Knights of the Hill Country

by Tim Tharp

  Man alive. The boys at school wouldn't never let me live that one down.

  “Okalah's been pressing their luck against us for a long time.” The way Blaine sounded, you'd have thought the whole town done him wrong someways instead of just a couple players. “I was gonna just wait and lay down the law on the football field, but when they come into our town, going after our girls, I ain't about to stand around and let 'em get away with that crap.”

  I didn't blame him for being mad about the way them boys cut his knee out on him, not one bit. It made me mad too. Course, the ones that really done it had already graduated and was gone by this season, but somehow that didn't make no difference right then. We was just thinking, Buddy, if you're wearing a red letter jacket with an O pasted on front, you better look out.

  “So,” Blaine said. “You coming, or am I gonna have to take care of this alone?”

  I glanced back at Sara. The wind whipped her hair across her face, and she pulled it back. “What's going on?” she said.

  “Don't worry,” I told her. “This won't take long.”

  Just like that, I left her and took off after Blaine. How can you explain something like that? One second, I'm standing there talking to a brown-eyed girl about how pretty it is out around Lake Hawkshaw, and the next thing you know, I'm storming off across the park with my fists balled up.

  “Let me do the talking,” Blaine said when we was about halfway there.

  “But she's my date.”

  He waved that off. “Don't matter. Just leave it to me and jump in when I need you.”

  “But we're just gonna talk to 'em, right?” I was already starting to lose some steam over the deal.

  “Depends,” Blaine said over his shoulder. He was walking out in front of me a little ways. It always bugged me when he done that. Made me feel like I wasn't nothing but a henchman. Like in the movies, how the gangster boss snaps his fingers at the big dumb guy and orders him to do the dirty work.

  Over by Misty, the Okalah boys laughed at something. Judging from their size, I guessed they was a linebacker, two running backs, and a little free safety. The linebacker—a big meaty type with a blond crew cut and a wide red face—had his hand on her shoulder while the others stood around gawking at her chest like she was on TV or something instead of right there where she could catch them. Blaine was right—we didn't need these boys in our town. But that didn't mean we had to get in a fight or nothing. Best thing to do was just to shame them into slinking off with their tails between their legs. Blaine was an expert at that kind of thing, so I expected he had him a surefire speech ready to go. I should've known better.

  Without saying word one, he barreled straight into their little half circle, and just as the big blond linebacker turned his head, a fat old Romeo grin on his face, Blaine whipped a right so hard into his mouth the kid's knees buckled and he went down about like a Christmas tree the day after New Year.

  Aw crap, I thought. Here we go. Two of us against four of them.

  “What the hell?” the little free safety said. The running back next to him started towards Blaine, but I grabbed him by the jacket and slung him to the ground.

  “Hey,” Misty yelled. “What do you two think you're doing?”

  Blaine just glared at the two kids left standing next to her and said, “We don't allow Okalah boys in our town, and we sure as hell don't let 'em talk to our girls.” He stood there in his wide-legged stance with his fists clenched at his sides. “And we don't put up with sorry-ass football players that go for a guy's knees on purpose neither.”

  “I'll talk to anyone I want to,” Misty said.

  The running back I'd slung down was up on his feet again now, and the blond linebacker was up on one knee, dabbing at his lip with his fingertips.

  “I'll talk to the man in the moon if I want to,” Misty kept on. “You can't come in here and…”

  Before she could finish, the linebacker launched up into Blaine's waist. Then the running back I'd grabbed before charged again, and I slung him right back down. The free safety stepped off to the side, but the second running back lunged in and clipped me a pretty good one on the ear. I shoved him backwards and hit him in the chest with a left and then a roundhouse right into his jaw. I was in the middle of it now. No last chances to choose any other ways. Arms and legs was flying everywhere, and a crowd come circling up, hooting and hollering, and little old Misty went to wailing like a siren going off.

  Blaine was straddling the blond kid on the ground and the little free safety was kicking at him, but I had both the running backs on me, so my hands was too full to help him. We might've bit off more than we could chew, but Jake Sweet jumped in out of the crowd and took one of them boys off me. That would've been the end for the Okalah bunch right there, even if it was four of them against three of us, but Assistant Coach Liddell and Officer Longacre off the Kennisaw police force busted in and started pulling us off one another.

  Officer Longacre made a barricade with his arms to hold three of the Okalah boys back, and Coach had a vise grip on my arm, but Blaine was still on the ground going after that blond kid. It was the Randy Caine deal all over again. Blaine's fist slammed up and down like an out-of-control crazy pumpjack, only it wasn't oil he was going for. I think it was something blacker than that even.

  Finally, I guess Officer Longacre figured the rest of us wasn't as likely to kill anyone as Blaine was, so he grabbed the neck of Blaine's letter jacket and dragged him off, making sure to keep clear of swinging fists. There wasn't no fight left in the kid on the ground, though. He'd took it pretty bad. His face was a mess, blood streaming out of his nose and off his lips, and the flesh around his eyes already starting to swell up. He struggled to his feet, but he was still real shaky and kind of tilted over into his friends to keep from falling back down.

  “You guys are such idiots,” Misty yelled. She was so mad she was bawling.

