A Hopeless Game

by Daniel Carson

  Coach Duncan shook his head. “No, I’m not aware of anything like that. But if there were something in his past, I’m the last person he would have talked to about it. Principal Booth made sure Randall kept me on his staff, but the two of us never got close. To be honest, he gave me quite a bit of crap. I don’t think he liked me any more than I liked him.”

  “How about the other coaches on the staff? Who was he close to?”

  “I’m not sure anyone was particularly close with Randall. Coach Williams had never met any of us before he came here from Utah. Coach Edwards was with Randall at his last stop too—that’s Crete City—but I don’t think even he knew Randall well. Truth is, we all pretty much left him alone. He came up with the plan, and we helped him execute the plan. And when the game was finished, it was always on to the next game.” He looked down at his papers. “It still is, I guess.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “The man who got us to this point is dead. But somehow, some way, we’ve got to get these boys ready to play one more time. It’s the next-game philosophy in all its brutal reality. The kids—and that’s what they are: kids. We gotta remember that. They’re reeling. They might not have loved the man, but he was a giant to them. And for this to happen right before the biggest game of their lives… it’s hard.”

  I offered my hand. Coach Duncan took it. “Good luck, Coach.”

  “Thanks, Hope. We’ll need it.”

  I turned to go, but Coach Duncan stopped me at the door. “You know, if you’re looking for someone who might have known Randall… I’d talk to Principal Booth. He’s the one who hired him. He and Randall had a pretty good relationship. Maybe he could answer your questions.”

  I found Principal Booth in the cafeteria, visiting with a group of students at one of the tables. As I walked through the large room with concrete block walls and tiled floors, the students looked at me like I was from outer space. They whispered to each other, trying to figure out who this outsider might be.

  Principal Booth strolled my way and offered a hand.

  “Ms. Walker,” he said with a warm smile. “Nigel Booth. I believe my predecessor had the privilege of knowing you.”

  “Privilege would be generous. Let’s just say I got into a wee bit of trouble in high school.”

  “I’ll tell you a little secret.” He leaned in. “I did too. Most principals did.” His smiled faded. and he nodded soberly. “Terrible business, this Coach Mossback thing. My secretary said that’s what you wanted to speak about?”

  “If you’ve got a few minutes.”

  He put his hands on his hips and looked up to the ceiling. Then he chewed into his lip and looked back at me. “There’s not much to say. I’m at a loss. The whole school is. And there’s not a lot I can tell you on the record beyond that.”

  “Then how about we agree that all of this will be off the record? I don’t plan on writing an article about what happened. But the thing is, I’m an investigator. It’s what I do. And, if possible, I just want some answers.”

  “I’m sure we all do.”

  “Arnie Duncan said you had a decent relationship with Coach.”

  “I hired him, if that’s what you mean. The board was tired of losing. Wanted to make a commitment to football. I told them there were three guarantees in Idaho: death, taxes, and Randall Mossback. They told me to do what it took to get him. So I did.”

  “And it worked.”

  “Going to the state championship in our third year? You bet it worked. Friday night after the game, at the party over on Main Street, I thought to myself… ‘Man, all the sacrifices were worth it.’” He let out a breath. “And then Sunday to find out about Randall. It’s just so horrible.”

  “A lot of people have used that word.”

  Principal Booth threw up his hands. “What other word can you use? That’s exactly what it is.”

  “You said something about sacrifices. What sacrifices are you talking about?”

  Principal Booth looked around, then leaned in a bit. “Teacher salaries are a tricky deal. Not a lot of wiggle room. So… I had to get creative. I arranged it so Randall only had to teach two classes a day. I gave him the largest stipend for coaching I possibly could.”

  “And let me guess: some teachers weren’t happy.”

  Booth sighed. “To put it mildly. I’ve taken a lot of heat since he got here. But our vision was that if the football team was doing well, it would be a rallying point for our entire school. The town, really.”

  “You and Coach—did you talk often?”

  “Almost daily. And if your next question is did I see this coming, the answer is not in a million years.”

  “Any thoughts as to why he would have done it?”

  He shrugged. “None. I’m utterly mystified.”

  Now it was my turn to lean in. “Listen, Principal, I don’t really want this getting out, but Coach Mossback… he did leave a note.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “What did it say?”

  “It was short and odd. It said, ‘I am a bad man.’”

  Principal Booth gave me the exact same squinty look that Coach Duncan had just given me. “What does that mean?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. Was Coach Mossback a bad man?”

  “He was a hard man. He took football seriously. He didn’t suffer fools. But man, could he teach football. He wanted those kids to become better. I don’t think any of that makes him a bad man.”

  “I guess what matters is what he thought about himself. If he thought he was a bad man, that might have been enough to… you know.”

  Booth rubbed his hand across his jaw. “You’re right, of course. I mean, we’ve all done bad things. Most of us forgive ourselves. But if Randall was as hard on himself as he was on everyone around him…”

  Principal Booth was correct. We had all done bad things in our life. But how many of us thought of ourselves as bad? How many of us went to that dark place?

