Damage

by A. M. Jenkins

  First Baptist Church of Parkersville, Texas

  BE JOYFUL ALWAYS.

  1 Thess 5:16

  Curtis gets out and slams the door. Dobie climbs over the tailgate. You stand there looking at that sign—the three little words in bold black letters: Be joyful always. It’s almost like God’s speaking to you personally.

  Things are about to get under control. Sure they are. Once the season starts, they will. Every year since ninth grade, crossing that goal line for the first time pumps you so full of joy, it all overflows and gets reflected back by a thousand people in the stands feeling the same thing. That first Friday night always puffs you up so light you could float out of the stadium and onto the bus.

  This is senior year. It’s bound to be great.

  It’s going to be a great year.

  You join Curtis and Dobie, walking across the parking lot. “I’m kind of hungry, too,” Dobie’s saying. “I might have a burger or two just to keep y’all company. Oh, man,” he adds. “Look who’s here.”

  He nods toward the cherry red Miata parked in front, a bright patch of color between the fluorescent lights and the darkness.

  And there they are next to it—Heather Mackenzie and Melissa Larkin, standing at an outside table, talking to some other girls. You dated Melissa for a while last year; it was an amicable breakup and the two of you still get along fine. And Heather is hands down the most beautiful girl in town, the number one girl on every guy’s “Top Ten To Do” list.

  But that’s not the only reason she captures your eye. It’s because you’ve always thought she’s like a jigsaw puzzle that’s just a little bit incomplete. And you like the feeling of holding someone else’s missing piece in your hand.

  “Look at Austin, making plans,” Dobie observes. “You can just about see the gears turning.”

  You weren’t really making any plans at all, but now you have to make a big point of looking like you were. So you walk a little slower and let a slow-moving grin take over your whole face while your eyes take a little extra time appreciating Heather’s long legs.

  “Aw, I was just kidding,” Dobie says quickly. “You know she won’t go out with nobody our age. Remember how she shot Cox down when he asked her out in front of everybody?”

  Yeah, you heard about that. But still you look at Heather—there’s something like a string pulling your eyes toward her. Heather’s like you; her father died when she was little. Of course, nobody talks about it, not right out. When Heather moved here in the third grade, the story was that her parents were divorced, and her dad was still in Ohio. But somehow word leaked out that Mr. Mackenzie killed himself, and, of course, the news zipped along phone lines and flashed in whispers from ear to ear. It’s been years since you’ve heard anybody mention it—but that hasn’t kept you from thinking about it, from wondering whether the Mackenzie house has a dark jagged hole at the heart of it, like Curtis’s, or whether it’s just a house, like yours.

  Tonight the first thing that captures your eyes, like always, is Heather’s rear end, tight and tilted like the back of a Camaro; and when that brief surge of interest is gone you look a little longer anyway, wondering if she’s ever had to click on a button or two to get Heather Mackenzie up and running.

  Curtis doesn’t slow, just walks right past them; the only thing he’s interested in is that Kat’s not at any of these outside tables. You don’t say anything to Dobie, and you certainly don’t say anything to Heather. You just follow Curtis through the door.

  Inside at the counter, he stands beside you scanning the room the way he always does since he and Kat went their separate ways.

  “Parkersville’s got five thousand people in it, right?” Curtis’s eyes flick from booth to booth.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So how come we keep seeing the same ones over and over?”

  “Beats me,” you say, knowing what Curtis really means is the ones he keeps seeing don’t include Katherine Hopkins. Curtis can be pretty negative sometimes. He wouldn’t hesitate a moment to sit there like a lump in the middle of everybody else’s good time. On the other hand, there’s you; if God sends you a personal message to be joyful always, you’re going to take it seriously.

  So when one of your little sister’s friends walks by, you reach out and give her ponytail a gentle tug. She’s been at your house a couple of times, but you can’t remember her name. She whirls around, breaks into a big smile, and says “Hi, Austin.” Exactly the kind of light friendly contact that helps pin things together so that the bottom doesn’t drop out of the evening.

