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not supposed to be here, he had said. Who are you? What are you doing here? And when I’d started to ask
him if he’d tried AA for his drinking problem, he’d said—
“George?” Now she sounded worried as well as concerned. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The fans had totally gotten into the call-and-response thing. The cheerleaders shouted “JIM” and
the bleacher-creatures shouted back “LA.”
Fuck off, Jimla! That was what the Yellow Card Man who’d become the Orange Card Man
(although not yet the dead-by-his-own-hand Black Card Man) had snarled at me, and that was what I
was hearing now, tossed back and forth like a medicine ball between the cheerleaders and the twentyfive
hundred fans watching them:
“JIMLA, JIMLA, JIMLA!”
Sadie grabbed my arm and shook me. “Talk to me, mister! Talk to me, because I’m getting
scared!”
I turned to her and managed a smile. It did not come easy, believe me. “Just crashing for sugar, I
guess. I’m going to grab those Cokes.”
“You aren’t going to faint, are you? I can walk you to the aid station if—”
“I’m fine,” I said, and then, without thinking about what I was doing, I kissed the tip of her nose.
Some kid shouted, “Way to go, Mr. A!”
Rather than looking irritated, she wriggled her nose like a rabbit, then smiled. “Get out of here,
then. Before you damage my reputation. And bring me a chili dog. Lots of cheese.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The past harmonizes with itself, that much I already understood. But what song was this? I didn’t
know, and it worried me plenty. In the concrete runway leading to the refreshment stand, the chant
was magnified, making me want to put my hands over my ears to block it out.
“JIMLA, JIMLA, JIMLA.”