Coming
This Weekend

CHAPTER TWO

Numbers

TUESDAY BEFORE FIRST · OCT. 28, 1986 · 7:47 A.M. · FORTY-FOUR

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A WHITE 044 SAT on the back glass of Matt Garrett’s Buick Regal, parked down by the tree in the parking lot in front of the school.

She’d been at the window since twenty till. She always enjoyed the last few minutes of quiet with her cup of coffee. This morning she spent longer at the window as the lot filled.

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A truck backed in with a 12 on it. Big numbers with a circle around them. The two-toned truck was Tommy Wilson’s.

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They were using shoe polish. The white kind in the bottle with the sponge in the lid, and every one of those boys probably got it out of his mother’s closet.

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She’d put a 7 on the back glass of a Chevrolet once. She couldn’t think whose car it was or what for. She was a cheerleader.

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Her door opened.

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Ruth Nester peeked in. “Laura, I need your green form.”

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She had dodged the front office this morning. Mainly because she hadn’t finished.

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“I’ve got it, Ruth.”

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“Today, hon.”

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“Okay, I’ll get it to you.”

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TUESDAY FIRST PERIOD · OCT. 28, 1986 · 8:10 A.M. · FORTY-TWO

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THE POSSUM WAS BACK before Laura got the roll sheet on the clip.

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“I’m tellin’ y’all, it’s the same possum.”

“Mr. Hayes.”

“Mrs. Sanderson, it’s the same one and I can prove it. One of its ears is gone.”

Laura looked at Randall as she walked to the front of the class. “If it wasn’t then there’d be two possums with an ear gone.”

“That’s what I’m sayin’, Miss. It ain’t possible. What’re the odds on that?”

“The odds are…turn to Prologue. One sixty-five.”

Several students moaned as they opened their books. Barry Edwards was rubbing at his wrist. It had a white smudge on the side of it. She started reading the Monk.

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The Monk was the easy one. A man who’s supposed to be praying and would rather be out with his dogs. She asked if it reminded them of anyone. A folded piece of paper caught her eye as it moved from Eddie Johnson’s row to Randall’s row. Eddie’s hand came back empty and stayed on his desk.

“Mr. Johnson.”

“Ma’am.”

“Bring it here.”

Several students laughed.

“Way to be, Johnson,” said Barry.

Randall brought it instead, which told her whose it was. She unfolded it at her desk. There was nothing on it but a 42, written big, with a bold circle around it.

She looked at it, then at Randall.

“Forty-two.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Her finger tapped on the desk. Waiting worked on Randall Hayes.

He stood there.

Sarah Mitchell’s hand went up. “Mrs. Sanderson, is the Monk gonna be on the test?”

She leaned to look around Randall.

“Everything could be on the test.” She put the paper in her drawer and shut it. “Sit down, Mr. Hayes.”

She walked back around and got them reading the Friar. Halfway down the first page Barry leaned across the aisle and said something to Eddie with his stained hand cupped at his mouth, and Eddie grinned down at his book.

“Mr. Edwards. What do we know about the Friar so far?”

“He be, uh.” He found a line with his finger. “Friendly.”

“Friendly?”

“It was sayin’ he be wanton. That be friendly.”

“Keep reading, Mr. Edwards.”

She came up his row and stopped at his desk, and he put the hand in his lap under the desk.

Amber Brown had her notebook open flat on top of the Friar. She was writing. When Laura’s shadow came onto the desk she laid her arm across the page.

Laura stood there a second.

“Miss Brown. Whereabouts is line one seventy-seven?”

Amber slid the notebook off the book with one finger and read the line out clean. She’d been in the right place the whole time. She looked up at Laura when she finished.

Laura went back to the front and sat on the front of her desk with the book closed on her finger.

“Anybody doing anything good this weekend?”

“Nothin’, Miss,” Barry said.

“Nope.”

“Just hangin’ out.”

Randall looked at Eddie. Eddie looked at his book.

Sarah Mitchell said her grandmother was coming Sunday.

“That’s nice, Miss Mitchell.”

The bell rang and they went out louder than they came in, and Randall said something in the doorway that got a laugh from them out in the hall. She got up and pulled her drawer open and looked at the 42.

Out the window the lot sat in the sun. From her room she could see the whole front parking. Four cars had numbers on them.

Laura got the roll sheet ready for next period.

Why would a boy put a number on his own car?

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TUESDAY LUNCH · OCT. 28, 1986 · 12:15 P.M. · WHAT ARE THEY DOING

THE COFFEE POT SMELLED burnt again. Laura grabbed the pot and put it in the sink. Whoever was off second period needed to make sure the pot was off. She turned on the water.

“December sixth,” Mary Ellen said.

“They are not,” Carol said, as she tapped Mary Ellen’s hand.

Laura walked over to the fridge to grab the leftovers she brought this morning.

“They ordered invitations Friday. Wanda Freese is printing the invitations and she told Dorothy at choir practice,” Mary Ellen said.

Laura grabbed her Tupperware bowl and took it to the microwave. She looked over at the table.

“They’ve only been goin’ together since June,” Sue said.

“She was in my class last year,” Mary Ellen said.

Sue shook her head. “These kids.”

Nobody said anything for a second. Carol looked at the ceiling and Laura could see her touching one finger after another.

“Well,” Carol said. “At least December weddin’s are pretty.”

“Mm,” Mary Ellen said, as she took a bite of her sandwich.

Laura sat down with her bowl. “What’d the Pattersons say?”

“Honey, the Pattersons are payin’ for it,” Mary Ellen said, eating a chip. “You know they’re gonna have the good napkins.”

Ray turned a page on the couch and didn’t look up. “That boy cut my yard for two summers. He’s a good kid.”

