Calvin passed the ball to Rachel’s sister Elena, the only girl on the Spartan team. She took it most of the way toward the goal, passing it briefly to Jonathan Marty when she was threatened by big Dickie, one of the two hulking Niebuhr brothers on the Roman team. Both hands on his stick, he rotated the empty end toward her head, and Jemma’s heart leapt. She ducked and rolled, taking the ball back from Jonathan just as she came to her feet. Romans converged from all over the field, a few pursuing her but most coming in from her front and her flanks. Just before she reached the crowd she made a long pass to Calvin out on the left edge of the field, who only had to dodge a couple Romans, pokey ones who had not been able to keep up with Elena’s pursuit. He brought the ball across his shoulder and slammed it into the goal.
The cheering and booing were so loud that Jemma had to cover her ears even while she shouted herself, so her screaming voice was oddly magnified, and echoed in her head. Her parents jumped up and down, making the aluminum rattle and flex, her mother waving her plastic torch and her father his red-white-and-blue sword-cane. It took a few minutes for the crowd to settle. Every event of the day was followed with care, but some, like the lacrosse game and the big Senior swim, drew special attention, and caused especially heated arguments. Exciting games were particularly divisive, and this was one of the most exciting pee-wee lacrosse games ever played on the reservoir field. Roman and Spartan points alternated in a way that would have seemed polite if not for the increasingly egregious checking, enough to sate even Jemma’s innocent bloodthirstiness. The teams were tied just as the clock was about to run out, when Calvin scooped up another dropped ball and would certainly have scored a winning goal if the Niebuhrs hadn’t ganged up on him in a way that would lead people to suspect they’d been given a specific assignment from their coach to take him down. One knocked his stick just after the other checked his belly; either blow alone he could have withstood, but the combination caused him to lose the ball. It was picked up by Ronnie Niebuhr, who made a long pass to another Roman close to the Spartan goal. The Spartan goalie, distracted by the injustice unfolding before everyone’s eyes but the blind referee’s, failed to block the shot, and the Romans won the game by a single point.
“What does it mean to wear this hat and these pants and wield this cane, if I can’t get justice for my son?” Jemma’s father asked, first of the referee, who would not call a foul, and then of the sky. Jemma participated in the bitter chants and the foot stomping, and shook a bouquet of rockets threateningly at the other side of the field, and muttered along with everyone else as the crowd broke up and people made their way down to the river for the corn roast.
Jemma walked with her brother and Elena. The two players carried their sticks over their shoulders, their gloves and jerseys slung off the end of the sticks. Jemma carried both helmets, clapping them softly together as she walked.
“The Romans are going to pay,” Elena said.
“Yeah!” said Jemma.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Calvin.
“Not really,” said Jemma.
“It was a big cheat,” said Elena.
“The worst ever,” Jemma agreed.
“It was just a game,” Calvin said. “It doesn’t matter much when you compare it to… a big lion running around and eating people.”
“Or an elephant,” said Jemma. “Who shmooshes you.”
“It’s just not fair,” Elena said, and then added, “Damn it.” It sounded weird, not like when Calvin said it. Jemma could tell she was not an experienced curser.
“Have you ever thought,” Calvin asked, stopping and standing just as they were passing through one of the sand traps protecting the second hole, “if we forgot who was a Spartan and who was a Roman, then we could just sort of turn around and take over.”
“That wouldn’t make it any more fair,” Elena said, and Jemma wondered aloud if the turtles were having a reunion party.
“Maybe it would,” Calvin said. He started walking again, using the end of his stick to push himself up when he made the big step out of the trap and onto the green. “We could have rushed the stands, both teams. Then we could have taken over.”
“My daddy said he’s going to sue the referee.”
“Sue him good,” Jemma said. “Sue off his pants.” Calvin was quiet then, and the two girls were quiet too as they walked the final blocks down to the river beach. Calvin was smiling every time Jemma looked over at him, thinking secret thoughts. Jemma closed her eyes and tried to think what he was thinking. It took a little while, but then, just as they got down to the water, she thought she saw it, an army of nine-year-olds riding lions out of the field and into the stands, biting off the heads of every adult and then tossing them back and forth with their lacrosse sticks. Jemma came behind them on an elephant named Justice. She held on with one hand to a thick red ribbon around his neck while he reared and stomped, encouraging him with cruel words in a language she didn’t even understand until a green lady in a ruined toga came crawling toward them. Justice lifted both his front legs high and let out a blast that broke windows all over the Forest. Jemma held him there, suspended over her mother.
The corn roast was supposed to be an occasion of fellowship and good feeling, when all the day’s competition was profitably reflected on, and victories savored but not gloated over. But that year a pall of resentment hung heavy over the feast. Jemma did not notice it at first. It was the usual corn roast, filled with the usual enjoyments. It had always been her favorite part of the holiday, when the hot afternoon faded into the warm evening and night, and the hoarded rockets of the day were spent in fits that anticipated in a very small way the fireworks to come.
Jemma and Rachel Rauschenburg hung their heads and arms over the pier, watching the half-matured sea nettles drifting up against the net that kept them out of the swimming area, and then sat with their legs dangling over the water, both of them trying to mix the fire from their sparklers — the Roman candles were prettier and more fun but they were in too partisan a mood to use them. They ran, up and down the dock, back and forth across the beach, around the picnic tables, stopping now and then to gnaw on a piece of corn, or suck the meat from a crab claw, or swill a soda so fast they got headaches from the cold of it. When they were good and sweaty they’d wade into the river and splash each other until they were refreshed.
Wandering, Jemma caught bits of conversation. At her parents’ big table, which should have held the best and happiest people of either team, only the Spartan elite were feasting. Jemma watched her father lifting crabs into one of the big steam pots, his fancy pants falling down on his hips and his beard slung backward around his neck. “It’s a fucking travesty,” he was saying. Her mother, fixing sparklers to her crown with the help of three attendants, agreed. Jemma lipped under the table with Rachel to trade between them a single piece of hot corn that each would butter again after every bite.