by Paul Bishop
"What?"
"Get the hell out!" I yelled, standing up again.
"No," Gerald said firmly, but at the other end of the audible scale.
"Well, if you won't leave, I will," I said. I moved across the room and stepped into a pair of well-worn Levis before dragging a sweatshirt over my head. A pair of heavy motorcycle boots completed the not-so-dashing ensemble. Gerald was silent during the dressing process, standing on the far side of the bed with his arms crossed. His anger and my deliberate movements spoke loudly enough for both of us. I moved past him and grabbed a leather jacket and a scarf from a hook on my way out the door.
On the street outside the flat, Gerald's voice taunted me through an open window.
"You can't run away any longer, old son," he said.
I gave him a two-fingered salute over my shoulder and didn't look back.
Well, I'd made a right cock-up of that. Overnight my life had converted into a soap opera.
I was getting very good at making dramatic exists, but I was losing friends fast. I was angry. A deep, down-to-the-bone kind of angry. But not at Sir Adam or Gerald. At myself. Self-pity is a narcotic with an addiction as strong as any tangible drug, and I'd wallowed down to the rock bottom.
Entering the detached garage in back of the flat, I zipped a pair of leather pants over my jeans and put on a full-face crash helmet. The BMW Rally Sport turned over eagerly on the first attempt and I moved it outside to let it idle on the center stand while I closed and locked the garage.
The BMW was a two-year-old RS-90 model with the traditional opposing cylinders which you could use as foot pegs to warm your feet in cold weather. The most recent BMW, the K-l, has the innovative four cylinder in-line engine. Innovative in this case means a high-tech rework of the four-in-line Indian bikes manufactured in America in the thirties and forties. There was no doubting the power of the K-1. It would get you up to a ton in nothing flat and keep you there all day, but the need to do a hundred plus miles an hour on a motorcycle was not real high on my list of priorities. Upgrading, therefore, didn't strike my fancy. With the peripheral vision and depth perception problems caused by having only one eye, I had enough trouble staying upright on two wheels without all the extra power. Bloody hell, self-pity was overshadowing my whole outlook on life. It was more than addictive. It was totally destructive. God help me.
The weather was overcast. Thunder rumbled in the distance with the promise of rain. I tried to kid myself that I was driving aimlessly, but all along I knew exactly where I was going. Heavy London traffic held me up for a while, but once I broke through to the outskirts of the city it was clear sailing to my old home football grounds in Wolverhampton.
My stomach was making audible noises to remind me it was lunchtime, but instead of finding a nosh bar, I parked in the team lot and pounded on the player's entrance until Harry Gordon, the equipment manager, angrily opened the door.
" 'Ere, wot's all this racket about, eh?" He was built like a huge ball, almost as wide as he was tall, with shiny black eyes, and a drinker's broken blood vessels in his cheeks and nose. His fearsome expression changed to one of surprised pleasure when he recognized me. We'd always got on well.
"Ian! Wot a surprise,' he said, and grabbed my hand in a two-fisted grip. "Prodigal son returning 'ome, eh?" He was pumping my arm like he expected water to spurt from my mouth.
"Not really, Harry. I just need to wander around and have a bit of a think."
"Like you used to on the day before a game, eh? Be like old times, eh? Come on in." He stepped aside to let me through.
"Many of the lads about?" I asked.
"Ooh no, man. Always take Sunday and Monday off. Any road, this time of year, being off-season, there's only a morning practice. You remember, I'm sure, eh?"
I nodded my head.
"Some of the younger lads from the youth team are having a kick about on the pitch, though, if you're interested, eh?" he continued to chatter. "And a couple of the regulars will be in for therapy later, eh? " His habit of ending most sentences with a questioning "eh" hadn't diminished since I'd last seen him.
"Thanks, Harry. But I really don't want anyone to know I've been around. You know how it is?"
"Ooh, say no more. Say no more. I haven't seen you, although it really is good to, eh?"
