Lance

by Ronald L Donaghe

  “It’s more than talk, now.” Lance spoke so quietly, I glanced from the road and into his face and caught his eyes. They were troubled and going from that lovely violet to a darker shade. “Everybody’s gonna know, Will,” he said, digging his fingers into my leg.

  May and I exchanged glances, and I saw that she was just as worried as I was. We were both protective of Lance, and he seemed so quietly frightened, I didn’t know how he was going to take it if a storm did blow through the school. He’d already been embarrassed in front of the team the way Casey did him that day. And if Rick had told Mrs. Collins about me and Lance because Casey had whined about the way I’d knocked him around on the football field, I could just imagine what they’d do if I tried to get back at them, now.

  * * *

  Animas High School faces east. It sits on a street west of the main highway that runs south through Animas from Cotton City and continues on down to the boot heel of New Mexico. When we arrived at the school we headed straight for the football stadium on the west side of the high school. The pep rally was about to start and the parking lot between the stadium and the high school building was crammed with pickup trucks and cars. I recognized many of them as we wove our way through the lot for the stadium. Some belonged to people who had already graduated and had stayed in the area, like Rick Zumwalt. And I guess I would probably go to the pep rallies and the games, too, if I were going to stay here after I graduated from high school.

  In the stadium, the band was just messing around as they tuned up. The drummers were going full tilt with the rhythm they set up when we were gaining yardage one scrimmage at a time. We came in through the south entrance and had to stand off to the side because the seats were already full. We have the smallest seating of any of the high schools. Going to Deming is like going off to a bowl game in comparison. But we only play them every couple of years, depending on their schedule and not ours. I don’t think they like being whipped by a smaller school. Across the field my teammates were also standing. They had suited up, but because I was late, I decided I wouldn’t. I was looking around and, before I could pretend I hadn’t seen her, my eyes met Margie Collins’, staring straight at me and smirking. She grinned and ran her tongue over her smeary red lips.

  As usual, the whole school had turned out. Many of the students were there because it was like a recess, but most of them were real fans of the games. When the cheerleaders led the first cheer, the crowd exploded and the band jumped into “Hold that Tiger,” though we sang “hold that panther!”

  Lance had told me he’d gone to a huge high school in New Orleans and had never once been to a pep rally or one of his school’s games. Now, he just looked around, almost indifferently, and I doubted that he would ever really catch the fever that sports caused in the people of this small town.

  Then the principal began announcing the names of the players in the upcoming home game, and one-by-one my teammates stepped forward and raised both hands while the crowd clapped, or guys called out stuff that made the crowd laugh. When my name was called, the crowd was looking toward the other players, but I stepped out, anyway, from the other side of the field holding my hands up.

  “BARNETT’S GOT A BOYFRIEND!” some guy called out, and every word came out so clear, I knew the whole crowd heard. A second later, someone started booing, then a few more people joined in. It was strange, however, that most of the crowd was just quiet. Then the principal called out the next guy’s name, which just happened to be Dick Lamb, and when he stepped out from among his teammates, a roar went up across the stadium because he was our star player, our quarterback. The year before, he had thrown passes like rockets that hit their targets almost every time.

  I was glad I’d been passed over quickly because, when I heard what the guy had yelled and then the booing, I didn’t know if it was to boo him or to boo me. When I moved back next to Lance, he looked frightened and had gone a little pale. When I touched his shoulder, he jerked it away and turned and ran out of the stadium.

  The last thing I heard before I ran out after him—noticing that people were looking at us—was the beginning of another cheer.

