Reality Check (2010) (5 page)

After he dropped Clea off--the horse trailer was already in the driveway at Cottonwood--Cody stopped at the cable office and paid three months in advance, the least they'd allow, for a DSL hookup. One way or another, college was coming; he had to be ready. He had everything installed and working right, was watching a YouTube video of the Willams College team--they didn't look particularly big or fast; in fact, he was sure he'd played against at least some better players already--when his father came in, carrying a case of twenty-four.

"Cody, Cody, Cody," his father said. "What's up?" He was in one of those good moods; they just seemed to happen sometimes.

"Not much."
"Want a bevo?" Bevo was a word his father used for beer, but only at good-mood times. Offering one to Cody? Maybe once or twice before. Cody said what he'd said on those occasions.
"I'm good, thanks."
"Suit yourself." His father snapped one open, came over to the computer. "What's this?" he said, maybe not even noticing how fast the computer was running now; his father didn't seem to have any interest in online things.
"College football."
"Yeah?" His father leaned over Cody's shoulder. "Don't recognize the teams."
"Williams versus Amherst," Cody said. "Williams is in purple."
"Never heard of neither of them," his father said. He watched for a minute or so. "Can't play for shit," he said. "What's so interesting?"
Cody had no intention of giving anything like a real answer, but at that moment something happened that hadn't happened in a long, long time. His father touched Cody's shoulder. A light touch, almost shy, if that made any sense, and then gone.
"I want to go to college," Cody said.
"Yeah? That's a long way off. Don't want to get ahead of yourself--see how this season goes first. Junior year's the biggie." His father watched a little more of the YouTube highlight. "And you wouldn't want to end up playin' with a bunch of plumbers like them guys."
"I don't know," Cody said. "There's more to college than football."
"Maybe for some," said his father.
For me, Dad. For me.
But Cody didn't say that. Instead, to his own surprise and embarrassment, out came: "Clea's leaving."
"Huh?"
Cody went silent. His father knew he and Clea were going out, had made an astonished kind of face on first learning the news, and Cody had divulged just about nothing since.
"What do you mean--she's leaving?"
Cody shrugged.
"Leaving for where? The Westons are moving?"
Cody shook his head, took a deep breath, blew it out. "Just her. They're sending her to boarding school in Vermont."
"So you broke up?"
Cody turned to his father. "No," he said.
His father's good mood started slipping away; Cody could see it on his face, like clouds moving in. "Gotta be realistic in life," his father said. "Life like ours, verse the Weston types."
Versus,
not
verse:
Why did his father, and so many other people Cody knew, always get that wrong? The little detail maddened him almost more than his father's whole statement. "What the hell are you talking about?" he said.
His father didn't like that tone, got a mean look in his eye, but no hitting would happen now: Those days were over, on account of this fairly recent size difference. Instead, his father backed away, toward the counter where the case of beer sat waiting. "Girl like her," he said, reaching for a fresh one, "where she's going you can't follow. Best to make a clean break, best for the both of you." His father went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Cody went online, found the Dover website, looked at pictures of the kind of kid who went there.

Tuesday Cody went to work. No reason not to: Fran was taking Clea shopping in Denver and they wouldn't be back till after supper. Or dinner, as the Westons called it. What was that expression from science? Fault line? Was there a fault line between supper people and dinner people? Fault lines, Cody remembered, were where earthquakes happened.

It was close to sunset when Clea called. "I'm back," she said. Cody drove over. Clea was waiting in the driveway. Cody parked and got out of the car.