I laughed. Harry probably didn't have any idea "how it is," but he was too much of a gentleman to press the matter. If I didn't want anyone to know I was around, it was good enough for him.
"Let yourself out, then, when you're ready, eh?" he asked.
"Absolutely. No worries, eh?" I replied. It was catching.
"I'll get back to it then, eh? Thankless task keeping up with this lot, I'll tell you. Don't let your smiling mug be a stranger, my son. Hear?" He gave me a wink and a nudge before waddling off down the hallway. Salt of the earth was Harry.
When he was out of sight, I sighed for old times and sniffed in a huge breath of air. The scent was everything I remembered. A witch's brew of sweat, liniment, anticipation, expectation, and something indefinable. A scent which stayed with you and could sneak up on you when you least expected it from some hidden part of your memory. I was warm and safe. I was home.
At the end of the long hallway which led off to the right was the locker room. I walked slowly down to it and entered. Thin wooden benches, supported at intervals by metal posts, ran the length of each aisle serving the lockers on both sides. My old locker was two rows in on the aisle. A new name plaque now adorned the front of it, and for a moment I had the feeling none of my past history existed.
"It's about time you got here," a voice said quietly from behind me. "I'm an old man, you know. I don't have time to waste standing around waiting for some youngster to make up his mind about where his best interests lay."
I hung my head down without looking around.
"How did you know I'd come here, Sticks?"
"Do you have to ask? You're like my own son, Ian. And when you're hurting, and nobody else wants to hear about it, you come home because there is always a place set for you at the table."
I turned around with tears in my eyes and hugged the man who'd been the most influential figure in my life. My own father always loved me and looked out for me, but I'd been playing soccer for almost my entire formative years, and it was this man who had nurtured my career and helped me achieve the level of greatness of which I was capable. His given name was Moses Johns, but I'd always known him as Sticks.
We broke the embrace and stood looking awkwardly at each other as I got my emotions under control.
"Come on," Sticks said eventually. "I've a new batch of Juniors on the field and I want you to take a look and tell me what you think. They're mostly tripe, but there are one or two good-uns."
We walked out of the locker room, down the familiar player's tunnel, and onto the field. A light rain was falling as two teams of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, one wearing red shirts, the other wearing blue, raced around the field with incredible energy. Sticks and I stood under large black umbrellas and watched the back and forth.
"Who's the young lad making all the going for the blues?" I asked. "He looks familiar."
"He should. He's Geoff Hunt. Robby Hunt's oldest son."
"He can't be. Robby isn't old enough."
Sticks laughed. "It's a cruel world when we first begin to doubt our immortality. You're old enough for the boy to be your son."
"Never," I said in mock outrage. "He definitely inherited his father's skills, and he's a natural leader to boot. Unfortunately, he also inherited his father's temper."
On the field Geoff was giving one of the other lads a bollocking over a rough tackle until the Junior's coach, who was refereeing the action, intervened.
"Makes friends fast, doesn't he?" I sad.
"He'll learn," Sticks commented.
Tall and thin, Sticks always appeared to dress like a rag-and-bones man. The team paid him well to scout for them and train their goalkeepers as only he knew how, but you'd neve
r guess he had a penny to his name from his clothes. His face was all long lines and angles, hollow cheeks, and thin lips. He had a pair of miser's eyes, the kind that could spot a coin in the gutter at a hundred yards. Those eyes didn't miss much else either, and were in constant movement, like hyperactive children.
Until someone pointed out that the event occurred in 1890, Sticks often had young lads believing he was single-handedly responsible for the introduction of goal nets. To hear him tell it, Sticks had been playing soccer since before goalkeepers were first mentioned in the Football Association laws in 1871. He could tell great stories of the days when goal areas were no more than two posts stuck in the ground with a tape across the top. His actual age was impossible to tell, somewhere between his late sixties and early eighties.
The man's entire life had revolved around soccer. In his prime, he was a cut above any other goalkeeper until arthritis ate into his knees. Since then he'd trained others to become the best they could between the sticks on the playing field, and also between the sticks of their personal lives. He was an orphan who never married, but his family was the largest I'd ever known.
