Robofootball: Doublespin

“God, I can’t believe that it’s been 2 whole weeks since I last touched you,” said Carly.

“I know, but things have been hectic,” replied Jess.

“I suppose so, did you at least finish up your exams?”

“Yeah, the teachers let me come in on their work days since they have to stay a few extra days after we get out.”

“That’s good, I suppose the timing of a tragedy is never a good one.” Ginny Robinson and was buried on Friday, June 11th, which happened to be the last day of school for them.

“Yeah,” answered Jess. “I don’t know, maybe Christmas time would’ve been worse.” He thought about how it was sort of a running joke that he always got socks and underwear for Christmas, but he got a lot of other stuff too. As Carly could relate, being an only child had its perks.

“Shh, don’t think of such things, how are you coping?” Carly stopped paddling in the little paddle boat and reached over and grabbed Jess’s hand. The boat didn’t slow much as Jess had been doing most of the work until he got the hint to stop. The foot pedals were connected on both sides to a common shaft so that one or both could pedal to move the boat. They drifted quietly on Blue Gill Lake, a perfect lake for paddle boating given that it was less than 16 acres in flat surface area. It was a small plastic/fiberglass model built for two and probably weighed about 80 pounds or so dry; nevertheless, there always seemed to be a gallon or so of water sloshing around its innards from several tiny leaks. Jess did the heavy lifting of it in and out of the old pickup, but it was big and awkward on its own from a size standpoint and needed a little help from Carly to get it on and out of the truck bed. He had backed the truck down the public boat launch and they had slid it out of the back of the truck right near the water.

“What’s the matter Jess?” She gripped his hand tighter.

“I don’t know if it’s any one thing.”

“I’m so sorry,” she squeezed his hand and reached over and up to kiss him on the cheek. “Sometimes an accumulation of little things can be worse and more stressful than one big thing.”

“Yeah.”

“Care to talk about it?”

“Like this morning for one. I usually don’t eat a lot of breakfast, just a bowl of cereal, that’s easy. One of the last things mom had made at home was some Rice Krispie treats and there were some Rice Krispies left. I poured a bowl this morning and went to the fridge, but there was no milk.”

“What’d you do?”

“Just ate them dry. I did find a can of Meijer frozen orange juice in the freezer and made that to drink.”

“Your dad hasn’t been grocery shopping?”

“No, not really, a lot of people brought us food after the funeral, but it’s been over 2 weeks and most of that has run out.”

“Hmm, I guess I never thought of that,” Carly said. “What else?”

“Laundry, food, cooking, its stuff mom always took care of.”

“Surely, you know how to run a load of towels and stuff.”

“Yeah, I do now, but I guess I just got used to having a pile of towels in my little bathroom closet,” Jess sighed looking far away across the lake into some unknown imaginary distance.

“I can come over once in awhile and help,” Carly volunteered.

“Thanks.”

“Maybe mess up your sheets too,” she said slyly trying to edge closer to him across the hump and steering lever that separated the 2 seats.

“That’d be….okay….” He was blotted out as she kissed him on the lips and then fell into him by accident as the weight shift caused the little square-like boat to tip upward on her side.

“Dang, careful now!” He said easily clutching her and placing her back carefully into her seat to rebalance the boat.

“Hmm, we should come out here at night some time, I bet the stars would look neat from the boat.”

“Maybe.”

“Of course they would, there’s no overhanging trees in the middle to block the view.”

“I guess.”

“Perhaps it’s not the best boat for making out, but we could go skinny dipping in the moonlight, what do you think?”

“Maybe.”

She hit his arm, “Hmm, maybe I’ll just take it back then.”

“Uh no, no, that’d be fine,” he finally grinned. “Do you have that new bathing suit you teased me about?”

“Yup, bright blue with white polka dots, I have it on under my shorts and T-shirt.” She pulled the top of her T-shirt down far enough for him to see the top which doubled as a bra at the moment.

“Nice!”

“You better believe it. Let’s take the boat back to shore and go for a swim.”

“All right,” he started paddling vigorously doing 90% of the work as her legs propelled around her set of foot pedals without having to hardly move them on her own. He spun the steering lever for the hard rubber rudder until the front of the boat pointed back toward the boat ramp where they had parked.