Laura looked over at him. “Nobody said he wasn’t good, Ray.”

“I’m just sayin’ he really is.”

Sue said her car was still going to Nagel’s on Saturday. No one added anything.

The microwave beeped. Laura got up and took her food out.

Carol slapped the table. “Y’all seen the cars?”

“What cars?” Sue asked.

“The students’ cars. They got numbers on ’em. Some of them put shoe polish on the back glass. I seen three comin’ in out in the gym parkin’ lot.”

Ray set his stack on the couch cushion and went out in the hallway.

“All I saw was just two out front this morning,” Laura said, sitting back down with her bowl. “It was four by the end of first period.”

Mary Ellen looked at her. “You were countin’?”

“I mean they’re right outside my window.”

Everyone looked as Ray opened the door. He came and sat down with his papers.

“Well?” Carol said.

“Can’t see much of the lot from the hall.”

“Could be that it’s some kind of deal for homecomin’,” Sue said. “They’re already startin’ on it.”

“Homecomin’s a week and a half off,” Ray said.

“So they’re early,” Carol said.

Laura tapped the table with her finger.

“Since when are our kids early with anything?” Ray asked.

“Since it’s somethin’ they want to do, Ray. You get a worksheet back late and a windshield painted early. That’s kids,” Sue said.

“My juniors keep sayin’ Baja,” Carol said. “Fourth period wouldn’t shut up about it.”

“I told y’all that’s a race in Mexico,” Ray said.

The table looked at him.

“Yeah, but they ain’t goin’ there, Ray,” Carol said. “They’re in fourth period.”

Laura put her fork down in her bowl. “I took a note off Randall Hayes this mornin’. Wasn’t a thing on it but a number. Forty-two, circled.”

“Forty-two what?” Sue asked.

“That’s all it said.”

Carol frowned at her sandwich. Mary Ellen shrugged with her whole front.

“My sister’s boy did that to a windshield,” Mary Ellen said. “Him and six others, and there wasn’t a thing in this world behind it. They did it ’cause the rest of ’em did it, and by Thursday they’d all fell out over somethin’ else.”

“When was that?” Carol asked.

“Sixty-eight,” said Mary Ellen. “They don’t change, Carol. If they changed I’d of had to learn somethin’.”

The bell rang and everyone hopped up.

“Reola’s doin’ the flowers herself, is what I heard,” Sue said, wadding up her sack.

“She’s not,” Mary Ellen said.

“Outta her own beds.”

“That poor girl,” Mary Ellen said, and they went out talking about it.

Laura snapped the lid on her bowl and set it back in the fridge. Through the little window in the lounge door she could see a small piece of the front lot. She stood there with her hand on the knob before she went out.

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TUESDAY EVENING · OCT. 28, 1986 · 6:40 P.M. · THE KITCHEN

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TRAVIS SANDERSON CAME IN AT TWENTY till seven and put his hat on the chair, which he’d been asked not to more times than not.

“Hey there, hon.”

“Hey,” Laura said to him. “Left you a plate.”

“I see it,” he said, as he gave her a kiss on the cheek.

He sat down heavy and started eating fast. She could tell what kind of day he’d had by whether he tasted his food. Tonight he wasn’t tasting it.

Frank came through and opened the refrigerator and stood in it.

“Shut that,” she said.

“I’m just lookin’.”

“You can look with it shut.”

He came out with the milk and had a swallow out of the bottle before she could say anything.

“Frank.”

“What.”

“Use a glass.”

He put it back. “Y’all got twenty dollars for football pictures?”

She placed a hand on her hip. She didn’t know whether to be upset with him or coach. “And when were you gonna tell us?”

“Coach only just told us last Friday.”

“Well you’re gonna have to wait till I get to my purse.”

He went on down the hall. She listened for his door. He’d learned to shut it soft about a year ago, which she minded more than when he slammed it. She sat down across from her husband and ate about half a slice of the meatloaf she’d made.

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“How was your shift today?”

“Not too bad. Had a fella out past the lake who wouldn’t come out of his truck.” Travis reached for the bread. “I had to sit out there almost an hour.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Sittin’. We finally got his wife out there.” He shrugged with the bread in his hand. “He eventually got out.”

There’d probably been more to it than that. There was always more to it than that, and she’d quit asking for the rest of it back when Frank was a baby, because the rest of it was the part he was leaving out on purpose.

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She turned her fork over. “There’s something goin’ on with the kids at school.”

“There’s always somethin’ goin’ on with the kids at school, hon.”

“They’ve been putting numbers on their cars.”

“Numbers?”

“Yep.” She picked at the green beans on her plate. “They’re writing on the windows with shoe polish. I saw about four. Carol said there was more over by the gym.”

“Numbers for what?”

“I don’t know.” She got up and got the tea pitcher and filled his glass, which he hadn’t asked for. “They keep sayin’ Baja at school. Ray says it’s a race in Mexico.”

“In Mexico?”

“You know them kids. It’s probably nothing really.”

She watched him. He rubbed his chin. She’d spent her whole marriage watching this man get told things. There was a look he got when something caught his attention, a stillness that came after his chewing. She’d seen it over supper tables and in church pews. Once he even got that look while a stranger talked in their car window. This was that same look.

“Probably.”

He got another piece of bread. “I had this woman argue with me twenty minutes over a stop sign that’d been out there since before she was born.”

“Which one?”

“Out by the gin.”

“That’s been there.”

“That’s what I told her.”

Frank’s door opened. The television came on in the front room. The volume went up and stopped.

Travis said that sign had been there since his daddy hauled to that gin.

He finished and put his plate in the sink and ran water in it, which he did about half the time.

He went in with Frank and sat down.

Laura just stared at the kitchen door. He hadn’t even followed up on it. He’d just walked out.