..."you will notice that in life sometimes things seldom do..."

 

I am wearing my new boots to school. Sometimes I inadvertently slip on the sleek linoleum of the classroom floors.  Everyone comments on my boots. I am the only student who looks like he dismounted his Harley on his way to class. In Coach Mann’s class we are discussing the Hammurabi code. Coach is giving a lecture. He is jumping around. I am afraid he is going to inquire if an of hi students individually went out and sought extra credit by going to see Last of the Mohicans.   As always the Christ Lutheran fucks in the back row just won’t shut up. I am seated next to the girl in my French class who always wears cool Metallica t-shirts and the oriental girl who talks about how much crazy sex she purportedly had over the weekend. I am self-conscious, I don’t what Coach Mann to realize that I saw him in the back of the theatre during the showing of Last of the Mohicans Friday night.

Coach M is digressing. He is talking about Doric Columns. He is quoting Francis Bacon. He uses a reference to McCarthy when talking about the upcoming football game this weekend.

"By the way, did any of you have a chance to go out and catch the one dollar showing of Last of the Mohicans over the weekend?"

I am quiet. I am looking down into the top of my boots. I don't want Coach Mann to think I am some sort of a brown noser. To think that I am a toady.

Coach M looks around the classroom as if his neck is a periscope

“David, give us insight on the French and Indian War.”

I step up. The floor in Coach Mann’s classroom is excessively polished and I slip. I am wearing the cool boots; the renegade boots. The boots that don’t give a shit. I have the picture of Renae in one pocket. I have the Gideon bible in the opposite. I am not wearing my glasses. As I step I slip. I don’t want to give an oral report in front of the classroom about last of the Mohicans. I adjust my waist. I ready to see if the photograph of Renae Holiday is still in my pocket. As I reach down the opposite pocket I suddenly pull my hand up and my green Gideon bible falls out.

Aron is behind me. He picks the bible up.

“Dave you dropped something.”

The class look at the bible in my pocket that feel out. As I go to grab it back from Aron he yanks it his nipple as if playing keep away.

The classroom explodes in laughter.

I don’t need this shit.

“Can I have it back, please?” I ask.

When I walk towards the bully with one contiguous caterpillar like eyebrow who made me feel like shit all through junior high I reach out my hand again only to slip a little bit. The class explodes in laughter. I want to sprint out of the room. I want to leave.  I want to go to one of the high schools like I saw last weekend in the state cross-country meet. I want to train with them. I want to compare diets and times and splits. I want to g o to Limestone where Renae and myself would indubitably being sharing a locker and I would have lunch with Renae and Laura and Best and possibly Hale. I don’t need this shit.  Aron is dangling the green bible out like it is fish tackle. When I reach again he reels it back. There is more laughter. I slip even more. Aron opens the book and begins to read.

“New Testament and Psalms and Proverbs. Dave, so which one do you masturbate with New Testament or Psalms/Proverbs?

Aron adds that he heard that Proverbs comes with a centerfold.

I am ready to explode. .Everything that has been going wrong for me inside building I find myself manacled inside of like a prison. Everyone is laughing. Everyone is pointing. Aron is doing lame stand up. I wish I was in the high schools like I saw over the weekend. I wish I never went to fucking Last of the Mohicans.

I wish every cell of my body didn't feel like it was part of a numerically descending nuclear counting and that I was ready to explode into a disintegrating vegetable cloud of dust, incinerating all who have made my life at MHS a corporeal hell.

                                                    ***

I mean, I couldn’t believe it when I was at the state meet. It felt like I finally felt my calling. It felt like I finally felt at home. Some schools had like half or the entire student body cheering them on. At Manual its like no one cares except for three runner are our really cool coach.

 

From the opposite side of the phone I can feel Renae apathetically shrug.

 

                                                                        ***

From the front of the classroom I hear a voice. The voice is not admonishing. It is overtly calm.

"Steve I see you have chosen to read from the top selling manuscript of all time."

Aron is stunned. For some reason Coach Mann always refers to Aron as Steve.

"Please return the book back to the student who dropped it."

Steve obliges. I place the bible in the pocket opposite the Renae Holiday picture and head back to my seat without giving an exegesis of the French and Indian war to the class.

As I sit down the girl who goes by the name Celine in my French class who always wears t eh cool Metallica t-shirts is looking at me.

