Stupid Fast (8 page)

“That’s bad,” I nodded at Andrew. It really was about the worst thing you could say to the poor kid.

I went inside, even though I didn’t want to. I found Jerri upstairs sitting on the couch with a wine bottle in front of her. She was staring out the picture window across the room.

“Um, hey, Jerri. Having some wine?”

She turned and looked at me.

“Felton, you look just like your father.”

“I’m six-one,” I said.

“Yeah, you are.”

“He was short. Remember?”

“Right.”

“Uh, you okay?”

“What do you think?”

“No.”

“Right again.”

“You really want that wine?” I asked.

“I do, but it makes me throw up, which isn’t really that great, Felton.”

“Did you drink wine before you went over to the Jenningses’ last night?”

Jerri looked out the window again. Then her cheeks began to tremble. She spoke out the window too, like she wasn’t talking to me at all.

“I haven’t had a decent conversation with a man in years,” she said.

“No. You have…Tito…”

“Don’t you bring up that ass.”

“Okay. You talk at the grocery store.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!” she shouted. Then she started sobbing really hard, which was terrible.

“I don’t know what to do, Jerri.”

“You don’t have to
do
anything, Felton. You’re a damn kid.”

“I want to help.”

“It’s not your problem! It’s not your problem! You got that, kid?”

I stared at her.

“Please go away, Felton,” she said, sobbing.

So I did. I went downstairs. What was I supposed to do?

I could’ve called Grandma, but that didn’t occur to me.

Jerri was an only child. There were no aunts or uncles or cousins to call, which I only thought about recently because Cody Frederick seems to be related to about ten percent of everyone in Bluffton, so this kind of thing couldn’t have happened to him.

My dad, of course, was not around. His parents and sister didn’t call us or write us or probably even think about us.

Gus and his parents, who were the closest thing me and Jerri had to people who cared about us, were in Venezuela.

Jerri’s dad was dead.

Grandma Berba, Jerri’s mom, lived in Arizona, and she seemed to hate Jerri. She really did. Jerri had always pretty much said Grandma Berba hated her (and I took that to mean she hated me and Andrew too—why wouldn’t she hate us? Who wouldn’t hate us?).

I should have called her right away. I didn’t know.

Andrew is the one who suffered.

I’m sorry. I went about my business then. I mean, I tried.

3:21 a.m.

Andrew was still out in the garage. Jerri sat silent in the living room. I stretched in my bedroom.

My body still hurt, but it was time to get going. I had to meet Cody Frederick and the other backs and receivers for pass routes after baseball. It was 8 a.m. Baseball practice finished at 10 a.m. Even though I could get to the field in ten minutes, I knew it was time to get going.

“What are you doing?” Andrew asked when I entered the garage.

“I have passing drills,” I told him, getting on my bike.

“You’re leaving?” he asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you want, I guess.”

He stared at me.

I left and biked up to Legion Field, where the baseball team was practicing, and Cody immediately shouted, “Yo, Reinstein! You’re a little early.”

Then all the honkies who had caused me pain and suffering for all those years started shouting, “Hey, Rein Stone! What’s up, Rein Stone? How’s it going, Rein Stone? Heard you dunked, Rein Stone.”

They used that “funny” name Rein Stone in a brand new way. It was like I heard it wrong all those years. They weren’t making fun of me. It was a good name. Rein Stone was like another word for pal or dude.

During practice, when somebody picked up a hard grounder or hit the ball hard, they looked up at me to see if I noticed, and I’d clap.

At one point, while the team was doing base-running drills, Coach Jones—a big fat ass gut buster with a country singer goatee who had once apparently pitched for the Chicago Cubs (not in the major leagues)—came over and said, “Can’t take you this year, Felton. Roster’s set. You practice a bit, and we’d sure be happy to see you out here next year.”

I said, “Okay, Coach.” Because I’d heard jocks do it all the time, I figured that it’s cool to coaches if you call them Coach, even if they’re not your coach, instead of calling them Mr. Jones or whatever. It must make them stand out from what they are at school otherwise, like driver’s ed instructors, lunch room monitors, keyboard teachers, etc. Coach.

