Whale Talk (16 page)

The starter calls us to the blocks—“Swimmers, take your marks.” The starting gun pops and I am stretched out over the water, surging with the adrenaline my fury creates.

The ride home is a trip. We stay long enough to collect my hardware and say good-bye to some of the other swimmers, then load up the Winnebago, stop in Issaquah long enough to take on a cargo of pizza and soft drinks, and get out on I-90 for the four-hour trip home. In the foothills of the Cascades rain begins, turning to snow as we climb toward Snoqualmie Pass.

Simet tells Icko to please not wreck the Winnebago, since we are laid out in it like our first college apartment, and it would be hard to explain to the state police why no one was strapped in.

“Won’t have to explain it,” Icko says. “We’ll all be dead.”

Dan explains to Chris that no one is really going to die, and though Chris doesn’t understand one word in
five, he has learned to mine Dan’s tone for the meaning to his sentences. Chris Coughlin is no dummy.

It’s quiet at first, and I believe I’m not the only one thinking about Jackie’s words. He said what the others were afraid to say, that the worst thing about being a loner is getting the chance not to be, then having to go back. I don’t want to talk about endings; this whole thing feels too good to do it only once. I say, “Coach, what are we gonna do about the letter jackets?”

Simet says, “We’re gonna wear ’em with pride.”

“We know
how
,” Mott says. “What we wanna know is
if
.”

Simet turns his captain’s chair around to face us. “Those guys made an agreement,” he says. “They can’t wait until we’re gone, and then go back on it. I’ll take this right out of school and into court.”

Whoa.

Jackie stares out the window. For him the jackets mean nothing. It’s being here. I lean over and put my hand in the middle of his back. “Don’t worry, buddy. We got good times ahead. You ever play any roundball?”

“At home in my driveway,” he says. And then, quietly, “By myself.”

“Well, start working on your jumper and get ready for evolution. We’re gonna rise out of the water
to the hard court. Hoopfest, here we come.”

“T. J., I’ve seen you play. You don’t want me on your Hoopfest team.”

“I’ve already won Hoopfest. I mean, look at these assholes,” I say, waving my hand grandly over the premises. “We looked pretty different in swimming gear; imagine us in basketball stuff.”

Jackie probably doesn’t believe me, but I’m dead serious. I see us as a team of role players, very different from other three-on-three teams I’ve put together. There’s a challenge here. I look at Mott, can’t decide whether I like the idea of a one-legged psycho swimmer better than a one-legged psycho hoopster. But that’s for early summer. If we can’t turn them around on the letter jacket thing, I say we go with Mott’s idea of rugby for the spring. Or maybe Australian-rules football.

I walk into the Athletic Council meeting ready for the worst. Simet has shamed them into calling an emergency meeting by accusing Cutter High’s male coaching fraternity of cowardice—that’s the word he used—for the recall on our letters while we were out of town, “attending the State meet, for Christ’s sake.” Now they’re not only pissed off at me, they’re pissed off at my coach.

Barbour asks what I’m doing there. “He’s not a member of this council,” he says. “This is the
Athletic
Council.”

Benson tells Barbour to cool it but agrees. “T. J., you don’t have any business here.”

Simet says, “He’s here as my guest.” It must not seem worth the fight to Benson, who lets it ride.

We sit at the long, rectangular wooden table in uneasy silence, and Benson calls the meeting to order. Since it’s an emergency meeting called for a specific purpose, he tells us, there is no reason for formalities. “Let’s get to the business at hand, which is the council’s taking another look at the letter requirements for the swimming team. As you know, Coach Simet and T. J., we took a vote last week and agreed that there needs to be a reassessment.”

Simet says, “I am aware of that, and I believe there is some question as to whether that was a ‘legal’ vote.”

“It was decided on by a quorum,” Roundtree says. “That’s the democratic process.”

“The democratic process,” Simet says, “doesn’t include waiting until the opposition is out of town to make decisions. I’m going to make this short. I’ve reviewed the original charter for this council, which goes back to 1955. There is not one piece of paperwork that gives
this council the power to dictate the letter requirements for any sport. It has been true,
without exception
, that the coach of the sport sets the letter requirements for that sport. I will challenge your power to do it differently in a court of law if I have to.”