Play on the field had resumed and Geoff Hunt made a spectacular run on goal. Another blue player broke into the clear and called for the ball. Hunt ignored him and instead sent off a rocket shot which was beautifully saved by the red goalie.
"What do you think?" Sticks asked.
"It was a hell of a shot, but he'd have been better to pass off and not hog the play." I replied.
Sticks stamped his foot. "Don't be a daft bugger. I wasn't talking about the Hunt boy. The goalie. You think I'm wasting my remaining years by changing over to training center forwards all of a sudden?"
"I'm sorry." I laughed. "What's the lad's name?"
"Sid Doyle."
As we spoke, Doyle came out of his goal to jump up and pull in a particularly dangerous right cross. In doing so, he took a nasty blindside clip in the ribs. He absorbed the punishment, however, and held on to the ball. The foul was hidden from the referee by a cluster of bodies and went unpunished. A few minutes later, though, the blindsiding offender received a bloody nose during another goalmouth confrontation. I had to hand it to Doyle. He was crafty. Even I didn't see the elbow he threw, and I was looking for it.
He'd proved he could look out for himself, and the more I watched the easier it was to see that Doyle's goalkeeping skills were full of raw potential. Best of all, he had good balance and his moves were intuitive rather than planned. He also looked like he was enjoying every second of the game.
"He has heart," I told Sticks. "And he's certainly fast. What's his history like?"
"Last year playing for his school team, he only allowed six goals. Two of those were penalties. He saved our other penalties during the course of the year and was named to the England School Boy team. His first cap."
"Impressive accomplishment."
"He's going to be one of the great ones. I can feel it in here, like I did with you." Sticks tapped the center of his chest with two bony fingers. "He's got talent, and heart, and a single-minded dedication to be the best he can be. He's just like you were at his age, but he's going to be better because he's already learned to overcome his limitations."
Before I could ask Sticks what he meant by that last comment, the referee blew the whistle on the field and sent the two teams to shower.
"Do you want to meet him?" Sticks asked suddenly and walked off toward the locker room without waiting for my reply.
"Sure," I said lamely, and followed in his wake.
We walked back into the locker room where the boys were now indulging in various stages of undressing, showering, and horseplay.
"Hey, you're Ian Chapel," said one of the lads who spotted our entrance.
"Am I?" I said, pleased to be recognized.
"Yeah," said the boy. "I used to watch you all the time on the telly through the bars of my crib."
"Cheeky bugger," I said, and laughed.
Sticks dragged me away to where Doyle was standing in shorts and socks. His build was thick and powerful, with large leg muscles and an abdomen an alligator would have envied.
"Sid, I think you recognize Ian Chapel," Sticks said, introducing me.
"Not 'arf," Doyle enthused. He shook my outstretched hand. "You've been my hero ever since I was a young nipper."
“What is this? I 'm not in a wheelchair, you know."
Doyle blanched at my tone of voice. “I only meant..."
"Don't worry about him," Sticks told the young man. "Age makes people testy."
I smiled at the boy and told him I'd enjoyed his play. "I especially liked the way you handled the chap who blind-sided you," I told him. "You can't let them get away with that nonsense or they'll just try it on again."
"He'd been asking for it all game," Doyle said. "I don't like coming on like the heavy mob, but I had to put a stop to it. I didn't think anyone noticed."
"Part of the game, unfortunately," I said sympathetically. "Still, the feeling you get when you stop a sure goal makes it all worthwhile."
"Nothing like it in the world," Doyle agreed with a wide, sincere smile of his own.
"Better get showered now," Sticks interrupted. "I want you in the sand pit early tomorrow. We need to sharpen your reaction time some more."
Doyle shook my hand, and I turned to walk away. When Sticks didn't follow, though, I turned back.
