Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

I opened the door to find him looking like he had the wrong address.

  “Hey, man, what’s up?” I said warily.

  “Are you ready, or what?” he answered. “We don’t want to be late.”

  He remained stuck there, his hands clasped in front of him, and fidgeting. He was trying hard. I got it now. This explained his lost look, because this was a place none of us had ever been before, a place where my older brother was learning to be my supporter, on my day.

  “You’re coming to my game?” I said, appreciative.

  He looked back down at his feet, then came up.

  “Ah, man,” I said, reaching out and tugging on his shirt sleeve, “it’s still a little early. Come in here, will ya?”

  I kept tugging, and he came in.

  “Nice place you got here,” he said, looking around before sitting himself at my desk.

  “Thanks. Now, you gonna give me advice, like a good big brother?”

  He looked a little startled but recovered admirably. “Advice? You want advice, from me? The chick, you mean? Well, as soon as the parents go in to wash the dishes—”

  “Ah, thanks for that, Lloyd. But I meant football. Football advice, and big game stuff. Tell you the truth, I’m more than a little bit nervous. A lot of people show up. I know they’re there for the varsity, but some of them will be watching us, too. Hey, this is the first time I’ll have you or Dad watching me play jayvee, and that’s enough to give me the shakes.”

  This pleased him noticeably. And loosened him up.

  “Okay,” he said, getting up and closing the door before starting, then speaking and pacing like some Hollywood version of a big-­game coach. “Here’s the main thing. . . .”

  I knew exactly what he was going to tell me to do. I was already doing it. Ever since the pep talk from Coach Fisk, I was getting and going. I played clean, but I played to crush bones. Anybody who came across my area of responsibility paid for it, and if somebody was carrying the ball into a zone of responsibility that was within my reach, he likewise paid for it. Dearly. Receivers were hearing footsteps before I arrived if I was in pass coverage; running backs altered their routes to avoid me; quarterbacks lost their composure and their effectiveness.

  It’s not that I was suddenly mad talented. I wasn’t. I was good, but only as good as a lot of other guys.

  But now I was fierce. I was menacing, and I was a threat to my own teammates in practice. I knew Monday I was already ready for this game. McCallum took a casual run in my direction after a lazy handoff because our offense thought our defense wasn’t taking things seriously.

  If I have pads and a helmet on, I’m taking it seriously, so you’d better take me seriously.

  When McCallum popped through the line and smiled at me as he came my way, I felt the roar come up from my guts. I flattened him. I drilled him right in the numbers, exploded through him, planted him flat on his back and continued running right over him.

  I kept running down the field, bellowing, smacking myself on the helmet, jumping in the air. I wanted the game to start right then and to go on forever, even after I finally reversed field and saw that McCallum remained on his back for a few minutes before getting very slowly up.

  When I blasted the competition with the perfect violence of a vicious clean tackle like that, it altered the offense’s game plan. And it altered me, made me better, stronger. My head exploded with the impact, because of the physical jolt and because of the crazy rush of power that came over me. Lining a ballcarrier up and knocking him out of his shoes with precise timing and malice only made me want to do it again, right away.

  And I knew well whose game I got it from.

  “. . . and a lot of times, if you add a little loud growlin’ and snarlin’ to your business just before you make contact, it’ll give ’em the yips somethin’ awful, and they’ll become gradually useless over time. And the harder you hit, the stronger you get, physically. Hit big and you’re invincible—be tentative and watch how quick you get injured. Or even better than all that, you get up from the best kind of punishing tackle and you feel like your feet aren’t even touching turf. You’re high, is the truth of it. Honestly, wickedly, high, the best feeling in the world.”

  It was hard to tell even what Lloyd was looking at as he stomped and pumped around my room throughout his motivational speech. Glassy-­eyed but clear at the same time, he looked at the floor, the ceiling, the middle distance and someplace way beyond that until he had said what he had to say, and he slowed himself like a jet’s engines powering down. Then, a little sweatier and breathier than when he had started, he gazed over to me as I sat on my bed, looking hard back at him. The talk left me unsurprised and mesmerized.

