Chris Crutcher - Whale Talk

“Who said, ‘Bring it.”

These guys are pissed , but for the moment Simet seems to hold the cards. Barbour looks at me as if he’d like to come over the table and take me out right there, and I couldn’t wish for anything more.

“Very well,” Benson says. “We’ll take that under advisement, maybe talk with the district’s counsel. I have one more thing I’d like an answer to.”

Simet says, “Shoot.”

“This is for Jones.”

I lean forward on my elbows on the tabletop, feeding off Simet’s strength.

Benson says, “Jones, tell us about the two hundred freestyle at State.”

“Not much to tell,” I say. “I never felt better.”

“And you finished sixth?”

“Dead last,” I say.

When the gun sounded for the two hundred at State, it was like I said-I never felt stronger. But back at Cutter, all they wanted were the points. They didn’t care how Jackie Craig or Andy Mott or Simon DeLong or Dan Hole or Chris Coughlin walked away feeling. They just wanted the points.

Words can’t do justice to the sensation of the cool water rushing over my shoulders and back, my stroke nearly perfect through the entire race. I finished the second hundred faster than the first, and a full thirty seconds slower than my fastest time. And we go into spring six points behind in our quest for the all-sport trophy.

“I think you tanked that race, Jones. I looked at your time.”

“I prefer to think I just ended my season a couple of minutes early,” I say.

“You have no respect for anything.”

“Sure I do, Coach. I have respect for the guys I swam with and the season we made. What I don’t have any respect for is you guys.”

Benson looks out the window, gathers himself, then calls an end to the meeting.

“Wait,” Barbour says. “You mean that’s it? We don’t have anything to say about this? These guys wear Cutter blue and gold? Man, I could swim faster than at least four of those guys.”

Before I even think, I say, “Tell you what, Barbour. If you can stay with Chris Coughlin for one workout, we’ll end this discussion for good. No letters, no litigation, no whining. But same for you. If you can’t, you shut the hell up.”

“Chris Coughlin?” he says. “That little reta-punk?”

“Yeah,” I say. “That little retard. Three-thirty Monday afternoon. He’ll be waiting.”

“That okay with you, Mr. Simet?” Barbour says.

Simet plays it just right, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Chris…”

Barbour goes on the offensive. “Come on, you heard the offer,” he says. “It’s coming from the captain of the team.”

Simet glances at me as if he wants to wash my mouth out with soap, takes a deep breath. “You want to take that back, T. J.?”

I hesitate.

“What’s the matter, tough guy?” Barbour says. “Open your mouth a little too quick?”

“The offer stands.”

Barbour says, “I’ll be there.”

Simet looks to the rest of the council. “How about it, folks? At least we could end in agreement.”

There is talk of this being highly irregular, but in fairly short order agreement is reached. If Chris Coughlin can outlast Mike Barbour in the water, the members of the swim team get their letters.

Back in Simet’s office, I congratulate him on his abilities as a thespian. This is a better deal than the original. Chris Coughlin has been in the water every day for three months. He was a pretty good little swimmer before he started; it was Chris who gave me the idea for all this in the first place. I don’t care what kind of athlete Barbour is, he won’t last. If you’re going to be a swimmer, you gotta swim.

While we were at State, Rich Marshall turned up the heat, calling the house from pay phones all over town and slamming down the phone when he heard a voice that wasn’t Alicia’s. Alicia agreed not to answer under any circumstances, and she was holding to her word, though she said the rings themselves were starting to sound threatening, as if he were able to turn the bell inside the phone malicious. So this afternoon Mom is at work and Dad is in the garage working on some bikes, she picks it up on the first ring, and lo and behold, guess who. He says if she’ll meet him with the kids just once more, he’ll leave her alone for good. He’s in his contrite mode, begging that a man should be allowed to see his sons. They argue about whether she’ll bring Heidi, but in the end she has to, or Heidi will tell my parents they’re gone. She hollers to Dad out in the garage that she’s going to take the kids up into the trees in the large vacant lot behind the house to make a snowman, and loads them up.

By the time Dad figures out they’re not in the vacant lot, there’s no way to track them down, so he calls the cops and waits. It’s after dinner when they come home. Alicia lies and says she decided to take the kids to buy some toys at a little secondhand toy store about three miles from the house. When Mom asks her to produce the toys, she can’t, and Thing Two says, “We saw Daddy!” Heidi sits in the wooden rocker over by the fireplace, thumb crammed into her mouth to the hilt, staring at the fire.

Dad tells Alicia she’d better pack her stuff, because when he reports to her caseworker in the morning, she’ll surely have to move out, and Alicia goes into meltdown, sobbing and begging for another chance. Thing One and Thing Two gather around her and kind of pet her head; Heidi never gets out of the chair.

And then the phone rings.

Dad picks it up to the click of the handset being slammed down. When Rich started calling over the weekend, Dad researched the locations of the phone booths through the phone company as the numbers popped up on Caller ID. Tonight he puts a piece of paper by the phone and traces Rich’s movements. By the tenth or eleventh call, a pattern appears.

Dad gets the video camera out of the closet and picks up his cell phone. “Plug a phone and a Caller ID gadget into the computer line,” he tells me. “When you see my cell phone number, pick up. It should come right on the heels of a pay phone call on the other line.”

My mom asks what he’s doing.

“I’m gonna get him on this no-contact order,” he says. “It’s not valid for Alicia now, because she was the one who broke it, but it’s good for us. The camera records the time of the shot, and Caller ID does the same. I’ll zoom in on him and take it to the cops. Let him cool his heels in the slammer for a few more weekends.”

Mom says, “John Paul, why don’t you just call the police and let them do this?”

“Because they don’t do it. It’s low priority until after he hurts someone, and truthfully, Rich Marshall has too many friends on the force. He’s been getting away with crap for years.” He moves toward the door with determination. “We should have hit him with everything we had back when he shot the deer out from under T. J.”

Mom tells him to be careful as Heidi comes through the kitchen door, one hand dripping soapsuds, the other dripping blood. Mom rushes to her. “Heidi, what happened?”

“It works!” Heidi says, touching her raw forearm.

Mom takes a Brillo pad from her other hand.

I close my eyes. “She found something to take the brown off. Goddamn it!”

“Who told you to do this?” Dad says.

Heidi doesn’t look up, runs her fingers over her forearm. “Daddy Rich.”

Dad’s out the door.

Mom and Alicia take Heidi to clean up her arm, while Mom tells Alicia this is her doing. I haven’t seen my mother this pissed since I peed on the hot steam radiator when I was five.

As if the minor gods in charge of jerks are doing their job, the telephone starts ringing from phone booths at about ten-minute intervals, which means Rich has gone into dumb-shit mode, driving directly from one to the next. I call Dad on the cell phone and we follow him. “Just look for that stupid red dually,” I tell him. “Very photogenic automobile.”