The Corn Husk Experiment

by Andrea Cale

  “Too quickly?” asked the anthropology professor in disbelief. “Too quickly? He’s been working for this his whole life. You need to just go with the flow, as they say. Whatever comes, comes. We may not be religious types, but I think you and I would agree that ever since his time in the womb, his life has appeared predestined. Let’s just enjoy this time, Mum. There’s always been some greater power—whether it has come through an adoption agent or a coach—to help him find his way. We’ve taught him all we can to have the strongest backbone possible in a life where he feels different. We have no control at this point. Just focus on getting a handle on those sticky, floppy lasagna noodles you’ll be wrestling with momentarily. That’s more than enough of a challenge.”

  “You’re right,” the woman said as she opened a bottle of the couple’s favorite Wildhorse Merlot and filled two glasses.

  “Here’s to JP running like a racehorse in the bowl game,” she said.

  “Yes, and here’s to us just letting go, letting him run wild,” countered her husband. “It’s time for him to run a little more freely from us.”

  An hour and a couple of calming glasses of wine later, a polite knock on the door let the family know that their dinner guest had arrived.

  The anthropology professor opened the door with a whistle.

  “Never heard that one before, sir,” Whistler joked. The defensive lineman’s appearance was grand in many ways. He easily filled the width and height of the doorframe. He showed off a warm smile.

  “Come on in, Whistler, it’s freezing,” JP’s mother called. “Now how did we manage to luck out and have two star players at our family dinner table tonight?”

  All their lives, the professors had been self-declared nerds, and proud of it. They suddenly found themselves in unfamiliar territory. They felt as though the most popular kid at school had chosen to sit with them at the misfit lunch table. And if they were being honest with themselves, they liked this feeling.

  “Well, professor, I’d have to fly all the way to Alabama if I wanted to enjoy my family’s dinner tonight,” said Whistler. “Thanks for inviting me to yours. I smell something tasty.”

  “So that’s where you’re from,” she said. “Poor thing, having to deal with this lake-effect wind and snow. Come here by the fire where it’s nice and toasty. Let me take your coat.”

  “Um, we’ve come a long way, haven’t we professor?” Whistler asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  Quick footsteps down the stairs interrupted the conversation.

  “Whistler means, Mom, that you two have come a long way since the morning you first dropped me off on campus and called his grades out in front of the guys.”

  “How was your rest?” she asked her boy with instant concern.

  “The best, Mom. Hey, man.”

  “Hey.”

  “It’s not enough that I have to listen to your snores resound through our apartment on East Campus? Now you are horning in on my home-cooked meals,” JP razzed.

  “I just can’t get enough of the man of the hour,” Whistler said. “Can you sign my jersey later?”

  “Yes, I can. I think I’ll put, ‘Dear Whistler, please try those nose patches I laid out so I can get some shut-eye before the big game. You have a very fitting name since you whistle through your nose. Your name would be even more appropriate, though, if it were called NGUH PUH, NGUH PUH, NGUH PUH—since that more closely resembles the sounds you make in the middle of the night. Signed: Your Friend, the Man of the Hour.’”

  The anthropology professor clasped his hands over his mouth with chuckles that sent aftershocks to his shoulders. His wife’s smile was as wide as either of her family members remembered seeing it.

  “OK, Whistler, you’re right,” she said. “Let’s just say that every once in a while a student teaches the professor a lesson about life. I admit that I may have pegged you wrongly in the beginning. But it wouldn’t have changed those initial poor grades.”

  “I guess winning you over will have to be enough,” Whistler said. “The achievement will be right up there with passing your class on the second try and, oh, winning the Orange Bowl.”

  “I’m so glad you kept just a pinch of your sarcasm,” the woman said. “Let’s eat!”

  As the players settled into their seats around the table, the professors handed out fresh salads, warm rolls with honey butter, and the balsamic dressing they’d prepared from scratch. They found themselves quickly offering the young men seconds.

