Half the Distance Read online

  I rolled over and went back to sleep.

  The phone rang at half past twelve. I sat on the edge of the bed but didn’t attempt a mad dash for the phone in the living room. If it were for me, they would have called my cell.

  My whole body was sore. It always was the morning after a game. Five minutes later, as I considered a hot shower, the phone rang again. I guess I ought to get it.

  The caller ID displayed Dad’s mobile number. I let it go to voicemail. Mom left a message. She, Dad, and Josh, my twelve-year-old brother, were having lunch with the Olsens. “Their house is on East Dogwood between North 2lst and 22nd. It’s the big white brick with forest green trim, in case you want to join us.”

  I didn’t. What I wanted was to pack up all my stuff and move back to Houston.

  No sooner had I slouched back on the couch with my gourmet meal of microwave popcorn drizzled with chocolate syrup and a glass of milk, a series of whams jarred the front door. My first thought was that a deranged gunman had sprayed the house with assault-rifle fire. I ducked my head and rolled onto all fours on the floor. Wow, these Bulldog fans take this football stuff way too serious.

  “Cujo, you home?” My best bud, Law, called out as the front door slammed behind him. He always barged in before you could answer the door. “Hey, man, what say we get out of here before Deacon Daddy and the crew get back?” Mom hated when people to dropped by unannounced. She hated it even more when they arrived with the bravado of a farmyard rooster. Good thing she wasn’t at home. She loved Law, but there were times he approached the edge of her tolerance.

  My first inclination was to kick him out. He walked right by me and sat with the other guys on the bus ride back from the game. Friends are supposed to have your back, and he didn’t, but considering he was probably the only person in the county still willing to speak to me, I was willing to cut him a tiny wedge of slack.

  “The family is over at the Olsens’.” I tried to keep my tone cool and my expression blank. I wanted to hang on to the anger over his snub on the bus, but Law possessed a childlike innocence that repelled annoyance and resentment like a bulletproof vest.

  “Come on, Dog. You gonna lay on the couch eating jelly beans all day or what? Put your skids on and let’s go.” He offered his hand to help me up.

  I crammed a fistful of popcorn in my mouth and washed it down with the last of the milk and took his assistance. The couch was old, and my butt sank halfway to China when I sat.

  I fished my blue swooshes out of the entry-hall closet and checked my hip pocket for my wallet. I wanted to be mad at him, but Law was the kind of guy you couldn’t be mad at for long. He had a sort of eager puppy thing going for him. I chuckled to myself and asked, “Where’re we headed?”

  “Out.”

  “Out where?”

  “Does it matter?”

  It didn’t. I picked up my truck keys from the table in the entry hall and jingled them toward Law. “My truck or yours?” You’ve got to love a state where pickups and SUVs outnumber cars two to one.

  “Mine,” he said. “You might try to commit suicide, and I don’t want to be a passenger when you do.”

  I managed a half laugh.

  Law was my new best friend, and I would venture to guess, at that moment, my only friend in Branard. He had been the Bulldogs’ starting left defensive end until I won the job. Any other guy would have been mad, but Law took the demotion in stride. When Coach posted the starters for the Richfield game, my first as a Bulldog, Law was the first to congratulate me. I knew right then he and I were going to be buds.

  Law’s whole name is Lawrence Dragoslav Stefanac. His mother’s family already had two Larrys so she nicknamed him Law, and it stuck. He kept his middle name a secret from most people. Even the school administration thought it was Douglas, so I was honored when he decided to shared his deepest dark secret with me. Although we didn’t have a lot in common, we became instant buds.

  Neither of us talked as we drove west on the Travers Highway. When we turned north on Pinkerton Road, I asked, “We going to The Falls?” It was a dumb question, really. The only things north on Pinkerton were a few farms, a played-out gravel pit, and The Falls. We didn’t know anyone living on the farms and the gravel pit was empty and boring, so The Falls was the only logical choice.

