Knights of the Hill Country (6 page)

The whole long walk over to Sara's house, I run these ideas through my head back and forth and every which ways, but I still didn't have it sorted out by the time I stepped up on her
porch. Even after I rung the doorbell, I felt about like jumping over the banister and sprinting down the street for home. Then she opened the door and shined them soulful-sad brown eyes out at me, and I remembered why she was different from Misty Koonce.

“Hey,” she said, brushing her hair back from her face.

“Hey.” I looked down at the green welcome mat and told myself to forget what anybody else said about the subject of girls. “Hope I'm not late.”

“No, you're right on time. Come on in.”

Soon as I stepped through her door, things was different from what I was used to with my regular friends. For one, it smelled like rocks in there. And they did—they used rocks for decorations. Had them on little tables and shelves all the way from the front hall to all over the living room. Big black rocks, little gray ones, red ones and white ones and every kind of shape you'd ever want in a rock. They looked good and they smelled good, clean and hard.

Sara caught me admiring them. “My parents are geologists,” she said.

And she took me right in to talk to them too, instead of steering me off to another room the way a lot of kids will do, like their parents have some kind of disease that'd strike you down with a deadly case of boredom if you hung around them too much.

Sara, she just leaned up against the side of the sofa next to her mother as comfortable as could be and even introduced her parents by their first names like I was fixing to be one of their buddies. Made me feel like someone worth knowing.

Mr. Reynolds—I couldn't call him Mark even if he was introduced that way—was parked in a wheelchair next to the
sofa and had him a guitar cradled on his lap. He didn't look like no one else in Kennisaw, and not just 'cause of the wheelchair neither. He had a little ponytail and a goatee and wore a black beret. I'd never seen anyone wearing a beret outside of TV. Course, I'd noticed him rolling around town before, but I never knew he was Sara's dad. It's funny, but even in a town of 9,500 people like Kennisaw, there can be whole different circles of folks. Whole different worlds, almost.

Mrs. Reynolds—who Sara introduced as Nancy—looked about like she could've been Sara's big sister. Wore the same kind of comfortable baggy clothes, and there wasn't no mistaking where Sara got all her hair from. Her mom couldn't have been more friendly to me neither, just like Mr. Reynolds was. You'd think it never even crossed their minds to suspect how much time I'd done spent conjuring up pictures of their daughter on a converted-basement sofa with her sweatshirt and jeans tossed off on the floor.

What I figured was they must've been keeping track of my football-playing in the
Kennisaw Sun
. I didn't know why else they'd bother being so nice to someone they didn't even know. That part wasn't different from just about every other adult I run into around town. Always beating me over the head with football questions. How bad was the Knights going to whip Sawyer or Okalah or Kiowa Bluff? Who did I want to play college ball for, OU or OSU? Was I planning on playing in Dallas and winning me as many Super Bowl rings as T. Roy Strong? It got pretty old, if you want to know the truth.

So I wasn't surprised when Mrs. Reynolds come out and said how Sara'd told her I was on the football team.

“Yes, ma'am, I play linebacker,” I said, getting ready for the same old questions.

“That's nice,” she said with a smile. “How's the team doing?”

“Uh,” I said. I sure wasn't ready for that one. Everyone in Kennisaw knew the Knights was working on their fifth undefeated season in a row. I thought they did, anyways.

Mr. Reynolds chuckled. “She doesn't follow sports much.” He turned to his wife. “They're doing very well, dear. Undefeated, I believe?” He looked back at me, and I nodded.

“So,” he said. “You play linebacker.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Reynolds studied on that a moment. “Is that the person who stands behind the quarterback?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “The linebacker's on defense.” I glanced back and forth from Mr. Reynolds to Mrs. Reynolds, wondering if maybe they was pulling my leg some, but they only smiled real bright like they was happy to have just learned something new. I swear, they must've been the only two people in Kennisaw, maybe even the whole hill country, that didn't know a thing about football. And still, here they was, interested in me anyways.

After that, nobody brought up football again, and pretty soon Sara suggested we ought to go on and get to our homework. “I thought we could study in the garage,” she said. “My dad had it converted into a library.”

