Zero at the Bone (17 page)

“This is a bad idea, Cray,” said Paula, a new tone of voice for her, forceful but keeping her temper. We were all making noise—Bronto, Paula saying she was going to leave if this kept up, my own voice telling everyone to calm down, blood running down my arms, getting into the greenish water as it began to foam.

And I knew what Anita would say. I could hear her, so vividly I turned off the water and stepped out into the hall, Bronto a wet-spiked blur down the stairs.

What you are doing has nothing to do with the cat, Anita would say.

I almost called her name, feeling her there in the house.

28

There were still faded scratches on my arms when I walked across the field toward Coach Jack a few days later, walking slowly because Merriman was with me, swinging himself along on his crutches. Each time his foot touched the dry field, a puff of dust rose up and hovered.

Merriman eyed the scratches. Merriman and I were learning to talk about things and not simply enjoy each other's company. I was starting to be able to read Merriman's eyes, when he was bored, when he was happy. Now I could see a joke on its way.

“No, Paula didn't do this to my arm,” I said.

“You're going to tell me the cat did it,” said Merriman.

Coach Jack swung his head around to look at us through his dark glasses. He gave us a non-nod, a little jerk of his head. He was wearing aviator glasses and had a Band-Aid on the bridge of his nose, where the glasses rested.

The quarterback was a former wide receiver, a guy named Ortiz. He was barking plays, no one out there but Jay Pauahi, the biggest player at Hoover High, a transfer the year before from Hawaii. Pauahi was the center, snapping the ball back through his legs to Ortiz, who would dance back, cock the ball, look over the empty field.

Ortiz looked graceful enough, but he must need the practice, grabbing the ball from center without fumbling. Otherwise, Coach Jack would not have the two of them out there, faces glistening with sweat behind the face guards. The team was in gray, scruffy practice jerseys, the coach letting everyone else take a break. Players lay all over the place, the August heat finally settling in, smog, the field so dry there were visible cracks in the ground.

I had spent all day packing hardware. In three days we would ship the last of the nightstands. We were ahead of schedule, barely. I had not even bothered to talk to Coach Jack since our meeting. The thought that I had been getting ready to deceive my parents, lie to them and forge their signatures, had made me put football out of my mind.

Coach Jack punched my arm, a little jab. It hurt. “Taking good care of Merriman?” he said. He didn't bother punching Merriman, or acting playful with him. Merriman was one of those people no one fools around with. Even Coach Jack looked at him with a certain lift of his chin, like someone looking at a famous statue.

Merriman didn't say a word to Coach Jack.

“Just wanted to see how the team was going,” I said.

“No news?” he said. He let the question hang there. No news about joining the team, he might have meant. He let it stay like that for a moment, letting me know he didn't like the way I had ignored him for weeks. “About your sister?”

Some people were beginning to become self-conscious about mentioning it, even a little embarrassed, as though the disappearance was shameful. Even Kyle had begun not to call so much. Perhaps people felt that there was the possibility that there was news, and that the news was bad.

But Coach Jack didn't mind slamming the questions home, asking, getting answers. “No news,” I said.

Someone had called the police to say that a young woman who looked like Anita had been asked to extinguish her cigarette in the Oakland Airport coffee shop. Someone called my dad to say someone who resembled Anita had been shopping for steel-belteds at Grand Auto in Santa Rosa. There were a few other reported sightings. None of these sounded like Anita.

Merriman looked out at the field, half closing his eyes against the glare. When a proper silence had passed since the mention of my sister, he said, “Ortiz looks all right.”

“Ortiz,” said Coach Jack, exasperation in his voice.

He turned and called, “Ortiz, throw the ball over here.”

The ball was a decent spiral, way wide. As I chased it down, the ball bounding, hard to handle, I knew what Coach was going to say.

He said, “Ortiz, let Buchanan take the snap.”

“That's okay,” I said. Meaning: no thanks.

Coach Jack just kicked a little grass dust mouse, turning to look at the field.

