I laid out of school and practice for a week. I can miss one game, I thought. Nobody was pleased, except probably U-Haul, but all I had in me was a ten-yard gimp hop through the living room in my sad droopy drawers to the downstairs head. Mattie Kate in the stands. Otherwise sleeping my life away on the couch bed. Every four hours I’d wake up, empty the tanks if needed, goddamn the whole mess to hell, and cruise away again, thank you Lortab. Doc said to double them up, and set an alarm and keep that good stuff in my blood around the clock. Eating I don’t recall, though I must have. Only the bottles of lime Gatorade standing by to wash down the pills.
Coach and Doc Watts launched an offense on the bone doctor (or rather, his poor receptionist) and got me an appointment for the next Monday, early, before the busy man went into his surgeries. I wasn’t excited for it. What if he wanted to cut on me? I was in no mood. Coach said not to worry, the bone guy would get me fixed up. Maybe in time for next Friday.
At school the rumors flew. Absent Demon was way more interesting than the real me. Angus came home to report my leg was: (1) broken, (2) not broken, (3) sprained (sprung, if we’re technical), (4) amputated (above the knee and below, pick one), (5) I was medivacked by helicopter to the brain hospital in Nashville and in a coma. Angus laughing. Me, just watching the clock. She had the rumors list written down her arm in marker, reading it all out. I was still an hour out from my next date with Lortab, and in no version of reality was I going to hold out that long.
Angus got quiet then, studying my sheet-covered leg. This was up in my room, after an assisted crawl up the stairs for privacy and better bathroom access. A guy needs his dignity. Angus was cross-legged on the bottom of my bed in her denim overalls and red socks. Hair up in the devil-horn knobs she’d taken on as her favored look.
“Hurts, huh.”
I laughed, just a bark: ahhuh. I told her I used to think I knew what hurt was. But this leg I would trade for the worst busted face and ribs my stepdad ever gave me. I’d even throw in cash. Her gray eyes edged up from my leg to my face. “That is one screwed up economy, bro.”
“Meaning what.”
She shrugged. Scooted over a little and recrossed her red sock feet, making herself at home on my bed. “You don’t have to trade one cockup for another one. What about like, trading up? Just get this shit over with, looking to better times ahead.”
“Gee, never thought of that. I bet next week the doc will wave his wand over this fucked-up knee and I’ll run a seventy-yard touchdown and we’ll all fart perfume. Why don’t you go out for cheerleader, miss sunshine?”
She shook her head, a small, quick move, not looking at me but out the window. What to do with Demon, the hard kid to handle. Age-old question. I felt meanness bubbling up inside me, like a burp of sour vomit. I made myself swallow it back down. “Sorry,” I said.
She looked back at me. Lord, those eyes. “What the hell are you so scared of?”
Dori had asked the same question. Clearly I needed to shore up some leaks. “You don’t know what it’s like to be me, is all I’m saying. To be sidelined, with no family or anything.”
Her eyes changed color, I swear. Light gray to darker. Didn’t say a word, but I knew what she thought. Coach was trying to give me things I refused to take. Maybe family was one of them. That and the silver money card she flew around on. I leaned over and grabbed the little orange pill bottle I’d hardly taken my eyes off of in the last half hour. Press-screwed the cap, gulped down my Lortabs and Gatorade. Closed my eyes, breathed. The pill itself tasted of rescue. I opened my eyes to the stare of Angus. She was weirdly patient, in a manner that could wreck you.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “Coach is great and everything. Because I’m the best tight end he’s had coming up in a lot of seasons. That’s the reason I’m here.”
“You really think that’s all.”
“Christ, Angus. He put me through tryouts, right after I came here. He checked me for speed and ball handling and I did pretty good, or I guess more than pretty good, and he told me I could stay. You didn’t know that? It was right after Christmas, down in his office. Deal struck.”
She didn’t know that, it was plain to see.
“Don’t act shocked. The man’s got his job to do. And right now, my speed and ball handling are for shit. Not a great position to be in.”
She started picking a loose thread in the sheet, really pulling at it. She would maim the sheet if she kept that up. The type of thing that kids get smacked for in certain homes, starved for in others. Punishments vary widely among households. “I’ve always expected to pull my weight here,” I told her. “That’s all I want. I’m not one to ask for handouts.” Maybe I sounded like an old man. Mr. Peg, former miner, hillbilly pure. Why wouldn’t I.
“For God’s sake, Demon. You’re a kid.”
“Am I, though?”
She shook her head, small and fast again. I wasn’t trying to be difficult, just straight. It’s all I knew how to be, with Angus. “He’s not going to kick you out because you got injured, playing his game,” she said. “Give my father some credit.”
I’d not known her to call him “my father” before, ever. He was Coach. I told her I didn’t think he’d give up on me, because I was important to the team. I planned on finishing out the season, with two years left to make my name as a General. I didn’t spell out to Angus what she couldn’t understand: that without football I’d be nobody again. That the loser Demon was still right there under the surface, and if I lost the shine, I was nothing. I’d never get Dori.
Somehow Angus decided she’d cheered me up. She went back to her list of my rumored sorry fates. “On the good side, you’re rocking the vote for homecoming court.”
“Bullshit, I’m only a sophomore.”
“I’m just the messenger here. You, sire, are headed for coronation.”
“Not happening. Anyway, I don’t want the pity vote. If I win, it’s got to be for my ripped physique and shallow personality.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I see that. But you’d better take what you can get. It’s not a pity vote if you’re injured in the line of duty. Like that soldier thing. Purple cross.”
“Purple heart,” I said. “Shit for brains.”
She smacked the flat bib of her overalls. “Dope!”
Her clowning was known to pull me out of a mood, but in this case it was the Lortabs. I was nodding off to happyland. Should take a piss first. Bedwetting was an ever-present danger on this regimen. You aim for that brief window where the pain is tamped down to bearable, but you’re not yet too dopeshit to haul ass out of bed. She watched me tilt and lever myself off the mattress, knifing in loud breaths until I was upright.
“Aw jeez, Demon. You gotta update the under wardrobe.”
She wasn’t wrong. The old cottonbottoms had lost all hope of whitey or tighty.
June must have got it through the school pipeline via Emmy, so there’s no telling what injury she thought I had. But I woke up and there she was, staring at my pill bottle. Straight from work, in her white coat with the plastic name tag. Under the coat, a black sweater and pants. The sexy way she bent forward straight-backed, like a hinge from her narrow waist, put Dori into my head. If not for the pain I could have pitched a tent right there.
“Hey!” I said, sounding hoarse and groggy. I might have double-doubled up the Lortabs. Doing the same thing day in, day out, you can forget if something happened an hour ago or yesterday.
“How long have you been taking these?”
I thought about it. “What day is today?”
She blew out a puff of air and swiveled around. Coach was in the doorway, red hat, lanyard and whistle around his neck, looking like any minute here he might make June run suicides. “Who put him on these?”
