Redemption Mountain

by FitzGerald, Gerry

  The coach smirked at Charlie incredulously. “Don’t get carried away, buddy. You’re just a sub here,” he said loudly. He pointed out toward the field. “And if that little girl out there can’t take it, maybe she shouldn’t be playing in a boy’s game.”

  “One more irresponsible comment out of you and you’re gone,” said Charlie. “Now, start acting like a coach. These are kids out here.”

  The coach crossed his arms. “Screw you, asshole. C’mon, get out there and get the game going, or we’ll find someone else to ref.”

  Charlie strained to control himself. “You’ve been warned, coach.” It was then that Charlie noticed two men staring at him from the sideline. One was the insurance man who’d given Natty a hard time at the game in Red Bone. But it was the other man who got Charlie’s attention. He was tall and heavy, with a pencil-thin mustache and a toothpick between his puffy lips. Charlie was certain he’d seen him before.

  Without Emma to watch, the Welch team became more aggressive, moving up the field to press the attack. A minute before halftime, they scored again. Angered by the incident with Emma, Zack had been trying to do too much by himself and lost the ball to a good tackle in front of his own goal. The Bones trailed 2–0.

  At the half, Charlie walked over and sat down next to Hank.

  “Rough game,” said Hank.

  “That’s my fault,” admitted Charlie, pulling his sweater on. The sun had dropped behind the nearby hills and the air had become cooler. The field lights had come on automatically.

  Natty walked over and tossed Charlie a plastic water bottle.

  “How’s Emma?” Charlie asked, unscrewing the cap of the bottle.

  Natty looked over at her team. “She’s got some bruises, and her lip is swollen, but she’s okay.” Natty waited while Charlie took a long drink from the bottle. “Hey, Charlie, I’m sorry about the coach. Wouldn’t have asked you to ref, if I’d known.”

  “It’s okay.” Charlie smiled at her. “I can handle him.”

  Natty frowned and exchanged a look with Hank, then she started out toward her team. Charlie looked at Hank.

  “He’s a tough customer,” said Hank. “Used to be a cop but got a little too rough, one time too many.” Hank turned and spit his tobacco juice in the dirt next to his chair. “Drives a truck now for the teamsters.”

  The second half started much like the first, with the Welch team lofting the ball down toward the Bones’ end of the field every chance they got. On defense, Rudy stuck close to Emma wherever she went. Her lower lip was swollen, and she still had some dried blood on the front of her new red jersey and a smear of blood on her right leg just above the knee. She also appeared to be limping slightly.

  From the beginning of the half, Rudy took every opportunity to bump Emma and to cut her off roughly when she attempted to get into the play. Charlie called several fouls on him, but most of Rudy’s rough play occurred when they were away from the ball and Charlie wasn’t watching. Rudy became more emboldened by the Bones’ frustration and began to taunt Emma, quietly at first and then, as his confidence grew, more loudly, to entertain his teammates.

  “Hey, whatcha got on your leg there, Emma? That blood from your period? Emma’s having her period! Watch out, she’ll get some on you.” Rudy was enjoying himself. “How long you been havin’ your period, Emma? Think you’d have bigger tits by now. That is, if you’re really a girl.”

  Emma tried her best to ignore Rudy and move away from him, but he shadowed her relentlessly and kept up a nonstop patter of taunts. Several times Emma looked to the sideline, and Natty could see her trying to fight back the tears. Natty tried to smile some encouragement to her, but she knew that Emma’s shyness was paralyzing her on the field.

  Rudy soon found a new sensitive spot. “Hey, Emma, nice lip you got there. You got big lips, anyway, Emma. How come your mama don’t have them big lips?”

  Charlie could hear snatches of what was being said, and he could see the smiles on the faces of some of the blue defenders, but he was too busy to tell who was saying what to whom. As he blew the whistle for a blue throw-in directly in front of the Welch bench, Charlie was surprised to hear someone on the field call out, “Ref, hey, ref. Time-out. Time-out.”

  Charlie looked up to see Gabe, the blond Welch midfielder, making a T with his hands as he walked up the middle of the field. Uncertain about the rules, Charlie nudged Matt Hatfield, standing next to him. “You get time-outs?” he asked softly.

