by Trent Reedy
“You’re never going to impress her with that ratty old rainbow T-shirt.” Nick flicked a paper clip at me. “Maybe wrap a towel around your head.”
Clint laughed. I balled my fists and took a step toward them.
“Is there a problem here?” Mrs. Potter emerged from the storage room. Rhodes jumped off her desk and everybody went quiet. She watched us in silence for a few moments.
Then the bell rang, and I slammed into the door and took off down the hall, trying not to listen to the comments and laughter from the people behind me.
* * *
I lingered in the American History II room after the others had rushed out. “Excuse me, Coach Carter?” I said just as he reached the door and shut off the lights.
A rod from a back surgery years ago kept Coach’s posture completely straight, and he also lacked flexibility in his neck, so he turned his whole body to face me. “Wilson.” He always addressed students by nearly shouting their last names. “You need to hustle.”
“I was hoping to talk to you for a minute.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I’d like to join the football team.” I held out the papers.
Coach snatched the forms from me and looked them over. He said nothing for a long time. “I thought you said your mom didn’t want you to play.”
“I know,” I said. “But she … Last night I convinced her to sign.” I tried to look him in the eye, like a man.
After another long silence, he nodded. “Like I said yesterday, I can see you’ve been working out a lot. Bulking up. I think you might eventually really help the team.” His mouth stretched into a half smile, half pained grimace. “It’ll be hard work, and you might not get much playing time right away this year.”
“I know,” I said.
“Then come with me.” He led me down the hall to the musty equipment room, where he issued me football pads and a helmet. Then he found me a larger locker to store it all. Coach whipped his pen over his pass book and then snapped off the top sheet. “This will get you into your next class, so you won’t have a tardy on your record. Before you go to class, you need to stop by the fountain and drink a lot of water. See you at practice after school.”
I smiled, glad to have football gear again. Glad to have my chance. “Thank you, Coach.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You might not be thanking me after practice tonight.”
One summer a few years ago, when Grandma was still alive, Mom marooned Mary and me on her farm for two whole weeks. Once I finished the two books I’d brought along, all I had to read was a stack of old National Geographic magazines with articles about people in jungle villages beating drums and honoring their warriors.
Entering the locker room to be among my school’s warriors reminded me of those stories. The place was full of a similar sort of primal energy. I loved it. It felt so good to be back that I hardly noticed the stench from all the sweaty clothes and gear. I hurried to my locker, eager to get started.
Cody Arnath stared at me as I started suiting up. He pushed his long hair out of his eyes. “Uh, what are you doing?”
“Just getting ready.” I pulled my shoulder pads out.
“You got to be kidding me,” Cody said. “You’re just starting now?” He shook his head and walked off.
That happy-to-be-back feeling quickly faded. After hurrying to dress, I moved toward the door to the practice field, carrying my shoes, shoulder pads, and helmet like everyone else. I tried to ignore all the looks and quiet comments from the guys that made a twisted, hollow, vomitous feeling deep in my gut. My heart thumped nervously.
“Wilson!” Coach Carter shouted. “Get in here!”
I ran to his office. He closed the door behind me. Like the locker room, Coach’s space was drowned in a dusty-salty smell, made only marginally better by a bunch of hanging pine-tree air fresheners. “Coach?” I said.
Carter motioned at a younger man with a goatee sitting on a stool. “This is Coach Brown. He’s our defensive coordinator, and he’ll be working with the linemen.”
“Hello,” I said.
Coach Brown stared at me as if he hadn’t heard me at all. Carter went on, “Pay attention to what I’m about to say. We’re bending the state athletic association rules a little by putting you in full pads tonight. The team already did their three required no-contact days. Someone might complain that you didn’t get yours.” He held up one finger. “So number one, if anyone complains about you practicing tonight, you will tell me about it after practice. I’ll sort them out.” He held up a second finger. “Two, if you’re injured, you will tell me immediately. Got it?”
“Yes, Coach. I’ll tell you if I’m hurt.”
