The Big Game

by Tim Green

  “Danny.” The team captain spoke in a somber voice. “Come here.”

  Danny had his school clothes off and wore just his padded girdle. His bare feet felt clammy as he walked across the grungy tile floor. He straightened his back and clenched his fists, having no idea what was about to happen. He thought Jace liked him, but it sure didn’t seem that was the case now.

  “Now we all know that seventh graders . . .” Jace scowled around at the entire team. “Are dirt.”

  The eighth-grade players howled and banged their hands against the metal lockers in agreement. Danny had no idea where this was going, but he knew he’d fight Jace if he had to.

  Jace held his hands up and the locker room went silent. “Tomorrow, the season begins. Today, we clean up the dirt.”

  Wild cheers from the eighth graders, until Jace held up his hands again. “The eighth graders all know it’s tradition that the seventh graders get cleaned through the gauntlet. Like the gauntlet on the field, it’s punishing. The seventh graders will walk through the gauntlet and the eighth graders will smack their backsides. And, once the dirt is cleaned up, we’re one team. But to do that we can’t have any grudges. No bad feelings remain. The seventh graders need to accept their punishment like men.”

  “Yeah!” Every eighth grader screamed his assent.

  “This season, we also have a special situation, a bitter grudge between a seventh and an eighth grader.” Jace turned a cold eye on Danny. “And it requires a special, individual punishment to clear the air.”

  Danny saw some pushing and shoving from the corner of his eye and he looked over to see Markle emerge from the crowd between some lockers. He had his football pants on and a sleeveless half T-shirt that showed off his ab and arm muscles. His long hair was tied back, exposing his purple-welted face.

  Even the swelling around Markle’s eyes and nose couldn’t hide the broad smile as he stepped up to Danny, steadily smacking a fist into his open hand.

  “Danny, hold out your hands.” Jace held out his own hands as an example, palms up.

  “Why?”

  “Hold out your hands!” Jace’s face burned red.

  Danny felt the sweat steaming from his armpits. He trembled, not with fear, but rage. He somehow knew Markle was going to slap or punch his open hands. He wanted to scream how stupid that would be. What if it truly hurt his hands? He had to play tomorrow.

  “Let’s go!” Jace barked.

  Danny nodded. “Okay.”

  Markle gave Danny a wicked smile.

  Danny held out his hands, but not because he was going along. He didn’t give a rat’s behind what people thought.

  When Markle went to slap his hands, Danny was going to punch him in the face, again.

  Danny and Markle stared each other down. With his eyes, Danny tried to warn Markle, but the older boy kept grinning.

  “Okay,” Markle announced, “here’s your punishment, seventh grader: you gotta hug it out with me.”

  A smattering of uncomfortable laughter bounced off the lockers like a handful of pennies.

  Danny’s muscles tightened. He was ready, but now uncertain. “What?”

  Markle seemed to be having fun. “Yeah, that’s right. Hug it out. Put it behind us. Move on. We can be cool, right?”

  “Us?”

  “Yup. C’mon. C’mere.” Markle stepped forward and hugged Danny, thumping his back with a meaty hand.

  Danny went stiff, but when he realized Markle was serious and not pulling some stunt, he let his arms embrace his teammate and he patted his back like a small dog’s.

  Jace laughed out loud. “That’s it. Some serious punishment to have to hug it out with Markle!”

  The rest of the team laughed too.

  “All right!” Jace shouted. “Two lines for the gauntlet! Owens, you’re first, and then we hit the field and get ready to stomp Froston!”

  They whooped and hollered and made two lines. The eighth graders began to clap their hands in sync against their thighs.

  “You go through slow, or you go through again!” Jace bellowed through the cheering noise.

  Danny braced himself and took a step into the gauntlet. He was halfway through when he began laughing. They weren’t smacking his butt using their hands as heavy paddles. They were giving the light smacks you gave someone when they scored a touchdown.

  Cupcake came out of the end right after Danny. He leaned close to Danny’s ear. “That didn’t even hurt.”

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to,” Danny said.

