Knights of the Hill Country

by Tim Tharp

  Mr. Reynolds chuckled. “She doesn't follow sports much.” He turned to his wife. “They're doing very well, dear. Undefeated, I believe?” He looked back at me, and I nodded.

  “So,” he said. “You play linebacker.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Reynolds studied on that a moment. “Is that the person who stands behind the quarterback?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “The linebacker's on defense.” I glanced back and forth from Mr. Reynolds to Mrs. Reynolds, wondering if maybe they was pulling my leg some, but they only smiled real bright like they was happy to have just learned something new. I swear, they must've been the only two people in Kennisaw, maybe even the whole hill country, that didn't know a thing about football. And still, here they was, interested in me anyways.

  After that, nobody brought up football again, and pretty soon Sara suggested we ought to go on and get to our homework. “I thought we could study in the garage,” she said. “My dad had it converted into a library.”

  I couldn't believe it. I figured a converted garage was every bit as good as a converted basement any day. “That sounds okay,” I said, which was pretty much the understatement of my life so far.

  “But I forgot.” Her eyebrows arched up and I knew I was in for a letdown. “My sister's book club's meeting in there tonight.”

  That was more my kind of luck. “Your sister's in a book club?” I said. “I thought she was only about thirteen or fourteen.”

  “She's twelve. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, but I had to shake my head over that idea. At twelve, you wouldn't have got me to open any book I didn't one hundred percent have to. Matter of fact, I was surprised you could round up enough twelve-year-olds in Kennisaw to fill out a book club.

  “I guess we could go over to the library,” she suggested. “At least it'll be quiet.”

  “We could,” I said, but the library with its yellow tables and shushing librarians didn't even come close to fitting the mood I was hoping for. “Or maybe we could go down to Sweet's Café and get us a table in the back. I bet there won't hardly be a soul there this late.”

  “You think?” She cocked her head. “I don't know. I don't think cafés let you hang around doing homework all evening.”

  “Sure they will. My buddy Jake's parents own it. We hang out there all the time. His sister'll be working tonight. She won't care how long we set in there.”

  “That sounds great, then.” Her face kind of lit up, and she sounded almost like someone accepting a date.

  “Great,” I said back. I was pretty proud of myself. For once, I'd done come up with a good idea right on the spot instead of thinking of it a day too late. “I hope you don't mind walking. It's only about ten minutes. My mom needed the car tonight.”

  “I don't mind. It's nice out.”

  Things was looking like they was working out real good, but just as she was slipping into a light jacket, I realized what I should've realized right from the get-go. What if Jake come sauntering into the café to kill some time? And worse than that, what if Blaine was with him?

  Sara had her jacket on. “Ready?”

  “You bet,” I said. It was too late now. All I could do was hope Jake and Blaine had better things to do tonight.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jake's big sister, Sheryl, didn't say nothing. She just stood there a few feet from the table and stared at us.

  “What?” I said finally.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking how nice it is to have you in here with your girl instead of Blaine for a change.”

  I glanced over at Sara to check on how she took the “your girl” remark, but I couldn't tell much with her hair hiding most of her face.

  “Don't get me wrong,” Sheryl said. “Blaine's okay, but he don't always know when to put all his teasing up and just be hisself. You sure you two don't want a slice of pie to help you study?”

  “No, we're okay.” I knew Sheryl was only trying to kind of prod things along between me and Sara, probably thought I couldn't do it for myself, but right now I just wanted to be left alone.

  “Well, if y'all need refills on your Cokes, go on back behind the counter and fill your cups up whenever you want.” She tossed me a nice, encouraging smile and walked away.

  Like I figured, the place was pretty dead, it being a Monday night. The red vinyl-covered chairs was mostly empty, and the little square Formica-topped tables was bare except for their salt and pepper shakers and napkin holders. They had this electric sign buzzing in the window. SWEET'S GOOD EATS! COME ON IN, it said in red lights, but nobody but a couple of old-timers up at the front counter had took them up on the offer tonight.

  The bell over the front door jingled and I whipped around, half afraid of seeing Jake and Blaine, but it was only lonesome old Mr. Derryberry shuffling in to take his place up at the counter with the other old bachelors.

  “You expecting someone?” Sara asked.

  “No, not really,” I said.

  Across the café, Sheryl cranked up the jukebox, a slow country song, one of the rare ones about love that hadn't gone wrong yet. Pretty obvious she didn't pick that one out for Mr. Derryberry.

  I had to admit this place was even better than a converted basement or garage would've been. If I'd got on a couch alone with Sara, I most likely would've started hearing my friends' voices in my head, saying, Put your arm around her, dumbass. Grab her hand. Kiss her. Reach up under her shirt. Probably would've been as big a disaster as the time I spilt that chili on Kim Hunt in her white blouse. Here, I could take things slow and easy. Be myself more. As long as Jake and Blaine didn't come strolling in next time that bell over the door went to jingling.

