My Best Year

by William Hazelgrove

  FORGET ABOUT IT

  TOBY

  I DON’T BELIEVE PARENTHOOD is a true representation of autism. First of all I make eye contact. Max does not. I routinely look at people’s eyes and have won several staring contests. Also, Max was very awkward socially. I do not see myself that way. I can recite any verse of Shakespeare from Midsummer Night’s Dream or Romeo and Juliet. These are very romantic plays and socially put me ahead of my peers who know only the lyrics of rap music, which was marginalized when artists like Kanye blended it with pop lyrics for mainstream white America.

  I do like Max’s father. I wouldn’t mind a school like the one his mother started. Dad says this is going to be my best year at this new school he attended almost thirty years ago. He says it will be different. He says I’m going to go out for the football team, and I told him it didn’t work out last time. He says this time it will be different. He said to forget all about what happened before. He says I am a new person. I am to forget all about getting suspended for posting on Facebook that Principal Shylock was a prick. I was to forget being kicked out for burning Mr. Slayballs’ ass and when I almost killed Mr. Roberts the Driver’s Education teacher. That was when Mr. Roberts turned white and said I would never get my license as long as he had breath in his body.

  Dad says this will be my best year, and then I will go to college. Dad says it happened to him and his whole life changed after his senior year.

  I prefer Modern Family as a more true representation of modern American family dynamics where less than half the families have a traditional heterosexual mother and father. I particularly enjoy the gay couple, but I don’t understand why a beautiful Latino woman would marry such an older man. Dad says it is because he has money.

  School starts tomorrow.

  BREAKING BAD

  COACH

  BREAKING BAD. I WATCHED every episode. But you know what I relate to most? The first scene where Walt is in the middle of the highway in his underwear with a gun pointed down the road. That’s how I have been feeling lately—like I’m standing in the middle of nowhere in my underwear with a cannon pointed down the road. I don’t know. Maybe it’s being in your fifties and you know that everything is pretty much behind you and all you can do is wait in your underwear with a gun and hope you get them before they get you.

  You might not know this, but I tried out for the Green Bay Packers. Yeah. I was a walk on. I mean I was All State at college and everyone said I had what it takes. At that time, I was six four and two fifty and I was all muscle. So I went to the tryouts and ran into guys who were just like me. We all knew this was it. All our dreams either began or ended here. That day mine ended and the next week I was selling insurance with my brother-in-law.

  I hated it. I got up at five every morning and worked out for two hours. But here was the thing. At the end of the workout, I was like all amped up and ready to go, but there was nothing to do with that super physical body but sit down at a desk and makes calls to sell Home, Life, and Health. So I quit. I went back to school and got a teaching degree and ended up teaching history. Then math. Then English. Funny thing is I never read a book. I just faked it. When they asked if I wanted to coach the football team it seemed like my dream came back in a way.

  I became The Coach. Hey, if you can’t play you might as well coach. I even thought that if I took the Sycamorians to State then maybe a college might notice me and then well, the NFL. But then I found out what everyone else knew after the Hammer factory left. The town was DOA and so was the school and so was football. Until Clampet showed up we didn’t have a team. I just turned fifty-five and I am thinking about my life a lot more. Like maybe I should have worked harder at that tryout in Green Bay. Maybe I missed an opportunity along the way and now I’m looking at retirement in a couple years.

  It’s like I saw that guy KC and the Sunshine Band. He was a big hit in the ‘70 and ‘80s. Then I see him at the county fair and he’s bald and fat and hanging onto the microphone. “What the fuck,” KC says, staring out at the audience, gasping. “What the fuck happened? I just turned sixty!” It happens like that. One day you are in front of screaming chicks and the next day you are old.

  So Principal Higgins pulls us into a special meeting in his office over this Clampet kid. Linda from the English Department is there and we stare at each other. She is a cute and blond and just this side of forty. We always eat lunch together and she tells me her dating stories, which center around not having any dates, and I tell her about being married for twenty-five years. Here’s the thing, we are both all about the road not taken.

