“To tell you the truth, Javi, I’ve been better.”
“What’s going on?”
Oberman saw the concern in Javi’s bloodshot eyes. He grabbed the stuffed football, squeezed it, and looked out the window again. Maybe he should tell Javi everything. He trusted him not to go blabbing. And who better to talk to about life’s unfairness, about how the world can be absurd, and painful, and relentless?
The bonfire was raging. The cheerleaders formed a wobbling pyramid.
He’d tell him, Oberman decided. He’d get it all off his chest. He opened his mouth to speak.
And then Lonny Hinkle walked past the window. He was headed toward the bleachers, blowing into his hands, red scarf looped around his neck.
Oberman sucked in a breath. Unbelievable. What fucking nerve. Was he trying to prove a point, to show he wasn’t rattled by the bullet in his box? As Oberman watched, Hinkle approached a group of teachers, grinning broadly. He gave one of them a jovial slap on the back. If he had the balls to come out tonight, Oberman thought, that meant he’d be there for the game tomorrow, smirking down from the bleachers as the Hornets got pummeled. Oberman dug his fingers into the stuffed football. His head felt like it would burst. He swung back to face Javi.
“What’s wrong, Coach?” Javi said.
“What’s wrong?” Oberman said. “What’s wrong?” He leaned forward. “What’s wrong is that you’re trying to sabotage my team.”
Javi frowned. He shook his head slowly.
“Listen carefully to me, son. I know things are fuzzy right now, but I want to make sure this gets through to you. Are you paying attention?”
Javi nodded, eyes wide.
“If you show up drunk tomorrow, I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
Even as he said the words, he felt disgusted with himself. This hadn’t been his plan. He’d meant to chastise Javi, sure, to tell him to get his act together. But not like this.
Maybe, he thought, Javi would take it as a joke. He watched him carefully, waiting for the slightest sign of humor. They could laugh this off, pretend Oberman hadn’t been seething as he said it, pretend that when the words came out, they hadn’t both believed them.
But Javi didn’t laugh. He held Oberman’s gaze and then slowly, as the weight of the words settled in, his eyes started to water. He blinked and looked down.
There was no going back now. A new reality had been established between them. They would both have to accept it and move forward.
“Are we clear?” Oberman said.
“Yes, Coach,” Javi mumbled.
“Then get the hell out of my office.”
Javi stood up unsteadily, gripping the back of his chair. He didn’t look at Oberman as he left the office and shut the door softly behind him.
Oberman sat at his desk for a few minutes. He picked up the playbook and set it down again. He stared out the window at the fire. Finally he got up, grabbed the stuffed football, and stepped into the darkened locker room. Far at the back he could make out Javi slumped on a bench, shoulders shaking. Oberman locked his office door behind him and walked out into the gym. On his way to the exit, he tossed the football in the trash.
He’d already opened the back door, the cool air rushing in, when a thought occurred to him and he stopped and turned around. He came back to the trash can, peered inside, and reached down. He came up with Javi’s two-liter. In four big chugs he drained the bottle and dropped it back in the can. Then he shoved the door open and stepped out into the night.
On the field, the cheerleaders were holding up huge cardboard letters while the crowd yelled “H-O-R-N-E-T-S... Gooooooo Hornets!” Oberman barely glanced at the stands as he made his way toward the bonfire. There were two students tending the fire, both freshman girls. After the last cheer had finished, the crowd would gather around the fire, and as the grand finale these two girls would throw the papier-mâché buffalo on the flames — glue bubbling, horns turning to ash, eyes bursting from their sockets.
Oberman stepped up to the girls. The alcohol hadn’t hit him yet, but nevertheless he felt a giddy rush of energy. The girls looked at him nervously. “Hey, Coach,” one of them said.
Now that he could see the buffalo up close, he could tell what a shoddy piece of work it was. It looked like a deformed dog with horns. He reached down and picked it up. It was so light, he thought. He almost laughed at how light it was. He stepped toward the bonfire and raised the buffalo above his head.
“Coach, hold on, it’s not time yet!” one of the girls said.
“Coach O?” said the other, her voice concerned.
But Oberman wasn’t listening. He was looking past the fire toward the shelterbelt. There in the darkness of the trees he could see them — dozens of red eyes glaring out at him. Above the crackling fire he could hear their gnashing teeth.
They watched him, unblinking. It was only a matter of time.
Sharon Hunt
The Keepers of All Sins
from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
The Albrecht men had a habit of being found floating on water.
The habit began with the grandfather, Carl, in Vienna in 1944. Alcohol was given as the reason he was floating lifeless in a turquoise-tiled pool, although the fact that he was swimming naked at the house of a man who had disappeared the previous day and that the man’s wife had alerted police to Carl’s demise, her face bearing signs of a fresh beating, gave pause to the idea that his death was simple misadventure. Still, money and the power of Albrecht’s widow ensured that the death was quickly labeled as such. The woman who had alerted the police continued on in her house, draining the pool, then staying mostly in the kitchen, where she made a bed next to the gigantic stove that gave off a fierce heat, saturating the air with moisture. Fifty years later she was found curled up next to that stove, her hair wet and dripping.
The same year her body was discovered, Carl’s son Caspar drowned in a lake on the opposite side of the world, in northern Ontario, where he owned a summer cottage that rose from the granite like a mountain, on land that was to have remained wild. The construction of the cottage had cost two men their lives after each fell, just days apart, onto the boulders below. Caspar’s body had a softer landing in the water by the dock. Like his father, alcohol was mentioned, but in this case, the woman who found him was his own wife, who always wore long sleeves and never went in the water, although on that day the cuffs of her linen shirt were damp when the police arrived. She said she had tried to pull him out, but his body was too heavy, bloated from years of excess, so she tied his wrist to the dock and let him float until they arrived.
Christian, Caspar’s only son, died in a lake in Switzerland twenty years after that. He had lost his grip on a ferry gate that came unlatched and from which he dangled until slipping into the cold water. There weren’t many passengers left on the ferry at that point and all of them were below in the little room that smelled of oil. The crew heard nothing until the driver of a speedboat radioed that he’d found a body floating toward shore and scooped it up. There was no mention of alcohol, but Christian’s girlfriend, Maud, had a hazy look, as if something toxic hadn’t left her yet. Christian couldn’t swim, but he liked the water well enough, she told the officer who came to investigate, having spent his summers at the family cottage in northern Ontario.
“Canada,” she added, since the officer seemed confused.
He didn’t look as if he traveled, rather like someone content to stay where he had been put, like Maud’s grandmother Eleanor had been. She doubted her grandmother could have located Switzerland on a map any faster than this man would northern Ontario.