TheBanyanTree: Sidda's novel -- 3

[Terri W.]

I felt much better after writing about what happened to Daddy ten  
years ago.  I do understand that expressing these things is supposed  
to be good for you.  I think that, before, I always thought  
"expressing" emotions was like "expressing" a pimple.  It meant you  
had a higher risk of spreading bacteria and infection.  And you  
scarred worse.  I think that's what I thought.  I'm not really sure,  
though, since I'm not that person anymore.

The sky had cleared by the time I blew out my candle, so I took it  
into my mind to check out how the Bucheks are getting along.  They've  
been in my head off and on all week, and it was about time I went for  
a spy.

The Bucheks live in town, which is several miles by county roads, but  
I can cut cut across the pastures and fields and, depending on the  
season and the condition of the crops, it's probably about four  
miles.  If the fields are plowed, it seems like ten.  If the day is  
nice, like today, it's just a fine walk.

Once I hit the City Limits sign, it's another mile to the Bucheks.   
They live three blocks from the high school.

When I got there, Coach Buchek was standing outside in his driveway.   
I know his schedule so thoroughly, I can tell you exactly what had  
happened before I arrived.  He had driven home from football  
practice.  He had stayed late to make sure all the boys left the  
parking lot okay and there was no engine trouble or personal issues.   
He may have stopped by the guidance counselor's office.  He started  
spending more time with Winifred Taylor last year, when he had a  
senior quarterback who was not making the grades he should have.  He  
talked to Winnie Taylor about it, who called in Mr. Siegler, the  
History teacher who'd given Chase Boudreaux his D- that put him on  
Probation. Coach Buchek told Bill Siegler in Winnie Taylor's office  
to do what he had to do.  If Chase deserved an F, go ahead and give  
it to him, and if that mean the football team lost their quarterback,  
and thus the District Championship, so be it.  Siegler told Chase  
he'd better pull his shit together, or he would regret it for the  
rest of his life.  Chase laughed in his face.  Siegler failed him.   
Chase found out about Coach telling Siegler to do what he had to do,  
and confronted him in tears in the Faculty Lounge.  I've never seen a  
boy more upset, such betrayal and confusion played on his face.  "But  
you're my Coach!  My COACH!  Don't you GET it?!" he bleated.  He came  
right off the hinges.

But it all worked out.  Siegler didn't want to flunk the boy, after  
all.  He wanted the boy to work harder and pass.  But it's a tough  
assignment, to be laughed at by a seventeen-year-old boy when you're  
a paunchy 55-year-old History teacher who still lives with his mother  
in a trailer in Friendship, Texas.  Siegler offered to let Chase  
write two papers to earn extra points, and Chase leaped at the  
deal.   There was one about Lewis and Clark and another one about the  
History of Environmentalism.  Chase threw his heart and soul into  
those papers, finally making the connection that you sometimes have  
to do things you don't want to do in the short-term in order to get  
the long-term payoff.  You'd think he'd have learned that in football  
practice, but, let's face it, the boy's brain was a sludge pipe of  
hamburgers, hormones, and ego.  I'd watch and wonder, sometimes, why  
he even bothered to wear a helmet at all.  He's at A & M University  
now, down in Bryan.  He'll flunk out and be working construction by  
Christmas.

Meanwhile, Coach Buchek got to know Winnie Taylor better through that  
whole transaction, and then, since, August, of course, he has been in  
to talk to her more and more, just s he has been to Pastor Goddard's  
place at least twice a week, and he and Cyndy still drive to Austin  
once a week for their sessions with the therapist there.

This past August, Coach Buchek was at football practice with his  
team.  It was a hot day, but not as hot as some other days had been.   
He called a play and watched as his star quarterback for this season  
ran the play flawlessly, and then, two feet from Coach Buchek, fell  
face down on the field.  He didn't move.  One of the other boys  
hollered, "Hey!  Quit screwing around!"  Still, the quarterback did  
not move.  Coach Buchek has coached that team for over twenty-five  
years.  They won District title three years in a row.  He and Cyndy  
had been married thirty years, they had two beautiful twin daughters,  
Marilyn and Kimberly, and one son, Danny.  Danny would be the  
quarterback who was now laying motionless on the football field.

Coach Buchek sent word to call 9-1-1, which meant the hospital  
dispatched an ambulance, and he started CPR.  But he told people  
later that as soon as he turned Danny over, he knew that he and his  
wife had lost their only son.  The boy gazed, unseeing, up at  
himself, already in Heaven.  They cut his uniform off him.  Coach  
tried artificial respiration.  The man knew all the right things to  
do.  The EMT guys got there in four minutes.  Danny was dead.

I just realized you might think this whole book is about people  
dying, but it is  not.  It is just a coincidence that both Daddy and  
Danny have died right here in the very first part.  People die all  
the time.  And often, it's a surprise.  Especially to the person who  
dies.  Neither Daddy nor Danny woke up on those mornings, thinking,  
"I'm going to die today."  One moment they were there, and then, the  
next, they

Just like that sentence.  Weird, huh?

There was nothing the EMT people could do.  The Assistant Coach, an  
already-troubled young man named Jesse Morales, was on all fours in  
the end zone, sobbing his heart out.  The other players stood around  
in clusters, muttering and staring, pale and slump-shouldered,  
bouncing their helmets off their thighs.  One kid dropped his helmet  
and commenced kicking it around the field.

Word spread like a brush fire in this little town, of course.   
Everyone knows the Bucheks, everyone knew Danny.  Up at the Methodist  
Church, the Sunday School for teens had grown less than popular.  The  
one kid who still showed up every week was Danny Buchek.  Marilyn and  
Kimberly are college graduates and live in Houston.  They both do non- 
profit work, one for an AIDS organization, and another for something  
called The Invisible Children.

