Cobra Strike Read online

  Sure, I said in my mind. I kept my stupid grin in place and nodded.

  “Not to get serious or anything,” she said, “but I think Shakespeare had it wrong. ‘To be or not to be’ isn’t the question. See, once you are, you are. The point is to find out why you are, and go from there.”

  She smiled. “What do you think?”

  I think I can’t possibly speak, I thought. But didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, there’s that one part you just recited,” she continued. “You know, about the undiscovered country. Can you repeat it for me?”

  If I had stopped to think about it, I probably wouldn’t have been able to. It’s like walking down a set of stairs. You never stop to think about it. You just do it. If you did think about it, you’d probably be afraid to. After all, to go down a set of stairs, you have to put one foot into empty space and launch your body after it. You have to trust the foot is going to come down in a safe spot and keep you from falling.

  “‘To grunt and sweat under a weary life.’” I stopped in total surprise. I wasn’t alone, but I had spoken perfectly. No stutters. “‘But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from where no traveler returns, puzzles the will.’ “

  “Yes,” she said, nodding, “that part. It’s beautiful poetry, but if you believe the body has a soul, it’s perfect nonsense, because the undiscovered country—heaven—is waiting for us to explore. Hamlet would have had a lot more hope. Right?”

  I didn’t trust my voice. I was still totally amazed that I had managed to recite a difficult piece of Shakespeare in front of her without stuttering.

  She didn’t need an answer; she kept on speaking. “Anyway,” she said, “you might be curious why I like Shakespeare. It’s simple. I’m into drama. I want to be a Broadway actress.”

  Sure, I said, again in my mind. I can see that.

  “I’m guessing you must be in the high school drama club. As good as you are, I mean. I’ll probably see you there. I plan to join right after school. I know it’s a little late to join, but my family and I just moved to Johnstown.”

  Her voice was bubbly. “You see, my dad just got a new job with the Johns Corporation. It was a great offer, a total surprise, almost like winning the lottery. I’m so glad we’re here.”

  I nodded. Feeling, as usual, like an idiot.

  “I’m looking forward to making a lot of new friends. I’d like to get to know you better.” She smiled and moved closer to me, extending her hand. “Okay?”

  I shook her hand. I hadn’t had to say anything. But I felt dazed. Was this how a moose that steps in front of a moving train feels?

  With another smile, she turned and walked away.

  At the doorway, she stopped. “I almost forgot,” she said. “My name is Elizabeth, Elizabeth Whitley. I’m in tenth grade.”

  Whitley? Whalin’ Waymen Whitley’s sister?

  She waited for me to tell her my name.

  I would have tried. I hated trying to tell people my name. When I can’t get it out quickly, I look dumb. Like I don’t even know my name. But for her, I would have tried, if I hadn’t noticed the water samples on the lab table. Crystals had formed in one of the test tubes!

  I pointed, trying to tell her with body language that something important had happened.

  She didn’t understand. Her smile dimmed.

  I was too excited to get a single word out.

  Her smile became a puzzled frown. She walked back into the hallway, leaving me more alone than I had been before.

  Finding out that there really was something in the water suddenly seemed like a second-place prize.

  chapter ten

  Friday night again. Second game of the season. Another pep talk. This time from Coach Donaldson.

  “Boys,” he said, “I’m not going to say much tonight. I think you’re excited enough as it is, having a new quarterback.”

  Donaldson gave Schenley a big smile. “Schenley, I expect you’re the most excited of all. For a year now, you’ve been asking me to find someone else to quarterback so you could play running back. But you did what we asked because you were the best we had. I am happy to say, tonight you get to shift positions.”

  “Thanks, Coach,” Schenley said.

  Coach Donaldson lowered his eyes and spoke to the floor. “Boys, this second part—I didn’t know if I should tell you.”

  He lifted his head again. “But I don’t want any of you making the same mistake, so the earlier I tell you, the better. Please listen up.”