“No!” Coach Brown looked like he’d just bit into an extra-sour lemon. “You are only going to tell us if you are injured, if your body is broken. You will be hurting tonight. I promise you that.”
“Three,” said Coach Carter, holding up three fingers for a moment before making a fist. “Coach Brown is going to put you through some extra workouts. Some extra drills. He’s going to add enough work to make up for all the practices you’ve missed. You won’t be ready to play in our first game this Friday, but you can suit up with the team. Depending on how practice goes, you might earn a little time in the game after that. You need to mentally prepare yourself. We’re going to work you hard.”
Coach Brown flexed the muscles in his arms. “Got that?”
I flexed my own biceps and stared back. If I was going to do this, complete Dad’s mission and play football like I always wanted to, then I would have to fight for it. “Got it.”
“Got it, Coach!” Carter yelled.
“Got it, Coach.”
Carter opened his door. “Get out of here.”
I rushed out of the locker room, now one of the last people. Outside on the sidewalk, I got into my shoulder pads and crushed the helmet down over my head, strapping my mouth guard to my face mask. Then I bolted for the practice field.
The other guys were all in five lines starting on the fifty, with the next player back every five yards. Matt Karn, Jay McKay, and Tony Sullivan, the senior captains, were out in front, facing everybody else. “Hurry up!” someone yelled. Unsure where to go, I hurried to the back of one of the long lines.
Finally, McKay took a step forward, leaned back, and shouted “Get in line! It’s football time!” so loudly that it echoed against the woods behind the game field. Everybody stopped talking and joking around.
“The head-and-neck stretch!” he called out. Everyone who knew what was going on answered with the same call. We rolled our heads clockwise for a while, and then switched to counterclockwise.
The three seniors took turns leading us through the warm-up like this. We worked our arms and legs. We did jumping jacks. Finally, the coaches marched out onto the field.
“Give me a lap!” Coach Carter yelled.
“Wilson!” said Coach Brown. “You better finish two laps before the slowest man finishes his one. Sullivan, make sure he does it!”
“Move it!” said Carter.
The entire herd took off running. They all seemed to know that they had to go around the back side of a certain light pole on the practice field. Tony Sullivan ran up right behind me and tapped his face mask on the back of my helmet. “Run faster or I will kill you,” he said in a low growl. I sped up, but he stayed with me. “You better be five yards ahead of me all the time, Wilson.”
I looked back and saw him still too close. I picked my pace up to a near sprint. We ran the length of the practice area, up a path that had been mowed in the grass on the steep hill toward the woods, a hundred yards along the ridge, down the slope, around the back of the softball diamond, another hundred yards, and around the outside of the practice field to the pole where we started. My chest felt like fire.
“That’s one lap, Wilson!” Sullivan shouted. “Speed up!”
Faster? I couldn’t go any faster! We were already ahead of over half the guys. Still
, Sullivan gained on me. My thighs burned on the way up the hill for my second lap. I risked a look back. Sullivan followed a few paces behind me.
“If I catch up to you on this hill where the coaches can’t see us, I’m going to smash you into the ground,” he said. “Run!”
I kept snapping my feet down, one in front of the other, gasping for air, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in my side. By the time I reached the far side of the softball field, I had begun to lap some of the larger, slower linemen. I could get two laps before some of those guys finished, but how could I get through the rest of practice after that?
“Sprint out the rest, Wilson! Go! Go! Go!” Sullivan gasped from behind me. “You’re dead if I catch you!”
I didn’t think. I just ran until everything hurt. When I reached the pole where a bunch of guys had finished their one lap, I trotted out to a stop. Someone slapped me on the back of my shoulder pads. I leaned over, my stomach clenched, and acidy sick-sweet vomit burst out.
Sullivan ducked down to talk to me. “This is only the beginning.”
“Puke it up!” someone said.
“Puke is weakness leaving the body,” said someone else. “Good work.”
