The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, page 17
“What happened?” Ernie asked the question even before the swinging door to the locker room had shut behind me. He’d been waiting in the hall.
“I made the team,” I said.
He pumped his fist as we walked through a hall crowded with students coming back from lunch and hurrying to get to class. “I knew he’d keep you. You work harder than anyone.”
“I turned him down.”
Ernie stopped. “You did what?”
“Mr. Shubb is looking for someone to write sports for the newspaper and take over as the editor in chief next year.”
“So?”
The first bell clattered, echoing loudly. “I think I’ll get more out of that than playing sports. It’s a big commitment—I can’t do both. Plus, my dad needs me at the store.”
“You’re giving up basketball?”
“It’s better for my future,” I said over the clatter of the bell and the banging of lockers.
“You can’t quit, Sam.”
“I’m not quitting,” I said. “I’m just choosing something different. Besides, think about all the great stories I can write about you now.” This caught Ernie’s interest. His eyes widened. “I’m going to call up the Times and get a job covering high school games. Coach says they don’t have a high school reporter. When I’m done, you’ll be a legend.”
The idea to contact the Times had come from my eavesdropping on Coach Moran’s telephone conversation. If I was going to be writing articles for the school paper, I might as well see if I could get paid to do it.
I called the Times sports editor when I got home and asked if he wanted a high school reporter. He asked me to see him the following day and to bring examples of my writing, which were essays I’d written in my English classes, since I hadn’t yet written for the paper. Given that saying about beggars not being choosy, the Times hired me. They agreed to pay me thirty-five cents a column inch, plus my mileage to and from the games. They also gave me a press pass.
My coverage of Ernie’s exploits appeared in the Times at least once a week during the next year and a half. By our senior year, I hadn’t just made Ernie a legend at Saint Joe’s; I’d made him a household name throughout the county. College recruiters showed up in hordes at Ernie’s games and practices. The recruiting letters, which started as a trickle, became a deluge of envelopes stuffing his parents’ mailbox and bore the insignias for USC, UCLA, California, Syracuse, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona. Coaches offered him scholarships in basketball, football, and track, but it became apparent that football was the sport that best utilized all of Ernie’s athleticism and provided his best chance at a professional career.
Giving up basketball for the journalism staff had two other unintended consequences. After a feature article I wrote about Ernie won first place in a journalism contest and I received a $500 scholarship, Mr. Shubb entered my writing in other competitions. By the end of my senior year, I had won close to $2,500 in scholarship money, which, as my mother liked to say, was no small potatoes. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Not playing sports also gave me the time to work at my father’s store, and that led to the second unintended consequence.
I wouldn’t need to take Mickie up on her offer when I turned eighteen.
10
My father’s disappointment that I would no longer be playing competitive sports was tempered when I told him that night at the dinner table that I wanted to earn money working at his store and could save for college. I knew my parents were concerned about the expense. More than once my mother had intimated that the community college would be a great way to get my general-education requirements out of the way. She was right, I knew, and I didn’t want to tax their budget any more than I already was, but I also really wanted to go to college.
“As of tomorrow, you are Broadway Pharmacy’s part-time delivery and stock boy. And when Alex leaves for college next year, you can take on the extra days.”
“Only if he keeps his grades up,” my mother said. She expressed no disappointment at the end of my competitive athletic career. As she spooned mashed potatoes onto my plate, she said, “Maybe you’ll become the next Woodward and Bernstein. Or Walter Cronkite. Wouldn’t that be something, Sam?”
I agreed it would be, but I doubted anyone would want to hire a newscaster with red eyes. Much as I had come to accept my appearance, I was not so naive as to believe people would readily accept me, someone who looked so different, and there was never a shortage of people to remind me of this when I grew too comfortable.
11
The Saint Joe’s newspaper was produced every other week, with production taking place right after class. I could work the schedule so I could be at my dad’s store in time to dust mop the floor, stock the shelves, and get out the door to make the deliveries. Shortly after the Easter holiday, I entered the pharmacy to find a new girl being trained at the front register by my dad’s longtime assistant, Betty. Some months earlier my father told us at dinner that Betty had asked to cut back her hours. Her husband had taken sick. My mom suggested my dad hire girls from the local high school to work part-time for minimum wage.
The girl behind the counter looked up from Betty’s tutelage and smiled without hesitation. “You must be Sam.” She stuck her hand across the counter. “I’m Donna.”
My mother would have called Donna “husky.” The blue smock did not hang on her the way it did on Betty. It protruded over her chest. I suspected Donna was stacked.
“Hi,” was all I could manage.
I set about my business but found mopping the floor more difficult than usual. It seemed no matter the aisle I moved to, Donna would appear to dust the merchandise and talk to me in between waiting on customers.
“Your father says you go to Saint Joe’s.” She flipped her hair from her shoulder and folded it behind her ear, revealing a silver hoop earring. Blue eye shadow painted her upper eyelids.
“I’m a junior,” I said.
“I’m a senior at Burlingame. What’s it like going to a school without any girls?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You get used to it.”
