Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

After my nap I went downtown, trying to walk off the effects of the dream, and ran into Justin Mayhew, our quarterback, a compact, muscular kid with shoulder-length brown hair. He was sitting on the curb out front of the Tastee-Freeze, looking glum. I joined him and he told me that he was worried about the offensive line holding up.

“That number eighty-seven liked to have killed me last year,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” I said, and mentioned my concerns about Fifty-five. “If you see him lining me up, throw the ball away. because I’m going to protect myself first and think about catching it second.”

“If I can see around those fat bastards they got on defense, I will.” He hawked and spat. “Tuttle’s a damn idiot. He can’t game plan for shit.”

Conversation lagged and Justin was making noises about going out to Snade’s, when Mr. Pepper, the ancient school janitor, came shuffling along. He was moving slower than usual and looked somewhat ragged around the edges. We said, “Hey, how you doing?” Normally a garrulous sort, he kept walking. “Hey!” I said, louder this time. Without turning, in a small, raspy voice, he said, “Go to blazes.”

We watched him round the corner.

“Did he say, ‘Go to blazes?’ ” I asked.

“He must be drinking again.” Justin got to his feet. “Want to run out to Snade’s with me?”

“What the hell,” I said.

The arc lights were on and the bleachers at Pirate Field were half-full when I arrived for the game. The crowd was mainly Taunton boosters, and they were celebrating early, hooting and carrying on; they were cordoned off from Edenburg supporters by a chain that didn’t serve much purpose when passions started to run high. They always brought more people than the bleachers could hold, the overflow spilling onto the sideline behind the Warrior bench. It was like a home game for them. The image of a black-bearded pirate brandishing a saber adorned the scoreboard, and following each victory, they would paint over his jolly grin with an expression of comical fright.

We dressed in a bunkerlike structure in back of the bleachers and the atmosphere inside it was similar, I imagined, to the mood on death row prior to an execution: guys sitting in front of their lockers, wearing doomed expressions. Only Doyle seemed in good spirits, whistling under his breath and briskly strapping on his pads. His locker was next to mine, and when I asked what made him so cheerful, he leaned over and whispered, “I did what you said to.”

I looked at him, bewildered. “Huh?”

He glanced around the room, as if checking for eavesdroppers, and said, “I fixed their bus.”

I had a vision of bodies scattered across a highway and Doyle in handcuffs telling the police, “I just did what Andy told me.” I pushed him against the locker and asked what exactly he had done.

“Ease off, dog!” He barred his elbow under my chin and slipped away. “I nicked their fuel line, okay?”

“They’ll just call for another bus.”

“They can call,” he said. “But all their backups got their tires slashed. or so I hear.” He winked broadly. “Relax, man. It’s in the bag.”

It was like someone spiked my paranoia with relief, and I began to feel pretty good. We went out for warm-ups. Taunton had not yet arrived, and an uneasy buzz issued from the bleachers. Coach Tuttle conferred with the game officials while we did our stretches. I ran a few patterns, caught some of Justin’s wobbly passes. The field was a brilliant green under the lights; the grass was soft and smelled new mown, the chalked lines glowed white and precise; the specter of Number Fifty-five diminished. The chirpy voices of our cheerleaders sounded distant:. the Edenburg Pirates are hard to beat. They got pads on their shoulders and wings on their feet . Tuttle sent us back inside and went to talk more with the officials.

In the locker room guys were asking, What happened? They gonna forfeit? Doyle just smiled. An air of hopeful expectation possessed the team as it dawned on everyone that we might be going to regionals. Then Tuttle came back in, put his hands on his hips, and said, “They’re here.” That let the air out of things.

“They’re here,” Tuttle repeated grimly. “And they don’t want no warm-up. Do you hear that? They think they can beat us without even warming up.” He searched our faces. “Prove ’em wrong.”

I suppose he was going for a General Patton effect, trying to motivate with a few well-chosen words in place of his typical rant; but it fell flat. Everybody was stunned — Doyle, in particular — and we could have used some exhortation. The locker room prayer was especially fervent. As we jogged onto the field, Taunton jeers drowned out the Edenburg cheers and dominated the puny sound of our pep band. The Taunton bus was parked behind the west end zone, and their tri-captains waited at midfield with the referee. In their black uniforms and helmets, they looked like massive chunks of shadow. Justin Coombs and I walked out to meet them for the coin toss. Number Fifty-five centered the Taunton quarterback and one of the linemen, Eighty-seven, who had jumped us in Crescent Creek. He appeared to have grown uglier since last year.

“Gentlemen,” the ref said to the tri-captains. “You’re the visitors. Call it in the air.”

He flipped the silver dollar and Fifty-five said in a feeble, raspy voice, “Tails.”

“Tails it is,” said the ref, scooping up the coin.

“We’ll kii-iick.” Fifty-five barely got the words out.

They didn’t shake our hands — Edenburg and Taunton never shook hands.

“Did Fifty-five seem weird to you?” I asked Jason as we headed to the sideline.

“I don’t know,” Jason said, absorbed in his own thoughts.

Things moved quickly after that, the way they always did in the last minutes before the game whistle blew. I knew Daddy and Mama would be home listening to the game — watching me play made Mama anxious — but I searched the crowd for them anyway. Noise and color blurred together. I smelled an odd sourness on the heavy air. Tuttle ran up and down the sideline, slapping us on the ass; then he gathered the return team, yelling, “Right return! Right return!” They trotted out to their positions.

Taunton was already lined up along the forty-yard line, a string of eleven black monsters. I expected them to operate with their characteristic machinelike efficiency, but the kicker approached the tee with a herky-jerky step and the ball dribbled off his foot; the others just stood there. One of our guys recovered the onside kick at the Taunton forty-six.

“They’re pissing in our faces!” Coach Tuttle said, incensed. “Disrespecting us!”

He told Justin to run a short-passing series, but when Justin got us huddled up, he called for a long pass to me off a flea-flicker.

“That ain’t what Coach called,” said Tick Robbins, our tail-back.

“Fuck him!” Justin said. “This is my last game and I’m calling what I want. That retard’s done telling me what to do.”

Tick complained and Justin said, “We throw short passes over the middle, it’s gonna get Andy dead. Now run the damn play! On two.”

We broke the huddle and I lined up opposite a Taunton cornerback. He was looking up into the sky, like he was receiving instruction from God. On two, I faked toward the center of the field and then took off along the sideline. Nobody covered me, and as the ball descended out of the lights, I thought this might be a satori moment. I made the catch, but the pass was a little overthrown and my momentum carried me stumbling out of bounds inside the twenty, where I fell.