Fourth Down and Out by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Author:Andrew Welsh-Huggins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2014-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

25

Business was starting to pick up at the Wendy’s. Several teenagers crowded the counter. I looked at my watch. Four-thirty.

“Do you need to go?” Anne said.

“Not really.”

“Do you mind if I tell you something?”

“I guess not.”

“You’re nothing like what I expected.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I think.”

“Like I said, I grew up in a big Buckeyes family. I mean, who doesn’t around here. But my dad and my uncles and my brothers are huge fans. And they, you know, idolized you.”

“They shouldn’t have.”

“Maybe not. But they did.”

“You?”

“I was definitely into it. It was fun, the games and the parties. It’s just in your blood, in Columbus.”

“And then.”

“When it happened, people couldn’t believe it. I’m not sure my dad has forgiven you even now.”

“You’re kidding. Even after all the heart-to-hearts we’ve had?”

She laughed. “I know it sounds silly. But it’s like they thought they knew you. Like you were their friend.”

“Sure,” I said. “I get that a lot.”

“And then . . .”

“I betrayed them.”

“No!” she said. “I mean, yes. I mean—that’s how they saw it.”

“How everybody did.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Not really.”

“I mean, afterward. My brother went around for a week. ‘Hayes,’ he kept saying. ‘Benedict Fucking Hayes. They ought to hang him too.’”

“He had a point.”

“Worst thing?”

“Yes?”

“I was the same way.”

“You weren’t alone.”

“When Doug told me you were involved. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Most people can’t.”

“Like I said, you’re not what I expected.”

“Which was?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “More—” She paused.

“More Captain Kirk, less Captain Picard?”

“Exactly,” she said, brightening. “That’s exactly it.”

“On the other hand.”

“Yes?”

“What your brother said about Benedict Arnold?”

“Oh?”

“Maybe he wasn’t that far off. Other than the fact that people forget Benedict Arnold died peacefully in England after several successes as a British Army officer.”

“So?”

I shrugged. “So maybe that just makes me a successful traitor.”

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