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If the oriole calls like last year
when the south wind sings in the oats,
if the leaves climb and climb on a bean pole
saying over a song learnt from the south wind,
if the crickets send up the same old lessons
found when the south wind keeps on coming,
we will get by, we will keep on coming,
we will get by, we will come along,
we will fix our hearts over,
the south wind says so.
-- Carl Sandburg
One. September.
No more than a week of college football goes by before Tim realizes he is a small fish in a Texas lake. Used to be, people knew his name and his face; called out to him when he drove by; gave him free drinks at any bar in town just for being Tim Riggins. But at practice now the coaches call him Tom. They slap him on the back and act like they're happy to see him, but in their eyes is just a sort of flat curiosity. Tim never sees a spark of interest in himself as a person, and it makes him leery.
He remembers how Coach Taylor used to look at him, even when while forcing the whole team to do stair-climbs in the pouring rain. Coach Taylor saw more than just a pair of catching arms and a couple running legs. Tim had not even realized it mattered, and now he misses it every single day. He misses the friends he used to have, the teammates who were like brothers, the men who pounded him on the back and asked him what he was gonna do next. He misses Billy, hanging out in his house, and the feeling of knowing everything and everyone in town. He misses being the big fish.
And the news just gets worse. Two things that had always worked for him – his easy smile and his name – are both falling flat with the ladies. College girls have so many hot athletes to pick from that he gets passed over, ignored, walked away from, and he doesn't like the feeling. If Billy knew, he'd rag on Tim for weeks about the girls who won't give him a second look.
School is impossible, even with all the "easy" classes that football players get. He imagines Lyla sitting next to him, taking notes in different colored pens, and it makes him laugh because of how not like him that is. She's probably getting straight As and he can't even stay awake. Who gives a shit about critical thinking? Regular thinking is hard enough.
Higher learning blows, and going pro had been Street's big dream, so Tim leaves, just packs up one day and drives down the highway blasting old country songs out the windows of his beat-ass truck. He'll be able to go home and sleep in his own bed and Billy will definitely hire him at Riggins Rigs. Sure, Mindy's around, and little Billy Junior will be coming along, but they won't be mad enough to bar him his own house. It'll be like it was before: clear eyes, full hearts, yada yada.
Probably Lyla will yell at him, but it can't be helped. College is just not for the Riggins boys: they're meant to work with their hands and shit like that. If Lyla was only around, Tim'd show her exactly how good with his hands he is, but of course on the phone she'll talk right over him and give him the third degree for an hour. He decides not to tell her the news quite yet.
Right east of Dillon he stops at a half-empty honky-tonk to buy himself some liquid courage. Now he comes to it, he isn't sure that Billy is going to like this idea after all. And Mindy will be a bitch, she always is, and she might call her sister, and he doesn't want to have to deal with Tyra yelling at him on top of everything else.
He calls Street instead, for practice. Street yells at him but then laughs and then acts like he expected it all along.
"I didn't go to college either and now look at me. I'm a big important man, you know."
"Yeah, don't you ride around in a limo all day?"
"Hell yeah I do. And then I ride a helicopter to my summer home in the Hamptons."
"What the hell is the Hamptons? Are you losing your accent, you cracker cowboy?"
"Whut y'all talkin' about, son? I'm just a country boy from Dillon, Tee Ex." Street lays it on with a butter knife, and soon they are both hollering helplessly with laughter. Tim sees a few patrons eyeing him, wondering if he's high, wondering what the hell he's going to do next. And hanging up when his small stash of quarters runs out, he realizes he doesn't know either.
He downs a couple beers and a shot of whiskey and he's thinking about how to break the news to Billy when someone puts another shot in front of him and a woman's voice says, "Aren't you Tim Riggins?"
He looks up and gives the bartender, a blond woman he hadn't really noticed, a second look. She's older than he is but he likes older women; he likes the kinds of looks they give him, the kind of look she's giving him now, like she's thinking of all the ways she can take him home and use him up. He smiles.
"That's me."
"I thought it was. My daughter, she watched you on television just about every week for two years straight. That girl never watched a football game in her life until she saw you."
"Oh yeah?" He takes the shot and downs it.
"Honey, aren't you on the wrong side of town?" she says, but her smile's telling him that east Dillon loves him as much as west Dillon ever did.
"No ma'am," he says, and feels a sudden rush of the pleasure he used to take for granted, back when he was someone and everyone knew it. "Not at all."
Two. October.
Unlike in the movies, sometimes it just friggin' pours in Texas. And in the middle of their ratty field, up to their knees in mud, the East Dillon Lions are learning that when Coach Taylor says that there's practice that morning rain or shine, he's not kidding about the rain part. And Tim's getting the worst of the mud, even in a slicker and boots, since Coach had him out demonstrating a play to a couple eager linemen.
Coach's voice is getting hoarse, but all the players can still hear him as he hollers for Red Left Sixty-Seven Hut and the air shivers to the sound of pads and helmets colliding. Tim is still surprised that these kids get out of bed at all and come to practice their half-assed game on a Saturday. But it just shows what he knows, cause every single one of them is here, and they've been at it for an hour and a half.
The tall kid with the really fast legs comes jogging up to Tim as he stands there waiting for the next play. Vincent, that's his name. Vince the auto booster. The kid eyes him sideways through the helmet's grille and asks in a winded voice, "Coach make you do this when you played for him?"
"Yeah," says Tim. "A lot."
