Football Hero (2008), Page 2

  "Wow," Poyer said, looking from Ty to Coach V.

  "Wow is right," the coach said.

  West stood silent with his arms folded across his chest until, in a low voice, he said, "Let's see how cute he looks with a free safety waiting to tear his head off."

  Ty got into the back corner of the sports bus and split open his ragged paperback copy of Watership Down. He had plenty of time. His was the very last stop. Ty's aunt Virginia and uncle Gus didn't live in one of the big new houses with sprawling lawns that people thought of when they thought of Halpern. Neither did they live in one of the dozens of renovated colonial houses clustered around the heart of the historic little village with its antique shops, fancy restaurants, pubs, and expensive clothing stores.

  Aunt Virginia's house was little more than a trailer with a roof.

  "Kid. Kid! Let's go, I got my bowling league."

  Ty peered over the seat to see the bus driver's eyes glaring at him from the big rectangular mirror up front. He fumbled with the book, turned down the corner of the page, and slipped it into his pillowcase.

  "Sorry," he said, jumping down the steps and onto the gravel shoulder of rural Highway 626. The bus hissed and pulled away as Ty started down the dirt track. Overhead, a robin sang from its perch on the electric pole. Ty rounded a bend, and the scrubby trees on either side of the track opened into a small grassy clearing. His aunt's house cowered at the back of the clearing, beneath a towering stand of thick pines.

  Instead of climbing the stack of cinder blocks that served as the front step, Ty skirted around the house and down a small dirt trail that disappeared into the pines. He needed to use the bathroom, and Ty wasn't allowed to use the one in the house. Forty feet inside the tree line, the path ended at a bright blue Porta Potti. Ty took a deep breath and pulled open the door, hoping to finish his business before he had to take another breath and failing as he always did.

  Not long after Ty had arrived in Halpern, Uncle Gus found the broken Porta Potti at a dump just outside Newark. Ty spent an entire Saturday digging the five-foot-deep hole. Then he helped Uncle Gus roll the bright blue plastic capsule off the back of his truck and out into the pines, where they set it up over the top of the pit. It wasn't so bad to go out into the woods, especially since the weather had warmed up, and Ty really understood. His aunt and uncle hadn't been looking to have a twelve-year-old boy dumped on them, and they deserved the privacy of their own bathroom. They already had to share it with their quiet and quirky teenage daughter, Charlotte, who took hour-long baths that outraged Uncle Gus, which prompted Aunt Virginia to snap at him like a lioness protecting her cub.

  Ty trudged back to the house, past the woodpiles, and in the side door, where he washed his hands in the laundry room. Along the wall rested a stale mattress that Uncle Gus called a perfectly good bed. At night, Ty would tip it down onto the faded particle-board floor. The walls boasted bare two-by-four studs trimmed with electric wire, pipes, and an open vent that sometimes leaked heat into the otherwise chilly little space.

  When he shut off the water and the pipes stopped their groaning, his aunt's voice pierced his eardrums.

  "Ty!" she screamed.

  Ty snatched a damp towel from the floor and dashed into the kitchen.

  "I didn't hear you, Aunt Virginia," he said, drying his fingers. "I was washing my hands."

  His aunt kept her long, straight hair tucked behind her ears, and it made the big round glasses she wore seem like the bottoms of two soup cans, each with a single black bullet hole punched in its center to serve as an eye. Two overgrown eyebrows--thick like woolly-bear caterpillars--dropped scowling toward the bridge of her long, narrow nose. Her lips, pale as rain-soaked worms, stretched tight across her big teeth.

  "Where were you?" she said, her words trembling with rage.

  "Spring football practice, Aunt Virginia," Ty said.

  "Today's your birthday," she said.

  "So I thought you wouldn't mind."

  "So I thought you wouldn't mind," she said, mimicking him with a high-pitched song, tilting her head from side to side before she frowned again. "You were told that we had a surprise for you when you got home. Did you forget? Are you that stupid?"

  Ty didn't answer. His eyes lost focus as he drifted back to an earlier time.

  A little bald man shook his fist at Tiger for taking his parking spot. The two of them had driven their dad's Subaru from their campsite to the grocery store in Racquette Lake to pick up the marshmallows he'd forgotten to pack.

