“What do you think?” I asked as we watched the Vanderbilt band take the field. This was how we always did it, going back over the big moments of the first half over hot dogs while waiting for the second half to begin.
“I like the Ole Miss speed,” Dad said. “The way they use so many receivers.”
This launched us into a critique of the speedy spread offense. If you like football, you had to love the fast offense embraced by Hugh Freeze. He called it “basketball on grass” because it allowed players to improvise and maximize speed. It was basically an extension of the two-minute offense played over the entire game. Gone were traditional huddles; rarely did the quarterback take the snap directly from the center. Coaches signaled plays with giant cards waved by reserve players, making the sidelines resemble some mad gambling tournament. It was known as a “spread” for its pattern of putting players on the far right and left of the field, “spreading” the distance defenses must cover. Gone were the days of twenty-two players stacked up against one another in the middle of the field.
“It’s got a lot of single wing in it,” my father said. “A lot of fakes and deceptions.”
“The single wing is coming back in some high schools. They do great with it. Nobody knows how to defend it.”
He lit up at the thought. “I’d love to go see some of those games. We should find out where and go see them. Single wing was all we ever played.”
We talked football until the second half started. It was one of those frustrating back-and-forths, with Ole Miss playing good football but Vanderbilt just a little better. Every time Ole Miss scored, Vanderbilt came back, and with just a minute to play, they led Ole Miss by three. “I can’t believe we’re losing to Vanderbilt,” I said, sinking into a pre-defeat funk. “Vanderbilt? This is going to ruin the whole season. It’s one thing to be 0-1, but 0-1 against Vandy?”
I looked over at our fellow Rebel fan with the Vandy husband. She looked even more depressed than I did. The prospect of a year spent with a gloating spouse must have been bleak.
“Field goal will tie it,” Dad said. He was always optimistic. I admired that but didn’t remotely share it. I was sure we were doomed. I was already working through my loss adjustment strategy. It’s only a game. It’s not bad.
Ole Miss was on their own eighteen-yard line and going nowhere. The quarterback Bo Wallace threw an incomplete pass. This is terrible, I was thinking.
Then, with the Vandy defense totally focused on stopping passes, Freeze called a running play straight up the middle. Jeff Scott, the compact, lightning-quick running back from Miami, shot through a break and was suddenly in a race for the end zone. In one of those wonderful moments in sports that you can’t quite believe, Scott juked the last Vanderbilt defender and crossed into the end zone with a couple of seconds left on the clock. My father and I leaped to our feet, hugging each other, surrounded by stunned Vanderbilt fans. “I knew it!” Dad yelled. “I knew it!”
Ole Miss 39, Vanderbilt 35. Final.
It was one of those small miracles that make all the pains of fandom worthwhile. Dad and I stood there, my arm around his shoulders, his around mine, completely happy. A very tired-looking Vandy fan in his thirties—nothing is as exhausting as losing—shook his head and pulled his red-eyed son, maybe eight or nine years old, closer. “Y’all played a real good game,” he graciously said.
“Got lucky there at the end,” Dad said.
“I wouldn’t say you didn’t,” the Vandy fan said and smiled that painful smile of defeat. They walked off, and I thought of how many times I’d walked away from games with my dad, looking to him to make the loss hurt less or the win last longer.
“It’s hot,” Dad announced. “Damn hot.” I was losing my postgame adrenaline and starting to wilt. Across the field, the Ole Miss student section and band hadn’t moved. The band had broken into a medley that included the shortened, politically correct version of “Dixie.” It drifted across the field in the hot air and brought back a million memories of past games. Still, it seemed a bit rude to be flaunting victory so broadly in the backyard of these nice Vanderbilt folks, who were clearly hurting.
“We just kicked their goddamn ass,” our female seatmate shouted. “Hotty Toddy.” Her husband sat dejectedly, flask in hand. He seemed to have drunk himself into a very toasty stupor.