  My favorite place in the whole county was The Falls at Myer Park, and Law knew it. The park was four hundred acres of rolling hills and giant pecan trees, with the Colorado River running through the middle. A hundred yards upstream from the free boat launch on the river’s west bank, the river made a series of sharp bends. A hundred yards past the last bend, flanked on either side by old-growth elms, hickories, and bald cypresses, the river took a sudden sixteen-foot drop, creating an almost perfect horseshoe waterfall. The spill formed a small, oval pool, perfect for swimming.

  Law said the county commissioners had debated the idea of turning the waterfall into a tourist attraction for years, but couldn’t agree on the best way to do it, so they did nothing. I guess it proves something positive can come from doing nothing after all.

  We parked on the side of the road under the shade of a huge elm. Law paused as he stepped out and locked his truck. “Todd.” He looked down and kicked at the gravel with his boot.

  I wondered what was up. He never called me by my name. On that first day of football practice, I knocked two offensive linemen on their butts on one play, and Law yelled, “Watch out, it’s Cujo.” From then on, he called me Cujo, after the massive rabid dog from the old movie of the same name.

  He grimaced and lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sit by you on the bus. I was going to, but as I walked past Lance and Jamel, Lance asked me if I was going to go sit in the loser section, or if I was going to sit with the team.” Law bowed his head. “I know I should have manned up, but you know what a weenie I am.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Yeah, he should have manned up. That’s what friends do. They always have your back. They don’t abandon you when things get tough.

  I wanted to ask, “Why didn’t you at least say something?” But I knew the answer. It’s called peer pressure. Adults say you shouldn’t give in to it, but I think they forget how hard it is to go against the crowd. Every kid wants to be liked and accepted. That’s why cliques form. And school isn’t the only place you see them. Even my dad’s church has cliques.

  There are the traditionalists and the contemporaries, the hand folders and the hand clappers. The choir hangs out together, the young marrieds have their stuff, and the blue hairs tend to hang together. It’s human nature, I guess.

  We trudged the rough, uneven hike from the road to the falls in silence. The hike was long, but the sights, sounds, and the fine water spray were worth it. We were lucky that morning, with the water too cold to swim, so we had the place to ourselves, peaceful and quiet. I could do with some peace and quiet.

  The day was mild with a soft wind out of the southwest. We sat on a rock shelf under the shade of a large cedar elm at the edge of the water on the up side of the waterfall. Law kept his normal chatter to a minimum, and I was glad for it. I had nothing to say. I just wanted to get through the next few days or weeks, however long it took for the impact of my bonehead mistake to die down a bit.

  Finally I broke my self-imposed silence, and said, “You know, the funny thing is, I don’t remember holding anybody. No matter how many times I go over it in my head, I don’t remember grabbing anyone or anything as I trailed the play.”

  Law didn’t reply.

  “I close my eyes and try to replay the down in my mind in slow motion, but I can’t see anyone to hold. At the snap, I made a hard push to the outside and the tackle committed to the outside. I spun back inside and tried to chase down the ball carrier from behind.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, I have done that exact same spin move at least a hundred times. So have you. Maybe a thousand times, if you count practice.” I leaned forward to rest my
head in my hands, my elbows on my knees. “Not once have I been called for holding when following the ball. Not once.”

  “It doesn’t matter, man. It’s over. Forget about it. You can’t change it now.” Law gave me a stiff rap on the bicep. I guess he figured physical pain was good therapy for the blues.

  Somewhere upstream, a bullfrog croaked and Law howled, “Pee-ewe-wee. Man, did you just fart?”

  I returned his earlier slug to the arm and stood. “We could go down to the shallows.”

  The weather was warm enough for us to endure a little mist. I loved to sit near the pool at the bottom of the fall and feel the spray on my face. We worked our way along the bank until we found a log someone had pushed up against a forked tree trunk. It made a perfect seat and backrest. I flopped down and slumped against the closer of the two trunks.

  “Wanna go farther down river?” asked Law.

  “Does it look like I want to go down river?”

  He grunted and sat beside me.

