Rules For Becoming A Legend Part 2

Cops coming and Todd had to run. Pregnant girl, disappointment, it all felt like symptoms of place, and he could remedy all by a few peeled off miles. He got to his feet and went back to the car. James was there, tugging at him, trying to get him turned away, but heres the thing about Freight Train: he was in the best shape of his entire life. A legitimate NBA talent with muscle in spades. James had no chance of holding him back, but he did slow him down. Got in his way enough so that by the time he was sitting in his van, trying to put the thing into drive, James madly punching the door and screaming for him to get the f.u.c.k out, a cop car pulled in.

Two officers climbed from the cruiser and Todd got out of the van. "Hey, guys," he tried, woozily.

"Shut up," James whispered.

It didnt matter that Todd was drunk-whats another MIP?-but it did matter that one of the cops was the safety officer a.s.signed to the high school basketball tournament who Todd had joked with during the first few rounds. A man named Officer Jakes, someone Todd felt too comfortable with.

"Son," Officer Jakes said, "why dont you have a seat."

Todd laughed, tried to shrug it off. Became agitated when Officer Jakes told him to calm down. "Ah, come on Jakes, dont be a blowhard." Todd took a drunken swing and missed by a mile. Jakes pinned big Freight Train against the police cruiser while James and the people awoken by the noise, ghosting the hotel windows, looked on.

His partner that night, Officer Pasadena, said, "Lucky that kid was so greased or he woulda took your head clean-"

"Shut up," Jakes told him.

"What is this?" shouted the Flying Finn, suddenly out, in pajamas, screaming from the balcony.

"f.u.c.k you," Todd growled and shifted his weight quickly to his pivot foot and tried to spin-a move that had never failed him before on the court-but he was drunk and underestimated his own weight. Jakes sloughed off, his wind knocked out, and Todd went too far laterally on his left knee. He felt it go watery the instant it happened. He cried out as the muscular tension left him and pain entered, a shot of it, as potent as anything. He collapsed. Officer Pasadena was on him roughly cuffing him next to the cruisers wheel-an extra shove for good measure-and Todd knew he was past the point of recovery. It was the fear every elite athlete has on the edge of better things. His body, a willing partner up to that point, quitting.

Some things mattered and some things didnt. Genny Mori was pregnant and it turned out that mattered. Breathe. Todd had never expected it, didnt want it really, but it mattered. He married her and the Oregon fog settled down again.

Rule 3. Neither Confirm Nor Deny.

Monday, December 17, 2007.

JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD-MINUTES AFTER THE WALL.

The door to the Brick House opens and a head peaks in. Its the janitor, Mr. Berg-Todds once-best-friend. He finds the breaker box, flicks the switches. The big, overhead light fixtures, with their wire grills grinning, whine to life. The glow is still too new and hazy for detail. But its warming up, building brighter all the time.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Berg says.

When James Berg first sees the body laid out b.l.o.o.d.y on the floor, naked but for shoes and underwear, the red light of the EXIT sign shining on him, he thinks the kid is dead.

"Holy s.h.i.t," he says again. Hes backing away. A murder? Over what, drugs? All that stuff coming into town. The new one is meth, people are saying. Hes back into the hallway, moving toward the door to the parking lot. Whole body is telling him to flee. Whoever did this is probably still around. Addicts will do anything for money. Every noise he hears behind him is the attacker come back to bash his head in. Hand on the push bar to exit, Berg stops. Thinks. He swallows, it doesnt go down. He coughs because of this. He has to call the police. Right now, call the police. But he hesitates. Hes a coward, not just rushing in. The kid back there could still be alive. He probably is still alive. Back through the dark hallway, back to the gym. Lights groaning as they work, slow to warm up. That body still not moving. What a sad ending for some poor kid. s.h.i.t, thered be a media maelstrom. He takes out his cell phone. Three numbers to hit.

Then he notices something along the baseline. A gray marked-up basketball. Everyone in town knows that ball. That boy on the ground is Jimmy Kirkus. Berg rushes to him and holds his fragile head in his hands. Jimmys chest still rises and falls. Hes alive and the gym lights are getting brighter all the time.

Berg a.s.sumes Jimmy has been jumped and then the beating went too far. Didnt happen often in Columbia City, kids getting real violent with each other, but it wasnt unknown. And after all hes been through? It was a small enough town that whoever did it would be found by morning, if not sooner.

"d.a.m.n, Jimmy." Berg feels terrible for not just rushing in, getting to the door to the parking lot before he could think himself out of it, come back and help. James Berg: Coward.

"He scores," Jimmy sputters.

