Mud, Sweat, and Tears Read online

  “He’s supposed to be doing a job,” walkie talkie guy was saying. “I made it very clear to him that I was not signing off on his volunteer hours if he didn’t do the work. They already looked for that ball all over this property. It’s not here.”

  “Viv, they’re talking about the football,” I whispered into the phone. “Apparently they think it’s somewhere on the property.”

  “I heard some frat guys got it into their heads to go out searching last night and tore the place up.”

  “Kind of, yeah,” I said. Although at this point it was hard to tell the frat guy mess from the Mud Sweat and Tears mess.

  “Well, I’m sure he didn’t just leave it lying on the ground in plain sight. But he could have hidden it in a ditch or a culvert or something. Buried it for a few weeks until the story blows over and then dig it back up.”

  Viv was silent. That meant she was thinking.

  “Do you see any fresh piles of dirt?”

  I looked around. I saw lots of mud, tall brown grass and three more people scale the wall with all the effort of someone climbing out of their car. “No, but there are lots of little hills between here and the Wind Museum. And the other side of the hill, of course. I’m not even sure how big his property is.”

  More silence.

  “Listen, I actually called to see if you can meet me at the medical tent and take me to the doctor. I have to get an x-ray.”

  “That’s taking it too far, in my opinion.” Viv said. “Expose yourself to radiation for no good reason? I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Viv, I really did hurt my ankle. Besides, the walkie talkie guy said I had to. Official Mud Sweat and Tears policy.”

  Viv tssked.“Life is not being kind to us, my friend. I lost my Final Four bracket.”

  “I can’t help but feel my problem is a little bit worse than yours.”

  “People always feel that way about their own problems.”

  “Can you just meet me at the medical tent and take me to get an x-ray? I’m sure I won’t be able to drive.”

  Silence.

  “Viv? Are you there? Can you come get me?”

  More silence. I pulled the phone away from my ear to see if the call had been disconnected, but then I heard her.

  “Where did you say you were?”

  “Right now I’m down by the stream at the park. You know where the road curves around before you get to the highway? But the place I need you to pick me up is at the top of the hill, the parking lot of the Wind Museum. That’s where the guy with the golf cart is supposed to take me. If he ever shows up.”

  “Do not get on that cart,” Viv ordered. “You sit tight and I’ll be right there.”

  “Of course I’m going to get on the –”

  But she’d hung up. I looked at the phone. Call ended.

  I frowned and handed it back to Walkie Talkie Guy.

  He misinterpreted my frown. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “He should be here any second.” He knelt and felt my ankle again, checking the wrapping. He stood and grabbed three or four of the plastic ponchos they’d brought for rain and rolled them together. He knelt again and lifted my leg, resting my ankle on top of the roll. “This will keep it elevated and help with swelling. Is it hurting? Unfortunately I can’t give you anything, but they’ll have some analgesic up at the tent.”

  It was hurting, but not unbearably so. “I can handle it,” I said. “I’m a little bit hard core.”

  “Atta girl,” he said with a grin, but I think he was mostly just relieved that I wasn’t complaining about the absent ride to the medical tent.

  He went off and talked to the other volunteers for a few minutes, then scowled toward the horizon, then talked some more. The horn blew again and a few dozen more people scaled Maniac Mountain. I’d almost gotten comfortable, sitting on the damp ground with my ankle elevated. I was on the receiving end of a few sympathetic looks, but an equal number of disdainful ones, too.

  To them, I considered waving my arms and shouting, “I’m a frigging inspiration!” But I didn’t.

  Walkie Talkie Guy came back, apologizing some more.

  I waved it away. “No problem. Listen, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop,” I said. “The guy who’s supposed to be picking me up – you think he’s out looking for the stolen football?”

  He gave up trying to look patient for my benefit. “I think that’s exactly where he is. I told him the walkie talkies don’t carry that well over the hills, and to keep on the path between here and the parking lot so we could keep a good signal. But I’ll bet you anything he’s roaming the cart over the hills looking for that stupid ball.”

  “Do they really think it might be hidden somewhere on the grounds of the museum?”