  “Like that,” he said. “Do it like that, and you’ll be all right, Arlo.”

  I knew what he was looking at, off in that distance. He was looking at the game he would have been playing, that we would have been playing, the Brodie Brothers mowing down the world together.

  “I will,” I said, standing and slapping his shoulder hard enough to make him arch-­brow me. “I will do it exactly like that.”

  ***

  I was keenly aware of the full stands, the biggest crowd I had yet played in front of, and of my people being up there among the fans. My girl. My dad, who had never seen me play jayvee. My brother. I got onto the field, but it was like I left half of my brain up there in the stands. I couldn’t get my rhythm. I was floundering when the playing field, the gridiron, was supposed to be mine.

  The other guys were a famously free-­passing team, loving the aerial game. But there is a big difference between knowing that fact and knowing what to do about it. Our whole unit was a step behind, a yard wide of making the plays we needed to make. They scored two of their first three possessions, both on deep throws after pump-­faking our defensive backs into thinking short. And I was right there, in coverage, watching the beautiful spirals their all-­conference quarterback was known for drift high over my head.

  “Come on, Arlo, head’s up!” Dinos yelled. I glared in his direction, on the sideline because he was useless at defending the pass.

  “Pass-­pass-­run, or run-­run-­pass!” Coach hollered after our offense chased us halfway back into the game. “It’s the stupidest damn thing I have ever seen in a game, and I feel so insulted I want to run right over to the other sideline and punch that coach right in the face. And I want to punch you guys right in the face because you’re too stupid to realize what they’re doing. But since I am not allowed to do that by the state’s interscholastic sports competition rules—and I know that because I checked last week—I need you guys to do basically the same thing, on the field!”

  This was embarrassing, and loud enough that I actually felt compelled to swivel around and check up in the stands to see if Sandy was watching this too closely. Or worse, if Lloyd was getting disgusted enough that he was coming to drag me out of the game by my face mask.

  “Hey!” Coach said, rapping on my helmet about fifty times before I even had a chance to answer the door. “Listen, Ferdinand the gentle bull! If you are that interested in whoever is up there in the stands, you are free to go and join them. Because for all the good you’re doing, you could just as well wave at those touchdowns from up there.”

  A couple of guys were bold or stupid enough to laugh but stifled it when Coach whipped round on them.

  “Pass-­pass-­run! Run-­run-­pass. Know what that means? It means, at the very least, you boys know what every play is gonna be on the second down. Right?”

  “Right, Coach!” we yelled together.

  “Right! So, feel ’em out on first down. Flex defense, bend-­don’t-­break. Then, second down we drop the hammer. Pass rushers, linebackers, deep backs, you will know where to be. Be there! And MOW THEM DOWN!”

  The entire defensive unit howled out a wordless Neanderthal roar, and the stands gave it back to us twentyfold. Lord, this was it. I could feel this, under my feet and inside my ribcage. The intoxication athlet
es always say they get from a raucous home crowd. It was the best thing I ever felt, and I wanted it to go on and on.

  After the first play from scrimmage, they got a five-­yard gain off left tackle, but it didn’t mean anything and we knew it. At the snap, we packed the line, our linemen standing their linemen straight up, just powering straight like plow horses while the linebackers all rushed in to catch the run coming right tackle. The three of us rammed into the running back all at once, blasting him and ourselves back through that line, on his ass, coughing back up half of those yards they had just gained.

  Then we knew the pass was coming. Our strong-­side safety, like he was told in advance, was running so hard, to the spot, he could have had his eyes closed, and he and ball and unfortunate receiver reached the exact same spot in the angry universe at exactly the same time.

  They started going with the run again, and on second down I was first man in. Since we were so clued in, it became purely a race, of speed and power and ruthlessness, and suddenly I was the man. Popped that running back so hard I went right over him, blasted him. Ka-­blam! It was like an explosion of humanity. It was just like Lloyd used to do it. The other guy never even knew what hit him. His arms and legs just stopped working, his knees gave out, and he dropped on the spot like a rag doll.