  The seriousness in his voice got our full attention.

  “You’ll notice I don’t have a wad of chewing tobacco in my mouth,” he said. “That’s because I gave it up. Doctor told me this morning I’ve got a cancer on my tongue.”

  If possible, the room got even quieter.

  “They’re going to have to operate. I’ll lose a piece of my tongue with the tumor, and I probably won’t be able to speak too good. So this might be my last season as a coach.”

  He looked at us without flinching. “Don’t feel sorry for me, though. It could be way worse. Doc says I’ll be fine after the operation. Some folks, he told me, lose their lips or teeth or cheeks, even a piece of their jawbones. Some people die because the cancer eats its way down their throats.”

  He coughed. “Anyway, I got two last things to say tonight. First one is, it ain’t cool to chew.”

  He gave us a grin. “And second, knock off those sad looks and get out there and play hard. If this is my last season, let’s make it a winning one!”

  We ran out to the field with two big differences from last week’s game. We were playing out of town. And we were armed with one of the best quarterbacks in the state.

  The Coluth Coal Miners finished third in the division last year, and some newspapers had predicted they would be even better this year. What they really had going for them was a monstrous defensive linebacker named Robert Smith. It was a boring name, but most people called him Chain Saw. And he lived up to his nickname.

  First of all, he could rip through an offensive line exactly like a chain saw. He easily weighed 250 pounds, had the sweetness of a grizzly with his leg in a trap, and did his best to hurt opposing players whenever he thought he could get away with it.

  There was another reason people called him Chain Saw. He’d spent six months on probation for losing his temper and using a chain saw to destroy a car. Some guy had insulted him at school. That night, Chain Saw pushed the guy’s car five miles to an empty field and sawed it in half.

  “That’s the guy, huh?” Waymen asked me as we moved onto the field.

  Chain Saw was number 66, in the green and white uniform of the Coal Miners.

  “H-hard to m-m-miss,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Waymen agreed.

  As we stared at Chain Saw, he shuffled up the field toward us, carrying his helmet in his hand. All our guys gave him plenty of room. He stopped in front of me and Waymen.

  “So you’re the hotshot,” Chain Saw said to Waymen. His voice was surprisingly high. But I’ll bet no one bugged him about it. Not with a face that looked like it had stopped sledgehammers.

  “Way men W hitley,” Way men sa id, sticking out his hand. “And this is my friend Roy Linden. Have a good game.”

  Chain Saw worked up a good gob and spit on Waymen’s left shoe.

  “I’m going to be all over you like a nightmare,” Chain Saw said.

  Waymen smiled sweetly. “I must admit, you look the part already.”

  Chain Saw frowned, not quite sure if he’d been insulted.

  Behind him, the ref blew the whistle.

  Chain Saw snarled at us and headed back to his team.

  We received the kickoff. I returned it to our forty-yard line before getting buried by a wave of green and white. Before I could stand, Chain Saw kicked me in the ribs.

  “Don’t get fancy,” Chain Saw said. “I’ll chew you up.”

  I got to my knees, hardly able to breathe it hu
rt so much. I looked around to see if the referee had noticed the kick. The referee, however, was facing the other way. Then I realized: hometown field, hometown referee. The ref had made sure he was looking away.

  It turned out not to matter.

  Waymen was so good, he drove us down the field in five plays—three of them passes to me.

  By the end of the third quarter, we had scored four touchdowns, three point afters, and a field goal, to give us a 30–21 lead. Altogether I had twelve receptions and three touchdowns. Waymen was proving exactly how good he was. He threw like he was pointing a rifle, carrying the ball he could run like a scalded fox, and when their linebackers broke through, he dodged them as if they were stalled trucks.

  All of it was good.

  The bad part was Chain Saw.

  By the end of the third quarter, Chain Saw had kicked me twice more, spit on two other players and poked his fingers in the eyes of another three. He was getting angrier and angrier because he hadn’t been able to tackle Waymen.