  The guy rolled his eyes. “I’ve heard all kinds of crazy rumors. That it was still here, that it was shredded and mailed to the NFL, that it was shipped to some collector in Japan. Last night, a few dozen frat boys and half the football team were combing these hills with flashlights. And who knows where it really is. I mean, it’s a football. You could stick the thing in a box and mail it around the world and no one would ever know, right?” He checked the elevation of my foot again. “Mostly what I’m hearing is $5000 reward.”

  He stood and barked into the walkie talkie again. “Tyler! Tyler, pick up!”

  Wherever Tyler was, he was in big trouble.

  Finally, we saw a golf cart top the hill and head toward us. I had to admit, I felt kind of bad for Tyler. I’d had my share of getting distracted by something and forgetting what I was supposed to do. Like, live a responsible life and stuff like that.

  But then, a second cart topped another hill. Except this wasn’t a golf cart, but a 4-wheeler. The Belle Court logo of a big bell and bunch of purple hydrangeas emblazoned on the hood.

  As the 4-wheeler got closer, I recognized a familiar head of silver curls.

  “Viv!”I struggled to stand.

  Walkie Talkie Guy looked confused. “Wha…?”

  Viv got there before Tyler. He had his hands up and was jumping out of the cart before it came to a complete stop. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He turned between me and Walkie-Talkie Guy, as if not sure who he should apologize to first.

  Viv marched toward him on shaky heels. She was wearing faded blue skinny jeans and metallic, marine-blue Louis Ferragamo cuff-boots. “I suppose you’re the young man who was supposed to be here an hour ago?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “And it was more like 45 minutes.”

  “Where have you been?”

  Tyler pointed toward the east. “I was just over there, I swear. By the Crosswalk of Doom. I heard that was the event with the most injuries so I figured it would be best to stay close by. Rapid response.” He looked both proud of himself and fearful that his excuse wasn’t going to work with Walkie-Talkie Guy.

  It did not. “Bull. I told you to stay on the hill. From there you would have been able to hear me or any of the other team leaders if they needed you.”

  “I swear, I thought I could hear you. And besides, no one ever gets hurt on Maniac Mountain.”

  Walkie Talkie Guy made a tight sound of barely controlled fury and lifted one hand toward me: Exhibit Clutz.

  I waggled my fingers. “I’m a frigging inspiration.”

  Viv stepped close and looked up at Tyler, her wrinkly chin jutting in outrage. “And, she’s hurt. So I will thank you to stay out of our way while I do your job for you. You can just go back to looking for the missing football and trying to cash in on your moment of glory.”

  Tyler protested for a moment, but he couldn’t sustain it. The word “Busted” might as well have appeared in ghostly lights across his forehead.

  Viv put her arm around my waist and gently urged me toward the cart. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get going.”

  Tyler and Walkie Talkie Guy watched her load me into the cart.

  “Check in at the medic tent, and they’ll give you instructions on where to send the medical release.”


  I waited until we were out of earshot before I turned to her. “Sweetie? Really? That’s laying it on a bit thick.”

  “Well, what could I do? You’re barely acting hurt at all. I can’t believe they didn’t just pat you on the back and send you back into the race with that performance. You have to at least moan or something.”

  “Viv, I really did sprain my ankle.”

  “Give it a rest. They can’t hear us.”

  “I’m not saying it for – where are we going? The medical tent is that way.” I pointed to the right.

  “We’re looking for the football, silly. Why do you think I got this thing?”

  “But I need…” I stopped and winced as she bounced over a hill, hard. “How did you end up with the Belle Court 4-wheeler, anyway?”

  “I turned the key and drove off with it, that’s how.”

  “You drove all the way here from Belle Court in a 4-wheeler?” How long had I been sitting there?

  “No, goofy. I–“ She broke off while she wrenched the wheel hard to avoid a rock. “The 4-wheeler was sitting on the trailer to Jason’s truck. And the keys were in the truck. So I took it.”

  Jason was the Belle Court landscaper slash maintenance man. “You stole Jason’s truck.”

