people who know me and like me. People who’ll miss me when I’m gone.”
“Supper’s waiting,” sang out Carmen from the front room. Through the window, Faye could see the other three gathering around the table. Carmen beckoned to them, while Joe helped Laurel into her seat. The aroma of Joe’s beef stew wafted past her nose.
“So, Doctor,” Faye said, rising. “Sounds like you have a busy life. When you’re not saving the world, what do you do for fun?”
“How long’s it been since you went to a high school football game?”
Faye tried to remember. “Not since I was in high school, I guess.” She’d never missed a game in those days, though she’d been more interested in how Butch Sullivan looked in his hip pads than in whether he made a first down. Whatever a “first down” might be.
“Ordinarily, there’s absolutely nothing to do in Alcaskaki on a Saturday night—trust me—but tonight’s the big conference championship. Want to go to the game with me?”
“Sure,” Faye said, hoping she could ditch Brent just long enough to find Joe and ask him precisely what a “down” was, and why it was important to get yours first.
Chapter Seven
Joe’s last-minute coaching on the vagaries of football had been surprisingly effective. Faye was able to follow the game reasonably well. She found that it had a strong statistical basis. If a team hadn’t achieved its goal of ten yards after three tries, the coach had to decide whether they had a reasonable chance of succeeding on the fourth try. Sadly, Alcaskaki’s boys rarely covered the magic ten yards, so the home team punted an awful lot.
The Alcaskaki fans sitting around her found their enjoyment of the game further dimmed by the sheer skill of the opposing team’s running back. Faye got a lot of pleasure from simply watching the graceful boy run, but she kept this pleasure to herself because she doubted the Alcaskakians would understand.
Turning off the statistical science part of her brain and focusing on a subject even closer to her heart, anthropology, she studied the crowd. Intentionally or not, the spectators had segregated themselves by color, and the grandstand was divided into one great swath of brown Sujosa faces alongside a second, bigger, splash of white Alcaskakians. Clumps of dark African-American faces punctuated the scene.
Faye had wondered where in hell she was supposed to park her brown-skinned, non-Sujosa self, but as Brent had settled in amongst the Alcaskaki folk, she’d sat beside him. Nobody had snubbed her or told her to go away, so she presumed the segregation was ruled by custom, not prejudice. Everybody sat where they’d always sat and never gave the matter another thought, except for those few people who, like Faye, didn’t fit easily into any category.
She was nonetheless gratified to see that, unlike their parents, the high school kids mixed easily. Most of them never sat down, preferring to stand around with heads and hips cocked at very cool angles, so they never had to declare an ethnic category by sitting in, say, the Sujosa section.
Having grown up poor, Faye was all too aware that the Alcaskaki kids sported the kind of jeans that are fashionably worn out when brand-new, while the Sujosa kids’ jeans had the unfashionable signs of wear-and-tear that show up on hand-me-downs. Several of the Alcaskaki teens were huddled over little teeny cell phones, whispering and laughing over messages being bounced off the nearest tower and beamed to kids standing three feet away. Alcaskaki apparently was a big enough town to rate cell coverage. She noticed that only two Sujosa kids had cell phones. These days, lack of money was more of a social kiss-of-death than skin color.
She eyed the two Sujosa teenagers who had somehow acquired the coveted phones, a possession made even more frivolous by the fact that the hilly terrain and remote location made them useless in the Sujosa’s valley. Body language and pheromones
“Supper’s waiting,” sang out Carmen from the front room. Through the window, Faye could see the other three gathering around the table. Carmen beckoned to them, while Joe helped Laurel into her seat. The aroma of Joe’s beef stew wafted past her nose.
“So, Doctor,” Faye said, rising. “Sounds like you have a busy life. When you’re not saving the world, what do you do for fun?”
“How long’s it been since you went to a high school football game?”
Faye tried to remember. “Not since I was in high school, I guess.” She’d never missed a game in those days, though she’d been more interested in how Butch Sullivan looked in his hip pads than in whether he made a first down. Whatever a “first down” might be.
“Ordinarily, there’s absolutely nothing to do in Alcaskaki on a Saturday night—trust me—but tonight’s the big conference championship. Want to go to the game with me?”
“Sure,” Faye said, hoping she could ditch Brent just long enough to find Joe and ask him precisely what a “down” was, and why it was important to get yours first.
Chapter Seven
Joe’s last-minute coaching on the vagaries of football had been surprisingly effective. Faye was able to follow the game reasonably well. She found that it had a strong statistical basis. If a team hadn’t achieved its goal of ten yards after three tries, the coach had to decide whether they had a reasonable chance of succeeding on the fourth try. Sadly, Alcaskaki’s boys rarely covered the magic ten yards, so the home team punted an awful lot.
The Alcaskaki fans sitting around her found their enjoyment of the game further dimmed by the sheer skill of the opposing team’s running back. Faye got a lot of pleasure from simply watching the graceful boy run, but she kept this pleasure to herself because she doubted the Alcaskakians would understand.
Turning off the statistical science part of her brain and focusing on a subject even closer to her heart, anthropology, she studied the crowd. Intentionally or not, the spectators had segregated themselves by color, and the grandstand was divided into one great swath of brown Sujosa faces alongside a second, bigger, splash of white Alcaskakians. Clumps of dark African-American faces punctuated the scene.
Faye had wondered where in hell she was supposed to park her brown-skinned, non-Sujosa self, but as Brent had settled in amongst the Alcaskaki folk, she’d sat beside him. Nobody had snubbed her or told her to go away, so she presumed the segregation was ruled by custom, not prejudice. Everybody sat where they’d always sat and never gave the matter another thought, except for those few people who, like Faye, didn’t fit easily into any category.
She was nonetheless gratified to see that, unlike their parents, the high school kids mixed easily. Most of them never sat down, preferring to stand around with heads and hips cocked at very cool angles, so they never had to declare an ethnic category by sitting in, say, the Sujosa section.
Having grown up poor, Faye was all too aware that the Alcaskaki kids sported the kind of jeans that are fashionably worn out when brand-new, while the Sujosa kids’ jeans had the unfashionable signs of wear-and-tear that show up on hand-me-downs. Several of the Alcaskaki teens were huddled over little teeny cell phones, whispering and laughing over messages being bounced off the nearest tower and beamed to kids standing three feet away. Alcaskaki apparently was a big enough town to rate cell coverage. She noticed that only two Sujosa kids had cell phones. These days, lack of money was more of a social kiss-of-death than skin color.
She eyed the two Sujosa teenagers who had somehow acquired the coveted phones, a possession made even more frivolous by the fact that the hilly terrain and remote location made them useless in the Sujosa’s valley. Body language and pheromones
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