Acts of God (5 page)

“What have you been watching?” Carly asked.

“The Discovery Channel,” Daniel said. “He watches it every night.”

CARLY LIVED IN
a small frame house painted blue. It had three bedrooms and a back porch that had been turned into a sunroom. The floors in the house were light-colored hardwood. It had taken Carly four years to finish fixing the house so that she loved to live there and so that Daniel could bring his friends home without being ashamed. There was a small yard with maple trees and a neglected flower garden. There was a front porch with a swing painted bright red and wicker chairs that had seen better days but always had fresh cushions as Carly's mother couldn't stop making things on her sewing machine even if you asked her to stop. There were pots of geraniums that had been pretty when Carly left to go to New Orleans but were full of yellow leaves now since no one had been there to pull them off.

Carly had bought the house with the death benefits she received after Dan Dixon's motorcycle ran into a tree on the old Pig Trail leading from Fayetteville to Alma. It was a narrow, winding road that for many years had been the quickest way to go to Little Rock. She owned the house free and clear and she loved the little house and spent a lot of time keeping it repaired and everything in working order.

It was on a small street seven blocks from the university and fifteen blocks from the junior high where Daniel was in school. It was only six blocks from Fayetteville High School. It was an old neighborhood on small hills that made it an interesting place to live when there was snow.

CARLY'S DAD LET
Carly and Daniel off at their house and leaned on the steering wheel worrying about them. “You got everything you need?” he asked. “I bet there's nothing to eat. You want me to go to the grocery store for you?”

“We'll be fine. Go on, Dad. Thanks for coming to get me and thanks for taking care of Daniel.”

“We don't want him to leave. I wish you'd give him to me.”

“Shut up,” she said, and kissed her father on the cheek and got out of the car.

“Call your mother tonight, honey. She wants to talk to you.”

“Has she been talking to Cynthia? I broke up with Charlie. Has she heard that? Tell her, will you. I know she hated him. Tell her I said she was right.” Carly laughed and leaned on the car door.

“Your mother never hated anyone in her life.”

“Okay.” Carly kissed her father good-bye and followed her son into the house. The house had the musty smell that houses get when no one has been there. Daniel and Carly opened all the windows and turned on the air-conditioning fan. “I'll have to go to the grocery store,” she said. “There's nothing here but stale milk. You want to go with me?”

“No, I'd better do some homework. Grandmother's been after me so much I'm about to get in the habit of wanting to do it.”

“I broke up with Charlie. Are you glad?”

“I heard you tell Granddad. I'm glad if you're glad. Yes, I'm glad. I didn't want you to marry him. He tries too hard to get in good with me.”

Carly put her arm around her son and hugged him to her. “You take care of things around here. I'm going to the store.”

She drove down the street to the IGA and filled a basket with basic supplies and paid for them and started out the door. Three people she knew closed around her and asked questions about New Orleans. “You're a celebrity,” one of them said. “Everyone in town is talking about you.”

“That's all I need,” she answered. “There goes my last refuge.”

SHE WOKE AT
dawn the next morning and went out for a real run for the first time in weeks. Then she went back home and woke Daniel and made his breakfast and went into her closet and got out the red skirt she'd been meaning to wear to her first class. New beginning, she decided. New year, new ways of being, no drunks.

She got out her engagement calendar and started marking out the Thursday afternoons for Daniel's ball games. Then she packed her backpack and drove her son to the junior high school, then went to the university to learn and to teach.

Her classes were good, reasonably small, and so well trained by Dr. Williams in her absence that she wondered if she could live up to the standards he had set. No one was wearing a baseball cap, something she hated and felt badly about asking them not to do.

That afternoon she went by the junior high football field to watch Daniel's practice. When she took a seat in the stands he was already on the field, catching passes from his good friend, John Tucker, and looking so old it made her sad.

“Is that your kid?” A man her age had come to sit near her. He was tall and big-boned and powerful, the kind of man her father was, and she warmed to him at once.

