saw what Harnett was saying—this whole thing was a farce. My lungs and lips stuttered like a child so aggrieved he can’t get out his first sob: F, F, F, F, F, repeated until it was the sound of our breathing, the thump and squirm of our organs. It was the saddest of father/son theme songs, and no coincidence for either of us that the letter it was based upon stood for failure.
32.
I HEARD THE BAND before I got there. Slowly I pushed my face into the chain-link fence and gazed across the field. Moths attacked the massive lights, which scribbled white commas on wet helmets. The bleachers smelled like popcorn and ketchup and sounded like the biggest family in the world. With the exception of one garbageman, the entire town of Bloughton had turned out; I spotted the trench-coated Principal Simmons and his wife; a row back, eyeing them, Vice Principal Diamond; I found the long-suffering Laverne as far from the two of them as possible, huddling with three pipsqueak kids beneath a Screaming Eagles blanket; I didn’t find Heidi or Foley, but found my mother over and over before realizing that the lips were different, the hair too short, the left ear lacking the telltale notches.
Even from a distance I could tell that getting wet was not for Ted. His conducting was stiff and fussy. You think this is tough? I wondered of him. Try digging a forty-five-degree, five-foot hole in the side of a rocky riverbank. I made the same challenge to Woody and Rhino and Coach Winter, all of whom stood beleaguered and winded on the sideline. At halftime, the band played while Celeste Carpenter and her four-woman homecoming court were escorted onto the field by a group of guys in alphabetic jackets. My view shifted and I found myself fantasizing about the dazzling green grass of the thirty-yard line, as yet untouched by cleats. My free hand instinctively flexed: the Root could cut through that turf as if it were cream.
Sometime during the second half I trudged home, my new white uniform gray with mud from passing cars, my trumpet case squeaking with each step. Harnett was waiting. With a pair of scissors he pointed to an overturned bucket. I sat and felt his rough fingers gather a handful of wet hair at my nape. I heard the snicker of metal and felt the blades slide cold against my skin, the damp segments of hair tickle down the back of my shirt. “I bet you name your scissors, too,” I muttered. Through his calloused thumbs I thought I felt the vibration of laughter; he rotated my scalp an inch so that I could see the Root where he had placed it, fully cleaned, right next to the door.
33.
FOLEY SHOOK A FORK free from a thatch of interlocked utensils and tossed it onto his tray. The cafeteria smelled like overcooked beef.
“It’s just the way it is here,” he was saying. “People attack anything. You have to not care.”
“But I do care.”
“Then you have to learn to act like you don’t.”
We shuffled another few feet, waiting for our turn at the steaming vats. “I try,” I said. “But now that they hate me, it’s like they won’t ever let up.”
“They’ll let up when you stop making it so interesting,” he said. “After I got power-dumped in middle school, they all called me Feces Foley. A name like that, you’d think it’d stick, right? And for a while it did, until I just embraced it. I even wrote it on my assignments: ‘Why Erosion Matters, by Feces Foley.’ And bang, it went away.”
“You think I should sign my papers Joey Crotch?”
“Why not? You gotta own it, man. You’re Joey Crotch. Joey Motherfuckin’ Crotch! And I’m Feces Foley! We’re like a kick-ass band. Joey Crotch and the Feces Foley Experience.”
I considered this. “Huh.”
“Yeah, huh. Look, I became invisible there, and when we moved here, I just did the same thing, easy as hell. You can do it, too. You’ve got to. That’s what it’s all about—being totally nothing until college. That’s where you start existing, not here.” He lowered his head and sniffed through the steamed glass. “Gimme a hunk of corn bread.”
I nodded at the cook. “Me too.”
“And what the fuck happened to your hair?” Foley asked, tucking away a strand of his own. “Someone take a lawn mower to that bitch?”
“My dad,” I said. A glance in the mirror that morning had properly demoralized me. There were