Tina covered her face and stood with her back to the house. “Oh. My. God,” she said, about ten times. Clyde pursed his lips and flushed red.
“Clyde and Tina, sittin in a tree,” Jay sang, his arms and legs moving in the doorway in some kind of loose-limbed jig.
Clyde drove home from Liberty Ridge with a boner. He played a CD called A Night in Tunesia that Troy had given him; it was all clanging drums and shouting. The light in his mom’s room was out when he got in, and he unlocked the house quietly. He still had the hard-on, that thing had held tough for twenty-two miles. In his room he took out a Penthouse he’d found by the railroad tracks behind the house and flicked past the dumb costumed pictorials to the pages he liked.
In the bathroom, a Post-it was stuck to the mirror. Troy called, he’ll be back tomorrow. Clyde made a jug of rocket fuel and put it in the fridge.
Even though he made it to Independence early the next day, Leon still asked about the radiator. “You want me to have a properly working vehicle,” Clyde told him, “you’re gonna have to pay me more than eight bucks an hour.” Clyde had never been this direct to Leon before and Leon, it seemed, didn’t much like it, because he signed Clyde out with a Prius, quiet as the night and twice as boring. It had been wrecked and repaired but the front end still put up a fight on the highway.
All day Clyde waited for a call from Tina or her dad but his phone buzzed only once, when Troy hit city limits. Growing up, Troy had spent so much time at Clyde’s house that Clyde’s mom thought she’d had half a hand in raising him. Before Clyde had made it home, Troy’s car, an early ’80s Camero that had been shedding parts since high school, rushed into his rearview swerving and honking. Clyde tapped his brakes and Troy swung past with his middle finger in the open passenger window. Then he slowed to a crawl. Clyde laid on the horn and got close enough to tap bumpers. In a burst of smoke, Troy rattled off and beat Clyde home.
Getting out of his truck Clyde said, “I think you left your tranny back on 58.”
“I think you left your tranny in Thailand,” Troy said, moving his tongue in his cheek and jerking his hand near his mouth. “With a serious case of blue balls.”
They shook hands, half hugging, and already Clyde thought Troy looked different. He couldn’t tell what it was, only a couple months had passed. It unsettled him but he tried not to let it show. Troy had a brand-new Graceland T-shirt on and Clyde wondered if he’d brought one home for him. “Mom ain’t come out yet?”
“Guess she didn’t miss me.”
They walked to the door. “She practically cries herself to sleep every night,” Clyde said. “Truh-huh-huh-hoy . . . my favorite suh-huh-huh-hun . . . ”
In the house Clyde’s mom gave Troy a hug that lasted so long Clyde had to stick his hands between them and say, “All right, Mom, break it up.”
“Well, I missed him,” she said.
“He missed you too,” Clyde said.
They had leftover cake and warmed coffee at the table. Troy looked around the way a person does who’s left, studying the things that those who stayed behind don’t notice anymore. Clyde guessed that Troy was seeing him the same way. His mom asked all sorts of questions about Nashville, saving Clyde the effort, then Troy and Clyde drove to the general store in Grain Valley for a six-pack. As they passed Strasburg on their way to Ekland Field, beers between their legs, they tried to find the rhythm they’d always had. It didn’t come easy and Clyde started to feel like his best friend had changed. Looking out, Troy said, “Goddamn, I do not miss this place.”
Clyde wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t like hearing it.
There was a time, and not so long ago, when Clyde would have chosen the perfect spot to park his truck, so people could admire it. Then he would have climbed the stands, heard the comments. “Wish you were out on that field tonight, Twitty,” that sort of thing. He might have stood up for somebody on the field, his modesty wrestling with an ego that wanted people to notice him. There was a time, that year or two right after school, when Clyde Twitty and Troy Hoffman would have been in these stands three, maybe four nights a week. But after Longarm shut down, after Strasburg died, people saw less and less of Clyde Twitty. And since Troy moved away, Clyde hadn’t taken in a single game, hadn’t wanted to spend the night answering questions. Tonight he could see how happy they were to see them again, Clyde Twitty and Troy Hoffman, the way it always was.
Clyde had never much liked playing baseball and had quit with no regrets when he got the Longarm job senior year. Coach hadn’t tried to hide his disappointment. “You broke your promise, you made a commitment to me and your team,” quack quack quack. Suddenly it’s my team, suddenly it’s a promise. Of course Coach had brought out the big guns, then: “potential.” He could win a scholarship, make the minors, he could blah blah blah. Clyde just didn’t buy it, a guy will say anything to get his way. Coach wanted to keep his pitcher, he didn’t want the inconvenience of finding a new one mid-season, that was all “potential” meant.
The air up top was still and cool, the bugs plaguing the lights up high. Troy shook hands with half the people in the stands and Clyde watched their faces. He knew almost all of them. He knew them from high school, grade school, work, his mom’s business, baseball, FFA. Strasburg was the smallest of towns, so small that it had to share a high school with Grain Valley. When Clyde saw Coach at the fence, he pretended he hadn’t. He suddenly felt funny being here with Troy again, just like old times. All these familiar faces made Clyde understand why Troy had left. Clyde’s phone buzzed. A text from Tina read: Dad says class, 6 p.m., stay for supper.
Troy sat down. “Got yourself a girlfriend, Twitty?”
Clyde recalled the language Tina had used on the steps and said, “I guess I do.” He told Troy about Tina and her dad. He pointed out the bruises on his arms. Troy had taken karate in Harrisonville once, for a few months, just long enough to instill fear in his fellow sophomores. But the more Clyde told him about the way that Jay trained and what Jay talked about, the more concerned Troy looked.
Clyde said, “You think it’s crazy?”
Troy stared at the field. Then he nodded once. “Uh, yeah, dude. I fuckin do. He even got insurance?” Troy said. That made Clyde laugh. “You sign anything?”
“Jay,” Clyde told Troy, “teaches traditional karate, not sport karate.” He didn’t even charge for classes. There wasn’t gonna be any paperwork. When Clyde repeated what Jay had said about the uchi deshi, and that he thought that Clyde, in a different age, would have belonged to the warrior class, Troy nearly choked on his beer.
“I know you don’t wanna hear this,” Troy said, “but he sounds like a fucking nutcase. Like the bad sensei from Karate Kid.” Troy made his voice into a husky growl: “There’s no fear in this dojo, is there? No, Sensei!”
Clyde didn’t even smile. He wrestled a cold beer from the tight plastic hold. “Yeah,” he said, taking a sip and turning his eyes to the field. “Most people don’t get it.” Clyde checked his watch. If he left right now he’d be only ten minutes late for class.
“Come on, dude,” Troy said, bumping Clyde. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I fuckin care about what happens to my best friend.” Troy wrapped an arm around Clyde’s shoulders. “Let’s get drunk and go watch the planes take off. Fuck fucking baseball.”
Passing the dugout, Coach called Clyde over. “Troy back?” Coach said.
“Visiting.” Clyde turned to watch Troy walk to the truck. “Says he’s done with this shithole.”
Clyde saw Coach narrow his eyes. He wasn’t used to this attitude from Clyde. Clyde wanted to say something even worse just to throw him off.
In Raymore Peculiar Troy bought another six-pack and