If You're Reading This

by Trent Reedy

  * * *

  The ride to work always challenged me, but that night, I think I might have walked about as much as I rode my bike, especially up the last hill. After petting Annie and throwing her rope toy a few times, I found Derek in the shop.

  He saw me and frowned. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Scraped elbow. Bruise on your bicep. You’re even later tonight than last night. Come on.”

  “Sorry.” I thought about coming up with some story to tell him, but why bother? “I was at football practice.”

  “You don’t play football.”

  “I’m on the team. Coach is sort of giving me a trial run, I think.”

  Derek looked surprised. “Really? So you finally get to play, huh? It’s about time.” He slapped his hand on the Falcon. “How was it?”

  I stretched my sore arms. “Well, it would probably be more fun if they didn’t stick me with extra drills to make up for missed practice.”

  “Rough on you, huh?” he said.

  “Oh yeah.”

  Derek put his hands on his hips. “So how did you get your mom to change her mind?”

  “See, that’s the problem. She doesn’t really know about it.” I saw the skepticism in his expression. “She works all the time, so I don’t really get to see her much. And she doesn’t like to be bothered with this kind of thing anyway. So I just filled out the forms for her.”

  “Including her signature?”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly after a moment. The old rusted windmill squeaked in the breeze. “Please don’t tell.”

  “I don’t know, Mike.”

  “Come on. If she finds out what I’ve done, she’ll tell Coach and I’ll be off the team before I’ve even had the chance to become part of it.”

  “That bad, huh?” Derek said. “Have you two been fighting or something?”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “We get along fine, as long as we’re going along through our routines. Anything outside of that and she shuts down or, worse, gets all upset.”

  “And playing football is outside of your routine.”

  “For the last two years, anyway.”

  He sighed. “I don’t like keeping secrets, but I guess I could go along with you on this one. Now come on. I need your help with the tractor.” Derek’s ancient John Deere 3010 narrow-front tractor seemed to spend more time in the shop than in the field. He already had the cover off to get started. He bent over the engine and held out his other hand to me. “Can you get me the nine-sixteenth?”

  I gave him the right size socket wrench. Of all the work I did on the farm, helping like this — just waiting around to hand Derek different tools — bored me the most. Today, though, I was grateful for the chance to stand still. Would Dad have been proud of me? I wished I could write back to him to ask.

  “Hey, you awake?”

  “What? Sorry. What do you need?”

  “Pliers.” Derek grabbed the tool himself and went back to the engine. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” I sat down on one of the small front wheels. “Only …” Derek was probably the only adult I could truly trust, the only one with whom I could talk about stuff that mattered. “You knew my dad, right?”

  “Yeah.” He reached deep into the machinery, twisting hard on something. “But not that well. He was a couple years ahead of me in school.”

  “Yesterday I got a letter in the mail that my father wrote when he was in Afghanistan. Someone mailed it to me.”

  “Oh.” Derek wiped his oily hands on his jeans. “Are you serious? Are you sure it was from your dad?”

  “Yeah, I’m serious.” I told him all about the letter, including the memory of my family watching that Hawkeye football game, which only my father would have known. Then I filled him in on the mystery with Ortiz. “You don’t know who might be sending them, do you? Like maybe it’s someone else he served with?”

  “I guess it could be,” Derek said. “Gosh, buddy. That’s a tough one. Still, it must be pretty cool to be able to hear from your father, right?”

  “Oh yeah.” I smiled. “He basically told me to go out for football. I just wish I could find the sender.”

  “Is that so important?” He picked up a crescent wrench and went back to work on the tractor.

  “Maybe not, I guess. But if there are more letters, what gives this guy the right to hold on to them? They’re mine. And if the sender was really close to my dad, he could maybe tell me more about him, like how he died.”

  “You already know that, though. He was killed in action, right? He was a soldier. He died a hero.”

