Chapter 12

EVERYONE WAS BACK at the high school in time to get changed and out to the stadium for the homecoming football game. Dennis was surrounded by his girlfriends and brought the volleyball cheerleaders into their group, surrounded by other volleyball players and cross country runners. The Team A cheerleaders got the fans enthused. There were still some noted bare spots on the field where the grass had not yet recovered from the mudfest two weeks prior. But somehow the atmosphere of celebration translated itself to action on the gridiron. The Wolverines rolled over the Wildcats for a homecoming victory 40-0.

Of course, the real reason to celebrate was the homecoming dance. There was a mad scramble for the restrooms in the high school so people could change from their outdoor clothes to dance dresses and suits. In Iowa, the guys didn’t go much for suits, preferring to not wear jackets, but most dressed in nice shirts and ties with actual slacks instead of blue jeans. Dennis came out of the coaches’ locker room in his most stylish black slacks with a black shirt and patterned tie. He even wore suspenders with the slacks instead of a belt. He stood in the hall waiting for his girlfriends, who had use of the girls’ locker room to change. The football team began to emerge from the boys’ locker room.

“Hey! There’s Dennis!” one of them shouted. “That’s where all the hot girls will be.” Dennis fought off a moment of thinking of himself as the small, weak geek he had been the year before. He didn’t pretend he could take on the whole football team, except in a footrace, but he didn’t need to cower in front of them. Instead, he smiled at them and shouted back.

“Way to go, Wolverines! Homecoming champions!”

Just at that moment, the girls’ locker room door opened and his girlfriends led the way out to join Dennis. Then girls in party dresses kept coming out of the locker room to join the parade down the hall in front of the football team. Daniella and Roberta claimed Dennis’s arms and the rest of his girlfriends coupled up behind him.

“Angelines! Angelines! Angelines!” the football team chanted. Several fell in beside their dates, or girls they wanted to date. None of the team, however, attempted to join one of Dennis’s girlfriends. When they got to the multi-purpose room that had been decorated by the homecoming committee, Dennis and the girls peeled off to the right and turned to face the door as the football team and their dates entered.

“The Wolverines have arrived victorious!” Dennis shouted. Everyone in the room applauded as the team and their dates arrived.

“Seems like a different world this year, doesn’t it?” Roberta whispered to him.

“You read my mind,” he answered.

“You have your work cut out for you tonight. You need to take my sister and me to the dance floor and make like we know what we’re doing when we dance. Then you need to do the same with every one of your girlfriends,” Daniella said. “We’re the only ones you have to take out two at a time, but the rest of the girls would love it if you did the same with them.”

And that was how Dennis spent homecoming. After each dance, he escorted his partners off the floor and picked up two new ones to dance with. Then he repeated with another two. Eventually, he had dances with individual girlfriends and then with the whole group gyrating with him. The girls made it obvious as they could that they were with Dennis.

The homecoming court was announced and applauded with the king and queen crowned. None of that affected Dennis and his girls. And when midnight rolled around and everyone left for home, the thirteen of them crammed themselves into four cars and drove out to Tori’s house where they went into the barn, stripped, and made love or cuddled for the rest of the night.

“It looks like dry weather for the next couple of weeks,” Randy said when he spoke to Dennis outside of church.

“That will be a relief,” Dennis agreed. “They reseeded the football field last weekend, but whatever sprouted was torn up pretty well Friday night. I don’t think anyone realized what a constant task maintaining the football field would be. It really needed at least the entire summer to get started instead of two weeks before the first game.”

“That’s true. How’s the cross country course?”

“It’s in pretty good shape. Bart mows it every Saturday morning but our race on it was canceled because of the rain. Our practices are pretty easy on the turf,” Dennis said.

“Are you planning to prep Abe’s field for winter?” Randy asked. The question was so unexpected that Dennis didn’t know how to answer.

“Um ... I’m not sure I even know what needs to be done or if Mr. Abernathy would want me to do it,” he said.

“The men here in the church will check with him to see if he would accept the help. I wanted you to have the opportunity to join in. When we were all busy with our own farms and didn’t realize Abe needed help, you stepped in. He’s mentioned it several times when one of us has talked to him. He and Lila think you and your girlfriends are angels sent from heaven.”