  “One each half.”

  Charlie blew the whistle loudly. “Time-out, blue,” he called out, pointing to the bench.

  “What the fuck?” The bewildered Welch coach walked out onto the field to find out what was going on. Gabe ignored his coach and continued walking up the field. He looked angry and was headed directly at the still-smirking Rudy. The stocky fullback was taken by surprise when Gabe fired two hands into his chest, knocking him off his feet.

  “You cut the shit right now, Rudy. You play soccer, and you shut the fuck up! You hear me?” Rudy bounced up quickly, but it was evident that he wanted no part of a fight with the stronger Gabe, who pushed him backward again, a finger in his face. “And you leave her alone. You stop talking to her, you stop talking shit, and you stop fouling her! You got that, Rudy? Just play soccer!”

  The Welch coach got to the boys ahead of Charlie and grabbed Gabe’s elbow, dragging him off the field. “How about you mind your own damn business, kid. I’m the coach of this team, not you. And you can rest your mouth on the bench for the rest of this game.”

  Gabe picked up his sweatshirt and kept on walking as the coach sent a sub onto the field.

  When the blue team called time-out, Natty had started onto the field to console Emma. As the Welch team’s best player gave himself up for Emma, Natty backed quietly off the field. This was a situation she would let Emma deal with on her own.

  “C’mon, ref! Let’s get this game going!” the Welch coach bellowed from the sideline. With a 2–0 lead, he was eager to get the clock started for the last ten minutes of the game. But Emma now played with a renewed determination, motivated by the gallantry of Gabe, a boy she knew only from the soccer games in which they’d competed over the years—both of them too shy to ever say anything to each other—and by her anger at Rudy.

  The Bones controlled the action with a tempo that the blue team couldn’t match without Gabe in the midfield. After keeping the ball in the Welch end of the field for several minutes, Sammy sent a blistering cross into the center of the field, where Emma knifed through several Welch defenders and, leaping high in the air, took the ball on her chest. The ball went softly into the air, but Emma never let it hit the ground. She left her feet for a vicious sidewinder kick, rocketing the ball past the startled goalie.

  The Welch coach was incensed. As his team walked back upfield for the restart of play, he screamed at Rudy, “She’s your responsibility! Don’t let her run free like that, boy. Stop playing like a pussy, or you’ll be on the bench, too!”

  Charlie glared at the coach as he screamed at his players and was an instant away from blowing the whistle and tossing him out of the game, but there had already been enough anger on the field without another confrontation. He hoped that the rest of the game would play out without incident.

  “Two minutes!” called out the gray-haired woman keeping time on the home side of the field. Charlie turned to her and nodded with a quick smile as he trotted toward the Welch end of the field.

  The Bones quickly gained possession after the restart, and Paul brought the ball over the centerline. He waited as long as he could before lofting it high toward the right corner in front of Emma. As she approached the bouncing ball, calculating her angle to the goal, she could sense an ominous movement at her blind side. Flashing back to earlier in the game, she turned just in time to see Rudy coming straight at her, full speed. Emma refused the natural instinct to slow down and lose the race to the ball, choosing instead to fire her right arm out in a rigid stiff-arm,
the hard base of her palm smashing into the bridge of Rudy’s nose, knocking the unsuspecting boy cleanly off his feet as she hurtled past him to the ball.

  The blue sweeper was positioned between Emma and the goal, his feet dancing nervously, a look of abject fear on his face as the league’s best player bore down on him. Emma danced quickly around him, juking left, then right, and back to the left again, as the sweeper’s feet went out from under him.

  Welch players were sliding through the grass, trying to poke the ball away, while the goalie moved out to cut down the angle, but Emma could do whatever she wanted with a ball on her foot fifteen yards from the goal. At the left post, Sammy was wide open and waiting for the pass that Emma normally would have made. But this time she drove the ball home with a blistering shot, tauntingly placed inches over the goalie’s left shoulder. She ran into the goal and grabbed the ball to get the game restarted quickly.

  The Welch coach was out on the field, running down Charlie. “That was a foul. A foul, goddammit! What are you looking at, buddy?” he screamed, a few feet away. “That’s no goal. She hit my guy in the face!”