“Jeff Scott!” he suddenly announced, springing to his feet. “Son of a bitch, Jeff Scott! All they had to do was tackle one little guy! He’s a leprechaun!”
That did make a certain amount of sense. Scott was only five feet seven and 170 pounds max.
He did a little jig with an angry face. “Why can’t Vandy tackle a goddamn leprechaun?”
We all looked at him for a second, and then his wife started to laugh and that seemed to make him angrier for a second, and then he joined in and they walked off. At the end of the row, he did another jig.
“It was a good game,” Dad said.
“It was a good game.”
3
After Vanderbilt, Ole Miss returned to Oxford for their first home game. My parents and I drove down from Asheville. It was a long day, but after the last-minute win against Vandy, we were eager to get to the next game. Sports is funny that way. Had Ole Miss lost, the next game would have been tainted with fear of more pain. But even a last-minute victory against the traditionally weakest team in the SEC was enough to convince us that this was going to be a great season. The Rebels were playing Southeast Missouri State, a college none of us had heard of, which made it tempting to assume Ole Miss would win. But my father reminded me of a previous “certain” victory that had turned into a humiliating defeat.
“Jacksonville State,” Dad said, “2010 and they beat us 49–48 in overtime.”
“I remember,” I said, sighing. “It was horrible. In overtime. How in God’s name did Jacksonville State score forty-nine points?”
“How did Ole Miss score only forty-eight?” he asked.
“Can we talk about something more pleasant?” my mother asked from the backseat, where she had been reading. She was right. Thinking about a disastrous game like that could induce the sports version of post-traumatic stress.
For the weekend, we had rented a little house outside Oxford in a tiny community called Taylor. It was famous for a restaurant called Taylor Grocery, which had developed a cult following for its catfish. The game started at 6:00 p.m., which was an odd, happy-hour sort of kickoff time but perfect for Ole Miss. The partying in the Grove always began at least four hours before game time. For a 2:00 p.m. kickoff, that meant the drinking would begin around 10:00 in the morning, which wasn’t a terrible thing, but it did take some combination of practice and natural ability. The problem with night games was that the pregame partying inevitably went on a little too long and a third-quarter hangover could become a serious problem. But for a 6:00 p.m. kickoff, you could sleep late, get something to eat in town, and still be drinking with family and friends at a perfectly respectable mid-afternoon hour.
On the morning of the game, my mother, who enjoyed football but had no desire to go to the games, announced she would hang out at the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house while Dad and I were at the game. This was the sorority that had brought her to Mississippi when she had come from LSU as a sophomore to “colonize” its first chapter at Ole Miss. She still had the combination of charm and iron will that had made the Kappa launch a great success.
I was headed out for a run but stopped in the door and turned around.
“You’re joking, right?” I asked, sounding a little too hopeful.
My mother looked at me in surprise. “I’ll drop you and your dad off and then just go over to the house.”
“It’s a great idea,” my father chimed in.
I had to admit there was something about my eighty-six-year-old mother at the Kappa house during the game that was sort of wonderful. But it was obviously total lunacy.
“You’re going to hang out with a bunch of drunk sorority girls?”
She made a face. “Don’t be mean. They’re Kappas.”
“They probably won’t get too drunk until after the game,” my father said. “It’s an early game.”
“Pacing is important,” I agreed.
My mother sighed. “I think I know more about Kappa girls than you do. When is the last time you were in a Kappa house?”
I wasn’t about to argue. “Why don’t you just stay here during the game? It’ll be crazy on campus.” She looked over at my dad in a way that said clearly, “Please explain this to your son.”
“I don’t think it’s a great idea,” he replied.
“How come?”
“We’re out here in the country. Your mother shouldn’t be here alone at night.”
“Country? There’s art galleries and Taylor Grocery out here. It’s not like we’re in the northwest frontier provinces of Pakistan. It’s far more dangerous at the Kappa house,” I insisted. “The first home game? Do you have any idea how hard they will be partying?”