  “So tell us, Whistler, about your upcoming competition,” the anthropology professor said.

  “Well, he means—if you want to talk about it,” added his wife.

  “Yes, my lovely partner is someone who can finish my sentences and subtly let me know if I’m being too intrusive.”

  “I don’t mind talking about it,” Whistler said. “It is what it is, basically. I never fully understood that overused saying until this moment. The University of Boston’s Falcons are the favored team—the best in the BCS, in my personal opinion. The quarterback is headed straight for the NFL if you ask me. Beyond his natural abilities, Devin Madison has the uncanny ability to win games. They’ve won all of their games this season. We’re lucky the Falcons are no longer in our Big East division. I’m not so sure we’d be heading to the Orange Bowl with them in our regular schedule. Too bad the guy’s a putz.”

  “How do you mean?” JP asked.

  “You know, dude, players have connections with other players, and you of all people know they talk. I’ve always heard that the guy changes girlfriends as often as he does athletic heat rub applications. He’s rude to his coaches. He screams at his teammates. He’s quirky too. Like many successful athletes, he has his odd superstitions and routines. People tend to just step back and let him do his thing since it’s all working.”

  “He hasn’t met The Keys,” JP said. “Especially the Master.”

  “He hasn’t met our new weapon, either,” Whistler said with an appreciative nod toward the running back.

  JP’s mother could feel the stress entering the dining room.

  “And how are you feeling about everything, JP?” she asked her son.

  The homemade lasagna and gravy with meatballs at a family dinner table that had facilitated nearly every moment of JP opening up over the years made the running back want to spill it all in this moment too. If his mother had asked him a second time whether he had a good rest upstairs, he probably would’ve given her a more truthful answer now.

  “I wish I could say dealing with the pressure is easy, but it’s just not,” JP admitted. “I don’t know what’s worse—having all the fans and media expect you to fail or having them expect you to shine. There’s more pressure now, that’s for sure. I don’t want to fail them. I’m scared of failing them.”

  JP’s parents looked at him with worried eyes and wished they could take away his fears. His roommate, an All-American athlete and team captain who could teach a course on dealing with great expectations, looked at JP with his own eyes, ones that contained anything but pity. His approach would leave more of an impact.

  “JP, whatever, dude,” said Whistler. “I don’t believe for a second that you’d rather be watching from the sidelines now that the impossible has happened with Coach Flash giving you a shot at the unlikeliest of times. At its core, football is a game with inevitable wins and losses, triumphs and mistakes. It can make fans celebrate and it can make them have a worse day for like an hour or two. You need to forget about all these distractions and focus on what you love to do—you can run.”

  JP’s parents looked at each other from across the table and understood that they were sharing a similar thought. They realized that on this night, Whistler was the greater power needed to pick up the relay stick that had guided JP through his seemingly destined life. It was a role they had each played themselves on many previous occasions.

  JP thought about his very first football coach who had told him he could run as a little boy. He
remembered too how the man had instructed him not to forget about him when JP became famous. It was a joke back then, albeit a kind-hearted one. He wondered if that coach from so long ago would remember his name now. Would his biological mother remember the name she had chosen for him? He thought of his long road of small successes and suddenly believed he would accomplish more.

  “You know, I think it’s our time, Whistler,” JP said. “I think we’re going to do it.”

  CHAPTER 26

  HENRY

  The Shy One

  Henry opened his eyes to a dark, eastern Massachusetts morning well before his mother had an opportunity to tell him it was time to get ready for school. The writing pad containing his secret hurt over the new nickname created by his sixth-grade classmates rested under his thin, lumpy pillow. His favorite University of Boston Falcons sweatshirt hung at the ready, like armor that he hoped would protect him from another day of being called “Polly Ester.” The insides of his backpack were already neatly organized beside his bed and ready to go. A frigid wind rattled his bedroom window and reminded him that his toes were cold. The feeling didn’t bother him nearly as much as the layers of anxiety filling up his insides.

