Cody's Varsity Rush

by Todd Hafer

  He felt the outside of his right foot touch down—and slide on the slick grass. He tucked and rolled, half expecting to either be flattened by Weitz’s truck or shredded by the barbed wire. He risked a glance back toward the road.

  The truck whizzed by him fish-tailing wildly. Cody heard a succession of click-click-clicks as Weitz snapped a series of reflector poles as if they were matchsticks.

  Then Weitz must have lost control. The truck lunged off the shoulder and tumbled and rolled, three, maybe four times. Cody lost count.

  Cody was on his feet now, so close to the barbed wire fence that he could use the top strand to steady himself. He watched the truck come to rest on its wheels. “This is real,” he heard himself whisper, as he slowly stepped his way back up to the shoulder. “This is really real.”

  He trotted slowly, warily, toward the truck. If Weitz pops out of that truck and comes after me, he thought, I’m going the other way—fast. And I think I have enough adrenaline rushing through me to run a four-minute mile right now!

  As he picked up his speed, he noticed a sharp twinge in his left ankle. It wasn’t much more painful than a bee sting. It wouldn’t slow him down. He’d run on lots worse.

  He studied the truck carefully. It had rumbled through the fence, taking down a whole section before it finally stopped. There was no movement from inside and no smoke from under the hood. He wondered if it would suddenly explode in flames, like in the movies. The truck seemed lifeless, but he couldn’t be sure.

  When he pulled even with the truck, he stopped running. Carefully, he stepped down from the shoulder and began making his way toward Weitz. He lifted his knees high; he didn’t want to trip at a time like this.

  He drew within ten yards of the truck and stopped. He could see that Weitz was slumped over the steering wheel—he wasn’t moving. Cody listened. The engine wasn’t running, and there was no hissing or gurgling.

  Stepping warily again, Cody had to remind himself to breathe. His heart was doing a drum solo in his chest. In the truck he saw blood spattered everywhere. He sniffed. He smelled beer, but no gasoline.

  “Weitz,” he said, poking his head into the truck. His voice sounded loud and foreign. “Can you hear me?”

  Weitz didn’t respond. Cody wanted to pull him off the steering wheel, but he remembered something he’d heard about not moving an accident victim in case of a neck injury. He couldn’t remember where he’d heard the advice—probably a TV show.

  He studied Weitz’s massive torso for a minute, looking for signs of breathing. But with the big man hunched over, Cody could discern nothing. Tentatively, he moved his left hand toward Weitz’s chest.

  If he wakes up and grabs me or something, Cody thought, I’m gonna need some new running shorts.

  He slid his hand between the steering wheel and Weitz’s chest, placing it where he thought his attacker’s heart would be. He paused. He felt a faint, rhythmic beat.

  He’s alive, Cody thought. The guy who just tried to kill me is alive.

  He turned and studied the road to the north and south. He thought he might have heard a car whip by moments ago, but he wasn’t sure. If there was a car, he wondered, they must have seen the accident, right?

  He turned his attention to Weitz again. Still no movement. Cody raised his eyes to the sky. He felt a tug-of-war in his head over what to do next. Stay with Weitz and try to administer some type of first aid? Maybe try to drag him out of the truck, just in case it caught fire? Or sprint like mad back toward town? Nick Baker’s gas station and convenience store was only about a mile back.

  God, he prayed earnestly, I just don’t know what to do. I don’t really know any first aid, so I’m thinkin’ I should run for help. But I don’t know if I can just leave Weitz here. If you could send somebody to help me—please.

  He looked back to the road. It was empty in both directions. He exhaled shakily and tried the driver’s-side door to see if it would open. It resisted at first but then gave way with a metallic creak that sent a shiver shooting down his spine. He half expected Weitz to tumble out at his feet, but there was no movement.

  Cody dropped to his knees, trying to get a better look at Weitz from underneath. Most of the blood appeared to be coming from his nose, which Cody figured he had smashed on the steering wheel, or maybe the windshield, which was now a spiderweb of cracks.

  “Weitz,” he said again, trying to fill his voice with authority, assurance. “I hope you can hear me. Look, I’m going to run for help. I’m running to Baker’s to call an ambulance—maybe I’ll be able to flag down a car on the way. So if you can hear me, hang on, okay? I’m gonna get help. I’m gonna pray for you. You should pray too.”

