I wasn't exactly put out about postponing the trip out to the festival. More than likely Sara would be there with her folks, and the thought of running into them with Misty Koonce prancing along at my side didn't set right, even though there wasn't nothing official between me and Sara or really anything close to it. Still, I wasn't pumped up about stopping off for beer neither.
“We're in training,” I told Blaine. “We don't need to be drinking no beers if we want to stay undefeated this season.”
He just waved me off. “Maybe you don't, but me and the girls do, don't we, girls?”
The girls backed him up, and I didn't see nothing to do but fork over my five-dollar bill. “I sure hope you don't get caught driving and drinking that stuff.”
Blaine laughed at that. “What do you think they're gonna do, throw their two best football players in jail? Give me a break.”
But jail wasn't what I was thinking about. I was thinking about Sara and her father. If my dad got smacked into by a drunk driver instead of just running off to Sapulpa, I'd probably feel like hauling off and punching the next drunk driver I come across. I didn't even want to think about what Sara's eyes would look like if she found out I was riding around with two six-packs of beer. I'd ruther have her see me with Misty Koonce.
For a while, we drove the usual route around town, through the Jolly Cone and down Main, up through the Wal-Mart parking lot and then back again. Misty didn't so much as take a sidelong glance my way the whole ride. Instead, every time we pulled through Jolly Cone, she craned her head out the window, looking back and forth and ordering Blaine to slow down.
“What the hell are you looking for?” Blaine finally said.
“Nothing,” Misty said. “It's just there was some boys in here last week from Okalah that I got to talking to. They were characters. Real funny. Y'all would like 'em.”
That didn't set good with Blaine. Ever since them Okalah boys cut his knee out last year, he couldn't even stand to hear the name of the town.
“Okalah?” He made it sound like a swear word. “If I ever seen one of them weak-ass cheaters in my town, I'd hit him so hard you'd have to call a plumber to come get my class ring out of his eye.”
“What are you talking about?” Misty said. “You never even met these boys.”
“Don't listen to him,” Rachel said. “He hates everybody that's not from here.”
“Not everybody.” Blaine reached over and turned down the radio. You knew he was ready to argue then. “I just hate cheaters from Okalah. They're not like us over there. I'll bet they don't even have Christmas. They probably hang goat heads up on their doors and dance around on hot coals and drink pig blood.”
“Oh, Blaine,” Rachel said, all disgusted.
“I'm serious. They're the lowest form of life there is. Back in the old days, Kennisaw would've gone more than five un-defeated seasons if it hadn't been for Okalah's cheating. Did you know they had seven uncalled penalties in that game?”
Rachel crossed her arms and looked out the side window. “Yeah, you told me that about a hundred million times.”
“And they had to wait till T. Roy graduated to get their cheating win in too.”
“That was a long time ago,” Misty said, leaning up towards the front seat. “These guys I met are different. They seemed like they'd be real fun to party with.”
“Like hell.” Blaine tipped his beer can up and took a good-size swig. “You know what kinda party I'd throw them boys if they come back through here? The kind where I'd knock 'em down and then pick 'em up by the scruff of the neck and drop-kick 'em one by one over the courthouse and all the way back to Okalah. You could watch 'em land headfirst on the pavement and go rolling down Main Street, bouncing off the parking meters like pinballs. That's the kinda party I'd throw 'em.”
“Oh no, you wouldn't,” Misty said. “You wouldn't do any such thing, not with these guys.”
“Really? Well, I'll tell you what, why don't you talk to Randy Caine about what'll happen. Randy'll tell you all about it. You remember old Randy, don't ya, Hamp?” Blaine shot me a look in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah,” I said. “I remember him.” I didn't like talking about Randy much, though, not like Blaine did. Him and Blaine had got into it pretty bad a few weeks back, right after that lousy game against Kiowa Bluff when Blaine totaled up minus six yards rushing for the whole four quarters.
All Randy done was set on Citronella's hood out in the stadium parking lot. When he got off, there was a little teaspoon-size dent left where he'd been, and that was all it took to get Blaine up in his face. Randy was a pretty good-size boy hisself, and at first, he tried to play it off tough, cussing Blaine and saying one more dent wasn't going to make a difference to a hunk of junk like that old Blazer, but by the time he figured out that wasn't the right way to handle it, he was on the ground with a mouthful of grass and a chunk of broken concrete aimed at his head. I never seen Blaine go crazy like that the whole time I knew him. He was out of control. When Randy finally showed back up at school, one side of his head was shaved and he had him thirty-two stitches zigzagging down the pale skin there in a kind of lightning-bolt pattern. It wasn't pretty. Blaine just said, “He messed with the wrong guy.” But I felt bad. I felt like there was something I should've done.
“God, Blaine,” Rachel said, leaning her back against the car door and staring a hard one into him. “That's about all I hear out of you anymore, how you're gonna kick somebody's butt. I don't know what's got into you, but I'm sick of listening to it.”
“Well, don't listen to it, then.” He turned the radio up, loud.
