Knights of the Hill Country

by Tim Tharp

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  After the stadium lights shut down and every last car and truck abandoned the parking lot, Blaine and me walked up into the empty stands. The place looked small and hollow now with the fans gone and nothing but the stars and a few stray streetlight beams to light it. Blaine went up ahead, kicking aside paper cups and popcorn boxes, making his way to the very top row, where he set down even with the fifty-yard line. We'd already showered and changed into our Friday-night clothes, our “Mo” Bettas and Wranglers, boots and black letter jackets. Didn't matter what we wore, though. There wasn't going to be no victory parties tonight.

  Slow and easy, I hiked up to the top row too. I had me a sharp pain in the hip, so it hurt to climb them steps like that, but at the top, I stood and looked over the concrete wall at the town out there. Course, it was too dark to make out the actual buildings, but I could see the lights sprinkled down the hillside and into the valley, and I knew by heart what they all belonged to. Decker's Hardware and the bank, the old brick drugstore, Sweet's Café, and, at the far edge, Cole-man's Barbeque Hut. Places I'd been to a thousand times.

  Then, to the north, climbing up Ninth Street Hill, the lights of the nicer houses shined through the trees, the houses with the wide front porches where girls like Rachel Calloway and Misty Koonce lived. Way across town from me and my mom's place and higher up the hill than Sara's. That was okay, though, I thought, picking out the spot where Sara's house was hid in the dark. There wasn't anything that special higher up on that hill anyways.

  “We had that game won.” Blaine was setting there staring at the scoreboard like maybe, if he just concentrated hard enough, he could still change the outcome. “We had it won every which way but on the damn scoreboard.”

  I looked up at the scoreboard too, but I couldn't make it change neither.

  “Covey Wallace,” Blaine said. “I vote we go find that sonofabitch. He needs his butt kicked. Hard.”

  “He's all the way back to Okalah by now,” I said. “They're probably out partying like it's the end of World War Four, and they're the only ones left on Earth.” I didn't care a dayold donut about getting back at anyone. The game was over. We lost. Scrounging around for some scrap of revenge wasn't going to change the score. Far as that went, I figured we'd be better off taking us a cruise out in the country, out to the dirt roads where the woods could swallow you up for a while, and you could feel like part of something a whole lot bigger than winning or losing.

  “The play was dead, and he spits in my face,” Blaine went on. “Stands right there toe to toe with me, puckers them big fat lips together, and spits in my eye. What am I supposed to do, dance with the fool?”

  “He was baiting you,” I said. “It's an old trick. They'll call a fifteen-yarder on you and toss you out of the game every time if you out and out bust a guy in the head.” I tried not to sound accusing about it, but I don't guess it worked.

  “So, what the hell?” Blaine stood up, his face red as a chili pepper. “Is it my fault we lost the game? Is that what you're saying? 'Cause I'll tell you what, I wasn't the one that threw that interception they scored on. I wouldn't have never threw that ball if it was me.”

  Not wanting to provoke him no more, I didn't answer right off. That stadium never seemed so dead-hollow quiet as it did right then. I shifted from foot to foot trying to think of some way to fill up that hollow feeling, but as usual I couldn't come up with nothing. Blaine was the talker, always had been. He won the argument every time, piled up words like truckloads of bricks, making walls out of them I couldn't break through with a sledgehammer. Sometimes I wondered if he even cared whuther them words was true or if he just wanted to come out on top.

  “Let me ask you this.” He broke the silence first. “What do you think this is gonna do to Darnell? He's the one has to live with that interception. He'll have to read about it in the paper tomorrow and all week and every year after this when the Okalah game comes back around. He's gonna have to hear about it up and down the halls Monday and every day for the rest of the school year. He'll walk down the street and kids are gonna look at him and say, 'There goes the guy that lost us the Okalah game and threw our five undefeated seasons out with the rest of the garbage.'”

  “It wasn't just him on the field,” I said. “We was all out there tonight.”

