Shots on Goal Read online

  “He does,” I say. “Maybe even five-eighths.”

  I shake my head. It’s frustrating. Joey’s fast, opportunistic. He scores goals and gets girls. But I don’t want to be like him.

  Well, okay, sometimes I do.

  An Insider’s Guide

  There’s a dark alley between Shorty’s Bar and Foley’s Pizza, on the Main Street block between 10th and 11th. You can sit with your back against either wall–the green-painted cinder blocks of Foley’s or the brick and mortar of Shorty’s. The attraction, besides being out of the wind, is the music from Shorty’s and the pizza smell from Foley’s.

  Foley’s crust is a little less doughy than the other places in town, a little thinner and browner. So it smells toastier.

  The jukebox at Shorty’s is programmed to play the same fourteen songs in succession unless someone actually feeds it a quarter and chooses something else. Shorty went to high school sometime in the 1970s, so you get these old songs, in this order, over and over, along with the clicking of the balls on the pool table:

  “Ready for Love” Bad Company

  “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” Bachman-Turner Overdrive

  “Can’t Fight This Feeling” REO Speedwagon

  “Freefallin’ ” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

  “Jack and Diane” John Mellencamp

  “Every Breath You Take” The Police

  “When I’m With You” Sheriff

  “Take It Easy” The Eagles

  “I Love Your Way” Peter Frampton

  “Rainy Days and Mondays” The Carpenters*

  “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” Charlie Daniels Band

  “Heard It in a Love Song” The Marshall Tucker Band

  “My Way” Frank Sinatra

  “Free Bird” Lynyrd Skynyrd

  * (I am not kidding.)

  9

  NERVES

  After practice on Friday Joey comes up to my locker and sits on the bench. “Tonight, right?” he says.

  I shrug. “Yeah.” Football game. Shannon and Eileen.

  “We gotta get moving,” he says.

  “It’s only quarter after five.” What the hell is he up to now?

  “We’re meeting them at six-thirty. And we gotta stop at work.”

  “Why?”

  “Gotta get something.”

  “The game’s not till eight.”

  “I know.”

  He takes a sweatshirt out of my locker and stuffs it into his gym bag. I just look at him, but I’m sure he has a reason for needing my shirt.

  “You’ll see,” he says.

  We leave the locker room and head down to Main Street, walking quick but not saying anything. “Kenny’s got something for us,” Joey finally says, and I figure it has to be alcohol, because there’s nothing else I could imagine Kenny getting for us that would be of any use.

  We go in the back door and Joey peeks into the kitchen. “Carlos here?” he says to Kenny, who’s at the broiler, poking at a steak with a big fork.

  Kenny shakes his head without taking his eyes off the meat. He’s got a cigarette hanging from his lip, which should have been enough to answer the question. Carlos threatens to fire Kenny at least once a week for smoking when he’s making food, so he doesn’t do it if he thinks Carlos is around.

  I follow Joey into the walk-in and he unzips the gym bag. He reaches behind the giant plastic jars of salad dressing and pulls out two bottles of apple wine. He puts one in each sleeve of my sweatshirt, then carefully rolls up the shirt and puts it back in the bag. Then we leave.

  “You better take this,” he says as we cross the parking lot, handing me the bag. “My parents would kill me.”

  Before I can react he starts walking backward in the direction of his house. “Meet me at the bottom of the path at quarter after,” he says. “They’re gonna meet us up on the cliff.” Then he turns and runs off.

  So I’m left standing there with the wine, saying to myself that my parents would kill me, too. I’m two blocks from the YMCA, so I head there. I can stash the stuff in my brother’s locker until after dinner.

  The cliff overlooks Sturbridge from high above. You can drive up from the other side, but the only way up from town is a long twisting path through the woods. It takes about eleven minutes to walk up. I ran it with Tommy every morning this summer in four and a half.

