Racing the Rain Read online

  Bickerstaff looked mildly perplexed at the guffaws as he entered but quickly surmised that the culprit was Stiggs, who was just taking his seat, carrying, for some reason, the weight room workout clipboard. Bickerstaff took off his ever-present Red Sox cap and ran a hand through his red crew cut.

  “Boys, I know the events of the past few days have come as a real big surprise. They have been real upsetting for a lot of us. Coach Cinnamon has been a force to be reckoned with at Edgewater for the past five years, and I think I speak for everyone when I say that he will be greatly missed . . .”

  Negative rumbling in the ranks indicated that he did not speak for everyone.

  “. . . and that we certainly wish him all the best in his new, uh, endeavor.”

  More rumbling. Rather than all the best, some apparently wished him all the worst. Some wished him to be stranded in the Everglades on his way south, to be found weeks later, his rib cage providing refuge for pollywogs. Aw, who were they kidding? They loved the guy. They just couldn’t believe he would up and abandon them like that, particularly after the amazing season they’d had. Miami Senior was a ’50s-era juggernaut; their old coach still thought the two-handed set shot was just swell. They hadn’t even made it out of their group last season.

  “Some of you only know me as the track coach or possibly a driver’s ed instructor,” Bickerstaff said. “Some of you know me from Glenridge. Well, I just want you to know that I’ve seen most of your games—home games, anyway—and I understand what kind of spirit and pride this team has, and what kind of success you achieved this past season. I don’t intend to come in here and upset the apple cart. Or as Coach Stoddard says, ‘I won’t kill the goose that laid the deviled egg.’ ”

  That got a good laugh. A Dewey reference was always good for a tension breaker.

  The mood proceeded to lighten considerably, particularly as Bickerstaff praised the team’s accomplishments and pledged to keep things “on an even keel.” He said that what he most highly prized was “hustle and teamwork” and that as far as he was concerned the secret to success in basketball as well as in life was “just plain hard work.”

  No one was about to quarrel with the kind of good old American Calvinist boilerplate that had been drummed into them since they had first set foot on a court or playing field years ago as larval athletes. Everyone seemed fully in accord, except Cassidy, who was thinking to himself, How about just putting the ball in the hole? Surely they still award two points for that?

  But generally speaking, the meeting broke up in good spirits, everyone now carrying the mimeographed “suggested” workout program for the summer. (Cassidy glanced at the pitiful amount of jogging proposed and sighed audibly.)

  He was afraid that Bickerstaff had heard him, because the coach asked him to linger after the rest of the rowdies had filed out with their general end-of-the-school-year good spirits restored.

  Bickerstaff came and sat beside him on the pile of wrestling mats.

  “Look, Quenton, I know we’ve had our differences in the past. I certainly acknowledge my share of the responsibility and I’m hoping you can acknowledge yours. I’m hoping we can put all that behind us now and work together at making this the best basketball team in the state.”

  Cassidy was unaware of exactly what kind responsibility he might bear for finding himself injured while on Bickerstaff’s track team, but he nonetheless replied with a snappy, “Yes, sir!”

  “Okay, good! That’s the spirit! That’s exactly what I wanted to hear! Now, I have a few things I wanted to go over with you . . .”

  And Bickerstaff then proceeded to explain precisely how he planned to kill the goose that laid the deviled egg.

  CHAPTER 36

  * * *

  WINDING UP

  The rest of the school year consisted of that series of anticlimaxes everyone associates with generally winding things up: senior day, graduation practice, yearbook mania. The popular kids would sit on the concrete benches outside classrooms beside a stack of yearbooks, exuding exasperation at the enormity of their burden. Oh, and would you sign mine, too? It’s around here somewhere; I think Sandra has it now and Phil is next. Can you get it from him?

  The wallflowers searched the passing crowd for people they wouldn’t be too embarrassed to ask. Being generally shy with people he didn’t know well, Cassidy had a foot in both camps. He was nonetheless assured many times in yearbookese as to his ace personality and limitless future. Stiggs and Randleman took up several pages each, both recounting numerous childhood adventures and silly exploits from basketball road trips, the majority of which seemed to involve water balloons and/or shaving cream.

