If Rock and Roll Were a Machine

by Terry Davis

  It was Rats 27–Explorers 7 with less than a minute to go in the third quarter and the Explorer receiving team taking the field when Coach Heslin walked up to Coach Christman, said something, and then looked toward the bench. Christman yelled, “Shepard!” and Camille came running.

  Bert carried a press badge that allowed him on the field, but at the half he’d walked up into the seats to munch some of Rita’s popcorn. Rita, Scotty, Zimster, and Steve Shepard sat in the first row of the second level because the walkway there was wide enough for Zimster’s chair, which was positioned between Scotty and Steve. Next to Steve sat Mike Jackson’s dad, and in the rows behind sat the families of other team members.

  When Camille ran onto the field, Steve jumped to his feet, raised both fists, and yelled, “Yes!” Scotty was a little slower. He yelled, “Go get ’em, Shepard!” Bert saw Eddie Hmongster move up closer to the sideline and raise his camera. Everybody in the Thompson section stood for the kickoff.

  Mike Jackson and Camille were deep to receive. It was a high, beautiful kick, and it settled into Mike’s hands at the same time eight snarling Rogers Rats were tearing up the Explorer wedge. Mike headed to Camille’s side of the field, away from the carnage. But the carnage pursued him, and he hadn’t made five yards on his slant when orange jerseys blocked the way. Mike Jackson could take a hit as well as anybody, but he lateraled the ball to Camille.

  Shepard would have made a yard or two up the sidelines, which is what everyone including the Rats figured he’d do. But he ran the other way. Not far, just enough to slip past the charging Rats, then he cut straight to the middle of the field.

  The Rogers half of the field was nearly deserted. There was only the Rat end converging from the far sideline, and the Rat kicker waiting at the thirty.

  The Thompson fans were going crazy. For a moment Bert was blinded by popcorn.

  Camille shifted the ball to his right hand as the Rat end bore in on his left. Scotty and Steve looked at each other, then Steve looked down at Zimster. “You might want to hide your eyes, Zim,” he said. “This is going to be rated R for violence.”

  Camille didn’t juke, jive, fake, cut, or leap. What he did was time his collision with the end to correspond with the twin explosions upward of his left arm, which he had cocked in the manner of a defensive lineman about to deliver a forearm shiver, and his left knee. The Rogers player went up in the air like a sack of beets leaving the back of a truck. Camille didn’t break stride.

  The Rogers kicker, a little guy, had an angle on Camille, and he kept his head up all the way to the point of impact. Or he would have if there’d been impact. Camille cut inside just as he was about to make the hit. All the kid hit was air.

  In a couple more strides Camille crossed the goal line. He tossed the ball to the ref, then was knocked flat by a flying Mike Jackson. Soon they were both buried in a green-and-gold pile of Thompson players.

  Scotty and Steve chanted into each other’s faces, “Shep-ard! Shep-ard!” Zimster howled like a dog. Rita jettisoned the rest of the popcorn. It was a middle-American high school football family madhouse.

  The Thompson players finally unpiled and Camille jogged back to the sideline carrying his helmet. When he neared midfield he stopped and looked up at Scotty. Bert had been watching him every step, and he observed this moment isolated from the movement all around. Bert turned and saw Scotty looking down at Camille. What Bert saw pass between the father and son sent a current of emotion through him.

  Bert knew there was a story in that look.

  “Are you ready for some foot-bawl?” Mr. Jackson sang out as the Thompson kicker waited for the ref’s whistle.

  The Rats ran a play, then the horn sounded and the teams changed ends. Fourth quarter. Rogers 27, Thompson 14. Plenty of time.

  The Rats made a first down, but Thompson held in the next series and Shepard went in to receive the punt. The Rat punter dribbled it about eight yards. Shepard didn’t get near it.

  The Explorer offense had a new look when they lined up. Shepard at tight end, Kelly McDougall set wide at the other end, Jackson a yard off the line between Kelly-Mac and the tackle in a receiver’s position, and Sean Christman at QB.

  Mike Jackson Sr. looked at Steve. Steve looked at Scotty. Scotty looked back at both of them. Zimster looked up at everybody but nobody noticed. “Guess they’re goin’ with the guys with the best hands,” Scotty said.

