Yearbook by David Marlow Read Free Book Online Page B

beer and urine Butch the Butcher, contented in his home away from home, the neighborhood mudhole.
    Guy had gone a-hunting. He hadn’t flubbed it up, hadn’t failed his old man. Hell, he hadn’t even been shot!
    If this was the sort of dividend reaped from hanging around Corky, Guy wanted more. Nothing had ever seemed more important.
    He spent the entire ride home staring out the window, watching the rain. Thinking.
    Nathan pulled into the driveway and Guy was struck with inspiration. His plan was so simple, he had to smile.

TEN  
    CLASSES ENDED MONDAY afternoon and Guy rushed to the football field with his shoulder bag of photo equipment.
    Standing away from the sidelines, careful to avoid any repetition of the bicycle fiasco, he observed the afternoon senior varsity practice, then took out his Pentax and attached his longest lens. He brought Corky into close-up focus and began to shoot. He took action shots and candid portraits. The dark, fast-moving clouds were a fine background for black-and-white photography.
    He went rapidly through four rolls of film, a month’s supply right there.
    As devoutly hoped, the pictures processed in the upstairs bathroom, which served as Guy’s darkroom, turned out just fine. The tonal contrasts, the excitement of the brutal action and the cool displayed by Corky, who turned out to be exceedingly photogenic, made this series the best Guy’d ever taken.
    School on Tuesday was long and tedious. When biology finally ended at three o’clock, Guy strolled outside to the playing field.
    Sitting in the bleachers, all nerves, he watched for an hour until Coach Petrillo called a time-out. The team dispersed.
    This was the moment. Now or never. Corky was chatting with a couple of other red-and-yellows. Guy walked over, opened his briefcase, removed three contact sheets and handed them to Corky. “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt. Would you mind looking at something?”
    Corky fast-scanned the columns, sheet after sheet. “Who took these?”
    “Me,” said a tiny voice.
    “No shit? When?”
    “Yesterday.”
    “They ‘re damn good!”
    So much for that. The storm in Guy’s stomach settled.
    “Here.” Guy gave Corky a blue grease pencil. “Check the ones you like and I’ll make prints for you. “
    Corky was delighted. “You mean it?”
    “Sure I figure it’s the least I can do after what happened.”
    “Everything go okay at home?”
    Guy nodded. “Better than okay.”
    Corky started checking off shots.
    “And don’t worry about any expenses. I’ve got my own enlarger at home, so it’s no big deal.”
    Coach blew his loud whistle.
    “Back to Bataan?” asked Guy.
    “Yep.” Corky handed the contacts over to Guy, and, in a gesture straight out of an old Ronald Reagan film, vigorously touseled the small boy’s hair with his hand and, smiling, trotted back out onto the field.
    By Friday, the day before the opening game of the season, Guy had printed and blown up eight-by-ten prints of the five shots Corky had chosen. He placed them in a large envelope which he deposited in the senior president’s mailbox in the Student Council office.
    Then he waited.

ELEVEN  
    HEAVY SWEATERS, reeking of mothballs, were pulled from shelves.
    Plaid woolen blankets tumbled out of linen closets.
    Cocoa, soup, coffee and gin flowed into thermoses.
    Mayonnaise and mustard, ketchup, butter, relish and jelly got slapped onto bread.
    The leaves of Waterfield were turning to rust. Colorful branches shook in the blustery wind. Football weather.
    At noon, Nathan piled the family into the Oldsmobile and drove off to the game. Assuming he wasn’t interested, no one asked Guy to go. So twenty minutes later, when he came out of his darkroom, it was too late to express his sudden attraction to the sport.
    Guy spent the afternoon at the movies.
    After her studying, Amy went to the Teahouse of the August Moon, the local Bohemian coffeehouse, to meet a friend.
    Marge Flynn was a complex, soft-spoken girl with