That afternoon Momma again sent Brad after Bossy. So she was on to me. I didn’t mind too much, except that I had gotten so worked up during the day that I really needed some alone time. Knowing how Sunday had stood up for me only increased my stress level. If Monday was going to be my big day, I had to muster up the courage for approaching her. My debacle in front of Shareece Grasfeld didn’t bode well for how I would hold up with Sunday.

At least I had made a new friend. Finkelstein looked weird, but he was OK despite being crazy and zit-ridden. I knew he would overlook my rude behavior in front of the lockers. I made up my mind that if I heard somebody running him down, I was going to say, “Nah, Man, Finkelstein is OK.”

Because of the incident with Shareece, I sulked all the way home on the bus. By the time Oz and I started milking, I had conjured up a nightmarish scenario. Maybe the whole thing was the kind of practical joke pretty girls play on the guy who isn’t getting any. On Monday, I could walk into school a laughingstock. People might laugh at Oz too because he was my brother. Then he might be annoyed with me for not telling him. I hoped that somewhere during our normal banter during milking one of us might say something that would serve as a smooth transition into the confessions of a choker. For some reason, he was unusually uncommunicative on this evening. I could not draw him into a conversation. There was nothing for me to do except milk and mope.

At Cache River High School, the basketball coach also taught PE. For some reason, my mind moped back to a lesson Coach had given one rainy afternoon during my sophomore year. Instead of setting up a basketball game in the gym, he sat the class down on the lower bleachers and talked to us about sex and girls. Mainly he spoke very frankly and graphically about the danger of careless sex. I found the idea of contracting VD pretty scary. For once I was glad I wasn’t getting any. Despite the seriousness of the topic, some of the guys laughed and joked through the whole period except for the end. That was when Coach told us how if you look at girls through the eyes of an ogre you will eventually find your beautiful princess:

Ogres are not exploitative and aggressive guys. They don’t worry about being handsome. Instead they work hard and study hard and mostly treat other people right. And they have x-ray vision. Seeing beneath the surface is important because people who say that beauty is only skin deep are stupid. Pretty is only skin deep. Beauty radiates outward from deep within because it comes from a kind and loving heart. There are lots of pretty girls, but princesses are rare because a real princess must be beautiful as well as pretty. Princesses and ogres have a lot in common because princesses can see beneath the surface too. Only a princess can love an ogre and only an ogre can find a real princess. Let the Casanovas and pretty girls have their day. A girl who is merely pretty gets ugly real fast when you get tired of her. Better to be an ogre and find your princess. That girl will always be beautiful and precious in your eyes.

Nobody interrupted Coach during that last part of his class. Nobody even laughed. Perhaps at some level, the level from which beauty radiates, we already knew the truth of his words. The period ended. Because we hadn’t dressed out, we couldn’t hit the boys’ locker room and demean the lesson with lewd jokes about ogres and princesses. I walked thoughtfully to class and then promptly forgot about Coach’s lesson. Or maybe I only thought I had forgotten because it all came back to me under the cow. Maybe that’s where ogres do their thinking.

Before my conversation with Finkelstein, if I had seen Sunday and Shareece lying naked in a meadow, I probably would have stepped over Sunday to reach Shareece. But Shareece had called Sunday a racial slur, and not in a fun way. Already there was something I didn’t like about Shareece. Was she beautiful or just pretty? Suddenly I was a lot less intimidated. I was still worried about being a laughingstock though.

After milking, the evening started off mellow, just the way I like Friday evenings. Oz, Brad, and I sat around the wash pot and listened to Randy’s Record Mart play Memphis R&B. The music, dripping with pain and heartbreak, suited my mood. I was planning on sitting there under Randy’s spell until Momma called us in for dinner, when right in the middle of Barbara Lynn singing If You Should Lose Me, Oz had to go and break the spell. “Hey, guess what?”

Who the hell interrupts a Barbara Lynn song? If we were in Vietnam and he yelled “INCOMING!” maybe I could have understood it. Even in combat, yelling over Barbara Lynn is optional. “Hey guess what” was downright sacrilegious and not at all like Oz. I was almost paralyzed by shock again. In fact, if I hadn’t already suffered the ignominy of being paralyzed by Shareece Grasfeld earlier, I might not have said anything.