  I wanted to stay where we were forever, away from the haters and the rest of the world. Pure hell would be waiting for me back at school. People would either insult me for ruining life on this planet as we knew it, or they would be all sympathetic and say things like, “It’s not that big of a deal,” or “Hey, it could have happened to anybody,” and not really mean it. Either way, I dreaded having to face everyone come Monday.

  My stomach felt queasy. I finally spoke. I know—same song, different verse, but I had to say it. “The funny thing is,” I told Law, “I don’t think it was me.” I stood up, wiping off the seat of my jeans. “Wouldn’t it be something if when we run the film tomorrow, we find out the ref blew the call, and I didn’t hold?”

  “Forget it. Just forget it. Blown call or not, you need to put it behind you. If you keep dwelling…”

  My cell phone interrupted by playing “Missing You Bad” by 2GuBu, the ringtone for Ashley, my Houston girlfriend. I let it go to voice mail. I’d call her back later, when I had a little privacy.

  Law started singing along with the ring. “Hey girl, hey girl, I’m missin’ you b-b-b-b-bad. Yeah, girl, yeah, girl, missin’ you bad.” Then going into a silly falsetto voice for the song’s last line. “Yeah, b-b-b-b-bad, b-b-b-b-bad, missin’ you so bad.”

  I took a swing at his arm, but he was ready for it and rolled his shoulder forward, out of the way of the punch’s full force.

  Law asked, “Wanna work on the dam?”

  “Not really.”

  The Swimming Hole Project was actually a cool example of what a bunch of high school kids could do when they channeled their energies toward a common goal.

  No one remembers who came up with the idea, but a couple of years before, someone began building a rock-and-mud dam just below the waterfall with the idea that they could create a larger swimming area than the twenty-by-twenty-foot hole that had been created over the years by the falling water.

  The other kids had used up all the large nearby stones, so Law and I would have to trek downriver a hundred feet or so and collect a load of the biggest rocks we could lift and haul them back.

  “Come on, dude. Work out some of that frustration.”

  Maybe a workout would help. “Okay,” I agreed. “Just for a while.”

  We worked on the dam for an hour and a half with only a word or a murmur here and there. I was getting tired, and we had made little progress for all the effort. I said, “Next time, we need to bring your johnboat.”

  “We could. Do you have shovels and a wheelbarrow at home?”

  “I think so.”

  “Next time we come up here, we need to pack some dirt and sand in around the rocks.” When I didn’t comment, he added, “Unless, of course, the next people to work on it do that.”

  “I’d rather pack dirt than haul rocks again, that’s for sure.”

  After one more rock-hauling trip, Law leaned against a nearby elm. “I’m beat. Let’s go.”

  Finally. I had wanted to stop two trips earlier, but I refused to quit before Law did.

  »»•««

  On our way home, Law pulled into the Bulldog Benny’s. I wasn’t hungry, but driver’s choice is the rule. I scanned the parking lot for any kids from school. I wasn’t in the mood for more sneers, jeers, and boos. Thankfully, the lot was almost empty. Through the plate-glass window, I only saw two moms with four preschoolers. The kids were climbing on the benches, yelling, and running around the tables. I am never having kids.

  When we pulled up to the drive-through, I didn’t recognize the cute dark-haired girl who took Law’s order, and in a town the size of Branard, it was rare not to know someone close to your own age. I changed my mind about ordering something. No need to have the girl think I was cheap or something. She smiled and handed the ticket to a guy on the kitchen line.

  I asked Law if he knew her.

  “That’s Lisa Brazo. She’s only sixteen but graduated from high school last year.”

  “Wow,” I said. “If she’s so smart, why is she working here at Benny’s?”

  “I said she’s smart, not rich. I heard she won a scholarship to Duke, in North Carolina—tuition, books, room and board, but nothing extra. Colleges don’t hand out spending money and stuff, you know. I suppose she’s working here until…” Law stopped talking when the lovely Lisa returned to the window with our order.

  She said, “Two double cheeseburger combos, and two large shakes. That’ll be twenty-one eighty.”

  “Twenty-one eighty, are you kidding me?” Law frowned and barked.

