Five Minutes in Heaven (10 page)

Molly and Jude glanced at each other. It might be a trick. Although the ancient wounds had healed, the scars remained to remind them.

“We need a full team if we're going to stand a chance.” He smiled at them smoothly, and Jude realized that he could have a fruitful career ahead of him as a horse trader.

“That's still just ten,” said Molly, leaning over to straighten one of the white bobby socks that was sagging below her crinolined poodle skirt.

“Can you think of anybody else?”

“How about Sandy?” asked Jude.

Ace smiled with polite incredulity. “Sandy? Sandy Andrews? Sandy Andrews on a football field?”

“I played catch with him last year,” said Jude. “He was working on his aerodynamics project for the county science fair. And believe me, Sandy knows how to throw a football.”

“If Sandy doesn't play, we don't either,” announced Molly.

Ace sighed with a sweet, long-suffering smile, a new facial expression in his rather limited repertoire. “All right. But you all ask him. He's not too crazy about me.”

“I wonder if this is a good idea,” mused Jude as Ace rode off down the hill. “Clementine always says that leopards don't change their spots without a whole lot of scrubbing.

“But he seems pretty scrubbed,” said Molly. “We may as well give him a chance. If he's too obnoxious, we'll just quit the team.”

O
N THE FIELD ONCE
pocked with their trenches, the former Commie Killers watched with amazement as Sandy repeatedly sailed the football over the heads of the enclosing tacklers and into Jude's or Molly's outstretched arms. Impressed, Ace promoted him to quarterback and Jude and Molly to ends.

Then they divided into two opposing lines. Crouching for drills like three-legged pit bulls, they collided time after time at a signal from Ace. The tenth time, Ace locked shoulder pads with Molly. Grinning at her with clenched teeth, he butted her backward down the field while she grimaced fiercely and struggled to dig her cleats into the turf and break his advance.

During the tackling drill that followed, Ace kept hurling himself through the air at Molly, bringing her crashing to the ground beneath him. Once, he continued to lie immobile on her like a sack of concrete, smiling up at Jude as Molly writhed and twisted beneath him.

“Get off me, you big lug!” Molly yelled.

Jude felt her hands clench into fists as she stood there watching. Apparently, the new, improved Ace Kilgore still had a few of his old tricks up his sleeve.

Laughing indulgently, he allowed Molly to push him aside.

“Drop dead, creep,” she snarled as she struggled to her feet, face flushed and helmet askew.

Jude leaned over and asked her in a low voice, “Are you okay?”

“Of course I'm okay,” she snapped, glaring at Ace as she straightened her helmet.

C
LOUDS WERE SCUDDING LIKE
hockey pucks across the bright blue sky. Noreen's crew wore red-and-white corduroy skirts, saddle shoes, and junior-high letter sweaters. Most sported jaunty ponytails.

“Girls?” the Mill Valley Butchers exclaimed when they dismounted from their bicycles and spotted Molly's black braids hanging down from her shiny red helmet.

“I know that ole girl,” said one, pointing at Jude in her red jersey and padded khaki knickers. “She ain't nothing but a fifth grader.”

“The Commandos got fifth-grade girls on their team! Oh, man!” They slapped one another's helmets with hilarity.

“You won't be laughing by the time this is over,” snarled Ace from behind his plastic face guard.

“Better face it, rich boy,” sneered Joe Sneed, “your ass is grass.”

Joe's older brother Clyde, a former football star at the high school, home on leave from the marines, had come along as referee. The boys on both teams kept glancing at him as he stood there straight as a linesman's stake in his severe blond brush cut. He'd survived boot camp at Paris Island and killed Commies in Korea.

The Butchers won the coin toss, and Joe effortlessly returned the Commandos' kickoff for a touchdown, striding like a Louisville pacer through the scarlet maple leaves that were swirling like flocks of migrating cardinals across the plateau from the Wildwoods.

“Sorry, guys,” Joe muttered to the Butchers as they trotted back up the field, shoulder pads jouncing like saddles. “I shoulda knowed this would be a waste of time.”

For a while, Sandy strolled around the backfield in his cleats, hands on his hips, studying the Butchers and holding up a wet finger to assess the breeze. Jude and Molly fled to the sidelines each time the ball was snapped, while the Butchers ground the Commando line into the clay and massacred the ballcarrier. The afternoon gave every evidence of being a long and bloody one, and Jude couldn't imagine why she and Molly had given up cantering their horses along the river in order to be ripped to pieces by a gang of surly hoodlums.