  The bell rang, and the kids stood up from their tables. Mr. Booth offered his hand again. “Duty calls, Ms. Walker. And… I don’t know if you’re the praying type, but if you are… I could use some this week.”

  Despite my recent visits to the Methodist Church, I wasn’t really—to use the principal’s words—the praying type. At least I hadn’t been in quite some time. But I nodded politely nonetheless.

  “Oh, one more thing, Principal Booth. Can you think of any teacher in particular that gave you a lot of grief about Coach Mossback?”

  “That’s an easy one,” he said, his face suddenly weary. “Our physics teacher. Mandy Broderick.”

  Chapter 14

  To get to the physics classroom, I had to make my way through hordes of high schoolers, all of whom looked at me the way high schoolers look at someone who doesn’t belong. One student coming toward me looked particularly snarly. Wild curly black hair. Earbuds in her ears. But this student I knew.

  “What are you doing here, Ms. Walker?” she asked.

  “Nice to see you too, April.”

  “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

  “Relax. I’m here to see Ms. Broderick.”

  “This about Coach Mossback?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Has somebody else died in the last few days that I should know about?”

  “Not that I’m aware.”

  “And you think Ms. Broderick knows something?”

  “I’m just trying to learn what I can.”

  April made a funny face, then put her earbuds back in and shrugged.

  “Nice chatting with you too, April.”

  Mandy Broderick was at the door of her classroom, greeting students with a smile as they entered. When she spotted me approaching, her eyes danced with confusion, then all of a sudden she smiled and waved.

  “What are you doing here?” she said warmly.

  “I’ve been talking to a few people about Coach Mossback.”

  “For a story?”

&n
bsp; “No, I’m not going to write a story. I just want to know.”

  She shook her head. “It’s all anybody can talk about.”

  “Do you have time to talk about it?”

  A commotion sounded from inside her classroom, and she poked her head in. “Knock it off, Morris! We both know Shari could take you down if she wanted to.” She turned back to me. “Can’t let the inmates run the asylum, can we? Hey, as long as you’re here, can I introduce you? I’ve got a couple journalism kids in this class, and they’d really get a kick out of it.”

  Mandy led me into her classroom, where twenty or so students were arranged in varying states of readiness, from the girl in the front with her notebook neatly laid out and her hands folded in front of her, to the boy three seats behind her with his head on the desk, trying to sleep—or perhaps already asleep. On the far side of the room, lab tables were set up with equipment, and beyond that was a counter loaded up with a variety of boards and stones.

  “What are those for?” I asked, pointing.

  Mandy’s eyes lit up. “Ahh, those are for a demonstration we’ve been working on. Have you ever wondered how the pyramids were built? Or how anything in the olden days was built? I mean, before cranes and bulldozers and all this machinery, how did us puny human beings lift and move such fantastic weights? The answer…” She pointed to her brain. “… is physics! Physical demonstrations are great. They’re the only time I really get the full class’s attention.”

  She turned to her students. “Okay, class, settle down. I’d like to introduce a former student of Hopeless High School, and someone my journalism club should know pretty well. This is Hope Walker. She’s an investigative reporter, and, if I may say, she’s a terrific writer.”

  This was met with a smattering of applause. One boy whistled at me.

  “Morris, you show women more respect than that,” Mandy snapped. “And if you do that again, I’ll let Shari kick you where the sun don’t shine.”

  “You can’t say that kind of stuff, Ms. Broderick. I got rights,” Morris complained.

  “And one of those is the right to remain silent. A right the rest of us are anxious for you to exercise.”

  The class erupted in laughter, and one of Morris’s buddies punched him in the shoulder.

  “Okay, find your lab partner and get to your stations. Today I want you to review your data from your Mpemba Effect experiments and start writing up your reports. If you’ve got questions, feel free to use your brain to wrestle with it before you ask me a dumb question. Now go!”

  The kids scattered to the lab tables and got to work.

  “You’re good with these kids,” I said. “I can tell.”

  Mandy shrugged. “I like kids. Mostly because I was one. I never understand those teachers who act like they were never sixteen before. Take a kid like Morris. Is he an idiot? Of course. But he’s a lovable idiot. He needs to be challenged. He needs to be corrected. Most of all, he needs to be loved. They all do.”

  “And what’s the lab about? You said a word I’d never heard before.”

  “The Mpemba Effect. It’s simple but illuminating. You take a cup of cold water, and a cup of hot water, and you put both cups in the freezer. Which one freezes the fastest?”

  “The cold one.”

  “You would think, right? It seems so reasonable. But sometimes what seems reasonable falls apart upon closer scrutiny… the kind of scrutiny provided by science. When we actually run a controlled experiment, we find out something very different.”

  “The hot water freezes faster?”

  “Even more interesting than that: sometimes it does… and sometimes it doesn’t. It all depends on the particular temperature of the hot water. Under certain temperatures, the hot water freezes faster. Under others, it doesn’t. It’s called the Mpemba Effect.”

  “That’s fascinating.”

  “I know, right? Now, make a kid read all about this in a textbook, and the majority of kids are bored to tears. But let them do the experiment themselves? Game-changer.”