  When the food’s ready you get down to the business at hand: eating. This hamburger is the first meal you’ve had today, and you may not be hungry, but your body’s going to wolf down every bite.

  “God, Austin, don’t they feed you at home?” Becky’s friend calls boldly from a nearby booth. She’s little, freshman-sized, underdeveloped—and she’s got on enough makeup to pave Highway 171.

  Her tablemates are giggling. “I must have missed a meal,” you tell her, flashing a grin that dissolves the giggles into elbow poking. “Either that, or I’m having a growth spurt.”

  Dobie has just taken a bite, but at the words “growth spurt,” he starts snickering into his hamburger.

  “Now, Dobie,” you tell him, “get your mind out of the gutter. There’s nothing dirty about a little spurt now and then.” Normally, calling attention to Dobie in front of females would make him slide under the table—but right now all he can do is set the hamburger down and put his hands over his face, and try to stop laughing long enough to swallow.

  Curtis eyes Dobie. “You’re not choking, are you?”

  Dobie shakes his head frantically, behind his hands. His ears are beet red.

  “Maybe you ought to whack him on the back a couple times, Austy,” Curtis suggests.

  Dobie shakes his head again. After a few more moments he manages to swallow, and lowers his hands. “Don’t do that, man. Don’t make me laugh while I’m eating.” His face is getting back to its normal color.

  “All I said was I’m having a growth spurt.” You start to add something about spurts being against the penal code—“penal code” being a surefire Dobie cracker-upper ever since eighth-grade social studies.

  But Dobie’s attention has been caught by something outside the window. “Dang,” he mutters. “I think I’m getting a growth spurt right now.”

  You turn to look. It’s Heather again, still outside. This time she’s bending forward to lean over the table. It is amazing, the lines a plain old pair of jeans can take on when a girl is wearing them. You feel like a dog perking up its ears.

  Curtis has long since given up looking around for Kat. He’s just stirring a straw around and around in the cup he hasn’t taken a drink from. If Curtis was a dog right now, his ears would be limp and drooping.

  You notice that Heather has one thumb hooked through a belt loop; the other hand flips her hair back over her shoulder. It crosses your mind that she knows how good she looks in those jeans, and wants everybody else to know, too.

  Well, they do.

  The light dusts her hair so that it looks almost golden. She looks a lot like one of those Barbie dolls Becky used to play with a few years ago—only nobody could ever make a doll so alive and perfect.

  Heather turns her head and sees you through the window.

  She gives you a smile so big and so bright that it lifts the breath up out of your chest. Somehow it doesn’t seem to be directed at Curtis or Dobie, although they’re sitting right next to you.

  You nod hello back, then turn to Curtis, though you’re still watching her out of the corner of your eye.

  “So,” you ask Curtis, “what do you think?”

  “Bout what?”

  “About Heather.” You figure you already know, but you’re in the habit of prodding Curtis out of his Kat-based bad moods.

  Curtis doesn’t even bother to look out the window. “I think she’s shallow and manipulates people
,” he says, and starts fooling around with Dairy Queen physics; holding one finger over the end of his straw, lifting it, letting the air pressure keep the Coke in the straw.

  Curtis is usually right about people. Curtis can peel people like onions.

  But Heather’s looking at you right now, and she says something to her friends out of the side of her mouth, so that the whole circle of girls collapses in a flurry of giggles and glances cast your way.

  And you’re supposed to play along with this game. You’ve always played it well; flirting, dating, getting laid—all without leaving a trail of hurt feelings behind—have always been Austin Reid’s home territory.

  Now Heather turns away; she’s talking with her friends, flashing that beauty queen smile like she was just crowned Miss Texas.

  Watching Heather, you wonder if she ever feels like the glue holding that smile to her face is slowly disintegrating.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The alarm clock has been going off for a while. It rasps the air, nagging, insistent.