  The minutes turned into half an hour as finally a knock on the door and his mother’s kind voice signaled his time was up.

  “Henry, babe, it’s about time to get ready for school. Do you need an extra little snooze first?”

  “Sure.”

  Henry lay awake in bed, knowing that before long he’d have to get up and join the two women in his life over cereal downstairs.

  “Good morning, Henry,” said his grandmother.

  “Hi.”

  “I never did get to tell you about my day yesterday. Do you still want to he-ah ‘bout it?”

  Misty exchanged glances with them both before reaching for boxes of cereal and raisins to fix her son a bowl.

  “Sure.”

  “So, I was havin’ a private con-vah-sation with a custuhmah at the station—maybe you know ’em—our neighbah a few apartments over named Mr. Delancey? Well, that pah-aht doesn’t mattah. Anyway, he was the only custuhmah in the shop and we were talkin’ quietly about the need to fix the railing posts in our apahtment building, and out of nowhere, my managah was ovah my shoulder, buttin’ in.”

  “What did he say?” Misty asked.

  “Well, he agreed with us and said it sounded dangerous to have fragile rails, and he suggested talkin’ with our supah.”

  Misty tilted her head and moved it back into place as if to subtly say, “That’s not so bad, is it?”

  “It’s not what he said,” the elder woman quickly added. “It’s the fact that he said anythin’ at all. I was having a private con-vah-sation. There’s nothin’ worse than when you think you are talkin’ with one person, and anothah makes an appearance and comments out of left field, makin’ you realize he’s been listenin’ all the while. It’s creepy. It’s rude.”

  Misty remained silent with polite indifference.

  “I was tellin’ this story to my grandson, anyway,” the elder woman said. “What do you think about it, Henry?”

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. “I guess I kinda see how that could annoy you.”

  “You see that, Misty?” the elder woman asked. “We raised a smaht boy.”

  Henry’s grandmother knew her story wasn’t the most insightful addition to her signature collection of observations, but she correctly guessed that something had happened to Henry at school the day before, and she was anxious for him to open up. She kept this knowledge hidden from Misty, who worried enough about the boy.

  Both women watched Henry silently force spoonfuls of breakfast into his mouth in a robotic motion. He stared only into the eyes of his cereal’s Os. Henry was accustomed to his mother’s stares, but both women’s watchfulness felt too intense. The boy picked up his bowl, carried it to the sink, and jogged to his room to fetch his backpack. He checked beneath his pillow to make sure each corner of his writing journal was hidden from both women. He had no idea that a topic of one of his upcoming entries would feature his own observation: the worst days tend to come when you aren’t expecting them, and the best ones hit you after starting them off with great worry. Against all of his household’s expectations, Henry, the shy one, was about to have an exceptional school day.

  Throughout the morning commute from Boston’s Allston neighborhood to the Kennedy School in Brockton via foot, T, commuter rail, and foot again, Teach frequently touched the rectangular envelope in his wool coat pocket to make sure its contents were safe.

  “Morning, Miss Sally,” Teach said to the school secretary, whose desk by the entrance showed off a new vase of red roses.

  The woman, in her seventies, offered a rare smile.

  “Hi, Teach.”

  “Secret admirer, I see?”

  “Oh, Teach. Do you really think I could pull off a secret admirer? They’re from my sister. It’s my birthday, if I may say so myself.”

  “Well, happy birthday, Miss Sally. The flowers are seriously beautiful, just like their recipient.”

  As Teach hustled up the sparkly concrete stairs toward his classroom he finally remembered the rose left frozen and dead in his trunk. The flower had been intended for the beautiful Tufts dental student he had taken out the evening before. A night of sleep had made Teach certain he had made the right decision over who would get his extra bowl game tickets. Instead of being flanked in the stadium by a beautiful, albeit difficult, girl on one side and one of his best buddies on the other, Teach had opted to hold an academic contest and award the tickets to the winning student and his or her chaperone. It was the type of decision that summed up the young man’s character.