  At the snap Christman dropped deep, Shepard ran a sideline left, Kelly-Mac went post left, and Jackson held his block. When the coverage had drifted far enough left, Jackson slid off the block and swung for the right sideline. Christman floated the ball sweet and fat as a pumpkin, Jackson ran under it and kept going to the thirty.

  Shepard hooked over the middle and caught a bullet. He was nailed before he could go anywhere, but it was seven yards. Then everybody went deep. Shepard leaped out of the crowd at the goal line, pulled it in, and fell into the end zone.

  Jubilation reigned only briefly among the Thompson fans. Both Explorer tackles had also gone deep on the play. Illegal receiver. Fifteen yards in the wrong direction and a loss of the down.

  On the next play Christman rolled right in what looked like a sweep. But he reversed the ball to Jackson coming left. Shepard buried the defensive end, and Jackson outran the few Rats who realized he had the ball. Six more for the green and gold. The kick was good. Rogers 27, Thompson 21. Six minutes on the clock.

  The Rats got a good runback. Then they ran for three first downs. Then the only place to go was into the Explorer end zone. But the Explorers held one . . . two . . . three downs. And then the Rats kicked a field goal.

  “A field goal?” Bert heard Steve say. “What is this? High school kids don’t kick field goals.”

  “That’s the seventh the Rogers kid’s kicked this season,” Zimster said.

  “Nobody kicked field goals when we were playin’,” Steve said.

  “You guys played in leather helmets—right?” Zimster said.

  “Right,” Steve said. “And we had no modern footballs. We had to rip the larger organs out of our friends and use them.” Steve wrapped one arm around Zimster’s thin shoulders and placed his other hand at his sternum, flexing his fingers like a claw. “And that, Jimmie the Zim, is what we did to our friends,” he said.

  “I don’t think you’d get a lot of play out of my organs,” Jim said. “They weren’t made to last.”

  Steve laughed. He kept his arm around Jim’s chair and remained seated for the kickoff.

  Pirates 30, Explorers 21. Three minutes.

  The same kid who kicked the field goal booted this one into the end zone. Jackson couldn’t run it out.

  It didn’t look like the Explorers could do it, and in this instance appearance coincided with reality: They didn’t do it. There was one play, however, that made folks glad they stuck around.

  After Christman got sacked on the ten, he hit Kelly-Mac for twelve and Jackson for six. But that was still two short of a first. So it was fourth down and the Explorers were on their own twenty-eight with a minute left. No sense punting.

  Christman got the ball on the first hut, flipped it out to Jackson, who had stayed behind the line of scrimmage, then blindsided the linebacker who was bearing down on Mike as though he were a double cheeseburger after the game. Jackson, who can throw the ball from Spokane to the Canadian border, pumped his arm in Kelly-Mac’s direction, stopping the rest of the charging Rat linemen. This gave him enough time to wind up and fling one to Shepard, who was streaking down the sideline like the famous French high-speed train.

  The two Rat safeties had been camped at midfield, so they were right with Shepard when the ball spiraled over their twenty. Shepard went up and the Rats went up. But Shepard went higher. He went so high, in fact, that the gold number 88 on his green jersey was visible above both Rogers players.

  This was the point at which someone might have asked Scotty: Does your kid play basketball? But nobody did.

  Shepard
grabbed the ball with one hand but wasn’t able to pull it in before the three of them landed out of bounds around the ten. Shepard was the first to his feet, and he was holding the ball high.

  The referee signaled that the play was no good, that Shepard had caught it out.

  Coach Christman exhibited signs of demonic possession. He ran onto the field waving both arms and kicking his legs high in the manner of a Nazi goose step. His clipboard flew into the air higher than Jackson’s pass. Heslin grabbed him before he could get to the referee.

  Steve, Mr. Jackson, Jimmie the Zim, Rita, and the host of Thompson fans in the seats behind screamed threats, excoriations, and vile expletives. Nobody but Bert heard Scotty say, “I think he was out.”

  When order was finally restored the ball went to the Rats back at the Explorer twenty-eight. For spite they tried to score, but two passes went incomplete and the gun sounded before they could get off another snap.