  Today is the first day of school.

  You manage to pull the pillow away but can’t get the energy to sit up. Through bleary eyes you see the alarm on the nightstand and reach out, clamp down on it till it shuts up.

  Okay. You know what you have to do. Don’t even think—just get up. Just get on your feet and start moving—don’t stop to sit on the edge of the bed, don’t wait for your head to clear, don’t pause at all. Just roll out of bed and keep going.

  You feel that guy in the picture, that Pride of the Panthers, looking at you, greeting you from his newspaper clipping. When your eyes grab hold of him he’s grinning that blank grin; he’s one pushpin away from being blank cork staring out from a flat wall, but he still seems more real than you are.

  So you do what you’re supposed to; get out of bed, walk down the hall into the bathroom, shut the door, and turn on the faucet.

  While waiting for the water to run hot, you take the wooden box off its shelf in the medicine cabinet and feel the heft of that golden razor in your hand. You almost feel like your dad’s with you right now, admiring the smooth curve of the handle, the sharp glint of the blade’s edge.

  Shave, shower, get dressed.

  When you walk into the kitchen Mom is still there, bustling around the kitchen. Usually she’s gone by this time, but right now she’s hurriedly packing her lunch. “Austin,” she says, “could you reach in the fridge and get me that baggie of carrot sticks?”

  It’s on the top shelf behind the milk. You hand Mom her carrot sticks and then get the milk out, too, because that’s all you have for breakfast anymore.

  “Thanks.” Mom stuffs the baggie into a brown paper sack. She’s got a run down the back of one stocking, but she looks pretty harried, and you can’t decide whether you should mention it. “Now, where are those crackers?” she mutters to herself.

  “Right there on the counter.” You pour your milk into a glass. If she weren’t here you’d just drink it from the carton.

  “Oh. Thanks. Hey, how about if you put some of those muscles to work and open the mayonnaise for me?”

  There’s a jar on the counter. You pick it up, grip the jar lid, and give it a twist. No luck.

  Mom’s got her back to you; the paper sack crackles as she dumps the crackers in. “You look a little tired,” she says, without turning around. “Feeling okay?”

  How does she do that? She hasn’t even looked at you this morning.

  You frown down at the stubborn lid. You could tell her about not sleeping well, but you don’t often talk to her about stuff, how you feel about things. Not because she’s mean or won’t listen. It’s just that you’re a seventeen-year-old senior football player, and she’s a forty-year-old office administrator who’s been working overtime for almost two years now, and your lives don’t overlap much.

  “Mo-o-om?” Becky calls from down the hall.

  “In here,” Mom hollers, and glances at the clock. You give the lid another straining twist and it comes free. “Thanks.” She takes the jar from your hand and turns back to the counter as Becky comes in, wearing one of her new pairs of jeans. Becky spent the largest portion of her school clothes money on two pairs of jeans, because she would rather wear the “right” clothes than have ten on-sale pairs of pants. No matter that now she’s got to do laundry every night to have something clean to wear the next day. The only thing that matters to Becky is that she wears exactly what her friends wear.

  “I’m begging you, Mother.” The words may be begging, but Becky’s mouth is pinched up for a fight. “Please, please, please let me wear my new blouse?”

  Mom dips a butter knife into the mayonnaise and starts slapping mayo on bread. Her knife doesn’t stop moving as she glances over at Becky, who’s wearing some blue shirt that comes partway off her shoulders. “No. I told you to take that thing back to the store.”

  “Allie’s got one just like this, and her parents don’t care.”

  “That’s why I don’t want you going to Allie’s house.”

  “It’s just a summer top. It’ll keep me cool—it’s not like it’s revealing or anything.”

  “You can’t wear a bra under it. Go change.”

  “Mother—”

  “No. Don’t ask me again,” Mom warns. She tosses the knife into the sink with a clatter.

  Becky’s eyebrows come together like thunderclouds. She looks the way she did when she was four, and you told her to quit following you and Curtis around. “I’m not a child anymore.”

