Friday Night Lights

by H. G. Bissinger

  “Not everyone you meet is going to be a jam-up Christian,” Hanson told him. “They may drink a beer, they may go to a concert. You can still be Ivory, you can be eighteen years old. You don’t have to be forty years old. You don’t have to isolate yourself.”

  But Ivory’s metamorphosis was total, a far cry from the days when he had led the chorus of laughter in response to the church teachings about fornication. And rarely had Hanson seen anyone with as instinctive a gift for preaching. He was amazed at Ivory’s comprehension and interpretation of the Scripture and his ease in the pulpit, the absolute fearlessness he showed in getting up before the congregation and preaching the word of God with those square shoulders that did make him look as though he was born to be a linebacker.

  Wearing a blue suit with a little trim of white handkerchief sticking out of the breast pocket, Ivory made a striking figure, his poise like that of someone thirty years old instead of seventeen. He truly seemed at peace in these moments, able at last to lose himself in something without anguish and ambivalence. He rocked back and forth and nodded his head as Hanson gave the altar prayer one Sunday. Moments later he was introduced as “the Reverend Ivory Christian.” The very ring of it sounded stirring and wonderful, and it was amazing to see this teenager who showed almost no enthusiasm about anything, who responded to almost everything with the shrug of an octogenarian ready to die, take the pulpit. He started softly but the exhortations of the congregation—“Talk! Talk!” and “Alright! Alright!” and “Take your time, son! Take your time!”—got him going in a sweet and easy rhythm. He connected with the congregation and they connected with him as he stood beneath a mural of the black Jesus and talked about his conversion:When you let go of this world, Jesus puts a certain joy in your heart. Do we really love him enough to say no to the world?

  Ivory let go of drinking. He let go of hanging out in the streets. He let go of parties. He let go of cussing. He let go of every former vestige in his life, except football. It still lingered as his perpetual, unconquerable nemesis. He tried to let go of that too, and he talked to Hanson about quitting football altogether because he felt it conflicted with his calling, and he didn’t want anything to get in the way of that. But Hanson gently coaxed him not to drop football too fast. It was there, and it had a place in Ivory’s life whether he liked it or not. “If playing football can get you to college, if playing football can get you an education, then play football,” Hanson told him.

  And no matter how much Ivory tried to hate it and belittle it and scoff at it, something took hold of him on game day as surely powerful as spreading the word of Jesus. Everyone on the team experienced butterflies, but no one got them as badly as he did.

  It hadn’t happened in the first game of the season against El Paso Austin, because everyone knew that El Paso Austin was a terrible team. But it did happen in the second game, in a stadium 530 miles east of Odessa in Marshall, Texas.

  As assistant coach Randy Mayes went over the list of the myriad responsibilities of the linebackers one final time, the drone of his footballese a numbing wash in the bloated air, Ivory’s legs began to shake. He started sweating and his complexion turned wan. The more Mayes read from the piece of paper he had prepared, which was based on hours of review of several Marshall game films where every play was diagrammed and analyzed for type, formation, and hash tendency, the worse Ivory looked, as if he was drowning in the expectations of what he had to do.

  The alien atmosphere of everything, the strange space he and his teammates occupied underneath the decrepit flanks of the bleachers with its spotted shadows and jutting angles, the crackling screech of “Anchors Away” over and over again on the ancient loudspeaker system to an absolutely empty stadium, the tortuous buildup of heat and humidity like the cranking of a catapult, only magnified the tension.

  “You okay?” Mayes asked him.

  “I need to throw up,” he said.

  “Go throw up.”

  And off he went, trying to exorcise the demon of football.

  Perhaps it was the distance that separated the two schools and the fact that Permian, at a cost of $20,000 to the school district, had chartered a 737 jet to get to Marshall.

  Perhaps it was the breakfast at Johnny Cace’s Seafood and Steakhouse, where he sat in the corner with the other black players and helped himself to heaping buffet-style portions of scrambled eggs and biscuits and chicken-fried steak.