There are protests and veiled threats, all of which go past Simet as if he isn’t in the room. The council decides to discuss it with Morgan, and possibly the school board, before making a decision.

“You have no decision to make,” Simet says. “This is entirely out of your realm of control. You should know I’ve consulted an attorney.”

“Who said what?” Benson asks.

“Who said, ‘Bring it.”

These guys are
pissed
, but for the moment Simet seems to hold the cards. Barbour looks at me as if he’d like to come over the table and take me out right there, and I couldn’t wish for anything more.

“Very well,” Benson says. “We’ll take that under advisement, maybe talk with the district’s counsel. I have one more thing I’d like an answer to.”

Simet says, “Shoot.”

“This is for Jones.”

I lean forward on my elbows on the tabletop, feeding off Simet’s strength.

Benson says, “Jones, tell us about the two hundred freestyle at State.”

“Not much to tell,” I say. “I never felt better.”

“And you finished sixth?”

“Dead last,” I say.

When the gun sounded for the two hundred at State, it was like I said—I never felt stronger. But back at Cutter, all they wanted were the points. They didn’t care how Jackie Craig or Andy Mott or Simon DeLong or Dan Hole or Chris Coughlin walked away feeling. They just wanted the points.

Words can’t do justice to the sensation of the cool water rushing over my shoulders and back, my stroke nearly perfect through the entire race. I finished the second hundred faster than the first, and a full thirty seconds slower than my fastest time. And we go into spring six points behind in our quest for the all-sport trophy.

“I think you tanked that race, Jones. I looked at your time.”

“I prefer to think I just ended my season a couple of minutes early,” I say.

“You have no respect for anything.”

“Sure I do, Coach. I have respect for the guys I
swam with and the season we made. What I don’t have any respect for is you guys.”

Benson looks out the window, gathers himself, then calls an end to the meeting.

“Wait,” Barbour says. “You mean that’s it? We don’t have anything to say about this? These guys wear Cutter blue and gold? Man,
I
could swim faster than at least four of those guys.”

Before I even think, I say, “Tell you what, Barbour. If you can stay with Chris Coughlin for one workout, we’ll end this discussion for good. No letters, no litigation, no whining. But same for you. If you can’t, you shut the hell up.”

“Chris
Coughlin?
” he says. “That little reta—punk?”

“Yeah,” I say. “That little retard. Three-thirty Monday afternoon. He’ll be waiting.”

“That okay with you, Mr. Simet?” Barbour says.

Simet plays it just right, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Chris…”

Barbour goes on the offensive. “Come on, you heard the offer,” he says. “It’s coming from the captain of the team.”

Simet glances at me as if he wants to wash my mouth out with soap, takes a deep breath. “You want to take that back, T. J.?”

I hesitate.

“What’s the matter, tough guy?” Barbour says. “Open your mouth a little too quick?”

“The offer stands.”

Barbour says, “I’ll be there.”

Simet looks to the rest of the council. “How about it, folks? At least we could end in agreement.”

There is talk of this being highly irregular, but in fairly short order agreement is reached. If Chris Coughlin can outlast Mike Barbour in the water, the members of the swim team get their letters.

Back in Simet’s office, I congratulate him on his abilities as a thespian. This is a better deal than the original. Chris Coughlin has been in the water every day for three months. He was a pretty good little swimmer before he started; it was Chris who gave me the idea for all this in the first place. I don’t care what kind of athlete Barbour is, he won’t last. If you’re going to be a swimmer, you gotta swim.

While we were at State, Rich Marshall turned up the heat, calling the house from pay phones all over town and slamming down the phone when he heard a voice that wasn’t Alicia’s. Alicia agreed not to answer under any circumstances, and she was holding to her word,
though she said the rings themselves were starting to sound threatening, as if he were able to turn the bell inside the phone malicious. So this afternoon Mom is at work and Dad is in the garage working on some bikes, she picks it up on the first ring, and lo and behold, guess who. He says if she’ll meet him with the kids just once more, he’ll leave her alone for good. He’s in his contrite mode, begging that a man should be allowed to see his sons. They argue about whether she’ll bring Heidi, but in the end she has to, or Heidi will tell my parents they’re gone. She hollers to Dad out in the garage that she’s going to take the kids up into the trees in the large vacant lot behind the house to make a snowman, and loads them up.