  I mean I would marry her in a second if I wasn’t already married. Frankly, I have been considering other options lately. The school won’t make it past this year. This we both know. Linda and I watched this movie Waiting for Superman. As teachers, we are supposed to hate it. You know, crappy teachers. But the movie has some good points. Like it talks about how some school districts are well funded and others don’t get jack. We don’t get jack and that’s probably why we won’t make the year. We are on some list or something of underperforming schools. Linda says we still teach like it’s 1910 with kids in rows just spitting back information.

  “We reward the kids who can memorize and discourage the kids who actually think because they don’t test well,” is the way she put it. “We pump up these kids with drugs so we don’t have to teach them anymore.”

  Needless to say, our colleagues don’t agree with us. But I can’t bullshit myself anymore. I mean by fifty-five you should have some idea what your life means. I am teaching Driver’s Education in a one-horse town that if you blink you could miss it. It’s not enough. I don’t have any kids and my wife sits at home and watches Cake Boss and the gay guy who plans weddings. Life is weird when you think about it. My mother-in-law used to say, “Just don’t think.” At the time I didn’t know what she meant, but I’m beginning to.

  “Do you know what this is all about?” I ask Linda outside Higgins’ office.

  She stares at me. She is wearing a blue dress with white stitching around the collar. She is one of those small women you could pick up and screw against the wall with their legs wrapped around you and not get tired. My wife would break my back if we tried anything like that.

  “No … but he told me it was extremely confidential.”

  “Probably going to fire us,” I joked.

  “Oh good, then we can run away together,” I joked back, tearing out my heart.

  So we get the low-down. Principal Higgins says that we are to make extra-special effort and submit Clampet’s grades to him for review. I don’t know who Higgins was blowing, but he must have a pretty big Johnson because he said this was all for the good of the school. Higgins said it was our job to make sure this kid graduated. Like I said, he was getting it or giving to someone. Then I had a meeting with Clampet and Higgins.

  “I will foot the bill and get the stadium back in shape. As I told Coach Williams, we will have a real Homecoming game,” he tells Higgins.

  Paul Clampet says he is going to give the Booster Club like five grand, or he could give it right to me. That’s what he says and I sit there with Higgins who is licking his lips like a dog in heat. The next day over lunch in the teachers’ lounge Linda and I talked about the meeting.

  “So you going to pass the kid?” I ask, because basically that is what Higgins was asking her to do

  “I guess so. He is just nine hours short, but he is autistic. I think it’s great his father wants to give him some kind of special last year,” she tells me in that soft little voice.

  “Yeah. I coached Paul, the kid’s his. He wants to have a Homecoming game where his son can catch the winning touchdown. He’s going to pay for the whole thing and have a Homecoming dance and a parade for the kid. I mean it’s like he’s creating his own high school or something.”

  Linda smiles with these small white teeth. “It’s like Parenthood where Christina creates a school for her autistic son.”

 
“I can’t stand that show,” I snort. “I got enough problems without listening to somebody else’s.”

  “I caught a few of them. I prefer The Good Wife.”

  I look up. “Oh yeah the lawyer show…right?”

  “Sort of,” Linda says eating some yogurt. “And I like that and Orange Is the New Black.”

  I stare at her and feel myself get hard. I watched that show and it’s like porno with lots of lesbians. I can feel the heat in my face as I clear my throat. I lower my voice.

  “Isn’t that all about lesbians in prison?”

  Linda smiles in a way that makes me want to throw her down on the floor.

  “Hmmm … yes, I guess it is,” she says licking yogurt off her spoon.

  I watch her licking this spoon and I consider going to the bathroom. She takes out some orange peels in a baggy. That is another thing. The woman does not eat. She had nuts and yogurt or she brings an avocado and eats it with a spoon. The thing is, I find it very sexy because my wife eats like a truck driver.