  Perhaps it was how some of the shoe-polish signs on the rear windows of cars in Marshall rhymed MOJO with HOMO, or the way the Marshall Mavericks slumped against the doorway of the locker room in their letter jackets when the Permian players arrived, their arms folded, the looks on their faces smug and sullen and smirking, as if to say, So this is big, bad Mojo, the pride of West Texas. They look like a bunch of pussies to me.

  But probably it was the thought of O-dell, as he had been called all that week during practice, staring across from him in the Marshall backfield.

  Odell Beckham, the stud duck of the Mavericks, number 33, six feet, 194 pounds, 4.5 speed in the forty, punishing, quick, able to take it up and out to the outside, a guaranteed lock for a major-college scholarship. O-dell. Everywhere Ivory went, everywhere he looked, that’s all he seemed to hear about. O-dell. Watch him do this on the film. O-dell. Read about him doing that on the scouting report. O-dell. Listen to this publication calling him the third best running back in the state. O-dell. Could any player possibly be that good, that awesome, that intimidating? Were the rumors true that he had walked on water against the Nacogdoches Dragons and had simply flown across the field like the Flying Nun against the Texarkana Tigers?

  Inside the locker room of the Marshall Mavericks, where a sign in thick red letters on the Coke machine read THERE’S NOTHING THAT COMES EASY THAT’S WORTH A DIME. AS A MATTER OF FACT, I NEVER SAW A FOOTBALL PLAYER MAKE A TACKLE WITH A SMILE ON HIS FACE, Ivory went through his physical upheaval, as far removed from the cocoon of the Rose of Sharon pulpit as he ever could be.

  He wasn’t preaching now. He was playing football.

  II

  The Marshall game was only the second of the season, and since it wasn’t a league contest it had no effect on whether Permian made the playoffs. But the stakes seemed as great as in a state championship, and the air swirled with the edgy sensation that the two teams on the field wanted nothing more than to bludgeon the bloody bejesus out of one another.

  Marshall came into the game ranked third in the state and badly desired a hunk of mighty Mojo’s hide to prove the Mavericks were for real. That’s why the coach, Dennis Parker, had begged the school principal to schedule the game, the first ever between the two schools, despite the distance between them.

  “I told him, we can have ten merit scholars at school. But if we beat Permian, we get more publicity.”

  Permian came into the game ranked fourth in the state with a reputation of invincibility to uphold. Out on the plains of West Texas everyone knew how the Panthers routinely bludgeoned opponents from El Paso and Abilene and Amarillo. But could they handle the pressure of playing in a hot and hostile environment where thousands drenched from head to toe in Maverick red would be screaming for their heads? Could Winchell hang in if the game got tight and they had to have it? Could Gaines? Could Ivory Christian?

  “They got a sellout in Marshall,” Gaines told his players several days before the game. “They’ll have eight or nine thousand. A lot of fan interest down there for this game.

  “I want you to to keep in mind why we’re going. It’s not a pleasure trip. It’s work. We’re going to work.”

  If Permian could survive here, in this rickety stadium hundreds of miles away from home that felt so much like the scene of some bloody ambush, before the biggest crowd that had ever watched a football game in Marshall, Texas, it could survive anywhere. But if the Panthers lost . . .

  Odell off tackle on the first play with thousands screaming. Ivory and outside linebacker Chad Payne in his face to drive him to the gr
ound. A loss of three.

  Odell off tackle on the next series. Ivory there again, leading the swarming charge of a defense coming at him like darts shot out of a forty-four magnum. A gain of two.

  Odell on a draw. Into the open field. Eludes Ivory. Won’t go down as the Permian defensive backs ride his back. Sprawls on the ground for every inch to a delighted, roaring crowd. Gain of thirteen. Welcome to East Texas football, Ivory. Stick it up your ass.

  Odell again. Busted by Ivory, a hit that sounds and reverberates. He crumples and loses the ball. Welcome to West Texas football, O-dell. Stick it up your ass.

  New series. Odell again on a draw. Carries four tacklers with him for a gain of six. Odell to the right side. Stacked up for a gain of one. Odell on a pitch. Ivory leads the charge for a loss of two.

