Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes Page 8

  “Yeah, well, reconsider. The girl has hidden taste.”

  “Did you give her your number?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Want me to ask the waitress to turn up the heat?”

  “What?”

  “Sounds like your feet are cold. She gave you that note three days ago. I’d have written my phone number in permanent marker on the back of Brittain’s alligator shirt before the class was over if I was in your covetous state.”

  I laugh. “When the time’s right. Listen, I been meaning to ask you about the other day in Lemry’s class.”

  Ellerby chomps down on his burger. “Which day is that?”

  “The day you talked about Sarah Byrnes. About shame.”

  “What’s to tell?”

  “Ellerby, I’ve known you since the first day I turned out for swimming. You haven’t uttered a serious sentence in four years.”

  He smiles, paraphrasing the punch line from the old joke about the kid who went through his entire life without uttering a word. On his seventeenth birthday his mother brought out a beautiful angel food cake with a sweet rich buttery frosting. The boy blew out the candles and began to cut the cake, then stopped and put down the knife. He said, “Mother, I don’t mean to be impolite, but I like chocolate frosting on my angel food cake.” Well, of course, the whole family was astonished, and they gasped and then cheered and patted him on the back. When his mother finally asked why it took him so long to speak, he said, “Up till now, everything’s been okay.”

  “Right,” I say, watching Ellerby polish off the burger on the third bite.

  “I just said what I believed, that’s all,” he says, swallowing.

  “Yeah, I know. I heard you. It’s just that I hadn’t heard much about what you believe before that day. Or since.”

  Ellerby sits back in the booth. “Beliefs.” He smiles. “You’re talking to the son of a preacher man,” he says. “You better set aside a few hours before you get me started on that.

  I glance at my watch. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ve wondered about you being a preacher’s kid. Is that tough?” I’ve never heard Ellerby complain.

  He shakes his head. “Not with my dad.” He nods toward the window, in the direction of the Cruiser. “How do you think I get away with driving that beast?”

  “I figured you must be as hard to handle at home as you are at school.”

  He smiles again. “Shit, man. If my dad said the word, I’d have it sanded down and primed by morning.”

  “I’ve never thought of your old man as scary.”

  “He isn’t scary. I’d do it out of respect.”

  I’m aware I’ve known Ellerby almost four years and I know almost nothing about his family. In fact, often as not I think of him as an orphan that my mother feeds.

  “When my brother died,” Ellerby says, his eyes almost dreamy, “times were hard. My mother couldn’t quit crying and my dad just lost himself in his work. I remember wishing for Sunday to hurry up because I knew I’d at least see him at church. Mom was so hurt she couldn’t even talk to me, and after about six months I started thinking my brother was the only kid in the family worth being happy about. I got it in my head that it should have been me who died. When Dad finally started getting back to normal, he was so busy trying to take care of Mom and running the church and all, he seemed to have forgotten about me. I was just a little shit, but I packed my stuff in my brother’s old gym bag and lit out for my uncle’s.

  “Only problem was, my uncle lives on the East Coast. Cops picked me up five blocks from home and called Dad. When he came down to the station I ran and buried my face in his chest and babbled how sorry I was, that I was sorry it was Johnny instead of me, and Dad dropped to his knees with me and held me tight and told me right there, on the cold concrete floor, how bad he’d screwed up. Since that day, I haven’t had a better friend.”

  Ellerby’s eyes are shiny and he continues quietly. “Beliefs. Man, I changed the face of God for my old man forever.”

  “What do you mean? How?”

  “By making him explain to a nine-year-old kid why God would let a preacher’s son die when he was going to grow up to be a preacher, too. I told him I thought God must be dumb, cheating them both out of a high draft pick like my brother. I said I thought if you were a preacher, God ought to give you a little extra protection. You know, like cops don’t give each other tickets?”

  “What’d he say?”

  Ellerby smiles. “He said he thought so, too. That he was as surprised as I was when it happened. Anyway, that’s when we sat down and tried to figure out God’s job description. You heard a piece of it the other day in class.”