  I felt about like Jack the Ripper or somebody for doing that to her, but Blaine just looked at her and said, “Shut up, you little nitwit. You got it started. Tell her, Hamp.”

  I didn't say nothing, though. I was searching the crowd for Sara now. It hit me she probably followed us over and seen the whole business, and I couldn't have felt much lower over that idea if I was laying at the bottom of King Kong's grave.

  Finally, I caught sight of her standing towards the back of the crowd. The wind was tugging at her hair, and her eyes wasn't just sad and soulful now. They was scared too. She turned around and walked off, and I didn't even try to follow her. Coach Liddell still had ahold of my arm, and besides, what was I going to say to her anyways? A girl like that don't go walking in the country with a Wild West Days brawler like me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sunday morning, a chilly gray mist hung low in the woods where we hunted, Blaine and his dad and me. Somewheres up ahead, they moved on, scaring up quail and talking football, while I lagged back by myself. I used to stick to Blaine and his dad about as tight as the skin on a peach, but lately I was wandering off by myself more and more. There was a deep gully over on the west side of the hunting lease that I liked to go to, and I found me my usual good smooth rock and set down to mull things over.

  The gully was full of gold and brown leaves, but there wasn't no wind this early in the morning, so they just laid there still and damp instead of blowing up in curlicues like they done in the afternoon when the wind was up. There was birches and oaks and dogwoods and all sorts of trees out there. Little thorny vines and sticker bushes and blood-red sumac grew along the gully walls. There always was something about this place that cleaned my head out and made me think more clearer, if I could just get alone for a while.

  I had a biology teacher this year, Miss Rose, and she was always going on about wildlife conservation. She was practically a nut on it. Sometimes I got to thinking maybe I might ruther do something in that line of work instead of football. I still didn't know what all it took to do it, but if you got to work outside in places like thi
s, then that would suit me just fine.

  After what happened out at Wild West Days, I figured the woods was the best place for me. Setting here on my rock with the good smell of the mist in the air and the trees looking down at me like wise old men, I could see how stupid I was. There wasn't no reason in the world for that fight. Sure, them boys needed to know they oughtn't to be talking to another guy's date, and Blaine had every right to make sure they understood we wasn't going to put up with no more knee-spearing from the Okalah Outlaws, but we could've spelled that out plainer than a first-grade reader without swinging fist one.

  Truth be told, I was about fed up with myself. I didn't know why I couldn't be more the way I was on the football field out in real life. Like I say, on the field I was about as confident as they come. I'd do my time-freezing deal and see everything that needed doing in a split second. Then I'd walk out of the stadium, and the next thing you know I got Misty Koonce bawling to beat the west wind and Sara Reynolds looking at me like I'm Frankenstein.

  Funny thing, though—standing there talking to Sara last night, I really started to feel like I knew what was what. As good as if I was sizing up a third-down-and-five situation with a minute left on the clock. I was right on my way to asking her out, and I knew she'd go. What I wanted to know now was, why couldn't I make that feeling last?

  The answer to that one didn't come to me, but I was bound and determined to figure it out one of these days. If I could just do that, then maybe I could freeze time outside them white chalk lines and know what to do right off instead of having to come here to the country and figure it out way after the smoke done already cleared.

  Out in the woods, footsteps crunched along in the underbrush. It was Blaine. I could tell his footsteps anywheres. First thing I thought of was to reach for my shotgun so it didn't look like I wasn't doing nothing but staring off into space, but Blaine busted out into my clearing before I could get to it.

  “I thought I'd find you over here again,” he said. “What're you doing—waiting for the quail to come to you?”

  “I was just taking a little time-out,” I said. “Y'all must not have got much of anything. I didn't hear many shots.”

  Blaine leaned his Mossberg twelve-gauge against the same tree as my gun and took a squat next to me. “Naw,” he said. “We didn't get as much hunting in as we did lecturing.”

  “About the fight last night?”

  “Yeah.” Blaine had him a couple of bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits wrapped up in his jacket pockets, and he pulled them out and handed me one. “I guess he figured the lecture he laid on me last night and the ones I got off Liddell and old Longacre wasn't enough. He was really on his high horse this morning.”

  “Well,” I said, “a lecture's not so bad. At least he's not the yelling drill-sergeant type like Sweetpea and Jackie's old man.” Sweetpea and Jackie was the Lewis brothers. Sometimes after practice or a game, you'd see old Mr. Lewis line them up against the side of his pickup truck like a couple of buck privates and just go to bawling them out so loud you could've heard him all the way down to Corpus Christi. Spit flying and his face about as purple as a bottle of grape Nehi.

  “I don't know.” Blaine took a bite of his biscuit. “With the yelling, you get it over and done with all at once. My old man's lectures, they just about go on forever. It's like the difference between hanging and the gas chamber. With hanging, the trapdoor drops open and—boom—you're gone. But with the gas chamber, you gotta set around and think about things while the poison clouds up around you real slow, and you start wishing you was already dead.”

  “Aw shoot,” I said. “Your dad ain't that bad.”