  It felt odd to be upset under a clear blue sky with a light breeze coming from the north, hinting at fall. I heard the trumpets and drum beats of the marching band back in the stadium. This was my last season as a football player. Not that I was really all that good, though I was able to connect with Dick’s passes and gain a few yards each game. But something had changed this morning, something I didn’t think I could tease my way through. Someone had called out my secret with Lance, which I guess I never really bothered to keep secret, since my family knew—and Rick and Mrs. Collins, and Rick’s brother Casey. Now, at the pep rally, someone had put a name to our secret, and here I was running with my chest full of fear—not down the field, attempting to make a touchdown before I’m hauled to the ground by my opponents—but running into the high school building, afraid that Lance and I would be hauled down by rumor and cruelty. I caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared down the main hallway. I blasted through the double doors and skidded to a stop, glancing around. I saw Lance enter Mr. Drummond’s classroom. So I tried to catch my breath, tried to calm myself down. The pep rally would be going on until ten, and it was just now eight-thirty.

  I couldn’t go into Mr. Drummond’s class, afraid that he was there. Art class was Lance’s sanctuary when he and I couldn’t be together, and I wasn’t going to ruin it for him by bursting in and startling Mr. Drummond. I looked in through the pane of glass in the door. Lance was flipping through some of his drawings in the sketchbook I’d bought him. Then I saw the Barker twins, both girls, who had come in from Playas, whose own fathers had been hired at the smelter plant where Lance’s stepfather worked. They were artistic, as well, and were just about the only girls Lance had made real friends with.

  I was about to walk away when Lance looked toward the door, saw me looking through the glass, and grabbed up his stuff, sketchpad included, and came out into the hall.

  He still looked frightened and confused but he attempted a smile, which I appreciated. “Sorry I ran out on you, Angel,” he said in his oily southern drawl, “but when that guy screamed out about us, I remembered these…” He pulled the sketchpad from under his arm and flipped a few pages, past blanks, then stopped and opened the book for me to see.

  “I thought I better pull these out and give them to you.” Our eyes met, and then I looked at the drawings.

  There I was in all my (imagined) glory, naked as a mesquite in winter. Lance had done me more than justice and bulked me up a little. He had brought my left thigh up on the stool I was (supposedly) sitting on to discreetly hide our “little buddy.” Then he flipped the page and there I was again, this time reclining on the bank of the cow pond on Old Man Hill’s place. In the picture, the pond is encircled by weeping willows. Shadow and light illuminate my body, and this time our little buddy is asleep, but visible beneath the shadow of a weeping willow branch that shades my crotch. When he flipped to a third picture, I couldn’t keep from laughing, and he frowned up at me as he removed the drawings from the tablet and rolled them into a tube.

  “You need to put these in the pickup, Will. I don’t want someone to find them when they’re snooping around.”

  “People do that in here?”

  Lance grinned. “We’ve all done nude studies. So we like to peek at each other’s stuff. Only I thought since people are talking, it wouldn’t be a good idea if someone saw them.”

  I felt sorry for Lance and was secretly flattered that he would use me as a nude study at school. I felt sorry for him because I didn’t think he was ready to face the mean things some of the students might say to him, now, if people were going to broadcast the news about us. After the pep rally, a few students came up to me in the hall between classes and said they’d heard the remark about me having a boyfriend, though I couldn’t tell if they told me to embarrass me or just to let me know. Funny that no one knew exactly who h
ad said it, but as I say, we even get people from the community who have already graduated coming to the pep rallies, and it could have been someone from Cotton City who knows Rick. In a way that’s better than having someone from the school spreading the rumors about me and Lance; but in another way, it’s bad, because it means that Rick (probably) is telling other people besides Margie Collins.

  As I write this, it’s after supper. Lance and Trinket are putting together a jigsaw puzzle in the living room. May isn’t back yet. I bet she’s out with Kelsey. And of course Rita’s not here. I wonder if she and Rick still talk about me and Lance. Rita said she felt guilty because of how Rick found out. I haven’t told her about Mrs. Collins, yet—although Rick might have already told her. I’ll just have to wait and see. I guess the only person I really don’t want to know is Mama. She’s been great with me and Lance, even though I’m sure it hurts her, so she’d probably feel obligated to break off her friendship with Mrs. Collins. If things blow over on that side, I’ll be relieved because I would hate to see Mama and Mrs. Collins break up as friends over what happened.