  The three of them triple-dated to the prom, Randleman driving his mother’s Volkswagen minibus, whose boxy interior nonetheless could barely contain the elongated tibias and femurs of half its occupants, nor the plastic hoops, bows, sashes, and acres of pastel crinoline of the other half.

  Their arrival at the dance attracted a small hooting crowd that was more than entertained by the circuslike aspects of their unloading. The boys had to exit in sections, stepping backward onto the curb while unfolding like jackknives, while the girls popped out one at a time, each suspended in the door momentarily by the compression of her superstructure, springing free suddenly like an orange seed squeezed between wet fingers.

  Cassidy of course took the radiant Maria, as it was becoming more and more ridiculous to continue pleading palship. Maybe it had started out that way, Cassidy wasn’t sure. Somewhere in the middle of a drive-in showing of Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte, everything had changed. He sometimes intuited that despite what he had been occasionally led to believe, in this particular relationship, he was nowhere near in charge.

  Randleman took the dark and beautiful Ruthie Lawrence, one of the tiniest girls in school, who somehow managed to still look diminutive, relatively speaking, in her pale lavender wedding cake of a dress. She and Randleman slow dancing to “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” looked like Paul Bunyan swaying in place with a shin guard made out of a kewpie doll.

  Stiggs went with Jerri Frazier, a blond cheerleader he had been dating since halfway through basketball season and about whom he refused to make any locker room comment whatsoever, leading many to speculate that perhaps they had gone most of the way or something like it. This relationship was considered anomalous, as the cheerleaders had been pronounced “solipsistic and frivolous.” Cassidy had discovered the wonders of Roget’s Thesaurus. Besides, they mostly preferred football players anyway. Jerri, a serious, gray-eyed senior, was an exception. She had set her cap for Stiggs early on and the poor dope never knew what hit him.

  Dinner at Ronnie’s restaurant had been hilarious and nearly irrelevant from a nutritional point of view. Everyone was too excited by what Cassidy called “good old whatever it is” to eat much of anything. On the way to the dance, though Randleman recused himself, the rest of them had a few swigs of Mogen David concord grape wine that Stiggs had filched from what his parents thought was their secret stash. Cassidy was pleasantly surprised to find that an adult alcoholic libation could actually taste almost as good as the kind of beverage he was used to, to wit, Nehi Grape Soda.

  They danced beneath the glittering mirror ball. They danced to the Beatles, the Stones, Herman’s Hermits. They went out to the hibiscus-scented patio overlooking Lake Formosa, where boys shed their jackets in the humidity and danced to Del Shannon and Petula Clark. They even waxed nostalgic when someone put on some oldies like Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, and the Big Bopper. Nothing, Cassidy thought, will secure your place in the teen pantheon like plunging to a fiery death in a private plane.

  All too soon they were playing “Good Night Irene” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and then it was beachward ho, where the junior and senior classes of Edgewater High School were tradition-bound on prom night to exchange their tuxes and crinolines for surfing baggies and polka-dot bikinis and sleep in the itchy sand of Florida’s Gold Coast, where, by a time-honored calcul
us of multiplying a certain quantity of alcohol by a maximum dose of sleep deprivation, followed by a lot of salty romping in the blazing tropical sun, they might eventually achieve the most sustainable teenage high possible without schedule one narcotics.

  And, under the circumstances, historically it all went pretty much according to plan, though there was a tiny fraction over the years who really didn’t seem to get the big picture, or who maybe got it all too well and ended up like the Big Bopper et al in some flaming calamity out on A1A, their meager passage on this coil now marked only by black-bordered photographs in next year’s yearbook and the heart-rending ad hoc plastic flower arrangements scattered all along South Florida’s two-lane blacktops that Cassidy called “prom crosses.”