Within an hour there were over a thousand people up at the school.   
They arrived there on foot, on bikes, in cars, drawn to the place  
like pigeons gather and move towards a lunch eater on a park bench.   
The principal called Coach Buchek at home and asked him what he  
wanted him to do.  "I'll come on down," he said.

They set up a quick sort of assembly in the gym, with the PA system  
and the bleachers.  The place was packed.  No one knew what they were  
doing there, or what the program would be.  Everybody was in shock,  
people were crying and a few were wailing, but mostly the people were  
subdued and shaken.  The thing is, no one really knew what had  
happened to Danny.  It was a hot day, yes, but not that hot.  Danny  
didn't take drugs.  He had no asthma or health problems.  But it  
surely must have played in Coach Buchek's mind that he may have  
pushed his players too hard.  That, somehow, this was all his fault.   
And the loss in his own life, how could he even absorb such a thing?

People will talk about that assembly for generations here in  
Friendship.  Coach Buchek spoke for about twenty minutes.  He stood  
up straight.  He did not crumble or cry.  He told the events of the  
afternoon as a father figure, but not as a father.  His grief was  
clearly not for public consumption.  He was Coach Buchek, and he had  
a certain image and reputation to live up to.  Strong, firm,  
reassuring, expecting the best behavior you could summon up from your  
character.  He thanked the EMTs and hospital and everyone present,  
said that he did not know what happened, that no one did, but they  
would find out, they would definitely find out, and then he finished  
with, "All I can figure is that God decided he needed another  
quarterback."

Two days later, every car in town had a decal on it, with Danny's  
number 15 and "In loving memory" curling through it.  Within the  
week, every high school football player in the district had a decal  
like that on his helmet.  Coach Buchek and Danny had been in the  
middle of sanding and painting their family home when the accident  
happened, and by the weekend it had been completed by friends.   
Another friend showed up with a refrigerator for the garage.  "Y'all  
are gonna get a lot of food.  You're gonna need this."

Danny died in mid-August, and by the time school started, the locker  
room had been renamed.  At the first Friday night football game,  
there was a moment of silence, another noble, somber speech of  
gratitude from Coach Buchek, and they held a raffle to add to the  
Memorial Scholarship fund begun by the sale of the decals.  Fifty  
percent went to a winner, fifty percent to the fund.  The winner,  
Melanie Petit, immediately donated her fifty percent back to the fund.

The town is starting to move on.  Coach Buchek and Cyndy, of course,  
are stuck.  They haven't changed Danny's room.  The sheriff still has  
Danny's uniform that was cut off him that day.  Cyndy had done the  
laundry and had no clothes or linens that smelled of her boy.  One of  
the twins -- I can never tell them apart -- came home to live for the  
first few weeks, and Cyndy acted a lot better than she felt, for the  
girl's sake.  But after the daughter went back to Houston, Cyndy  
spent many afternoons talking to herself and crying about having  
nothing full of Danny's smell at all, nothing at all.  She'd be  
wandering alone in her house, smelling her sofa, the curtains in his  
room, looking under his bed for a totem.  It went on for hours and  
hours.

I watched her from the alley that runs along the back of their  
house.  I watched the family before Danny died, and I have been very  
intentional about including them in my rounds since then, of course.   
They are out of the way of most of my routes, but I make the effort.

The first time I saw Cyndy smile after Danny died was almost a month  
later.  Someone had finally cleaned out his locker at school, and  
Coach brought her a pair of Danny's dirty sweat socks.  She first  
beamed at her husband, they laughed, and embraced each other.  But by  
the time the whole scene was over, they were holding onto each other,  
sinking to the floor together, clutching on to each other.  I  
witnesses keening.

This evening, Coach Buchek stood in his driveway, looking down, his  
hands on his hips.  He wears a baseball cap when he coaches -- he's  
balding on top and he can't take the son.  He's fifty years old.  two  
months ago he could have passed for 35.  He is gray now, and his skin  
sags, and his lips are thinner.

I read somewhere that 90% of marriages break up after the death of a  
child.  The partners just can't stand the sight of each other.  Your  
spouse is a constant reminder of the tragedy.  Coach and Cyndy have  
great faith, and are strong and good people.  But every day everyone  
in town greets them with sorrow in their eyes.  Every day, people  
stop laughing when they enter a room.  everyday the tinyness of  
Friendship becomes a burden and there is no escape for them.

That's why Coach has been spending time with Winnie Taylor.  He  
hasn't gone to her house, I've been over there and she lives alone  
and is always alone.  The day Coach seeks her out at her house is a  
day that I will be there, I promise you.

Sometime in the next week or so, too, they'll be driving into  
Austin.  There was a autopsy, of course, but it took a ridiculously  
long time.  Testing, I guessing.  They'll go into Austin to find out  
what killed Danny.  If it was anything at all that Coach could have  
prevented, the world will end at their house.

Coach Buchek stares at the driveway a long time, then rubs the back  
of his neck and straightens his shoulders to go into the house.  He  
and Danny used to come home to a house full of lamp light and cooking  
smells.  Cyndy always had music on, too.  She liked to sing and dance  
while she cooked.

I watch from the window as Coach enters the house, which is full of  
dimness and quiet.  He flips on a light, blinks in the brightness,  
and flips it off again.  A soft lamp comes on a few seconds later.   
Coach pauses and cocks his head, listening.

It is several long minutes before Cyndy finally comes downstairs.