“I’m glad you didn’t have to work today,” said Carly.

“Yeah, luckily we got the big truck trailer container full of glass last night. Coach Bruce had a friend who worked as warehouse supervisor at a recycling plant for a beer distributor and got Jess a full time summer job which included some good physical labor.

“Six days in a row is enough, you should get a Sunday or a weekend off now and then.”

“Well, we were a little off schedule. The route drivers were late bringing the empty cans and bottles back, and the guy picking up the glass trailer came early.”

“You ran the bottle crusher?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of neat, a big iron slab goes up and down and when I dump the bottles in the hopper, it crushes them on a conveyor which carries the crushed glass out a window into the box trailer outdoors.”

“What do you do with the cans?”

“There’s another machine for that, air-powered I think, there’s some other name…”

“Pneumatic?” Offered Carly.

“Yeah, that’s it, it sucks them between two steel rotating tires in the machine that flattens them instantly. The space between the tires is smaller than your finger and the cans go through there.”

“I hope these things have guards in place so they don’t suck in your hands or feet.”

“Oh yeah, it’s all internal, I only saw the inside when the maintenance guy pulled the back cover off to grease the machine. It has a blower too like a combine, after the cans get crushed, they fall to the bottom and are blown through a tube into the back of an enclosed trailer outside.”

“Sounds neat, what do you do with all of the boxes?”

“Paper bailer. It’s like a big metal bin and cage. You load it with boxes, press the big green down button, the cage shuts, and a press crushes the boxes flat. You can load it maybe 12 or 15 times before it makes a big fat paper bale, or more like a cube.”

“How big?”

“I think maybe 5 feet on each side, its real heavy.”

“125 cubic feet per bale then,” Carly instantly calculated.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Jess had a habit of agreeing while letting her do the math. He had escaped geometry with a B+ after just finishing his junior year. Carly had trigonometry as a junior and got all A’s as usual. She would be heading to Calculus next while he would go on to Algebra II.

They paddled partially up on the soft sandy shore until the boat would go no further. Jess leaped out and dragged it forward with Carly in it so she wouldn’t get her feet wet while exiting, all the while careful not to bend the rudder. After heaving it into the back of the bed of the Silverado, they grabbed their beach towels and began stripping off their outer clothing.

“Whaddya think?” Carly modeled her new 2-piece suit by rotating her shoulder sideways and pressing her chin into it as she slid her hand down her thigh.

“Wow!” Said Jess thinking that she filled it up nicely in all the right places. She had curves all right like a Marilyn Monroe or a Scarlet Johansson. She seemed to carry her 140 pounds quite well on a 5’3” frame.

She half walked and half ran into the water, “Come on slow poke.”

He whipped his own shorts and T-shirt off as if he was being blitzed by a safety and jumped in after her with little more than a plain dark green pair of swimming trunks. When he got up to his waist level which was past most of her breasts, she slid behind and tried to tackle him, but wasn’t strong enough to bring him down as he went rigid.

“My strong man,” she said excitedly embracing him in an iron grip from behind. He broke out of it easily enough and swung around, grabbing her into his arms before she could splash much.

“I work out,” he said flexing his muscles.

“Sexy,” she said. “They’re getting bigger.”

“Between my job and summer workouts at the gym, coach has me on a new weightlifting program too.”

“Are you working on the farm too?”

“Not really, when mom was in the hospital, I helped Uncle Larry till the field. We just seeded it with alfalfa. We’ll maybe bale the first batch of hay in a few weeks. Uncle Larry says that it’s been dry enough that we’ll just bale once this year, probably in late summer or early fall unless it really picks up. With a lot of rain, sometimes you can bale 3 times a year, but since we just planted new seed, it may be only once this year.”

“No corn?”

“Nah, dad has been out of it and Uncle Larry thought that alfalfa would be easier, especially since you only have to reseed it every 5 or 6 years ago before it gets too weedy. We won’t get as much money as corn, but there’s less to take care of, no spraying or weeding or anything like that.”

“I see. Let’s go in, lie on the towels, and soak up some sun. You can put some sunscreen on me before I burn, I need to work on my tan.”

“Okay.”