  “Yeah, but that’s what they say about all soldiers, at least the ones who die in war.” Derek looked like he was about to object, so I continued quickly, “And they all are. Absolutely. But what does that even mean, ‘He was a hero’? I mean, did he die in like a sniper attack, or from a rocket-propelled grenade or something? Was he standing in the street, or did he take out a whole bunch of Taliban on the way?”

  “Kind of morbid, isn’t it? What difference would it make to know that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just need to know.” I couldn’t explain why certain girls were pretty or why I liked my favorite foods. Some feelings just existed. But maybe it was more than that. “I didn’t get a lot of time with my father. He devoted his life to my mother, sister, and me, and he gave his life in this war that doesn’t make much sense. I’d like to know if his death counted for something, if it made any difference.”

  Derek shook his head. “Well, I wish you luck. Those letters sound like a really neat second chance.”

  I hoped more letters would come. I’d hate for the one letter I’d received to be my last chance.

  My body ached all through the next day’s classes, and I only suffered worse through Wednesday’s practice, so that by Thursday morning I walked down to the kitchen as stiff as a mannequin. Mom’s shift at the nursing home didn’t end until eleven p.m., so I was surprised to find her awake and sitting at the kitchen table in her faded pink robe, her hands around a cup of coffee. She offered me a half smile, the lines creasing in the corners of her eyes. “What are you doing up so early?” she said.

  “I was about to ask you the same question.” I poured myself a big glass of water from the tap. Not only did my body ache, but I thought I might fall asleep standing up. I’d reread Dad’s letter a few times last night, which kept me up half the night thinking about who he was and wondering what had happened to him.

  “Mom, did Dad ever send us any letters home from the war?” I asked. Surely he must have, but I had never seen them. Except for D-Day each year, Mom had kind of put away all memories of Dad.

  “What?” She wrinkled her nose like she smelled something awful. “Why do you want to bring up all that old painful stuff?” She rested her head in her hands. “As if the anniversary of your father’s death wasn’t hard enough, Mrs. Dinsler died last night. She had some grandchildren. Some granddaughters, and I think a boy in your grade?”

  Denny and his cousin Alyssa were in my grade, but while I was sorry to hear about their loss, I didn’t want to let Mom steer us off topic like she usually did. “Yeah, but, see, I got this letter from —”

  “I was just talking to her while I helped her get her medication.” Mom wiped a tear from her eye. “She was looking forward to her grandkids visiting this weekend. Eighty-seven. Stroke. Died in her sleep.”

  “Mom, do you think Dad —”

  “Michael, please! Not today, okay?” She took a drink of her coffee. “You’re dressed with your bag and everything. You never get ready this early.”

  I should have known I’d never get her to talk about Dad. About anything, really. “I have to go in to type up my ‘What I Did During My Summer Vacation’ paper for English class.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t afford a computer. It would help both of you kids so much with your schoolwork. They’re just so expensive.” She closed her eyes and rubbed the bac
k of her neck.

  “It’s okay, Mom. The computers at school work fine. No big deal.” I took a spotted banana from the counter.

  “Mikey, what happened?” She stood up with a look of horror on her face.

  “What?”

  “Those bruises!”

  I held the banana up. “It’s still good. The peel always looks worse than the —”

  “I’m talking about your arms.” She moved closer to examine me. When I tried to back away, she put her hand behind me and held me there as she peered at my arm. If she figured out where those bruises really came from, I’d have suffered them for nothing.

  “Um, just got a little banged up on the farm yesterday. Cutting wood.”

  “You’ve never been this hurt from farmwork before.” She pointed to my raw elbow. “And this. Don’t try to tell me that was from an ax.”

  “It’s just a scrape, Mom.”

  “Michael, what happened?”

  “Okay.” I sighed. This was my last chance to throw her off. “I was … roughhousing with Ethan after school. We both wanted, you know” — I did not know, and hoped something would come to mind — “the last Mountain Dew in the box. He tried to grab it from me, and I made a run for it. Then I dropped it, and we both kind of scrambled after it, trying to keep the other guy from getting it. Kind of a dumb game. Sort of, you know, wrestling.”