  “Come on, man, don’t make a fuss,” I told him. “She doesn’t set the prices.”

  Lisa gave a little sigh. I couldn’t decide if it meant something or not. I hoped it was an “Oh, that’s nice” sigh.

  While Law dug in his hip pocket for his wallet, I reached across him and handed her a twenty and a five. I raised my hand and said, “Keep the change.”

  Law took the food and apologized to her for being such a grump. She took it with a smile—and a very nice smile, I might add.

  Law was not a tightwad. He was, in fact, a generous guy. He always insisted on paying more than his share, even if it meant spending his last dollar. Although he told people his dad was some kind of money-market whiz who bought and sold foreign currency over the Internet, I knew the truth, so if I could, I always tried to find a way to pay without making Law feel bad.

  He once confessed to me that his dad contributed exactly seventy-six dollars and forty cents a month to the family’s upkeep, and did not, as Law sometimes claimed, “make thousands of dollars before breakfast, lose it all by lunch, and make it back by supper.”

  As we pulled out of Benny’s lot, Law asked, “Kona Blue Mustang GT or Crystal Red Corvette?”

  He and I had a running bit going where we compared girls to cars. Sort of cute rated a Mini Cooper, a Smart Car, or a Mazda2. Really cute might rate a Gun Metallic Nissan GT-R or a Rally Yellow Camaro Z28. The cuter the girl, the hotter the car.

  “Corvette,” I said without hesitation. “Definitely Corvette.” Top tier.

  As we turned onto Freesia Avenue toward my house, my gut jumped to my throat, and my chest muscles seized my heart like a vise. There, at the end of the block in front of my house, were a red pickup truck, a green and yellow jeep, and a Branard city police car. I imagined the worst as we pulled up in front of Mr. Gregora’s house next door, our curb and driveway being blocked.

  Several of our neighbors stood on the sidewalk nearby, or in their yards, as if they were watching a house fire. Thankfully, I saw no smoke.

  I jumped from Law’s truck before it stopped rolling and ran toward the cop and the others standing in the street. To my amazement and relief, rather than blood spatter, bullet holes, or crime-scene tape, I found Jeremy Tate and Dewayne Robinson washing my truck. I was stunned.

  Officer Hightower was talking to Mr. Frost from across the street. When I interrupted to ask what was going on, the cop explained, “I was on my way home from
work. I live here on Freesia, just a few blocks down.” He made a motion to the north with a jerk of his head. “And what do you think? I found these two painting graffiti on this truck.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I see this truck here every morning on my way to work. I notice it because it’s always parked on the grass next to the driveway rather than on it.”

  We had a two-car garage but our driveway narrowed down to a single car width before it got to the street. Mom and Dad both parked inside the garage, and every time one of them wanted to leave, I had to get up and move my truck. As a minister, Dad often got emergency calls to the hospital or to someone’s home, and Mom was always busy chairing some committee at church or doing some other volunteer work.

  I opened my mouth to ask Officer Hightower a question, but Law beat me to the punch. “Why did you make them clean it up instead of arresting them?”

  That was what I wanted to know. If Jeremy and Dewayne were so cowardly as to vandalize my truck instead of confronting me face-to-face, they deserved to go to jail.

  “Well, for one thing, if you don’t get to scrubbing with mineral spirits and rags right after the paint’s been sprayed, it won’t come off. And well”—Officer Hightower took a deep breath—“that’s what Mr. Nelson asked me to do.” He almost sounded apologetic.

  I didn’t know whether to be mad, glad, or both in some alternating pattern. A mumbled thank-you was the best I could muster as I turned to go in the house.

  Officer Hightower said, “If I were you, I’d park in the driveway where the floodlights are from now on. You know, lately there’s been a rash of kids breaking into vehicles and stealing stuff.”

  I nodded and had started toward the house when he grabbed Law’s arm. He studied Law’s face a few seconds, then asked, “You the Stefanac boy from over on Conn Street?”

  “Yes, sir.” Law lowered his chin and studied the ground.