Coach Jones wasn’t a regular teacher. He was the driver’s ed person at the county tech school.

“Hey Coach,” I asked, “How do I get my driver’s permit?”

“Stop by practice tomorrow, and I’ll bring you the paperwork,” he said. “Think about baseball next year?”

“Definitely, Coach,” I told him.

***

At one point, I believed nobody had noticed that I’m stupid fast. This was not the case at all.

Between baseball practice and pass routes, honkies galore came up to me and said stuff about my D-I prospects. “Wisconsin contact you yet? You on Rivals.com? Have you got your 40 time yet?” I answered no, not yet, to every question but only really understood the first one. The idea that the University of Wisconsin football team might contact me made me sweat a little, made my heart beat funny.

Uh, I didn’t know how to play football. Didn’t anyone realize that?

As far as Rivals.com and 40 times, I had no clue what the honkies were talking about.

***

I didn’t disappoint the honky class during routes though.

At first, I was a little unsteady and totally uncomfortable, and I could feel my face getting hot because it was embarrassing in a squirrel nut way. Cody would show me a route in the playbook and would tell me where to run, and I’d run it as fast as I could, and the pass would end up ten feet behind me and I’d try to twist around and get it, which would almost knock me down. “Slow down,” Cody said. “You can go all jackrabbit after you catch it. The only time you should take off like that from the line is if we’re going downfield.”

“Okay,” I nodded, but I wasn’t sure what he meant. (Face was frying hot from feeling stupid—honkies were whispering.)

So I breathed and slowed down. And that was it. It was there.

I sort of jogged the routes. And then somehow, it felt like there was nothing more natural in the world than running and receiving a football. Right away, when I moved more slowly, Cody threw it right to me, and I found out I can catch really well. I have really huge gorilla hands. (In the past, when I was shorter, I actually walked with my hands all balled up so nobody would think to call me gorilla.) Andrew has huge hands too, which is one of the reasons he’s so good at piano. Gorilla hands are perfect for catching a football, by the way. Catching a football felt like falling asleep when you’re super tired or taking a pee after you’ve just put down like ten gallons of water. So easy and so good. Catching a football felt like a huge relief.

Even though I was jogging, nobody could even come close to keeping up with me. Toward the end, Karpinski tried to cover me. I’d always hated Karpinski but had plans to grill with him and watch a football movie, remember, so I didn’t want to embarrass him. I didn’t really think I’d embarrass him. He’s a jock. And he’s a really good catch. But, it would seem, he isn’t very fast. I jogged around, and he stumbled all over himself. Cody threw the ball, and I caught it.

“Jesus Christ,” Karpinski shouted. Then he walked up to me and smacked the ball out of my hands, which I wasn’t ready for. I sort of tensed because it was an asshole thing to do, something Karpinski would do to Squirrel Nuts. But then he said, “Nobody can cover you, Rein Stone.” He was totally breathing hard like he was going to barf. “We’re gonna kick everybody’s ass.” That put me back at ease.

At the end, Cody said, “Coach doesn’t want me to do this, but just for fun, let’s do a fly.” Everyone else was drinking water out of bottles, lying around on the ground, sweating.

“Okay,” I said.

“Line up about in the slot.”

“Where?”

“Thirty feet that way,” Cody pointed, “When I say go, just goddamn gun it. I’ll try to hit you.”

“Downfield?” I asked.

“Yup.”

Everyone watched. I stood like I’d seen receivers stand on TV. When Cody said go, I let loose. I hadn’t run like that since track, and it felt unbelievably great. When I was about twenty yards down the field, Cody threw the ball. I tried to keep one eye on it and one on the ground, which didn’t work, and I stumbled a little. I balanced myself and kept running. Looking up, it seemed like the ball was a thousand feet in the air, and it seemed like it was going to pass me by and land way in front of me, so I just strode out as hard as I could, kept my eye in the sky, the little brown blob against the clear blue—and then it got bigger and bigger, and it was falling in front of me, so I stretched my arms way out and watched the ball drop into my hands. The honkies all cried “Woo!” Somebody shouted “Holy shit!” I turned around and jogged back toward the group like that catch was something I’ve done my whole squirrel nut life. Inside my chest, though, my heart exploded, not with heart attacks but with everything.