It was a nice lazy summery sunshiny Sunday afternoon and Carly made him forget about his mother and father a bit as they lay quietly on the towels. His towel was a replica of a big $100 bill while hers was a bright yellow with M&M’s characters plastered all over it.

“You are coming to dinner today, right?”

“I suppose, if I’m invited.”

“Of course you are. You could probably bring your dad too. In fact, let me check with my mom. She always makes a nice Sunday dinner, I think you should come every Sunday.”

“That’s probably not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I’d like to, but it probably won’t work for my dad.”

“Why?”

“He’s always so wrapped up in sports, he bets on a lot of games.”

“Really?”

“I guess it’s more of a hobby for him. He’s always flipping channels, checking scores, and watching every game imaginable.”

“But there’s not much going on this time of year, except baseball.”

“Yeah, but any given day, there’s like 12 or 15 games going on.”

“And he bets on them all?”

“I’m not really sure. I know he does it, but he’s kind of private about it.”

“Does he still play poker?”

“Every Friday night.”

“Do you do anything with him at all?”

“Not much.”

“What about eating dinners?”

“No, not really, with mom gone, we’re kind of on our own.”

“What have you been eating?”

“At first, some neighbors and relatives gave us some food. Aunt Jenny brought us a pan of lasagna, Mrs. Jankowski across the street gave us a pot of cabbage rolls, and you know, other stuff. After that, we’ve been eating mostly canned and frozen food, at least when there’s some in the house.”

“Well that’s it, you’re coming to our house for Sunday dinner, we’ll go back and clean up at your house, and then get to mine.”

“Well, maybe.”

“No maybes, let’s go now.”

Jess’s dad was in the living room when they arrived sprawled out on the sofa, red-eyed, unshaven, and nursing his 3rd beer at 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon without any solid food to go with it. The Tigers had played the 1:00 game and were done. A West Coast national league game was now on the 42” plasma screen featuring the Dodgers against the Astros.

“Hello Mr. Robinson,” Carly called out.

“Oh, uh, hi Carly,” he mumbled in return but didn’t move much, just a subtle shift.

“Is it okay if Jess comes over for dinner?” She asked politely.

“Uh, sure.”

“You can come too if you like.”

“No, no, you kids go.”

“Will you be all right on your own?”

“Sure,” he replied with worn out foggy looking marsupial eyes. He looked sad or melancholy to Carly as he said it. He took a final swig from a 12 ounce can of Coors Light and placed it next to the other two empties on the dusty coffee table. He squeezed it between the remotes and a half eaten back of Doritos that was still open, nacho cheese flavor.

Jess pulled Carly along to the end of the hall to his bedroom. The house was a fairly plain 3-bedroom single story ranch with the bedrooms on one end, a few square feet under 1,200 in area since it was built 24’ x 48’. Jess showered in the main full bathroom as Carly searched for some clean clothes for Jess which wasn’t easy. While he was occupied, she found a laundry basket and overfilled it with Jess’s dirty clothes and hauled it to the basement where there was a laundry room. The basement was partially finished and did have a rec room with an old air hockey table that looked as though it hadn’t been played with in a decade. There wasn’t much dust on it because the surface was covered with boxes of junk, some craft materials and projects that would never be finished, even if Jess’s mother were alive. There were some of Jess’s free weights and a bench along with a treadmill; his mother had purchased the treadmill, used it all of 3 times, and quit. Jess at least had gotten her money’s worth out of it and more.

Back upstairs, Carly passed the other bedroom outside of Jess’s and his dad. Like her, Jess was an only child, and the 3rd or spare bedroom had been Ginny’s craft and sewing room. Ginny liked to make quilts and the room was stuffed with materials, fabric, needles, tables, and a couple of sewing machines. It had not been touched since she had died and was also getting a little dusty. Mike Robinson hadn’t give it a single thought and Jess wasn’t about to do anything either.

“See ya later dad,” Jess stopped briefly as they passed back through the living room on their way out.

“Yeah, yeah,” his dad waved without looking up.

“Bye Mr. Robinson,” added Carly.

Jess’s dad responded with another half-hearted feeble wave as his bloodshot eyes never wavered from the television.

Once they got outside, Carly said, “Jess, he doesn’t look so good.”

“I know,” said Jess.

“The reason women don’t play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.”

Phyllis Diller