  “I borrowed Jason’s truck. And he won’t report me, because then he’ll have to admit that he left it unlocked with the keys in it. He’s not supposed to do that. You never know when one of those old people with dementia is going to walk by and get some wild idea in their heads…” She trailed off again and shielded her eyes. “We should check out those old windmills down there. That would be a good hiding place.”

  I shifted to lift my leg onto the dash of the cart. At least I could keep it elevated.

  “Keep a look out along the ground on that side. Anything that looks freshly trampled, freshly dug. Stuff like that.”

  We bounced and my ankle ached, but I looked. I didn’t find anything. But I looked.

  We checked out all the windmills we could find. There were a lot. Old ones, new ones made to look old (with names on them like “Heritage” and “The Old West”) Dutch ones, futuristic looking ones. Even a gigantic one lying on the ground. The sign said it was the first full-scale wind turbine ever made. The blades were 100 feet long, and the housing that had once been in the middle of the three mammoth blades was so big a person could stand up inside. Those things didn’t look nearly so big when you were looking at them from the ground. Much like Maniac Mountain.

  Viv wove the cart in and out of the big tufts of grass, around mesquite trees. She got out and walked around a suspicious-looking mound for a while, acted like she was going to reach down and sift through it, then straightened. She came back to the 4-wheeler and fished around in the back until she pulled out a watering wand.

  She poked at the pile but came away with an unsatisfied frown on her face.

  “I’m thinking that whoever stole a valuable object would give it better protection than a pile of dead leaves. Also, I’m hurt and need an x-ray.”

  “If I were going to do something like that, I’d wrap it up tight in some waterproof packing. Like, two or three layers of bubble wrap, and lots of tape, and then more bubble wrap. And then an entire roll of plastic wrap. And finally, I’d wrap it with brown paper so it would be kind of camouflaged.”

  “So, have you found any oversized football-shaped packages of brown paper?”

  “Not yet.”

  I couldn’t help but notice that she’d ignored the I-need-an-x-ray part.

  We looked under rocks, up in trees, poked at every clump of dried grass we found. Finally, Viv stopped the cart and sat overlooking the land, her face dark. “This blows. Two failures in 24 hours.”

  “Plus, I hurt my ankle and need to get an x-ray,” I said, although my heart wasn’t really in it by this time.

  “Would you please give it a rest? You have gotten way too into this – holy crap! What’s the matter with your ankle?”

  Around the bandage Walkie Talkie Guy had wrapped, my calf was swollen. My toes were blue-ish, and my foot was also roughly fifty-percent bigger than it usually was.

  I rotated my leg at the hip, surveying it from different angles. “Fell off Maniac Mountain,” I said calmly. “Sprained my ankle.”

  Viv tore up the hill toward the parking lot, through it and out the other side, where she’d parked on the street. The ramps were still down, which I was pretty sure wasn’t legal, but whatever. Viv had learned how to capitalize on her resemblance to everyone’s grandmother and frequently got out of tickets.

  She trundled the cart up the ramp of the trailer with relative ease. “Relative” meaning we did almost wobble off the side of the ramp, and once we got up there we both realized that I would have to get off the trailer somehow with my bum leg. So Viv backed it back down the ramp, let me off, then zipped it back up while I hopped to the passenger side of the truck with the Belle Court hydrangeas stenciled on the side.

  The people in the ER were appropriately sympathetic, and even seemed a bit scandalized that it had taken us almost three hours to get there. I just raised my eyebrows at Viv and kept filling out the forms.

  “I’ll be responsible for the bill,” she announced. She must feel pretty guilty then, I thought. Viv rarely offered to pay. I guess that’s how she hung on to all that money.

  I got wheeled to the radiology room and chatted with the nurses and technicians about the missing ball, the football rivalry, and Taco John’s while we waited. I was assured that the Tortilla Touchdown with the Two-Point Conversion was a delectable experience like no other. “Just try it,” the x-ray technician urged repeatedly. “Promise me, you’ll just try it once. That’s all it will take.”

  The nurse wheeled me back to the waiting room. Jason was there, and from the stubborn look on Viv’s face, he was giving her a lecture.