Catching a ball is the best.“That was the damn bomb right there,” Karpinski said, high-fiving me as I got to them.

Honkies smiling everywhere.

I smiled so hard I thought my face would break.

***

After pass routes, Cody put my bike in the back of his truck.

“That’s a hell of an old bike,” he said.

“It’s from when my dad was a kid,” I told him.

“It’s from when you were a kid. You’ve been riding that bike for like three years. You used to look hilarious on it.”

“Um.” Why did Cody remember my bike? Did I look that dumb? “Yeah. I could barely reach the pedals a couple years ago. Now it fits perfectly.”

“It was your dad’s?”

“Yeah.”

“He must have been tall too.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Me, Cody, and Karpinski then drove over to Main Street to grab a sub. We listened to rap music. I’d never listened to rap music. I felt like I was in some kind of bad ass rap-jock movie. Thump. Thump. Thump. Rap sort of makes things in slow motion. Heat came off the streets, which were reflecting the sun. The speakers boomed kind of lazy and scary.

Along the way, Karpinski—who was seriously sitting on my lap (“You pop wood, Rein Stone, and I’m going to have to punch you.”), which was gross, he was completely sweaty—said, “Erin Bellmeyer on the right.” Erin, a honky girl, walked down the street. Karpinski slid over me to get to the open window and then shouted, “Hey, Erin! Hey, Erin! You’re my Balls’ Mayor!” She laughed and flipped him off.

I don’t completely understand honky humor, which is maybe why I’ve not been funny.

At Subway, Karpinski was totally loud, swearing constantly, jamming a sandwich in his face, spitting food out, firing wet pieces of bread out of his straw at younger kids, who looked at him and smiled like they enjoyed it. I could see the fear in their frightened eyeballs though. I’ve been one of those kids. Me and Andrew got hit by spit wads by jocks way older than us when we were at Subway two years ago. I smiled like the poor dumb kids here when Karpinski did it. Even though he was only eleven, Andrew actually said, “You are so immature.” Andrew’s pretty fearless. I was mortified and told Andrew to shut up. I was still kind of mortified when Karpinski did it, even though I was no longer the target.

“You’re such a pig, Karpinski,” Cody laughed.

Karpinski snorted and jammed food in his mouth.

And I fake-laughed my entire ass off. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ho ho ho ho! My ass is falling off! Ha ha ha!
Thank God Gus is out of the country. He would skewer you for laughing.
Ha ha ha ha!

I’m an asshole.

When we got up from the table, my muscles were in walnut balls again.

“Ahh. Jeez, I’m sore!”

“Good. You worked hard enough. More weights tomorrow,” Cody smiled.

Cody and Karpinski drove me back to my house. (
Thump. Thump. We are Honky Gangstas. Thump.
) As we drove up the driveway, Karpinski, who had, of course, been a mammoth asshole to me as long as I can remember, said, “You’re not as big a dickweed as I thought, Rein Stone.” We did some kind of weird handshake. I decided he wasn’t that big a jerk really (seriously, he isn’t). Then we got to the top of the driveway.

Andrew was still outside the house. He was sitting upside down in a lawn chair, with his back arched so his straight hair touched the gravel. He had his arms crossed over his chest. He stared at the truck.

“That kid is a dickweed,” Karpinski said.

“He’s my brother. He’s a little pissed off today.”

“That’s why he’s upside down?” Karpinski asked.

“Probably.”

Cody jumped out and helped me get my Schwinn Varsity out of the back of the truck. Upside down, Andrew stared the whole time.

After Cody and Karpinski left, I wheeled my bike passed upside down Andrew. I said, “Jerri still drinking wine?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m an animal. I live outside, pee in the yard, and steal cucumbers from gardens.”

“Jesus, Andrew. You’re acting like a freak.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m a freak.”

I parked my bike in the garage, entered the house, and found it dark and quiet.