  Blaine shoved his hands in his letter-jacket pockets. “But that ain't what folks are gonna remember. They're gonna be looking for a scapegoat. That's how people are. And what do you think his girlfriend's gonna do? She won't want to have to mess with him now. No way. Her and nobody else's gonna want to have anything to do with the town goat.”

  “Cinda's not like that,” I said. Cinda was Darnell's girlfriend, had been since sixth grade. “I don't think she even cares if he's on the football team.”

  “Well, you're a whole lot dumber than you look, then. You think girls around here don't care about that? These girls living up in their big old houses, driving around their brand-new SUVs all over town, they want 'em a football player to show off.”

  I glanced off at the lights on the hillside. “I think you're selling the girls around here pretty dadgone short.”

  Blaine didn't even hear that, though. “Wouldn't surprise me none,” he said, “if Darnell's dad didn't blow his stack too. Next thing you know, he'll be kicked right out of the family.”

  I had to give Blaine a close-up look on that one. All the sudden, I understood. He wasn't really talking about Darnell. Not at all. He was talking about hisself. He was afraid of folks calling him the goat. Whispering about him behind their hands every time he walked down the street. The topic of sports columns and town gossip and the butt of jokes down at the Rusty Nail. The guy whose girlfriend wouldn't never care for him again and whose dad would kick him flat out of the family like what happened to his brother, Billy.

  “Sounds to me like you're making too big a deal out of it,” I said. “I mean, listen, we still got the second-best record any team in our division ever had in the whole history of Oklahoma football. Think of it that way.”

  I guess I should've known Blaine wasn't never going to think of it that way, though.

  “Hold on,” he said, grabbing my arm. His eyes went all wide like he'd just had him some kind of amazing Bible-style revelation. “I got it. The perfect damn idea. Here's what we'll do, we'll head over to Okalah and find Covey Wallace.”

  “I don't know—” I started, but I couldn't get nothing in.

  “Wait. Just hear me out.” He looked away at the football field, like he could see the whole thing unfolding down there. “We find Covey Wallace, and I challenge him to one play. One more down, only with no cheating this time. Just me and him. Fifth and ten, we'll call it. If I make it by him for a score, I get his letter jacket and fly it from the flagpole in front of school all weekend. If I don't make it, then he gets mine.”

  “Your letter jacket?” I couldn't hardly see Blaine letting loose of his letter jacket for even five minutes, let alone a whole weekend.

  “Hey, son, if I can't make ten yards against that fool, then I don't want my letter jacket no more.” He was pumped again, his shoulders thrown back and all the slouch gone out of him. I could see something else too, though, just barely, but there it was, a kind of pleading look way down in the shadows of his eyes.

  I had to give in then. It was too hard to see Blaine that way. “That's all we'll do, though, right? Just challenge him to one more play. Fifth down and ten.”

  “That's all. Trust me.” He was already charging off, taking them stadium steps two at a time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was only a twenty-minute drive to Okalah, but Blaine must've downed three beers on the way, easy. They didn't seem to quench nothing, though. “I don't know what the big deal with college is supposed to be anyways,” he said, staring down the headlight beams on the road in front of us. “I mean, how many college teams have gone undefeated as long as we done? That's what I want to know.”

&nbs
p; “So what are you saying?” I asked. “You're not going to college now at all?” I didn't like the sound of that. I still hoped Blaine would find a way to go to OU even if it wasn't to play football. Them college campuses was awful big places to head off to by yourself.

  He wasn't in the question-answering mood tonight, though. “You know how many pro teams have went undefeated as long as we did? None. Only one pro team went one season undefeated. So you can just keep the pros too. That's what I'm saying.”

  “You can go to college for more things than just football,” I said, but I didn't make no more headway with that one than the last one.

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I don't need college, and I don't need the pros. All that's just a step down, as far as I'm concerned. I'm a Knight. That's what I am. That's what I'm always gonna be.”