"Who got to you, kid?" There is blood everywhere. On the floor and also oozing and drying on the brick wall. Kids face looks like a cut of steak.

"Huh?"

"Who jumped you? You been fighting?"

"No."

"Dont worry, Im going to call for help." Berg has his cell out, pressing its bellyb.u.t.tons, getting beeps. "Get the ambulance, the police and-"

"No!" Jimmy screams and then squirms in pain. "No, I was running. Just running."

With his eyes, Berg traces the blood from the wall to Jimmy, and then back again. Couldnt be. No. n.o.body could do that. Then he understands why theres so much blood on the wall. A path of drippings up to it. Jimmys done it to himself and thats the scariest thing.

Berg helps him into his ripped clothes, hustles the kid to the cab of his truck. Jimmy goes where hes guided, a zombie. Its still snowing. Great twirling flakes touch down, individual masterpieces, piling up to be crunched through. Rain, this is, only frozen, memorialized. Berg shakes his head to clear the thought, focuses on the task at hand.

In the ride to the hospital, over the hill, right by Peter Pan Park, past Fultanos Pizza and the football field, past where Mr. Mori once had his dental office and past the new movie theaters, Berg keeps the radio jacked. Big news today: the Oregon State Athletic a.s.sociation has decided to drop Columbia City High School down from 6A, the highest level, to 4A starting next year. The surprise isnt in the drop-the town has been hemorrhaging residents, and so students, for years-but in how far. Everyone a.s.sumed it would be 5A for the Fishermen. Now in 4A theyll be up against schools even tinier than they: Dayton, Burns, Milo. People are calling in, outraged or encouraged. They say OSAA should make it more like college-play in the division youre good enough to-not how it is, solely based on school size. Then there are others. People saying this will be good. Columbia City aint what she used to be. Next year could be the start of something special. A run of t.i.tles in 4A.

Their last year with the big boys wont be easy either. This years 6A division presents a uniquely demanding gauntlet. With Shooter Ackley out of Seaside, Ian Callert over in Canby, Danny Rubbe down in Cape Blanco-all NCAA Division Ibound athletes-not to mention Jesuits factory of disciplined contenders, 6A is shaping up to be something to tell your kids about. Bergs got the windows down for cold air. He has to keep Jimmy awake. He knows that much. These call-in people with their outrage, theyll do it for him. 4A? This is a joke! Whole town empty. The cold air isnt enough. He doesnt care what these people have to say. Only values the noise they make. At least we know well kick b.u.t.t.

"What the h.e.l.l were you doing, Jimmy?" he shouts over the wind and radio.

Jimmys head lolls on the end of his neck. "Where we going?" he asks. Blood bubbles up on his lips.

"The hospital. Were going to the doctor. Youve been hurt."

"I know." Theres a gurgle in the kids throat and Berg wonders if he should stop the truck, make sure Jimmy isnt choking on his own blood. Instead he presses down on the gas harder. Truck roars. The hospital is nearby.

"Dont tell, OK?" Jimmy says after a little while. The sound of his voice is barely audible over people p.i.s.sing on over the pseudo issue of sports divisions. Kid sounds like his father, Todd Kirkus, from back when they were best friends and he was about to do something Berg wasnt sure about. Bergy? Be cool. Dont tell.

Tears come to Bergs eyes. "I wont tell. I wont."

Two nurses come at them moments after they enter the ER waiting room.

"What happened?" the first nurse asks. Berg doesnt recognize her.

"Chris?" the second nurse shouts. "We need a bed out here, get us a bed." This one Berg knows. He cant remember her first name, but shes a Parson. She was a couple grades below him in high school, her mother was the English teacher. He used to drink with her brother. Bud Lights and bonfires.

"Wheres Todd?" the Parson nurse asks. "James, wheres his father?"

But the bed is there and Berg is pushed aside in the activity as the first two nurses and a tall, bald man who must be Chris, lower Jimmy onto a wheeled gurney. Sarah. The second nurses name is Sarah. Sarah Parson. Berg feels an unnatural amount of relief to remember her name. With this, it somehow seems to him, everything will be OK.

Then a pale girl Berg has never seen before steps through the nurses and up to Jimmy just as hes about to be wheeled away. Young, still in high school probably. She bites her lip and reaches her hand out toward his head.

Sarah grabs her hand before she can touch the kid, holds it. "No, honey," she says, "not now."

"Is he going to be OK?" the girl asks in a shattered voice.

Jimmy just stares. Berg isnt sure hes heard her.

"h.e.l.l be OK," Sarah says and places the girls hand back at her side.

"Carla?" Its the Reverend Ferguson. New to town, homeschools his kids. This girl must be one of his, Berg thinks. "Carla, come here now."

