Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford

Author:Kelli Jo Ford [Kelli Jo Ford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2020-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

The next day Mose showed up at the travel trailer at 6:00 a.m. The tin door gave under his knuckles when he knocked. “I wanted to see if y’all needed some help,” he yelled, running the brim of a stained mesh cap through his hands. “I can come back.”

“Open up,” Marni yelled. She sat in a white robe at the tiny fold-down table cuddling a mug, her mop of curly hair piled high on her head. She waved him inside, offering coffee.

“I can’t believe Coach Gilbert is still at it,” she said. “He was coaching the boys when I was playing. Running four corners half the game, screaming his fool head off. Kicked me off the bus once for kissing Lew Johnson in the back seat on the way home from Krum. Of course Lew didn’t have to find a ride home. He ran four corners!”

As manager of the boys’ basketball team, Mose had sat in the front seat of a Blue Bird bus, his forehead pressed to the rectangular sliding glass window as he watched Orion, the Hunter, stretch above the mesquite and sleeping cattle. He poked his nose into the metroplex as a junior when the team with no better than a 50-50 record had lucked into the regional tournament by way of a putrid district and a halfcourt miracle lobbed at the buzzer.

He was supposed to keep the stat sheet but didn’t have a head for numbers. He had complained to his mother how the figures jumped around on the page and how the players prodded him.

“Don’t let them run you off, Mosey of mine,” she’d said. “Just listen to Coach and do your best.”

In the added pressure of the big game, he kept confusing the assist column with the point column, and it was easier for the lanky, acne-faced boys to focus on Mose’s managerial skills instead of the drubbing they took at the hands of a 1A team whose home gym sat in the middle of a wheat field.

When Coach nodded off on the way home, the boys made a game of tossing tape balls at Mose’s head, a game at which they surprisingly excelled and therefore did not let up on. Instead of charging down the aisle, fists swinging, Mose sat lower in his seat and leaned his forehead against the vibrating glass. He kept his gaze on the Hunter, closing his eyes to his own weakness as the bus carried him back home. In his senior year he was not asked to return.

“Coach Gilbert was real good to me. I had to quit on account of Mama’s health.” Mose immediately felt bad for his lie. “Well,” he said. “She needed somebody here.”

“You sure loved your mama, didn’t you.”

Mose passed his fingers through his beard and looked at the floor.

“I’m so sorry, Mose.”

“Just over a week ago she was talking about us planting a good garden next year,” Mose said, his voice low. “She asked me every day how many more milks I had to go to get all my seeds planted.

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