Besides, I knew the order of Randy’s countdown. Fontella Bass singing my favorite song, Rescue Me, was up next. I had warned my brothers and sisters that the penalty for interrupting that song was death. Rather than kill my brother, I decided on getting the sacrilege over as soon as possible.

Starting with a heavy sigh so he’d know to make it fast, I groaned, “What?”

“Naw, Man. Just something that slipped my mind. Shareece Grasfeld stopped me in the hall today and asked me if you ever said anything about her.”

It slipped his mind? What was going on here? Nothing ever slipped Oz’s mind. “So what did you say?”

“I told her you liked her.”

“What? Why did you say that?”

“What? Are you blind or something? How could you not like her?”

“And what did she say?”

“She said she liked you. Did she say anything to you?”

A cacophony of bells erupted in my head. Whether they were pealing in alarm or celebration eluded me. Here he was on chatting in the hallway terms with The Queen. Why had he never told me that? And why would he tell her that I liked her? There was just too much for sorting it out right then and there.

Fortunately, I was saved by Fontella Bass. “Aw, she pretty much just said hi. Let’s listen to this song.”

Before Rescue Me ended, Momma called us in.

After dinner, I didn’t watch TV. Instead, I finished Lady Chatterley’s Lover and sneaked out behind the barn. There aren’t many perks to rural life, but one of them is that as long you don’t stay outside too long, nobody questions you for going out of the house at night. Maybe that’s how the outhouse got its name. The night was a tad cool for a little alone time, but according to the weatherman, it wouldn’t get better any time soon. There were big doings out west that would soon bring our long balmy Indian summer to an end. The cold and wet winds of early December were on their way.

The next morning, after sleeping on it, my debacle with Shareece didn’t cut so deep. If what Oz said was true, she had sought an opportunity for speaking privately with me. My being alone wasn’t unusual, but on her side, being alone took some doing. Shareece was almost always surrounded by other girls. Maybe they figured some of her good looks would rub off on them. Kind of like me being afraid some Finkelstein zits might jump ship and land on me. And when she wasn’t surrounded by her ladies in waiting, she was with that boyfriend of hers, John Lee Murtree. John Lee wasn’t known for his brains but he could work magic with a basketball. That’s why he was captain of the basketball team. More importantly to my way of thinking, He was a really big guy. A strategy for saving face, should the need arise, revealed itself to me. Once I inserted him into the mix, nobody would blame me for freezing. Shareece might be pretty, but pretty isn’t worth an ass whipping.

At morning milking, Oz picked up where he had left off the night before. It was like that joke about Old Joe and the devil. No introduction. No preamble. No nothing. “So what exactly did Shareece say to you?”

I was still too embarrassed to admit I had choked. “Aw, she just said she would see me in our church.”

“And what did you say?”

“Aw, I just smiled at her. I didn’t care. She isn’t anything to me.”

“She isn’t anything to you! How can she be nothing? She’s beautiful.”

Now was the perfect time for testing my line. “She’s pretty, but pretty ain’t worth no ass whuppin.”

“Hey,” Oz sounded offended, “you don’t have to worry about ass whuppins when you got me watching your back.”

Obviously Oz was not a good test subject. I tried another tack. “Even so, we don’t want to get John Lee worked up with the basketball tournament coming up.”

Oz said, “Humpf. You wanna talk to the girl, you talk to her. And don’t you worry about nothing. Besides, Shareece Grasfield is worth an ass whuppin.”

Reading between the lines was not my strong point that morning. The full import of Oz’s words went right over my head because I was serious about not getting John Lee worked up. He and Shareece were the most envied students in Cache River High. Like any high school royal couple, they did a lot of hand holding, wall leaning, stealing kisses, and walking the hallways with their arms around each other.

Them that has, gets. Shareece and John Lee were well positioned for reaping even more blessings. The Southernmost Illinois Farmers Union Holiday Tournament was upon us. Hopes ran high that with John Lee at the helm The Cache River High Mudjacks might, for the first time in years, actually win a game in the Holiday Tournament.

What I couldn’t figure was why Shareece would waste a backwards glance on me when John Lee stood right on the verge of his moment of glory. He already had a job washing cars at the used car lot over in Levee City. His job meant he always had a couple of bucks in his pocket, which was more than I could say. If we won even one game in the tournament, he would be elevated to godhood and Shareece would be elevated right along with him. In a severe reality check, I remembered how Shareece had walked away without looking back. Come to think of it, she hadn’t wasted a backwards glance on me.