  Teach jotted down secretary Sally’s birth date on his desk calendar. He removed the envelope from his coat pocket containing the details of the game and placed it in a terribly messy drawer. As the bell rang signaling the start of the school day, he surveyed the punch ball field and believed he knew which student’s contest it was to lose.

  The kids burst noisily into Teach’s classroom. They hung up their winter coats, tossed their hats and gloves into personalized bins, and slipped their cool feet out of snow boots and into sneakers and loafers. They were chatting all the while, except for one. Henry was so preoccupied with staying under the radar today that not even his best friend Oscar heard so much as a whisper from him.

  “OK, OK, my favorite kiddos,” Teach said. “Let’s quiet down now. Time to start filling your developing minds with fun facts and ferocious figures. We’ve got a lot to cover today. Please get your Current Events notes out of your desks and we’ll update them with the latest news in preparation for Friday’s quiz. Who watched the news last night?”

  A handful of Teach’s most ambitious students raised their hands to report a mining accident, Commonwealth legislation passage, and the passing of a US senator.

  “These are all very relevant and important,” Teach said. “At least a few of you did your homework last night. How about the category of sports? Did something happen yesterday that was sports related?”

  Many more hands reached for the ceiling now. Henry knew the answer, but, as he usually did, he avoided making eye contact with his teacher despite him being Henry’s favorite instructor so far.

  “Patsy!”

  A few kids sniggered in their seats as the girl nicknamed “Patsy, Patsy, Four-Eyed Fatsy” prepared her answer.

  “Go ahead, Patsy. You’ve got this,” Teach encouraged.

  “Um, well, last night? I overheard my dad talking about this? Um, he said that University of Boston made it into a great football game. I think its name is Orange and Navy?”

  “You are correct! That’s exactly right, Patsy. UB, the college I happened to attend by the way, is going to the Orange Bowl next month to play against a team in Syracuse. It’s a great win for Boston, and I think you’ll hear people talking about it more and more. People may even wish they were going to the game.” />
  Teach reached into his messy desk to remove his precious envelope.

  “This brings me to tonight’s homework assignment. It’s a special one. I think you are going to like it,” Teach said.

  The same kids who chuckled at Patsy’s name grumbled mildly in their seats. They were used to Teach’s playful, sarcastic jokes and thought this was another one of those.

  “I’m serious,” said Teach. “This is going to be an assignment I think you are going to love, because—Oscar, do you mind giving me a drum roll, please?”

  Henry’s best friend happily pounded his big palms on his desk.

  “The assignment comes with a—uh, thank you, Oscar, that will be all—a very special prize for the student who submits the best poem as decided by a small panel of independent judges who I will tap from our fine faculty. The prize is a pair of tickets to Boston’s bowl game for the winner and his or her guardian. Your seats will be next to mine, so hopefully that won’t put a damper on the bounty.”

  The shrieks and hollers that erupted within Teach’s classroom revealed that sitting next to the coolest teacher at the grandest game they could imagine would be far from an issue for any of them. Even Henry showed the man a rare grin. The room’s toughest bully bounced up and down in his seat like a kindergartener on Christmas morning.

  “Jeesh,” Teach said. “OK, no one has won anything yet. You guys are going to get me fired. Quiet down, now. So tonight’s one and only homework assignment is to write a poem. It can be about anything that matters to you. It can be any length. It must, however, be written in couplets. What, you may ask, are couplets? Let’s put away your Current Events notes and open up to page forty-four in your English texts. Henry, could you do us the honor of reading this example?”

  As the kids quietly flipped through the pages, Henry located the poem and cleared his throat.

  “‘An Autumn Greeting’ is written by an anonymous poet,” Henry said.