  We’re halfway up when Joey sticks out his arm, grabbing my shoulder. He nods toward the down side of the hill, where two deer are browsing on the undergrowth. They’re bucks—a nice-sized six-point and an average spike. Joey pulls back an imaginary bow and goes, “Sproing.” They look up, black eyes on us, still chewing slowly, staring us down. The bigger one snorts, swishes his tail, and takes one leap away, then walks about twenty feet and stops. The smaller buck follows. They stare at us again from deeper cover, and the big one lowers his head, eyes still on us.

  “I didn’t think bucks hung around together in the fall,” I say.

  “They ain’t in the rut yet,” Joey says. “Not entirely. They’ll start fighting over the does soon. Choosing their harems.” He starts walking again, a little faster than before. I’m lagging behind, so he turns to speak: “The ones with the bigger horns always win.”

  There’s a cleared spot at the top of the hill about the size of a baseball diamond, with two picnic tables and a small parking area behind us. You can see the whole town spread below you.

  It’s a warm evening. From this height the town’s football shape is most evident—it’s a flat oval set down between the hills. All around us the hardwoods are showing their colors—rusts and ambers and bright oranges and reds.

  So if you imagine a football-shaped town (I’m not saying it’s perfectly symmetrical), then the stripe running toward us is the Pocono River, which reaches the bottom of the cliff and makes a hard turn along the edge of town. And the lacing—right down the middle of the ball (the downtown is just three streets wide)—is Church Street, dotted with six different spires. They’re all doing well; Christianity is our most important religion, ahead of football and wrestling.

  Route 6 curves in and forms the other stripe, with the cinder block factory just beyond it and the football stadium at the far edge, diagonally across from us tonight. We’re about 220 feet above town here. The high school is a block over from the stadium, on the first rise of the hill on that side. That side of the hill climbs as high as over here, though not quite as steeply.

  We’re sitting on the rim of the bowl up here, with the steepest drop right below us. There’s a low wooden snow fence, but it’s easy to clear. You’d die if you fell. Or at least you’d get seriously mangled.

  Shannon and Eileen aren’t here yet (I don’t know why we didn’t meet at the bottom and walk up with them; that’s how I would have done it), so we scout around for a good place to drink. You can’t do it out in the open, because the cops sometimes ride up here, especially on nights when there are likely to be parties.

  Technically this is a town park, in honor of somebody who donated the land for it, but the only real indication of that is a memorial stone and the Christmas star display, which they light up after Thanksgiving. It gives a pretty cool effect; it’s like forty feet tall, so you can see it from everywhere.

  Since this is such a small town, there isn’t a whole lot of mystery about girls you’ve gone to school with your whole life. But Shannon and Eileen went to Immaculate Heart through eighth grade, so our paths haven’t crossed much. All I know about Eileen is that she plays field hockey and has kind of a pug nose and red hair. Shannon is a gymnast and a hurdler, and I guess you’d say she’s willowy.

  “Looking good,” Joey says suddenly, gazing toward the path, at the grand entrance. Shannon’s a head taller than Eileen, a lot narrower at the hips, and is the only one of the two that is not sweating heavily. She’s smiling at us as they approach.

  “Nice night,” Shannon says as they reach us.

  “Easy for you to say,” says Eileen. “You just gl
ide up that hill like it’s nothing.” She opens her mouth wide and hangs out her tongue. She’s got a sleeveless yellow shirt on so she has easy access to her armpits, one of which she wipes with the palm of her hand. She sniffs the palm and wipes it on her jeans. “So where are the refreshments?” she says.

  “Follow me,” says Joey. He starts walking across the grass. There are some big rocks on the side, and you can climb down easy and get out of sight. There’s some broken glass—it’s not like we’re the first to ever drink up here—but the park’s mostly clean.

  “Would you ladies care for a view of the town?” Joey says. “Or a cozier spot beneath the pines?”

  They both laugh. “I want to see my house,” Eileen says. “I haven’t been up here in years.”

  So we sit partway down the rocks and Joey opens one of the bottles and takes a swig. He passes it to Shannon, who hands it to Eileen, and then it reaches me.

  “Hey, I can see Herbie’s bench,” Joey says.

  “Herbie, too,” I say.

  “No, it ain’t.”

  “Yes, it is,” I say.

  “You can’t tell.”