  But the VW minivan clown car returned to home port with its occupants none the worse for wear, though they were certainly dazed, sunburned and, or so they thought, a little hungover. Actually, they were mostly just exhausted. But they had survived their junior prom in decent order, and there were some who could not say as much.

  The next week it was the All-Sports banquet, held annually in the same cafeteria where they consumed their Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and vegetable medleys during the week. As befitting a festive occasion, someone had taped up some crepe paper basketballs, footballs, and tennis rackets to the walls, but there really was no disguising the same old lunchroom.

  Cassidy, Stiggs, and Randleman sat with their teammates and dates, along with the new coach and his wife. Coach Cinnamon had been invited but sent regrets.

  The football team had barely broken even that year, so for once the coaches and players were sincerely humble, if not sheepish, in presenting their awards and rendering their various postmortems and rationalizations. But everyone understood that the whole year had been dominated by basketball and therefore so was the sports banquet.

  Despite the stifling air in the cafeteria, the boys all immediately put on their letter sweaters as soon as they got them. Bickerstaff did a nice little sum-up and tribute to that year’s team, along with his barely contained enthusiasm for what they would undoubtedly accomplish next year. Stiggs won Most Valuable Player, Randleman was Top Rebounder, and Cassidy was Most Improved.

  Cassidy didn’t think he’d improved that much, he just got a chance to play is all. But he was happy with his little trophy, which he ceremoniously presented to Maria, who accepted it with a small, sitting curtsy.

  As Mr. Kamrad and the other spring sports coaches took their turns at the lectern, Cassidy’s mind drifted. In some ways it seemed like a huge expanse of time back to the start of the year, that first hot September morning they reported to their new homerooms. The football team had been doing two-a-days since mid-August, and you could tell them in the hallways by their lean and wan faces: they walked around looking stunned (their coaches were convinced that withholding water would make men out of them—fortunately only a handful across the state died every year).

  It seemed like it took forever until basketball tryouts at the beginning of November, and then the season itself had been inordinately long, too. From the first shaky games in early December until the state finals at the end of March, he had to admit that there were a few times toward the end when he had grown weary of it all.

  But now that he was sitting here looking back on it, it seemed to have gone by in the blink of an eye. As Bickerstaff went on and on, Cassidy was looking so introspective that Maria gave him a quizzical look. He smiled and shrugged, and tried to pay attention. He didn’t really come out of it until a few minutes later as Mr. Kamrad was describing how the Edgewater crew had barely been edged out of second place by Andover at the prep nationals.

  “Many times in sports a contest is decided by a matter of inches. In our case it was a matter of about six of them. But that was the difference between first, which is where we wanted to be, and third, which is where we were.”

  As far as Cassidy was concerned, a twenty-foot jump shot that misses by six inches makes you look like you couldn’t throw a Ping-Pong ball into an open manhole.

  He glanced down at the mimeographed booklet stapled inside a sad little crepe paper cover. The first page read:

  1964 All-Sports Awards Banquet

  Saturday, May 23, 1964

  Edgewater Cafeteria

  6:30 p.m.

  - MENU -

  FRUIT JUICE

  TOSS SALAD

  FRIED CHICKEN

  BAKED POTATOES  GREEN BEANS

  SWEET ROLLS

  ICE CREAM PUFF

  (Hot Chocolate Sauce)

  ICE TEA

  Or

  COFFEE

  As the bowling coach, a lesbian named LizBeth Q. Harlow, yammered on and on about the “near miracle” of her team’s third-place finish in the county tournament at Orange Blossom Lanes, Cassidy folded the program in half and slipped it in his jacket pocket.

  He figured it would be good scrapbook fodder, though he was fairly sure that in the future if he ever came across it among the desiccated boutonnières and ripped movie tickets, it would be that “TOSS SALAD” that would break his heart.

  CHAPTER 37

  * * *

  TRAPPER NELSON, JR.

  Having found nothing better, Cassidy thought he might return to his bag boy job at the base commissary, but then the Monday following the last day of school, Trapper Nelson called him from a pay phone at the Pantry Pride.