“I’d think an all-girls’ school would be boring,” she said. “I can’t imagine going to one. It seems like my best friends are always guys. Your dad says you play baseball. I play first base on the softball team.”
“I had to give it up to write for the newspaper,” I said, which was an outright lie, since I hadn’t gone out for the team.
“I know,” she said. “I saw your stories in the window.” My father displayed all my articles from the Friar and the Times in the store windows with great pride. “I liked the one you did about Ernie Cantwell hitting the last-second shot. You really made it sound exciting.”
“You read my articles?”
“Not all of them, but the ones I’ve read are really good.”
She was being kind. The Times edited my sports stories so much it was like that line on the TV show Dragnet—“Just the facts.” Still, it felt cool to have a senior girl tell me she liked my stories.
“Maybe I’ll come watch you play softball some time,” I said. “Maybe I could write an article for the Times.” I was hoping to impress her. The Times would never cover girls’ softball.
“That would be great,” she said. “Though I don’t think you’d have much to write about.”
I had never felt comfortable talking to girls, except for Mickie, of course, who was at my house even more than in grammar school. She and my mother continued to spend time together even when I wasn’t home. They would shop together and occasionally go to the movies. Every so often I’d catch them alone at the kitchen table, and Mickie would look like she’d been crying, but when I asked about it, my mother’s response remained consistent. “Girl stuff. It wouldn’t interest you.” Mickie gave me the same mantra.
Talking with Donna was easy. I felt no pressure and no reason to be self-conscious. She was eighteen and a senior, after all; she had no interest in someone barely seventeen years old.
I seemed to have an inordinate number of deliveries that afternoon and didn’t make it back to the store until five minutes before closing. After ringing up the cash purchases, I hurried to the back room to grab my coat. Donna was standing on her toes reaching to hang up her smock. My assessment had been correct. A white knit sweater did nothing to camouflage the size of her breasts. She turned her head, catching me looking.
Trying to cover, I stepped toward her. “You need any help?”
“I’m short but not that short. Thanks. Wow, polite and cute.”
I felt my face flush and turned to grab my jacket from the hook behind the door. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
“Wednesday,” she said. “My parents don’t want me working every day. I have to keep my grades up. I’ve got a full load this semester, and I partied a bit too much last semester.”
“Okay, Wednesday,” I said.
I knew Donna was just being courteous when she called me cute; I was, after all, the boss’s son. Besides, it had sounded like something a big sister would tell her little brother. Still, I found myself thinking of her that night as I studied in my room, and during the next two days.
12
I arrived late to the store Wednesday after a journalism meeting went longer than expected, and I had just enough time to get out a quick hello to Donna as I raced past the front counter and pushed through the swinging door to the elevated pharmacy. My father stood at the counter hunting and pecking at the typewriter with two fingers.
“Sorry I’m late, Dad.”
“School comes first.” He ripped off a label and handed it to his tech.
“I’ll catch up.” I grabbed the dust mop and started down the aisles. Donna remained behind the counter talking with Leo Tomaro. Tomaro had been a football player of some repute at the local high school, but I’d heard he was also dumb as a post. Tomaro liked to come in to the store to talk sports with my dad, and I’d recently heard him say he’d “taken some time off” from college.
Tomaro talked with Donna the entire time it took me to dust mop, and he remained at the counter when I went to empty the garbage beneath the front register.
“Hey, sport,” he said, making me feel like I was ten. “Your dad says you’re a big-time sports reporter now, huh? You know what they say. ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, write about those who can.’” He gave Donna a toothy grin.
“I think the saying is, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, don’t,’” I said.
“Yeah, whatever.”
“How’s community college?” I asked.
“I’m taking a break,” he said. “I had a business opportunity come up, and I didn’t want to pass it up.” He turned and pointed out the window to an older-model red Camaro parked at the curb. “Check out the new wheels. Cost me nearly a grand.”
“Nice,” I said and then, because I just couldn’t help myself. “Tomaro’s Camaro.”
Donna snorted, then tried to cover it up as a sneeze.
Tomaro said, “Yeah. I’m thinking about getting one of those personalized license plates.”
Donna’s lips were pursed tight, as if she was holding her breath. I indicated I needed to get the garbage box below the cash register, and she took a step back to give me room. I knelt, biting my tongue to keep from laughing, and pulled out the box of garbage, which was filled with Kleenex—Betty had a perpetual cold—along with candy wrappers and receipts. When I reached behind the box to gather all Betty’s frequent misses, Donna bent down behind the register. The blue smock, which she left mostly unzipped, fell open, revealing a silver chain with a locket and a considerable line of freckled cleavage. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the garbage, but then she said, “Here you go, Sam.”
She handed me a balled-up scrap of paper and mimed sticking her finger down her throat. I laughed out loud. At that point, I think even Tomaro realized he’d been the butt of my joke. When I popped back up, he said, “So, are you in high school yet, sport?”
“I’m a junior,” I said.
“At Saint Mo’s?” He said this in a feminine voice and bent his wrist. “I couldn’t do a school without the ladies. I guess you don’t have that problem. Or maybe you do?” He bent his wrist again. My father called from the back of the store, indicating Tomaro’s prescription had been filled. “Get that for me, will you, sport? You’re the delivery boy, after all, aren’t you?” He winked at Donna.
