Flat Water Tuesday by Ron Irwin

Author:Ron Irwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

17.

I awoke late one night to find Perry shaking me. My small room smelled like bandages, sweat and iodine and I listened to his whisperings in a half fog, as if he were part of a bad dream that refused to go away. Finally I pushed him aside and swung my feet to the cold floor, sat on the edge of the bed hugging myself. Perry smelled of beer and the cold outside. I looked at the glowing numerals on the clock. A little after three in the morning.

Perry walked to the window, peered around the curtain at the wasteland beyond. “Did you hear me, Carrey? Connor hijacked the rowing truck. He says you have to come. He’s waiting for you down by the football field. Get something else on, it’s freezing out there.”

I put my hands on my hips and stretched, tried to wake myself up. “Is he crazy?”

“Not as crazy as he thinks he is. Ruth and Wads are also there. He’s got beers, dude.”

I pulled on my T-shirt and sweatshirt and jeans. Perry watched me dumbly in the dark while I yanked a sweater over my head, slammed my already socked feet into my sneakers and found my jacket and hat. I walked out into the hallway. It seemed obscenely bright. The torn linoleum floor was streaked with Perry’s wet footprints. He was a sight to behold in a long, formal coat, snowmobile boots, and a neon green hat. His face had turned bright red in the steam heat of the dorm. When he shoved me through the main doors out into the cold, the night wind howled right through me.

It had snowed. A white revelation of it was like a blanket over the leaves sparkling in the starlight. It clung to the exterior walls of the dorm in flashes, to the wooden fences lining the walkways, had streaked the trees with white. The air seemed to contain the dormant energy of that early snowfall. We started walking fast, me with my arms flat against my sides, my fists balled in my pockets. The dusting of snow on the main drive seeped into the bottoms of my sneakers so that by the time we’d crossed over Route 7, my socks were damp and my feet freezing. Perry and I walked along in silence, until finally he said, “Channing was impressed by your bench pull testing. Connor couldn’t believe it. Dude, you almost kicked his ass. There he is over there. Check it out.”

I could just make Connor out in the long strip of snow before the field house. The football field. His back was to us, his form shimmering and fading as he threw something deliberately and quickly into the darkness. Ruth was standing near him, small and motionless in a cobalt blue ski jacket that hung off her narrow shoulders. Perry looked at Connor and said to me, “He has a good arm. He’s making thirty, forty yards even though he’s buzzed.”

We had walked up to the end zone near the road.

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