the goalposts.
12
ANNE
B ig Bend Central was losing badly. She came to the game because it was expected, and honestly, she didn’t mind getting out of the little house for a bit. Win or lose, this game and the carnival afterward were a big deal.
She’d seen all the stuff set up in the field outside the stadium, the games and the vendors and the rides. Most of her students would be at the homecoming dance after the game tonight, but tomorrow they’d be out on the midway, trying to win those huge garish stuffed animals—purple bears and pink dogs and green monkeys—sneaking in flasks to spike the silly-shaped soda cups they were selling for five dollars a pop.
As for the game itself, Anne knew how serious Texas was about its football, and Murfee was no exception. The stadium seated over eight thousand—a huge concrete bowl open at both ends to knots of sweet acacia trees. It had a full press box and reserved seating and thelatest artificial turf and a scoreboard with video replay. What it did not have, not at the moment, was a winning team. BBC was down early just as they’d been in nearly every game of the season. But the stands were full, and under the huge lights, with everything polished and painted and perfect, the entire stadium
glowed
. She could only imagine what this all looked like from high above, the surrounding darkness of the desert anchored by all this heavy light—a great bonfire, burning and bright, trying to escape skyward.
Marc would have loved this crazy stadium in the middle of nowhere, the circus atmosphere. Electricity—excitement—ran through the bleachers, through the entire town, even as Presidio scored another touchdown and BBC’s coach screamed on the sidelines and tossed what Anne imagined must be a very expensive headset into the stands.
She was sitting with Lori McKutcheon and her small, silent husband, as well as two other teachers. They’d been nice to wave her over, passing small talk back and forth and including her in their chatter about the school, the carnival, the team. Lori’s husband said one thing and one thing only—BBC sure missed Chris Cherry—drawing nods and agreement from everyone around them. Anne pieced together that this Chris had been a great quarterback in Murfee and had even played some in college, but was back home as a deputy sheriff. The same deputy she’d read about in the
Murfee Daily
, something about a body discovered on a ranch. No one cared about that now. Instead, the town just wished he could trade his deputy’s uniform for a football one again.
• • •
She burrowed into her jacket, her cold breath adrift. Lori talked, and she nodded in all the right places and said more or less the rightthings, a well-honed ability since Austin. She was here but not here, a ghost, turning in a lifelike performance; maybe a mime, forever pulling at invisible strings and failing to escape from invisible boxes.
At one point she thought she saw Caleb Ross sitting with Amé Reynosa, but when she looked again, they were gone. She lost herself in the game, the rise and fall of small voices around her. There was another reason she was glad to get out of the house, not face the thought of being alone. She knew that on this night more than any other, she needed to drop into this ocean of unknown people, let the tide of their lives and conversations take her away. Tonight she needed to hide. There was another cheer, a roar like pounding waves. Lori said something to her and Anne smiled, not knowing or caring what she smiled to.
She’d already deleted the inevitable cellphone messages from her parents, unheard, because she knew what they would say, and she’d spent the whole day keeping busy, trying to ignore the calendar and the time. After the game she was going to walk the midway a bit, buy one of those stupid soda cups or an elephant ear, let herself get cold and numb until she couldn’t feel her fingers . . . until she was so frozen by the
12
ANNE
B ig Bend Central was losing badly. She came to the game because it was expected, and honestly, she didn’t mind getting out of the little house for a bit. Win or lose, this game and the carnival afterward were a big deal.
She’d seen all the stuff set up in the field outside the stadium, the games and the vendors and the rides. Most of her students would be at the homecoming dance after the game tonight, but tomorrow they’d be out on the midway, trying to win those huge garish stuffed animals—purple bears and pink dogs and green monkeys—sneaking in flasks to spike the silly-shaped soda cups they were selling for five dollars a pop.
As for the game itself, Anne knew how serious Texas was about its football, and Murfee was no exception. The stadium seated over eight thousand—a huge concrete bowl open at both ends to knots of sweet acacia trees. It had a full press box and reserved seating and thelatest artificial turf and a scoreboard with video replay. What it did not have, not at the moment, was a winning team. BBC was down early just as they’d been in nearly every game of the season. But the stands were full, and under the huge lights, with everything polished and painted and perfect, the entire stadium
glowed
. She could only imagine what this all looked like from high above, the surrounding darkness of the desert anchored by all this heavy light—a great bonfire, burning and bright, trying to escape skyward.
Marc would have loved this crazy stadium in the middle of nowhere, the circus atmosphere. Electricity—excitement—ran through the bleachers, through the entire town, even as Presidio scored another touchdown and BBC’s coach screamed on the sidelines and tossed what Anne imagined must be a very expensive headset into the stands.
She was sitting with Lori McKutcheon and her small, silent husband, as well as two other teachers. They’d been nice to wave her over, passing small talk back and forth and including her in their chatter about the school, the carnival, the team. Lori’s husband said one thing and one thing only—BBC sure missed Chris Cherry—drawing nods and agreement from everyone around them. Anne pieced together that this Chris had been a great quarterback in Murfee and had even played some in college, but was back home as a deputy sheriff. The same deputy she’d read about in the
Murfee Daily
, something about a body discovered on a ranch. No one cared about that now. Instead, the town just wished he could trade his deputy’s uniform for a football one again.
• • •
She burrowed into her jacket, her cold breath adrift. Lori talked, and she nodded in all the right places and said more or less the rightthings, a well-honed ability since Austin. She was here but not here, a ghost, turning in a lifelike performance; maybe a mime, forever pulling at invisible strings and failing to escape from invisible boxes.
At one point she thought she saw Caleb Ross sitting with Amé Reynosa, but when she looked again, they were gone. She lost herself in the game, the rise and fall of small voices around her. There was another reason she was glad to get out of the house, not face the thought of being alone. She knew that on this night more than any other, she needed to drop into this ocean of unknown people, let the tide of their lives and conversations take her away. Tonight she needed to hide. There was another cheer, a roar like pounding waves. Lori said something to her and Anne smiled, not knowing or caring what she smiled to.
She’d already deleted the inevitable cellphone messages from her parents, unheard, because she knew what they would say, and she’d spent the whole day keeping busy, trying to ignore the calendar and the time. After the game she was going to walk the midway a bit, buy one of those stupid soda cups or an elephant ear, let herself get cold and numb until she couldn’t feel her fingers . . . until she was so frozen by the
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