“I’m sure they will have the best party,” my mother said, adding pointedly, “the nicest party.”
“They always do,” Dad agreed.
I headed out in the hot midday sun for my run. By the time I got back from navigating the dangers of Taylor, past the boutique art galleries and Taylor Grocery, my parents had settled on my mother’s staying at the house.
“It’ll be fine here,” she said and sounded a touch relieved. I realized that she hadn’t wanted to go to campus; it was just Dad worried about her.
My father was already dressed in the red Ole Miss polo shirt we’d picked up the day before on campus. “You ready for football?” he asked. It was a refrain we had shared since I was a kid. This was before “Are you ready for some football?” became a popular riff in promo ads and game-day hype. When I was growing up, it was our own code, like a password to another special Saturday. “You ready for football?”
“Are they going to win?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
It made us both smile. It always did.
“It’s a good day for a game,” Dad said. That was part of the ritual as well. It could be pouring rain or sleeting, and it would still be a good day for a game.
“Great day,” I said, reciting my part.
For this season, the university had started new game-day parking regulations involving a complicated system of off-campus bus shuttles. The only way to get on campus was with a parking pass, which mostly went to season ticket holders and donors to various building and scholarship funds. But I’d been lucky enough to snag a pass through the kindness of the athletic department. My dad was the oldest living member of the Ole Miss Student Hall of Fame, and that he still wanted to come to games seemed to please the university a great deal.
We drove onto campus around 4:00 p.m. for the 6:00 p.m. kickoff. As we parked just off All-American Drive and were getting out of the car, I grabbed from the car a campus map that I’d picked up earlier at the Rebel Shop. That had been a mandatory stop to buy the matching Ole Miss shirts that we were wearing.
“What’s that?” my father asked, sounding like a suspicious TSA agent eyeing a chain saw in your carry-on.
“It’s a map.” Then I added, as if it were necessary, “A campus map.” Good to clear that up, in case he thought I was bringing, say, a map of Quebec.
He shook his head, looking pained. “The day I need a map to get around the Ole Miss campus…” He let it hang there, unfinished.
“Okay, but what about me? You know I haven’t been here in years.”
“Stick with me,” he said gravely, as though we were heading out on a dangerous patrol.
As my dad and I slowly made our way across campus to the Grove, it was like walking into a huge reunion of a very extended family. If you didn’t recognize someone immediately, the odds were still overwhelming that you would enjoy getting to know anyone you met, at least after a couple of drinks and some trash talk about the impending Rebel victory. It was the exact opposite experience of walking through Manhattan at rush hour. Yes, both were crowded, but here no one hesitated to make eye contact, smile, and greet one another with a nod and “Hotty Toddy.” Of course, my initial reaction was to pull back, as though the next level of friendliness would invariably be intrusive and awkward and probably involve a request for money or at least football tickets. But by the time my father and I had reached the Circle by the Lyceum, it was all starting to feel perfectly normal. It was probably what visiting a nudist colony was like: a little odd at first but pleasant after a while, as long as it was warm.
And it was warm, too warm. I looked over at my dad and was startled that he was drenched in sweat and red-faced. My mother had stuck an inhaler and a little bottle of tiny nitroglycerin tablets in my pocket. I wondered if he might need one or both. A couple in their forties saw me looking at my dad with concern and stopped to ask, “Y’all doing okay?”
“Hotty Toddy,” Dad said automatically, managing a smile.
“Hotty Toddy to you, good-looking,” the woman said, taking his arm and looking over at me questioningly. I shrugged.
“It’s hot,” I said stupidly, not really knowing what else to say.
“Real hot,” her husband agreed. “You know, we were just right inside there, and it’s nice and air-conditioned. Might want to cool off in there.” He motioned to a large building behind us: Brevard Hall.