  "Why didn't you smash that guy's face?" Ty asked, hurrying after Tiger into the store. "Or cuss him out anyway? You were there first."

  Tiger snatched a bag of marshmallows from the shelf, smiled at him, and said, "It doesn't matter what someone else thinks of you or what they say about you. You have to know what you are, who you are. That's what matters. A guy like that, just pretend every time he opens his mouth that it's a fart. That's all it is anyway."

  Ty grinned.

  "What in the world do you think is so funny?" Aunt Virginia asked, the color of her face showing hints of purple.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AUNT VIRGINIA LEANED TOWARD Ty so that he could smell the remains of the tuna sandwich she'd eaten for lunch.

  "I, uh, I was thinking about something else, Aunt Virginia," Ty said.

  "Don't you go into one of your trances on me," she said. "Save those shenanigans for Mrs. Brennan. Your uncle will be back soon and he is not happy. You can just chop wood until he gets here."

  Ty knew better than to ask for something to eat, even on his birthday. He knew he'd be fed sooner or later, just not when he wanted and certainly not if he asked. Part of the reason he didn't feel so bad about the way his aunt treated him was because Charlotte would occasionally get a taste of it herself. For every minute Aunt Virginia spent crooning over Charlotte's pink nail polish or braiding her scraggly blond hair, she'd spend another minute grouching at her about wiping her feet or getting a C in math.

  So Ty didn't take it personal. Even though Aunt Virginia had been his father's sister, he figured that deep down, kids rubbed her the wrong way. She also found it hard to pretend that they didn't get on her nerves. If nothing else, she was honest.

  The other consolation was that Ty's father had apparently gotten Aunt Virginia's share of familial affection. Ty had enjoyed over eleven years of kisses, hugs, and regular praise from both his parents. So, when he calculated it out, even spending the next six years with Aunt Virginia and Uncle Gus would leave him well ahead of many kids.

  Ty returned to Uncle Gus's mountain of wood, pulling thick logs off the pile, splitting them with the dull ax, and placing their splintered parts neatly onto the stacks. From the top of a pine tree, a song sparrow trilled, then cocked its head to watch. Dizzy from the work, Ty set a fresh stick of wood on the chopping block and let his arms fall to his side. Small storms of insects swirled in the light that glinted at him through the trees. Ty turned his face into the small breeze to dry his sweat and heard the broken rumble of Uncle Gus's black F 150 with the big white cover on the back.

  When he opened his eyes, Uncle Gus's face glowered at him through the tint of the cracked wind-shield. Beside him, Charlotte's face glowed like a small moon, her features as expressionless as the craters on the dead planet. Ty raised the ax, half as a salute, half to prove that he'd been at work. His uncle slid down from the truck and marched toward Ty with a big round belly and a bowlegged stride.

  Uncle Gus's hair had already begun to gray, but it was thick as a rug and only stayed brushed over to the side with help from a tin of greasy pomade. A matching walrus mustache covered most of his mouth. The corners of his milky green eyes, like the mustache and the rolls of fat in his neck, drooped toward the ground. His business, a cleaning service, had left his stumpy strong hands chapped, red, and hard as granite.

  He pointed a stout cherry finger at Ty as he approached and Ty's stomach sank. From the corner of his eye, Ty saw Aunt Virginia pop out of the w
ashroom door and stand with her arms folded across her chest like an angry spectator. From the truck, Charlotte gave him a sympathetic look before she ducked down behind the dashboard, pretending to adjust the radio.

  "You," Uncle Gus said, his voice and finger trembling together. "You slacker. Lazy. Tricky. Lying."

  Uncle Gus's eyes were set close together, sometimes making him appear to be cross-eyed, especially when he was mad. His face expanded, turning colors before he let the air out, hissing like a busted radiator from beneath his mustache.

  "He went to football practice," Aunt Virginia said in her singsong mimic.

  "Football?" Uncle Gus said, stopping in his tracks, his dark eyebrows wrinkling. "It's your birthday. You're twelve."

  "That's why I thought you wouldn't mind."

  Uncle Gus shot an accusing look at Aunt Virginia. He would often complain to her, out of the blue, that she spoiled Ty and no good would come from it.

