Twenty-Eight #2
At the L-shape of the pier, June Bug and Dee Dee turned left, away from Trudy with their backs toward her.
Trudy let out a sigh of relief. Thankfully, the ticket booth blocked the festival lights, hiding Trudy in its shadow.
June Bug helped Dee Dee take her seat next to him.
Trudy couldn’t see very well, but Dee Dee must’ve pulled her hair back in a bun or something.
Surely, she hadn’t cut it short. Not before homecoming.
“Recognize this spot?” June Bug asked. “You caught that largemouth ... right over there.”
Before Trudy could even be surprised that Dee Dee had gone fishing, or impressed she’d apparently caught a bass, Carter replied, “Oh ... yeah ... I guess it is.”
Robust confusion twisted across Trudy’s face.
Slowly, she turned to look over her shoulder, scooted around, so she could rest her head on the piling, and face them without being seen.
It was Carter, not Dee Dee, but why? Were he and June Bug friends?
And what were they doing out here? Her first thought was smoking pot.
Oh God, she really didn’t need to see that.
Whatever they were doing, she’d have to tell Haskel. She tried to make herself smaller.
Then Carter rested his head on June Bug’s shoulder and that orange leather sleeve enveloped the boy.
Trudy shut her eyes as tightly as she could, reopened them only to find the same scene unfolding.
Carter turned his head, slowly, looked up toward the quarterback.
June Bug pressed his lips to Carter’s and held them there.
Carter reached up and grabbed the back of June Bug’s head, holding their faces together.
Trudy’s hands flew over her mouth as she turned away.
Her eyes darted in every direction, unable to land on a steady spot.
She tried to name everything she felt. Astonishment?
Fear? Something akin to remorse for stealing this moment that was never meant for her.
She tried to still herself with tiny sips of air.
How long would she have to sit there? She thought about Leon, considered the scandal that would ensue if this came to light. Never mind Haskel’s campaign. Never mind June Bug’s own future with Bear Bryant.
A sultry moan cringed Trudy out of her thoughts, and then, “We need to talk,” June Bug said.
Carter cleared his throat. “Okay?”
The boys sat directly in the glow of the festival, and Trudy watched them despite hating herself for it.
“I don’t know how ...” June Bug started then stiffened. “God! What is wrong with me?” He ran his fingers through his hair and stood, began to pace; the pier creaked and whined. Trudy scooted her foot closer to her seat, trying to ensure it wasn’t visible.
“You’re just nervous,” Carter offered, still sitting. “I mean, Bear Bryant? Homecoming? It’s a lot of pressure.”
June Bug looked down at him. “I feel like I’m on that conveyor belt at the grocery store checkout. Like I’m some big dumb milk jug headed to a place I don’t want to go.”
“Afraid you’re a commodity, lost in the big Winn Dixie buggy of life?” Carter snickered.
“I’m being serious,” June Bug said. “Every day, I get closer to a life chosen by everyone but me. And I have to get off that conveyor belt, Carter.”
Carter stood, took hold of June Bug’s arm, and pulled him in. They embraced. “You worry too much.” He tried to kiss him, but June Bug pushed him away.
“You don’t get it. If I don’t get off now, I never will.” He turned back around, grabbed hold of Carter’s shirt, wadded it in his fist, and jerked Carter toward him. The dock groaned and shook. Trudy gasped and considered intervening but held her breath.
June Bug pressed their noses together and shouted. “I want to hit you as much as I want to hold you!” His voice echoed across the river. “Don’t you see that?”
“Lower your voice,” Carter whispered, coolly.
June Bug released him with a shove.
Carter stumbled back, stood frozen, blinking his eyes, his chest rising and falling. “What the fuck, man?”
June Bug turned toward the river, grabbed a fistful of his own hair, unable, perhaps, to be with his own spontaneous aggression. He spoke to the water. “I don’t know what’s true.” He sighed heavily. “Because I love you, Carter.”
Carter opened his mouth to respond but said nothing.
June Bug turned to face him. “I love you.
But in the same moment those words leave my tongue, I fucking hate everything about you, and everything that you are, and everything you do to me.
The thoughts you make me have, Carter. I never had these .
.. thoughts ... until you. June Bug kicked one of the pilings with the bottom of his shoe.
The whole pier shifted an inch and Trudy almost yelped. Carter steadied himself by holding on to another post.
“And now look at me,” cried June Bug. “I have no idea who I am.”
