Free Road to Nowhere by Paul Robertson Page B

game.”
    “How’s she getting home?”
    “Friends.”
    Kids? On those roads? “I’ll get her.” He started shoveling soup. Corny watched him.
    “And Meredith called,” she said.
    Why did she ever call? “She needs money?”
    “Not this time. She’ll be home next month for spring break.”
    “Great. And the soup was, too.” Wade had started toward the closet for his coat, but then he stopped. “We should do something.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know. Something fun. I’ll think about it.”
    A game in the high school gym on a cold February night was just about as good as anything ever got. Randy and Sue Ann waited at the door just a minute before they went on, listening to the crowd.
    Then they were in the sound instead of just hearing it, like being under water instead of just seeing it, and that warm heavy feeling came down on Randy like it always did. He could have been a teenager again whenever he was in there, out on the wood floor and the basketball rough and hard in his hand and running the drills and warming up, he and Ed Fiddler and Jeremy Coates and the others, and Sue Ann leading the cheers.
    Now it was Kyle playing, and Kenny Fiddler, and Kelly was leading cheers, looking for all the world like her mother.
    They sat right under the Cherokee Warrior painted on the wall, and just in time. The referee tipped the ball and the boys were off. It was back and forth real quick to start, and both teams put up points in the first minute. Randy was watching for a few things to see how the Cherokees were playing—how much they were passing, how close they were getting in under the basket—and it was looking pretty good. They’d really been working on that passing especially. The defense wasn’t clicking quite the same way, though, and Hoarde County was getting their shots in, too. There’d be a lot of points if it kept up like this. And that was fine.
    Kyle wasn’t as tall as most of them—and all of them were so tall these days, not like twenty-five years ago, when it was shooting that counted and not much else. Now they’d have to get in close and pass, or else try for the three-pointers. But Kyle was a good strong boy and didn’t let anyone push him around. Some games he scored more from the free-throw line than from anywhere else.
    Jefferson County was up by a few when the buzzer ended the half. Randy leaned back when the teams ran off to the locker rooms, and the whole gymnasium quieted down, and everyone started out to the concessions. It made him feel like the air going out of a balloon.
    “Should we get a Coca-Cola?” he asked like he always did, and he and Sue Ann squeezed down to the floor and out into the hall.
    “How’s your headache?” she asked.
    “I don’t think I even remembered I had it.”
    They got their sodas. Gordon Hite was there in his sheriff uniform, and Randy talked to him about the Cherokees’ defense while Sue Ann talked to Artis.
    Then Gordon lowered his voice a little, even though it was plenty noisy in the hall. “You heard about the furniture factory?”
    “Louise Brown called me,” Randy said. “She said Roland Coates told everybody there today.”
    “That’s all we need,” Gordon said. “It was going to happen, though. Roland wasn’t going to pass it on to Jeremy, not after the blowup they had last year.”
    “It’ll be the end of an era. Three generations they’ve had that factory.”
    “Do you think they’ll close it?”
    “I sure hope they don’t.” At the back of his neck there was a little twinge, and Randy wondered if anyone at the concession stand might have an aspirin. “Why would they?”
    “We’ll hope for the best,” Gordon said. “But I was thinking about the budget and how maybe we could use another deputy this year, and if the factory closes, that’s going to mean hard times all around.”
    “It would be, but I think we’ll manage, and I don’t think we’ll worry about it yet.”
    The game was ready to start again and