At least Oz didn’t press me anymore. I was glad of that until the significance of him saying that Shareece was worth an ass whipping hit me like an epiphany. Now the shoe was on the other foot. “Oz, what exactly did Shareece say to you yesterday?”

He didn’t reply immediately. He just started milking really fast. That wasn’t a good sign. After a while, he said, “It’s not important what she said. It’s just important what I said. Well… what I did, actually.”

“OK. What did you actually do?”

“We’re brothers, Rail. We don’t stab each other in the back. The girl wanted to talk to you and I tried to hit on her. I’m a jerk. I guess I just forgot myself. I’ve been feeling like crap about it ever since it happened.”

“Since what happened?”

“OK. So she says she likes you because you talk proper. I say I talk proper too. So she says, and I quote, ‘But Rail do it better than you.’ Then I say, ‘Nobody does IT better than me.’ After I said that, she just turned around and walked away.”

I couldn’t help myself. I burst into laughter. “Well you certainly shot yourself in the foot.”

Oz said, “Yeah, that’s right. Yuck it up. But seriously, I don’t think she realized I used first person objective when I should have used first person subjective. She just didn’t want to be bothered. I screwed up when I tried to go all James Brown on her. You went James Bond instead. Played it all suave and unconcerned. That was the way to go. Girls like Shareece are used to boys acting a fool around them. They aren’t used to boys being cool. You probably hooked her.”

“You really like her, don’t you?”

“Yeah… But that doesn’t excuse betraying my brother. I should have found you and warned you in advance that she was looking for you. You know how you get panic attacks. But after she blew me off like that, I was just wrecked. Man. I so glad you handled it. I am really sorry. I was too ashamed to talk about it yesterday.”

It broke my heart for him to be sorry. He hadn’t done anything except have a sense of honor. That was vintage Oz. My mother shouldn’t have separated Oz and me. We complemented each other. I was timid, he was brave. I was circumspect. He was straightforward. I thought I was noble and honorable, but Oz was even more so. Even in play.

Once when we were in the fifth and sixth grades, we were sword fighting with sassafras sticks because Oz had read something in a magazine about Japanese poetry. His goal was to compose a hauntingly beautiful haiku poem before dispatching me. I knew nothing about the structure of a haiku poem, but having read Cyrano de Bergerac, I understood the principle of what he was trying to do.

Of course I completely sabotaged him simply by losing immediately. Oz won the sword fight but he had failed in composing his poem. I was quite pleased with myself. Victory even in death is still victory. However, instead of dispatching me with a thrust of his sassafras sword, he fell to one knee in front of me. “I am defeated since I cannot offer you a beautiful death. Please grant me an honorable death by cutting off my head.” It was such a perfect moment that I think if I had had a real sword, I would have lopped his head off. As it was, we both just fell out laughing. His honor had trumped my cunning.

Other than not listening to me when I wanted to talk about missing hearts, Oz had always been there for me. If he wanted Shareece, he could have her. I decided to quit the field. “Hey, Man, we’re cool. Like always. I’m not interested in Shareece or fighting John Lee. Go for it. Knock yourself out. After you knock him out of course.”

“Well that’s the thing. I happen to know that John Lee doesn’t much care for Shareece. He claims she won’t put out. Says she’s nothing but an airhead who just wants to look cute all the time. He’s got another couple of girls on the side. Shareece is just for bragging rights.”

“Boy oh boy. You must really like her. You’re like a private eye investigating John Lee.”

“ No, I’m not. Unlike you, instead of reading all the time, sometimes I listen to the talk. And I do like her. She sounds nice. Too nice for John Lee. I’m done but you’re not. I’m telling you, you should hit that.”

As gorgeous as she was, Shareece felt like trouble between my brother and me. If she wouldn’t put out for John Lee, why would she put out for me? The thought of talking to her was terrifying. What if I suffered another meltdown? Finkelstein had seen. What if somebody else saw?

And yet despite all my misgivings, after what Oz had just told me, I decided that perhaps I was being a little too rash in quitting the field so quickly. “I’ll think about it.”

Next Chapter: The Hunter