“Oh, don't get that way.” She turned the radio back down and scooted over towards him. “I just want to do something more fun. Like how about we go park somewhere and finish off our beers before we head over to the festival. You don't mind parking for a little while, do you?” She added a flirty note onto that last part.
He looked over at her, kind of checking out how the top buttons on her blouse was undone. “Okay,” he said. “But I still don't want to see no Okalah boys around our town. That's all I can say.”
We parked over on the dark side of the parking lot at Malcolm Hickey Elementary School, and Misty picked up what was left of one of the six-packs and said why didn't her and me head down to where the swing sets was and let Blaine and Rachel have a little time to themselves. So that's what we done.
The evening air was brisk and the moon was out big, and the pale light made Misty's hair look almost silver. I couldn't help but glance over at her time after time as we walked down to the playground. That hair of hers and her long eyelashes, the smooth skin along her neck and the way her furry pink sweater curved in the front. For a short girl with skinny arms, she filled that sweater out just about right.
I have to admit I felt proud to be with her. Course, she didn't have even a drop of any sad-soulful look in her eyes like Sara. Her eyes was more shiny, like toy money. And when she giggled, it was real high and thin like one of them little plastic pianos you get when you're about three years old. Right then, I didn't care, though. I could see myself strolling down senior hall with Misty on my arm, the other guys staring after us with their mouths hanging open, looking about like a pack of thirsty bird dogs, saying, “Look at who old Hampton's w
ith. Boy, what I wouldn't give to be in his shoes.”
No one would be making fun of the way I was with girls then. Blaine would slap me on the back and tell me I made the right choice, and next spring, him and Rachel and me and Misty would show up at the prom together dressed like red-carpet movie stars. No question, Blaine and Rachel was bound to be king and queen, but maybe me and Misty would be runner-ups, and we'd dance a slow one with the red and blue lights spinning around us and the rest of the school watching. Boy howdy. Now that's what it meant to be a Kennisaw Knight.
I hadn't even touched one beer, but watching Misty there under the moon like that, I felt a little drunk anyways. I couldn't help wondering if maybe I was falling in love with her after all. It was a different feeling than I got with Sara, but I didn't know much about this whole romance deal. Maybe you could fall in love with more than one girl at a time, only in two different ways. That wasn't exactly something I could ask Blaine or any of my other buddies about, though. They talked plenty about sex, but they never talked about love.
Anyways, I didn't want to be one of them types that can't stick to one relationship, like my dad or the way my mom was now. My mom. I didn't know what she was looking for, but it sure didn't seem like love. She flitted around from one man to the next the way a sparrow leaves one crumb in the dust and hops off to another one just 'cause it's different.
I swore to myself I wasn't never going to be like neither one of them, even if they was my parents. But here I was anyways with two girls burning up my mind—and about every other part of me too. Maybe T. Roy Strong went out with a different girl every night, but even just two in one week made me dizzy.
Down at the swing set, Misty drew her up a swing, and I set in the next one over. “You ever been to Dallas?” she asked, swaying back and forth in her swing.
I told her I'd been there once when I was a kid and Blaine's folks took us down, and she said, “Well, you oughta go back sometime. They got a mall with a skating rink inside. That's how big it is. They got a store with the cutest sandals and all sorts of fashions you can't get in Oklahoma.”
“I don't wear cute sandals much,” I said. I thought that was a pretty funny one right there, but she didn't pay much attention to it. Instead, she kept going on and on about the other cute stuff they had in Dallas, skirts and purses and ankle bracelets and everything else. Then she got going on movie-star hair and tanning salons, which somehow jumped over to her sister the cowgirl barrel racer. That girl could cover more subjects in a shorter amount of time than an allin-one edition of the Funk & Wagnall's encyclopedia.
The whole time, she swang back and forth real slow, and I kept looking over at how low-cut that pink sweater of hers was. I told myself to quit it before she caught me, but next thing I knew, I'd be checking it out again. You would've thought I was hypnotized or something the way I kept at it. There's that old saying about a girl looking so good it hurts— well, I'm here to tell you that ain't no exaggeration.
Once, back when I was a little kid, I found me a brand-new razor blade on the ground. Course, a kid's bound to want to pick up anything so shiny and pretty, but the next thing I knew, blood was everywhere and I had a slice the size of the Grand Canyon across my palm. That's what being there with Misty reminded me of.
Sara wasn't like that. There wasn't nothing about being with Sara Reynolds that hurt. Fact was, with her, everything tended to get more clear, and my insides got more solid instead of frittering away into mush. Two different girls. Two different ways of feeling. They don't teach classes on that.
“You know what?” Misty stopped swinging. “There's something I always wanted, and maybe you can get it for me.”
“Uh, sure.” I looked down at her little red boots. “What is it?”
“A trophy. I always wanted me a trophy.”
“A trophy?” I had to check her eyes now just to see if she was fooling, but she was as serious as the FBI.
“Everybody's got trophies but me. My sister's got her barrel-racing trophies. You and Blaine got your football trophies. Rachel's got her horse trophies for Mr. Highboy. I want one for something.”