  Out here on the farm, twenty miles from Hachita, and even farther from Animas and Cotton City, it’s hard to recall how tense I felt all day at school. Although the nights are crisper, I have the window open, and I can feel the softness of the night, hear the desert outside and the noises from inside the rest of the house and feel relaxed.

  The first game is two days away. I hope the rumors have died down by then.

  Four

  The Storm and Its Aftermath

  I can’t sleep after a game. But tonight it’s more than just the game. As usual, my body’s worn out, but deep down past the muscle aches, after a good shower, I feel physically good. I’m just too shook up to sleep. Lance is asleep in our bedroom because he’s too shook up not to sleep. I’m sitting at the kitchen table. Mama, May, Trinket, and Rita are in bed, too. May has taken over Uncle Sean’s room (where my oldest sisters Julianne and Marsha slept when they were living at home). Rita resents having to share a room with Trinket, claiming she’s too old to be nagged by her baby sister.

  Only Trinket doesn’t nag anymore. She’s had to grow up fast, first with Daddy dying, and now with Lance living here and people knowing about us. She has seen how mean some people can be. She met Lance when he had been freshly beat up by his stepfather, and now she’s got to make sense out of what happened to him after the football game tonight. She’ll see his lip is busted, and we’ll have to come up with something that will make sense to her, without letting her know how close Lance came to getting hurt really bad. We’ll have to come up with something to tell Mama, too, so she won’t fret. I’ve got to make sense of what happened as well, though I’ve got to wait until Monday to find out more from other people. Find out what they saw.

  A home game is the biggest event in Hachita, Animas, and Cotton City, and tonight was no different. Our stadium only has one set of bleachers on the east side of the field. But people come from all over and most of them watch the game standing up. The bands for each school play on opposite sides of the field.

  This was the first time Lance saw me play against another team. Trinket once told him that I was Dick Lamb’s star receiver, and she believed it more than I did. I am pretty good at snagging his passes, though, even if I’m about to fall from a double take-down. So it felt good to know that Lance was up in the stands. He and Mama and Trinket got to sit in the bleachers as family members of the players. Those who made the decision at the ticket booth already knew about Lance being kind of an orphan. Some people might have even known about his stepfather beating on him. Lance had never made that a secret when other students struck up conversations with him as the new kid in school. Fact is, there were several new students this year who started with Lance because of the new town of Playas that went in. Although most of them went to the lower grades, the hallway still feels more full during the day. And the stadium seemed packed and noisy tonight as our team took the field for introductions. I figured people from Playas were at the game, too.

  Each guy ran out waving his arms as his name was called, trotting over to the middle of the field and taking his place by his teammates. When my name was called, I hesitated a split second, feeling my face turn red, expecting catcalls as there had been at the pep rally a few days before.

  When my name echoed from the loud speakers above the bleachers, I ran out onto the field. Normally, my heart swelled to hear my name, then the cheering of the crowd. But tonight, I listened for derision and booing and ran quickly to my place in the line, relieved that there was only cheering. We stood facing the bleachers, and I scanned the crowd for Lance, easily finding his face in the glare of the lights. When our eyes met, Lance and I raised our hands at the same moment and waved to each other.

  “—blowing kisses to his boyfriend,” Casey said, under his breath to Dick, who snorted at Casey’s wit.

  I heard it but pretended I didn’t.

  A few minutes later, the game began with the bugle call to “charge” as we became the receivers, and I caught the kick and bulldozed my way across the field making it almost to the fifty yard line. The cheering crowd, the band, the announcer’s voice blurred into the first prickles of sweat as we danced and grunted our way down field. We made the first touchdown in two plays.

  Back from the line, I could hear the linemen threaten and taunt each other as they waited for the snap, but I was listening more closely to Dick’s countdown of the play. As a back fielder, however, I am removed from the hand-to-hand combat at the line, so I scanned the lineup and went into motion when the snap came, cutting past the line and running out unopposed for a few seconds, hoping Dick would recover and pass quickly.

