Hometown Favorite: A Novel by BILL BARTON, HENRY O ARNOLD Page A

game had been knocked
out of me. I saw no reason to keep going."
    Dewayne nodded his head toward Jesse's leg. "I see you're
still hobbling."
    "Never fully healed. Guess I'll be a gimp the rest of my
days."
    "You drop out of school and come home to this?" Sly said,
indicating the room with his hand.
    Jesse had secured a cigarette from his pack, and in the time it
took to light it, he found the backbone to look Sly in the eye.
    "Nothing changes with you, man" Jesse smiled and pointed
his finger toward Sly's face. "You know how to cut through it.
I came home to this because this is my place, and I know my
place:"

    "Hey, ain't no judgment allowed between us." Dewayne gave
Sly a second jab with his elbow-but this time he didn't accompany the playful gesture with laughter. "We're here just to
encourage you, brother."
    "I'm encouraged, my man. Let me buy you a beer."
    Jesse lifted his hand toward the bartender, but Dewayne
shook his head.
    "Not tonight, Jesse. Maybe next time."
    Sly begged off because of the next day's early departure, and
Dewayne allowed the snub to cover his own desire to exit. The
pair dared not confront Jesse with the truth of how they saw the
downfall of a best friend. Neither of them had a magic solution.
They had not left Springdale to become miracle workers. And
they could not join him to drink from his fountain of anguish.
The agony would have to curdle in Jesse's gut alone. So after
another group embrace and the exchanged lies of promised
future reunions, one last plea from Jesse accompanied their
exit.
    "Hey, if you stick around, you might see Coach Hopper," he
said, his cheerleader friend returning to his side with a fresh
beer. "He's here most nights"
    But the cry had come from too far away. The faintness of its
echo failed to register on ears that had gone deaf to the past. Sly
and Dewayne gave a last wave of recognition as though Jesse
was a mere fan, and they faded out of his sight as startlingly
as they had appeared. Sly backed out of the parking lot in his
Tahoe and mumbled a bitter critique of their onetime inseparable friend.
    "Jesse never did have the sense God gave a turnip;" he said,
and Dewayne offered no rebuttal.

    Cherie and Rosella had spent their evening together sitting on
Dewayne's bed as Cherie gave a rambling saga of Dewayne's
life represented by specific objects: painted handprints from
elementary school-God's first visual sign of his future in
football; a piggybank of the Bible where he squirreled away
his coins; a picture of his father with a collage of pictures of
Dewayne at different ages, cut out and glued in a circle around
Robert's smiling face; an African mask he had made from
beans, beads, buttons, and safety pins, revealing a creative side
of Dewayne that Rosella never suspected; a Best Sportsman
award given in his junior year in high school and the only
one on display in the room, the other trophies boxed up and
hidden away in his closet; a bronze casting of a cross with the
inscription "No Greater Love" at the base, given him on the
day of his baptism. Rosella absorbed it all in rapt attention,
and by the end of the evening, Cherie told Rosella that if she
ever heard her son was not treating her with proper respect,
she would be on the first bus to California prepared to visit
upon him divine wrath. Rosella assured her such a trip would
not be necessary.
    When Dewayne got home, he heard the ladies cackling before he unlocked the door and followed the laughter into his
bedroom to find Rosella modeling his high school helmet and
shoulder pads. Both women screamed when Dewayne said
hello, and Rosella, her adrenaline racing, charged him with
lowered head, only to bounce off his laughing abdomen like
a coin off the head of a drum. Dewayne and his mother were
laughing so hard, neither could help Rosella to her feet.
    Dewayne gave a minimalist explanation of his time with
Jesse, avoiding any details of how he and Sly had