  Mom shook her head and smiled. “You boys. How is Ethan, anyway?”

  “Good,” I said. “He’s really good.”

  “Well, be more careful from now on. I don’t think one pop is worth all these cuts and stuff.”

  “Mom, I’m fine, really. It looks worse than it is.”

  She reached out to squeeze my hand, pulling me closer to kiss it. “You’re such a good boy, Mikey.” She let me go.

  “I know, Mom,” I said, at once relieved and disgusted with myself.

  * * *

  I tried to act normal as I entered seventh-hour American History II, but I couldn’t help groaning a little when I sat down at my desk.

  “Wilson! Have you been drinking water like I told you to?”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  He held out his drinking-fountain pass. “Listen up, football men. All of you, starting with Wilson, will go drink water for a full minute. I mean it. A minute. Count it off. Then count off two minutes without drinking. After that, drink for another minute. Then come back to class so the next man can go. Move it, Wilson!”

  I left my desk, took the pass, and went to drink from the cruddy old fountain where the water tasted like our rank locker room smelled. When I came back to class, everybody had moved into groups to work on their Civil War projects. Isma had two desks pulled up to our usual corner in the back.

  “What was that all about?” she asked when I sat down.

  “He’s big on hydration.”

  “Okaaaay …” She stretched out the word as if she thought he’d acted crazy. “All that running around. The hitting and yelling. It doesn’t seem like you.” She leaned closer to me and spoke quietly. “You’re smarter than that.”

  “Believe me, sometimes that’s exactly me.” I thought of Dad’s letter. “I used to watch and play football all the time with my dad. Just because I love reading and care about my grades and future doesn’t mean I have to hate sports. Why do so many people think that it has to be one or the other?”

  Isma shrugged. “It just seems like that’s how it usually goes.”

  As if on cue, Coach Carter appeared beside our desks. “Wilson.” He smacked a small red three-ring binder on my desk. “I forgot to get you this yesterday. Here is your playbook. You will memorize every play. Pay close attention to the tight end position. I will quiz you at random times in the coming days. Be ready.”

  “Yes, Coach,” I said.

  After he left, Isma shook her head. “So I guess we won’t be getting together to work on the presentation.” She kept her eyes focused on the doodle she was making in her notebook.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. With football and Dad’s letter, I’d forgotten all about Isma’s invitation.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to,” she said.

  “What? No, it’s just that with practice, I can’t meet up after school. But … maybe Saturday?”

  “No,” she said sharply.

  “Whoa. Sorry for the suggestion. Okay, what about —”

  “It’s no problem about Saturday, but my parents are really busy and I have … It’s just … I’ll probably get stuck with chores or something.” She sighed. “I guess just forget it.”

  We went to work on our project.

  * * *

  In the locker room after school, I hurried to get my gear on so that I wouldn’t be last again. I slipped into my football pants, pulling them up and then tying the laces in front.

  “Idiot! What are you doing?” Matt Karn said on his way out the door. He was wearing just shorts and carrying his helmet and shoulder pads with his practice jersey.

  Ethan leaned over on the bench next to me. “Didn’t you hear Coach yesterday when he talked about a light practice tonight?” he said. “We don’t go full contact on Thursdays. We’re resting up a little, getting ready for tomorrow’s game.”

  Compared to the day before, that night’s practice did feel like a rest. We stretched out and ran our lap. I ran two once again with Tony Sullivan chasing me. After that, the first string walked through our starting defense, while the other second-stringers and I did our best to run the other team’s offense.

  Since I was playing scout tight end, I sometimes lined up across from Nick Rhodes. Every time my play called for me to block down on him, he pulled some cheap shot, like an elbow to the ribs or a quick tripping move that dumped me to the ground.