  Cody placed a hand on Weitz’s shoulder for just a moment, then turned and bounded toward the road.

  “Okay, God,” Cody gasped as he struggled to find a fast pace that he could sustain for a while, “I guess I’m doing the right thing, but this is trippy. Help Weitz—hang on. After all that’s happened, it would be cool if he could survive this and turn his life around.”

  Cody did a half turn, running backward for a few steps so he could look back at the crash site. Still no truck in flames.

  I wish Pork Chop could see this, he thought. Not so he’d think I was a hero or anything, but so he’d learn that God does make a difference in a person’s life. Because if it weren’t for God, I’d be really tempted to leave Weitz’s sorry carcass out there.

  Cody quieted his thoughts for a moment. He thought he heard the distant hum of tires on asphalt. He strained his eyes, studying the ribbon of highway ahead of him.

  Then he saw it. A gray dot, coming his way. “All right,” he panted. “Help at last!”

  The dot drew closer. It was a small sedan. Maybe a Civic or a Corolla.

  He began waving his hands above his head—as if doing jumping jacks. The car was only a football field away now but not slowing down. Cody waved even more frantically.

  The car gave two short bursts on the horn—“hello honks,” his mom had called them, as it sped by. Then he heard a fading female voice, “Yeah, we see ya, little hottieeeeee!”

  Cody wagged his head in frustration. “Never thought I’d be bummed to hear something like that,” he gasped.

  When he saw another car approaching, he knew he would have to be more assertive. He moved from the shoulder to the middle of the oncoming traffic lane. Please, God, he pleaded, don’t let me get flattened by a car while trying to save Weitz’s life. That would be just too weird and sad. I’m trying to do the right thing, but I don’t wanna become roadkill on that guy’s account!

  As the vehicle drew closer, Cody realized it wasn’t a car. It was a motorcycle—a big one. He went into waving mode again, whipping his arms around like a crazed aerobics instructor.

  “Thank God,” he panted, as he heard the driver gearing down.

  The Harley-Davidson was as big as a horse. Cody marveled at its size as the driver maneuvered his hog to the shoulder.

  Cody waited till the driver killed the engine before gasping, “Accident—Call 911.”

  The driver, clean-shaven and thinner than Cody’s stereotype of Harley men, slid a pair of dark sunglasses up to his slightly receding hairline. “Accident?” he said calmly. “Where?”

  Cody turned and stabbed his right forefinger to the east. “Back there.”

  He wanted to say more but found it hard to link more than a few words at a time. He wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion or panic. “About a half mile.”

  The driver nodded and angled his Harley toward town. He slid forward on his seat. “Hop on,” he said. It sounded like a command, not a suggestion.

  Cody slid off the bike as soon as it rolled and crunched to a stop in Baker’s gravel parking lot. Nick Baker was at the counter. Cody pushed past a mother and two pudgy, waist-high twins to get to him.

  “Mr. Baker,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Call police. Ambulance. There’s a wreck!”

  Mr. Baker kept his eyes on Cody as
he reached under the counter and produced a cell phone. “How many cars?” he mouthed to Cody.

  Cody looked at him helplessly. “Huh?” he said.

  “In the wreck,” Mr. Baker said, annoyance creeping into his voice.

  “Idiot,” Cody mumbled, labeling himself, not Mr. Baker. “One,” he said. “Just one. It’s Gabe Weitz.”

  Cody gripped the counter with both hands. He listened as Mr. Baker reported the accident. Occasionally, the store owner looked to Cody to confirm something or to provide missing information. Finally, he pushed a button on the cell phone and returned it to its place.

  He looked at Cody and nodded. “Help is on the way,” he said.

  Cody turned and sank to the floor, gulping the disinfectant-laced air. He wondered how long it would be before he heard the catlike yowl of sirens. From his sitting position, he was almost eye-to-eye with the twins. They were both studying him, with a mixture of fear and curiosity. Finally, one of them tugged on his mother’s running shorts. “Is that boy sick?” he asked.