Doyle was sitting down on one of the thin wooden benches and was talking with one of the other boys. He'd removed his shorts and his left sock. As I watched he rolled down his right sock and revealed a prosthesis which started about six inches below his knee and ran down to a flesh-colored lump of plastic where his foot should have been.
I looked at Sticks who was studying me intently with his beady little eyes.
"You set me up," I said without heat. "You're a bigger bloody bastard than all the others put together."
Chapter 5
Pain throbbed through my thighs, and I was finding it impossible to drag enough air into my lungs. On the opposite side of the sand pit from me, young Sid Doyle was jumping around with seemingly endless energy. I hated him.
Doyle kept his body in a half crouch, his legs pumping up and down in the heavy sand as he ran in place.
Sticks sat looking down at us from the top of the pit, a grim expression on his face. He suddenly barked the word, "Left!" and both Doyle and I launched ourselves in full dives to our left sides.
The sand was damp and unforgivingly hard. Doyle, however, bounced like a rubber ball and with catlike quickness he was back on his feet an instant after landing, his legs again pumping away like pistons in a perpetual motion machine. My weary old bones weren't anywhere near as fast to recover.
"Too slow, Ian! Too slow! Get your knees up," Sticks berated me.
I forced my legs to move faster, feeling the pain in muscles which threatened to turn to taffy under me.
My effort was ignored, and several agonizing seconds passed before Sticks shouted, "Right!"
Doyle launched himself effortlessly to the right. I had tried to anticipate the call and dove left again, hitting the ground hard. I tried to convince myself to jump up, but I knew the effort wasn't worth it. Instead, I laid there in blissful agony and prayed the apocalypse would come.
"What have you been doing with yourself in the last year? You told me you were in shape." Sticks glared down at us from the grassy knoll on which he was sitting. With his jaunty red hat cocked at a rakish angle he looked like a garden gnome. "Take a break," he said, more to Doyle than to me since I was already taking one.
"Sod it," I said under my breath.
"What?" Sticks demanded.
"Nothing."
Sticks shook a finger at me. "Don't whine. I hate whining. The object of this routine is to quicken your reaction time. If you react to the commands, you won't dive in the wrong direction. If you anticipate, you will inevitably make a wrong choice."
"Sod it," I said again,
louder this time.
Sticks grunted. "Let's have the pair of you out of the pit."
I scrambled out after Doyle and stood trying to catch my breath. Sticks took my hands in his. He held the backs of them up to his eyes and scrutinized them.
"What a mess," he said. "How bad is the pain?"
His assumption of pain was a telling point.
"Most days it’s marginal," I said. "Aspirin helps. Other days...” I trailed off with a shrug.
Sticks made an odd noise—somewhere between a grunt and a snort—which I knew indicated his understanding of the situation. "Take a good look at these, Doyle," he said, holding up my paws for the younger man's examination. "These are your future."
My hands are a mangled mess. Over the years, l've broken every finger except for my left pinky. There was never time for the breaks to heal properly. As a result, the bones had set themselves into a serpentine nightmare. Three fingernails are permanently black, and two more are missing. The second knuckles of my right ring and index fingers were enlarged with arthritis. All of these injuries were the result of the sliding, slashing, or stomping of cleats.
Doyle made no comment. Maimed hands are not unusual for a professional goalkeeper. I was willing to wager Doyle already had a few scars of his own.
Sticks dropped my hands in favor of picking up a battered bicycle. "Come on," he called over his shoulder, and set off pedaling. "I've got a surprise for you."
Doyle started to sprint after Sticks’ departing figure. His gait was slightly odd, but he could move. If I could pull off his prosthesis and hide it, I might stand a chance of beating him to wherever we were headed.
The night after I'd been hit with the stinging revelation of Doyle's physical condition, Sticks took me on an old-fashioned pub crawl. We'd talked a lot about my missing eye and my chances of playing in goal again.
"You can't go on blaming soccer for the loss of your eye," he'd said quietly after the third or fourth pint of John Courage.
"You don't know what you're talking about," I said, but he was nearer to the truth than I wanted to admit.