  “You interested in a job this summer?” Trapper said.

  “Holy cow, are you kidding me? I hate bagging groceries. I’d rather shovel crap than bag groceries.”

  “Well, that’s about what I’m offering. Come on down to the Jupiter Hilton and I’ll buy you a Coke. We can catch up a little and discuss a little business.”

  Cassidy hadn’t ridden his old ten-speed in months, as there was an unwritten law governing the maximum age at which it was still cool to pedal yourself around town. He was well past it, but this was no time to stand on ceremony. It took him less than fifteen minutes to get to the Hilton, where Trapper was waiting on the bench in front of the store, eating four moon pies and drinking from a quart bottle of T.G. Lee milk. Sitting on the bench was an opened Topp Cola waiting for him.

  “Youngblood!”

  “Hey, Trap. Long time no see. How are the tropicals?”

  “All signed, sealed, and delivered, except for one rock beauty. I couldn’t bring myself to sell her. She has become a permanent resident. I could swear she recognizes me. When I come into the cabin she swims over to get as close as she can to me. She’s amazing.”

  Cassidy sat, out of breath, and greedily tilted back the bottle. It had been a hot, thirsty three miles of pedaling. After a minute, he could almost talk.

  “I know. They have real personalities. But hey, what’s this about a job? You’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

  “I almost wish I was. The jungle cruise business has just about gotten out of hand. Dave Booker brings boatloads of twenty-five to thirty tourists by most days of the week.”

  Trapper, it appeared, had become a polished entertainer. He donned his Tarzan loincloth, wrapped himself in harmless snakes, and fake-wrestled sleepy old alligators. The crowd never failed to swoon. He would give a little tour of the camp, showing off whatever happened to be in the cages and pits at the time: bobcats, raccoons, lynxes, alligators, turtles. And, of course, Willie the parrot was a great favorite, sitting on low branches and begging potato chips from the kids. (“I tell them to brush the salt off first. It’s not good for him.”)

  “But basically, what it boils down to is that I need help running Trapper Nelson’s Zoo and Jungle Garden. That’s what I call it now. I even had postcards printed up! Those tourists will buy anything that isn’t nailed down,” said Trapper. “It pays seventy-five cents an hour and I’ll provide lunch. I need somebody to help me work up the trinkets and doodads, clean the cages, feed the critters. I mean, heck, it’s getting to the point I don’t even have time to go check my traps anymore. I like
making money, God knows, but this really is getting out of hand. It’s even starting to affect the Thursday night poker game. Last week the tourists barely had time to clear out before Jim Branch’s boat pulled up. And he brought Joe Kern and Judge Chillingworth with him. I didn’t have a thing ready for them. They joked around about it, but I could tell they were irritated. That ended up being a big night, too. At one point we actually had two separate games going. I didn’t think they’d ever leave.”

  Trapper took the last bite of moon pie and finished off his milk, shaking his head.

  “I still don’t get why they’d come all the way up there by boat just to play poker,” Quenton said.

  “Yeah, well, come talk to me after you’ve been married a few years, Youngblood. You can tell me how much your wife likes having a bunch of your fishing buddies coming around, drinking bourbon and smoking cigars in her house.”

  “Yeah, but they could find someplace to go closer to town, couldn’t they?”

  “Sure, but they like a little taste of the primitive. My place appeals to their frontier spirit. Why, some of those guys even bring guns with them, pistols. Lay them right on the table in front of them. I think it’s supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t seem that funny to me.”

  “Why don’t you tell them to cut it out?”

  “Well, I guess because I’m not used to bossing around circuit judges and state attorneys, Youngblood. I’m just the innkeeper. I provide a woodsy refuge from domestic bliss.”

  Cassidy finished his drink and they sat watching the few boats heading out the inlet for some weekday fishing.

  “Hey, Trap,” said Cassidy, “you ever been married?”

  Trapper sighed. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There was a girl, back before the war. We ended up getting married before I got drafted. Lucille was her name.”