“No problem,” I said.
I hurried like an obedient retriever, grabbed the white bag from the counter, and brought it back, handing Donna the paperwork to ring up the sale on the cash register. Tomaro pulled out a credit card and slapped it on the counter. “You keep working hard, and someday you might get some plastic.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, as if I’d forgotten. “My dad said to just rub that cream in twice a day, and it should take care of that rash in no time.” My father had said no such thing and would never have broken a customer’s confidence, but having been at the store, I’d picked up a bit about certain medications. Before Tomaro could respond, I nodded to the window. A parking-meter cop stood on the sidewalk, flipping open her ticket book. “I guess the parking meters don’t take plastic.”
Tomaro grabbed his package and hurried out, but not before Donna burst out laughing.
13
I returned from my deliveries just before my dad locked the front door and flipped the sign in the window to CLOSED. Donna had stayed to help ring up the cash deliveries. Half an hour later we all departed together.
“See you at home,” my father said, walking to his car.
“Could you believe that guy today?” Donna asked as we walked down the sidewalk.
“He hits on all the girls who work for my dad,” I said, though Donna was the first girl to work at the store.
“Trust me, I know. He hit on all the girls at school, too. Everyone knows he’s after one thing.”
“Stimulating conversation?” I asked.
Donna laughed. “You’re funny.” I stopped next to the Falcon, and she said, “Now, that is a sweet ride.”
I mimicked the sound of Tomaro’s voice. “So where are your ‘wheels,’ sport?”
“No wheels for me, sport. My dad grounded me. Long story.”
“Is someone picking you up?”
“Fat chance. When I’m grounded, I’m walking. It’s my dad’s way of punishing me. He says that maybe the exercise will clear my brain.”
“Where do you live?”
“It’s not far. I live in Hillsborough, just a couple miles.”
Without thinking I said, “I’ll give you a ride.”
“You sure it’s not out of your way?”
It was the opposite direction. “No problem at all.”
Donna touched my arm, and it sent an electric pulse across my skin. “Like I said, polite and cute.”
Inside the Falcon, Donna asked, “Can we put the top down?”
Though it was a bit chilly, I happily obliged. Other than Mickie and my mom, I’d never been alone in the Falcon with a girl. I hoped someone I knew would drive up and see me, the devil boy, with a high school senior riding in my car.
Hillsborough was a wealthy neighborhood with large homes, sweeping driveways, and expansive lawns. We made several turns, and I knew I would be hopelessly lost trying to get back home.
“Turn here,” Donna said. I drove between two brick pillars leading to a driveway that curved past a manicured garden with English hedges, rosebushes, and other plants I couldn’t name. I stopped the car beneath an impressive colonnade for a two-story stucco home. “What does your father do?”
“You mean when he’s not on my case or grounding me? He’s a big-shot lawyer.”
“What about your mom?”
“She pretty much plays golf and cards at the country club all day. At night she drinks.”
The statement hit me like a slap. I didn’t know what to say.
Donna flipped her hair. “Do you party, Sam?”
I hadn’t even had a beer up to that point. “When I can,” was all I could muster.
“It’s such a double standard. My mom is shit-faced half the time, and if I party, my father grounds me. How is that fair?” I recognized her question to be rhetorical. “Well, thanks for the ride,” she said and exited the car, but rather than run up the steps, Donna walked around to the driver’s side and rested her forearms on the door. Her shirt fell open, and her cleavage swallowed the silver chain and medal.
“Do you know how to get out of here?” I raised my eyes. Donna grinned. “You just take a right out of the driveway, turn left at the first stop sign, go one block, take another left, and follow the road back to the El Camino.”
I nodded, but I doubted I would remember a single word. Then Donna leaned forward and kissed me hard on the mouth, her tongue forcing my lips apart, probing. Before I could even decide how to respond, she pulled back, smiling. Then she winked. “See you, sport.”
Struck dumb, I watched her bound up the steps and disappear through the front door.
When I got home, my mother was finishing setting the table for dinner. She’d started to wait for me and my dad to get home so we could all eat together.
“What took you?” she asked.
“I gave Donna a ride home.” I quickly added, “She didn’t have a car and was going to have to walk, and it was getting dark.”
“That’s nice.” She pulled open the fridge and retrieved the milk. “Wash your hands.”
As I washed my hands at the bathroom sink, my mind drifted back to Donna’s cleavage and her warm, moist lips pressed against mine, her tongue exploring.
“Sam, food’s on the table.”
Feeling flush, I lowered my head and splashed water on my face.
“Sam?”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I said, using the hand towel to dry my face. I hoped it was a minute. I had my doubts. It had taken nearly the entire car ride home to lose my erection.
14
Donna did not work Thursday or Friday. I contemplated making some excuse to ask my father for her phone number, like she left something in my car, but the longer I chickened out, the less plausible that excuse became. Besides, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to muster the courage to call her, or to hold a conversation for very long.