“That sounds real good,” Dad said but didn’t move. He was looking out at the scene in the Circle with a smile. In front of us were hundreds of red party tents inside a half-mile circular drive. To our left was the Lyceum, the oldest building on campus, built in 1848 in imposing Greek Revival style, with half a dozen columns.
“You know,” he said, “when I first came up to Ole Miss as a freshman, those columns weren’t any more big around than this.” He held out his hands about eighteen inches apart. The couple looked at him, then me, then saw the smile on his face, and we all started laughing.
“When was that?” the woman asked.
“Nineteen thirty-six,” he said.
There was a pause as she did some math, then she asked, “How old are you?”
“Ninety-five,” he answered. “Ninety-six in December.”
“Good God almighty,” the woman said, tightening her grip on his arm. “And you’re going to the game?”
“Yes, ma’am. We went to the Vandy game, too,” he said with a trace of pride. “That was a hell of a game.”
The husband looked at his wife. “I told you we should have gone. I mean, he went and he’s ninety-five!”
“When you’re ninety-five, I promise you we’ll go.”
“When I’m ninety-five, you’ll want to bring your boyfriend.”
“I sure hope so.” They were laughing.
I took my dad’s arm, and she let her hand drop. “I think we should go inside and cool off,” I said.
“You do that,” she said, “then come on over to our tent,” pointing across the Circle toward a tall statue at the bottom of the Circle; it was a memorial to Confederate soldiers. “We’re over by the statue. Same place every year. Kind of a boring group, but we try.”
My father waved, and we turned around to go inside Brevard Hall.
“This is the chemistry building,” my father said as we stepped inside the cool brick building. “I think I had some classes in here.”
There was a desk by the entrance with a campus security guard, a middle-aged African American woman who looked at us curiously.
“How you doing?” she asked. She looked hard at my father. “You okay?”
“Fine. This is the chemistry building, isn’t it?” my father asked.
She looked at him in surprise and smiled. “It was. Old Chem, they called it.”
“I’m old,” my father said.
She laughed. “But now it’s Brevard Hall. Chemistry moved.”
“If chemistry moved out,” my father asked, sitting down on a plastic chair near the guard’s d
esk, “what moved in?”
“The National Center for Computational Hydroscience,” I said, reading from a pamphlet I’d picked up by the entrance. “And the Mississippi Mineral Resources Institute. And a computer lab.”
“I don’t know what any of that is, but it sounds important,” Dad said.
“Got a dean’s office too,” the guard said.
“Been to the dean’s office a few times,” my father said.
The security guard laughed and asked, “So what y’all doing now?” She looked at my father with a sweet concern.
“Cooling off,” Dad answered.
“Ain’t it the truth,” she said, nodding. “You planning on going to the game in that long-sleeved shirt?”
I looked at my father, and it dawned on me that under his Ole Miss polo shirt he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
“What are you doing in that thing?” I asked.
“Your mother thought I should wear it.”
For some reason, I hadn’t noticed.
“There’s a bathroom over there. You can take it off. Or do it right here. I don’t mind.” She laughed.
The bathroom was stone and marble with a slight echo. I doused my face in cold water and, when I came up, saw my father struggling to get his Ole Miss polo shirt off. “This damn thing,” he muttered as I turned to help him ease the shirt off. I thought of the countless times he’d helped me dress or undress, how he’d taught me how to knot ties in half a dozen different ways and shown me how to put on football shoulder pads. Now it was my turn to help, wishing I could slip time backward so there was no need. He had run marathons into his seventies, rarely been sick. But now he was ninety-five.
We carefully peeled off the polo shirt and the long-sleeved shirt underneath it. It was a button-down blue oxford dress shirt, soaking wet. I helped him unbutton it and rolled it up. “I’ll carry this.” He nodded, then started to put his Ole Miss shirt back on. Even at ninety-five, he was still strong, which only meant he had once been very strong. He got it back on, dug a comb out of his back pocket, and worked on his hair. For some reason, it was longer than I remembered, mostly a whitish gray but not completely.
The Last Season Page 4
