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  "So they both left," I continued. "And it's all Dad's fault."

  "So why aren't you talking to them?" Brian asked finally.

  I slapped some paint on my roller, which was tough because my eyes were watery all of sudden. "Because before they left, Bill asked me which side I was on."

  Brian didn't say a word. Just waited. That impressed me so much.

  "It wasn't fair, him asking that. I have to live here for two more years at least. I can't get Dad all mad at me. It wasn't fair," I whispered. "It wasn't fair."

  "But it's been like seven months. Couldn't you call?"

  I painted for a while. "Because I'm not the one who has to apologize." That's a bruise Bill will have to punch first, I thought to myself.

  We didn't say anything for a long, long time. Just painted.

  "Can I ask a question?" Brian asked finally. "Did your dad play college ball?"

  I snorted. "Until he flunked out. But he played a lot in the army."

  Brian gave me this weird look.

  "What?" I asked.

  "It's just interesting, the parallels. What happened with you at school last year."

  For a moment I almost threw my brush at him, I was so mad. But I just kept painting. "Is that what your mom would say?" I asked, trying to sound mature.

  "I think so. I didn't mean to make you mad," he offered after a couple minutes. I guess it was pretty obvious.

  "I'd just never thought about it before," I said.

  "You can get mad at me if you want."

  "If I did, you'd be covered in paint."

  Which made us both laugh, and broke that horrible tension a little, gave me time to get my padding back. And I did, a bit. Enough to remember that at least I didn't flunk out of college, I just failed one stupid class.

  After a while, just to fill up all that silence, I said, "I'm sorry you don't get along with your dad."

  "That's the thing, I do get along with him. But now I—I kind of wish I didn't."

  "You could have my dad instead," I offered. Which made us both grin.

  "Do I really sound that bad when I'm playing?" It sounded like it took as much courage for him to ask that as some of my questions.

  "What's your dad say?" I asked. Which I thought was very smart and Oprah-like.

  "He always says it's their fault, the other players. Whenever we talk about it."

  I nodded. That explained a lot.

  "What"—Brian kind of steeled himself—"what would your dad say?"

  I knew what my dad would say because I'd heard him say it, heard him rant about what a useless whiner Brian was, tell Jimmy Ott to kick him off the team. He'd said worse than that too, especially that night Brian had made so much fun of Bill. After that game Bill went out back with a sledgehammer and just demolished an old broken tiller we had. Reduced it to bits. Dad sure had some things to say about Brian then.

  "He'd say"—I chose my words extra carefully—"that a team starts with its QB."

  Brian shook his head. "You have no idea how much Jimmy Ott talks about your brothers. Especially Win. It makes my dad so mad. He says it's unprofessional. And it made me want to just kill Red Bend. Even though Jimmy, he isn't doing it to be mean or get us riled up. He's just making a point."

  "Oh," I said.

  "About attitude. Your brothers' attitude. I think it made me so mad because I knew he was really making the point to me."

  We thought that over for a while. Then, because I couldn't stand it any longer, I had to ask, "Do you think I was just copying my dad when I, you know, screwed up in English?"

  Brian sighed. "That's what my mom would say. She sees that stuff everywhere. Like, 'Oh, you're driving a red car?' So what? It was probably just real hard for you, with school and the farm and all."

  "My teacher said our family should, you know, talk to someone." I focused on my painting so I wouldn't have to look at him when I said it.

  "Like a counselor?" Brian asked, surprised.

  "I guess so. I didn't even know she'd said it until a couple days ago."

  "Wow." Brian chuckled a little.

  "What?"

  "It's just funny. Here you are being told that you need a family counselor when I've got that already. Too bad Jimmy Ott couldn't send me to some jock to straighten out my football." Suddenly he stopped laughing. "But I guess that's what he did, isn't it?"

  And that was so strange to even think about that we barely said another word until Dad and Curtis left and we went up to the heifer field and ran our guts out. And the good thing about our conversation—well, one of the good things, one of the good obvious things—is that it gave me an excuse. Because halfway through when we were both panting and sweaty, my clothes soaking wet and Brian's hair stuck to his forehead, he asked why I was doing the workout too.

  "Because I'm your goddam therapist," I gasped.

  18. D.J. Goes to Town

  Wednesday morning I decided that if I was really going to spend the next two weeks training for preseason, I should probably figure out if I would even, you know, be allowed to play. So after Brian worked through his weights and stretches, I said we could quit for the day. He gave me this long look but I wouldn't look back because I'm such a bad liar, so eventually he left and I took the pickup to Home Depot to track down Jeff Peterson.

  Jeff Peterson works in the flooring department there, but his other job, his real job if you ask anyone including him, is coaching Red Bend football. He's been doing it for three years and he was assistant coach for a long while before that. He and Bill were really close when Bill was in high school, and he really helped Bill with all the scholarship stuff and getting his grades in order. He has a little mustache, and whenever he's thinking hard he'll chew on it, sort of pull his upper lip down and gnaw on it a little. I bet he doesn't even notice when he does it. Bill and Win used to have a great time imitating him. He's a good guy. He doesn't yell. I like that.