  “Hell if he ain't. I bet if he had to he could talk for a month straight without setting down or taking a drink of water. And it's always the same old thing. He's the authority on everything and I don't know squat. They're all full of bull, if you ask me. My dad, Coach Liddell, Longacre, every one of 'em would've done the same thing in our place.”

  “You think so?” Setting there on my rock, I got this weird feeling like I was in two worlds at the same time. In one of them, I was here with Blaine, soaking up how mad he was over everything, and in the other one, I was still in the middle of them wise old men trees and that peaceful feeling they gave off.

  “Sure they would.” Blaine stared off past the gully. “I bet my old man would've chased 'em out of town with a shotgun back in his day. Now I gotta listen to him going on and on all about how we was lucky we was in Kennisaw. He said if we was in any other town when it happened, the law'd lock us up tighter than a can of Spam.”

  “Well, he was probably right about that, don't you think?”

  “Maybe,” Blaine said around his mouthful of egg and bacon and biscuit. “But we wasn't in another town.” He swallowed. “That was the whole point. Them dudes come into our town. I'll tell you what, though, from now on, I ain't waiting for 'em to come in here first. If I have to, I'll drive right down the center of Okalah and kick every butt in sight, and I won't care the first thing what the law has to say about it.”

  “Hey,” I said. “We'll get to kick their butts plenty on the football field.”

  “Yeah, well.” Blaine swallowed again, hard this time. Them biscuits wasn't easy eating without milk to wash them down with. “To hear my old man talk, I might not even get to play in that game. He says if I get in any more trouble, I'll be lucky if the bleeding-heart English teachers up at school don't make Coach set me out for the rest of the season.”

  “What English teachers is he talking about? I see Mrs. Williams up at every game right on the fifty-yard line.”

  He didn't act like he even heard that. “Dad said if you wasn't involved in it too, they'd for sure set me out against Sawyer this Friday. Seems like the way he sees it, if they put me on the bench, they'd have to do it to you too, and Sawyer's too tough to beat without you in the lineup.”

  “Your dad said that?” It made me so proud Mr. Keller thought that way about me, I didn't see right off how it must've looked to Blaine.

  “Yeah.” He threw the tail end of his biscuit off in the high grass. “Like you was the only one the team needed, and I wasn't no more use than a flea collar on a dead dog.”

  “I'm sure he didn't mean it like that.”

  “I don't care how he meant it.” He stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. “They ain't taking me out against Sawyer or Okalah either one. We gotta win them games. There ain't no other option. And I'm gonna be the one to win 'em for us too.”

  He stepped over and picked up his twelve-gauge. “C'mon. Let's go. There ain't nothing around here worth shooting.” He started off through the high brush and I got my gun and followed along after him like I'd been doing since we was nine years old and heading through Leonard Biggins Park to see T. Roy Strong.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Friday night, when we busted through that paper banner and charged onto the field, the crowd let loose with cheers so loud they about rocked that old stadium clean off the ground. Our last two games of the regular season was homers, this one against Sawyer and the next one against Okalah. Course, we had us a longtime grudge against Okalah, but everybody knew Sawyer was really our toughest opponent in the division, so there couldn't have been any more electricity running through the stands if they'd been hooked up to the Hoover Dam. It was almost enough to burn out all the bad feelings I'd felt since that stupid fight.

  First time I seen Misty at school after that night, she just hugged her books against her chest and turned her nose off in the other direction. I figured that was lucky. If she'd said what she was thinking, it would've probably scorched me down into a pile of smoking cinders right there in the middle of senior hall. Sara did at least look at me when I come into history, but truth be told, I didn't have the nerve to meet her eye to eye, and even when we got in our study group, I kept shut up. You would've thought I'd come up with some explanation for her in a week's time, but no way. Not me.

  I didn't have time to th
ink about any of that stuff now, though, not with a team like the Sawyer Comets staring us down from the far side of the field.

  In the last three years, Sawyer done beat every team they played but one, the Kennisaw Knights. And in all that time, we never won by any more than six points. Now, we'd lost over half our starters from last season to graduation, but Sawyer still had every single one of their offensive stars, and that included Anton Mack, their tailback. He was pretty good last year, but this year he was crazy good. Word was, he didn't just have every move in the book, he had enough for a whole encyclopedia.

  What no one on our team ever talked about, though, even Jake Sweet, was how Mack looked like he was aiming to break Blaine's single-season rushing record. He could even do it tonight, but he'd have to go through me, and I was bound and determined not to let that happen. Maybe I didn't know how to fix things up with Sara Reynolds, but there wasn't no one in our division knew how to tackle better than me.

  Leastways, there hadn't been before this season.

  Thing was, Anton Mack wasn't the only Sawyer star folks was talking about. On defense they had this big Kiowa Indian boy named James Thunderhorse who moved down from Shawnee. I mean, this kid was a mountain, only a junior and already six five and almost three hundred pounds. The Kennisaw sports page called this game “the closest thing to a Super Bowl that 4A football was likely to see,” and on top of that they put in a whole article about who was better on defense, James Thunderhorse or me. Said it was a shame me and him wouldn't be on the field at the same time battling it out, 'cause that'd be the best heavyweight matchup since Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali.