Ed got the first round and a basket of salted peanuts, which he began to shell methodically, amassing a pile of nuts before devouring them in one quick handful. They watched the baseball game for a while, Dean marveling, as always, at how relaxed baseball players seemed as they stood at the plate, waiting for a ball to be hurled at them at ninety-plus miles per hour. They reminded him of cows, the way they chewed their cud and calmly regarded the cars whizzing by. Maybe that was why Ed liked the game so much.
In between innings there was a commercial for Nike shoes, featuring a long-legged girl running through the woods. Ed started talking about “air ponies” again, unable to get the name right even when it was right in front of him. He said he was thinking of buying Megan a pair anyway.
“She’s such a good kid,” he said. “And she never asks for anything.”
“They’d be better for her feet,” Dean said. “You ready for another round?”
“Yeah — and some more of these?” Ed held up an empty peanut basket.
Waiting at the bar, Dean glanced around the room. The crowd skewed younger than he’d expected, everyone around Garrett’s age, in their late twenties to early thirties. He checked for his assistant coach and was relieved not to find him. He’d congratulated Garrett after the game, shaking his hand on the field, but he didn’t go to the locker room to see the players, afraid he would be called upon to say something about the game — a victory despite Garrett’s rearrangements.
A woman was waving to him from a table in the back. Laura, he realized. He waved back with a tentativeness that made her laugh and say something to her companion, a dark-haired woman Dean vaguely recognized.
“I’ll be right back,” Dean said to Ed, dropping off their round. “I just need to say hello to someone.”
“Sure.” Ed’s eyes were fixed on the game as he started in on the new peanut basket.
“I thought you’d never see us,” Laura said as he approached her corner table. “We were waving for, like, ten minutes — this is my friend Abby. She teaches music at the middle school.”
“Your son Robbie is in one of my classes,” Abby said. “Chorus.”
“You probably hear his voice more than I do, then,” Dean said.
Abby looked at him like he was pretty much the asshole she’d expected, but Laura smiled.
“Sit down with us,” she said.
“I would, but I’m here with my brother-in-law.”
“Invite him over, too.”
“I don’t want to spoil your ladies’ night.”
“You’re not spoiling anything! Come on, one beer.”
Dean allowed himself a grin after he turned away from them to check in with Ed. He assumed Ed would decline, but Ed was more than happy to meet two young women. He followed Dean to their table and immediately engaged them in conversation, asking what subjects they taught and what they thought of the new principal.
Upon learning that Laura was not a teacher but a therapist, he grilled her about homeschooling.
“I need to know the long-term effects,” he said, pushing his empty beer glass toward the center of the table as if to clear away all distractions. “For girls,” he clarified. “Two girls.”
“That’s hard to say,” Laura said. “It depends on a lot of different factors.”
“Let’s say, one year of homeschooling, for religious reasons — what does that do?”
“Um, I guess that could be fine. In a lot of cultures, it’s traditional for children to devote some time to religious studies.”
“So it doesn’t mess them up for life?”
“It takes a lot to mess up a kid for life,” Laura said, with a quick glance in Dean’s direction. “They’re pretty resilient. That’s why I like working with them.”
Ed nodded sagely, as if he had suspected as much, and then began to ask Abby about her life, one question after another, like he was shelling his peanuts. It amused Dean to see this side of Ed, who rarely initiated conversation at family gatherings, maybe because he knew everything already. Or maybe it was easier to let Joelle take charge.
Laura turned to Dean. “That was awkward at the game. I’m so sorry. I got nervous. There’s no reason we can’t still be friends.”
“You were just trying to do right by Robbie,” Dean said.
The mood between them relaxed, but then neither of them knew what to say next, so they let themselves be drawn into Ed’s conversation. He was telling Abby about his latest side venture, a cardboard-shredding operation he had set up using an old wood chipper. According to Ed, there was a market for shredded cardboard among alpaca farmers. Dean couldn’t tell if this was actually true or one of the many lines of bullshit that had earned Ed his Cowpie nickname.
“There’s a ton of people raising alpacas on the Eastern Shore,” Ed said. “A whole sheep and wool community. You should see their hairdos; everyone has white-and-gray dreadlocks, like they’re trying to be sheep. You know how people say dog owners start to look like their dogs?”
“Does that mean dairy farmers look like cows?” Dean asked.
“What do you think, could I pass for a bull?” Ed flared his nostrils and made horns above his head with his fingers.
“Maybe if you got a ring through your nose,” Laura said.
Ed’s laugh, a deep bellow, made everyone else laugh, too.
They drank quickly, amid increasingly vulgar jokes about farming life, but when Laura made a move to get the next round, Ed insisted that he had to go.
“Sorry,” Ed said. “I have to be up early to milk the ladies.”
“Yeah, I should get going, too,” Dean said. But he was disappointed.
“I could give you a ride if you want to stay,” Laura said.
Dean declined, but Ed interrupted, saying he could drive Dean’s car back. “Just have Laura drop you at our place.”
“That works for me,” Laura said.
“It’s settled, then,” Ed said, with a wink that didn’t even try to approach subtle. “I’m going, you’re staying.”
Abby left, too, to Dean’s surprise.
“She never stays out late,” Laura said. “I can’t seem to find a drinking buddy around here. Not that I’m a huge drinker. But sometimes you need to let loose.”
“Sure,” Dean said. “Especially with all the delinquent kids you have to deal with.”
“Oh, let’s forget about that!”
“Wait, did you think I was talking about Robbie?”
Laura smiled at him, fondly, like they were old friends. “How did you end up here, anyway? I mean, in Willowboro?”
“I got a job, and then I fell in love with someone who lived here.”
“But why did you take this job? You could have worked anywhere.”
“Not really. Willowboro was the only place small enough to give me a head coaching position at twenty-five — or wait, twenty-six. I was twenty-six when I moved here. Before Willowboro I was on staff at a Div I school in Virginia.”
“But you didn’t like that?”
“I did, but I wasn’t going to wait ten years to get promoted. I wanted my own team. They basically let me start from scratch here. There was a football program in place, but it was still pretty new. Not what it is today.”
“So the football team is your baby.”