  “I wish you were my physics teacher.”

  Mandy laughed.

  A voice called out from one of the labs. “Ms. Broderick?” A girl was raising her hand.

  Mandy frowned. “Elisabeth, are you sure you’ve wrestled with your question long enough?”

  “As long as I can, Ms. Broderick. But I can’t hold it any longer. I really have to pee.”

  The kids all laughed, and Mandy shook her head. “Go take care of your business. But next time, pee during the passing period.”

  “So.” Mandy turned back to me. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m just trying to get a fuller picture of Coach Mossback.”

  “So you can figure out why he did this?”

  I nodded. “I realize we’ll probably never know, but… it’s just so shocking. To do this the week of the state championship game?”

  “You think it’s odd,” said Mandy.

  “You don’t?”

  “I think I made my position on Randy clear the other night. The guy made me sick. Maybe he started to make himself sick… and maybe with the big game coming up, it all came to a head.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” I said.

  “Pressure can turn coal into diamonds… but usually it messes things up. Randy handled pressure well for a long time. He was the diamond. Maybe he finally cracked.”

  “You don’t seem torn up that he’s dead.”

  “I didn’t want to see the man dead, just out of a job,” said Mandy. “But… well, I’d be lying if I said I was particularly sad about it. Though I suppose I’m sad for any boys who liked him.”

  “Did some of the boys not like him?”

  Mandy gave me the are-you-effing-kidding-me look. “My guess is most didn’t like him. The most charitable word I can use is that Randy was demanding. Less charitable, he was mean. And the word I would use is… abusive.”

  “Abusive? In what way?”

  Morris stood on his lab chair and started clucking like a chicken. Mandy strode right over to him, pulled him down, and took him to the side for a little chat. After a minute, she came back to me rolling her eyes.

  “Sorry, I should go. The natives are getting restless. Maybe you and I could go out for a little girls’ night sometime?”

  “I’d like that.” I gave her my cell number and turned to go. But then I turned back. “What temperature?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What temperature does hot water have to be in order to freeze faster than cold water?”

  She laughed. “Turns out the answer is even more complicated than that.”

  I had a feeling Mandy Broderick was right.

  As I walked to my car, my phone buzzed with a text from Katie.

  Emergency! My house. Not kidding around!

  Of course I went straight there. And when I pulled up, I found Katie all alone on the front steps, her head in her hands. I ran across the yard.

  “Katie, what’s the emergency?”

  She turned her phone around and played a video. It showed her husband attempting to throw a football to their son, Dominic. It looked like one of those commercials where a man is teaching his son how to throw a baseball… except featuring a dad who doesn’t actually know how to throw a baseball. As in… a dad who really hasn’t the first clue how to make a ball go through the air from point A to point B.

  “Ever since Friday night’s game, all Dominic can talk about is football. And he insisted we teach him how to throw a football. Of course I’m like, don’t look at me. So I asked Chris to do it, being his father and all. And Chris didn’t want to do it.”

  “Chris was never really the athletic type.”

  “And I knew that. But still, I figured, it’s football. Every boy must know how to throw a football. So I made him do it. And there I was filming it, thinking how sweet it would be to capture the priceless moment when a boy plays catch with his dad for the first time.” She shook her head. “
And this is what I captured.”

  She played the video again. It was truly remarkable how uncoordinated one human being could be.

  “Well,” I said, “you were probably really nice about the whole thing. Right?”

  She looked at me dead serious. “I think you know me better than that. I’m like, ‘Chris, what the hell are you doing?’ And he’s like, ‘What do you mean?’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean, what do I mean? Have you ever seen yourself throw a football?’”

  “Katie, you didn’t.”

  “I did. And then I showed him the video. And I’ve never seen him so hurt in all my life. I feel terrible.”

  “Because you are terrible.”

  “I know. Like I said, I’ve always known he wasn’t an athlete… but I just had no idea that any man, even Chris, could be… that much of not an athlete. And then I couldn’t keep my big fat mouth shut.”

  “You assaulted his manhood, Katie.”

  She raised her hands in the air. “I know, I know. He probably got teased about stuff like this when he was little, too. And then he goes off and makes something of himself. You know, he gets himself a hot wife—that’s me in case you’re wondering—and builds a good life. And then I just had to go and bring him down a notch.”

  “Or three.”

  “Or all of them. What’s the maximum number of notches, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Eleven? Let’s say eleven.”

  “Hope, how do I make it up to him?”

  “Well, he’s a guy, so…”

  “Other than that, Hope! Other than that!”

  “Katie, you’re a good person.”

  “With a big fat mouth.”

  “Stop saying that. You’ve got a brilliant mouth. A very funny mouth. And yes, sometimes it gets you in trouble. But you also took me back after I abandoned you for twelve years.”

  “What’s that have to do with my brilliant mouth?”

  “Nothing! It has to do with you being good and kind and decent. So Chris isn’t good at football… who cares? What is he good at? What is he interested in? Where could you lift him up? Make him feel better about himself? Where could you honor what he already does well?”