  When the next play called for me to run an in-route, I’d had enough. I was supposed to run out about ten yards and then cut in behind the outside linebacker toward the middle of the field for the pass. Instead, when the center hiked the ball, I shot out straight for Rhodes, planting my hands on his chest under his shoulder pads and driving him right back into the cornerback, Noah “Monty” Monteray. As they both fell, I spun around off them and cut in across the middle of the field. Karn, the quarterback, frowned and whipped the ball hard toward the ground five yards ahead of me. I ran faster, dipped down to scoop up the ball before it could hit the dirt, and kept running, only to be stopped by one of our safeties, Chris Moore.

  “Nice catch,” Moore said.

  “Wilson!” Coach Carter shouted. “This is a walk-through. You don’t want to walk? You can run! Give me a lap!”

  Rhodes glared at me as I took off, but Monty nodded. I poured on a lot of speed, empowered by my sweet, if temporary, victory. When we switched sides and Coach put me on the scrub defense against the starting offense, I was the outside linebacker, with Rhodes lining up across from me as the starting tight end. For a light practice, I still ended up getting knocked around quite a lot.

  After a few forty-yard sprints, Coach brought us all in for his end-of-practice talk. We knelt down on one knee with our helmets off as he slowly looked us all over. “We’ve been talking about HIT for months now — Hard Work, Integrity, and Team. The Big Three!” He held up one finger. “Hard work! You’ve been working hard all summer in the weight room and in practice since we started this year. Integrity! Tomorrow you will play some good, hard-hitting, clean football, respecting the officials, playing with honor, by the rules. Team! We have all been helping each other get ready for this game. Every man here knows that every other man has his back! Tomorrow is your chance to show that you live the Big Three when we play Dysart. Our first game. A home opener. I’d say we’re ready!”

  All around me the guys erupted in shouts and whoops. McKay put his fists in the air above his head and screamed “Roughriders!” He held out the end of the word for a while.

  “Mount up!” the rest of the guys called out at once.

  “Rip out their esophaguses!” Dozer punched the ground
.

  “Yeah! Our house, baby!” shouted Karn.

  These guys seemed like they’d lost their minds, but it was cool. I looked across the mob and spotted Sullivan. Unlike the others, he kept his calm, but his shoulders rose and fell as he breathed deeply with a satisfied look on his face.

  Coach quieted everyone down. “Dysart’s a tough team. The Trojans went undefeated last year. They topped us by two touchdowns.”

  “Let me at ’em, Coach!” Cody Arnath called out.

  “We are coming at them!” Coach shouted. “With everything we got!”

  Again, the team erupted. A shiver went up my spine, like I wanted to punch something. Rip something apart. I clenched my hands into fists and flexed the muscles in my arms and chest. This intense, violent camaraderie had to have been part of what Dad wanted for me. And even if Isma would probably have laughed at it, I liked it. I wanted more.

  Coach went on with his talk, ordering us to drink a lot of water and to get plenty of rest that night. “Believe. Achieve,” he finished. “Now, tonight’s team supper is where?”

  “Piggly’s, Coach. Six thirty,” said Dozer.

  I couldn’t hold back a smile. For years, I’d watched the football team completely take over Piggly’s a few nights a season for supper the night before game day. They always laughed and seemed to have a great time. Tonight, I would finally be able to join them.

  “Right,” Carter said. “Piggly’s at six thirty. It’s not a requirement, but it’s good to be there. Helps build Team. So shower up and get your game jerseys from Laura and Kelsey in the equipment room. Hopefully I’ll see you all tonight.”

  After Coach dismissed the team, I wondered for a moment if maybe I’d get lucky and not have to run extra.

  “Captains, make sure you give Wilson his fifteen minutes of work tonight,” Coach Brown added as he walked off the practice field with Carter.

  So much for luck. McKay, Karn, and Sullivan put me through brutal running and bear-crawl drills for the full fifteen minutes. Karn was extra cruel. He kept complaining that my extra workout would make him late to see Maria Vasquez. If the rumors about them were true, Karn only wanted to meet up with her for one thing.