Catch & Release (9 page)

“Now football,” says Odd. And he catches me being the idiot thinking about sex, or at least thinking about guys thinking about sex, but turns out he's still talking about football. “Football sets a person up. You got your guys. You got your recognition. People hear your name. Football is the first step. But now football is out, so I need a job. A job with the benefits of football, if you know what I mean.”

I'm pretty sure I don't. I'm pretty sure the benefits of working at the Kid-O-Korral were nothing like the benefits of football.

 

Odd turns on the radio.

Does everything on the radio suck? Or is it just that Odd is making the choices? Even the ads are dumb— worse than TV, that's for sure, and that's saying a lot. I miss my friend TV. I miss my couch, and I miss my monsters. I want to be home.

 

“You can talk to me,” says Odd, and he switches off the radio.

I don't feel any overwhelming urge to talk. I'm kind of out of the habit. My friend the TV doesn't expect me to hold up my end of the conversation. TV is the best friend ever.

“You can say anything,” says Odd.

“Can I say shut up?”

“You can, but I'm listening. I'm just going to listen as long as you need me to listen. So I hear you saying you want me to shut up. But I don't hear you saying you don't want me to listen . . .”

“So, you heard me say shut up?”

“I'm just listening.”

“So talking is listening?”

“Yes. Talking is listening.”

“If you won't shut up, could you at least make sense?”

“The only person who needs to make sense to you is you.”

“That's dumb.”

“Yes. It is dumb. It's OK to be dumb. You can be whatever you need to be.”

“Fuck. I don't need to be dumb. I need you to just shut up. Is that possible?”

“It's possible, if you make it possible.”

“OK. I'm making it possible. All it takes is you shut your mouth and I shut mine. Deal?”

“That isn't the way it works. Communication is a human need. We
need
to communicate.”

“Look, if I needed to communicate, I'd do it. But I don't. Can you just turn the radio back on if you need to listen so much?”

“We all need to listen.”

“What is this crap?”

“It's not crap. My mom read it in a book.”

“What?”

“My mom got a book a few years ago and it told her that the way to talk to guys was to trap them in the car. It's called car therapy. So I expect it now, the talk.”

“Talk? Talk about what?”

“Well, with my mom it was mostly about me controlling my impulses and how my dad is an asshole and how she doesn't want me to be an asshole like him.”

“And you want me to tell you what? That you are an asshole? OK. You are an asshole. Are you happy now?”

“This isn't about me. It's about you. You need the emotional release of talking. Talking prevents assholishness.”

“And now I'm an asshole?”

“Yeah. Although most of the time people say bitch when they are talking about a girl, but yeah, you're an asshole. ”

“I'm an asshole because?”

“We are all assholes.”

“
Talking
assholes . . .”

“That's progress,” says Odd and he turns the radio on again.

“This guy has something a lot of the young guys don't,” says the radio, “He knows where he is at. Now the question is ‘Can he make all the pieces stick?'”

What guy? What pieces? If Bridger were in the car, I'd try to pay attention. I'd try to be ready to say something that proved I was listening along with him, that we were together. But Bridger isn't here. We aren't together. I don't need to make the effort to be nice. I don't need to pretend I care about football.

 

There aren't any bleachers at this game. There is only the field with the lines drawn out in lime and a trailer with a bank of giant sodium lights making the night stark and bright with shadows. The crowd is three or four deep at the fifty.

I'm mostly just here because it is the place to be. More importantly, it's the place to be with Bridger. I'm pretty indifferent to the game. Sometimes, when someone runs like a rabbit—“He. . .Could. . .Go. . .All. . .The. . . Way . . .”—I pay attention, but mostly it's all “That'll move the chains” kind of crap. The game doesn't matter as much as the way Bridger looks down at me snuggled against his shoulder and tugs me closer.

On the field they crash together, some fast shuffling, then the whistle. Number 36 is down, not down flat-onthe-back down. He's down on his knees like he's waiting for the executioner's ax. People move like ants when you flip over a rock, organized but frantic.