  “They said punishment.” Cupcake scratched his flattop. More seventh graders were coming out, all wearing silly grins.

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “I got a hug and you got a pat on your bum.”

  “Well, it beats bloody knuckles and sitting on a pillow.” Cupcake slapped another teammate high five.

  When it was finished, the whole team bounced up and down, woofing like dogs, until Jace shouted, “Break it down!” And they roared like one giant beast.

  When they were all dressed in their gear, they marched down to the field in two columns and circled around their coaches.

  “Take a knee!” Coach Kinen barked. “So, you seventh graders went through the team gauntlet. Now we’re one. Next year, you’ll do the same thing to the new class, so don’t tell anyone. It’s a tradition, and we do it that way to make it scary. The unknown is always scary. Then, you find out that the guys doing the gauntlet are your teammates, and they don’t hurt you, they help you. They congratulate you for making it to the regular season, where the enemy is anyone we play. Right?”

  “Right, Coach!” they yelled as one.

  “That’s right.” Coach smiled at them. “And the game tomorrow is gonna be like a gauntlet for you seventh graders. You don’t know what to expect. You’re nervous, but this team is gonna be with you. You’ll be fine. You’ll be together, supporting each other, and we will win!”

  They cheered and Coach Kinen blew his whistle and practice began. It was an easy day, with no hitting or wind sprints. They ran through plays, making sure everyone knew his job, and when it ended, Danny wasn’t tired in the least. He was flying high, eager to begin his junior high football career.

  He forgot all about Ms. Rait and her reading lesson. He and Cupcake were in Herman’s truck, stopped at the light in town, when Danny was torn from their joking conversation as he remembered his appointment with the teacher.

  “Hey, sorry, Herman. Can you pull over and let me out?”

  Herman stroked his thick beard and gave Danny a funny look. “Right here?”

  “Yeah, I gotta do some extra schoolwork at my teacher’s house.”

  “That’s barley,” said Cupcake.

  The light turned green. Herman made his turn but pulled over. “Want me to take you to wherever you’re going?”

  “Nah. I can walk.” Danny was already out the door, and he shouted his thanks before slamming it shut.

  Cupcake rolled down his window. “This with Rait?”

  Danny paused. “Yeah, but no big deal.”

  Danny had filled him in at lunch about the teacher’s conditions.

  Cupcake hung his arm out the window. “Well, how you gonna get home? Walk five miles?”

  “Ms. Rait drops me off. I’m fine. We’ll play Siege later, after dinner.”

  “Well, okay,” Cupcake said. “Don’t forget, I talked to Jace and the guys say they’ll run her out of town if she messes with you.”

  “Yeah. I’m okay,” Danny said, wondering how they’d even do something like that.

  Cupcake saluted, then said something to his brother, and they pulled away.

  Danny shouldered his pack and crossed the intersection. He trudged through town until the houses thinned out. He passed several fields and some woods before he came to an old farmhouse with number 1197 on the mailbox.

  It was a trim little two-story white house with a green roof and shutters. The barns had been torn down, but an old red chicken coop stood off to th
e side out back. Several live oak trees surrounded the house providing shade. Gravel crunched beneath Danny’s feet.

  Ms. Rait’s car was parked beside the house, and he now saw she’d had a ramp built to give her access to the front porch without having to climb the stairs that Danny took. There was a sidelight window next to the door, and he peered through it to see what he could see as he reached for the bell.

  He looked down a hallway and into the kitchen on the back side of the house. Ms. Rait was sitting at the table with a tall glass of iced tea. She wasn’t alone.

  He pulled his finger back from the bell, because this was definitely not part of the deal.

  Ms. Rait saw him and waved her hand like a bat’s wing, crazy and fast.

  Janey turned and saw him too, and she was up out of her seat before he could run. He knew it was her from her ponytail, and he had to wonder how deeply she was involved in this whole reading thing. Had she betrayed him from the start? It bruised his heart to even think that.

  The door flew open.

  “Hi, Danny.” Janey’s voice didn’t have even a hint of guilt.