  Only tonight, he kept passing to Ronald Spencer, the other receiver, whether he was open or not, and during half-time I laid into Dick.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Dick! I’ve been open all night and you won’t even look in my direction!”

  We were shirtless and drenching ourselves with water, then toweling off, waiting for Coach to come in.

  He shoved me. “Mind your own business, Barnett. I’m doing my job as I see it.”

  “And you don’t see me, ready to waltz into the end-zone? You’re blind or stupid!”

  “He don’t want to get faggot sweat on the ball,” Casey Zumwalt said. He’d been watching Dick and me argue.

  “Is that it, huh? Is it, Dick?” I said, glancing at Casey, then glaring at Dick. “You’re all nervous over what Casey says. How do you even know it’s true?”

  Dick and Casey exchanged glances. Dick smirked. “Yeah, Barnett, it is that,” he said.

  I caught his eyes, made him look at me. “Really?”

  “Anybody that turns down free pussy has to be queer,” he said.

  So I knew right then that Mrs. Collins had been talking. As we returned to the field, I had a lump in my stomach that wouldn’t go away. The drums sounded like thunder. The storm was getting closer.

  * * *

  “Pass it to Barnett! You idiot! Barnett’s wide open!”

  It was the second half, coming up on the end of the third quarter. I was glad someone saw what was going on. I wouldn’t have minded that Dick wasn’t hitting me, except Spencer was messing up, and Dick’s throwing arm was soft tonight.

  We lost on our home field, not that Lamb passing it to me would necessarily have changed the outcome, but we missed several opportunities, and it made me mad to think Dick would risk throwing a game down the toilet just to show me what he thought of me.

  Coach Grey laid into him during one of our time-outs, but even he had a funny look on his face and didn’t look at me, at all.

  The game ended and we left the field hanging our heads.

  “What they get for having a faggot on the field!” someone said from the other team.

  “Damn right, man,” his teammate said. “Makes me sick to my stomach!”

  I knew who the guys were. We always played Lordsburg
for the first home game, so it was embarrassing to have lost tonight, especially on our own turf, because Lordsburg is not as good as we are in football. They sounded pumped up and proud and mean-spirited, so I just slunk back to the locker room to shower.

  I noticed that Dick and Casey were already showered and gone by the time I got there, so I hoped Lance would meet me in the locker room after my shower. The other guys on the team were still friendly to me, showing by their slaps on the back and their lowered eyes they thought Lamb had messed up too. So if Lance came in as usual, we could put on a brave face. Despite the rumors, at least these guys would see that the talk didn’t bother us.

  But Lance didn’t come.

  So I figured he was waiting for me in the stadium parking lot.

  The cars were still milling around and raising dust, and even though it was nippy out, I was only wearing a T shirt. I’d left my Levi jacket in the pickup, so even though I didn’t see Lance, I headed for the pickup to retrieve it. When I opened the door I had to step back, almost gagging. Someone had thrown fresh cow manure onto the seat. That wouldn’t be hard to come by, since almost every kid who goes to school, here, comes from a farm or ranch.

  * * *

  I didn’t know what to do. It would be hard to clean up the cow manure in the dark. Daddy had covered the seats with plastic a few years before, so we could clean off the grease and stuff, and since I used the pickup to go back and forth to school and run errands, I kept it clean. I was too worried about where Lance might be, however, to try cleaning off the cow manure, so I locked the pickup so he couldn’t get in and accidentally sit on it and headed for the school building.

  There was a dance going on in the gymnasium after the game. I never went. I didn’t know how to dance, and I never dated, anyway, so it didn’t matter. I was also sure that was the last place I’d find Lance, so I headed for Mr. Drummond’s classroom. Lance might be there if he was upset, though I didn’t know why he might be, since nothing really happened at the game, other than us losing.