Ranger Mason had enlisted in the army shortly after the Bison’s first summer game ten years ago. Joel and Starsha continued as always. His shame was such that when Joel made her happy he felt wretched. When he made her sad he thought to himself, Well, at least she doesn’t know.

One evening that summer, Joel had discovered an issue of Playgirl waiting in his house’s mailbox, the naked men on its pages smeared with cow shit. A few weeks later, Joel had taken a job as a carhop at the Sonic Drive-In and one afternoon had brought an order for four fudge milk shakes to a car full of footballers who’d never once given Joel any trouble. A few seconds later he’d been covered head to toe in liquid chocolate. “Ranger says hello from Baghdad,” said the boy behind the wheel, all of them cackling on their way out of the drive-in.

Joel never told his girlfriend about the punch he’d thrown at the game, nor any of the harassment that punch had apparently brought to bear on him. When he mentioned the chocolate incident to her brother during their next round of mudding, Troy had replied offhandedly, “Oh, fuck ’em.” After a beat he’d turned to Joel with a clumsy smile and added, “But, you know, it might hurt my feelings.”

Joel had laughed, his heart in his mouth. It had been so thrilling, so distressing, to finally flirt like he meant it.

If only Troy had always been so kind. As the summer cooled and coppered into fall, his calls to Joel had become more infrequent, their time together briefer. He was always chewing pills when Joel saw him, always rubbing his neck and grumbling about the sprain he’d experienced years before, as if Joel could do anything but fret for him. Troy was always hurrying off early from their meetings or arriving hours late. Daily, hourly, Joel suffered violent fits of jealousy.

Not that Joel possessed the strength to do anything about it.

“I want you tonight,” Troy had whispered into the phone, on that final November afternoon.

“Where have you been?”

A pause. A heavy breath. “Meet me tonight? I’m seeing the game. I’ll come find you after, down at the park?”

“The public park?”

“I want you,” Troy said again in a whisper.

Joel had only hesitated for a moment. He didn’t see that he had a choice. “Of course.”

It was well past dark by the time Joel arrived, and a cold wind had harried the town all day. He listened to the Bison lose their game and snapped off the radio. He sat a long time in his car, his headlights illuminating the plain stone steps descending into the dark. He took a long breath.

As he reached out a hand to kill the engine he stopped when he heard static come leaking from the radio, a low, expectant shh, even though the little light above the speaker was a dead red. Was there another car here? A radio playing down in the gully below? But no: Joel brought his ear to the grille of the speaker and heard a faint pop from inside, a rattle, something that sounded an awful lot like a distant groan.