“Angelines,” Dennis sighed. “If you can give me instructions on what to do and I can get it done on the next two Saturdays, I’d be happy to do the work. I really like him.”

“We’ll get it set up and I’ll come out to make sure you’ve got the system down next Saturday. You’re a good man, Dennis. Your dad would be proud of you.”

Dennis was getting used to leading warmups for everyone but the football players in the gym each afternoon. The coaches and team managers were always in the group and the cheerleaders continued to help him lead the exercises, often to music and routines they came up with. Workouts were exhausting and were followed by regular team practices. Other students found out the workout was open to anyone and more and more of the students joined in just for the exercise. When basketball season started in November, the boys’ teams might be in the best condition they’d ever been in. There were soon seventy-five people exercising right after school. A couple of other teachers decided to join the coaches as well.

On Tuesday, the volleyball team was dismissed after warmups to get ready for their game. Dennis traveled with the girls, but he mostly supervised and checked Shelby’s and Thoms’s work taping.

The Wildcats had revenge for Friday night’s football loss and dealt the volleyball team a 1-3 loss in four very tight games. They were exhausted by the time they boarded the bus for the trip back home. The cheer squad made their way through the bus, congratulating each team member and encouraging her to keep her spirits up. The cheerleaders were really becoming a part of the team.

“What are we writing this weekend?” Brenda asked as they drove to Boone for their Composition and Intro to PE classes Wednesday. Dennis opened his notebook and read the assignment.

“Five to seven-page essay, informative topic of your choice,” he read. “Use well-structured introduction, body, and concluding paragraphs. Organize using thesis statements and topic sentences. Use paragraphs as an organizational method. Incorporate effective transitional devices. Integrate relevant, credible supporting details, and evidence from source materials. Incorporate quotations from source material.”

“Oh, yeah,” Brenda sighed. “Piece of cake. We can use a PE topic, can’t we?”

“I think so,” Dennis said. “I was thinking of writing something along the line of clothing standards for high school athletics. Did you know, last night a representative of the ICCA showed up at the volleyball game and inspected all the cheerleaders on both squads? It was bizarre. She had a checklist of things that ranged from making sure they had no jewelry on to where their cellphones were stored. Then she gave each member of the squad a checklist of clothing and uniform rules. They are severe! The cheerleaders can’t even wear sports bras and sport shorts for practice anymore. They have to have no midriff exposed and if they wear shorts to practice in, the shorts have to be full and extend at least two inches below the butt ledge.”

“Oh, geez! Last year’s entire team would have been suspended months before they were,” Brenda said. “That fits right in with that crazy woman who was shouting at us for practicing basketball in skimpy uniforms a few weeks ago.”

“Probably related. There are posters up around town campaigning for decency and clothing standards for our youth.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Brenda laughed.

“You can say that again. There’s been a lot of controversy about athletic dress this year, like people complaining about Olympic volleyball players in bikinis. I think there’s lots of material to make a paper out of.”

“Don’t forget you need a thesis statement and then evidence to prove it. If you can get that, I say go for it. You could turn it into a blog post later,” Brenda said as she found a parking spot at the college.

“Um ... I’m going to have somewhat limited time this weekend and we’re going to need every bit of it to get these papers done. I’m going to prep Mr. Abernathy’s hay field for winter,” Dennis said.

“What’s that involve? Do you need the girlfriend brigade to help?”

“I might. It’s disking and fertilizing this weekend and reseeding next weekend. All tractor work, I guess.”

“Poor lonesome you!”

The cross country meet Thursday night was at the Bulldogs. They ran around another par 3 golf course for the meet. Dennis felt a little stiff, thinking that he might have overdone the conditioning exercises on Wednesday. The cheerleaders had a new dance exercise routine that really worked the glutes.

This was a seven-school meet. Only five of the schools fielded complete teams for the girls’ run. Forty runners lined up for the start at 6:30. The top three competitors crossed the finish line within forty-five seconds of each other, a good minute and a half before the fourth place runner. Janice managed to stave off a challenge in the last 500 meters and won the race in 21:19. Her teammates came in fourth, fifth, eleventh, and fifteenth, giving the team a solid victory with 36 points.