  “I . . . what are you doing here?”

  “I saw Ms. Rait after volleyball practice. She was carrying some books and I helped her get them into her car and she asked me over for tea.” Janey smiled like this was an ordinary thing to happen. “Come in.”

  It felt like some kind of a setup, but it was Janey, so he followed her into a bright kitchen with tree-filtered light falling in through the lace curtains on the windows. The walls and cabinets were white, as was the floor; the only color came from some blue tiles here and there and the blue jars on the countertops.

  There was a third drinking glass, empty, on the table. Ms. Rait raised a clear pitcher with ice and lemon slices floating in the tea.

  “Can I pour you a glass, Danny?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” Danny sat down, accepted the cool glass, and took a sip.

  “We like it lemony and sweet.” Ms. Rait smiled at Janey. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s real good.”

  “Janey tells me the two of you are thick as thieves.” Ms. Rait raised her glass.

  “Ma’am?” The word “thieves” alarmed him.

  She laughed. “It’s an old-fashioned way of saying best friends. The kind that would do anything for each other. Is that right?”

  Danny glanced at Janey. The freckles on her round cheeks stood out from her blush and she cast her hazel eyes at the floor as she slipped into her seat.

  “Pretty much,” Danny said.

  “So, I thought it would be okay if she stays while we do some testing. Would you be more comfortable with her here?”

  “I guess so, yes,” Danny said. “Why do I have to take a test? You already know I can’t read good.”

  Ms. Rait reached down into a shoulder bag she had beside her chair. She removed a folder full of papers and set it on the round wooden table. “I need to drill down on exactly what’s going on with your reading. Then I’ll know how to fix it. I think I know, just from when you said ‘toe’ instead of ‘to.’ I think you have gaps in your phonetic awareness.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.” Danny’s throat tightened.

  “It’s not that bad, really. If you have to have a reading problem, it’s the best one to have.” She opened the folder and slid a stapled bunch of papers his way. “It means you recognize letters and their sounds but just have a tough time stringing the sounds together in the right way. With some hard work, we can fix it in a short time, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let me make sure I’m right.”

  Danny took a pen from his backpack, flipped the first page over, and began. There were letters and pictures that he had to match them to. It was easy until he came to a page with whole words; then he began to melt down.

  After that, Ms. Rait held up cards and asked him to read the words. He got a few simple ones but butchered the rest. Same thing with his writing. She asked him to spell some simple words she spoke aloud, and it was ugly.

  Janey saw his face and she patted his hand. “You’re fine. It’s all good, Danny. Really good.”

  He could tell by her eyes that she meant it, and he kept going. After the written part, Ms. Rait held up more cards for him with just letters, then letter combinations, and finally whole words that made him struggle again.

  “It’s just what I thought, Danny.” Ms. Rait tucked the papers and cards back into the folder, then swapped it for a different folder. She took out a single sheet along with some blank index cards. “These are ‘sight words,’ words you can’t always sound out, but important words you need to memorize.”

  The page full of words reminded Danny of when he first saw the gauntlet machine on the field.

  “Let’s go through them. Read me the words you know and we’ll circle the ones you don’t so you can work on them.”

  Danny knew many of the words on the first sheet, words like “and,” “the,” and “this.” He struggled mightily with the second sheet though, which had bigger words like “agree,” “flour,” and “thrill.”

  “You make flash cards for the circled ones,” said Ms. Rait. “We can take a few each day for you to memorize. You won’t learn them all at once, but you can learn them. I know you can.”

  “Well, I know this one is ‘tap.’” Danny pointed to the word. “So this should be ‘tack.’” This time he pointed to “take.”

  Ms. Rait nodded. “Okay, but that’s ‘take.’ The ‘a’ sounds like its name, ‘a,’ because of the ‘e’ at the end. That’s a silent ‘e.’ When silent ‘e’ comes at the end of the word, the vowel makes a long sound and says its name. I know it can be confusing, but vowels can make different sounds. So that the same ‘a’ can make more than just the ‘a’ sound when it’s in other words. It can also sound like ‘uh,’ as in ‘about.’ Most of the time though ‘a’ makes the sound you hear in ‘tap’ or ‘ax’ or ‘tack.’ So, when you see an ‘a’ I want you to think ‘tap,’ unless you see that silent ‘e’ at the end. Then I want you to say the word aloud, then ask yourself two questions: Does that sound right? Does that make sense in the sentence?”