  A scout from a neighboring school that will play Marshall in several weeks has his binoculars trained on the game. He is supposed to be watching Odell, and he knows Odell is great. But his eyes keep sliding off to Ivory. He keeps poking his colleague in the side and saying, “You’re not gonna believe this but that number sixty-two has made another tackle.”

  It may be that Ivory Christian hates football. It may be that he is burned out on it. It may be that he considers it pointless, an eight-year journey to nowhere. But it also may be that under the right circumstances, the demon wins the heart of the most steadfast soul, and the nemesis always becomes a lover.

  Permian goes ahead 3-0 in the first quarter on a twenty-five-yard field goal by Alan Wyles, but Marshall, capitalizing on a fumble by Comer, moves deep into Permian territory and then scores on a six-yard lob pass from Benny Valentine to flanker Alfred Jackson. The ravenous Marshall fans go wild at this first indication that Mojo can actually be beaten.

  The score remains 7-3 at the end of the first half.

  The Permian players head into the locker room, which has the feel of a refugee camp, or of a makeshift hospital ward after a catastrophe. Bodies are strewn everywhere and the air is thick with the pungent smell of grass. Ivory lies on the floor with a towel over his head, utterly exhausted from perhaps the most inspired thirty minutes of his life. Brian Chavez, starting both ways at tight end and defensive end after missing the first game of the season because of an ankle injury, walks through the locker room shirtless, his body drenched with sweat. He goes to the bathroom and vomits and when he comes out he looks yellow. He is tired and wilting in the stuffy heat. Winchell, as usual, is silent and ponderous. So is Gaines, who spends most of halftime staring at his play sheet, knowing that without the sloppiness Permian would have twenty-one points instead of just three. The team outgained Marshall in the half 157 to 113 yards, and the great O-dell has been held to a mere thirty-nine yards on fourteen carries, but the Panthers are still losing and seem to be bursting at the seams a bit.

  “Our own mistakes are the reason we’re behind now,” he tells the players in the stuffy, squalid darkness. “Let’s toughen up. We knew it was a four-quarter football game when we got on the plane today. We just need to bow up.”

  The Marshall fans give the Mavericks a standing ovation when they come out for the second half. The Marshall band plays a rousing fight song while the Mavettes, in their sequined costumes and tasseled boots and white cowboy hats and with their lips painted as red as a Texas sunset, move their arms back and forth in a mesmeric cadence.

  Even the little group sitting in the wedge of bleachers behind the west end zone seems to be getting into the intoxicating pace of the game. It is a delegation of Russians who spent the previous day at the nearby air force base in Karnack to witness the destruction of Pershing missiles as provided by the recent INF treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

  Courtesy of the chamber of commerce, the Russians are dressed in gray shirts embossed with the word MAVERICKS in red letters. They have on red-and-white MAVERICK hats. They have red MAVERICK carry-on bags with red MAVERICK footballs inside them. They sit on red MAVERICK seat pads and they are holding special GO! MAVS flyers printed up by the Marshall Messenger that have the signatures of every Maverick football player and feature good-luck ads from Jerry’s Auto Parts and the East Texas Sports Center and Pump ‘N Pantry. They look a little wild in their outfits and they don’t understand a lick of football, but by halftime they are fairly adept at making a hook ’em horns sign and in any case their understanding of America by the end of the game will be absolute whether they realize it or not.

  Winchell drops back to pass and throws deep. Hill tiptoes against the sideline while stretching his head back to pick up the ball. He makes a remarkable catch, as if he has eyes in his chin. The thirty-six-yard gain sets Permian up for another field goal to cut the Marshall lead to one point.

  Marshall fumbles the kickoff and Permian recovers deep inside Maverick territory at the 37. With a second and eight, Winchell throws a little pass in the left flat to Hill, who eludes his defender with ease and is gone for a touchdown.

  Permian goes for two points. Winchell fakes the hand-off and goes around the right end on a bootleg, angling for the end zone. A Maverick defender heads for the corner as well, the moment of impact unfolding like a game of chicken on a lonely highway; the whole point is not for the players to avoid each other at the last second but to collide. The crowd waits in breathless anticipation for the inevitable head-on. And then the sound comes of two high school boys smashing into each other, as jarring as a bottle flung full force against a wall or a stick being snapped or a club being taken to a set of bones.