Chris, the bald male nurse, is pushing Jimmys bed toward the door that leads into the ER. Berg walks with them. The door opens before they get there and some doctor out of Portland, because Columbia City cant seem to raise their own doctors-just janitors and Pepsi deliverymen-ushers the nurses back, already talking jargon Berg has no hope of following. Sarah stops, looks at Berg, and Berg stops. He cant go back there.

"Remember," Jimmy calls out.

Mr. Berg releases a breath he hadnt known he was holding. "What?"

"You wont tell?"

The doors are closing. Berg nods his head, not sure if Jimmy can see.

"Well take good care of him," Sarah says, a calmness he could cry for in her voice.

Berg keeps nodding.

He turns back to the waiting room in time to see the pale girl wavering out of the sliding doors, the Reverend Ferguson holding her elbow. Shes visibly weak. "Thats Jimmy Kirkus," Berg hears her tell her father. "The basketball player."

Berg doesnt know whats wrong with the girl to be here so late at night, to be so pale and sick, but something surely is. He feels like hes seeing a different side to the town hes always known and it frightens him. This is a world populated by pallid, shaky girls and boys bent on smashing themselves out. He wishes it were any other night, and he was home, watching the Late Show, smirking along with Letterman. He sits in one of the gray chairs, picks up the courtesy phone, checks for a dial tone, places it back down.

Berg remembers running into Jimmy and his father, Todd, years before. They were in the Safeway parking lot around Christmas, buying a tree from the Boy Scout sale. Jimmy couldnt have been more than two. Such a sweet kid, he ran around picking up tree tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Couldnt believe those were free. Sweetest kid. Lately though, kids been different-no surprise there with what hed been through. Whole worlds weight on him.

So maybe, in a way, Jimmy was jumped back in the gym; only by himself and not some other kid. The sweet Jimmy snuffed out by the new one. Mr. Berg shakes his head. He doesnt like thinking about things in this way. Brings him close to a black hole in his mind. All the possibilities and none of them right. Trapdoors. Slippery slopes. He had hated college for that reason and chose work as a janitor for the way it shrunk the world down.

First he calls Van Eyck beverages, gets Todds cell number from a sleep-voiced kid who perks up at the word "emergency." Hangs up on him quickly, lest he forget the number floating in his head, and dials Todd. Of course he does. Hes the father of a kid too, isnt he? Jimmy Kirkus wasnt thinking straight when he told Berg not to tell. There are records and insurance claims to be factored in. Jimmy is a minor, who the h.e.l.l did the kid think would check him out? The phone is ringing and Bergs shame is building. Not rushing right in, or coming sooner to have prevented it happening in the first place, these are things he adds to his own case against himself.

Todd answers on the fourth or fifth ring, the oceanic roar of driving in the background. Berg pictures him in his Van Eyck Beverages delivery truck, working the night shift as always.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Todd, its James. James Berg?"

Theres the background roar and a sharp, rhythmic clicking too. Blinker?

"Its about Jimmy. I found him in the gym. I thought hed been jumped. But that wasnt it." The phone is fumbled, and in the ensuing scuffling, three bangs in a row, it sounds to Berg as though its been dropped from a great height, though it was probably just from ear to lap. "Todd?"

"Im here," he says so quickly Berg cant be sure the phone was ever dropped in the first place.

"Jimmy was on the floor and . . ." Berg doesnt feel guilty for telling, just guilty he hadnt called sooner, from the gym, from the car ride over, from twenty-two years before.

When hes done there is only breathing on the other end. No words, but what could James expect? This was about Todds kid, not their friendship. Still, he cant stand it, he presses on.

"I wish I wouldve known he was still in there, in the gym-Coach Kelly should have told me. I wouldve never. Well, you know that. Listen. Hes at the hospital now. I guess youll have to come pick him up." Theres a shifting sound, the pop of the truck door opening, Todd getting out. James pictures him pacing on the side of the highway. He hears a siren from far off, though he cant tell if its on his end or Todds. He looks up and notices the nurse, Sarah, staring at him from the check-in desk, listening. He wants to say more, but cant, not with her there.

Then a click. Hung up on. Not even a sc.r.a.p of grat.i.tude, forgiveness, or acknowledgment. James throws the phone across the lobby. Cord yanks it short so it bashes onto the floor, receiver cracked. He looks up. Sarahs all owl eyes from where she sits.

The dial tone, dull but somehow urgent, bleeds out.

"Ill pay," James says. "The phone. I can pay for that."