I spat to try to get rid of the taste. If vomiting counted as a badge of honor out here, something told me I would be very well decorated by the end of practice.
Carter sent the linemen to one end of the field and took the receivers to run pass routes. Coach Brown grabbed me by my practice jersey. “Come with me.” He picked up a football and led me to our own corner. He pointed downfield. “Go!”
I took off running again, a little unprepared. Was this punishment running? Conditioning? Coach Brown launched the football like a rocket, straight at me. I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. I did a sort of half turn to catch it, but somehow my feet tangled while running. The ball would sail right past me as I fell unless I stretched out for it.
I snagged the football in my fingertips just before I hit the ground. When I opened my eyes, I still had it in my hands! It had been a long time since I last played, but I could still do this.
“Get up, Wilson!” Coach Brown shouted. “Don’t just lay there!” I scrambled to my feet and made as if to throw the football back. Coach pointed at the ground next to him. “No! Run!”
I sprinted back to the coach’s side, and he snapped the football from my hands without even looking at me. “I’m going to overthrow the football. You better catch it. Go!”
I darted off again as fast as I could move, looking a couple times over my shoulder. Twenty yards. Twenty-five. Then he threw it. He’d told the truth. This would go over me, but not by too much. I pushed my legs harder. Looked up quick to check the ball. Ran harder. Checked again. I had one chance. I dove for it with my arms stretched out and my hands like a basket, praying to get hold of the ball. I caught it!
That is, until I hit the ground and lost it. The ball went rolling away.
We must have run about fifteen passes. I caught all but two of them. After a while I couldn’t count. Couldn’t think. Just tried to breathe. Run. Find the ball. Try to grab it. Run more. Finally, when I reached Brown’s side, he waited. I stood ready to run again.
“Wilson.”
“Y-yes, Coach.”
“Looks like you can catch. I’m going to walk over to the linemen. You will run over to the drinking fountain and get as much water as you can before you run to the linemen. You will get over there before I do. Go!”
I ran to the long tube and found the switch that sent six streams of water out in big arches. I put my mouth over one stream and drank and drank. Nothing had ever tasted so good in my life.
The moment ended almost before the water could hit my stomach. I ran off again to beat Brown to the linemen, who waited in seven lines in front of pads on a huge steel rack. Jay McKay stood on the back of the thing. He gave the “go” call and seven linemen launched out of a three-point stance to slam shoulder-first into the pad and push the whole sled back.
I took my place behind four other guys. Finally, a little rest. Coach Brown replaced McKay on the sled. “Wilson! You’re up. Move to the front of the line!”
I heard a few chuckles and felt some hard elbows as I took my position. Coach blew his whistle and I ran into the pad, pumping my feet against the ground after he yelled at me.
It went on like that all night. The seven-man sled. The single-man tackling sled. The chutes where we just practiced running out low so we wouldn’t hit our heads on a bar. Then we ran the starting offense against a defense of tackling dummies. I had to hold one across the line from offensive tackle Robby Dozer, who stood just over six feet tall and weighed over two hundred twenty pounds. When he dropped into his three-point stance across from me, he actually growled. McKay snapped the ball, and I barely saw Dozer. A blur hit the bag, I hit the ground, and the fullback Drew Hamilton blew right past me.
“You got to hold it!” Dozer said, glaring down at me.
Nick Rhodes messed me up even worse. As starting tight end, he sometimes lined up next to Dozer on the line. When the play called for Rhodes to block down on my dummy, he came full blast. The first time he hit a lot more of me than the dummy, and he crushed me into the ground again.
“Get up, Wilson!” Rhodes yelled.
Coach made them run the same play again. This time, I didn’t care how tired I was. The bag didn’t weigh nearly as much as the hay bales I’d been throwing on Derek’s farm. I lifted that tackling dummy, bringing it up to slam right into Rhodes’s chest, stopping him dead and even knocking him back a little.
A while later, we switched and the starting defense ran against a scrub offense. Coach mostly left me out of this, since I didn’t know any of the plays. I had no problem with that. I needed the rest.