  “Who else sits there?” I ask. There’s definitely a guy on the bench, and it sure looks like Herbie from here. What are we, five hundred yards away? “It’s Herbie.”

  “It’s Herbie,” says Eileen, squinting into the distance. “His shirt says I Am a Macho Stud.”

  “He’s got a new zit on his chin,” says Shannon. “And there’s a speck of tomato sauce or something on his lip.”

  I reach for the bottle again. “Believe me, it’s Herbie.”

  “Hi, Herbie,” Shannon says, waving in his direction. “Come on up.”

  When she waves you see the individual muscles in her forearm, lean and sinewy. She brushes her hair back behind her ear and catches me staring at her. She smiles and flicks up her eyebrows. She’s sitting cross-legged, slightly above me to my left, with a denim jacket tied around her waist. Eileen is on my level, facing me, but closer to Shannon. Joey is next to her, squinting out toward town.

  “That is Herbie,” Joey says after a few more minutes, and we all laugh.

  By seven o’clock there’s a definite momentum downtown toward the stadium. More cars are moving that way than the other, and people in the streets are heading there, too. It’s getting dark and the streetlights have come on. We’ll have to get off the hill soon or we’ll have a hell of a time getting down.

  There’s an inch or two left in one of the bottles and I’m feeling pretty good. The buzz will hit when we stand.

  “How many points we get for this?” I ask Joey. This is an ongoing discussion we’ve been having about how to be cool, how to earn a place among the elite.

  “A few,” he says. “So far.”

  “What points?” Eileen asks.

  “Status points,” I say. “Unofficial.”

  “You mean like what level you’re on? What clique?”

  “Like that. Yeah.”

  Eileen laughs. “You give yourself points for going out with me?”

  I blush and laugh and shake my head. “Yeah.… I don’t know. But you know what I mean. People do keep score. Maybe not with points exactly …”

  Shannon sits up real straight and smiles. “I think Joey’s worth at least a half a point for me,” she says. “What do you think, Eileen?”

  “Maybe three-quarters. What about Bones? I get any points for being with him?”

  “I’d give you one,” Shannon tells her. “Two if he tries to make out with you later.… Five if you let him.”

  Not likely. I try to turn this back to a more serious discussion. “You know what I mean. It used to be—like when our parents were in school—being in sports was the coolest thing you could do. Now the coolest people aren’t even into sports. If you’re in a heavy-metal band or you deal drugs and carry a weapon you’re way up there.”

  “True,” Eileen says. “Or if you’re screwing some older guy.”

  Me and Joey turn our heads slowly toward Shannon, then look away fast.

  “You guys,” she says. “Filthy minds.” Then she laughs and reaches for the bottle, and we all watch her drain it.

  It got noticeably cooler as the sun went down. Eileen picks up my sweatshirt, the one that had the bottles wrapped in it, and asks if she can wear it. “That’s not real clean,” I say.

  “It won’t kill me,” she says, pulling it down over her head. The shirt says Sturbridge Soccer, and since she doesn’t play, but I do, I get a little uneasy about how that will look at the game. But I let it go.

  Shannon stands up and puts on her jacket, and we all start heading toward the path. I’ll come back for the gym bag tomorrow.

  You run the gauntlet of most of the school on your way from the ticket booth to the bleachers. Joey and Shannon are holding hands, with Eileen on one side of them and me on the other, but I can tell people are looking at us as if me and Eileen are together. Which I suppose we are.

  I want to get to the bleachers, to be inconspicuous, but Joey leads Shannon toward the refreshment stand, where everybody from our team is hanging. Herbie and some others are over on the dark side, near the bathrooms. Herbie’s leaning against the building with a cigarette in his mouth, and Rico and Trunk and Hernandez are there, too.

  “Were you on your bench before?” Shannon asks Herbie.

  “Of course,” he says.

  “Like an hour ago?” she asks.

  “Probably. How come?”

  “Told you,” I say.

  “We were up on the hill,” Shannon says.

  “I know.”

  “You could see us?” she asks.

  “I could pick you out a mile away, beautiful.”