"Hell," says the kid. "I'm thinking juvy wasn't so bad."
Tim smiles. "Catch a touchdown that comes through the rain, and you won't say that again."
The kid smiles back, a beautiful smile too big for his face. "Guess I won't."
"Vince!" hollers Coach Taylor. "Get your ass over here. Break's over!"
"Got rain down my back," says the kid with no particular heat, and he jogs back into formation.
After a few more plays, Coach says they're done. Tim moves back under the bleachers to watch the kids scuffle inside – they all seem so young. He forgets for long stretches of time that he's only a year older than they are. Often enough he feels like their father or something.
On the bleachers he catches a flash of red and he looks up. Mrs. Taylor is sitting there with a big blue umbrella, watching her husband. As the last of the kids move inside, Coach sees her and waves, and she waves back. Tim is about to go inside too, but he stands there instead as Coach vaults over the low bleacher-side wall and climbs a few rows to his wife.
He bends over to her and says something, and Tim feels a sharp squeeze in his chest as she smiles up at him. She wipes some raindrops off his cheek, then grabs him by the collar and Tim sees his coach's wide grin as he leans in for a kiss.
The umbrella covers everything else except Coach's hand, which slides down to ground itself in Mrs. Taylor's back pocket. Tim smiles and turns away, jealous as hell. It's not that he wants a wife and a baby, cause being whipped like Billy is not attractive. But he misses Lyla, no matter how he pushes the feeling away. He misses her and she isn't here, and she never will be again. It hurts him low down in his gut somewhere and no amount of sex with other women helps and no amount of telling himself to stop being an idiot helps. There was a time in the rain when he kissed Lyla Garrity, and after that he wasn't ever all himself anymore.
He walks through the locker room and gives Landry a high-five and tells Cafferty that he did all right and bumps chests with a giant defensive lineman named Tinker. He squelches out into the front parking lot and climbs into his truck and drives to his trailer, hoping that the rain at least will keep Becky in the house. She is seriously chasing him, and although it is true – at least according to Street – that Tim Riggins will bang anything in a skirt, Little Miss Texas is not Tim Riggins material. She is only a kid, and her dark eyes are sweet and open with depths of teenage pain that he's not plumbing with a ten foot pole. She ought to realize that he's just too busted up to fix someone else. She ought to know better. She ought to leave him alone.
Three. November.
They have a system set up where Street calls Tim at Billy's house at eight on a Sunday night. That's late enough that Tim only gets a glare from Mindy on her way to bed – she sleeps all the time now that she has no job – and a hissed whisper from Billy to keep his voice down. In a house that used to be his own, Tim skulks like a trespasser in a corner of the kitchen, giving the news to New York.
It isn't much of a conversation, because Tim has to tell Street that Saracen's dad stepped on an IED and blew himself to hell, and that Matt isn't doing real well with the whole thing.
"Oh shit," says Street, and Tim very much agrees. "But his dad wasn't around much, right? I mean … it shouldn't break him up that much, should it?"
Tim has no reply, none that wouldn't include telling Street that he has no idea how it feels to have his father get gone, because Street's dad is still around and is pretty damn proud of his boy. And that if, say, your father walks out on you, no matter how far away he goes, or how much he never spares a thought for you, you still think about him pretty much every day and wonder what he would think if he saw you throw that winning pass or get that beautiful girl. And then if, say, he dies, you'll always wonder, but you'll never, never know.
"Yeah," is what he finally settles on. "But he's not keeping it together."
"I should call him," says Street. "I'll call him."
"All right. Just don't be surprised … he won't be real polite."
"I get it," says Street. "I do."
After they hang up, Tim stands there staring at the receiver. He has not called Lyla in two weeks and although she has gotten ahold of him a couple times, they haven't had much to say to one another. What else is there to say? She's staying out there, and that's that. But he owes her this call and he'd told Matt he would make it, so he does.
Usually her roommate picks up, but this time it's Lyla herself who answers, and her voice is as cold as he'd known it would be.
"Something pretty important must be happening for you to actually pick up the phone, Tim. So what is it? Did you knock up a stripper? Oh, wait …."
He doesn't let her finish the joke. "Saracen's dad stepped on a landmine in Iraq and he died. I told Matt I'd call you and let you know."
There's silence on the other end and when she finally does talk again he can tell she is crying, crying for Matt Saracen's dad, which is so like her that it makes him furious at the same time that it wrings his heart.
"The funeral – "
"His body is still out there. The funeral won't be till it gets back. Your dad can tell you."
"I'll come home for it," she says and there's that fury again, that she'll come home for Matt's dead dad, but not for him.
"Well, I guess I'll see you when I see you," he says, and when she says his name, he cuts her off again. "You should call Matt. He's hurting, don't take it personal what he says to you."
"I will. I won't. Tim – "
"I gotta go, Mindy's giving me the evil eye," he says, even though Mindy's nowhere in sight. "Talk to you later." And he hangs up before he starts begging, and he leaves the house before he puts his fist through a wall. His chest is as tight as if his truck were sitting on it; his throat's clogged with words he isn't going to say. I'm a coward. I can't do this. Say you love me. Come back home.
Out on the road, driving as fast as the old truck will go, the cold wind rips through the cab and out the other side, whipping the treetops and scudding the clouds past the stars. That's something Street doesn't have, since he's Mister Skyscraper now: in Texas, the wind blows your heart clean, and you can see for miles.
--end--