  Sure enough, there he was in the flooring department, growing out his mustache for football season. He was helping some lady decide between four identical colors of carpet until finally she went away without buying anything and he turned to me.

  "Hey there, Coach," I said.

  "Well, hey there, D.J. What can I do you for?"

  I took a deep breath. "Coach, I want to play football for Red Bend this fall." I figured it'd be best to get it over with fast. Like pulling off a Band-Aid.

  "Huh," he said, probably chewing his mustache right off but I was too busy studying the floor to see. "I thought you had some scholastic problems last semester."

  Which, if you'd asked me the hundred things I thought he would say, wouldn't even have made the list. Also, how did he even know?

  "Yeah," I said. "English."

  "Because you need a clean transcript to play. You know that."

  Which I did know but I guess I'd forgotten. "We're working on it, me and Mrs. Stolze." Which wasn't a complete lie because I'd talked to Mom about it once and gone through the file. "She said if I got her the papers I could turn it around."

  "You need to work on that then, don't you?"

  "Yeah. I guess I do."

  "Okay then." Jeff turned to help a customer.

  "But—Jeff? If I did that could I, you know, play?"

  "I'll have to do some asking around. Don't know what the rules are." He turned away, smoothing his mustache, and started talking to a guy about subfloors, which would be fascinating if you had nothing else to think about for the rest of your life.

  "Should I, you know, keep training?" I managed finally, sounding like a total moron I'm sure. The subfloor guy seemed to think I was, anyway.

  "Oh, yeah. And say hey to your old man."

  Yeah, right. It was Dad's fault I was in all this mess. Because you know what? I would never tell this to anyone, but all spring as the letters from Mrs. Stolze had kept coming home and I still wasn't doing anything and Mom was so upset, I just knew in my heart that it wasn't that serious. And maybe that was because I knew Dad had d
one the same thing. Maybe if I lived in a family where people got through school just on their grades and their brains and stuff, maybe I'd have cared more. Cared enough to pass, at least. Which I now had to do. So, not knowing where else to go, I headed over to Red Bend Elementary School to find Mom.

  There were hardly any cars in the parking lot seeing as it was the middle of summer, and the hallways had that echo schools have when there aren't any kids. There wasn't even a secretary. So I just stuck my head into the principal's office where I figured Mom would be and sure enough there she was, typing away on her computer.

  "Hey," I said.

  She jumped about three feet in the air. "Jesus, D.J.!"

  "Oops. Guess I should have knocked."

  "That's okay," she said, catching her breath.

  The office sure looked different. There were lacy curtains and a windowsill full of plants, and some other plants in the corners, and pictures of us on the desk: the family portrait Mom made us do a couple years ago, my hair looking pretty much awful; Curtis as a little kid in a pile of footballs; me with my heifer Lee Roy Jordan and her first-place ribbon at the 4-H fair; and one I'd never seen before of Bill and a huge black guy in their Minnesota uniforms, standing side by side. It was framed and everything.

  I picked it up. "Who's that?" I asked.

  Mom took it away from me in that way moms have. "It's just something Bill sent me. That's his roommate, Aaron Johnson. He's from Detroit, he's a lineman—"

  "Bill sent it to you?"

  "He e-mailed it. I just printed it out," she shrugged like it wasn't anything, even though it was. "So," she asked, turning off her computer screen, "what's up?"

  I felt like I was being sort of bombarded, like I'd walked in on her cheating or something, which now that I've given it more thought I guess she was. But at the moment I just sort of shoved it all aside and said instead, "I need to talk to Mrs. Stolze."

  "Oh. English," Mom said. You could tell she was flustered. And then she rallied a little and gave me a big smile and said, "That's great, D.J. How can I help?"

  "You could write the papers," I offered.

  Mom gave me that hairy eyeball she can do and I grinned, and then we were back to being normal like nothing had happened.

  "Well, Mary Stolze seemed awfully flexible when she talked to me," Mom continued. "She doesn't want you to miss basketball."

  Which, stupid me, I hadn't even realized. I don't care about volleyball, and of course nobody knew about my football plans—and nobody except Jeff needed to, thank you very much, not until I knew for sure that I could play—but I was pretty important basketball-wise. Bill got through high school because he was a starter and he was getting a free college education too, and now that being-good-at-sports thing was rubbing off on me too. Finally.

  "So I don't have to write anything?" I asked hopefully.

  Mom gave me the eyeball again. "We'll work something out."

  Which meant that I had to drive over to Mrs. Stolze's house, one of those houses I've always wanted with the garage under the bedrooms, and ring the doorbell and everything and talk to her.

  But here's the super-weird thing: Jeff had already called her. So when I arrived she was acting like this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Now, Mrs. Stolze is a very nice lady and a great teacher, but she knows about as much about football as the heifers do. Less, probably, because at least they've been watching me and Brian. It's a huge joke all her classes have with her, how much she doesn't know.

  "So what position are you playing?" she asked all nicely.

