by Pamela Morsi
“Come on,” Camryn said, leading the group to her mom’s Jeep. “Jadee and Brooke can ride in the front with me. We’ll put the seats down in the back and the rest of you who want to go can squeeze together.”
“If the cops see you, we’ll all be in trouble,” Trish Turley pointed out unnecessarily.
“If you want to stay here at the gym, fine,” Camryn told her.
That ended any bellyaching. The girls wanted to be where the boys were. And Camryn was their chance at transportation, even if it was like a clown car with nine girls in the back.
They found the restaurant easily and without incident. The big yellow bus in the parking lot was a helpful hint.
Coach Poule was both surprised and slightly shaken to see them. Apparently he’d forgotten that the girls’ team, which had lost their game early that morning, was still under his protection. For that reason, Camryn was certain, he decided to forego his usual ruling about fraternization on school trips. Typically he made the boys and girls eat at different tables. Camryn squeezed into the booth next to Tree who was already wolfing down a plate full of pancakes. The other girls followed her lead, interspersing among the guys. The coach said nothing.
Tree looked at her in the crowded noisy restaurant and somehow it felt private, as if everything going on around them was background noise and it was the two of them alone together. Camryn and her guy.
“I can’t believe the coach left you girls,” Tree said. “He must be really distracted by the whole ‘seen by scouts’ thing.”
“Or the girls are just invisible,” Camryn replied jokingly. “That’s sure what it feels like a lot.”
“Girls are not invisible to me,” he assured her. “Not that I ever look at any of them but you.”
“That’s a lie if I ever heard one.”
“Did you all walk out here?”
“I have my mom’s Jeep,” Camryn answered. “I put everybody in the back.”
“Your mother let you drive her Jeep to West Plains?” Tree said incredulously.
Camryn shrugged. “She’s feeling better about me. I asked her to go with me when I visit the army recruiter. To make sure that all the important questions get asked and answered.”
Tree’s eyes widened at that. “So she’s cool about you going into the military after graduation?”
“Yeah, it’s weird. She was, like, relieved. She told me that the store couldn’t really support two full-time employees. And she didn’t think I’d be happy staying at home.”
“Well, she’s right.”
“Yeah, but how could she know that? We’re not like you and your dad. I never tell her anything.”
Tree shrugged. “Maybe moms just know.”
Camryn considered that. “I doubt it, but I guess it’s possible,” she said. “I mean if Aunt Will can know who is coming to see her and when somebody is in trouble, then there must be some kind of brain waves or something in the air to latch onto.”
“Brain waves, huh?” Tree repeated, considering. “You know, sometimes I know, I just know, what another player is going to do, before he even has the ball in his hands.”
Camryn believed that. She’d seen him play.
“Too bad you didn’t know that guy was going to throw his elbow into your nose.”
“Right,” he agreed.
Camryn looked Tree over lovingly. His hair was still damp from the showers and his pale brown eyes still sparkled with awareness and intelligence. But the skin under both was now purple and his nose was big and purple enough to resemble eggplant. An eggplant with two pieces of white cotton sticking out the end of it.
“Do the other guys on the team know that you’ve got a tampon up your nose?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “And you’d better not tell them.”
The threat was a friendly one, but it made her grin.
“I bet you always wondered why girls carry those around in our purses,” she said. “We’re always aware of the danger of nose injuries.”
Tree chuckled and then moaned.
“Don’t make me laugh, Cammy. It hurts.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks for being in there with me,” he said. “It helped to put my head in your lap.”
“You were very brave.”
“I screamed like a girl.”
“No, I’ve heard a lot of girls scream and it was definitely not like that,” Camryn insisted.
“I appreciate it, even if it’s a big, fat lie.”
“I would never tell a big, fat lie to a guy with a big, fat nose,” she teased. “I always wondered if I would still love you as much if you weren’t so good-looking.”
“You got a verdict on that?”
“I still love you very much,” Camryn told him.
“Me, too,” he answered.
“You’re in love with you, too, huh?” she complained. “It’s so annoying that the guy can never say it.”
He set his fork down and turned his head to look directly into her eyes. His tone was quiet, firm and straightforward. “I am in love with you, Cammy. I don’t know what’s going to happen next week or next year or two years from now. I don’t know where I’ll be or where you’ll be or what either of us will feel about anything. But today, right here, I am completely certain. I love you.”
“I can live with that,” she answered.
41
It was almost ten o’clock at night and after two overtimes before the team’s heartbreaking loss. Their opponent was good, but not that good. Piney was sure the boys could have beaten them if Tree had been in top form. Pain, blood loss and breathing obstruction were not small things. The fact he’d stayed on the court almost the entire game and continued to rebound and score all the way to the end felt like a victory to his dad.
Piney made his way into the somber locker room where he collared Coach Poule.
“I’m taking him home with me.”
The coach agreed. Piney waited on one of the benches until Tree got out of the showers. He handed Tree a couple of painkillers and a bottle of water and told him to be seated. He carefully removed the damp dressing that spanned most of his face and retaped his nose, including improvising a temporary splint made of tongue depressors.