I strolled out there in my Wrangler cutoffs and running shoes, and my new red T-shirt,
STANFORD
in stiff yellow letters across my chest. I loved the way the turf felt under my soles. Some of the field had come up in scabs, punched with holes from the heavy footsteps. Pauahi slapped my hand and gave me a grin, hand on one hip, breathing hard.

There were only the two other players on the field, aside from myself, but it was easy to imagine a crowd of grass-stained jerseys. I grabbed Ortiz by the sleeve and said, “Line up wide right.”

Ortiz gave me a doubtful look from inside his helmet. “I'm just fooling around,” I said.

Ortiz gave me a little hands-out gesture, pretending he didn't mind.

I lined up behind center and my hand went up to my face. I had to laugh. I lifted my hand to straighten my helmet, give the crossbar over my face a tug. But I wasn't wearing a helmet and had not put one on since I was knocked unconscious so long ago.

I looked over the teams that weren't there, seeing it in my mind, the butts of my own team, the other team jacked into position, panting. Football players are always breathing hard, big athletes, tired after a few minutes of hauling themselves up out of the dead grass.

“P-twenty-nine,” I sang out. That was a play number I was pretty sure didn't mean anything this season. I had left the jayvee team in the middle of last season and joined the varsity Wildcats in their blue-and-white uniforms. I had memorized all Coach Jack's plays in just a few days. The number meant that the receivers were to run down about thirty yards, and then slant in across the field, and try not to trip over each other if they met. There had never been a P-twenty-eight or -thirty. It was just a code, and sounded good, all of Coach Jack's passing plays ready to be turned into running plays if the quarterback saw his entire team coughing blood.

Pauahi snapped the ball before I expected it, dug it into my hands and then started his blocking routine, a dance with his arms up, his feet toeing the dry grass, a rapid turn one way and then another. No teams on the field, but Pauahi electrified, showing me and Merriman what an offensive center could do, all the players on the sidelines on their feet, hollering, caught by the mood.

This was where I usually stayed, right behind the center, while hands reached in and tried to face-mask me, bodies grinding together, gristle and joint, guys hurt and recovering and hurt again as they tried to keep from throwing up, hanging on. It was against the rules, but on some plays half of the players, defense and offense, stayed on their feet by clinging to each other's jerseys, shoulder pads popping out.

Ortiz was down thirty yards and made his cut, running across my field of vision, one hand up. And I had kept the ball too long, enjoying the feel of the little leather goose bumps and the Frankenstein stitches as I got a grip, stepped back, and cocked my arm.

I jumped. No reason. I needed something extra on the ball, and I was eager for some elevation. I was in the air, a scissor kick, and threw a terrible pass, my arm out of shape, the lame pass wobbling.

And not so lame. The ball wobbled just as Ortiz half slipped on a dandelion, the only plant still green on the entire field, the yellow flower springing right back, escaping the worst of his cleats.

When Ortiz got his stride back, the ball was bouncing off his chest, and he had to bring it down into his hands to keep it out of his face. So he spun, put a great move on whatever ghost was tackling him and ran. I had forgotten how it looks, a receiver clear, breaking as fast as he can.

I had forgotten what it looks like to see someone run, all out, nothing moving but one figure, all the way into the end zone, even if the field is full of jerseys, only one person there who is really alive.

Coach Jack gave me an expectant stare, taking off his sunglasses. “The team looks good,” I said. Meaning: I wished him luck. That little sample of the game was sweet, but it did not change my mind. There was no way I was going to play again.

“It's timing,” said Merriman, swinging along, kicking up dust out toward the Jeep. “No, it's not timing,” he said, correcting himself. “It's touch. You have it, and it's driving Coach Jack crazy.”

“Just a lucky pass,” I said.

Ever since Merriman told me how he shot himself in the foot I was worried about Merriman, but awed by him all the more. He had explained the shooting to me sitting on his patio, just between the two of us, and I was still recovering from what he had said.

There was no defective safety, no forgotten bullet in the chamber. Merriman had sat in his bedroom with a gun he had rediscovered in his bottom drawer, a gift from an uncle. He had not known whether it was loaded or not, and in a spirited, mindless moment, he didn't care. He had stretched out on his bed, taken slow aim at his right foot, and squeezed the trigger.