“Well,” I said, mulling it over. “What are you good at?” I was only trying to be helpful, but she gave me a pooky look and let out a big sigh like she hadn't never seen anybody so backwards.
“I mean I want a trophy right now. I want you to get me one.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Are they giving trophies out at Wild West Days for something?”
“I don't know if they are or not.” She climbed up out of the swing and walked over and stood with her legs straddled around mine. “But I know who does got some.” She wrapped her hands around the swing chains, just touching mine, and leaned in so that low-cut sweater pooched out right under my chin.
“Who?” I said, trying not to swallow so hard she could hear it.
“Right up there.” She nodded in the direction of the school building. “They got a whole case full of trophies doing nothing but setting there losing their shine.”
“I helped win some of them trophies,” I said.
She leaned in closer, and the smell of her perfume wrapped clean around my skull like some kind of beautiful poison from one of them deadly exotic flowers they got in the Amazon rain forest. “Well, then,” she said, real soft. “In a way, I guess they belong to you already. All you gotta do is get one back and give it to me.”
I glanced over her shoulder at old Malcolm Hickey Elementary. “I don't know. You mean break in there?”
She poked out her bottom lip. “Don't you think I'm worth it?”
“It's not that,” I said. But then, I didn't know what it was neither. I didn't know much of anything right at that second, except how low-cut her sweater was and how sweet her perfume smelled and how her hands seemed to burn my skin where they touched.
“Just one trophy,” she said, so close up her warm breath blew down on my forehead. “I'll never forget it.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just one.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Walking across that playground, I gave a look up at Citronella, hoping maybe Blaine and Rachel would be over there waving for us to come on, but whatever they was doing, they was doing it out of sight. That's how I was, wandering around looking for someone to make up my mind for me. It's like Sara said back in history class that time—if you don't know who you really are, how are you going to know what you think is right?
Misty skipped on up to the dark side of the building first and started checking for open windows. One after the next they was locked down tight, and I said we might as well give up, but she wasn't about to quit that easy. Finally, we got down to about the last two windows. I gave one a push, and it shot up so quick I thought it'd bust right there and spray broken glass all over us, but it didn't. It just stood there, wide open and dark as the devil's own cave. There wasn't no excuses left now. At least, that I could think of.
“Hey, all right!” Misty clapped her hands like she was about to go into a cheerleading routine. “Go on and climb up in there!”
I wasn't one bit excited about it myself, but I figured she was my date and it was my gentlemanly duty to climb in first. Once I got inside, I asked her if she was coming too, but she said she better stay there and be lookout, just in case. I didn't like that just in case business, but it wouldn't have been too gallant to go crawling back out now, not without at least looking for a trophy.
“Hey, Hampton, look at me,” Misty whispered. She'd set her chin on the windowsill there so all I could see was her round little face grinning in at me. “I'm nothing but a head,” she said, giggling.
And she did—she looked like a cut-off head someone done stuck up in the window for Halloween.
“Nothing but a head,” she said again, and added on a haunted-house moaning sound to go with it. “Woooooooooooh!”
Then she pulled her chin off the sill and said, “And make sure you get me a first-place trophy too.”
That Misty. You
couldn't help wondering what folks would've thought of her if she hadn't been so good-looking.
Once my eyes got adjusted, the room wasn't so dark. There was one of them glowing red exit signs out in the hall, and the light leaked in through the window in the door, washing up on the maps and the blackboard and the little desks. It was spooky, especially how small them desks was, all lined up in perfect rows like they was waiting for a bunch of dolls to show up for class. Out in the hall, they had the water fountain hung so low on the wall, I'd have to take a knee just to get myself a drink.
I had to shake my head over all that, wondering how I could've ever been small enough for a place like this. But I sure had been. This was my old school, where I'd grown up from a lost kid whose father run off on him to a first-team football player who's friends with the most popular kids around.
Heading down the hall, I had the feeling I was walking with all the children who come here down through the years. Same thing as when you walk out in an empty football stadium and you can practically see the players who played there and hear the fans cheering around you. Like being in the middle of ghosts, but in a good way. I couldn't help wondering if maybe pieces of people's spirits did somehow linger on behind them as they passed through life.
Funny, now that I done got out of reach of Misty's perfume, I was already starting to think like me again.
Something in the dark creaked and I froze. Probably just the building settling, I told myself, and started back down the hall. The trophy case was at the far end, lit up by the red glow of the other exit-sign light they had down there. The case stood right outside the old gym, and you could almost hear the squeak of kids' basketball shoes on the wood floor and the thump of dodge balls bouncing off the walls. It's odd, ain't it, how full up empty places can be?
That trophy case was sure something. Beautiful. Trophies going back to the T. Roy days, every different size you'd ever want—loving cups, gold balls, angels holding up gold torches, little football and baseball and basketball players froze in place, all with that red exit-sign glow settling down on them. Boy howdy. It wasn't just a collection of trophies, it was a whole town of trophies.