By the time Dad figures out they’re not in the vacant lot, there’s no way to track them down, so he calls the cops and waits. It’s after dinner when they come home. Alicia lies and says she decided to take the kids to buy some toys at a little secondhand toy store about three miles from the house. When Mom asks her to produce the toys, she can’t, and Thing Two says, “We saw Daddy!” Heidi sits in the wooden rocker over by the fireplace, thumb crammed into her mouth to the hilt, staring at the fire.

Dad tells Alicia she’d better pack her stuff, because
when he reports to her caseworker in the morning, she’ll surely have to move out, and Alicia goes into meltdown, sobbing and begging for another chance. Thing One and Thing Two gather around her and kind of pet her head; Heidi never gets out of the chair.

And then the phone rings.

Dad picks it up to the click of the handset being slammed down. When Rich started calling over the weekend, Dad researched the locations of the phone booths through the phone company as the numbers popped up on Caller ID. Tonight he puts a piece of paper by the phone and traces Rich’s movements. By the tenth or eleventh call, a pattern appears.

Dad gets the video camera out of the closet and picks up his cell phone. “Plug a phone and a Caller ID gadget into the computer line,” he tells me. “When you see my cell phone number, pick up. It should come right on the heels of a pay phone call on the other line.”

My mom asks what he’s doing.

“I’m gonna get him on this no-contact order,” he says. “It’s not valid for Alicia now, because she was the one who broke it, but it’s good for us. The camera records the time of the shot, and Caller ID does the same. I’ll zoom in on him and take it to the cops. Let him cool his heels in the slammer for a few more weekends.”

Mom says, “John Paul, why don’t you just call the police and let them do this?”

“Because they don’t do it. It’s low priority until after he hurts someone, and truthfully, Rich Marshall has too many friends on the force. He’s been getting away with crap for years.” He moves toward the door with determination. “We should have hit him with everything we had back when he shot the deer out from under T. J.”

Mom tells him to be careful as Heidi comes through the kitchen door, one hand dripping soapsuds, the other dripping blood. Mom rushes to her. “Heidi, what
happened
?”

“It works!” Heidi says, touching her raw forearm.

Mom takes a Brillo pad from her other hand.

I close my eyes. “She found something to take the brown off. God
damn
it!”

“Who told you to do this?” Dad says.

Heidi doesn’t look up, runs her fingers over her forearm. “Daddy Rich.”

Dad’s out the door.

Mom and Alicia take Heidi to clean up her arm, while Mom tells Alicia this is
her
doing. I haven’t seen my mother this pissed since I peed on the hot steam radiator when I was five.

As if the minor gods in charge of jerks are doing their
job, the telephone starts ringing from phone booths at about ten-minute intervals, which means Rich has gone into dumb-shit mode, driving directly from one to the next. I call Dad on the cell phone and we follow him. “Just look for that stupid red dually,” I tell him. “Very photogenic automobile.”

He says, “How’s Heidi?”

“Georgia’s on her way over. She’s okay, I think. I mean, shit, it’s hard to tell. Mom and Alicia are fixing her arm.”

The line goes dead.

There is a certain way my dad gets that makes you nervous; kind of the opposite of his Zen, let-it-be self, and this cold, get-the-job done countenance is a good indicator.

The main-line phone rings three more times without a follow-up call from Dad, then on the fourth they ring almost simultaneously. “Hey,” I say.

“Is the phone ringing?”

“Yup.”

“Got him,” Dad says. “I’ll get him on tape a couple more times. Be sure the Caller ID registers time and date.”

I check it. “It is. Dad?”

“What?”

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to have a little talk with Rich Marshall about how to treat kids.”

“Where are you?”

“Never mind, T. J. He’s already got the racial thing going with you. I don’t want you anywhere near this.”

“Okay,” I say. “But tell me where you are anyway, just in case something happens, and I need to call the cops.”

Dad knows me too well. “I’ve got my cell phone right here. If I need cops, I’ll call cops.”

Shit.

“You wait there and make sure the technology is working.”