  I kept right on in a somersault that left me in the backfield where I hopped to my feet and met the quarterback face mask to face mask.

  “Hello,” I said, smiling right into him. I could not stop smiling.

  And right there he showed me. In his expression, in his blinking.

  He showed me what he really never should have showed me.

  When we lined up for the pass, I kept looking over to Coach for the sign that I could blitz. I looked, looked, looked again until I did everything but fold my hands please.

  And then he gave it to me.

  At the snap I was gone as if there were no football game in front of me at all but just wind sprints I was running alone on the track. I was vaguely aware of maybe a hand brushing my arm or something, but that was it as I came barreling in weak side and absolutely crushing my new QB pal, belting him square in the middle of the number eleven on his back before he could even get his feet set. I even carried him a couple of extra yards into the backfield, feeling a rush of power and strength that surely had no limit now, before I slammed him to the ground.

  While the crowd roared crazy, I rolled him over, and could feel myself smiling again, and I said it again.

  “Hello again.”

  “Yeah, hi,” he said, wincing.

  This was already the greatest day of my life.

  It became muscle memory then. I didn’t think, I just knew without knowing. I was everywhere the ball was, appearing for all the world to be the fastest, hardest, smartest thing that had ever played, because the game was making total sense to me, and it was getting so easy. I hit everything in sight, some things I didn’t even see. I hit running backs and receivers, tight ends and offensive linemen. I found out I loved hitting offensive linemen. They were big but not much stronger than me, and had no chance of getting up the same head of steam a charging linebacker could. A couple of times I had a straight shot at the ballcarrier, but I veered slightly to barrel down his blocking lineman anyway, just to be inclusive.

  I wound up on my back, or on my front, with my face mask full of dirt like I was cutting turf cookies. I got sandwich-­blocked by two very angry linemen. My hand was stepped on when I was at the bottom of a pile. The backup quarterback drilled me in the side of the head with a throw, and it was too hard and too precise in the vicinity of no open receivers to have been an accident.

  I loved every single down of it.

  Deep in the game, under two minutes to go, they were lined up in our end, third and goal and four yards out. They lined up one of their defensive linemen at fullback. He was an absolute beastmaster of a guy who had done his fair share of terrorizing our offense all afternoon, which was the main reason I even bothered to watch when our offense was on the field.

  The snap, the handoff, the crush of bodies, the line partially opening up and partially just getting stamped down by the guy like they were so many weeds in his footpath.

  Middle linebacker, he was my responsibility.

  I turned on the jets like it was my life on the line and not just four yards.

  Three yards.

  Two.

  The behemoth and I were formally introduced at the one-­and-­a-­half-­yard line. A pleasure to meet you, I have admired your work. Same to you.

  The almighty crack was a gunshot cutting silence, a clash of equipment and muscle and physics blasting through the din of a thousand crazies.

  My everything hit his everything, his everything my everything, shoulder and shoulder and shoulder and shoulder and helmet and helmet and scream and crunch and down like the last two dinosaurs.

  At the two-­yard line.

  The stop.

  I had dreamed about a stop like that. Everybody who plays linebacker dreams about a stop like that, and as I jumped up and over the great beast—and I think guys were slapping and pounding on me—I felt it, it, it high like high like no drugs could possibly fake, just like Lloyd said. I floated as I sucked up the crowd roar and spurted adrenaline sweat like a lawn sprinkler and I screamed until my lungs emptied and my feet were not even there.

  Somebody, whoever, grabbed me by the shirt as I continued down the field toward whatever, who cared, and over to the proper sideline and off the field.

  Time passed quickly, in spurts, like somebody was alternating between stomping on my accelerator pedal and my brake as I showered and changed and smiled and we made way for the varsity and Coach Fisk said things and pointed at me with both hands and everybody thanked Thanksgiving and out we drifted—some of us to watch the varsity game, others to find our people in the parking lot or to be found by them.