  There was a great exhalation of coffee- and popcorn-breath out of the Thompson section and then everybody began packing up. Generally spirits were high. People were talking about the potential of this new offensive lineup.

  Camille walked up to the concrete wall where the seats began. His hair was matted down and a mixture of field chalk and sod was stuck above one eye. Scotty walked down to meet him. Bert saw this and he saw the Hmongster a few feet away sighting in with the school’s Pentax.

  “I didn’t get control till I was out,” Camille said.

  “That’s what it looked like to me,” Scotty said. “Great catch, anyway. Great game.’

  Camille beamed. He spotted Zimster up in the crowd and yelled. “Jim! You want to meet us back at school and go cruise for a dog?”

  Zimster gave him a thumbs-up.

  Bert watched Scotty watch Camille walk down the sideline and then up the asphalt walkway toward the bus.

  * * *

  The mood back at school was such that if Bert hadn’t been to the game, he would have thought they’d won. Everybody—guys, girls, the few parents waiting to have a word with their sons before the boys went off into the postgame night where they had a lot better chance of getting hurt in their cars than on the football field—everybody was full of smiles, good cheer, and high hopes for the next game, which would be the last. Band kids, a subspecies defying the usual human classifications, were singing “Twist and Shout” and dancing like the parade crowd in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Some parents carped about Coach Christman not moving Jackson to receiver earlier in the year, but they carped good-naturedly.

  It was a beautiful night. A little cool, a little moist. Just right for wearing your hooded sweatshirt under your coat. The players coming out of the locker room didn’t seem to want to leave either. They hung around, sitting on the steps or leaning against car fenders.

  Bert was looking over at Jim, wondering what had happened to all his nastiness. Jim was sitting in his chair at the rear of Camille’s 1949 Chevy station wagon talking with Scotty and Rita. Thinking of Zimster made Bert think about grade school, and thinking about his grade school years could bring Bert down real fast.

  Mike Jackson hustled out the locker room door in his shirtsleeves and said something to Scotty. All Bert heard was the word “Camille.” They both hustled back, and Bert followed.

  Scotty stood at the little tiled curb that keeps the water from running out of the shower entrance onto the concrete floor. All the showers were going full blast. Bert was standing on his tiptoes beside Jackson looking into the shower area over the tiled wall. Camille sat on the floor in the blast from one of the showers, his chin on his chest.

  Bert saw Scotty say something to Camille, but he was too far away to hear through all the shower noise. Scotty picked up two towels from the pile on the table by the entrance and stepped in. He turned off the shower in his path and the one spraying down on Camille. Scotty wiped his face with one of the towels and said something else, but Bert still couldn’t hear. Camille said something. Scotty tossed the towel down onto Camille’s shoulder. Camille looked up and said something, then he started crying again.

  Bert’s calves were hurting and he settled back down off his toes.

  Scotty leaned forward and extended his arm. Bert didn’t have to strain to see because Scotty was so tall. In a second Camille appeared. He put his arms around his father’s neck and cried hard. Loud enough for anyone in the locker room to hear.

  * * *

  Bert sat on the north end of the 7-Eleven sidewalk eating slowly the first of what would be a number of hot dogs. The Sportster sat a few feet farther north in the big dirt lot between the 7-Eleven and the yogurt store. The 7-Eleven hadn’t become a Thompson hangout at this point. Tonight would be the night that made it one.

  Bert was savoring his dog, capturing with his tongue each errant slice of jalapeño pepper and onion chunk that clung to the napkin. Bert was surprised to see Camille’s station wagon roll past the gas pumps and into the dirt lot. Public Enemy continued pounding out of the stereo after Shepard shut down. Bert could see the sides and top of the old rig vibrating. Zimster could add hearing loss to his list of handicaps. Shepard and Jackson climbed out slowly. They walked as though various parts of their bodies would have preferred to be home in bed. Bert had assumed Camille wouldn’t feel like going out on the town after the incident in the shower. But then Bert didn’t really know Camille.

  Both boys crawled into the back of the Chevy. They emerged hoisting an old easy chair to which Jim Zimster was secured by a series of bungee cords. They placed the chair on the blacktop a few inches from Bert’s Big Gulp cup. Zimster unhooked the cords and took a breath. Everybody spoke a greeting, including Jackson, with whom Bert had never spoken. Shepard adjusted the watch cap he was wearing over his wet head. “We mean to rid this place of some hot dogs,” he said.