Finally, Sandy announced in the huddle, “Okay, I'm ready.”

Jerry Crawford centered the ball to Sandy. The Commando line turned suddenly impregnable, giving Sandy the leisure to fake a lateral and two handoffs to Ace and the Panther Twins so convincingly that the Butchers chased them down the field before realizing that Sandy still held the ball. Jude and Molly, meanwhile, were darting around midfield, causing the pursuing Butchers to collide with one another like enemy tanks. Sandy sailed a perfect spiral pass to Jude, who grabbed it out of the air and dashed untouched across the goal line.

Noreen's cheering squad went wild, prancing and twirling and turning cartwheels. They shook their red-and-white pompoms and thrust out their arms and legs in intricately choreographed patterns. Then they shouted in unison, with the same fervor they used to devote to speaking in tongues: “Hidy, hey, hidy, hoe! Iddley, widdley, waddley, woe! Our Commandos are the best! Better, better than the rest!”

The Butchers slunk home to the mill village after their defeat, and Molly invited the Commandos and the cheerleaders to her basement to celebrate their first victory with Cokes and butterscotch brownies.

“I have an idea,” said Noreen as she drained the last of her Coke and brandished the green bottle like a fairy godmother's wand. “Let's play Spin the Bottle!”

The boys in their football uniforms eyed one another, grinning nervously and blushing behind their newly sprouted acne. Then they eyed the cheerleaders, who were draped decoratively around the steel jack posts that held up the ceiling.

“Good idea,” said Ace, grabbing the bottle from Noreen. “Me first. Y‘all girls get in a circle here.”

Molly and Jude sat down cross-legged on the black-speckled linoleum as though before a campfire. Noreen and the other cheerleaders sank to their knees, tucked their feet beneath their hips, and braced their palms against the floor behind them so that their chests puffed out like robins in the spring. Ace stepped into the center of the circle, squatted, and twirled the bottle on the linoleum. It spun more and more slowly before finally stopping on Molly. She and Jude exchanged glances.

“Nobody has to play who doesn't want to,” announced Jude.

“Fair's fair,” said Molly. She stood up and disappeared in her football uniform behind the furnace with Ace.

Jude watched Jerry spin the bottle, praying it wouldn't land on her, wondering what was going on in the shadows behind the furnace. Would Molly really kiss their ancient enemy? Would she moan and sigh the way she had in third grade when she kissed the back of her own hand?

Jude watched in silent misery as the bottle inched to a halt. It was pointing at Noreen. She jumped up with a squeal, kicking back her saddle shoes in a coy pep-squad hop. As she and Jerry headed for the furnace, Ace and Molly emerged. Molly was blushing. She didn't look at Jude. But Ace did, grinning, his braces glinting in the light from the overhead bulb, which Molly had encased in a red-and-gold Japanese lantern.

Sandy's spin landed on Jude.

“She's too young,” said Molly quickly. “She's just a fifth grader.”

“She's only a year younger than I am,” said Sandy. “I just skipped two grades, is all. Come on, Jude.” He held out his hand.

In the dark beneath the cobwebbed heating ducts, Sandy whispered, “Thank God I got you.”

“I'll say,” whispered Jude. “Do we really have to do this?”

“We might as well get it over with.”

As they tried to embrace, their arms collided and tangled. Then they bumped noses and began to giggle. Finally, Sandy managed to plant a peck on her mouth before they both doubled over with silent agonized hilarity.

Afterward, Jude and Molly changed from their football uniforms and walked to the pasture behind Jude's grandmother's house, where they kept their horses. Jude's father had bought them from a friend of Mr. Starnes who trained Tennessee walking horses for shows. These two geldings hadn't made the grade, but they were wonderful for riding because they were so happy no longer to have their hooves weighted for the ring that they seemed to dance on air as they ran. Tennessee walkers originally being bred for plantation owners to ride while surveying their fields, these two could cover miles without tiring, in a running walk as comfortable as rocking in a rocking chair. Although they had elaborate names and pedigrees, Jude called hers Flame because of a flaring white mark down his forehead, and Molly called hers Pal because he was a palomino, with a ghostly pale mane and tail.