No accident. I hadn't even told Detective Waterman the entire story.

We got into the Jeep, stainless steel crutches angling across the back.

“Maybe it was because you didn't want football anymore,” I said. “Some part of your mind didn't want it.”

“It's okay if you don't play football, Cray,” said Merriman. “Personally, I would give anything to play quarterback this year.” He looked back at me. “But don't let Coach Jack play yo-yo with your brain.”

“He won't,” I said, wanting to sound self-assured.

“He doesn't care about you or about your sister.”

I was surprised at the tone in Merriman's voice, not contemptuous toward the coach so much as stripped of illusion. “He's a proud, sensitive man,” said Merriman. “He's suffered and come back against all odds. He's learned so much about life he doesn't know we exist.”

I wondered what Anita would think about the new Merriman, the books he was checking out of the library, heavy volumes about engineering, the great bridges of the world, the Roman arch, tunnels under seas.

29

I jumped up into a Dumpster to pack down the cardboard scraps, a whole mountain of refuse Anita would tell us we ought to recycle, strips of plastic and torn-up boxes. Cartons gave way, collapsing in the depths of the steel bin. I tried to force it all down with my weight, gripping the sides and trying to make room for more, when a truck arrived, rumbling, backing routinely up the side street.

The big moment—the last of the nightstands was ready to be loaded, piles of neat cardboard cartons:
THIS END UP
. But from the start, things did not go smoothly.

The truck driver sawed his rig halfway back to the shipping department door, and then he started to have doubts. He stopped the truck, stalled it, and drove back, nearly all the way back to San Leandro Street, before the brakes gasped again and he shifted back into reverse.

Workers stopped wiping down the surfaces, cleaning up, the buzzer sounding as the truck was starting to look like an even worse idea. The truck scraped off the door handle of a Nissan sedan. The bright little door handle tinkled to the ground. The truck hesitated, got a new surge of power, and backed solidly into Jesse's metallic blue Chevy Blazer.

The truck driver got out, squinting, as though it was so hot and the air so dirty, it was no wonder. He was probably right out of truck-driving school, with a little scuzzy mustache and a bright blue-and-pink tattoo on his arm. For a while there was nothing but Spanish and Cantonese from inside the factory, the truck driver observing the damage, with no expression, climbing back into the cab, killing the engine.

Barbara must have been watching from a side window up in the office. Her voice boomed all over the factory, the volume turned too far up, calling for Jesse to report to the shipping department entryway, please.

But Jesse was already on his way through the shipping room, kicking the empty plastic bags that had fallen out of a carton, all new, ready for hardware. Jesse walked with his hands on his hips, a posture he might have picked up from my father. It's hard to walk like that and not look unnatural, and that's how Jesse looked, stiff with anger.

The truck driver was out of the cab of the truck again. He was not only examining the two vehicles, he was studying the end of his rig, which was scraped a little shiny where the door handle and the Blazer had each taken a bite. The driver had a blue adjustable billed cap and a white-and-red T-shirt with a Nation's Famous Hamburgers logo.

Jesse asked for his insurance papers, holding out his hand, not looking at the driver.

“I need to see the owner,” said the truck driver.

Jesse made a gesture, bending his arm and straightening it, his fingers wiggling.

“I want to see the man in charge,” said the truck driver.

“Mr. Buchanan isn't here,” said Jesse.

Now that the truck driver had Jesse talking, he turned his back. He dug under the front seat of the cab, at eye level, and brought out a little black plastic notebook. He found the papers he wanted and gave Jesse one.

It took Jesse a few seconds. Jesse's work shoes were gloppy with old squirts of glue, crusts of paint. “I think you must have given me the wrong paperwork,” he said.

“That policy is still in force,” said the truck driver.

“This documentation has elapsed,” said Jesse.

“What has
elapsed
,” said the truck driver, “is the parking rules.”

The truck driver walked all the way over to the sidewalk, and there was an ancient red no-parking zone right where the sedan was. He didn't point, but he let one arm hang heavy for a moment, a minimal way of letting anyone watching know exactly what he was talking about.