  In the huddle at first and ten on their thirty-yard line, toward the end of the quarter, Waymen looked around at us.

  “You boys tired of that ugly slab of meat wearing number 66?”

  We didn’t have to answer.

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s go for a field goal on the fourth down. First three downs, let Chain Saw through the line.”

  “Like we’ve been stopping him,” one of our offensive guards said.

  Waymen grinned and clapped his hands to break the huddle.

  When our center snapped the ball, Waymen backpedaled, waiting for Chain Saw. He lumbered through, arms windmilling from his massive body.

  Waymen played him like a matador playing a bull. Waymen sidestepped, but left one leg in place so it looked like an accident when Chain Saw tripped. Chain Saw fell so hard his faceguard plowed the field.

  Waymen fired a short pass to me. I was hit hard for a gain of only a yard.

  Next huddle, Waymen reminded the guards to let Chain Saw through again.

  This time, Chain Saw was bellowing with rage as he tried to tackle Waymen. Waymen dodged once and spun around, going backward. Then as Chain Saw tried to cover more ground, Waymen fired the ball hard at Chain Saw’s helmet—so hard that the point of the football squeezed through and popped Chain Saw on the nose.

  That left us at third and eight, with Chain Saw so mad we could almost hear the grinding of his teeth above the roar of the crowd.

  “Let him through again,” Waymen told us in the huddle. “I think I’ve got him where I want him.”

  And, once more, the guards let him through.

  This time, as Waymen backpedaled, he slipped. Or, as he told me later, pretended to slip. He fell square on his back.

  Chain Saw came roaring to dive on Waymen with all 250 pounds of anger.

  As I watched, green and white covered Waymen, the green and white of a guy who had broken the legs of three different players in the last two seasons.

  But seconds later, Chain Saw rolled away, groaning in agony. He couldn’t get to his feet. It took four men and a stretcher to get him off the field.

  I trotted over to Waymen.

  “Wh-what h-happened?” I asked.

  “Tough break,” he said. “I sort of lifted my knee to protect myself as he came down. And he sort of landed on it. And it sort of hit him somewhere below the belly button.”

  He shook his head. “I sort of feel bad about it.”

  “Th-that h-he’s out of the game?”

  “Nope,” Waymen said, grinning. “I sort of feel bad about my poor knee. He does weigh a lot, you know.”

  I grinned back.

  We made the field goal and never looked back, winning the second game of the season 40–21.

  Things were looking good.

  At least on the football field.

  chapter eleven

  I decided Monday after football practice would be a good time to stop by the newspaper office. I drove my truck from the high school and parked downtown.

  The Johnstown Journal was in a small building just off Main Street, squeezed between a men’s clothing store and a small restaurant. The late afternoon sun bounced off the front window, and as I walked to the door, I saw my reflection.

  It did not make me feel better. What I saw was a high school kid armed with a jar of water and a notebook. I wondered again whether this would actually work. But I didn’t know what else to do, especially since the county health inspector clearly wasn’t going to help me.

  I took a deep breath and pushed the front door open.

  A bell tinkled.

  The office looked like something you would see in an old black-and-white movie. The one big desk in the corner belonged to the Journal’s only reporter, a big-bellied man named Eldon Mawther. He had a typewriter on his desk. An old rotary telephone—the kind that had a circle you spun to dial the numbers—sat beside it. Framed black-and-white photos hung on the walls behind him, showing him as a much younger man shaking hands with different people, including one with President Nixon during his visit to Johnstown.

  Eldon Mawther stood up when I walked in. Unlike his younger self in the photos, he was now nearly bald. He grew the hair on the side of his head long, greased it, and combed it over the top. He always wore dark pants with suspenders and a white shirt and a bow tie. He had worked for the newspaper for nearly forty years. I knew all that because he came to every Cobra football game, and he spent more time telling us things than he did asking us questions.