  She blushes and laughs. Herbie, too.

  Rico and Trunk and Hernandez are staring at Shannon, who’s got two fingers through one of Joey’s belt loops. Eileen pulls on Shannon’s arm and says, “Let’s hit the bathroom.”

  They walk away without saying anything.

  “What’d you guys drink?” Herbie asks.

  “Wine,” Joey says. “Guy at work got it for us.”

  “You get them drunk?”

  “Think so,” Joey says. “Hope so.”

  Herbie turns to me and smirks. I kind of roll my eyes. Rico says something to Hernandez under his breath and they giggle. I glare at them. I didn’t hear what they said, but I know what they’re talking about. I start to explain about helping Joey and all, but stop after one word. “She’s—”; then I say screw it to myself. “I’m going to take a piss,” I say, and walk away.

  Girls generally take longer in the bathroom than guys, so when I come out they’re coming out, too. Shannon puts her arm around my shoulders; that makes me feel sort of warm but also like I’m her little brother or something. My hands are at my sides.

  “Let’s get munchies,” Shannon says.

  So we go to the refreshment window and she asks for four Cokes and two lollipops. “Okay, Eileen?” she says, turning to her.

  “Yeah. Get me a purple one.”

  I reach for my wallet, but Shannon says she’ll pay. She takes her arm off my shoulders and pulls out her wallet. She takes out four dollars and sets her wallet on the counter.

  She picks up two of the Cokes and Eileen takes the others. “Would you put my wallet in my pocket?” Shannon asks me. She eases her butt toward me, and I slip the wallet into the right back pocket of her jeans, which is a tight squeeze. I do it as carefully as possible. Eileen smiles and shakes her head. Then we walk back to where Joey and the others are.

  We sit about fifteen rows up at the forty-yard line: Joey-Shannon-me-Eileen.

  We fall behind early, but Lenny Olver takes a pitchout in the second quarter and goes forty-eight yards with it, tying the score. The band breaks into “Born to Run” and the cheerleaders do a kind of sexy dance.

  I nudge Shannon.

  “Why aren’t you down there?”

  “Cheering?”

  “Yeah.”


  She shakes her head. “I’m too flat.”

  I tilt my head and look closer, and she puts her hand in my face and her other arm over her chest. But she’s laughing.

  I give her a look that lets her know what an outrageous statement she’s made, but she clicks her tongue and says, “Well, I am.”

  I look past her at Joey, who’s squinting toward the field. He can’t see worth a damn without his glasses. Maybe he can’t hear, either, because he hasn’t said anything since we sat down. He’s just there. In my way.

  After the game Shannon and Joey disappear, so me and Eileen walk slowly toward her house. I know where it is because she pointed it out from the cliff. We walk along Maple, which is a block above Main and is quiet and dark. There’s no sidewalk here, so we walk in the street.

  I don’t know what to do with my hands. We don’t say anything, but she keeps looking over at me as we walk.

  “Pretty good game,” I say after we’ve gone three blocks.

  She lets out her breath. “Yeah.”

  We walk another block, and then my hand brushes hers by mistake. “Oh,” she says.

  I stick my hand in my pocket. She stops suddenly and steps to the side of the road and bends over.

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  Then she pukes. Not much gagging, just a couple of quick wet heaves.

  I step back and look away. “You all right?” I ask.

  She walks back a few feet and doesn’t answer. I hear her say “Shit” to herself. She wipes her mouth with her sleeve, which of course is really my sleeve.

  After a minute we start walking again.

  “You make me really nervous,” she says finally.

  “I do?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, you’re out with me, but I don’t exactly seem like your first choice.”

  “Oh.”

  “You never take your eyes off her.”

  I start scratching my jaw. “No?” I stop walking. “Sorry,” I say.

  She shrugs. “It’s okay. Sometimes I can’t stop looking at her, either.”

  We come down from Maple toward Main. She lives near the river, on Court Street. We cross Main a block up from Herbie’s bench, which is already occupied. When we’re about a half block in from Main, I hear somebody, sounds like Hernandez, shout, “Go for it, Bones!”