Chris Crutcher - Whale Talk

Snowflakes build on the windows. Other than Coach slipping out to put out a new flare, or Icko intermittently starting the engine, there is nothing more than the sound of heavy breathing.

“You might decide you’d rather be a one-legged white boy than all brown an’ shit,” Mott says, after I’ve been sure he’s asleep, “but believe me, you’d damn well rather be brown than be somebody got done by his mother’s boyfriend.”

I can’t even imagine it, can’t believe he’s telling me.

As I think it, he says, “My counselor says the only chance I have is to tell people I’m a prick; that way I might have less reason to act like one.” He settles down in the seat. “So, consider yourself told.”

Around four the interior fills again with light, and an engine idles in the near distance. Icko is out the door, scrambling up the hill before most of us can clear our eyes, and before we know it, a state snowplow driver has us standing in the snow while he hooks a chain to the front bumper and hauls the bus to the highway. He and Icko pound the fender away from the wheel far enough to make it drivable, and we are headed through the snowy night, our first meet-and our first group therapy session-behind us.

We’re famous in Cutter for a couple of days after “plunging off the treacherous, icy two-lane” and “surviving the wintry night,” as the Cutter Free Press put it. Our team picture made the front page, and with the story slanted toward the events after the meet, the events of the meet were cleverly obscured.

The school paper took a different slant:

Cutter Mermen Set Records

In a performance this past weekend that may well rival the winning of the state football championship, the Cutter High School swim team set school records in nine individual events and one relay. Swimmers Dan Hole, Andy Mott, Jackie Craig, Simon DeLong, Tay-Roy Kibble, Chris Coughlin, and The Tao Jones scored points in those nine events in a losing effort. The small size of Cutter’s team made winning either of the meets in this double-dual event virtually impossible. Cutter’s team includes no divers, and their small numbers exclude them from participating in more than one of the two relays.

Nevertheless, the Herculean efforts of the small but fiercely competitive group of athletes could be the seed that spawns an athletic dynasty in the distant future, the likes of which Cutter High School has never known, according to team Captain T. J. Jones.

Coach John Simet was not available for comment.

A controversy arises over some of the syntax and word choices, but the reporter and the editor were able to convince the journalism teacher that certain journalistic license was in order to present the team in its most positive light. It may have helped that the editor and the reporter are one and the same, and the journalism teacher didn’t actually see the article until the paper was published and in the hands of the student body.

Simet sits on top of his desk in the empty classroom a few minutes after the bell, reading and laughing while I stand by the door waiting.

He places the paper on his desk. “Man, I am going to, if you’ll pardon the expression, eat shit over this.”

I stare at my article. “You think?” I read a few sentences aloud. “Nothing there that isn’t fact. I guess I could have played up Mott’s disqualification, but why bust a guy when he’s riding high?”

“Do you have any idea how Benson and Roundtree will respond to this? I’ve got to present our letter requirements at the Athletic Council meeting this afternoon. You’ll be lucky if they don’t require you guys to win every meet just to win a lowercase letter.”

“Tell them I got out of control.”

“They won’t have trouble believing that.”

“And that you’re pissed; that you’re requiring me to write a column next week about how facts can be used to present a different picture than what is true.”

“It’s just not in your nature to try to make my life easy, is it, Jones?”

I agree it is probably not in my nature.

I’m not in the hallway five seconds before I hear the melodic tones of Mike Barbour floating to my ears.

“Jones!”

I turn. He’s with Rich Marshall, carrying the newspaper. “Saw this article on your swim team.”

I say I’m glad he was able to get someone to read it to him.

“I got through it okay. Took me a while, though. Kept stumbling over the word dynasty.”

“It does have three syllables.”

“That wasn’t my problem,” he says back. “My problem was with the meaning . I thought it meant something about winners. What was that, some Special Olympics swim meet?”

“You’re welcome to get some of your football boys together for a little intramural meet,” I tell him. “Say maybe as a fundraiser to get some of you guys tutors.”

“We’ll do a swim meet,” he says, “if you guys wanna follow it up with a little flag football game.”

Marshall clears his throat. Man, I feel like I’ve been transported to jock-monster hell. These guys are the worst of the worst. This isn’t about athletics, this is about assholes. “Do you have any respect for anything, Jones?”

“Yeah, I have respect for some things,” I say back, and have to hold myself back from saying I have respect for little kids and women and their right not to be treated totally like shit by some unconscious subhuman ass wipe.

“Like what?” he says.

“Nothing you’d recognize, Rich. Really, save your brain cell for helping the PE teachers pick up balls after class. Maybe they’ll let you keep a few of them so you’ll have enough to figure out that a real hunter only murders adult animals.” Man, I’ve got it going for these guys, more than I realized. I feel snakebit every time I’m around either of them.

“You better be a little careful what you say to me, Jones,” Marshall says. “I’m the same as a teacher when I’m in the building. Don’t make me report you.”

“Report me, Marshall. Report me. Go tell Morgan I’m showing you nothing but contempt. Be accurate for once in your life. Do it next period. I’ve got a history quiz.”

Barbour steps forward and my heart races. I can’t say how much I want to mix it up; how badly I want to feel my knuckles buried in the cartilage of his nose, see blood splattered on the lockers. I don’t even care whether it’s his or mine. “You’ll never see one of those goofballs you call swimmers in a Cutter letter jacket,” he says. “Not one. You know who the male student rep to the Athletic Council is? You’re looking at him, my friend of color. Off color.” He grins.

“You guys just keep doing what you do,” I say, my voice pinched as I walk away, slowly as if I couldn’t give a shit; in fact I can barely breathe. I get upstairs and into an empty science lab, where I lean against the wall and talk myself out of going to the council meeting myself to tell them how screwed up it is to give a nothing-burger like Mike Barbour a vote on the athletic welfare of Chris Coughlin or Simon DeLong.

I don’t have to run into Marshall more than once in a day to give myself permission to get out of the building for lunch. I invite Carly to my house for something to eat and anything else that might happen, since Mom is at work and Dad usually spends Wednesdays out at Head Start, but she has a paper due, so I drive over alone. This thing is getting out of hand, starting to mean too much. What will I do if Mike Barbour ends up with the deciding vote on our letter jackets?

Dad’s car is in the driveway, so I figure I’ll run it all by him; he’s always good for an intelligent perspective. But I don’t see or hear him inside. I pour a big glass of Gatorade and dig some cold chicken and potato salad out of the fridge, take it into the living room, and flip on Sports Center. Dad’s coat lies across the back of the couch and his boots are under the coffee table; very unusual because my dad is a world-class neat freak. I mean, he can have a bike torn down in the garage and every tool is in its place before he stops to take a leak. Mom kids him about it all the time.