"I have to get up at three thirty," she said.
"Yeah, I know." The sky was blazing in the west, a blaze reflected in Cottonwood's many windows, as though the house were on fire.
Clea leaned forward, nuzzled her head against his shoulder. "Good-byes suck," she said.
Cody could foresee a whole future of good-byes suck, like some scene shrinking in a series of funhouse mirrors. And there he was in the scene, getting smaller and smaller, but still in Clea's life, standing between her and opportunity: the true picture--at that moment, he was sure--and it had come from his father, of all people. He backed away, let her go.
"I think we should break up," he said.
Clea's eyes opened wide, her mouth, too. "What did you say?"
Cody made himself repeat it.
"But--but why?" she said.
"I just think we should."
"You don't mean it."
"I do."
"Explain."
"I can't."
"You can't?" Clea said. "Are you saying you don't love me anymore? Because that's the only reason there could be for breaking up."
Cody shivered, couldn't help himself. "Yeah. I'm saying it."
"You don't love me anymore?"
"No."
"Then--" She started to cry. "Then what was yesterday all about?"
"I can't say," said Cody.
"You can't say?" Her tears dried up and anger caught fire. "What the fuck? You can't say what yesterday was all about?"
The only thought that came to him was this:
Screw your courage to the sticking-place.
He shook his head.
"And all the other times? Are you just a liar?"
A jumble of words got stuck in his throat, almost choked him. He shook his head again.
"Say something! Talk! Explain!"
Cody screwed his courage to the sticking-place. "I don't love you anymore."
"I don't believe you," she said.
That left him nothing but the biggest lie of all. It almost made him sick to say it. "And never did."
Clea slapped his face, good and hard. Then she whirled around and ran into her house, stumbling a little on the stairs. Cody kicked his car as strong and viciously as he could, leaving a big dent in the fender. Overhead the sky turned dark purple.

HIT HARDER
,
BE SMARTER
. Right from the first practice, Cody knew he was running faster--the stopwatch told him that. And when they got the pads on and started hitting one-on-one, he knew he was hitting harder from the way some of the kids didn't seem to want to go up against him, shuffling to other places in the line. Not Junior Riggins, of course. Junior loved hitting anyone. He even did sound effects, like it was a video game.
"Bam! Crunch! Kapow!"
Coach Huff loved to watch Junior hit people.

As for being smarter, Cody wasn't sure about that. But running the Rattlers' wing-T offense didn't require much intelligence. They had hardly any plays: counter, draw, dive, sweep, option, plus three passing plays of which two were hardly ever used. The third, blue three, a post to Dickie van Slyke, the wingback, off a play-action fake, was never used, never even practiced, but it was Cody's favorite because it kind of resembled a real NFL play. Once in a while Cody, Dickie, and Jamal Sayers, the tailback, would linger after practice, fool around a bit by themselves with blue three.

"What we do, campers," Coach Huff liked to say, "we run it down their throats." Sometimes he said, "We run it down their fuckin' throats." If a teacher was around, he added, "Pardon my French." Back in freshman year--Cody and Junior had both made the varsity, Junior even starting most of the time--Junior had asked Cody if
fuckin'
really was French. Cody hadn't known. He'd looked it up, found that the derivation was complicated, uncertain. In fact, the whole history of the word, apparently thought of as a bad one from early times, was kind of interesting: He'd never thought about where words came from.

Junior had shaken his head. "Coach Huff don't know shit," he'd said.
The week before school started, the two-a-day practices began, so Cody's last day of work was the Saturday. Sue Beezon handed him his check. "A job's waiting for you anytime, Cody."
"Hey, thanks. Maybe next summer."
"See you then. Good luck on the field."
A heat wave moved in, stayed for the whole week, made Coach Huff very happy. "Just what we need," he said, dripping sweat even though he was doing nothing harder than fanning himself with the playbook: "Toughen you up. Case you haven't noticed, we ain't the County Creampuffs. What are we?"
"Rattlers," they'd all shouted. Coach Huff had cupped his hand to his ear and they'd shouted it again, this time at the top of their lungs, their faces all red, practice uniforms soaked right through, vomit patches fermenting here and there on the turf. Cody was so whipped at the end of each day that his mind was completely blank, which was fine with him. He hardly thought about Clea at all.