“I guess.”
They sat on the couch, feet stretched out on footrests, ate popcorn, drank soda, watched more highlights.
“Can you believe that pass?” Wyatt said. “Sick.”
“You never, uh, talk about him, huh?” said Dub.
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“Gone before I was born-you know that.”
“Yeah.”
“So there’s nothing to talk about.”
They lapsed into silence, not an uncomfortable one. Wyatt and Dub had spent lots of time together, just like this.
“Play some Madden?” Dub said after a while.
“Sure.”
“Gonna beat your ass,” Dub said. They played Madden. Wyatt was up by two touchdowns-Dub never won- when Mrs. Mannion called down, “Wyatt? Staying for dinner?”
“Thanks, I better get going,” Wyatt said.
He drove home, stopping for gas when he noticed the needle quivering down near empty. He put in three dollars’ worth, all he had on him. Standing at the pumps, cold wind whipping through under the overhang, sky dark, he tried to find the right words for telling his mother about Bridger High. Nothing came to mind. He decided to just wing it. Why not? She was his mom.
She was in the kitchen, still in her office clothes except for slippers, thawing a frozen red block of spaghetti sauce on the stove.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey. Dinner’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
“I-”
“And Coach Bouchard called.”
“Yeah?”
Wyatt went into his bedroom, closed the door, called the coach on his cell phone.
“Hi, Coach. Wyatt.”
Silence on the other end. Then came what might have been ice cubes clinking in a glass.
“Coach? You called me?”
The coach cleared his throat. “Yeah, hi. I did.” The coach sounded a little strange-like he’d been drinking. Wyatt rejected that idea immediately.
“What’s up?”
“Kind of a-what would you call it? — bump in the road. That’s it-bump in the road. We’ve hit a little bump in the road.”
“Who?” said Wyatt. “What bump?”
“About Bobby Avril. Seems like the school committee-talkin’ about Silver City, not East Canton-has these rules I didn’t know about, rules-what’s the word? — governing, rules governing transfers. Transfers and sports, is what I’m referrin’ to. Anybody else can transfer, of course. But for playin’ sports, don’t matter varsity or JV, there’s only one transfer who can play on a team each year, meanin’ the year of transferrin’. After that, why, you’d be resident, so no problem for the next year. Get what I’m sayin’?”
Coach Bouchard was taking fast, and again Wyatt got the feeling he’d been drinking, but he thought he grasped the general idea, and it led to a bad thought: Dub wasn’t going to be able to play for Bridger.
“So, um,” Wyatt said.
“Bottom line-you can transfer to Bridger, no problem, but you can’t play ball for Bobby Avril, not this season.”
Wyatt’s heart began to beat way too fast. “Coach? I don’t think I heard you right.”
Coach Bouchard’s voice sharpened a bit. “There’s nothin’ I can do. Rules is rules.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Don’ understand? Chrissakes, by the time I called Bobby Avril, first thing I got in the door, that one transfer space was already taken.”
“Someone else transferred first?”
“Exackly. Turns out his dad goes back a ways with the AD, just like I go back with Bobby. Only thing is he beat me to the post.”
The post? What post? Wyatt didn’t get that, maybe didn’t get any of it. “Whose dad?” he said.
“Dub Mannion’s,” said the coach.
“Dub got the position?” Wyatt thought back to that sharp glance Mr. Mannion had shot him down in the home theater. What had Wyatt said just before that? I’m doing the same thing.
“What I’m tellin’ you,” Coach Bouchard said. “First come, first served basis.”
Silence. And then the ice cubes again.
“Coach? Can I stop by your office tomorrow? Talk about this?”
“Tomorrow? Not gonna be there tomorrow or any other goddamn tomorrows. I resigned. Done, all through. Weren’t you listenin’ today?”
4
“Supper’s on,” his mom called from the kitchen.
Wyatt heard her but stayed where he was, standing in his room. He’d laid the photo on his desk and was now examining it under the light of the lamp. He noticed little things he’d missed before, like how big his father’s hands were-bigger than Wyatt’s, just about the same size as the coach’s-and a light-colored metal chain, maybe gold, that his father wore around his neck. He bent closer, gazing into the photo image of his father’s eyes. They began to look not like eyes at all, but simply ovals of light and shade, mostly shade.
“Wyatt? I’ve been calling and calling.”
He turned. His mom was in the room, a red-tipped wooden spoon in her hand; he hadn’t heard her enter.
“Sorry, I-”
Her glance went right to the photo. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
“I hope it’s not something you shouldn’t be-” By now she’d moved in closer; his mom was kind of unstoppable when she got curious about something. “Who are-Oh, my God.” She grabbed the photo, stared at it, then whipped around toward Wyatt. “Where did you get this?”
“I, uh, the coach gave it to me.”
“The coach? Why would he do a thing like that?”
“On account of the economy, Mom. He was packing up. All the extracurriculars are gone.”
His mother’s eyes opened wide, and her face seemed to soften. “Baseball, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Yeah.” Was there any point in going into the whole Bridger idea? None that Wyatt could see: The Bridger idea was gone, too. “So the coach had this and he gave it to me.” He pointed to the photo, still in her hand. They were standing close together now, their eyes on the photo. “Did you know him back then, Mom, in high school?”
“Hey,” Rusty called from the kitchen, “what’s the holdup with dinner?”
Wyatt’s mom didn’t seem to hear. “Not really,” she said, her face still soft, and now her voice as well. “He was two years ahead of me. I knew who he was, of course. All the girls-” She stopped herself.