  “That don't mean you have to forget—”

  Before I could finish, without warning one, he tromped on the brake and swerved off to the shoulder of the road right on the outskirts of Okalah.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I hollered. “You just about drove us off in the bar ditch.”

  “I got something to take care of,” he said, tossing a beer can into the backseat. He got out and walked around to the rear end of the Blazer, where he pulled out his old single-shot .410 and a box of shells. He always kept that little old shotgun back there. Just in case, he told people. But it wasn't nothing more than a kid's gun, really, the first one he ever owned, and he only used it to take potshots at jackrabbits in the fields along the back roads outside Kennisaw. Said it was more of a challenge with the single-shot. It was like life, he said. You only got one shot at that too.

  But there wasn't no jackrabbits around here, only the Okalah town-limits sign. HOME OF THE OKALAH OUTLAWS, it said in red lettering. POP. 8,953.

  He opened the box of shells and slid one into the chamber, and then, before I had a chance to get the window rolled down to say something, he raised the barrel up and squeezed the trigger. Boom! That old town-limits sign rocked back and forth, the middle of the thing peppered through with buckshot holes.

  For a second there, he smiled a little smile to hisself, but it didn't last long, and that black look settled over him again. He broke the shotgun open, popped out the spent shell, and slid him a fresh one into the chamber.

  I had the window rolled down now. “Hey, cut it out! You don't think folks is gonna know who did that after we roll into town?”

  Blaine stared at the sign a moment longer. “Yeah,” he said, starting back for the driver's side. “We can always hit it again on the way back if we want.” He climbed in and set the gun down on the floorboard behind the seat.

  “Why don't you put that thing back in the back again,” I told him.

  “Never know when you'll need you some insurance,” he said, and then, there we was, heading off for the lights of town.

  Now, the first thing you do when you pull into any small town is cruise up and down Main Street to get the overall feel of the place, and then the next thing you do, if you're a teenager, anyways, is head over to Sonic or whatever kind of burger joint they got, and see if there's any action around.

  “This town's dead,” Blaine said. “Check it out. There ain't even hardly nobody up at the Sonic.”

  “Maybe they're already in bed,” I said.

  “On a Friday night after a football game? Even this town ain't that lame.”

  As we circled through the Sonic parking lot, he rolled down the window and yelled at the carhop, asking her where everybody was, trying to sound all innocent, like he wasn't up to nothing but just scouting around for some friends. She was roller-skating her tray full of Cokes along to a car down the way and didn't slow up a notch. “Big party at the armory,” she called out over her shoulder.

  Blaine turned back to me. “The armory. You know where that is?”

  “No clue. It's getting late anyways. Party's probably about over.”

  “Are you kidding? They ain't gonna end that party till Monday morning.”

  “Well, I sure don't know where to find it.”

  “That's okay. I mean, how hard could an armory be to find in a Podunk town like this?”

  He was right on that one. It wasn't but just a few minutes before we come across a good-size line of cars parked along the side of the road over on the west side of town, and sure enough, we followed them right up to the parking lot, where there wasn't space one left open. The armory itself was this gigantic building made out of good old red Oklahoma stone with the 45th Division Thunderbird emblem fixed on the front wall. Over on the lawn, they had them an old green World War II cannon, and next to that a pack of high school kids in red jackets was hanging around, talking and laughing. There was another group congregated up under the big arched doorway of the building, and here and there you could see a couple walking together or a stray single kid heading across the lawn with his hands in his pockets.

  “I guess this is where everyone is,” I said as we cruised real slow through the full parking lot.

  “Yep,” Blaine said. “This place is so packed they must be celebrating Asshole Day or something. I know they can't be having a victory dance. Even Okalah fools ain't stupid enough to think they won fair and square. I'll tell you what, if that Covey character's around here, I'm gonna have to just lay him right out on the spot. One punch and down, just like last time.”

  “Hey now,” I said. “Remember what your dad told you about how much trouble you could get in trying something like that in any town other than Kennisaw. Besides, I thought we done agreed you wasn't gonna do nothing but challenge him to a fifth and ten for letter jackets.”