  The other big worry I had didn't turn out so bad. This whole time, I was afraid Sara would discover how terrible I really was with textbooks. Not that I had a problem reading. Give me the sports page or something else I'm interested in, and I'd go right to town on it. But studying was a whole different animal. Must have been fourth grade last time Mom or anyone else set down to help me with my homework, and I don't guess my skills had got much better since. If I had a list of terms or names or something like that to look up, everything just seemed to turn into Egyptian hieroglyphics right in front of my eyes. In the study group, I figured Sara just thought I was slower finding the answers than everyone else, but here, one-on-one, she was bound to find out what kind of a real idiot I was.

  A funny thing happened, though, when we got to working on the assignment. Sara showed me how to pick out the most important words or names from out of the worksheet questions and look them up in the index of the book. I hate to admit it, but I didn't even know the book had an index! I'd always scraped by without reading that far back. But just that one little tip was the difference between sinking and swimming right there. I started finding answers so quick, I got to wondering if maybe I wasn't dumb after all. I might even be a little bit smart in my own way.

  By the time we got down towards the last few questions, I was starting to feel kind of like a Civil War expert. If Darnell and Lana Pitt wanted my opinion on the Confederacy now, I was ready. It even crossed my mind that I might order off one of them Civil War chess sets they show on TV, hang around out in Sara's converted-garage library learning how to play it with her.

  “Did you find the one about Matthew Brady yet?” she asked.

  “Page two thirty-four,” I said.

  She looked up from her paper. “You're really good at this. How come you don't say that much when we're in our study group?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn't good at it till you told me I oughta look things up in the index. I'd just set around turning pages, hoping an answer would jump up and bite me, I guess.” It's funny how you can be honest about things like that once you stop worrying about them.

  She laughed. “You weren't that bad.”

  “No, really,” I said. “You oughta be a teacher.”

  “Thanks.” She looked down in her
shy way and smiled, and I thought that'd be hard to beat right there, making her smile like that.

  Conversation was smooth sailing after that. She talked about living over in Oklahoma City before moving here, and I told a little about living up in Poynter. We had a good time trading stories about what we was like as little kids, the friends we'd had and left behind when we moved, what kind of games we played, the Halloween costumes we wore, and what kind of trick-or-treat candy was our favorite. All sorts of things. It wasn't nothing like what my buddies told me about them and their girls.

  Talking about the days back in Poynter, I skipped over the serious part—the old sad story about my dad running off— but Sara, she didn't skip over nothing. They had a tough time back where she used to live after her dad's accident, almost tore the family apart, she said, but now they was stronger for getting through it.

  “How'd it happen?” I asked. “The accident.”

  “Drunk driver. Seven years ago. Dad had a flat tire on the interstate and pulled over on the shoulder. He'd just shut off the engine when this drunk girl—I think she was only about twenty-two or twenty-three—plowed into the back of his car and spun it back out into traffic. A semi hit him then, flipped his little Honda right over the guardrail. He was lucky to be alive. That's how he looked at it right from the start. The rest of us didn't deal with it half as well as he did. Especially me. I was just pure trouble there for a while.”

  “You? That's kind of hard to picture.”

  “Well, I don't mean I joined a motorcycle gang or anything. I was just ten. But I wasn't doing my homework, and I was always fighting with my sister and my mom and my teachers. Never my dad but everyone else. I basically hated everything. The sidewalk, the mailbox. Set a glass of milk down in front of me, and I hated that.”

  “What happened? I mean, you sure ain't like that now.”

  Her eyebrows slanted up, like maybe she thought she could still be that way a little sometimes. “Well, but every once in a while, when I see my dad struggling with something simple like putting his shoes on, it still makes me mad.”

  “I don't blame you.” I was starting to see how she got that sad-for-the-world look in her eyes.

  “I guess the turning point for me came one day when I was with my dad at the hospital. There were all these doctors in white coats walking by like ghosts, and the rooms filled up with people who'd gone wrong in some way, and it just hit me. Maybe I should try to do something to make them right again. And to be honest, I think I was so mad about what happened, at how unfair it seemed, that I figured if I helped fix people it would be like getting even with whatever hurt my dad. Sort of like getting revenge, almost. That's when I made up my mind to go to medical school. From then on, I always felt like I was doing something about what happened, making something out of it.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “I didn't mean to get so serious like that.”

  “No,” I said. “I'm glad you told me.” I studied the salt-shaker for a moment. I knew I had to tell her about my dad after all. It would've been selfish somehow if I didn't after what all she just told me. “My dad run off on us,” I said, just like that. “I don't even see him anymore.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eight. I guess it was like its own kind of car wreck in a way. My mom sure didn't come out the same afterwards. But I don't guess either one of us had one of them hospital moments when we realized what to do about it.”

  I could feel her looking at me, but I couldn't do nothing but stare an extra set of holes in that saltshaker. I was afraid if I looked up in them brown eyes right then, I might have to realize who I really was after all, and I didn't think I was ready for that.

  “I'm sure you'll figure it out one of these days,” she said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you thought about what you're going to do after high school?”

  I knew what she was doing—trying to get the conversation back on something lighter. It was one more thing to like her for.

  “I'll play college ball,” I said, shifting in my seat. “See how that goes. If pros don't work out after that, I guess I'll go into coaching. I don't know what kind of coach I'd make—I ain't that great at telling folks what to do—but that's pretty much the only other thing there is if you don't go pro.”