  “Roy Linden,” he said in a booming voice with fake friendliness, “how’s our star receiver?”

  I smiled. This was one of the few times I was grateful I couldn’t speak my thoughts. Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have been this friendly. Two weeks ago, I was just another high school football player to him. But that was before Whalin’ Waymen Whitley showed up and threw me three touchdown passes in one game. If Eldon Mawther wanted to be my friend just because he suddenly thought I was a star, he wasn’t much of a friend worth having.

  And there was another reason I smiled. I had something important to say, and I didn’t want to mess up how I said it.

  I’d been thinking a lot about my stuttering since Waymen’s sister had caught me quoting Shakespeare. I had surprised myself by quoting him in front of her.

  It was another of the mysteries of stuttering. A famous country music singer named Mel Tillis can sing perfectly, but when he speaks, he stutters.

  For me, I wondered if speaking from a memorized script got me past my stutter. And I was about to find out.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Mawther,” I said. “I’ve got some interesting news for you.”

  Hah! It worked!

  I had written my own script and pretended it was a scene in a play where a kid talks to a newspaper reporter. I had memorized the words and acted them out in front of a mirror, just like I had done with Shakespeare’s work. And now, I was actually following my script without stuttering!

  “Let me tell you, son,” he said, chuckling, “you don’t need to bring me the news. You and Whalin’ Waymen just keep playing like you did this weekend. That kind of news will take care of itself. And I’ll keep on writing it the way I see it.”

  He scratched his belly. “You like that story I wrote about Waymen Whitley?”

  “Sir,” I said, still playing my part. I held up the jar. “There’s something wrong with this water.”

  He frowned. “What’s water got to do with my story? I’m thinking it was good enough to sell to Sports Illustrated. Jed down at the barbershop says the same thing. Did Waymen Whitley happen to mention whether he had read it? I didn’t get a chance to ask him after Friday’s game.”

  “Fact is, sir,” I continued, setting my jar of water on his desk, “I believe the story goes beyond that.”

  “Me too,” Eldon Mawther said, no longer scratching his belly, but rubbing it like it was a cat. “I’ve always said I could do some good writing if there was anything worth writ
ing about in this town. And Whalin’ Whitley fits the bill, all right. So tell me what you thought of my story.”

  “Down at the county offices, an inspector told me there was nothing wrong with the water, but—”

  “Water?” Eldon Mawther wrinkled up his round face, looking like he might sneeze. “Water? We’re talking football, boy. What’s water got to do with anything?”

  Actually he was talking football. I was sticking to my memorized script. I was afraid I’d start stuttering if I answered his questions.

  I held up my notebook. “And sir,” I said, “here are my notes on my own testing of the water.”

  “Boy, did a tackle knock a nut loose in your head?”

  I had my script, and I was sticking to it. “The water sample was taken from a spring on Claire Linden’s property. While I could not discover exactly what chemical is in it, it has killed birds and fish. Somewhere, something is leaking into that water.”

  Eldon Mawther had stopped rubbing his big belly. I noticed rings under his armpits where old sweat had dried.

  “There is a story here,” I finished. “A story about the chemicals. And a story about why the county health inspector tried to make me believe there is nothing wrong with the water.”

  I set the notebook beside the jar filled with water on his desk. “The story is yours, sir. Take the water and the notebook. It’s all you need to get started.”

  I let out a deep breath. It had taken a lot of concentration to follow my script.

  The reporter eased himself onto the corner of his desk. He stretched out his suspenders with his thumbs. He stared at me for nearly half a minute.

  Finally he spoke. His voice was flat, not at all friendly. “There ain’t no story, boy.”

  Of all the things I had prepared for, this answer was not one of them. No story? I had seen crystals form in the water. And while I had seen the county health inspector drink it, I wondered if he had switched the samples first. I had all my test results in the notebook. What did this man mean, there was no story?