“That’s good, that’s good, Dad,” Tree said, getting annoyed at the fussing. “Let’s just go.”
“I think that’ll do it,” Piney said, putting on the finishing touches. “But we’re not headed home yet. Somebody wants to meet you.”
He led his son out into the gym and over to the area near the scorer’s table. There were several men seated around there, all with laptops. Some conversing with the statisticians, some talking with coaches and two that rose to their feet as Piney and Tree approached.
“That’s the guy from Mizzou,” Tree said.
“Yeah,” Piney said. “He brought somebody else down here to see you.”
Tree greeted Ted Jakowski, the man he knew, and responded politely through the introductions to Curtis Westbrook, the man that he didn’t.
“I was talking to Curtis about you,” Jakowski began. “I told him I don’t think you’re going to be big enough for our team. But I think you’ve got a lot of basketball in you. I mentioned it to Curtis because he’s here in the neighborhood, so to speak.”
Westbrook explained, “I got your new packet and I was impressed. And hearing Ted’s praise, I decided to come down here to see for myself.”
“You got my packet?”
Westbrook nodded. “I’m on the coaching staff at Missouri S&T in Rolla.”
“So you guys don’t work together?” Tree asked.
“No,” he answered. “But we’re not competitors and we both like to see good players get good opportunities.”
“Why don’t we all sit down,” Jakowski suggested. They moved farther down the bleachers for more privacy.
“How’s the nose?” Curtis asked.
“Broken,” Tree answered. “But not as bad as I thought it would be on the court. T
he worse thing was trying to keep from flinching every time I saw an elbow headed in my direction.”
“I thought you looked good out there, even with the nose,” Westbrook said.
“Thanks.”
Westbrook pulled a sheaf of paper-clipped sheets from his bag. Piney recognized them as the contents of the packet they’d mailed out. Westbrook referenced them as he asked Tree questions.
“Your test scores actually look better than your grades. That’s unusual.”
“I don’t want you to think that I’m not trying in class,” Tree said. “Sometimes I think the teachers grade me tougher because they think that being the basketball star, I’m getting off easy.”
Piney frowned at his son for that one.
“Maybe it just seems like that,” Tree dissembled. “But when I write a twenty-two-page history paper on Jacksonian Removal Policy and Colby Plum writes two and a half pages on the life of George Washington, we both get B’s.”
Jakowski was barely holding back a grin. Westbrook was more even-spoken. “There is always some of that in college, as well,” he said. “There will be professors who’ll think you’re stupid and try to give you a free pass. And there’re professors who resent athletics and make it harder for you than it needs to be. Fortunately, both of those types are rare at Missouri Science & Technology.”
Tree nodded. “As a kid from the Ozarks, I never expect anything to be without its challenges. And I’m okay with kind of being myself whether I have jock status or not. I want to play basketball. But I’ll still go to college without it.”
“Yes, that’s what Ted tells me,” Westbrook said. “You’re interested in premed.”
Piney saw his son’s eyebrows go up and anticipated a quick denial. He didn’t get it.
“Becoming an M.D. is a pretty big dream for a guy from such a small rural school. But it’s a field I’m interested in, one I’ve grown up around.”
“Then Missouri S&T might be the perfect place for you,” Westbrook said. “Our premed graduates have a seventy-five-percent placement in medical schools. Which compares rather well with forty-nine percent nationwide.”
The discussion continued companionably. They talked about the game, the future, the current NCAA standings and speculation about who would come out ahead in March Madness.
Ultimately, Curtis Westbrook invited them both to come to Rolla for a weekend game and a tour of the campus.
“That will allow you to meet the coach and we can set up an appointment with the bean counters to lay out the scholarship package that we’re able to offer.”
Piney could have shot to his feet and high-fived everyone around. His son had been offered his chance at a good school only about four hours from home. He might get a better offer, or he might not. But he had this one and it was a cause for celebration.
Piney did not celebrate, of course. He thanked both men, agreed to make the campus visit and shook hands all around.
“I’d better get this guy home and get him some rest,” he said.
The scouts agreed.
Piney and Tree made their way down the now deserted street to the lone car still parked in the bar ditch. All of Tree’s disappointment in the game and discomfort with his injury had disappeared in the absolute jubilation of being an actual bona fide college basketball prospect.
He was talking a mile a minute, repeating every word that had passed in the discussion as if his father hadn’t been sitting right beside him the whole time.
“How big a place is Rolla?” he asked.
“The school or the town?”
“Both.”
“The school probably has six or seven thousand students. The town, oh, about twenty thousand people, I’d guess,” Piney answered.
Tree repeated the number several times. “More people live in that town than I’ve probably seen in my whole life.”
Piney laughed. “Now don’t go all hayseed crazy here,” he said. “You’ve been to practically every city in Arkansas. And think of all the places we drove through that summer we went on vacation to Orlando.”
“But I was with you,” Tree said. “This time I’ll be somewhere totally on my own.”