  It made Bert smile. Shepard sounded like his dad. There was just that little accent.

  More Thompson kids began pulling in. Lauren Haskell parked her Karmann-Ghia beside Camille’s Chevy. Then a bunch of sophomore boys showed up, then Clara Davis and Sharon Jackson, Mike’s sister, then Darby and Sean Christman in Darby’s Tracker with the top down. All the stereos gave way to Public Enemy.

  People gravitated around Zimster’s chair. Bert sort of knew these people, but he didn’t feel particularly comfortable around any of them, and that included Darby and Camille. He wasn’t sure about Zimster. Bert was a little peeved. All he’d wanted to do was eat a peaceful two or three hot dogs.

  Bert heard footsteps and looked up to see Krista James. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt that said THOMPSON VOLLEYBALL. Krista always looked good, but she looked particularly good tonight with her cheeks flushed in the cool air. It hurt to look at Krista because she was so beautiful. What hurt was that Bert knew he would never touch this beauty, would never have Krista or any girl like her. Bert also knew that beauty wasn’t a quality that needed to be touched to be appreciated, and he knew that human beings didn’t exist to be possessed. But this knowledge didn’t prevent Krista James’s beauty from tearing at Bert’s heart.

  Bert took a peek over at Darby. The Darb was by no means eclipsed by Krista. Darby had a look and she had a way. She also had a Sean Christman. Lauren Haskell was sleek and cute as an otter and seemed just as playful with Kelly-Mac. And Bert had never noticed until tonight how good-looking Sharon Jackson was. Even his childhood friend Clara Davis was looking good to Bert, and she was big and tough enough to beat him up.

  Bert wanted to scream. Goddammit! I came here for a hot dog not a hard-on! But he contained himself.

  Camille asked Jim what he wanted on his dog, then he and Mike ambled inside. In less than a minute everybody was inside lined up for dogs or nosing around in the aisles, and Bert and Jim were alone.

  Bert wanted to say something, so he asked how Jim knew Camille. Jim said they had European History together. “Can I ask you a favor, Bert?” Jim said.

  Bert said sure.

  “Tell me if you don’t want to,” J
im said.

  “Come on,” Bert said.

  “Would you mind getting my chair out of Camille’s car and helping me into the bathroom?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Bert replied.

  As Bert hauled the wheelchair out of the car and set it up he was remembering back to fifth grade when every kid in class but Zimster had been happy to tell Mr. Lawler when Bert was acting like he thought he was more important than anybody else. Every kid but Zimster. They hadn’t done it out of meanness, most of them. They were just little kids happy to please their teacher. They didn’t know much about being people. But Zimster knew. Bert was grateful to have the chance to repay some of this debt.

  Camille and Mike set Jim back in the big chair and Bert returned the wheelchair to the Chevy. It was a lot more pleasant messing around in there with no music going. More pleasant, that is, until Bert realized why there was no music going: Krista James was sitting in the driver’s seat looking through the tapes. She looked up in the dim yellow glow of the old dome light. If girls get more beautiful than this, Bert thought, one look at them would stop your heart.

  “It was good of you to help Jim,” Krista said.

  “I’ve know him since grade school,” Bert said.

  “I know him from European History,” Krista said. “He’s smart and he’s got a wicked sense of humor.”

  In that moment Bert was stricken by a thought: What do you do for a love life if you’re among the Zimsters of the world? Can you masturbate? Pray to all the powers of the universe that you can. Please let there be a Zimsterland.

  Krista was talking to him. She repeated herself. “Any requests, I said.”

  “Well,” Bert replied. “I like ZZ Top.”

  “You’re not going to believe it,” Krista said. She waved a tape box.

  Bert went in for another dog. He squirted a thick line of melted cheese up both sides, then over the cheese a thicker layer of chili, then over the chili just the thinnest line of mustard. He wrapped the dog in extra napkins to catch the spillage, then heaped on the jalapeño slices and onion chunks. There are some desires that transcend a concern for fresh breath.