After defense practice, Coach sent us all to the end of the field, where we were grouped by class. The freshmen stood shoulder-to-shoulder across the goal line first. The rest of us fell in behind. The conditioning drill called for us to sprint ten yards, dive to the ground, get back up and sprint ten yards, dive again, and repeat all the way to the other goal line. If Coach saw anyone running too slowly, he’d call out that we had earned another run.
By the fourth, fifth, or sixth rotation, I can’t remember which, I threw up as soon as I crossed the finish line. Then I readied myself for the next rotation.
Finally, Coach brought us all to the center. We took our helmets off, went down on one knee, and gasped for air while he talked about what had gone well at practice versus what we needed to improve. When he finished and sent the team inside to clean up, most everyone took off their shoulder pads and walked back to the locker room. I, on the other hand, was surrounded by the three senior captains.
“Wilson, for missing two-a-day practices, plus camp, plus Monday’s practice, we’re going to make you hurt for an extra fifteen minutes after practice every day!” Matthew Karn sent a football spiraling straight up above his head and then caught it. He led us to the bottom of Bleacher Hill. “Sprint up. Jog down. Go!”
I ran the five yards to the hill fast, but as soon as I hit it, I felt like someone had tied weights behind me. It was as if I were climbing the straight-up steep stairs to my attic, only at the top I found no bed, no rest, but more running.
“Faster, Wilson!” McKay yelled.
“Keep it up,” said Sullivan when I ran around behind the three captains at the bottom of the hill. I stopped and rested with my hands on my knees.
“Who told you to stop, you lazy turd? Go!” Karn shouted.
McKay laughed. “Dude, you’re gonna kill him.”
“That’s okay,” said Karn. “We don’t need him.”
I glared at him. He flashed a sick grin and pointed to the top of the hill.
Finally, after many more laps and after I heaved up nothing a couple times, Sullivan stopped it. “That’s enough, Wilson. You’re done for the night.”
“What?” Karn said. “He’s got like five minutes left. Coach
told us to work him for fifteen minutes extra.”
“Fine,” Sullivan said. “But he’s still got to do a cool-down lap. I’ll run it with him. You guys can go.”
“You got guts putting yourself through this, Wilson,” said McKay. “I’m glad I don’t have to do all this extra stuff.”
“You already did. We’ve been working all summer and in practice for days,” Karn said. “This idiot just showed up today.” He led McKay away.
“Come on,” said Sullivan. He started for the hill again. I couldn’t do any more. I wanted to drop to the ground. “Move it, Wilson!” he shouted. That got a laugh from the other two.
After we reached the top of the hill, Sullivan led us back farther toward the woods. When we had moved out of sight of the practice field, he dropped the pace down to a walk.
I didn’t say anything. I’d had a pretty good practice, and it felt great to be back, but obviously a lot of the guys didn’t think it was fair for me to start late. When Sullivan and I ran together earlier, he had threatened to kill me. Well, he could go ahead. I couldn’t stop him.
But he didn’t attack me. He didn’t even say anything until we had walked at least the length of the nearby game field. “Matt Karn’s a jerk. So is Rhodes.” I looked at him to see if he was serious. “I saw the crap Rhodes pulled in practice today. I know what Karn was doing. Don’t pay any attention to those guys.”
We walked the rest of the lap in silence. As we neared the practice field, where someone might see us, Sullivan kicked it up into a pathetically slow jog. I matched him. “You really worked hard today. And you look tough enough. We need all the strength we can get if we’re going to make the playoffs this year.” He stopped and hit me in the shoulder. “Stick with it, okay?”
“I won’t quit,” I said, as much to my father as to him.
Neither of us said anything more for the whole walk back to the locker room. It seemed like every muscle in my body ached individually. Sweat ran in tiny rivulets through the dust on my legs, which were so tired I couldn’t stop them from shaking. So far, football had been physical misery, but a lot of fun. I’d never quit.