  Uncle Gus snapped his fingers at his wife before holding his hand out, palm up. From her apron she produced a rolled-up document tied with a bit of red yarn in a knot, so that the ends hung limp without the fanfare of a bow. Uncle Gus's fingers curled around the paper tube. He slowly swung his arm toward Ty before he opened his fingers again.

  "Work is a privilege," he said in a whisper. "You need to learn that. Happy birthday, boy."

  Uncle Gus jiggled his hand until Ty reached out and took his surprise. He slipped the yarn off the end of the tube and unrolled it to find an official state document, the paper thick and coarse to the touch, the ink letters fat and fancy. Ty's heart pattered as he read, thinking the certificate might have some connection to his parents and would somehow hold the key to his freedom. Maybe it was a bond or some hidden cache of wealth that would pay for college.

  But as his stomach settled and he began to decipher the words, his daydream turned into a nightmare.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TY'S BIRTHDAY SURPRISE WAS a work permit from the state of New Jersey.

  "Most kids can't work until sixteen," Uncle Gus said with a nod. "'Cept if it's a family business. Which this is."

  Uncle Gus nodded toward the truck and Charlotte's impassive face. On the side of the rusty black F 150 was a plastic sign with red letters that said: "Slatz's Cleaning Services, Proprietor: Gus Slatz."

  "Coach V wants me to play wide receiver," Ty heard himself say. "He thinks I'm the fastest kid in my class."

  Uncle Gus smiled, glancing at his wife as if Ty were telling a joke.

  "Fast enough for him to give you a big fat contract like your brother's gonna get?" Uncle Gus said. "They gonna pay you, you're so good?"

  Ty opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  "No, they ain't," Uncle Gus said, then he poked one of those stubby red fingers into Ty's chest. "You got to make money in this world, boy. No time for games. You ain't no football player. You ain't Tiger and your daddy didn't leave you no insurance money when he ran his car off that road. He didn't leave you with nothin' but us. That's it. Now, I could be bitter about that, my wife's brother just dumpin' his kid on me when I got my own already, but I'm not like that. I'm bigger than that, the churchgoing type.

  "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day," Uncle Gus said, glancing at his wife with a knowing look and taking on the aspect of a preacher. "But teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. I'm gonna teach you to fish. Teach you to work."

  Ty looked at the mountain of wood and the three long, tall rows he'd split and stacked over the previous months.

  Uncle Gus grinned and winked at the woodpile, then he shook his head. "See? You think that was work. You got no idea, but I'm gonna show you work. Every day. You get right home after school. Four till midnight, you'll get a full day's work. Happy birthday, boy.

  "Now, get your scrawny butt in the truck."

  According to Uncle Gus, the ride to Lucy's Bar took twice as long because they had to go back home and pick up Ty and now they were caught in traffic. He complained about that the whole way, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Ty's eyes watered from the smoke. When he reached over to roll down the window, his uncle slapped at his hand and told him to leave it up.

  "You trying to give Charlotte an allergy attack?" Uncle Gus asked, scowling so that the vein in the middle of his forehead bulged.

  Charlotte popped her gum and stared straight ahead without saying a thing. Her dirty wheat-colored hair hung limp and straight and long, parted in the middle to expose a scalp line as pale as the skin on her face and her bony arms. Sometimes, she reminded Ty of a horror movie victim, with her hunched narrow shoulders and vacant milky green eyes big as jumbo marbles.

  But the simple curves of her round face and the faded pink polish on her nails suggested something more pleasant might be hidden within. And, although she'd never said anything particularly nice to Ty, neither had she ever said anything particularly mean. In Ty's lonely world, he considered her to be on the friendly side of the ledger.

  Eventually, they did get there, pulling off the highway onto a broken service road littered with low, grimy buildings. The telephone wires hung slack between their poles as if exhausted, unadorned by birds of any kind. This close to the tidal swamps of Secaucus, the hazy air owned a funk that made Ty wrinkle his nose as he climbed out of the truck. They entered Lucy's Bar through the back.

