everybody smell our breath. But now that we were starting to discover pool—some of the dads had mid-life pool tables in their bricked-over garages, and didn’t get a summer vacation like we did—smoking was the cool thing. We all wanted that cigarette hanging casual from the corner of our mouths as we lined up a shot. Wanted to have to squint through the smoke like tough guys. It was practice for who we were all planning to be.
But that morning, none of the offseason basketball guys would have rolled a pack into their socks. It would have gotten beat to death against the cotton.
Tommy, though, working. Of
course
he’d have some, right?
It would have been a gamble, angling over to the stripper instead of the pumpjack, but sometimes a cigarette’s worth whatever else might happen. Too, if your lungs are already on fire, why
not
have smoke coming out your mouth, right?
So that’s the story that started Friday, got upstaged by Steve Grimes, but was still there after Grimes had been cleared.
Nobody knew who, exactly—nobody wanted to be that person—but there was word that when the first fire trucks arrived on the scene from Stanton, that, between those slowsmoking modules and the school, running through the cotton like ghosts, far enough away already that they looked motionless almost, was a pack of six offseason basketball players, their hands in fists by their sides, not even one of them looking back.
And I wish I could leave them there like that too.
Chapter Three
I n the GHS yearbook from ’85/’86, Ms. Godfrey is looking slightly out of frame. Like there’s something happening just behind the camera.
Ms. Godfrey.
Sheryl Ledbetter.
At first I didn’t even look in the L’s for her.
Worse, when I’m waiting in the main office, she remembers me. Doesn’t even break stride, just steps past the desk, wraps her arms around my neck. Has to stand up on one foot to do it. I smile, don’t know what to do with my hands.
“
You made it
,” she whispers into my shoulder, and now I don’t know what to do with my eyes either.
Instead of talking to me there, she takes me to the library, to my Dewey Decimal number. All my books are there. All the ones I never sent her.
I made it.
I don’t feel right in the teacher’s lounge—I only ever snuck in there once, for nothing remotely wholesome—so we walk the carpeted halls at four-thirty after school, my hands deep in my pockets.
“Ms. Everett,” I say, passing one of the three labs. Another real name.
Ms. Godfrey nods, looks pleasantly ahead of us, her lips held slightly different now, I think. As far as I know, she never knew Ms. Everett—Ms. Everett was both after and before Ms. Godfrey—but probably heard about the memorial service (the funeral was in Arkansas, where she was from). Ms. Everett, who had a seizure while ironing one morning before school, died like that. I got in a fight with a good friend about her the next day, still carry a scar on my back where he threw me into a paper towel rack in the cafeteria bathroom, the back of my shirt so bloody I had to wear a football jersey the rest of the day like I had spirit, rah rah, because the basketball jerseys didn’t have sleeves. My friend had probably just said her name wrong, I don’t know. Or probably he’d just said it at all. If she’d made it to school that day, though, then Coach Sharpe wouldn’t have been asked to finish her class for her— he had a B.S. in something, so maybe knew what a Bunsen burner was—and his Senior English wouldn’t have needed a semester-long substitute. One still finishing her degree.
Ms. Godfrey.
We were all taller than her, I remember.
And English, it was supposed to be a joke. Sharpe’s English had been, anyway. All you had to do was prod him with the right questions and he’d pinch his polyester shorts up to sit on his desk and tell stories all period. Show us his fingers, how crooked they were from his wide receiver days. Tell us about his
But that morning, none of the offseason basketball guys would have rolled a pack into their socks. It would have gotten beat to death against the cotton.
Tommy, though, working. Of
course
he’d have some, right?
It would have been a gamble, angling over to the stripper instead of the pumpjack, but sometimes a cigarette’s worth whatever else might happen. Too, if your lungs are already on fire, why
not
have smoke coming out your mouth, right?
So that’s the story that started Friday, got upstaged by Steve Grimes, but was still there after Grimes had been cleared.
Nobody knew who, exactly—nobody wanted to be that person—but there was word that when the first fire trucks arrived on the scene from Stanton, that, between those slowsmoking modules and the school, running through the cotton like ghosts, far enough away already that they looked motionless almost, was a pack of six offseason basketball players, their hands in fists by their sides, not even one of them looking back.
And I wish I could leave them there like that too.
Chapter Three
I n the GHS yearbook from ’85/’86, Ms. Godfrey is looking slightly out of frame. Like there’s something happening just behind the camera.
Ms. Godfrey.
Sheryl Ledbetter.
At first I didn’t even look in the L’s for her.
Worse, when I’m waiting in the main office, she remembers me. Doesn’t even break stride, just steps past the desk, wraps her arms around my neck. Has to stand up on one foot to do it. I smile, don’t know what to do with my hands.
“
You made it
,” she whispers into my shoulder, and now I don’t know what to do with my eyes either.
Instead of talking to me there, she takes me to the library, to my Dewey Decimal number. All my books are there. All the ones I never sent her.
I made it.
I don’t feel right in the teacher’s lounge—I only ever snuck in there once, for nothing remotely wholesome—so we walk the carpeted halls at four-thirty after school, my hands deep in my pockets.
“Ms. Everett,” I say, passing one of the three labs. Another real name.
Ms. Godfrey nods, looks pleasantly ahead of us, her lips held slightly different now, I think. As far as I know, she never knew Ms. Everett—Ms. Everett was both after and before Ms. Godfrey—but probably heard about the memorial service (the funeral was in Arkansas, where she was from). Ms. Everett, who had a seizure while ironing one morning before school, died like that. I got in a fight with a good friend about her the next day, still carry a scar on my back where he threw me into a paper towel rack in the cafeteria bathroom, the back of my shirt so bloody I had to wear a football jersey the rest of the day like I had spirit, rah rah, because the basketball jerseys didn’t have sleeves. My friend had probably just said her name wrong, I don’t know. Or probably he’d just said it at all. If she’d made it to school that day, though, then Coach Sharpe wouldn’t have been asked to finish her class for her— he had a B.S. in something, so maybe knew what a Bunsen burner was—and his Senior English wouldn’t have needed a semester-long substitute. One still finishing her degree.
Ms. Godfrey.
We were all taller than her, I remember.
And English, it was supposed to be a joke. Sharpe’s English had been, anyway. All you had to do was prod him with the right questions and he’d pinch his polyester shorts up to sit on his desk and tell stories all period. Show us his fingers, how crooked they were from his wide receiver days. Tell us about his
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