  “I can’t just let it go, Viv. You know me, I’m not a stickler for the rules. But come on. You stole my truck.”

  “I borrowed the truck. And, I left a note. You keep leaving that part out like it doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re not authorized in any way to drive the truck or the 4-wheeler.”

  “I don’t even know why you have that thing. You never even get it off the sidewalk.”

  “Belle Court is insured for employees only to –”

  “Blah blahblah.” She saw me then. “Can we just focus on poor Salem for a moment? I mean, at a time like this, to be worried about such things as insurance and responsibility…” She put an arm around my shoulders. “Bless your heart. Is there anything I can do to help.”

  “I have to wear this thing twice as long as I would have if we came in right away,” I said, pointing to the boot I now sported. I was pretty proud of myself for making that up on the spot. What with the pain and the meds and everything.

  “Oh, honey.” Viv turned to Jason. “See? What if she’d had to wait even longer? What if –”

  “What if you’d brought your own car and drove me straight here?” I offered. “Where is your car, anyway?”

  “It’s here,” Viv said, then tilted her head shortly toward Jason. “He brought it here.”

  “I had no other way to get here and get my truck.” His lips thinned and he crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Okay, you two,” I said. “Exchange keys and let’s get out of here.”

  They grudgingly did as instructed. Jason took his and pointed them at Viv in warning. “I’m not kidding, Viv. Something like this could get you kicked out of the place.”

  “Oh please,” she said. “All they’re going to do is make a bunch of idle threats and then raise my rates.”

  Jason frowned, but everyone knew that was the truth, so they left it at that.

  I crutched my way slowly to Viv’s Caddy, looking as pathetic as I could in the process.

  Viv climbed behind the wheel, frowning. She turned the key, but left the car in Park and turned to me.

  “Okay, look.
I seriously thought you were kidding. I mean, how could I know? You’ve been talking for three weeks about faking a sprained ankle…”

  “I also told you several times that I wasn’t kidding.”

  “But how could I know –”

  “It’s okay, Viv.” I reached over and patted her hand. “You got caught up in the hunt and lost track of what was important. I get it. It could happen to anyone.”

  Her lips flattened. “Right.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re all human. So I kept telling you I was in great pain and you ignored me for the sake of a little football. It’s no big deal.”

  “Shut up and tell me what I need to do to make it up to you.”

  “Viv, it’s enough simply to know that you feel guilty.”

  “I do feel guilty. Come on. What do you want? A shiny new set of crutches?”

  I leaned back, much more tempted by the thought of Viv’s money than was decent. “You know what I really want?”

  “Have you been here for the last thirty seconds? Yes, I do want to know what you really want.”

  “A Touchdown Tortilla Platter from Taco John’s.”

  “A…?”

  “Touchdown Tortilla Platter. It’s basically the best enchilada you’ve ever had. A dozen or so layers of corn tortillas, cheese, beef, red sauce….if you get the Two-Point Conversion, they’ll add a fried egg on top.”

  “That sounds disgusting.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Remember how you drove me all over hell and gone looking for that football?”

  She thinned her lips, then started the car. “Taco John’s it is.”

  Taco John’s was full of color – orange terra cotta tile crisscrossed the floor, vibrant wooden parrots hung from swings suspended from the ceiling, and various pots – some short and fat, some tall and slender – filled with green plastic plants covered every flat surface.

  I crutched my way to a table while Viv ordered for us. She carried a little plastic goalpost with the number 12 on it and slid into the booth.

  “Did you remember myTwo-Point Conversion?”

  “How could I forget? I’ll probably wake up screaming tonight remembering that one.”

  The sun was low in the sky, and early spring light filtered around the edges of the shades hanging in the west windows. Unfortunately, it highlighted the thin layer of dust that settled over everything after Thursday’s dust storm. I pitied the staff that would have to wipe down all the wooden birds and clay pots. I ran a finger along the pot behind my seat. It was short and fatter than the one behind Viv’s seat – that one was probably three feet tall – and I could only imagine that if I worked here and had to clean, I would have that thing knocked over and broken the first day.