Bridger says, “Don't worry. He's OK.”

They are cutting Number 36's jersey off with a ragged, tugging blade. Then they unbuckle the shoulder pads. The steam is rising off his back in a boiling cloud, bright in the yellow lights. The others stand around him, breathing around their mouth guards in little puffs. There is heat and there is cold. Number 36's back is hunched, his head is tucked down, and his arm swings a little with his breathing. Every little tick of the second hand is measured in pain. I can see that; the clench of the body after each ragged breath, that's the tell.

The others stand around him like bison, massive in the front quarters thanks to the shoulder pads, but narrow in the ass for speed. You can see the calculation written in evaporating sweat. A broken collarbone means . . . and what they can do about it is . . . and what they can do without Number 36 is. . . .

What can we do without Number 36?

A person could never tell from this moment, frozen in the yellow light, that he has a sense of humor. He wrote funny things on the whiteboards in empty classrooms and everyone, teachers and students, pretended we didn't know who was making us smile. In this moment, he is just a hurt animal, and that's how I remember him.

But none of it matters now, because that game is totally over and Number 36 is totally dead. His broken bone healed. It healed stronger than before. He got faster and bigger and stronger, but none of that matters. Number 36 became Case One. Broken bones mend stronger, but once the bone saw hits you, it doesn't matter how strong the bone is. There might have been jokes inside that carcass once, but now Number 36 has been lowered into the ground. All the blood and jokes are gone out of him, replaced with embalming fluid and silence.

There's a long line of cars waiting to pay the fee and enter the park. Once we get past that, there's another long line of cars stopped to look at a single bison on the naked, scabby hillside. This is somebody's first bison, I guess, and they don't know that there will be milling herds of them a little further down the road. In a few hours, that person will be sick of bison. Bison will seem less interesting than a brown couch in a dentist's office. Bison will be so close to the car it will be possible to hear the poop plopping on the pavement.

“Look, if we're fishing in the park, we need to stop at the store at Mammoth and buy permits. OK?”

“It's your money, Polly. If it makes you feel better, buy permits.”

“And you have to use some of my flies. You understand. This is catch and release only. Those are the rules. Not my rules . . . the rules. OK?”

“Alrighty then, trout torturing for sadistic pleasure only. Check.”

The cars finally start moving.

“Feel like boiling? The turnout's in a minute.”

I think about it. I used to love visiting Boiling River. Finding the perfect spot between the cold river and the hot springs, complaining about the rotten smell of the clouds of sulfur steam, taking sly looks at shy, almost naked strangers—what's not to love? But now I imagine seeing Odd's robot leg on top of his stack of clothes, like it's normal to remove body parts to go swimming.

“No, it's bound to be too crowded, don't you think?” I say. It's a reasonable answer.

 

Yellowstone is pretty much living up to my expectations. It's a people zoo. The parking lots at the store are full. We have to drive past to park at the base of the terraces, which isn't that far, except now I worry about Odd walking. I mean, he made it to the bottom of the falls and back up afterward, but he has to be hurting after that effort. I know I am. At least this little walk is fairly short and level, but Odd doesn't head the right direction. He starts up the boardwalk to the thermal features like that was the plan. It was not the plan. I made the plan, and climbing up hundreds of steps in the company of hundreds of people was not part of it.

Water sparkles in the sunlight while it trickles down stone steps. Pretty, pretty, pretty.

A bride in a frothy white dress is having her picture taken with the Opal Terrace in the background. She is a little toy bride standing by sugared shiny tiers of cake. Delicious. Good enough to eat. The breeze shifts and a cloud of sulfur steam surrounds her like a veil. She laughs and buries her nose in the bright bouquet in her hand. Then she grins and sticks out her tongue. She is beyond beautiful. She is adorable. People clap and take pictures. They share her happiness. The world has come to her wedding. They are all her honored guests.