Jerri was out cold the whole rest of the afternoon. I checked on her a couple of times. She was breathing. It actually occurred to me that I was acting like Jerri when she’d stand there watching me while I watched TV (pretending to be asleep so I wouldn’t have to talk to her).
Is she really sleeping?
One time, I got real close to her and put my hand in front of her face to see if she’d flinch because maybe she was pretending to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to talk, but she didn’t move. Plus, there was no TV in Jerri’s room at that time, so there wasn’t anything she could be squinting at.

I spent most of the afternoon watching TV myself, a Big Ten Network replay of the 1994 Rose Bowl game, where Wisconsin beat UCLA. Wisconsin had this little bowling ball running back who ran over people and stomped on their heads.
He’s tougher than you, but you’re faster.
As I watched, I stretched my legs because they seriously hurt. Andrew never came inside.

Around seven, I took him out a goat cheese sandwich. He still sat in that stupid lawn chair out on the driveway.

“Why don’t you come inside?” I asked.

“I’m not welcome in my own home,” he said.

“Yes, you are, Andrew. Just come in and watch TV, okay?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

About ten minutes later, he did come in though.

“Can I watch cartoons?” he asked.

I got off the couch, motioned for him to sit down, then went into my bedroom to email Gus from my laptop. I wasn’t sure where to start. So I just said:
jerri lost her marbles today. might be in trouble
. I hit send and went into the bathroom to shower. While I scrubbed my fur-bursting, pee-smelling jock body, I figured Andrew had stayed out of the house for over twelve hours. He’s no dickweed. He’s tough as hell. I also thought, Gus will reply with something good. He’ll help me figure out what to do about this crazy shit.

Gus is only sixteen too, of course. What was I expecting?

I dressed in the biggest jeans I could find, not that they were big. They were far too small for my body. Jerri bought them for me in late May, just a month before. I was still growing like a weed (not a dickweed). All this growth and too small pants, etc., made me wonder if I could seriously take that jerk Ken Johnson in the 100 meters. My guess was yes. If only I had the chance. I pulled on the longest T-shirt I had, so as not to show off my furry belly button, and headed out past Andrew watching
SpongeBob
.

“Where are you going?” Andrew asked.

“Bike ride. Call if you experience any trouble.”

Andrew pulled the phone off the side table and sat it in his lap but didn’t say anything else; just kept watching the sponge.

Of course, I couldn’t tell him I was going to see Aleah.

***

Why couldn’t I tell him? Because he’d probably have wanted to come with me, okay? Or he might have tailed me and gone all peeping tom in the windows. He had my cell number if something went wrong, and Jerri had it on speed dial on the phone, so he could just press a button, and I’m very fast. I could get back to the house in mere minutes if need be. There was clearly no reason to bring up the sore subject of Aleah. What if he woke Jerri? What if Zombie Jerri was in a Frankenstein mood and got the word from loose lips Andrew and decided to lumber over to the Jenningses’ again? (“Give me some wine!”) I sincerely doubted my relationship with Jennings, both father and daughter, could withstand another dose of drunken Franken-Jerri. It was good judgment, sound judgment on my part not to tell Andrew anything, okay?

Crap.

So I biked toward my ridiculous paper route, not to deliver papers but to see a girl who plays piano and who lives in my best friend’s house. The sun was still pretty high because it was summer. I sweated in my tight jeans because it was summer. I smelled the pee-smell of my own athlete’s body. I biked to see a girl, it occurred to me, who may well not want to see me at all, who may well be under instructions from her father to bring me to her house for purposes not even remotely regarding the love I had in mind.

I haven’t yet reported on the sound of my anxiety fantasies. Sounds like this:

What if this is some kind of intervention? What if Mr. Jennings called a social worker, some harsh-looking old lady who tells me that I’m going to be pulled from my home and stuck in foster care or the care of the state because Jerri is obviously an unfit mother because we call her Jerri and she doesn’t really work (“What kind of work is being a crossing guard, Felton? That’s not real work.”), and she has hair under her arms, and she sleeps in her car when she’s drunk (“Jerri Berba is entirely unfit.”). This could be it, Felton. This could be the beginning of a nightmare without end. Andrew and I will send letters back and forth from shag-carpet country homes, rundown, stinky, dirty homes owned by dirty people who make money taking in defenseless foster kids. They’ll use the money to buy beer and cigarettes, and they’ll blow cigarette smoke in my face and burn Andrew’s forearms with their butts, and they’ll force him to drink beer too. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! The letters between me and Andrew will be filled with our love for each other and be filled with the severe abuse we’re enduring. But it won’t matter because the abuse will eventually break us down, kill our brotherly love, because we’re not strong enough, and we’ll grow apart and get hardened and do crimes and get no cards or calls from Jerri. Poor Jerri—screaming for wine, crying, stuck in a straitjacket in some rat-sack dirtbag asylum in some dirty city. This is crazy. Come on. Snap out of it, Felton. Come on. No! No! You’re not being crazy at all! This is not implausible and stupid at all! You found your dad hanging from a beam in your garage! Five years old! You know the whole wide world of horror isn’t something from a stupid movie. It’s reality. It’s true! The whole wide world of horror will open up. It’s ready to swallow you whole at any given moment, particularly this particular moment because this moment with Andrew saying he’s an animal that pees in the yard and Jerri buying ten bottles of wine is just the kind of moment when…

“Are you planning to park your bike?” Aleah was standing at the end of her driveway, her arms hanging at her sides, her mouth open, her eyes blinking. I realized I’d been circling her block for like ten minutes.

I can be a serious head case. Truly.

I stopped my bike and breathed (
om shanti shanti shanti—dang it
).

“Sorry. I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

“Bad stuff.”

“I figured that. Would you like some iced tea?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Come inside then.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

***

Aleah is an odd person. I found that out right away. She’s extremely intense all the time. This is not reserved for piano playing. Her piano playing is just a normal part of how she is second to second, minute to minute, day to day. On fire.

“I love human drama,” she told me.

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure I agreed.

“Your family’s weird.”

“Yes. That’s true.” She was certainly right.

“I’m weird. It’s okay to be weird.”

“I don’t know.”

“I embrace being weird.”

“Oh.” Huh?

We sat on opposite ends of Gus’s couch in the living room. She’d poured me some really sweet iced tea that tasted almost like blueberry juice. She sat cross-legged, facing me. She was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt and jeans and a red bandanna tied over her hair. I couldn’t exactly turn toward her because my legs are long. They felt twenty feet long.
I’m spaghetti man.
So I had to keep them on the floor in front of me because if I tried to sit cross-legged, I’d fall off the couch. I didn’t tell Aleah, but just three years before, Gus and I had made a fort out of this couch’s pillows. We’d written out a list of people who weren’t allowed in the fort, which included our mothers. We then played with super balls inside the fort. We named the balls after honkies (a couple of whom I’d eaten lunch with that day), and we threw them hard against the wood floor, saying crap like “Take that Karpinski!” Several times, the balls bounced off our faces, which hurt and which made us even madder at the honkies.
You want to hear about weird, Aleah?

“I’ve always been weird,” Aleah said. “But I’m weirder now than ever.”

“Where’s your dad?” I asked.

“He’s teaching. Then he goes for a glass of wine with another English prof.”

“Wine?”

“Yes.”

This was not to be an intervention.

“Does your dad know I’m here?” I asked.

“Of course. Daddy suggested I invite you over. I would’ve anyway. He’s worried about you, you know?”

Okay.
“Tell me what happened last night, okay?”

It wasn’t as bad as I thought. There was no screaming or breaking and entering or talk of turnips or engagement or Tito. Jerri didn’t mention me or Andrew at all either. She’d just knocked on the door sometime after midnight. She said she only knocked because the light was on. She looked like she’d been crying. She told Aleah’s dad, who’s named Ronald, that she had a lovely time talking to him. He agreed it was nice to talk. Then she left. “Daddy said she smelled like alcohol, but she wasn’t acting drunk,” Aleah said. “We both thought it was odd, of course, but not that odd. My mom acted much crazier than your mom.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s not so bad. I figured Jerri kicked in your door and killed your cat or something,” I said.

“We don’t have a cat.”

“I mean, not literally.”

