Return to Oakpine by Ron Carlson Page B

writing for them all. They were his audience. So strange. He’d written a thousand reviews for deadlines and for the magazines in New York, and all the stories and the novels, and he’d been writing for the kids they’d all been. He slowed his thinking down and started in sophomore year with homeroom, with Mrs. Scanlon, and he saw the classroom and went down the rows chair by chair looking for the dead. She had the alphabet, in large examples of cursive writing, in a lined banner around the top of the walls, and Jimmy felt the letters now, the weird feeling they’d given him where they were listed above the blackboard and the door and the windows that opened onto the great western desert running west to places that as a boy he could not imagine, though he had tried.
    He was dozing lightly, the pain still a hard, untenable force along his spine, when Chuck came back. The big man was wet and smiling. “This one is history.”
    Jimmy looked at him, unsure for a moment who he was and what he was speaking of. History? “Craig Ralston’s boy is the most amazing receiver we’ve had in some years—he can scramble. We’ve got Sheridan by two touchdowns with five minutes. You knew Craig Ralston, right? He runs the hardware?”
    â€œI must have,” Jimmy said. He felt as disconnected as he’d ever felt. He was going to be sick. Chuck backed the vehicle out of the field, each little bump flaring in Jimmy’s bones.
    On Berry Street the rain had stopped, and water dripped generously from the trees in the dark sky. Chuck pulled up and came around to Jimmy’s door, but Jimmy could not get out. He smiled faintly at the driver and said, “I’m having a little moment here. We might need some help.” As he said it, a woman came out of the front door of the house with a windbreaker over her pale blue housedress. She was carrying an umbrella, and at her first movement, he knew it was his mother. He had spoken to her once a year on her birthday, and there were times when she called him on his, but he had seen the woman, who was now coming toward him, only twice in thirty years. His head reeled. He had dreamed of this, this old place where he grew up, many times. And of course he had written about it. Seeing her there, he knew he had dreamed this too, his mother coming to him, taking his hand, her look of concern, her embrace. Her impossible cheek, cool and papery and sweet. The dreams were a blessing.
    â€œJimmy,” she said. Her tears were on his neck. “Jimmy.” Now her hands were on his shoulders and the side of his face, and it all rose in him, and he felt as if he were going to black out. He looked at his mother’s face, and it registered like light throughout his body.
    He whispered, “Mom,” and his voice broke. “Mom, I’m sick.”
    â€œYou’re home,” she said.
    â€œI’m sick, Mom. I’m so sorry.” He hadn’t planned anything to say, and he said this, and then he began to cry. He hadn’t planned on crying. He hadn’t cried in almost a year. “Oh shit.” She held him, drawing him out of the vehicle so he was standing in the gloomy afternoon. Chuck put the four bags on the porch, and now he stood out front of the Suburban. Mrs. Brand held Jimmy up, and they began to walk down the driveway. The rain dripping from the trees magnified itself in Jimmy’s ears and became a crystal ringing. He could see through their yard to the Hendersons and the Dorseys and one more to the Kirbys.
    â€œI’ll get my purse, Chuck. Just a minute.”
    â€œMrs. Brand. It is no problem, and there is no charge. Good to see you, Jimmy. Take care. I’m going to get back and see the end of the game. We’re kicking Sheridan’s butt, which has been long overdue.” Chuck climbed in, backed carefully onto the wet street.
    Louise Brand helped her son to the garage and showed him the refurbished