  Cody and Pork Chop sat in a back booth at Dairy Delight on a Sunday following a morale-sapping 10–8 Saturday afternoon defeat at Lincoln. Coupled with a narrow homecoming win over St. Stevens, Grant’s record stood at 2–3. The team’s goal of a league title was drifting from the realm of possibility. Chop looked tired. He sported a gash over his left eye. His helmet had been ripped from his head during an all-out blitz late in the St. Stevens game, but he continued to battle, taking on two hard-charging pass-rushers.

  But Chop wasn’t interested in football. His eyes were intent on Cody. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “So, dawg,” he said, deep-set brown eyes widening. “Tell me what it was like.”

  Cody drew in a deep breath. “Well, Dad drives me to the prison. We go to this reception window, kind of like the ticket windows at the movie theaters. There’s a tired-looking guy sitting there. He pushes a form to me and says ‘Fill this out.’”

  When I’m done, Dad and I pass through a metal detector into this huge room. People are milling around, including a woman with two little boys, who take turns socking each other in the arm—harder each time. A guard directs me to a cubicle, kind of like the ones in the library, only when I sit down I’m staring at a Plexiglas wall. On the other side of the wall is a cubicle just like mine. It’s like I’m looking in a mirror, but I’m missing from my own reflection.”

  Pork Chop raised his eyebrows. “Trippy,” he said. “Then what?”

  “A door opens on the other side of the glass. A line of scary-looking dudes in orange jumpsuits files in. In order, they start filling up the cubicles. The people on my side of the room start pointing and shouting, pushing past each other to get to the right cubicle. Weitz is last in line. I sit opposite him. He looks tired. But he’s put on some muscle. Been hitting the weights, I figure. I pick up this phone. There’s one just like it in his cube. He says, ‘Hey.’ His voice sounds all tinny and faraway, even though he’s three feet from me.”

  Pork Chop drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “And?”

  “He starts to talk, but without looking at me. He mumbles, ‘What do you want?’ No apologies. He doesn’t ask if I got hurt when he tried to run me down. I ask him if he’s okay, and he looks at me for just a second. ‘Well, I’m in jail. You call that okay?’” Pork Chop coughed. “What a loser.”

  Cody closed his eyes for a moment. “Yeah, I was expecting something more from him. But that’s all he’s got. He hangs up his intercom phone, pushes his chair back, and walks away.”

  Pork Chop took a long pull from the double straws he had plunged in his chocolate shake. “That is one freaky dream, dawg. And you say you’ve had it twice?”

  “Yeah. And it was almost exactly the same both times. The only difference is that the first time, it was my mom who drove me to the prison.”

  “So, Code, do you think that’s the way it might have gone down—if Weitz had lived and the police had arrested him?”

  Cody exhaled slowly. He imagined Weitz regaining consciousness and staggering to the highway. He wondered if it was the injuries or the alcohol—or both—that made him suddenly lurch into the path of an oncoming Peterbilt semitruck. “Maybe,” he said sadly. “I was hoping he could turn his life around. Be a different kind of person. You know, I told him to pray—when I went up to his truck after the wreck. I’ve wondered a lot if he heard me. I hope he did.”

  Pork Chop narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

  “So he could be forgiven.”

  “But, dawg, think of how he terrorized us! He tried to kill you. He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.”

  “That’s the point, Chop. None of us deserves it.”

  Pork Chop finished his shake with a long, loud slurp. “I don’t know about you, dawg. The stuff you say sometimes, it keeps me awake at night.”

  Cody leveled his eyes at his friend. “Good,” he said.

  Chapter 6 Nowhere to Hide

  World History had quickly become Cody’s least favorite high school class. To Cody, Mr. Dellis, with his dark, slicked-down hair and round glasses, bore an eerie resemblance to Dr. Octopus, Spider-Man’s arch enemy. In reality, however, the teacher had a different enemy: Christianity.

  “I will teach you things the textbooks don’t have the guts to report,” he had told his class on the first day of school. “I am going to teach you history as it actually was, not the way certain groups try to spin it. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I am certain that will happen. That’s what results when you are committed to giving the unvarnished facts and your unbiased opinions about them. I will make some of you uncomfortable, but that is part of the educational process.”