  Uncle Gus left the two of them with the buckets, mops, brooms, vacuum, and cleaning supplies in a little hallway and disappeared into the front. Ty peered into a tiny kitchen where a man as big as a bear, wearing a full beard and a backward Jets cap, smoked a cigarette while laying circles of dough into a vat of boiling grease. On his massive bare arm, swirling snake tattoos surrounded the name "MIKE." Ty sniffed at the scent of donuts mixed with stale bread and hamburger meat gone bad.

  Mike turned his head and squinted at Ty through the smoke. Ty felt dizzy.

  Ty and Thane walked out of the Old Forge theater into the night. When they turned the corner to where their car was parked, they startled a crooked old man picking through the garbage. In his hand was a half-eaten chicken leg smeared with ketchup that he quickly concealed behind his back, licking his lips. He blinked at them and sniffed and stepped sideways off the curb to make room so they could pass.

  Thane dug into his pockets, removing their change from the movie and holding it out for the startled old man.

  "I think you dropped this," Thane said, waiting for the man to hold out his hand. When he did, Thane let the money fall. He took Ty by the arm and led him away.

  Ty glanced over his shoulder. "Why'd you do that? That was for ice cream. That guy was a bum."

  "What if he wasn't?" Thane asked.

  Ty wrinkled his brow and said, "What do you mean?"

  "Don't judge someone by what you see," Thane said. "I met this bum once who was a doctor. His wife died and he kind of lost his marbles. Sometimes people just run out of luck and they start to look like something they're not. Don't get me wrong, sometimes they're exactly what they look like, but you always have to wait to find out. It's what's inside that counts.

  "Don't judge a book by its cover."

  From the pocket of his enormous jeans, the cook removed a switchblade knife, flicking it open and turning the point so that it glinted at Ty. Mike's grin proved to be missing the front teeth. On the knuckles of his hand were the letters "K-I-L-L." Ty stepped back, bumping into Charlotte, who shoved him so that he tripped and stumbled halfway into the tiny kitchen.

  CHAPTER SIX

  INSTEAD OF IMPALING TY, the colossal cook dipped his blade into the boiling vat and removed two golden brown miniature donuts. He let them slide from the knife into a paper bag, which he shook, producing little puffs of white smoke. Then the knife went back into the bag and Mike held the powdery donuts out for Ty with a grunt, nodding his head until Ty removed them and handed one to Charlotte.

  "Thanks," Ty said. He took a small bite, then devoured the rest, the dough and sugar melting together into his watering mouth.
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  The door at the end of the little hallway banged open, and Uncle Gus reappeared, wiping his bushy gray mustache on a sleeve. Uncle Gus's watery eyes left Ty thinking that he'd had a drink. He had the look of a Saturday afternoon when he'd sit watching ball games in his chair, drinking beer after beer. Uncle Gus glared as Ty licked clean the remaining powder from his lips.

  "Hey," Mike said in a loud rumble from the kitchen.

  "Gus."

  Uncle Gus's scowl brightened instantly at the sign of Mike. He stepped into the kitchen and looked up at the cook, wringing his hands and telling him how much it meant to the kids that he would give them a snack.

  "It's not every day a middle-school kid gets a donut made by a former NFL lineman," Uncle Gus said.

  "Wait there," Mike said in a deep, rumbling voice. He stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and turned to his stove.

  Uncle Gus spun around at Ty and made sneering faces while Mike removed another donut from the vat. Ty looked past his uncle to see the big man stick a finger into his nose and remove a bloody booger with a half-inch tail of quavering snot. Mike winked at Ty, then smeared the mess onto the donut before popping it into the bag of sugar. Ty curled his lower lip into his mouth and clamped down hard.

  "You think something is funny?" Uncle Gus asked, his face going red.

  Uncle Gus calmed down, though, when Mike nudged him and removed the donut from the bag with his switchblade. Uncle Gus took it, forcing a smile, and Mike sucked on his cigarette. Mike gave a thumbs-up and squinted at Uncle Gus until he popped the entire donut into his mouth, chewing so that his big mustache danced up and down on his face. Mike smiled and nodded, laughing so deep that the cigarette tumbled from his lips and Uncle Gus joined him. Ty stole a look at Charlotte's blank face and thought he saw a twinkle in her eye. Laughter burst from him, and Uncle Gus looked at him uncertainly, swallowing in the nick of time. Mike walloped him so hard on the back that Uncle Gus stumbled out into the hallway.