  Charlie pointed to the center of the field as he turned toward the incensed coach. “Tie game,” he called out loudly. Then, softly, he added, “That was a good clean stiff-arm.”

  “One minute,” called out the timekeeper.

  “Emma, you fucking whore! I’m going to get you for that,” yelled Rudy, as he trudged upfield like a bull, oblivious to the blood that flowed freely from his nose.

  Players were still trotting back into position when Charlie blew the whistle for the restart. He wanted to give the Bones one more chance to score and win the game. The ball caromed around in midfield for a few seconds before Zack came across the centerline like a freight train. He dribbled through a pair of defenders and raced toward the goal. With time running out, Zack fired a powerful low shot that the Welch sweeper dove for, heading the ball across the end line.

  “Corner,” Charlie called out quickly, running across the field.

  “There’s no time left, you asshole!” the Welch coach screamed. Charlie looked over at the timekeeper. She put her palms up, not knowing what to do.

  “Ten seconds left,” Charlie yelled. “Corner kick.”

  “Paul,” Natty called out. Paul raced to the corner and readied himself for the kick. Just before he took his long stride to the ball, he looked up to find Emma.

  The instant they made eye contact, Emma nodded, made a quick feint, and sprinted toward the mass of players in front of the goal. Paul stepped into the ball and sent it high and hard toward the box. Emma sprang into the air, her head three feet over the scrum, and pounded the ball with her forehead past the flailing goalie and into the net.

  As Emma was coming down, Rudy was going up in the other direction. Rudy led with the top of his forehead and caught Emma just above the right eye with a sickening smack, sending her backward in midair. Charlie was still pointing into the goal when Emma got hit. He blew two quick bursts to signal the end of the game as he sprinted toward Emma. Rudy stood over her. “How’d that feel, you cunt?” he yelled.

  Before Rudy could say another word, Zack drove his shoulder into the Welch player’s stomach, carrying him through the air and into the goal. Zack got off several hard punches to Rudy’s face before Charlie wrapped his arms around him. As he struggled to pull Zack away, Charlie saw Natty on the ground, hunched over Emma. Then next to him appeared the legs of the Welch coach.

  “I want that nigger suspended for the season!” The coach’s red face was inches from Charlie’s as he struggled to restrain the now-frenzied Zack.

  “Who you callin’ a nigger?” Zack spat out angrily, trying to kick his way out of Charlie’s arms.

  Rolling on the ground with Zack, Charlie saw that several other skirmishes had started on the field. It was turning into an all-out brawl. Suddenly a loud voice cut through the chaos.

  “All right! That’s enough!” It was the voice of authority that Hank had developed in his fifty-year career as a schoolteacher and principal. “That’s enough,” he repeated. “It’s all over.” In a few seconds, the fighting had stopped, and the teams were drifting away from each other.

  Charlie pulled Zack to his feet. “Okay, it’s all over,” he said. “You did what you had to.” He was relieved to see Emma back on her feet, walking slowly toward the sideline with Natty, a towel pressed to her eyebrow. “Go see how Emma is. I’ll take care of the coach. Okay?”

  Zack’s muscles relaxed and he seemed to slump in Charlie’s arms. “Okay,” he whispered. But Charlie could feel the boy’s tears dropping onto his forearm. He released his grip from behind but kept his arm around Zack’s shoulders, which developed into a hug as he came around to look into the boy’s face.

  “Hey, Zack,” Charlie said to make eye contact. “He shouldn’t have said that. He shouldn’t have said what he did. But all I can tell you is there are a lot of ignorant people in the world, and he’s one of them. So don’t worry about somebody like that. Okay?”

  Zack grunted, then wiped his eyes with the bottom of his new shirt, now torn in the middle. Charlie walked him up the sideline to where the Bones were packing up their gear. Natty saw them and walked their way. “How’s Emma?” he asked.

  “She’s okay,” Natty said. “Going to have another good bruise. Probably going to need a couple of stitches, but she’ll be okay.” Charlie nodded. “Going to take her to the clinic when we get back. Then I’ll stay with her for a while. Make sure she doesn’t have a concussion.”