I am pressing the slim pamphlet into the same pocket where I keep the knockout picture of Renae.

I sit down. Somehow Coach Mann doesn’t request that I come back up and tell the class all about the French and Indian war. The girl  who is Celine in my French class.

“You keep a bible in your front pocket?”

“Yeah,” I say.

She is not judging. She is a bad ass. She goes across the street in the alleyway behind Shepkee’s and smokes before school and during lunch.

"Why?"


I don't want to tell Celine hat I am trying to tame my anatomical functions of my body. I don't want her to know its because I think nonstop about losing myself in the socket of flesh that is the female form. That I stay up late precipitously balanced on the edge of my bed losing my vision in the sight of the college girls next door sloughing their attire, walking around like origami in bra and panties. That I think about what would happen if Renae and myself finally had two seconds alone.

I don't want to tell her that the reason the bible is always on me is because I am a Christian.That I wore a billowing almost bridal like drape cementing a vow in an inscrutable masculine pronoun deity. That I am an irreparable sinner but because of his flesh and blood incarnate wailing on the planks of an oversized plus sign somehow I will not be damned after the eclipse of consciousness that is this life fades into etheric haze of yesterday. That, as the molecular pebbles of my flesh transition into kitty litter ash I will be rejoicing overhead with my creator.


I don't want to tell her that the skeleton on her Metallica t-shirt is covering her left nipple and how I want to suck the hell out of it.
  

"I don't know. It's just something I started doing in the last couple of months."


"Maybe I should do that. Maybe if I kept a bible in my front pocket I would keep fucking up less."

I wonder if any of the girls who participated in the state meet are Christians. I wonder if I went to their schools if we would meet and if they would bow their head in front of their teal trays and give thanks for the victuals in front of them, the same way my family bow our head. I wonder if on the weekend we would go out and run together. I wonder if we would leave ourselves and blast down the country fields constituting single A, our pace in stride finding ourselves alone in a field at dusk.

I wonder if I would kiss her if I would taste her sweat before we would sprint home laughing, cheering each other on during the race .

I wonder if I went anywhere else if I would feel this lonely and confused all the time.   

“Well, since our ambassadors was sabotaged on his way up to the front of the class I encourage each of your to see last of The Mohican’s at Westlake. It is only a dollar. I think you will find the experiencing much edifying.”

Coach Mann looks at Aron and says that he is expecting a 1000 word movie review typed.

He then says thank you.

 

As class ends I am walking out coach Mann turns to me again. Every time he turns to me like that he says my name then says the word Word.

“David, a word.”

I stop. I am embarrassed. I wonder if Coach Mann witnessed that I was watching him watch Last the Mohicans as I was walking out of the theatre with Hale.

“Did anyone go out this weekend and see Last of the Mohicans?”

 Coach M asks. I know he saw me. I am embarrassed because he looked like he was crying

“No one,” He  says.

“David, I apologize about the altercation with Steve earlier in the class period. It wasn’t fair that he had the opportunity to disparage your faith in front of the whole classroom. It must have been rather embarrassing for you. I thought you handled the situation with equipoise and grace.”  

 I am still embarrassed about the Gideon bible. I wonder if Coach M will mention that he saw me with Hale watching last of the Mohicans in Westlake Friday night.

“Did you happen to attend the state Cross-Country finals?”

 

I nod .

 

“I would much rather have been running in them but my season didn’t turn out at all as I planned.”

 

Coach M looks back at me and hushes out a smiles.

 

“You will notice that in life things seldom do. That’s the joy. Those moments that are not preordained.  The moments when things happen in your life and you have a nano-second to decide what the right thing is so to do. That’s when you become pressed and inked in the pages of History. That’s when you add something to the orchestral nod of the planet. That’s when life becomes brand new.” 

 I nod. Coach M smiles at me.

“I greatly enjoyed your delineation of Last of the Mohicans. I can see you greatly enjoyed the movie. You should check out the book by James Fennimore Cooper. It’s different from the movie but in a way I feel it would behoove your intellectual sojourn.

Behoove. Coach Mann uses the word behoove.

It sounds like an apiary giving breached birth.

 There are two more football games until State.  I leave his classroom thanking him again.I am already running late for cool Joe Thomas’ class which I can honestly give two shits about.

As I walk down the hallway I stick my hand in my pocket.

Without Christ and Coach Mann and occasionally Patrick I would feel all alone.