And so at the end of May he graduated from high school. We all did: Wanda Jo Evans and Bobby Williams and Tom Crossland and the rest of us.
Jack was almost comical in his cap and gown. The red mortarboard was perched like a pinwheel at the back of his head and the crimson gown he wore was at least three sizes too small for him; it was stretched tight across his shoulders and the hem of it stopped at his knees. He looked a joke, a travesty, like some form of Paul Bunyan who had been gotten up for a kindergartener’s promotion or a pigmies’ ball. But when his name was called he rose dutifully, even proudly, from his seat in the auditorium. Then he stomped up across the stage in his cowboy boots and accepted the diploma from the president of the school board as if the diploma were something he actually valued.
In the evening we got drunk with one another for the last time. Afterward we went our separate ways. Bobby Williams and Tom Crossland went to work for their fathers, farming. Wanda Jo Evans stayed in Holt, where she was employed at the phone company as a secretary. And Jack and I went off to college, to study at the university in Boulder. I had in mind to study journalism, in the attempt to begin making something of myself as my father had suggested. And what Jack had in mind was to play football. He had an athletic scholarship, a full ride. The coaches at the university were willing to ignore the Ds on his transcript if he was willing to get his nose dirty. And of course he was.
So we had that in common that summer after graduation: we were both going to college at Boulder. It served as another bond between us. Whenever we met during the summer we talked about college and explained to one another just what kind of splash we intended to make. When we got there, though, it didn’t turn out quite the way we intended: one of us sank and the other barely made a ripple. Boulder was a deeper pond than a couple of boys from Holt County had anticipated.
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But it was all right in the beginning. He was a big rawboned kid and when he showed up for football practice in the middle of August he was sufficiently violent to please the coaches. Still it must have been obvious that he wasn’t a college-level running back. He was big but he was too slow. So in the second or third week of practice the coaches moved him into the line. That way he could use his strength and aggressiveness and not have to think too much. But he missed the glory. In high school he had carried the ball himself and had had his name featured prominently in the local papers. Now he was a defensive tackle and while he was still pretty good, everyone in college was good; so he wasn’t singled out for special attention.