Bama Boy (4 page)

“Maggie! It’s not funny!”

“I think it’s hilarious!” she gasped when she could finally speak. “I never thought I’d see the day Tiffany Tyler would have the hots for a sharecropper!”

“You’re missing the whole point. Do you think she really cares anything about him? Of course not! Just last week she was calling him Li’l Abner. But now he’s a big man on campus, and she wants his head to add to her collection,” I concluded bitterly.

“I hope she gets it, too,” said Maggie between giggles. “I’d give a lot to see Tiffany go to the Sears store on a date!”

“But Mags, Jimbo probably never even knew girls like Tiffany existed. He doesn’t stand a chance. She’ll chew him up and spit him out!”

“Tracy, aren’t you taking it a little too personally? You may be his tutor, but Jimbo’s love life is his own business.”

She was right. Jimbo was nothing to me but a boy I tutored twice a week, a boy who was awfully nice, but not very—well, sophisticated. This whole business with Tiffany might even be good for him. He might get hurt, but in the end he would be a better person for the experience. Sadder but wiser, as the saying went. Now that I thought about it, Tiffany was probably doing him a favor.

So why did I feel like tearing her hair out?

Over the next four days, it seemed that I never saw Jimbo without Tiffany hanging on his arm. I don’t know why it bothered me so, but it did. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I thought Tiffany really cared for him, but I’d seen her play the same game with other boys. She’d never lost yet.

There was no way around it; I was going to have to have a talk with Jimbo. It was going to be a delicate task, to say the least. If only Anthony had been a little more cooperative! This sort of thing would have been better coming from a guy.

My big chance came on Thursday night, when Jimbo came over for his tutoring session. We sat on the living room couch and talked about the football team and Jimbo’s sudden popularity, and I decided I would never have a better opportunity to approach the subject of Tiffany. I groped for the right words, but finding them proved even harder than I’d thought. There were no words in the English language that could tactfully say, “Tiffany Tyler wouldn’t be caught dead with a boy like you.”

“It’s great to be popular, but with so many people making such a fuss over you, it must be hard to tell who is sincere and who isn’t,” I began hesitantly. “Take—well, take Tiffany Tyler, for instance. A lot of guys have lost their heads over Tiffany, and she’s happy to flirt with them, but she doesn’t really—I mean, she never—that is, she—”

“You mean, don’t get too hung up on Tiffany, ‘cause I don’t stand a chance with her.”

He made it sound so simple. “I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly, but—well, yes.”

Jimbo grinned, revealing his dimples. “It’s probably just as well. She scares me to death!”

An overwhelming sense of relief flooded through me. “You mean—you’re not disappointed?”

“Shoot, no! She’s not my type. Besides, I’ve already picked out the girl I want.”

My relief dimmed ever so slightly. “Who is she?”

Jimbo’s eyebrows rose, but his blue eyes twinkled. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Okay, I guess I deserved that,” I confessed, throwing up my hands in mock surrender. “But I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“No, but you might tell me I don’t stand a chance with her, either. Then what would I do?”

“You could always concentrate on physics,” I suggested, directing a pointed look at Jimbo’s unopened textbook.

Jimbo heaved a sigh and opened the book. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Well, you’re not going to be a high school celebrity forever, you know,” I said, stung by his lack of enthusiasm. “Next summer you’ll be just one more unemployed eighteen-year-old looking for a job.”

“Gee, Tracy, you really know how to make a guy feel special!”

Now I had really done it. I’d hurt his feelings, and that was the one thing I’d never meant to do.

“But Jimbo, you
are
special! Just look at the way you’ve turned the football team around. I’ll bet you could do anything you wanted to, if only you’d apply yourself. You could go to college! Maybe you could get a football scholarship,” I said, warming to the idea. “Coach Moore might have connections at some college, if you let him know you’re interested.”

“Tracy, I hate to burst your bubble, but Elmore just won its first game in over two years. College coaches aren’t exactly gonna be beat’n’ down the door to sign me up.”

“But it wouldn’t hurt to ask, would it? Jimbo, don’t you ever think about your future?”