  Danny nodded slowly. “Okay. I think I get that.”

  “And I can help you with the flash cards.” Janey rattled the ice in her glass.

  “Let me show you some,” Ms. Rait said. “I think it’s easier when you can see it.”

  Danny did see it, and he began to say words right he hadn’t known before. He laughed out loud, and then he heard a noise from the corner of the kitchen. Ms. Rait had a pet door cut into the lower part of the back door, and an enormously fat white cat wiggled its way inside.

  “Oh, Mrs. McGillicuddy, where have you been?” Ms. Rait was up out of her chair now and she expertly thumped across the kitchen to the fridge, where she took out a carton of milk and poured some into a pan by the garbage can.

  The cat pattered across the floor and began drinking. Ms. Rait sat back down.

  “That’s a big cat,” Janey said.

  “That’s a pregnant cat,” said Ms. Rait, and then she sighed. “But she’s fat too.”

  They went over a few more sight words and the sounds Ms. Rait wanted Danny to use for other vowels before Mrs. McGillicuddy began to circle Danny’s leg, rubbing her head against his shinbone.

  Ms. Rait peered under the table. “She’s shameless. Loves men and makes no bones about it.”

  Danny and Janey laughed.

  “Can I pick her up?” Danny asked.

  “Only if you want to make her day,” said Ms. Rait. “I think we’ve done enough work.”

  Danny scooped the large cat up into his lap, and she collapsed there in a fluffy heap. Danny laughed and scratched her ears. She began to purr faster and pressed her head into his fingers for more.

  “Told you,” Ms. Rait said.

  “I like this cat.” Danny stroked her long white fur.

  “Do you have a cat?” Ms. Rait a
sked.

  “No, my mom’s a dog person. We had a dog, but it got hit by a car. My mom cried for a week and said ‘never again.’”

  “Well, Mrs. McGillicuddy has decided you are a cat person.” Ms. Rait folded her hands on the table. “Now, what can you tell me about this football team of yours? I already know our girls’ volleyball team is the best in the county.”

  Janey blushed. “Well, one of the best for sure.”

  “Same with football.” Danny dove right in and told Ms. Rait all about Jericho High and how Crooked Creek Junior High was the main source of talent for Jericho. He talked until Mrs. McGillicuddy hopped down off his lap and headed for the pet door. She got stuck halfway through and began to yowl.

  “Can you give her a push, Danny?” Ms. Rait asked.

  Danny went over to the door and with two hands gently stuffed the cat through the swinging door. When he straightened up, he saw Mrs. McGillicuddy dash across the grass and up into the chicken coop.

  “That chicken coop reminds me of the Amoses’ shed.” Danny pointed out the window in the upper half of the door.

  “Amoses?” Janey said.

  “From Bud, Not Buddy. The shed with the fish heads and the wasps.”

  “But . . .” Janey looked confused.

  Danny laughed and dug the Playaway out of his backpack. He told her about how Ms. Rait had given it to him.

  “It sounds like you like it,” the teacher said.

  “I did,” said Danny. “I do.”

  “See?” Ms. Rait sounded excited, the way she did in class. “Those details you just told us about? Inside the shed? That’s called reading comprehension.”

  Danny frowned. “But I didn’t read it.”

  “That’s right. You heard it, but it doesn’t matter how you get the information, through your eyes or your ears; you still understood it and remembered it and connected it with real life. That’s just excellent.”

  Danny wasn’t sure if he should feel incredibly proud about all that, but he did have to fight to keep a smile from curling his lips.

  “Anyway, I think that old coop is where Mrs. McGillicuddy has made a den for her future kittens. And if either of you wants one, you’re welcome.”