“The one in the yellow shirt. He's my only child. I'm Carly Dixon. That's Daniel and that's John Tucker McCarthy throwing to him. He's the quarterback that was so good last year. Do you have a son out there?”

“I sure do. He's a seventh grader who kicks field goals. Well, he's trying out to kick field goals. He's a soccer player really. I hate for him to start football. I ruined my shoulder playing when I was in school. But you can't stop them, can you?”

“It's a lot different now. You'll be surprised. My brothers and my cousins were always getting hurt, but now they play shorter halves and the rules are stricter and the pads are better and there's a physician here at every practice.”

“I hope you're right. See that little kid over there with the blue and white striped shirt. That's Jesse.”

“With curly hair. Like yours.”

“I'm Grady Clayton. My boy's Jesse.” Grady Clayton climbed down two rows and sat beside her. Not too near, just on the same bench. “I'm about to fall asleep,” he said. “I just got back from New Orleans. I drove all night because I took a wrong turn and went through Memphis.”

“I just got home from there. Yesterday. I'm with the National Guard. I was there for two weeks. It's really awful, isn't it?”

“Not like anything I've ever seen. I'm trying to send some trucks down there to help with the cleanup, but I hate to send my men down there into that unless I can make it worth their while. What were you doing there?”

“I'm a first responder with the Guard. We do helicopter rescues.”

“Wow,” he said. “I'm talking to a heroine.”

“No, I'm just a momma hoping my kid will get to start the game Thursday night.”

“Is that what you do? You're in the National Guard?”

“I'm a college professor,” she said, and giggled. Grady Clayton was a man who made women giggle. “I teach in the business school.”

“Hell, I'm out of my league here,” Grady moved in a little nearer.

The whole team had come out onto the field and the coach was talking to them. They moved into a circle, then spread out across the field in three groups. Daniel was in the group with John Tucker, so that meant he was going to play in the A group.

Grady's kid, Jesse, was down at the end of the field with an assistant coach getting ready to practice field goals. The coach set up the ball. Jesse kicked it expertly between the goal posts. Then he did it again with a second ball.

“That's amazing,” Carly said to the boy's father.

“They came and pulled him off the soccer team and asked him to play. I hope I don't regret it.” Jesse kicked a third football exactly between the posts.

“That's amazing coordination,” Carly said.

“Yeah. Well, we'll see how he does when the wind's blowing and the pressure's on.” Grady was trying to sound practical, but he was beaming. “I want to talk to you about New Orleans,” he told her. “I need input. I'm fixing to lose a lot of money down there if this turns out to be a bad idea.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I'm a trucker. I called down there last week and offered to send some trucks to help move some of the debris off the highways but they kept jacking me around about the contracts so finally I drove down there to see the problem. Their main highway along the coast is torn up. Well, you know if you've been flying over it. I'm sending fifty trucks down there on Thursday if I can get the men to drive them. I'm not letting a bunch of strangers drive my trucks. Look out there, Miss Carly. Your kid just made a great run.”

“I taught him to run. I used to have to take him to the track when I'd do laps. At first, when he was little, he'd just play in the sand at the shot put, at the university track, then he started running with me, I guess because he was bored.” She looked over at Grady and took in all his big shoulders and long legs and wide chest and she was about to think she was just a tramp forever when he smiled his wide, good smile and she just went on and let herself get interested. Except he's probably married, she decided. Well, no ring, but what does that mean anymore?

“I taught Jesse to kick,” Grady said. “When I was in junior high I was small for my age so I kicked field goals to be on the varsity. I played for the team in seventh grade kicking balls and now there he is. His mother's pretty tall, I don't think he'll stay small but he might. He's tough though, real tough.” He stopped, then looked right at her and went on. “I'm divorced from his mother. It's hard on him.”

