Boys of Blur (20 page)

Charlie and Cotton and Sugar sat in white chairs by a pool, watching palm trees bend beside the sea. They were still wearing ties from a funeral, and bandages from before that.

Mack was at a barbecue, slicking sauce on chicken with a paintbrush. Sugar’s stepdad stood beside him—shorter and thicker and slower and balder and more mustached than Mack, but full of smiles and laughs that came out like gifts that he would never need back because he always had more.

He’d made the sauce.

“Wait till you taste it,” Sugar said. “Seriously. There’s nothing like it.”

Charlie’s mom and Sugar’s mom and Cotton’s mom were listening to Mrs. Wisdom and laughing just inside the glass doors of the beach house, and the boys all
suspected that they were talking about them. But nobody said anything.

Cotton nodded at a stack of books that his mother had brought for Charlie’s recovery.

“Don’t worry, coz. I slipped a couple good ones in there. Don’t go near that book by Dickens. He has better. But you have to read that edition of
Beowulf
.”

“Why?” Sugar asked.

“Because I’ve read three and it’s the truest to the original Anglo-Saxon,” Cotton said. “Serious awesome sauce.”

Charlie smiled.

“No, I meant why read it at all?” Sugar asked. “It’s poetry, right?”

Cotton sat up straight. His eyebrows went up. “You kidding me, coz?”

“I’m not your coz.”

“You’re my cousin’s bro,” Cotton said. “And any bro to my coz is a coz of mine. It’s like relational math,
coz
. Simple.”

Charlie burst out laughing. Sugar smiled. Cotton rolled on.

“And yeah,
Beowulf
is poetry, but it’s poetry that’s all blood and dragons and monsters. Think Vikings, but tougher.” Cotton shook his head. “History of the world,
coz
, warriors and kings and conquerors, man, they ate poems up. I mean, ninjas even had haiku. You more manly than ninjas, Sugar Diaz?”

Sugar glanced at Charlie and then smirked at Cotton. “That all something your mom told you?”

Cotton groaned. “Always with the mom. And no, it’s something anyone who knows the history of the world could tell you.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. He held up his hands. “I’m sold. Sugar, I’ll let you know how it is.”

Molly raced out of the house wearing inflated water wings so big her arms stuck almost straight out from her sides. She climbed onto the arm of Charlie’s chair and dropped knees first at his stomach. He caught her before impact.

She raised both hands and widened her eyes.

“Monsters,” she whispered.

“Nah,” Cotton said. “Charlie killed those.”

“Get in the water,” Charlie said. “They don’t like water.”

So Molly did.

As the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico, two half brothers, one half sister, one step–second cousin, three moms, one former foster mother, and two stepdads raised glasses of wine and water and milk and cran-apple juice and root beer to the memory of a man who had hurt most of them.

But even out of him, good had come.

And when the sun did set and the moon rose, and the guests left that big white beach house and her husband was reading a book to her daughter, Natalie Mack wrapped herself in a sweater and walked out on the beach.

Her son limped after her. He put his arms around her while the wind pulled at the blond hair piled on her head, and he saw that her freckles were wet.

“Mom,” Charlie said, “I don’t know that I’ve ever thanked you.”

She looked at him. “For what?”

“For keeping me safe when it was bad. For Mack. For Molly.”

She leaned against him.

“For everything,” he said.

And like a younger Mrs. Wisdom, she kissed him on the head.

Charlie Reynolds sprinted onto the field and didn’t slow down until he reached the huddle. He heard his mom’s sharp whistle. He heard Molly call his name. And then the huddle broke and he ran to his position split out wide by the sideline.

Sugar stood not ten yards from him, wearing his college hoodie.

“Speed, bro,” Sugar said. “You got it.”

Cotton was assessing the defense before bending down behind the center. He was cupping his hands and shouting down the line, pretending to call an audible. He loved doing that, but right now Mack only allowed him one audible per quarter.

“Twain! Twain!” Cotton shouted. “451 Bradbury!”

The other school’s fans had started their slow chant back up.

“Homeschool … Homeschool … Homeschool …”

Cotton loved that, too. He was done with his act. He slid under the center. Charlie’s eyes were on the ball. It snapped back into Cotton’s hands, and Charlie exploded off the line. He jab-stepped in, slapped his defender’s arms
away, and then looped outside and accelerated. Another defender was racing over to help. Charlie heard the crowd inhale. He looked up and saw the ball high in the lights. It was soaring. Too deep.

Inside, Charlie scrambled for another gear, a gear his body knew was possible, an echo of the speed he had once felt when he was younger and the muck was new beneath his feet.

He found it. His legs churned. The teeth on the bottoms of his shoes barely touched down, but they tore the earth. He was flying now, pulling away from boys who wore a different color.

The crowd was on its feet, but Charlie only saw the ball. Thousands of voices unified in one growing swell of expectation, but Charlie only heard his own breathing.

He dove, and floated through the air like he was made of sparks.

Because he was.

Thanks to my lovely Heather Linn, who kept the spark of this story alive for too many years, and to Rory D, who devoured the first manuscript.

Thanks also to Liza McFadden, the Barbara Bush Foundation, and Celebration of Reading for all they have done for literacy, and for getting my feet planted in Florida for the first time.

Thanks to Judy Sanchez and U.S. Sugar for toting me out into the cane harvest and letting me play with fire while getting in the way of their amazing operation.

Thanks to Mary Ford for getting me onto the Pahokee sideline for the Muck Bowl.

Thanks to Captain Dan for the Swamp Boatery, and to Dane for falling in amongst the baby gators.

Thanks to my pops for first introducing me to
Beowulf
and the growling rhythms of Anglo-Saxon, and for his own brilliant verse-rendering.

Thanks to the rabbits.

Thanks to the runners.

Thanks to the One who invented quick and fire and heat, who beats the hearts and sends the breeze.

(Oh, and to Jim Thomas, because something tells me we have not yet begun to fight.…)