  It’s no good. Winchell is a foot short.

  Permian leads 12-7.

  Odell takes the hand-off on a draw at the Permian 30 and cuts to the left side. Cornerback Stan Wilkins has a perfect angle on him to make the tackle, a chance to “hit the snot out of ’im” as the coaches like to call it. Wilkins weighs 136 pounds, and of all the kamikazes who dominate Permian and are eagerly willing to sacrifice their bodies for the great cause of football, he is the most fearless, or foolhardy.

  But Odell doesn’t have time for such mythic self-sacrifice. He outweighs Wilkins by sixty pounds, and with one hand he casually throws him to the ground. He speeds down the sideline and isn’t brought down until the eight. The Mavericks score on the next play. The try for two points fails but they are back in the lead, 13-12.

  Permian moves to a fourth and five at the Marshall 28. Winchell drops back to pass, throwing a perfect strike on a timing pattern to reserve split end Johnny Celey on the left sideline. Celey turns around too late to catch it. As he comes to the sidelines Gaines is livid. In an uncharacteristic moment, he loses control. Celey hopes to avoid him but Gaines grabs him by the shirt.

  “What you thinkin’ about, boy!” he screams at Celey at the top of his lungs. He stares at him with a look that seems almost desperate. Celey, like an embarrassed little boy, refuses to make eye contact. Then Gaines lets go, moving back into his anguished solitude, on the headset once again to Belew in the press box trying to crack the Marshall defense for the go-ahead score. He doesn’t want to lose this game. A loss will only fuel the fire of those who think he doesn’t have what it takes to win the ones that really count. Sure, he can get his boys to pummel the El Pasos. Anyone and his mother can do that. But against the big boys he big-time bellies up. . . .

  He doesn’t need the pressure of it, because he has been through the misery of it before.

  Marshall linebacker Kevin Whitworth tries to get up off the field in the middle of the fourth quarter. There is a sudden interlude in the frenzy of the game as he takes off his helmet and rises only to his knees. The sun is beating down and the humidity makes every piece of clothing stick to his skin like heated molasses and Permian is knocking on the goddamn door again and it’s not the Mavericks he is playing for but the entire town of Marshall and there are eight thousand people screaming like they are all giving birth and it is up to him not to let Permian score even though he is sick to his stomach from exhaustion.

  Whitworth begins to vomit on th
e grass, which stinks in the heat and has been torn to bits by cleats and the crash of helmets and the endless screams of the fans. No one pays attention except for Trapper, the Permian trainer, who starts shouting at him from the sidelines, “Gut check, baby! Gut check!” Yes, it is a gut check, a test of how much Kevin Whitworth wants to play this game.

  He’s done vomiting. He gets to his feet and stays in for the next play.

  Permian’s fourth down at the Marshall 20 fails.

  With a little over a minute on the clock and no time-outs left, Winchell works the sideline brilliantly, the team as precisioned and disciplined as anything in college. Thirteen yards to Robert Brown for a first down to the 40. Eighteen yards to Hill for a first down to the Marshall 42. Thirteen yards to Hill for another first down to the 29. Ten more yards and they win the game with a field goal.

  First and ten. Thirty-six seconds left. Winchell throws a perfect strike, but the ball is dropped. Second and ten. Thirty-three seconds left. The pass is incomplete. Third and ten. Twenty-nine seconds left. The pass is incomplete. Fourth and ten. Twenty-six seconds left. The pass is incomplete. Marshall is penalized for having too many men on the field. Permian has another down.

  Fourth and five. Twenty seconds left.

  Winchell drops back to pass, the eleventh play of this drive. He has time. He isn’t rushed. . . .

  He looks for Hill, who has already caught eight passes for 198 yards and cannot be stopped if he gets anywhere near the ball. All the ingredients are there for another Permian miracle. It has to happen. Each and every fan, those who have willingly traveled the 530 miles, those listening at home over the radio, can feel it in his soul. The ball rises and almost seems to freeze in the exhausted air, spent by so much cheering and hitting and incomprehensible effort. . . .