“Daniel's dad is dead,” Carly answered. “Since he was three. But he has my dad and my brother. Life's harder than we know it might be when we're young. It's funny how it happens to you, isn't it? But when you see folks after a real disaster like in New Orleans it makes this look like nothing. I mean, regular messes like divorces or getting fat.”

“Am I fat?”

“No.” She giggled again. He kept doing that to her. “God, I didn't mean you are fat. Women, I mean. If I stopped running I'd get fat, but I'm not going to stop.”

Four other parents had joined them. Then half a dozen more. A woman Carly knew came and sat by her and held out a bag of M&Ms. Carly ate a handful of them and passed the bag to Grady and he ate some, too.

“You're not fat,” she said. “You're a big, good-looking man.” She giggled again. Well, what the hell, she decided. So I'm interested.

Grady Clayton went home from the ballpark before the practice was over but not before Carly left. A friend was bringing Daniel home. “My ex-wife's going to pick up Jesse,” Grady said. “I don't like to run into her if I can help it. We just got divorced last year and it's still pretty raw between us.”

“What happened?” Carly asked.

“Who knows? I thought she liked me, then she stopped.”

“I'm sorry,” Carly said.

“Well, I'm not, except for Jesse's sake. I have him two weekends a month. That's not much but, well, hell, I hate to get you into all that. She's not . . . well, you'll probably meet her this fall so I'll just say this, she's from up north and she doesn't understand the South. I'm surprised she's letting him play sports. If you make her mad she can really make you sorry so I don't want her to think she has to run into me all the time if he plays football.”

“Sit on the other side when she's here. Tell Jesse where you'll be and why.”

“That's good advice, Carly. Thanks for that. Hey, do you have a card or something in case I need to ask about things?”

“No, but I'll give you my number.” She wrote her cellular phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to him. In return he fished around in his billfold and found a card and gave it to her. Clayton Engineering, it said. Long and Short Hauls, Gravel, Cement, Stone, Ornamental Stone, Limestone, Rocks, Surveys.

“Oh, no,” she said. “The way I need a driveway, this will burn a hole in my pocket.” She giggled again and they walked together to the parking lot and he got into a big Mercedes and she got into her Honda and they waved good-bye.

One door closes, Carly thought, and another one opens. How did I get so goddamn lucky? I better hurry or I won't have time to run before I cook supper.

GRADY BROUGHT HIS
parents to the game on Thursday night. They sat on the fifty-yard line ten rows up from the running track that circled the high school field.

Carly arrived just as the game started. She'd been held up by a faculty meeting at the university, which was only a block away, so she had left her car in the university parking lot and walked from her office to the high school football field. The junior high games were always played on the high school field, which is why they were on Thursday nights. The high school team used the old university practice field on those afternoons. It was an old arrangement made in the 1960s and still honored by the university, the high school, and the junior high. Fayetteville was still a small town in 2005 although you'd never know it to read the statistics.

GRADY STOOD UP
and waved to her and pointed to the seat he'd been saving with his Momma's coat. Carly giggled. Stop that, she told herself. You really have to stop doing that. She waved back and went up and took the seat. “This is my mom and my dad,” he said to her. “Alice and Jo Fred. This is Carly, Mom. The woman I told you about who goes up in the helicopters.”

“Hello,” Alice Ann said.

“Hi, there,” said Fred.

“Oh, hello,” Carly said. Well, she thought, at least I stopped giggling.

“I got you some M&Ms,” Grady said. “I decided they might be lucky.”

“We need luck against Springdale,” Carly said. “They bring eighteen-year-olds.” They all laughed at that. It was an ancient joke in Fayetteville that Springdale altered birth certificates.

“They really used to,” Grady said. “In my day I know they did.”

“When did you play?” Carly asked.

“Nineteen seventy-six to seventy-nine,” he answered.

“You knew my husband,” Carly said. “Daniel Dixon, he played at Ramey and then here. He would have been a senior when you were a freshman.”