  “Anyway, I think it is sweet what he is doing for his son.”

  I clear my throat, trying to get the lesbians out of my head.

  “What did Higgins want from you?”

  Linda raised her eyebrows and smoothed a frosted wisp of hair behind her ear. I could smell her perfume that always reminded me of some French town. You don’t think of French towns usually when you are teaching in a dump like Sycamore High.

  “He said I would get a bonus if we could manage to pass him by the end of the semester.”

  I stared down at my Sloppy Joe and applesauce and my uneaten brownie. Lately around Linda I had been losing my appetite, and a lot of times I go back to the lunchroom with my tray still full. Blanche, the lunch lady, gives me funny looks because I used to come back for thirds.

  “So what did he want from you?” she says putting her spoon back in a plastic baggy.

  “Ah.” I waved my hand. “Just let this kid get on the team and have him win the game with a touchdown pass.”

  “Oh that’s all.”

  “Yeah.”

  We sat there with our hands inches away and I realized then I could just reach forward and take those delicate fingers in mine. I had imagined what her house looked like many times. Maybe it has a nice bed with frilly stuff on the spread and pillows. And in my fantasy we would go in there and just tear that bed to pieces with our passion. I had seen this at least a thousand times.

  “So,” I said, looking up at her, “You going to play ball?”

  Linda tilted her head and suddenly we were no longer talking about Higgins or Paul or this kid. She leaned in and looked me right in the eye.

  “Are you?” she whispered.

  HELL YES!

  HECTOR THE JANITOR

  SONS OF ANARCHY. THAT is my show, bro. They kick some major ass, you know? Anyway, I don’t know what is going on but this dude comes to my basement and gives me five hundred dollars just to be nice to his son. He says his son is new to school and he wants to be sure he has a good time. So he gives me five hundred dollars man and tells me his name and gives me a picture. I almost fall off my chair when he gives me the money. I mean the school is probably going to close this year and there are no jobs left you know. So I say hell yes, I’ll be nice to his son.

  Toby, I think his name is.

  Betty, the secretary, says she got an offer, too.

  “Well we all can use a little extra spending money,” she says over lunch. The dude gave her a card with his son’s picture and inside the card was an even nicer picture of Mr. Ben Franklin.

  “I remember Paul when he was here. And he was such a nice boy who just wanted to please.” Betty paused with that shit they call meatloaf right beneath her mouth. “I have his son’s picture on my desk beneath my copy of Fifty Shades of Gray.”

  GO, STOP!

  COACH

  I HAD TOBY FOR Driver’s Education before he even came out to the football field. Paul told me the kid had taken Driver’s Ed before, but I don’t know. He gave me a fifty for hazard pay. They gave me Driver’s Ed because they were too cheap to hire a real teacher. Well this kid appears in the parking lot stooped over with the darkest circles under his eyes I have ever seen. I don’t know, maybe he’s a pothead or something.

  “All set,” I ask him

  He just shrugs and stands by our Driver’s Education car from like 2000. It’s an old Cutlass and I’m thinking it’s Lurch. You remember the Adams Family and Lurch the butler? Well that’s who this kid reminds me of–big long neck with the Adam’s apple and the dark circles and the bowl haircut. So we get in and get all buckled up and I put him on the driver’s side and I have my brake that I use a lot.

  “Listen, your dad told me you already went through Driver’s Ed, once so let’s just see what we have here.”

  He stares straight ahead and I give him my standard speech.

  “Now when I say slow down I mean hit the brake. If you don’t I will. Got it?”

  He just nods and says “Okay.”

  He is definitely one of these guys who sits in a basement all day XBoxing. The kid’s head is nearly hitting the ceiling as we pull out.

  “Easy on your speed.”

  We are heading for the highway and he’s going twenty miles an hour.

  “I meant easy on your speed, but not that easy. Let’s give it some gas!”

  He looks at me with those Lurch eyes.

  “You know accelerate,” I say. “Put the pedal to the metal!”