I couldn't believe it. I figured a converted garage was every bit as good as a converted basement any day. “That sounds okay,” I said, which was pretty much the understatement of my life so far.

“But I forgot.” Her eyebrows arched up and I knew I was
in for a letdown. “My sister's book club's meeting in there tonight.”

That was more my kind of luck. “Your sister's in a book club?” I said. “I thought she was only about thirteen or fourteen.”

“She's twelve. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said, but I had to shake my head over that idea. At twelve, you wouldn't have got me to open any book I didn't one hundred percent have to. Matter of fact, I was surprised you could round up enough twelve-year-olds in Kennisaw to fill out a book club.

“I guess we could go over to the library,” she suggested. “At least it'll be quiet.”

“We could,” I said, but the library with its yellow tables and shushing librarians didn't even come close to fitting the mood I was hoping for. “Or maybe we could go down to Sweet's Café and get us a table in the back. I bet there won't hardly be a soul there this late.”

“You think?” She cocked her head. “I don't know. I don't think cafés let you hang around doing homework all evening.”

“Sure they will. My buddy Jake's parents own it. We hang out there all the time. His sister'll be working tonight. She won't care how long we set in there.”

“That sounds great, then.” Her face kind of lit up, and she sounded almost like someone accepting a date.

“Great,” I said back. I was pretty proud of myself. For once, I'd done come up with a good idea right on the spot instead of thinking of it a day too late. “I hope you don't mind walking. It's only about ten minutes. My mom needed the car tonight.”

“I don't mind. It's nice out.”

Things was looking like they was working out real good, but just as she was slipping into a light jacket, I realized what I should've realized right from the get-go. What if Jake come sauntering into the café to kill some time? And worse than that, what if Blaine was with him?

Sara had her jacket on. “Ready?”

“You bet,” I said. It was too late now. All I could do was hope Jake and Blaine had better things to do tonight.

Jake's big sister, Sheryl, didn't say nothing. She just stood there a few feet from the table and stared at us.

“What?” I said finally.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking how nice it is to have you in here with your girl instead of Blaine for a change.”

I glanced over at Sara to check on how she took the “your girl” remark, but I couldn't tell much with her hair hiding most of her face.

“Don't get me wrong,” Sheryl said. “Blaine's okay, but he don't always know when to put all his teasing up and just be hisself. You sure you two don't want a slice of pie to help you study?”

“No, we're okay.” I knew Sheryl was only trying to kind of
prod things along between me and Sara, probably thought I couldn't do it for myself, but right now I just wanted to be left alone.

“Well, if y'all need refills on your Cokes, go on back behind the counter and fill your cups up whenever you want.” She tossed me a nice, encouraging smile and walked away.

Like I figured, the place was pretty dead, it being a Monday night. The red vinyl-covered chairs was mostly empty, and the little square Formica-topped tables was bare except for their salt and pepper shakers and napkin holders. They had this electric sign buzzing in the window. SWEET'S GOOD EATS! COME ON IN, it said in red lights, but nobody but a couple of old-timers up at the front counter had took them up on the offer tonight.

The bell over the front door jingled and I whipped around, half afraid of seeing Jake and Blaine, but it was only lonesome old Mr. Derryberry shuffling in to take his place up at the counter with the other old bachelors.

“You expecting someone?” Sara asked.

“No, not really,” I said.

Across the café, Sheryl cranked up the jukebox, a slow country song, one of the rare ones about love that hadn't gone wrong yet. Pretty obvious she didn't pick that one out for Mr. Derryberry.

I had to admit this place was even better than a converted basement or garage would've been. If I'd got on a couch alone with Sara, I most likely would've started hearing my friends' voices in my head, saying,
Put your arm around her, dumbass. Grab her hand. Kiss her. Reach up under her shirt.
Probably would've been as big a disaster as the time I spilt that chili on Kim Hunt in her white blouse. Here, I could
take things slow and easy. Be myself more. As long as Jake and Blaine didn't come strolling in next time that bell over the door went to jingling.