  Cody had nodded approvingly upon hearing these words. “Sounds to me like this class will be cool,” he said to Robyn and Pork Chop after the first class. “I’d kinda like to learn some stuff that isn’t in the history books—get the real inside scoop, you know?”

  Robyn had narrowed her sky-blue eyes, as if deep in thought. “I don’t know, Cody,” she said slowly. “Something’s kind of bothering me.”

  Cody shrugged. “What could be bothering you, Hart? It was just a bunch of introductory stuff.”

  “Well for one thing,” she said, “there is no such thing as an ‘unbiased opinion.’ There’s a reason they’re called opinions, you know.”

  Pork Chop smiled at Cody. “She’s got a point, dawg. You should listen to her more—that’s my unbiased opinion anyway.”

  “Thank you, Deke,” Robyn said. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Cody rolled his eyes.

  As the school days piled up, Mr. Dellis gave more and more of his “unbiased” opinions: “The Bible glorifies war and demeans women.” “The Bible is filled with contradictions.” “The Bible is a second-rate source of history, at best.” “The Bible promotes racism.” “The most horrific atrocities in world history have been carried out in the name of Christianity and other similar religions.”

  Midway through the first semester, Mr. Dellis folded his hands in front of him after finishing a tirade about “rightwing politicians and their heinous abuse of power” and asked, “Anyone care to respond? I am open to dissenting opinions—”

  Cody saw Robyn’s hand shoot up. He knew the moment was coming. Ah, Mr. Dellis, he thought, you just poked your hand into the lion’s cage once too often.

  “Yes, I have a question,” Robyn said, pushing her Perry Ellis glasses up her nose. Her voice had that slight quake in it that meant she was about one Fahrenheit degree short of a boil over. “Is this World History class—or Intro to Religious Bigotry?”

  “Ms. Hart,” Mr. Dellis scolded, “I hardly think that tone is appropriate.”

  Robyn arched her thin eyebrows. “But you just said you were open to dissenting opinions. You are open, aren’t you?”

  Mr. Dellis smiled. “I see I’ve touched a nerve here. Perhaps I should clarify myself. Ms. Hart, I am not trying to offend you or anyone else in this class who migh
t share your belief system.” Cody was pretty sure Mr. Dellis shot him a glance as he finished his sentence. “My point,” the teacher continued, “is merely to show that Christianity has not been, by and large, a positive force in world history, including American history. I am happy to entertain facts to the contrary. But only facts, not borderline insubordination. Understand, Ms. Hart?”

  Cody looked at Robyn sitting in the desk next to his, near the front of the classroom. Her jaw dropped and he could hear her gasp with exasperation. The message was clear: Are you going to help me out here or not, Cody Martin?

  Cody turned to the front of the class. He kept his eyes focused on the clock at the front of the room. In nine minutes the class would be over. This is your fight, Hart, he thought. I’m not going to get dragged into it. I didn’t take this class to debate religion with some guy three times my age. I’d just end up looking like a fool anyway. Mr. Dellis is smart. Oily and kinda creepy, but smart.

  Cody nearly fell out of his chair when Pork Chop, sitting at the desk directly behind his, finally broke the uneasy silence. “I’ve just been sitting here thinking about what you said, Mr. Dellis,” Chop began, “and I have to disagree.”

  Mr. Dellis walked toward Pork Chop’s desk. “Can you back up your position, Mr. Porter?”

  “I never talk unless I can back up what I say,” came the response. “You know when you said Christianity hasn’t been a positive force in American history? Well, what about Abraham Lincoln? I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now if not for him, and he was a deeply religious dude.”

  Mr. Dellis smiled dismissively. “Ah, but Mr. Porter, who says that Lincoln’s faith had anything to do with his humanitarianism? He was always deeply sensitive when it came to the plights of other people. He possessed an almost innate sense of equality.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s simply not true.” Pork Chop’s voice rang with genuine respect. “You see, only a couple years before he was elected president, Lincoln went on the record saying that ‘Negroes’ shouldn’t be allowed to vote, serve on juries, or hold public office. He even said they shouldn’t marry white people. But, later on, obviously, he changed his heart. A lot of people believe his faith was the cause of it.” He paused and looked at Cody. “Right, dawg?”