“Yes, well, there’s a little more.” Aleah nodded.

Aleah was playing piano around 3 a.m. when the doorbell rang again. Ronald came bounding out of his bedroom in his pajamas, looked at Aleah, and said, “This is a little much,” assuming Jerri was at the door. But it wasn’t Jerri. It was a police officer.

“Sorry to bother you. Saw the light on. Just wondering if you know Jerri out there?” The police officer turned and pointed to Jerri’s car, parked out front.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

Ronald told the officer that he did know her. The officer asked Ronald to dump out the bottle of wine he’d found on the front seat.

“She’s asleep,” the officer said.

“That’s the bottle of wine she brought over when she came for dinner,” Ronald told the officer, which was a lie, of course. “She didn’t drink much of it.”

The officer paused for a moment, stared at Ronald, looked over at Aleah, then told them to be nice to Jerri. He said that he’d known her all his life and that she’s a good girl. He said she’s had a rough life.

“Oh my God. That cop was Cody Frederick’s dad.”

“The policeman said he’d call your mom in the morning to check up on her.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if he did.”

“Why has your mom had a rough life, Felton?” Aleah asked.

“Ummm, suicide?”

“Suicide. Your dad?”

“Ummm, yes. But Jerri’s never been…She’s never been bad off. She’s always been okay until this year. I think.”

“It’s getting dark! Let’s go for a walk!” Aleah said, jumping off the couch.

***

There is one social class in Bluffton I’ve failed to mention. It’s the class, I guess, that Jerri probably belonged to, at least when she was a really young girl. You’ve got your honkies. You’ve got your poop-stinkers. You’ve got your college kids. Then you’ve got this big group of sort of hidden kids whose parents work at Kwik Trip or Subway or in bars or not at all. It’s a pretty fine line between honkies and these people sometimes, and the big difference is parents that drink a lot of beer and are noisy when they do, which is maybe why Jerri was sort of one of these people. (My grandpa, who died of lung cancer when I was a baby, owned a bar, made a lot of noise, drank a lot of beer.) The reason she wasn’t exactly one of these people is that her mom, Grandma Berba, who now lives in a condo in Arizona, sold insurance, divorced my grandpa, and didn’t drink a lot of beer. Plus, Jerri is really smart and was really good at school, which means she turned honky, or almost college kid, from how she described it. This class in Bluffton tends to ride in the back of ugly cars, live in ugly houses close to Main Street or in trailer parks on the outskirts of town, wear clothes from garage sales, swear a lot, get into fights when they’re in middle school (or pregnant in eighth grade), then sort of disappear when they’re in high school. If they don’t disappear, it’s either because they’re serious criminals, or loud, raspy girl-drunks, or because they’ve migrated into honkiness, which means they’re probably okay at school or sports. You might call them townies or burners or druggies. Gus calls them dirt balls, but it didn’t catch on with me because the name made me feel bad for my grandpa and for Jerri. It’s the serious criminals you have to watch out for.

Herein lies the story of how Aleah was made aware of townies (or dirt balls) because of an interaction with a couple of serious criminals, Rick and Rob Randle.

Aleah and I left her house and walked out onto Hickory Street. The sun was setting, and the sky was all orange and purple. It was really pretty.

“I really love how the air smells here,” she said.

“Like poop?” I asked.

“Is that poop?” she asked.

“I’ve always thought of it as poop,” I said.

“It smells like the country,” she said.

“Like poop,” I said.

“Chicago smells worse in the summer,” she said.

“Chicago smells worse than poop?”

Aleah laughed.

“Uh huh,” she smiled and nodded.

“Do you miss Chicago?” I asked.

“No. Not really. I’ve had a bad year.”

“Why?”

“My mom.”

“Suicide?”

“No. Not even close! Too much life in her. That’s what Daddy says.”

“Oh.”

We turned right on Davis Street and walked along the curb. There aren’t many sidewalks in this newer part of town.

“So,” I said, “how does it feel to be the best piano player of your age group in the universe?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and she tilted her head and squinted like she was thinking.

“Do you think there might be really good piano players in China or Russia or something, so you can’t be sure you’re the best?”