  Blaine screwed his face up like he was having to step over a cow pie. “Who are you, his mother or something?”

  “Before we come over here, you said—”

  “Okay, okay, don't get all sensitive on me. Damn.” He turned back to the windshield. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Ahead, a row of real pretty girls set side by side up on the stone wall that run along the side of the parking lot. Every one of them wore red Okalah jackets. “I bet one of them nasty little things could tell us where old Covey is.”

  He pulled up in front of the wall where the girls set and rolled down the window. “Hey, can any of you pretty ladies tell me where my good friend Covey Wallace is at?”

  A cute brunette hopped down off the wall. “Who wants to know?”

  “Just a couple big shots with the circus is all.” There he went, pulling another one of his wild stories out of nowhere.

  “Shoot,” the brunette said. “You guys ain't with no circus.”

  “Sure we are. We done traveled the whole entire country back and forth two dozen times. Dallas, Baton Rouge, St. Louis. You name it. Lion taming's what I do. It's pretty dangerous. Chairs and whips and all like that. A guy gets used to it, though.”

  The girl looked around him in towards me. “Who's your friend there, the giant?”

  “No way,” Blaine said. “The giant's ten foot tall. His head alone's the size of a beer barrel. This here's the strong man. Name's Mamboosala.”

  “Really?” She fixed her eyes right on mine now. “How much can you lift?”

  “Oh, he don't talk,” Blaine cut in. “Never could. Born that way. But he's strong, all right. You should see his act. He wears him this wild leopard-skin-type deal and big black fur boots. Throws barbells up in the air with weights on 'em the size of snow tires. The crowd goes crazy. They're throwing popcorn, yelling his name—Mamboosala, Mamboosala, Mamboosala. Just like that.”

  “He sure looks strong.” She smiled at me. Usually, I wouldn't have thought a cute girl like her would have no more interest in me than she would in reading Moby Dick on a Saturday night, but she sure seemed to have something more in that smile of hers than just plain old nice.

  Blaine gave me a glance, then turned back to her. “Yep, he's strong, all right, but the problem is he never was too bright.”

  “Hey now,” I said.
“I make better grades than you.”

  “Did you hear that?” He slapped me one on the shoulder. “The first words he ever spoke. It's a miracle.”

  She stepped back and crossed her arms. “You're full of it. You guys ain't even old enough to be in any circus. What's them jackets you got on anyways?” She squinted at the K on the front of Blaine's jacket. “Wait a minute, y'all's from Kennisaw.” She turned around to her friends. “Hey, these boys are from Kennisaw.”

  “Well,” said the little redhead from her perch up on the wall. “We kicked your butts tonight, didn't we?” Her friends had a good laugh over that one.

  Blaine's jaws tightened on him, and that vein around his temple pumped a couple times, but he kept hisself from blowing up.

  “What do y'all want with Covey?” the brunette asked.

  Blaine forced a smile back on his face. “We just want to challenge him to a little rematch,” he said. “We got us a bad call by the officials out there, and we figure it'd only be fair to line it up again and see who really won.”

  “Bad call, huh?” the brunette said. “I'll bet.”

  The redhead hopped down from the wall and waltzed over next to her friend. “Y'all looking for Covey Wallace? I know where he is.”

  The brunette one punched her arm. “Shawna, don't you dare tell them where he is.”

  “Why not? If he wants to drag some little blond tramp from another school over here, then he can sure talk to these guys too.”

  “All's we want to do is discuss that rematch.” Blaine looked at me. “Ain't that right, Mamboosala?”

  I didn't say anything. Truth be told, I wasn't real hot on that Mamboosala stuff.

  Little old Shawna walked up closer to the window and eyed us over. A strand of her red hair come loose across the side of her face, and she pulled it back. “There's a big beer bust going on at the pavilion out by the lake. He's out there. You know where the lake is?”