  “You were a real hit with Brittain.”

  “That stuff scares guys like Brittain. Guys like him don’t want to be accountable for shit. They fall to their knees on the deck when they should concentrate on swimming hard. That’s why I said what I said about your friend Sarah Byrnes. She’s been around all my life and I’ve done nothing; stayed as far from her as I could because I don’t like thinking about her pain. But that’s chicken shit, because once a thing is known, it can’t be unknown.” He sits back and folds his hands behind his head. “Dad and I sit around and watch the God network a couple of hours a week just to see what guys like Brittain are thinking. You know, keep up with the enemy.”

  Ellerby stands. “That, my friend, is about as much philosophical bullshit as I can take in one night. Let’s crank up the Cruiser and spread the word.”

  The Cruiser slows to a stop in front of my house a few minutes before midnight. “Get some sleep,” Ellerby says. “We’ve got a tough meet tomorrow.” He squints into his side window. “Look, isn’t that Dale Thornton’s wagon?”

  I cup my hands around my eyes to block the light from the dash. “Hard to imagine there’s three of these things.” As I say it, the door to the wagon swings open and Dale steps out. “Wonder what he wants. You didn’t steal anything from his garage the other night, did you?”

  We meet Dale in the middle of the street. “Hey, man,” Ellerby says, “got her running, huh?”

  Dale locks his fingers into his belt loops, a stance preceding the moment he used to kick my butt, or take my lunch money. He says, “Yeah. No sweat.” He stands, eyes shifting from one to the other of us.

  I’m on past conditioning. “You pissed, man?”

  Dale smiles uneasily. “Naw. Why would I be pissed?”

  “To tell the truth, Dale, up until the other night, I never saw you when you weren’t. It was just a guess.”

  He looks at the ground. “I wasn’t always pissed,” he says. “I just needed to make sure all you guys were a-scared of me.”

  “It worked. What brings you out this late?”

  “Got to thinkin’,” he says. “The other night. You guys talkin’ about Scarface.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. She really laid up in the crazy house? Like you said?”

  I nod. “Yup. Why?”

  “Well,” he says uneasily, “we was purty good friends there for a little bit. After that stupid newspaper, when she was kinda mad at you for goin’ off to be a jock…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Helped me out of some tough spots. You know, let me talk without tellin’, stuff like that.”

  I say, “Yeah.”

  “Thought I better tell you somethin’ else. Told her I never would, but I don’t wanna see her rot in some crazy house. I got a aunt there….”

  I wait, and Dale looks at the street again, kicking at a pebble. “You got to be careful what you do with this. I mean, who you tell.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can’t just be tellin’ anybody.”

  “Okay, I won’t. Tell me.”

  “Reason I know them burns wasn’t caused by no boilin’ pot of spaghetti is she tol’ me different.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “Said her daddy pushed her face against a burnin’ wood stove.”

&nbs
p; The hammer hits my stomach with such force that my knees turn to rubber. “Jesus Christ. Are you shitting me?”

  Dale casts a sideward glance at Ellerby, then back at me. “You think I’d drive over to your house in the middle of the goddamn night to shit you?” To Dale the very worst thing in the world is to be called a liar. I need to remember that.

  “No. I didn’t mean that. I just meant…Jesus, Dale. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Night she tol’ me she was fixin’ to kill herself.”

  God, I’d had no idea. “How’d you stop her?”

  “Had to slap her around pretty good,” he says. “That ain’t no way, to go killin’ yourself.”

  I glance over at Ellerby, who has just set a personal record for speechlessness. In the dim streetlight I see his face is drained of blood. He says, “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

  “She tol’ me not to.”

  “Yeah,” Ellerby says, “but…”

  “Ain’t no buts. I said I’d keep my mouth shut and that’s what I done. Shit, who would I of told?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellerby says. “Cops. Child protection people.”