  And just then he floors it and that 425 V8 jumps to life.

  “Hey you want to take your foot off the pedal,” I say, trying to stay calm.

  Lurch just stares ahead with his hands on the three o’clock and nine o’clock positions and we are already up to eighty.

  “Hey, hit the fucking brake!”

  And he still has it floored and is staring straight ahead like he’s in a trance or something.

  “Alright that’s it, pull over,” I command, stomping on my brake.

  You won’t believe this but the fucking kid pushes down the accelerator! Come on! I mean now the engine is fighting it out with the brake and that engine is winning and all I hear is this screech from the brakes. Blue smoke is flying behind us and we are heading for the highway and this tanker semi of gasoline is bearing down and I got the brake to the floor with my body arched up because we are going to die.

  “STOP!”

  And the kid just keeps his hands on the nine o’clock and three o’clock positions like he’s driving through the park or something and we have passed ninety now. I scream because that tanker of gas is blowing his horn and this is it.

  “SHIT!”

  And just like that I see my life flash before my eyes just like the movies. And I have had a pretty crappy life and it is not pretty and I look out the driver’s side window and all I see is the silver grill of the truck with one of those big mouths with the teeth painted across the grill. That’s it. Check out time. And we hit the middle of the intersection and the car is smoking like crazy because the brakes are burning up. That semi is so close I can see the driver swearing with a cigarette in his mouth and somehow like some old silent movie we cross the intersection and the semi blows by and I scream out. “SLOW DOWN!”

  Then Lurch hits the brakes I mean locks them up and the fucking air bags pop out and I’m breathing hard and my heart is two hundred beats a minute. I stare at him with his hands still on the nine o’clock and three o’clock positions.

  “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”

  He stares straight ahead and says:

  “You said don’t brake until you said slow down.”

  I just stare at him and decide right then I’m going to ask for five hundred for hazard pay. I mean I really thought I bought the farm. And now this kid is coming out for football and nothing is right. His helmet doesn’t fit with his chinstrap over his mouth and his shoulder pads have turned Lurch into Herman Munster. The guy’s body is just too long or s
omething. But the worst is when I told him to jog across the field. I wanted to see if he could catch and so I said, “Clampet, take a jog across the field and I’ll toss you one.”

  So he takes off and jogs across the field. My phone rings and I pull it out. It’s the wife and I think about not answering. Simmons the fullback starts shouting to me.

  “Hey Coach … Coach!”

  “What?” I say letting the call go to voicemail.

  “Uh, Coach I think we got a problem.”

  I look and Clampet is now climbing the galvanized steel fence like Spider Man. So I look at the nine guys who are my football team.

  “Don’t just stand there you dummies,” I say. “GO GET HIM!”

  I stand there watching Clampet climbing the fence in his helmet and full pads. Life gets weird when you get old.

  KLUTZ

  RANDY

  THIS CLAMPET KID COMES out looking like something out of horror flick with his helmet too small and his shoulder pads falling off.

  “Give him some passes Twain,” Coach says.

  “Sure thing, Coach.”

  I mean our team sucks. We barely have nine guys and we usually just play a few games because everyone knows we suck. So, I figure this Clampet kid can’t be any worse.

  “Hike!”

  I take the ball and hit him on a short and out. The ball bounces off his helmet.

  “Do it again,” Coach says.

  “Alright flat pass …”

  The Clampet kid stares at me.

  “Just go over there and I’ll throw it to you,” I tell him.

  He goes right and I lob one over. BONG. It comes off his helmet again. I mean, what the fuck. This guy is supposed to win a game for us? So Coach has me keep at it. We throw long ones, short ones, and I feel like it is the carnival where you throw the baseballs at those open mouths and win a prize because I am hitting this kid in the chest and the pads and even his hands and every time the ball bounces off him. I don’t think he caught one pass that first day. I hope his dad has a lot of money because he’s going to need it to pay off the opposing team if he wants this klutz to win the game.