  Sandy grabbed me just as I was leaving the locker room.

  “Did you see me?” I said to Sandy, who was around my big neck like a lilac-­scented boa constrictor.

  “Are you okay?” she said, leaning back to look at me.

  “Amazing,” I said. “Incredibly amazing.” Words were not sufficient to explain.

  We walked to the parking lot, me a thousand feet high. Suddenly Lloyd had me, I didn’t even know how. He stole me and now I was his, his hands gripping my shoulders.

  “I could hardly believe my eyes,” he said, both solemn and elated.

  “Believe ’em,” I said, rising up on the toes of where my feet should have been to look down on him.

  “What are you so giddy about?” Dad said, verging on dampening the holiday spirit. “You lost.”

  “What?” I said, still grinning because I couldn’t help it.

  “You lost,” Dad repeated, though straining to hold his stern face. Team game or no—won, lost, or whatever—he couldn’t hide how proud and excited he was about what he had seen of me. Of his boy. His brute of a boy. “The field goal? Last minute? You lost.” He was chuckling at this point.

  “So that’s funny now, is it?” Lloyd said, cutting an icy chill through the heart of the conversation.

  “What?” Dad snapped back.

  “You never seemed to think it was funny when my teams lost. Whatever happened to ‘A loss is a loss is a loss’? Huh, Dad? Must have taken you a whole weekend to come up with that gem. Or the one you basically stole from Bill Parcells, ‘You are exactly what your record says you are.’ You thought I was too stupid to even know you didn’t make that up.”

  “Right, Lloyd, can you not spoil the day for everybody?” Dad said.

  I turned from him to Lloyd, who was shrugging and nodding in a petulant, aggressive way. Then to Sandy, who was shimmering.

  “Anyway, I’m not the one doing the spoiling,” Lloyd said. “It was Arlo who lost.”

  “Maybe they did,” I said, “but I didn’t.”

  And that was exactly how I felt.

  “That’s r
ight,” Sandy chirped, the sound of her tone pulling all the menfolk happily away from the football talk.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Lloyd said. He was looking at Sandy in a way that instantly suggested a world of unfortunate possibilities.

  “A pleasure,” Dad said, shaking her hand with both vigor and delicacy like she was kind of robust royalty. He was never a naturally sociable creature, and it could seem like every time he met a new person he had to relearn the whole process all over again. I feared he might be odd, and he was, but kind of charmingly so. Good start.

  “Pleasu’.” Lloyd’s speech was garbled because he had something in his mouth, and that something was the back of Sandy’s hand. Specifically, the knuckle of her left index finger.

  “Lloyd,” I snapped.

  “Shows you what you know about these things,” he said to me. “A gentleman is supposed to kiss a lady’s hand.”

  “Teeth don’t play any part in hand kissing,” Dad said.

  I turned to Sandy, mortified. She was laughing. I opened the car door and pushed her into the back and climbed in after her, just to make sure Lloyd didn’t. He and my father got in and we eased our way out of the crowded parking lot.

  “Your brother is sooo funny,” Sandy said as she leaned in close. She said it very softly, so Lloyd wouldn’t hear her from the front.

  “He is?” I said. “Well, I know he can be. I mean, I’m glad he was.”

  “What was I?” he said, whipping around and laying his old devil grin on us.

  “Who says we were talking about you?” I said.

  “Pffft. Who else would you be talking about, him?” He gestured dismissively toward the driver.

  “Don’t be nasty, Lloydo. I think your father is a lovely and very interesting man as a matter of fact.”

  Lloydo. Miraculous. How can women achieve things like that, well, easy intimacy I guess, accomplishing in an hour what guys can almost never manage?

  He turned around and beamed at her.

  “Yeah, Lloydo,” I said.

  And again, how does the same head, with the same lips and teeth and eyebrows, change expression comprehensively without seeming to flicker?