  “Don’t even start,” Mom says, grimly laying turkey slices on bread.

  “I was going to ask if I could go home with Allie today, but now I’m not because you’re just going to say no. So I’ll just say thanks, Mom—thanks for not trusting me and for ruining my life.”

  “Your life is just fine, miss.” Mom drops the top piece of bread onto her sandwich and turns to Becky. Each glares at the other with the exact same bulldog stubbornness before Mom turns back to the counter to stuff her sandwich into a fresh baggie. “I refuse to lose my temper, because I’m already late.” She drops the sandwich into her paper sack, crumples the top down. “Austin,” she says briskly, “your sister interrupted. You’re not coming down with anything, are you?”

  She stops moving and waits for an answer. But her eyes are still angry, like they haven’t quite let go of the argument with Becky. And her short dark hair is still damp, because she’s late for work and didn’t have time to dry it this morning. And there’s still a run in her stocking that she doesn’t know about.

  You’re not going to tell her. “I’m okay. I just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, is all.”

  “Try to take a nap when you get home, okay?” Mom gives you a quick, tight smile, snatches her purse off the counter, and moves to the door. “Lock this behind me, will you? Becky, I’m going to call at four o’clock sharp. You better be here to answer the phone.” Then she’s out the door, her purse falling down off her shoulder.

  The screen door bangs shut, the Wild Horses wall calendar next to the refrigerator flutters a little before settling back into place. Years ago, Mom tried to make a go of her own business of breaking and training horses, but there just wasn’t enough money in it. That calendar, with its soft-focus photographs, is your mom’s only acknowledgment that she ever had dreams of anything besides working in an office.

  “Everybody gets to do everything they want, except for me.” Becky is standing next to you, arms folded, face sulky. “Even you get to do what you want, just because you’re a boy,” she says, as if it’s all your fault she has to go change her blouse. “Nobody cares what you wear.” Her eyebrows are coming together again. “And you got all the eyelashes. And you hardly ever get a zit.”

  She whirls around and stomps down the hall, leaving you alone.

  You can spend your time standing here like a zombie, or you can get moving, too.

  Okay. Time to change the channel. You should drink what’s left of you
r milk. Better get something down, since you won’t have lunch till after noon.

  But you really don’t want it anymore, so you pour the rest of your breakfast down the kitchen sink.

  Becky hurries by on her way to catch the bus. She’s wearing a denim jacket and holding her books over her chest, so you have no idea if she’s wearing the forbidden blouse. She unbends enough to mutter a “Bye,” at you before she scuttles out the door.

  “Bye,” you tell her, even though the screen door has already slammed behind her, and you’re alone again.

  Okay. After twelve years of school, you can get into the routine, make all the right moves and say all the right words by habit. All the actions from all the years before have embedded themselves in your brain.

  So you go brush your teeth, grab a couple bucks out of the jar for lunch, lock the back door on your way out.

  Once in your truck it’s down the highway, turn right into the parking lot, straight to the area by the field house where all the athletes park. Get there right as the bell’s ringing. Go straight to homeroom, sit and mess around with your friends till you get your locker assignment. Head to that first class and sit while the teacher wrestles with the roll, with latecomers, with people in the wrong class, passes out a xeroxed sheet of class rules and after everybody’s read it, reads the whole thing out loud anyway. Then there’s stacks of books waiting to be handed out, chalkboards full of words to be copied, more xeroxed sheets filled with more words that nobody wants to read—or hear.

  The whole day is like trying to sing a song that’s had all the music drained out.

  At lunch it’s the same as all the other years. The athletes eat together off campus at the Dairy Queen. The talk runs to practice, girls, classes.

  It’s hot as Hades at the outside tables in the Dairy Queen parking lot, so you and Curtis and Dobie and Brett eat inside. Through the window you can see the First Baptist Church hasn’t gotten around to changing its sign yet. Be joyful always.