The Fairfield County Friday Night Gridiron Bonanza (sample)
The best part of someone died with Kiki Malone, but whoever that someone was, it wasn’t Wade. It was a sad day that sunny Thursday when they laid the poor girl into God’s earth, but Wade Shaunson wasn’t distraught. Only just kind of missing her. Aaron Hobart was missing third period history, which he appreciated. He hadn’t known Kiki (Katherine, actually, but if you knew her you’d know she was a Kiki) all that well, but he was there and no one could say he was not. He was an excellent come-with guy; he was more than happy to share in the community’s grief as the Class of 1998 said goodbye to a life taken too soon. Aaron was ready to feel people’s pain and to take the weight of the world onto his shoulders. He had signed the condolence book, and solemnly introduced himself to Mr. and Mrs. Malone and told them that Kiki had been a special presence in his life, and he’d grabbed three little sandwiches off the trays at the folding table set off to the side—there was no money for a reception and anyway what with the big weekend coming up any place in the village large enough for such a thing had been booked. The minister had said beautiful things. Wade was a respectful kid and well-liked by other people’s parents, and he knew just how to kneel at the graveside without it seeming like a pose. Aaron stood behind him, hands folded save a few awkward scratches at the back of his neck—his own, not Wade’s. They were friends but not lovers, which quite nearly summed up Wade’s relationship with Kiki as well. The cheerleading squad had laid Kiki’s button-up sweater and her red-and-white pom-pons at her final resting place, their mascara running as they shouldered noble duty in a march that lacked their usual pep. Wade had removed that sweater in the back of his father’s pickup truck once, in happier days, while the tempting breasts beneath were still alive and responsive to touch. He had declined to share that memory in his kind words to Mrs. Malone. That was just how he was. Good kid. Very well-liked. And so he knelt and waited, by a count in his head, a full silent minute beside the grave of KATHERINE KELLY MALONE, Beloved Daughter and Friend, September 11, 1980 — October 11, 1997, “Aim for the stars.” “When I go,” Aaron said, just for something to say, “I hope they shoot a movie in the graveyard some day and you can see my name.” Then: “I’m sorry, buddy. I am.” He knew not to use the word ‘really’. ‘Really’ always meant you didn’t mean it. “Don’t be,” mumbled Wade. “Look, I spoke more to her today than I did all this school year.” “I see people on TV get all upset because someone dies and they never had a chance to make things right,” said Aaron, scrunching up his toes. “That ain’t you.” “Your concern is touching,” Wade replied, and he kissed two of his fingers, then pressed them to the A in KATHERINE, preserved in memory, carved in stone. He got up. Didn’t brush the dirt from his pants; that would not be respectful. Clumps of Connecticut graveside soil would be his badge of honor until his mom next did the laundry. “I’d like to be cremated, myself.” “Hey that’s great. Why you tellin’ me this shit.” “Someone has to know.”
It was a terrible thing, losing a nice girl like Kiki like that, and didn’t the senior class have enough on their plates, with the stress of college applications and kids-these-days’ hormones and they grew up too fast, too fast? The teachers kept the workload low and Principal Theobald had convened an assembly on Tuesday on the topic of a time for healing. Tommy Owen—that was her boyfriend—gave a speech, a “eulogism” as he’d called it. His eyes were red, even from tears. Tommy, like Wade, was well-liked, but for different reasons; he was a football hero, and that was enough for Red Corners. He brought pride to a small place, a choking vestige of small-town America in Fairfield County; the last town the yuppies hadn’t sacked, except Bridgeport. His cock had been in Kiki’s mouth, briefly, only minutes after moonrise that fateful Saturday night. There was a good chance that it was the last cock ever to enter the deceased. He was quite shaken, and impressed upon his schoolmates that life is precious and fleeting and we should, like Kiki so well, um, you know, lived life, like, for the best. Poor Tommy. No one blamed him for being sad or incoherent. She had a very pretty little mouth, and he hadn’t made much of an effort to drive her home after the party or anything like that. He could have at least snatched her keys and told her she should walk it off. He could have done a lot of things. Wade hadn’t been at the party; he didn’t get to go to those kinds of parties. He was home that Saturday night, and Sunday too. There had been no school Monday—Columbus, America—but by then most people knew. About Kiki. Wade had found out from his parents, who had heard from, just, people in town—news travels fast, and when school opened up again, everybody was already mourning.
It was a very tasteful send-off, it was agreed, and so nice that it was a nice day. Aaron’s decent brown shoes were slung over his shoulder like sneakers over a telephone wire—“they still do that in for fun in these rural parts,” he’d said—and his actual sneakers, which he’d had the foresight to bring, were on his feet as he and Wade walked up Litchfield Lane into what passed for town. “I wonder what the last thing she thought about me was,” mumbled Wade, as they waited for the stoplight to change as a mere formality. “You gotta bring it back to you, don’tcha,” was Aaron’s response. “Last thing went through her mind was the speedometer. You aren’t the type people throw curses on as their dying wish. Even her.” “Hey, I treated her like a princess.” “Yeah, Diana,” said Aaron, with a wicked leer. No response. “See, ‘cause she died in a car crash, so—ah, forget it.” Wade held his sport coat tightly around him. “I’m cold. You cold?” “Only insofar as I feel it in my knee when it rains,” said Aaron. At some point during all this the light had turned green, and they had crossed, and progressed, and passed Elmer’s Barber Shop, stuck on the corner. Old men with nothing to do but die had made Elmer’s their hangout long ago, just as their fathers’ generation had gone to Elmer’s to die, or wait to do so, and tell fishing stories, and associate with other old men, while the children sold their farms and flew away. Sometimes the old men would even get haircuts. And sometimes someone from the Elmer’s crowd would up and die, and no one was surprised. Even old Elmer had died already, years before. It had been April. Not even a small place, and Red Corners was a small place, could churn up communal grief for every passing. The old would be remembered, but only the young could be mourned.
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