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9
At the game, practically everybody looked up to us, and with faint awe—as though we were
representatives of a slightly different race of humans. I thought it was kind of nice, and for once Sadie
didn’t have to slouch to fit in. She wore a Lion Pride sweater and her faded jeans. With her blonde hair
pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like a high school senior herself. A tall one, probably the center
on the girls’ basketball team.
We sat in Faculty Row and cheered as Jim LaDue riddled the Arnette Bears’ defense with half a
dozen short passes and then a sixty-yard bomb that brought the crowd to its feet. At halftime the
score was Denholm 31, Arnette 6. As the players ran off the field and the Denholm band marched onto
it with their tubas and trombones wagging, I asked Sadie if she wanted a hotdog and a Coke.
“You bet I do, but right now the line’ll be all the way out to the parking lot. Wait until there’s a
time-out in the third quarter or something. We have to roar like lions and do the Jim Cheer.”
“I think you can manage those things on your own.”
She smiled at me and gripped my arm. “No, I need you to help me. I’m new here, remember?”
At her touch, I felt a warm little shiver I did not associate with friendship. And why not? Her
cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling; under the lights and the greeny-blue sky of a deepening
Texas dusk, she was way beyond pretty. Things between us might have progressed faster than they
did, except for what happened during that halftime.
The band marched around the way high school bands do, in step but not completely in tune,
blaring a medley you couldn’t quite figure out. When they finished, the cheerleaders trotted to the
fifty-yard line, dropped their pompoms in front of their feet, and put their hands on their hips. “Give
us an L!”
We gave them what they required, and when further importuned, we obliged with an I, an O, an N,
and an S.
“What’s that spell?”
“LIONS!” Everybody on the home bleachers up and clapping.
“Who’s gonna win?”
“LIONS!” Given the halftime score, there wasn’t much doubt about it.
“Then let us hear you roar!”
We roared in the traditional manner, turning first to the left and then to the right. Sadie gave it
her all, cupping her hands around her mouth, her ponytail flying from one shoulder to the other.
What came next was the Jim Cheer. In the previous three years—yes, our Mr. LaDue had started at
QB even as a freshman—this had been pretty simple. The cheerleaders would yell something like, “Let
us hear your Lion Pride! Name the man who leads our side!” And the hometown crowd would bellow
“JIM! JIM! JIM!” After that the cheerleaders would do a few more cartwheels and then run off the
field so the other team’s band could march out and tootle a tune or two. But this year, possibly in
honor of Jim’s valedictory season, the chant had changed.
Each time the crowd yelled “JIM,” the cheerleaders responded with the first syllable of his last
name, drawing it out like a teasing musical note. It was new, but it wasn’t complicated, and the crowd
caught on in a hurry. Sadie was doing the chant with the best of them, until she realized I wasn’t. I
was just standing there with my mouth open.
“George? Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer. In fact, I barely heard her. Because most of me was back in Lisbon Falls. I had
just come through the rabbit-hole. I had just walked along the side of the drying shed and ducked
under the chain. I had been prepared to meet the Yellow Card Man, but not to be attacked by him.
Which I was. Only he was no longer the Yellow Card Man; now he was the Orange Card Man. You’re