Look at our kid Jimmy, asleep in a hospital bed. Hes dreaming beautiful things. Car window studded with water. Taillights smeared red across the windshield. Paul Simon singing on and on from the CD player about diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Mom and Pops looking back at him through the rearview mirror, and then at each other-like they still care. Dex playing his Game Boy and asking Jimmy to "Please, please, just get me past the fireball plant in level eleven." Watching the darkness outside the car from warm safety. A day he always wants to dream about, but never does. Hes hovering, just on the dusty side of sleep, a great happy sadness welling within.

Its been a fitful hour of doctors coming in and administering tests with penlights and clicking sounds. And once, in the middle of it, a nurse with Mickey Mouse scrubs and a doctor with hairy spider hands laid him down and inserted him headfirst into a giant, whirring machine. The doctor had been kind, patted him on the foot and told him it was just a CT scan. Jimmy hadnt known what that meant, or what they were looking for with the machine, but he said, "OK, yeah," and listened to the whirring and beeps for clues. He figured with a machine that big, with mechanics so obviously expensive, it could see straight into your brain. Poke around and tell if you had hurt yourself permanently, but also, maybe, see exactly who you really were and what you wanted and who you wished to become. Jimmy isnt sure of what they found. This scares him. Like its a test he might fail.

Gravity. Thats the only thing that pulls Todd out of the parking lot-big Van Eyck truck taking up two spots-and through the sliding automatic doors and into the hospital. Emotional gravity. He was on the cliff, just an hour earlier, when James Berg called. Son. Hospital. Hed dropped the phone. Not that. He couldnt handle that. But then it wasnt that. And there was an easier grade down after all. Not the smash into flat-out oblivion hed first seen. Jimmy was alive.

Otherwise hed be too tired, too spooked by the empty future that had snapped into focus when he had a.s.sumed the worst to even make it this far. He would have walked away, truck left on the side of the road where hed pulled off when James Berg called, blinking hazard lights. They would have found the truck-known immediately that it was his from the dead cow skull hed glued on the dash-but never him.

Into the hospital and the first one up is James Berg. Out of a waiting room chair and at his side. Matching steps.

"Todd, hes going to be fine," James says. "Nothing permanent, Im told. h.e.l.l be OK."

"Where is he?"

"Right through there. Thats Sarah Parson, you remember her?" A nurse he vaguely recognizes, smiling, pressing a big, blue b.u.t.ton that opens the doors into parts of the hospital you dont normally see unless youre bringing life into the world or sending it away.

"I just found him laid out, you know, on the floor. I think he did it to himself. I took him here just as fast as I could. Im sorry, Todd."

Todd knows whats happening. He glimpsed down into the gap where their friendship once was. Best friends. Until Berg had ratted him out for drinking. It seems silly now, but somehow, twenty-two years old, its still fresh-black dug. Guys trying to fix it all wrong though, like he always has. A gnat. Trying to fill it in with words. Be nicer, kinder, more understanding. Get lower, why dont you? What he needs to do-and Todd recognizes this even if he couldnt put the right words to it to say so-is just man up and tell him hes an a.s.shole. n.o.body made him do any of what he did that led to his initial, selfish spiral. Hed drunk, hed f.u.c.ked, him, Todd Kirkus. Just stand up and tell him like it is. Then maybe they could get on with it. Move some dirt.

"James, just go," he says, as kind as he can manage.

"Yeah, OK, but if you need anything."

More wrong. Todd waves him off. Picking up steam. Hes closer in orbit now, crashing through the atmosphere, following Sarah Parson. James falls off as Jimmy-his son-a planet, rolls in. Emotional gravity.

For the last half hour hes been left alone. Its quieter than before. The lights in the ER dimmer, theres a curtain pulled around his bed, and its a delicious gray. He could stay in this color forever. He loves how everything is shades of the same.

Then his pops comes in, yanks wide the curtain, lets in the background light, casters screaming. He grabs Jimmys shoulder, shakes him out of his half sleep. The whole bed moving. Jimmys brain is a loose marble rattling in his tin-can head. Last night with the brick wall comes back to him. Pain. All is pain.

"Youre dead, kid," his pops says. "Now get the h.e.l.l up."

Jimmy whimpers as his fathers low-down voice brings on a different kind of hurt; now its like his brain has too much water packed around it. No room to think. "Its too early?" he says. His pillow is wet. Somewhere, something is leaking.

His pops whispers like air let out of a bike tire, "Gettheh.e.l.lup."

"But, Pops," hes almost crying. "Its too early."

"Too early? I gotta pick my kid up from Columbia Memorial, four in the morning, and its too f.u.c.king early?" Todd sweeps Jimmys thin hospital blanket off in one go.