Annoyed, he gave me a shove. “Well, I would for real. Just one win. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I’m getting a special feeling here,” I said.
“Shut up!”
“I’m getting all tingly and shit. like God’s listening in. He’s heard your voice and even now. ”
He chucked one of his empties at me.
“. universal forces are gathering, preparing to weave your heartfelt prayer into His Glorious Design.”
“I wish,” said Doyle.
Darkness folded down around us, hiding the scrub pine. Though it had been overcast all day, the stars were out in force. Doyle twisted up a joint and we smoked, we drank, we smoked some more, and by the time we’d finished the first twelve-pack, the dead live oak appeared more witchy than ever, the stars close enough to snatch down from the sky, and the pond, serene and shimmering with reflected light, might have been an illustration in a book of fairy tales. I thought about pointing this out to Doyle, but I restrained myself — he would have told me to quit talking like a homo.
Clouds blew in from the east, covering the stars, and we fell silent. All I could hear were dogs barking in the distance and that ambient hum that seems to run throughout the American night. I asked what he was thinking and he said, “Taunton.”
“Jesus, Doyle. Here.” I flipped him a fresh beer. “Get over it, okay?”
He turned the can over in his hands. “It ticks me off.”
“Look, man. The only way we’ll ever beat them is if their bus breaks down on the way to the game.”
“What do you mean?”
“If they show up late, they’ll have to forfeit.”
“Oh. yeah,” he said glumly, as if the notion didn’t satisfy him.
“So get over it.”
He started to respond but was cut off by a shrill jee-eep, a sound like a rusty gate opening; this was followed by a rustling, as of many wings.
I jumped up. “What was that?”
“Just a grackle,” Doyle said.
I peered into the darkness. Though it was likely my imagination, the night air looked to have taken on the glossiness of a grackle’s wing. I didn’t much like grackles. They were nest robbers and often ate fledglings. And there were stories. A droplet of ice formed at the tip of my spine.
“City boy,” said Doyle disparagingly, referring to the fact that I had spent my first decade in Aiken, which was a city compared to Edenburg. “Is Andy scared of the birdies?”
There came a series of jee-eeps, more rustling. I thought I detected almost invisible movement in every direction I turned.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Want me to hold your hand?”
“Come on! We can drive over to Dawn’s and see if she wants to do something.”
Doyle made a disgusted noise and stood. “Something’s about to poke a hole in my ass, anyway.” He touched the back of his jeans and then inspected his finger. “Christ, I’m bleeding. I think something bit me.” He kicked at the sofa. “I could get an infection off this damn thing!”
“I bet you can get Dawn to suck out the poison,” I said, hurrying toward the car.
As I backed up, the headlights swept across the bank, revealing the row of thrown-away sofas and chairs. I could have sworn one of them was missing, and as I went fishtailing off along the dirt road, the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that it was the one we had been sitting on.
If it hadn’t been for football, I would have been an outsider in high school, angry and fucked-up, a loner whom everyone would have voted the Most Likely to Go Columbine. People said I took after my mama — I had her prominent cheekbones and straight black hair and hazel eyes. She was one-quarter Cherokee, still a beauty as she entered her forties, and she had a clever mind and a sharp tongue that could slice you down to size in no time flat. She was a lot quicker than my daddy (a stoic, uncommunicative sort), way too quick to be stuck in a backwater like Edenburg. Some nights she drank too much and Daddy would have to help her upstairs, and some afternoons she went out alone and didn’t return until I was in bed, and I would hear them fighting, arguments in which she always got the last word. When I was in the eighth grade I discovered that she had a reputation. According to gossip, she was often seen in the bars and had slept with half the men in Taunton. I got into a bunch of school-yard fights that usually were started by a comment about her. I felt betrayed, and for a while we didn’t have much of a relationship. Then Daddy sat me down and we had a talk, the only real talk we’d had to that point.
“I knew what I was getting when I married your mama,” he said. “She’s got a wild streak in her, and sometimes it’s bound to come out.”
“People laughing behind your back and calling her a slag. how do you put up with that?”
“Because she loves us,” he said. “She loves us more than anyone. People are gonna say what they gonna say. Your mama’s had a few flings, and it hurts — don’t get me wrong. But she has to put up with me and with the town, so it all evens out. She don’t belong in Edenburg. These women around here don’t have nothing to offer her, talking about county fairs and recipes. You’re the only person she can talk to, and that’s because she raised you to be her friend. The two of you can gab about books and art, stuff that goes right over my head. Now with you giving her the cold shoulder, she’s got no outlet for that side of things.”
I asked straight out if he had slept with other women, and he told me there was a time he did, but that was just vengeful behavior.
“I never wanted anybody but your mama,” he said solemnly, as if taking a vow. “She’s the only woman I ever gave a damn about. Took me a while to realize it, is all.”
I didn’t entirely understand him and kept on fighting until he pushed me into football at the beginning of the ninth grade; though it didn’t help me understand any better, the game provided a release for my aggression, and things gradually got easier between me and Mama.
By our senior year, Doyle and I were the best players on the team and football had become for me both a means of attracting girls and a way of distracting attention from the fact that I read poetry for fun and effortlessly received As, while the majority of my class watched American Idoland struggled with the concepts of basic algebra. My gangly frame had filled out, and I was a better than adequate wide receiver. Not good enough for college ball, probably not good enough to start for Taunton, but I didn’t care about that. I loved the feeling of leaping high, the ball settling into my hands, while faceless midgets clawed ineffectually at it, and then breaking free, running along the sideline — it didn’t happen all that often, yet when it did, it was the closest thing I knew to satori.
Doyle was undersized, but he was fast and a vicious tackler. Several colleges had shown interest in him, including the University of South Carolina. Steve Spurrier, the Old Ball Coach himself, had attended one of our games and shook Doyle’s hand afterward, saying he was going to keep an eye on him. For his part, Doyle wasn’t sure he wanted to go to college.
When he told me this, I said, “Are you insane?”
He shot me a bitter glance but said nothing.
“Damn, Doyle!” I said. “You got a chance to play in the SEC and you’re going to turn it down? Football’s your way out of this shithole.”
“I ain’t never getting out of here.”
He said this so matter-of-factly, for a moment I believed him; but I told him he was the best corner in our conference and to stop talking shit.
“You don’t know your ass!” He chested me, his face cinched into a scowl. “You think you do. You think all those books you read make you smart, but you don’t have a clue.”