Running Loose by Chris Crutcher Page A

didn’t make a call.”
    “Maybe he didn’t see it that way,” Norm said. “It doesn’t seem to me like Arney’s the problem here.”
    “Yeah,” I said, “but they probably shouldn’t let you ref in your hometown.”
    “Probably not.” He passed me some meat. “So, what are you going to do now?”
    “I’m going to school, tell anybody who asks me that I think Lednecky’s a hunk of slime, break every training rule he ever thought of, and stay the hell away from Boomer Cowans.”
    Norm smiled. “Sounds like you have a full life planned.”
    “From now on, I’m a lover,” I said.
    He nodded and said that didn’t sound like a bad alternative and pulled out his pipe. He loaded it with this special cherry-smelling tobacco he only uses after dinner and set the pipe down by his plate. He never smokes while somebody is eating.
    “Do what you have to do,” he said after a while. “You know your mom and I are behind you, even when we don’t agree with you. In this particular case, I do, if that means anything.”
    It did.
    I finished eating and called Becky. She asked how I was doing and if I wanted to drive over to Clear Lake and go bowling or see the movie or something. I sure as hell did.
    Before I left, Carter called, just to check in, I guess, and make sure I hadn’t slit my wrists or loaded the back of the pickup with fish guts and driven it over the spillway. He didn’t push it but asked if he could bring his car over to Norm’s station Saturday afternoon to wash it. We could talk then. I said sure.
    “You guys coming up to the dance tonight?” he asked.
    “Un-freaking-likely,” I said. “Unless I decide to end it all.”
    We talked about the rest of the game a little and hung up. The whole incident didn’t seem to bother him that much, and that bugged me. I wanted the whole world to be outraged, but especially Carter.
    Becky didn’t have much to say about the game. I jabbered a lot about injustice most of the way to Clear Lake, where we went bowling, but she spent most of the time teasing and flirting with me and generally making me feel good and taking my mind off it. It was nice to know that just because I wasn’t a football star anymore, I didn’t have to go back to being a dork. And as long as Becky was still with me, there was no way people would write me off completely. At least they’d have to wonder.
     
    We bowled three or four games—I quit after she beat me—and went over to the local drive-in for a milk shake and some Tater Tots. We ran into a couple of guys from Clear Lake whose names I didn’t know but who I recognized from football last year. They heard we’d won but didn’t know any of the details.
    “How’s that black kid?” one of them asked.
    “Good,” I said, “and fast.”
    “He better than Cowans?”
    I smiled. “He’s so much better than Cowans it’s indescribable. Boomer wouldn’t be allowed to carry hiswornout sweaty jock from the locker room to the garbage can.”
    They looked at each other and back at me. “How about Sampson?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Might be close.”
    They wanted to know more about him, like if he was mean or dirty or whatever. I told them his real name was Jackie Robinson, but they didn’t get it. It sounded like maybe Lednecky coached at Clear Lake, too. I didn’t tell them that Washington was probably on a slab in the morgue by then. I figured they ought to have to worry about him another day or so.
    I started in again on the way home. I should have just shut up. It wasn’t as big a thing when I was with Becky anyway because she never really cared that much about football and couldn’t have cared less if I played. She was more concerned that I didn’t get eaten up with it and become a terminal pain in the neck.
    “You know about confrontation?” she said, scooting over close and laying her hand on my knee.
    “Some, I suppose. What do you mean?”
    “Well,” she said, “when I lived back East, I used to