Trudy focused on breathing silently. The lights of a barge appeared in the distance down the river.
“I don’t want this life.” June Bug tipped his head back and looked at the sky, then let it slump forward. He whispered, “I’m throwing it, Carter.”
Carter shook his head. “No.”
“I have to. If Bear Bryant likes what he sees, I’ll have no way out.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Carter said, “throwing the game robs the whole team.”
“What are you talking about? I threw the game against Goose Shoals, and we won .” June Bug shrugged. “No harm, no foul.”
“It won’t go that way against McFarland, and you know it.”
Trudy felt her body tense, a rush of heat moved through her. June Bug had played poorly on purpose? And he’d let her take the blame? It had nothing to do with the Field House Run. Her jaw began to ache.
“What’s your idea, then?” June Bug guffawed. “Oh, I know! Let’s be lovers! You can come to Tuscaloosa with me, and we can sneak around and live in secret even though I’ll have news reporters and millionaire Booster Club donors tracking my every move twenty-four seven. That what you want, Sissoms?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“We can get girlfriends while we are at it, and we can lie to them too.”
“You’re already doing that in case you forgot.”
“I already told you.” June Bug shook his head and scowled. “Daddy made me get back together with Dee Dee until the election. Some bullshit about Uncle Haskel’s campaign.”
Carter crossed his arms. And Trudy wished she could unhear the truth about Dee Dee and June Bug being back together.
“What am I supposed to do? Take you to homecoming?”
Carter slumped his shoulders, tipped his head back and looked at the sky. “Of course not.”
The barge had gotten closer. “Well, guess what? My relationship with Dee Dee was never a problem until you showed up!” June Bug’s voice skipped across the water again.
“Wait a second.” Carter stepped backwards.
“So, you blame me for this? Because in case you don’t remember, I was only trying to be friends like our dads wanted.
You’re the one, Leon! Moody! Junior! who reached over in the middle of the night at fishing camp.
You started this. Whatever this is.” He swept his hands through the air and then dropped them by his side.
They stood silent and Trudy wished she knew what time it was. Finally, June Bug whispered, “I didn’t mean to—”
“To what? Actually feel something?” Carter said. “Did you ever think that I might be over here sorting through this too? You think this is easy for me?”
June Bug’s shoulders slouched, deflated like yesterday’s party balloon; he lowered his head, touched his thumbs to his forehead and the strapping quarterback melted, his face all scrunched up, his eyes flooded.
Carter’s shoulders dropped witnessing June Bug’s release, but he remained still, perhaps giving June Bug room to feel what he needed.
Only after the quarterback devolved into heaving sobs did Carter embrace him, one hand with a handful of QB-1’s shirt, the other gripping the back of his head, his fingers disappearing in June Bug’s hair.
Carter somehow appeared to grow into June Bug, or maybe it was June Bug who shrank into Carter.
They rested themselves—a silhouette of boys embraced—against an old piling on a pier that was at least seventy years their senior.
June Bug’s crying shattered Trudy’s heart; she was overwhelmed by the mix of her own emotions coursing through her, feelings she’d still not named.
The barge was passing them now, about half a football field away in the middle of the river; its wake ripped through reflections of the Falconhead lights, scattering them; soon the waves would slosh underneath Trudy and the boys and slap the rocks on the bank.
Finally, June Bug squeaked out, “I don’t give a fuck about Bear Bryant. I don’t care, Carter, about any of it.”
Carter studied June Bug’s face.
June Bug pulled away. “I’ve lost myself. And I don’t even know how to talk about it.”
The six-foot-three quarterback bent in half and sobbed again, like something primal, into Carter’s shoulder; hearing the truth come out of his mouth, listening to himself say it aloud, perhaps too much to handle. Carter pulled him in tighter.
Trudy bit her lip, tried to steady her breath. Tears turned cold on her face. She turned her head to give the moment back to the boys as much as she could, realizing what a gross contravention she was.
She couldn’t be sure when the boys let go of one another or when June Bug stopped crying; the barge’s waves crashing under the pier had drowned out their voices.
She closed her eyes until she felt the pier sway, felt their stumbles back toward the bank.
If either boy looked in her direction, she didn’t know it because she just watched the lights of Falconhead dance on the water.
Once she heard the gate clang, she stood to see their silhouettes heading back toward the festival.
Halfway up the path, June Bug turned right, and Carter headed left.