Piney could hardly fault his son for the heady pleasures of envisioning his own freedom, his own adulthood, even if it was less definitive than he imagined.
Miles after miles of chatter, chatter, chatter. Piney was ready to swear that the caption in Tree’s yearbook that said The Strong Silent Type was completely in error. Then, like the ever-busy toddler Piney could still remember, he fell asleep virtually in midsentence.
Alone with his thoughts, Piney’s rumination immediately turned to Jesse. He hadn’t talked to her since that morning. He’d meant to call her at lunch. But the long discussion with the scouts was important. They understood that the student would make the choice, but the parents would need to feel reassured, as well.
Piney fished his phone out of his pocket and then hesitated. Calling would probably wake up his son. It was only a few more miles. He’d wait.
He couldn’t deny how attached he’d grown to her. He wanted to share everything and hear everything. And it didn’t matter how late it was.
When they finally arrived home, he sent his sleepy son straight to bed and unloaded Tree’s gear himself. But as soon as he’d set the duffel down in the living room, he couldn’t hold back another minute.
The phone rang three times before she picked up.
“Were you sleeping?”
“No,” she answered, her voice completely clear. “It’s…it’s happening.”
“What’s happening?”
“Aunt Will. Doc Mo was here most of the evening. But we’re on our own now.”
“I’ll call you back from the road,” Piney told her before clicking off.
“Tree! I’m out on an emergency.”
42
Jesse’s morning had begun like so many others. Stoke the fire, make the coffee, milk the cow and so on. The chores had gone more cheerfully than usual because of the interruption of Piney’s call. She loved the image of him playing hooky to go to the basketball game. She only wished that she could go with him.
Back in the cabin Aunt Will was still seated in her rocker. As Jesse walked by she noticed her aunt’s coffee cup was completely empty. Typically she sipped on it most of the morning.
“Do you want another cup?” Jesse asked, picking it up.
“No…no, I don’t think so. Could I have a glass of water? Water’s what I really want.”
Jesse quickly poured her a glassful and began looking over the options for breakfast. “Would you like oatmeal or mush?” she asked. “Actually, I have some leftover mush from yesterday that I could try to fry up for you, if you’re interested.”
“I’m not really very hungry this morning.”
“Well, you have to eat breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.”
Aunt Will gave her a half smile. “All right, try frying up the mush. You need the experience if nothing else.”
It turned out to be a straightforward task. She sliced the cold mush into quarter-inch strips and browned them in a bit of butter. Jesse thought they looked as good as her aunt’s and proudly set them before her at the table.
She got compliments from Aunt Will, but noticed she hardly ate half of one piece.
“My belly feels so big this morning that I can’t eat,” she complained. “But I’m mighty thirsty. Can you get me another glass of that water, DuJess?”
Jesse munched on the leftovers as she cleaned up. Aunt Will got up to return to her rocker and staggered dangerously. Jesse caught her and helped her to her chair.
“I’m completely off balance this morning,” Aunt Will said. “This danged old belly’s too big for me to carry around. You’d best call Piney and tell him to come draw it off.”
“Piney’s gone up to Missouri for a basketball game,” she told her.
“Oh, well then, tomorrow is soon enough, I suspect.”
&nbs
p; With her aunt settled in by the fire, Jesse did some straightening around the house. Most mornings this gave Aunt Will time to tell her stories and laugh about things that happened decades ago. This morning, however, she only gazed in the fire. When Jesse glanced at her next, she was fast asleep.
The morning passed by slowly as her aunt slept and slept. Finally Jesse awakened her for lunch.
“Oh, Lord,” Aunt Will complained. “I feel as full as when I left the breakfast table.”
Jesse urged her to get up anyway. She helped her to the table. She drank a couple of glasses of water, but she didn’t eat anything.
“I’m feeling kind of queasy,” she said. “I think I want to lay down. I haven’t slept for two or three days, I’m thinking.”
“Uh…you slept all morning, Aunt Will.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m tired enough not to have slept for a week.”
Jesse helped her to the bedroom, encouraged her to use the toilet and then tucked her into the bed.
“Better?” Jesse asked.
“Much better. I swear, Maudine, I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here to care for me.”
For an instant Jesse wondered if she’d heard correctly. Then she was sure she had.
“It’s not Maudine, Aunt Will. It’s Jesse.”
Aunt Will looked straight at her, her brow furrowed. “Well, I sure wouldn’t a recognized you. Is Mama coming up to see me today?”
“Uh…it’s me, Aunt Will. It’s…it’s DuJess.”
Aunt Will stared at her for a half minute and then began giggling so hard, she snorted. “Of course it’s DuJess. Lord, girl, you don’t even know where my crazy mind has been.”
Wherever it was, Aunt Will obviously found it quite amusing.
Once settled in the bed and as soon as her laughing stopped, Aunt Will dropped off to sleep again as if she were exhausted.
In the light streaming in through the bedroom windows, Jesse realized that her aunt’s color had changed. The yellowish tint that she’d grown accustomed to was gone. Aunt Will looked gray.