The other big worry I had didn't turn out so bad. This whole time, I was afraid Sara would discover how terrible I really was with textbooks. Not that I had a problem reading. Give me the sports page or something else I'm interested in, and I'd go right to town on it. But studying was a whole different animal. Must have been fourth grade last time Mom or anyone else set down to help me with my homework, and I don't guess my skills had got much better since. If I had a list of terms or names or something like that to look up, everything just seemed to turn into Egyptian hieroglyphics right in front of my eyes. In the study group, I figured Sara just thought I was slower finding the answers than everyone else, but here, one-on-one, she was bound to find out what kind of a real idiot I was.

A funny thing happened, though, when we got to working on the assignment. Sara showed me how to pick out the most important words or names from out of the worksheet questions and look them up in the index of the book. I hate to admit it, but I didn't even know the book had an index! I'd always scraped by without reading that far back. But just that one little tip was the difference between sinking and swimming right there. I started finding answers so quick, I got to wondering if maybe I wasn't dumb after all. I might even be a little bit smart in my own way.

By the time we got down towards the last few questions, I was starting to feel kind of like a Civil War expert. If Darnell and Lana Pitt wanted my opinion on the Confederacy now, I was ready. It even crossed my mind that I might order off one
of them Civil War chess sets they show on TV, hang around out in Sara's converted-garage library learning how to play it with her.

“Did you find the one about Matthew Brady yet?” she asked.

“Page two thirty-four,” I said.

She looked up from her paper. “You're really good at this. How come you don't say that much when we're in our study group?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn't good at it till you told me I oughta look things up in the index. I'd just set around turning pages, hoping an answer would jump up and bite me, I guess.” It's funny how you can be honest about things like that once you stop worrying about them.

She laughed. “You weren't that bad.”

“No, really,” I said. “You oughta be a teacher.”

“Thanks.” She looked down in her shy way and smiled, and I thought that'd be hard to beat right there, making her smile like that.

Conversation was smooth sailing after that. She talked about living over in Oklahoma City before moving here, and I told a little about living up in Poynter. We had a good time trading stories about what we was like as little kids, the friends we'd had and left behind when we moved, what kind of games we played, the Halloween costumes we wore, and what kind of trick-or-treat candy was our favorite. All sorts of things. It wasn't nothing like what my buddies told me about them and their girls.

Talking about the days back in Poynter, I skipped over the serious part—the old sad story about my dad running off— but Sara, she didn't skip over nothing. They had a tough
time back where she used to live after her dad's accident, almost tore the family apart, she said, but now they was stronger for getting through it.

“How'd it happen?” I asked. “The accident.”

“Drunk driver. Seven years ago. Dad had a flat tire on the interstate and pulled over on the shoulder. He'd just shut off the engine when this drunk girl—I think she was only about twenty-two or twenty-three—plowed into the back of his car and spun it back out into traffic. A semi hit him then, flipped his little Honda right over the guardrail. He was lucky to be alive. That's how he looked at it right from the start. The rest of us didn't deal with it half as well as he did. Especially me. I was just pure trouble there for a while.”

“You? That's kind of hard to picture.”

“Well, I don't mean I joined a motorcycle gang or anything. I was just ten. But I wasn't doing my homework, and I was always fighting with my sister and my mom and my teachers. Never my dad but everyone else. I basically hated everything. The sidewalk, the mailbox. Set a glass of milk down in front of me, and I hated that.”

“What happened? I mean, you sure ain't like that now.”

Her eyebrows slanted up, like maybe she thought she could still be that way a little sometimes. “Well, but every once in a while, when I see my dad struggling with something simple like putting his shoes on, it still makes me mad.”

“I don't blame you.” I was starting to see how she got that sad-for-the-world look in her eyes.

“I guess the turning point for me came one day when I was with my dad at the hospital. There were all these doctors in white coats walking by like ghosts, and the rooms filled up with people who'd gone wrong in some way, and it just hit me. Maybe I should try to do something to make them right
again. And to be honest, I think I was so mad about what happened, at how unfair it seemed, that I figured if I helped fix people it would be like getting even with whatever hurt my dad. Sort of like getting revenge, almost. That's when I made up my mind to go to medical school. From then on, I always felt like I was doing something about what happened, making something out of it.”