“Sure, I do!”

“Then what are your plans?”

Jimbo glanced at his watch. “Well, I figure if I hurry, I ought to make it home in time for
The Cosby Show
,” he said, grabbing up his books. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I stared after him, shaking my head in disbelief. The boy was hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. If I had any sense at all, I would wash my hands of the whole business. After all, I’d known Jimbo for less than three weeks. Why should I care whether or not he passed physics? Why should I care what became of him after high school?

On the other hand, if I gave up on him, I would be admitting to Anthony that he’d been right all along. Besides that, the football team was counting on Jimbo, and he had to keep up his grades in order to play.

And if I sometimes had a nagging suspicion that my concern for Jimbo with beyond loyalty to my school or competition with Anthony, some sixth sense warned me it was best not to examine that possibility too closely.

* * * *

When I saw Anthony again on Monday, he was so sweet to me that I knew he was up to no good, and in physics I discovered the reason for his mellow mood. Mr. Donovan announced that our class would have its first test on Thursday.

By this time, I was determined not to let Anthony have the last laugh. I had hoped to use Jimbo’s Tuesday night session to review for the test, but he had an assignment for his civics class due the next morning. I offered to help him with it, thinking if we breezed through it quickly, we would still have time to work on physics.

I was already familiar with the assignment, since my own civics class had done the same thing only two days earlier. We were supposed to search the newspaper for articles relating to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, and turn in an example of each one. I’d completed my own assignment, but I’d saved a week’s worth of back issues of the
Elmore Daily Banner
for Jimbo. By the time he arrived, they were stacked neatly on the coffee table.

“There they are,” I told him, gesturing toward the pile of newspapers. “Choose your poison.”

Jimbo picked up the paper on the top of the stack, and I took the next one. For the next few minutes there was no conversation, nothing but the sound of rustling newspaper as we turned the pages. Then I noticed a black-and-white photograph of four middle-aged men in business suits. When I glanced at the caption, a familiar name leaped off the page.

“Jimbo, here’s a guy with your name,” I told him. “See? Second one from the left. James Maxwell.”

“Let me see.” Jimbo laid his newspaper aside and studied the picture for a minute, then grinned at me. “That’s my dad. Can’t you see the family resemblance?”

“Oh, sure!” I laughed. “According to the paper, this man is a NASA big shot who’s heading up the space shuttle project at TeknoCorp. If this guy has a son, you an bet he doesn’t have to pay someone to tutor him in physics. All he has to do is ask Dad.”

 “And that’s where I have the advantage,” Jimbo said, turning back to his own newspaper.

“What do you mean?”

“Only that my tutor is a lot prettier than his dad.”

“Jimbo Maxwell, you are a shameless flirt!” I scolded, turning pink in spite of myself. “I’ll bet every mother in Alabama hid her daughters when she saw you coming.”

“Well, I don’t like to brag,” Jimbo said reluctantly, “but I guess you found me out. I was a real lady-killer!”

“You are an idiot!”

“I think I’ll take Richie snipe hunt’n’ this weekend if the weather holds,” Jimbo said. “Wanna come along?”

“That depends. Would I be chasing snipes or holding the bag?”

Jimbo grinned. “You catch on fast! But don’t worry. Holdin’ the bag is Richie’s job. You’d be helpin’ me chase snipes.”

“I think I’d like that.”

“Great! How about Saturday night?”

“Fine,” I said with a smile, picturing Anthony’s reaction when he found out I planned to spend Saturday night stomping through the woods in search of nonexistent snipes.

Jimbo proposed the snipe hunting trip to Richie as soon as my brother got home from his pee-wee football game. Richie was delighted (not to mention gullible), and over the next few days I found myself looking forward to the trip more and more.

As I had predicted, Anthony was less than thrilled when he learned of my plans for the weekend. Then on Wednesday, Mr. Donovan reminded us of the big test the next day, and Anthony became positively chipper.

“Take old Jimbo out this weekend and show him a good time,” he encouraged me. “After he takes his physics test tomorrow, he’ll need some cheering up. Come to think of it, you may need it worse than he does.”

