other cars as I drove down the highway. I bought a pair of cheap binoculars so I could scan Chief?s
box at Sanford Stadium on football weekends. Even a glimpse, I thought, would help. Finally I
accepted the danger of fantasies. They sour into nightmares and vanish, leaving scars on the soul.
Tonight could not change that, even though the fantasy was becoming real again.
I could feel the armour, like a steel skin, slipping around me.
“Don?t go away again,” she said. “Not for a while, at least. Give it a chance.”
I let some anger out, not much, just relieving the pressure for a moment.
“That isn?t exactly the way it played,? I said harshly.
“It was Chief. He never understood how we really felt about each other.”
“He understood all right.”
She looked away, fiddling with a strand of cotton ravelling from her dress.
“Hey, Jake, you know Chief. He always made whatever he said sound so.. . so, right. Nobody ever
argued with Chief.”
“Maybe somebody should have.”
She stared at me for several seconds before saying, “Why didn?t you?”
I didn?t know how to answer that properly.
What I said was “Pride,” and let it g at that.
She nodded. “Beats us all, doesn?t it
“Well, it?s a little hard, coming to grips with the feeling that you?re a failure at twenty-one because
you have bad ankles. It made me readjust some of my values.”
“Jake,” she said suddenly, changing the mood entirely. “1 want to hear about Teddy.”
“I wrote you all there is to know.”
“1 want to hear it from you.”
“Why, for God?s sake?”
“So I?ll know it?s true and I can forget it, once and for all.”
“It?s true, believe me. I won?t replay it, Doe. It?s not one of my favourite images.”
It had been so long I had almost forgotten the lie. It was heroic, a real Greek tragedy, that much I
remembered.
“Time you laid Teddy to rest,” 1 said softly. “Forget the war. That wasn?t reality, it was madness.
Remember him the way he was the day you pushed him into the bay. That?s what he?d want.”
Then she started to cry, very softly so you would hardly notice
“He?d like it, that we?re together here. He was all for us, Jake.”
“I know it.”