  “Good idea,” said Charlie.

  “Gotta cancel on the Roadhouse tonight.” Natty smiled briefly.

  “That’s okay,” Charlie said, as he started to walk away. “Going to have a word with the coach here.”

  “Charlie, be careful with him,” Natty said.

  Charlie eyed the coach in the parking lot behind the bleachers as the man tossed a bag into the trunk of his car. The coach saw Charlie approaching and put on the wry smile he’d used when Charlie first confronted him during the game. He crossed his arms defiantly. Charlie hadn’t decided what he was going to do until he saw the smirk on the coach’s face.

  He walked straight up to the coach and drove his right fist as hard as he could into the man’s stomach. The shorter man gasped, doubled over, and vomited into the gray cinders of the parking lot. While he was still gasping for air, Charlie yanked his hair with his left hand, pulling the coach’s head up against the top of the car. He stepped forward and drove his right knee up between the coach’s legs, and the man’s whole body shuddered with pain. Tears came to his eyes, and he heaved again down the front of his shirt.

  “Remember this feeling,” Charlie forced out between clenched teeth. “This is how a young black kid feels when an adult calls him a nigger. Now you’re going to apologize to Zack, but I don’t want a good kid like that anywhere near a piece of scum like you, so you’ll apologize to me, and I’ll pass it on to him.” Charlie took a menacing step backward with his right leg. “Let’s hear it, or you’re going to need a fucking colostomy bag before you get out of this parking lot.”

  The coach, his eyes closed, tears and vomit running down his face, held up his hands as he struggled for air. “No, no,” he managed weakly. “Sorry. Sorry, Zack,” he whispered hoarsely. Charlie released his grasp of the coach’s hair, and the man slid down the side of the car to the ground. As Charlie walked back across the field, he noticed a Cadillac pull up quickly behind the coach’s car. Kyle Loftus and the man with the thin mustache got out and hurried over to the still-gasping coach.

  * * *

  NATTY HAD STARTED toward the bus with Emma. The girl held an ice bag to her eye, and a butterfly bandage covered her swollen lip. “Looks like you had fun today, Em,” Natty said.

  “Did we win the game?” Emma asked softly.

  “I’m not sure. You got the goal, but I’m not sure what the league is going to do after all this. Doesn’t matter,” she said, putting her a
rm around Emma’s shoulders. “That was one hell of a game you played.”

  As they walked past the goal, Natty noticed someone sitting on the grass on the home side of the field. Emma saw him, too. It was Gabe, sitting with his arms on his knees, watching them. Emma looked over at Gabe, then at Natty. Natty smiled at her and nodded. “Go ahead, Em. We’ll wait for you.”

  Emma limped toward Gabe. She held the ice bag to her right eye and moved slowly. Gabe jumped up and began to walk toward her. They stopped about ten feet apart, unsure of what to say. Finally, Gabe spoke.

  “Emma, I, uh, wanted to apologize for my team. They shouldn’ta treated you like that and said that stuff to you.” He looked at the ground and scowled. “That ain’t the way to play soccer.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. “Anyways, that’s all I wanted to say. Good game you played. Real good game.” His voice and his eyebrows rose with enthusiasm. “Damn! Three best goals I ever saw!” Then he went silent, afraid he was talking too much.

  It was Emma’s turn to say something, but she wasn’t sure if her voice would work. “Thanks,” she squeaked out softly. Then a little more loudly, “Thanks for helping me. Hope you didn’t get in trouble.”

  “Naw, that don’t matter.”

  Emma glanced back at the bus. “I gotta go,” she said, taking a step backward.

  “Listen, Emma, I, uh, was wondering if you were going to play for Red Bone High next year. You and the Willards and that Polish kid—you think you’ll all be playing?”

  Emma shrugged. “I guess.”

  “’Cause I was thinking, I got an aunt lives in Red Bone, and I could, you know, live over there and transfer to Red Bone High to play soccer.” Gabe couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice. “So we could play on the same team, me and you, the Willard boys, and that new kid.”

  Emma smiled through the pain of her lip and her rapidly swelling eyebrow. “That’d be a pretty good team.”