Coasters. Gerald Duff

was hoping to park a lot closer,” Bobby said, “but I got here too late. Don’t open that glove compartment. That latch is hard to get back fastened shut.”

      “Like getting a zipper stuck, huh, Shepard?” Jess Hardy said, taking his hand off the glovebox opener and shifting it to the radio switch. “That little brunette on the far side has got calves on her like old Linda Boyd used to have back in high school, don’t she?”

      “Which one?” Bobby said. “That one on the left?”

      “Naw, that one at about two o’clock, yonder on the right.”

      “You can’t tell when she’s sitting down,” Bobby said morosely, “not at this range. You can’t tell nothing about none of them when they’re lying around on the ground like that.”

      “Well, nothing looks good all the time,” Jess Hardy said. “Nothing.”

      “You can’t even say that, the way that old woman’s got them doing out there,” Bobby pronounced. “Look at her. Working with just the one, and her a sophomore and the skinniest girl of the bunch.”

      “You know who that is, don’t you?” Jess Hardy said, punching at a button on the dash. “Don’t your radio work?”

      “Not with the ignition off. Who, that little one? No, I don’t know her.”

      “Turn it on, then,” Jess said. “No, not the girl. The teacher there, showing her how to do. The woman in that track suit’s who I’m talking about.”

      “Her? How would I know who she is? I don’t have dealings with nobody at the high school anymore.”

      “Don’t you just wish you did, though?” Jess Hardy said and pointed toward the two women standing near the north endzone. The older woman now had the skinny cheerleader tilting herself way over to one side and then the other with both arms extended high above her head as she did so. The girl was uttering a short whooping sound as she ended each of her dips to the right and left.

      “You not going to try to guess who it is?” Jess asked, maintaining his point toward the woman in sweat clothes.

      “No, and I don’t give a damn who she is,” Bobby said. “I’m not interested in that old biddy.”

      “You will be when I tell you who she is,” Jess answered him. “That lady there coaching that kid is none other than Diane Dailey, Class of ’68, Thomas Jefferson High. Miss TJ High in our senior year.”

      “Naw,” Bobby said, leaning forward far enough to bump his chest on the steering wheel of the Thunderbird. “Nuh-uh. She’s too old-looking. She’s not . . . . She’s not . . . .” He paused to look more intently across the green sward of the football field and then finished his statement.

      “Dressed right,” he said and sank back into his seat.

      “How long ago do you think 1968 was, Bobby?” Jess said. “Yesterday? That’s her all right, and I know it for a fact. My old lady told me and she works in the personnel office for the school district.”

      “But Diane Dailey was out there in Hollywood on that TV show. She was one of them women on Dallas, man.”

      “That’s right, Shepard,” Jess said. “And when’s the last time you saw J.R. Ewing on the tube? That fucker’s been off the air for probably ten years.”

      “Diane’s having to teach school back home here? I can’t believe that.”

      “You see her out yonder, don’t you? And I’ll tell you something else. I bet if she was to shuck off that sweat shirt she’d still have them great big old knockers, too.”

      “You reckon?” Bobby asked and leaned forward again in the driver’s seat. “Godalmighty.”

      “They never lose them once they got them, Bobby. They just hang a little lower down than they used to. That’s all the difference there is.”

      “Unless a woman gets real fat,” Bobby Shepard amended. “That’ll change the size of them.”

      “Tit size is independent of body fat, Bobby,” Jess Hardy said. “It’s a completely different hormonal base working there, son. Now they will look littler because of contrast, but you ignore the body background, and there’s not a hair’s difference in size from what they ever was.” Pausing, Jess stared ruminatively toward the two upright women standing among the ones lounging on the ground. “That’s the truth,” he added slowly. “The pure truth. I swear to God.”

      “Well,” Bobby said in a tone of concession. “Did you ever talk to Diane Dailey back in high school?’

      “I’d say hi to her in the hall now and then,” Jess said. “She’d always answer me back, too, if she wasn’t walking alongside old Odis.”

      “Right,” Bobby said. “Odis.” He stared steadily at the group of women on the field before the Thunderbird and then spoke once more. “Diane Dailey, wearing them old loose clothes.”

      The two men fell silent after that, looking through the tinted windshield of Bobby’s car at the scene of instruction taking place near the north endzone, the sound of colliding bodies and the grunts of young men coming from the opposite end of the field as the Yellow Jacket squad attempted to learn more effective ways to cross a well-defended goal line.

8

      Sixty dollars per diem is sixty dollars more than I have right now, Waylon told himself as he drove through the parking lot beside the main building, looking for a visitor’s space. I don’t care if it is language arts instead of math. I can get through five classes of anything on a substitute basis.

      The telephone call from the vice principal of Thomas Jefferson High had come the night before when he was dozing in front of the television set, and Waylon had not been able to get straight just which teacher it was he was being asked to fill in for while she enjoyed a spell of sick-leave, but he had made certain of the subject matter the school had hired him to teach.

      “You can do English subbing, can’t you?” the vice principal had asked him just as the credits for some sit-com were rolling across the screen of Charlie McPhee’s TV set.

      “Oh, yes,” Waylon had said. “That’s my native language.”

      “Three sections of sophomore language skills, one junior American Lit, and an hour in the afternoon assisting with the senior class play.”

      “That would be no problem,” he said, sitting up to get a better timbre into his telephone voice. “Sixty dollars a day, you said.”

      “Before deductions,” the woman said. “Love Is Eternal.”

      “Pardon me?”

      “Love Is Eternal,” the woman said again. “That’s the name of the play the seniors are doing this year. It’s about Abraham Lincoln.”

      “Got you,” Waylon had said. “I love the theatre.”

      Why not find a place in the teachers’ lot, he said to himself, not seeing any spaces marked for visitor parking, there’s bound to be at least one that sick English teacher’s not taking up this week.

      The set of steps up to the row of doors into the building was filled with teenagers milling about and uttering high-pitched yelps, and Waylon felt the same sensation of weakness kick up just below his breastbone that he had always experienced each morning of his high school years as he approached to enter those doors. Unlike back then, though, no one this time purposely jostled against him as he passed through the crowd and nobody reached out to slap whatever he was carrying out of his hands.

      Not a single person even seemed to notice him, in fact, and he felt reassured as he stepped into the lobby of the building, pausing to let three or four girls swarm past him in a clot. The older you get,