On weekends, Jude and Molly rode downriver through pastures of bluegrass and timothy and fescue, past fields planted with tobacco and corn. Through bottomland studded with cottonwood, maple, sycamore, and sweet gum, their branches draped with lianas of wild grape that stirred in the breezes down the valley like serpents writhing in a jungle. After a picnic in the sun by the river, they headed back home along ridges thickly forested with oak and hickory and ash. In the fall, juicy orange persimmons fell into their laps as they passed beneath the overladen branches. And in the spring, dogwoods and redbuds starred the dark brooding woods with bursts of pink and purple and white, like fireworks that didn't fade.

That afternoon after Spin the Bottle, they cantered through Mr. Starnes's alfalfa field, alongside the low-leaning willows by the river. As Sidney leapt and barked beside her, Molly veered Pal toward the shore. Jumping the lip of the bank, Pal plunged into the water, throwing up a spray that glistened orange in the setting sun like sparks shooting from a fire.

Once Molly was thoroughly soaked, she headed Pal back toward dry land. He arced time after time up the rutted clay rise like a salmon leaping upstream. Molly threw her head back and laughed, dark wavy hair fanning out around her face, thighs gripping Pal's straining shoulders, fist maneuvering the rope she'd run through his halter for reins. For a moment, Jude couldn't catch her breath. Molly looked like the goddess on her grandmother's glass vase, the one with the bow on her back and the dogs leaping at her knees.

When Molly reached level ground, she dug her heels into Pal's flanks and lay down along his neck. He broke into a gallop, flying hooves hurling up clods of earth. As his cream-colored mane floated up and mixed with her dark hair, Molly glanced tauntingly back over her shoulder at Jude. Jude leaned forward and Flame shot off across the field after Pal like a land missile. Jude could see each muscle of Molly's back tensing and straining beneath the wet clinging fabric of her pale-blue work shirt.

When Jude and Molly finally slid off Pal and Flame in the stand of giant oaks on the cliff above their cave, the horses were covered with patches of white lather and dark sweat. The girls collapsed on a bed of leathery mauve leaves, laughing and gasping as their horses snorted and stamped and wheezed. In the tops of the huge old trees swayed globes of mistletoe the size of medicine balls.

After catching their breath, Molly and Jude propped themselves up on their elbows so they could watch the indigo mountains below, wave after wave of crenellated ridges like ripples on the sea, all being swallowed up by a maw of vermilion sunset. Jude could smell Molly's sweat and the rotting oak mold beneath the two of them, where a million earthworms were munching away. Molly's breath was stirring Jude's hair and tickling her ear. Suddenly, she recalled Ace's smug smile when he came out from behind the furnace and Molly's averted eyes.

“Do you still want to build a cabin up here when we grow up?” she asked Molly.

Molly turned her head to look at Jude. “Sure. Don't you?”

“Yes. But we haven't discussed it in a long time.”

“What else would we do?” Molly reached out her little finger and interlocked it with Jude's.

“That kissing stuff was pretty dumb, wasn't it?” said Jude, relieved.

Molly didn't reply.

Jude's skin prickled with anxiety. “Wasn't it?”

“Yeah,” Molly finally agreed. “Count on Noreen to dream up an ordeal like that.”

“Sandy and I couldn't figure out what to do with our arms.”

“You couldn't? Here. I'll show you.”

Jumping up, she grabbed Jude's hand, pulled her to her feet, and arranged Jude's arms around her body. Beneath her fingertips, Jude could feel the damp cotton of Molly's shirt and the firm muscles of her back. Then Molly placed her arms around Jude, one hand holding a shoulder and the other Jude's waist.

“See? Simple.” Smiling with just her eyes, she moved closer and kissed Jude firmly on the mouth.

As Molly's chest pressed against her own, Jude experienced an alarming sensation. It was sweet and nauseating, both at once, like eating too much fudge. Her teeth were set on edge and a shudder shook her limbs.

“What's wrong?” asked Molly.

Opening her eyes, Jude found herself staring directly into Molly's, which at that moment matched the blue of her shirt. “I don't know,” she said. Shifting her hand down Molly's back, she discovered a piece of elastic stretching between Molly's shoulder blades. “What's this?”