  “There's other things besides sports,” she suggested.

  “I know, but I ain't much good at anything else. Blaine's dad told us if we want to succeed at something, we have to set our sights on that one thing and go after it, and for me that one thing is pretty much football.”

  “You don't have to do it just because he said so, you know. You could experiment around, maybe find something else too.”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess I don't have to.” She'd caught me off guard with that. I mean, Blaine and his dad was pretty much the only ones outside of my coaches that ever bothered to give me much in the way of advice. Didn't hardly seem right for Sara to jump in and start questioning an authority like Mr. Keller.

  “I'm just saying, it's your life,” she said.

  “I know.” I was back to staring down the saltshaker. All the sudden, it was real important to make Sara understand how it was with me and the Kellers, but I didn't know how to go about it. Her father might've been in a wheelchair, but at least he was there. All I had was Blaine and his dad.

  “It's not that there's anything wrong with football,” she said. “But you surely have some other interests too.”

  “Well.” I was starting to feel unsure of myself again. “I like to go hunting.”

  “Hunting?”

  I realized how stupid that sounded. Like maybe I thought I'd make me a career out of hunting later on, wearing a safari jacket and one of them funny-looking round helmets and all. The whole conversation had been going so good, and now it was coming apart faster than the Lowery Mud Hens' defensive line.

  “I mean, it's not so much the hunting part I like.” I was stumbling around the way I do when I haven't thought things through. “My real favorite part of it is just being out there in the woods. You get out there early in the morning with the dew still on the leaves and the grass and everything, and it's just a whole different world. The sun's coming up, and it's cool and quiet, and everything's real still. It's like you're part of everything around, and you just get this huge feeling inside. That's what I like.”

  I looked up, expecting her to be staring at me like I was a crazy man, but she wasn't.

  “Sounds nice,” she said. She was looking off towards the wall like she could see the morning sun hanging over the hill instead of the antique Coke signs and wagon wheels that really hung up there.

  “You don't think it sounds stupid?”

  “No. Why would I think that?”

  “Oh, you know, the big jock talking about walking around in nature, looking at the sun coming up and all.”

  “You know what I think?” she said. “I think you sound real spiritual.”

  “Spiritual? Me? I don't know about that. The only times I get to church is when the Kellers take me with them. My mom stopped going a long time ago.”

  “I don't mean it like that. Not spiritual like a preacher or anything. It's just how you are inside. You're quiet but not so much in a shy way. More like you're waiting till there's something worthwhile to say.”

  I had to laugh at that. “I guess I haven't found it yet.”

  “Oh, I don't know.” She twisted a wild strand of hair around her finger for a second. “Maybe you just haven't found the right person to hear it yet. What you were just saying about walking out in the woods in the morning, that sounded pretty worthwhile to me.”

  “I sure like it out there,” I said, feeling like I'd somehow got the conversation back on the right track. “You should go check it out sometime. There's a great place to go right out on the other side of Highway Two.”

  She looked down, and her hair hid most of her face. “I will.”

  That's when it hit me. You stupid idiot, y
ou need to tell this girl that you'll take her out there your own self. It was as clear as day. I could take her out there this weekend, go to all the best spots, bring some sandwiches, hike up to them cliffs over Lake Hawkshaw, and look off across the water to where the hills rolled away into the sky.

  The bell over the door jingled.

  Before I even got turned all the way around, I knew who come in. It was just my luck with girls. There they was, Jake and Blaine.

  “Hey, Sheryl,” Jake called to his sister. “Set us up some Cokes.”

  “Get 'em yourself,” she told him.

  “Aw now, Sheryl,” Blaine said. “Is that any way to act towards a couple hardworking football players?”

  I could wish all I wanted that they'd just hang around at the front counter and not pay any attention to us in the back, but it wouldn't do no good.

  “What the hell?” Blaine grinned real big when he seen me, but it wasn't a friendly grin. “I can't believe my eyes. It's the great Hampton Green. Who's this here you're with, Hamp, your personal secretary?”

  “Hey now,” Sheryl said. “You leave them alone and come get you a Coke.”

  Course, it didn't do no good. Jake and Blaine headed straight for our table.

  “Don't tell me you're in here doing actual homework,” Jake said, eyeing over the textbooks setting there on the table.

  “Hampton doing homework? No way.” Blaine pulled out a chair, spun it around, and set down with his arms resting on the back of it. “I don't believe we've met,” he said to Sara, like he didn't even know who she was. “I'm Blaine Keller.”

  “I know,” she said. “We've been going to the same school since eighth grade.”

  “So, what's the deal? You filling my boy in on all the answers?” Blaine picked up her history book and pretended to look it over.

  “Actually,” she said, “Hampton's been finding most of the answers.”

  “No way,” Jake said.

  I started to come out with how interesting some of that Civil War stuff was, but I knew neither one of them boys would buy that. Probably would've thought I was trying to put on a show for Sara. Fact was, I couldn't hardly think up anything decent to say. It was almost like I was setting between two sides of people who didn't speak the same language.