  Dale snorts and spits on the ground. “Shit. When was you born, man? Those guys don’t listen to jokers like me. I give my word to Scarface I’d keep my mouth shut, an’ that’s just what I done. ’Cept for now. Don’t wanna see her rottin’ in some crazy house, like I said. Maybe we ain’t such good friends anymore, but we was once.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, but he pulls away. “Listen,” I say. “We’ll figure out who to tell. We’ll be careful. Thanks for coming here, man. Really. I owe you.”

  Dale laughs. “Gimme your lunch money.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “A number of you have chosen abortion as your topic,” Lemry says toward the end of class, studying a list in her hand. “Since there is such an interest, I’m setting aside several days for discussion to be sure everyone gets time.” She steps around to the front of her desk, removing her reading glasses. “Let me warn you, this is a topic that can get out of hand. Adults don’t handle it well. I’d be surprised if there weren’t people in the room who have had experience with abortion, either directly or through friends. So I’m going to keep a tight rein on things. I will feel free to remove you from the discussion, or even the room, if you’re disrespectful toward other people’s views. That won’t necessarily mean you’re in trouble with the law, it’ll just mean I think you need a break. As always, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re also accountable for decency.”

  She doesn’t ask for agreement. We’ve had some pretty spirited discussions over the past three weeks, about child abuse and women’s rights and racism, among other things, and what’s becoming clear is that most tough problems in the world run into each other. We start talking about one and we end up talking about another and no one can figure how we got there. I think Lemry knows that.

  I’m off my pace a bit. Jody’s in the bleachers watching Brittain, and I can’t take my mind off her note. I’m hitting my time standards, but when I should be bearing down in the stretch laps my mind wanders.

  I’ve always tried to stay cool when it comes to matters of the heart. As a fat kid growing up I just assumed there would never be a girl for me. In junior high I watched the popular kids hang out playing boy-girl games, and I told myself they were stupid and wrote mean things about them in Sarah Byrnes’s and my trashy newspaper, but truth is, sometimes it hurt so bad I wanted to die. I told myself the kind of friendship I had with Sarah Byrnes—the tough kind—was better. I think most of us tell ourselves we don’t want what we think we can’t have just to make life bearable.

  When I started swimming and began to shed some of my outer insulation, things changed a bit. A few girls have even shown interest in me over the past couple of years; they just weren’t the ones I was interested in. Don’t think I didn’t consider taking up with them anyway, just so I wouldn’t look like a social adjusto, but I didn’t.

  So far, I’ve opted to laugh off my loneliness in that area, but I do know it’s serious stuff and I’ll have to deal with it someday. I wish my mother could be more help, but she treats love like an extracurricular activity. I think my dad hurt her a lot, though she’s never said much about that, probably because I have as many of his genes in me as hers—twice as many visible ones—and she doesn’t want me thinking there’s something wrong with me because my dad was a jerk. Someday I’ll have to sit her down and have a serious discussion.

  And now there’s Jody. Sure, she’s in the bleachers watching Brittain, so maybe she’s changed her mind since dropping me that note, but she’s a possibility now. As Ellerby said, anything that’s known can’t be unknown, and I have that note locked away in the headboard above my bed. And believe me, it’s known. In a biblical sense. I have consummated its existence, yes I have. Ellerby was right—I should have acted more quickly. The longer I wait the more reasons I can think of why it means something other than what I thought it meant when I first read it.

  “Steamrollers,” Lemry yells. “One hard, one easy; two hard, one easy, up to ten and back.” My mind calculates; a total of 100 laps hard, 19 easy. Jesus, will I be glad in a month or so when we start to taper off for state. Being a distance man, I’m expected to come out on top of this.