  I had to cough so I wouldn't laugh, because I could have said something like Exterior Flame-Thrower and she would have believed me. But instead I said I wanted to be a running back, and she sat me down in her nice yellow kitchen and got me a pop and told me her idea. Which was pretty easy seeing as all it required was me working my guts out for the rest of the summer. And she promised not to tell anyone my football plan, like it was some huge military secret or something, and I said thank you very much for everything and I left.

  As I drove home I guess I should have been thinking about how exactly I was going to spend the rest of the summer, what with preseason looming and everything, working my guts out for Mrs. Stolze. But instead all I could think about was Mom sitting there in her air-conditioned office with her lace curtains and her plants and her computer, and I'd bet our farm she was writing Win and Bill. That office, frankly, seemed more like a home than our house did. And she was there all the time too, from morning until dinner, and there wasn't anyone else in the building even, just her, and so how much could she get done working by herself? Besides writing e-mails and printing out Bill's pictures? Maybe that's all she did all day long when she wasn't looking for a real principal or doing other principal stuff.

  It occurred to me, pulling into our driveway, that I wasn't the only person in our family keeping secrets.

  19. The Opposite of Flirting

  I didn't think about Mrs. Stolze's project for the rest of the week either, if you want to know the truth, because there was so much else going on. For one thing, thinking about The Fight took up some time. Talking to Brian had brought it all back, I guess you could say, and then finding out Mom was writing Win and Bill for all these months without mentioning it, not even to me—well, it was a lot to think about.

  And other things were changing too. It wasn't like Brian and I were flirting or anything—it was the opposite of flirting, probably—but things were getting ... different.

  We were still running in the afternoons, which was nice because we had a lot more wind now, and it wasn't so hard, running down that country road. We'd always take our shirts off because it was always so hot. Don't get the wrong idea—it's not, you know, like a sports bra is revealing or anything. At least it isn't on me. Besides, it's not fair that guys can go around without their shirts whenever they feel like it but girls have to stay all covered up like we're nuns or something. Especially when it's as hot as it gets here in August.

  So we ran along not talking too much, me keeping Brian going and him keeping me, and after a while a truck came up behind us, which doesn't happen too much where I live, and it slowed down a bit and then I heard:

  "What the hell are you two doing?"

  I jumped a foot. Dad was leaning out the passenger window as Curtis drove.

  "Nothing." Which wasn't true because we were running, but I sounded guilty.

  "You get some clothes on, you hear? I'm not running a goddam beach party."

  I pulled out my T-shirt from my waistband, watching Dad adjust the rearview mirror so he could keep an eye on us, but then they drove over a hill and couldn't see us any more and I just tucked that T-shirt away and kept running. Brian didn't say anything and neither did I, but I could see out the corner of my eye he was grinning.

  That night at dinner Mom kind of looked at me like there was something I wasn't telling her. Which there was, but I think what she thought I wasn't telling her was different from what I wasn't telling her actually. Anyway, I blushed.

  Friday afternoon when we got back from running, Smut all thrilled to see us because we'd been half an hour and she'd started to panic, Brian asked what I was doing this weekend.

  "I dunno. Work on an English paper, I guess."

  Brian laughed. "Romeo and Juliet and all that?"

  "Kind of. Remember back when all we had to do was draw a picture?"

  "'My family.' With the blue line along the top for the sky." Brian grinned.

  "Curtis used to draw these great pictures with the animal legs going in every direction like they'd been run over or something. Mom still has one on her dresser."

  We grinned at that. Brian tossed me a water bottle from his trunk. "So that's what you're going to do? A picture of Romeo and Juliet and the tower and everything?"

  "Yep," I said, dead serious. "All sixteen colors of crayon." And then, because it was just such a perfect moment, the light hitting Brian's face and his hair t
hat's so shiny even though it's short, and the barn so pretty in the sunshine, I couldn't help it. I sprayed him full in the face with my water.

  He let out a yell and came after me with a bottle in each hand, but I got to the hose in time and really blasted him, which would have been great except that once he was wet he didn't seem to care how much wetter he got and he started wrestling me for the hose so we both were soaking, and Smut was jumping everywhere and getting mud all over us, and then he got the hose away from me and his other arm around my waist so I couldn't get away and he just blasted me, and let me tell you the water was cold. It comes from our well and must be like fifty degrees and Brian must have been pretty mad because I couldn't get away even though I was really wriggling and hollering and laughing hysterically—

  And right then Amber drove up.

  I froze.

  Brian got me right in the face, but I wasn't playing anymore. He saw Amber and let go of me. "Who's that?"

  "A friend of mine ... Amber," I called, "this is Brian Nelson."

  "I know who he is," she said, leaning against Lori's Escort.

  I turned the spigot off. Brian pulled a towel out of his trunk and started wiping off.

  "So, I'll see you around?" I asked, wishing Amber would blink at least. I so wanted to say something else, ask if maybe he wanted to do something over the weekend. Not a date or anything like that, just something. But I couldn't. Even if Amber wasn't sitting right there watching us like we were some kind of laboratory experiment, her hair all orange and everything.

  "Sure," he said. But he smiled at me as he pulled out. I think it was a smile.

  I made a show out of getting my T-shirt on, wanting to keep that smile memory a bit. I didn't think Amber would be too pleased about Brian and me goofing off together like that.