She asked me different things. Could I show her how I went about drawing a face. Easy. Start with a circle, divide it with a cross with the sideways part below center. Eyes go on that, with a gap in the middle, same wideness as the eye. Different type eyebrows for surprise or love or mad. Then draw the jaw below the circle as a separate thing, like a skull and jawbone, because a face actually has a skull underneath it. (Something I learned from Tommy.) She asked me how I would decide what type of jaw to make. That’s simple: small jaw for a kid or a lady, big for a man, bigger for a superhero. Which is why lady superheroes are dead tricky.
She wanted to know if I’d taken any class or seen drawing shows on TV, which I didn’t know existed. She kept on being amazed until the bell rang and I couldn’t believe an hour was up. She said I had a natural talent and did I want to work with her on improving it. Perspectives, composition, etc. Long story short, she would be my Gifted teacher. I could try out other media that she had a whole studio full of. Art supplies other than pencils. Jesus God.
If you’ve ever heard that song “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,” that was Betsy Woodall coming to visit. No six white horses, but an occasion. Mr. Peg would say high dudgeon.
The first time was late that winter, to transfer over my paperwork. If she approved of how I was doing with Coach, they’d go to the DSS office and sign him on as my new guardian. Old Baggy would shed no tears. She hadn’t called once since I’d moved in with Coach, taking her usual approach of, if the kid’s not broke, don’t fix him. And if he is, go whistle it out your ass.
My grandmother was not that easy. Getting moved up to the harder classes won me no prizes, she wanted report cards. Mattie Kate had busted her butt clearing up the living room, piling the crap in back rooms, so we all sat around the giant table, including Mr. Dick and Jane Ellen that drove them in the Comet. Miss Betsy wanted to know if the sports nonsense was going to interfere with my education. I looked at Coach: no lanyard twirling. Eyebrows on even keel.
“There’s not any sports right now, football season is over with till the fall,” I told her. My grandmother probably being the one person on God’s earth that didn’t know that. Obviously other ones did exist such as basketball, but not in Lee County. Any sport that’s not football around here is like vanilla. Why even eat that, if they’ve invented flavors.
She asked Coach was this true, me being done with sports?
“Miss Woodall, you can leave this young man to me. I plan on doing my level best to enhance his full potential.” Total poker face.
She eyed us one by one. Angus had on this gigantic green sweater that swallowed her entire body like that Scooby-Doo girl, and her hair in these pop-up knobs like devil horns. My grandmother was like, Hmmm, maybe this one needs my educating. But Coach wouldn’t give her up. He might not say much, but he’d sometimes come up behind Angus and put his arms around her neck, chin on her head. Stand there leaning on her like a man saved.
All the sudden my grandmother hefted up her six-foot scarecrow self, and we all drew breath. She walked over and picked up the photo of Angus’s mom. Wiped it with her sleeve, looked at it, set it back down. Then announced that I appeared to be on the uphill climb, and if I kept it up, all would be well. She discussed changing my last name to hers, which I wasn’t wild about. Having the exact name of my dad seemed like asking for confusion. With a dead person, that could have consequences. Plus where was Mom in all this, erased? Otherwise, all good. I had legal kin and a guardian that didn’t hate me. Mattie Kate brought out a roasted chicken, and we had the meal that table was made for, fit for a king.
I was on notice though, and she stayed on my case. Jane Ellen drove Miss Betsy and Mr. Dick up to visit every few months, and it never stopped feeling like Survivor where I was fixing to get voted off the island. I hung on. The bright side was, our living-room situation improved, with the mayhem transferred to Coach’s office and other places Miss Betsy wouldn’t see. Once in a great while they stayed the night. Mr. Dick used a fold-out couch in a downstairs room.
Angus said it wasn’t too disgusting now for friends to come hang out, so we both did that, different friends. Hers being all guys, mine girls. Angus said just keep the drama out of her sight. She and Sax and them stayed upstairs gaming or watching old movies that Sax was into. He memorized entire scenes and had contests with Angus of trying to say all the words right. Crazy to watch. They were in the same classes, and he kind of egged her on into contests of everything, including best grade on every test. Meaning he ended up pissed at Angus basically at all times.
Downstairs meanwhile, the so-called homework club girls sat around our king table trying to fit variable expressions into the tiny mail slot of the Demon skullbox. They’d crack their gum and be amazed how hard it was for me to get higher math. If I flirted with any one of them on accident, the others would go brutal on her. They couldn’t just relax and be regular human. Angus had a point, and I was seeing it. Then May Ann Larkins’s older sister Linda came with them, being an alleged math whiz. Holy Moses. Long hair, long legs, long sideways looks out of those blue eyes like, dude, I’m in high school. I know shit. This is not algebra we’re discussing. Try doing equations some time while trying not to get an under-table woodie.
Who these girls really loved though was Mr. Dick. If he was there, they made such a fuss I got jealous. Me with my excellent arms and legs, feeling sorry for myself because these girls are crowding Mattie Kate out of the kitchen, taking over the blender to make strawberry milk shakes for Mr. Dick. Or pushing his wheelchair outside, breaking branches off the crab apple tree for him to smell the first flowers of spring. Not that I wanted to be their little dolly. It’s how sweet they were, in a way that didn’t happen with regular guys. Not trying so hard. And not scared.
Coach saw my future, and it was tight end. Every kid of course dreams of being quarterback, and I did too, since my altar call in the church of Fast Forward. But I never forgot what Coach said: a team is made of followers. Your coach or QB calls the play, but it’s not worth pissing on unless there is execution. That’s what a tight end is about. He’s fast, he’s alert, good at catching a pass and holding the ball and putting it down. Big enough to be a force, to get around the end and open a gap for a running play. If he has what it takes to play both ways, D-line also, and if he says his prayers, then he might get to be one of God’s diamonds. A General.
Football camp ran through a good chunk of summer, both JV and varsity. Coach had put in the word with Mr. Briggs, the JV coach. He agreed about me being tight end, and that’s where he put me, as alternate to Collins that was in eighth grade, my height, thirty pounds heavier, headed up to Generals the next year. To be the next Collins, I would need to bulk up. Bring it on.
Mr. Briggs also ran defense drills for the high school team, and sometimes called me over to go in on the hamburger drill, which is man-on-man. If he needed to match somebody for size. U-Haul always noticed, trying to take me down with the Hellboy eyes. But too bad for U-Haul because I just kind of oozed my way into the kingdom, as young as I was. No more errand boy. Coach gave me full privileges in the weight room, and at camp we all used the field apparatus together. The chutes, which are a metal pipe contraption like cattle chutes but with a low ceiling, three feet high. You have to get your body down low and charge through there, duck-walk running without banging your helmet on the top. Four guys would run it side by side, trying to be first to get to the end and hit the blocking guard and push him up the hill.
The chutes were my superpower. On other drills I held my own, but on the chutes I amazed. Tall as I was, I could still make myself small. And then at the end, throw all my might against whatever stood in my way. Everybody saying, Jesus look at him go, turbo-Demon. To me it felt normal. Keep your head down, don’t get seen, assail. My life was one long chute leading me there. By fall I was dressing out, wearing my jersey to school on Fridays, getting the full quotient of pep rally love. A damn seventh grader. In another year, I’d be playing for Coach.
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