  Brittain and Ellerby go out in front. The first lap is a twenty-five yard sprint, then an easy twenty-five followed by a fifty-yard sprint. They’re still pulling away from me at four hard—a hundred-yard sprint—but there I begin to close the gap. My easy laps are faster than theirs, and as we begin into six hard, then seven, stored blubber comes into play. By eight hard, we’re even, and beyond that I’m pulling away with every stroke. At ten hard, they’re in my dust—or my mud. God, this feels good. There is no place I feel more powerful or more in control than in the second half of a tough distance workout. I piss and moan with the best of them reading Lemry’s workout on the bulletin board, but once I’m in it, I’m in it. Whoever beats me can’t let up, because the older I get, and the longer the distance, the tougher I am. I figure I’ll make the Guinness Book of World Records by swimming the Bering Strait some New Year’s Eve after I turn ninety. I hope Brittain’s still around for me to hate by then, though he’ll probably be secure in heaven, and out of everyone’s hair.

  I’m cooking in the decreasing laps, eight hard and less. Ellerby’s pulling away from Brittain, but he’s way back from me and I need a challenge, so I’m thinking it’d be a nice touch to double-lap old Mark, especially with Jody watching. It shouldn’t bother him. Brittain’s talent is speed, not tenacity; but I have survived my years as a fat kid by mastering the adolescent psyche, and I know he’d rather eat his own liver than have Jody see me standing in the shallow water looking for something to do while he finishes his last two laps. Hey, nobody ever called me sensitive.

  Skullduggery is in order here. I’ll have to push harder through the easy laps without his knowing, because if he discovers me, he can hold me off.

  When I finish seven hard, we’re at opposite ends of the pool and I’m due for one easy. Instead, I turn it on coming off the wall, back off when I swim into his view and pick up again once we’ve passed each other. I don’t think he caught me, so I’ll get another chance to make up a bundle after six hard. This is too easy. I hope Jody appreciates it.

  “Abortion,” Lemry says, pacing the perimeter of the room. “This is delicate stuff, so let me remind you once again to be careful. I’ve read some rough drafts, and it’s clear that those of you who chose the topic have strong feelings. My guess is that others do also. For purposes of discussion, keep your passion to a minimum and make your points rationally.”

  I’m going to sit back, at least for the first round. I know for a fact that Brittain and two others in the room—Sally Eaton and Cynthia Parrish—have picketed the clinic up at Deaconess Hospital where women in this town go for abortions. And Jody has been up there at least once. Plus it’s one thing to mes
s with Brittain’s head in the pool, but when a subject bangs up against his religious beliefs, he gets cranked, and anyhow I don’t even know what I think about this. I do believe women ought to have a choice, but that’s because my mother has always been so vocal. Truth is, I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant (a line Lemry better not hear unless I want to do push-ups in the aisle until the end of the period), and unless something in my life changes drastically, I won’t be approaching an activity that will cause anyone else to become pregnant in the near future. Mr. Moby Calhoune has been voted the Closet Sex Maniac Most Likely to Become Pope three years running.

  “Who wants to start?” Papers shuffle, eyes fix to desk tops. Lemry fingers through the rough drafts. “Ms. Eaton, you turned in an extensive draft. Could you give us a rough sketch of what you wrote?”

  “Sure,” Sally says. “The hard fact about abortion is that it is murder. A fetus has no capability to stand up for itself, and yet it is as alive as you or I. So-called pro-choice activists say it isn’t because it doesn’t speak or communicate in any way we know. Yet if you look at the growth between conception and birth, which is greater than in any period between birth and death, no one can say in good conscience it isn’t life. The taking of life is murder.”

  Whew. Lemry has to be impressed; I am.

  “Mr. Brittain?”

  “Couldn’t have said it better,” Mark says. “The truth is, potential mothers and people who conspire with potential mothers to allow abortion will pay forever in the afterlife.”

  Lemry nods. “Let’s keep this discussion a bit more immediate, okay? We’ll discuss religion and belief systems in another segment.”

  “That’s the problem,” Brittain says back. “You can’t separate this question from spiritual reality. That’s the only way pro-choicers can make an argument. But there are laws far more powerful and absolute than human laws. You can’t argue the question of abortion without including the laws of God.”