“You’d better choose your words carefully, Anthony,” I warned him. “You might just have to eat them.”

But even though I wouldn’t have admitted it to Anthony for the world, I had my doubts about Jimbo. I simply could not convince him of the importance of this test. We’d had plenty of time to review for the test after Jimbo had finished his civics project, but he had spent the rest of the hour telling me tales from his Alabama childhood instead. I usually found his sense of humor delightful, but it was maddening to try to teach formulas to someone who clearly couldn’t care less or, worse yet, insisted on turning everything into a joke.

Knowing Jimbo’s attitude toward the test, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I looked out the window at fifteen minutes after six on the night before the test and found him in the front yard with Richie, tossing a football around.

“Jimbo!” I called, stepping out onto the front porch. “Are you ready to start? It’s already a quarter past.”

“Already? Well, since we’re late already, a few more minutes aren’t gonna hurt. Come on and play!”

“
Me
?”

“Sure! Come on!”

Without really knowing why, I stepped off the porch and joined Jimbo and Richie in the yard.

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Richie’ll snap the ball to you and then go deep. You just throw the ball to him.”

“What will you be doing?”

“I’m coachin’.”

“All right,” I said, positioning myself behind Richie. “Here goes nothing.”

On my signal, Richie snapped the ball and then scampered across the yard. I took a deep breath and threw the football. It was a weak, wobbly pass that hit the ground long before it ever reached its intended receiver.

“Come on, Trace!” Richie groaned. “That ball was underthrown!”

“Look, Tracy, let me help you. Richie, get back out there.”

As Richie sprinted across the yard, Jimbo situated himself behind me and positioned my fingers between the laces on the football. He placed his hands over mine, and guided me through the release. I knew most of the credit for the pass belonged to him, but I still felt a little thrill as I watched the ball arc gracefully through the air and descend into Richie’s outstretched arms.

“Well, look at that,” Jimbo said. “Joe Montana won’t get a wink of sleep tonight, knowin’ you’re around.”

He dropped his hands lightly onto my shoulders as he spoke, and I realized the thrill running through me had nothing to do with football and everything to do with Jimbo’s nearness, his sure, capable hands resting on my shoulders, and his warm breath ruffling my hair.

“I think—I think we need to start studying,” I stammered in confusion, and hurried into the house.

I spent a restless night that evening, my sleep disturbed by dreams of footballs and physics tests. Jimbo, on the other hand, strolled into class on test day as calmly as if he laid his football career on the line every day of his life. An hour later, it was all over but the waiting. I felt pretty good about my own test. Some of the problems were pretty tricky, but I was pretty sure I had a solid “B.”

“How did you do?” I asked Jimbo as we left the room at the end of the period.

“I’m pretty sure I passed,” he answered.

“Do you think you got a ‘C’?”

Jimbo shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

When Mr. Donovan passed out the graded papers the next morning, I was so eager to find out what Jimbo had made that I hardly even noticed the eighty-eight penciled in red on the top margin of my own paper. I turned around in my desk just in time to see Jimbo tuck his test paper into his notebook.

“What did you make?” I asked.

“Well, I passed,” he answered cautiously.

My heart leaped up into my throat. “How bad is it?” I asked, not mincing words.

“Sixty-nine.”

Sixty-nine. One lousy point away from the “C” he needed. I had lost my bet with Anthony, but somehow that didn’t seem quite so important anymore.

“It’s okay, Jimbo,” I said, trying for his sake to sound positive. “We’ve still got three weeks before report cards come out. We’ll bring it up, you’ll see.”

For the rest of the hour, I listened with only half an ear to Mr. Donovan’s lecture while the rest of my mind was occupied with the problem of Jimbo’s grades. He was right on the borderline, so it wouldn’t take much to bring his grade up. Mr. Donovan had a reputation for being tough but fair. I made up my mind to talk to him about Jimbo as soon as class was over.

When the bell rang, I approached the physics teacher as he sat behind his desk at the front of the room.

“Mr. Donovan,” I began, “if a student needed to pull his grade up before report cards came out, would you be willing to give him an assignment for extra credit?”