Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

  It was pretty commonly assumed that Anderson was on the ’roids, which explained the inhuman bulk of him, the back acne, and the fistful of Division 1 recruitment letters that started pouring in for him on September 1.

  I didn’t care what Anderson did to himself, only what he did to me. Scare me, dare me, hurt me, improve me.

  “Comin’ atcha, Brodie!” he barked from down in his stance.

  I was in a half crouch but straightened right up to give him a bright smile and welcoming wide arms.

  The quarterback took the snap and turned for the handoff as the lines engaged. Their job was to open that hole between the center and right guard to spring that halfback through and onto open spaces. Ours was to see that that hole never opened or was plugged again just as quick if it did. But the defensive tackle, Ottaker, who’d been lining up opposite Anderson all day, had clearly had all he could take. He might as well have started every play already down on his back with his hands covering his face.

  So the big boy was mine. All day.

  Down went Ottaker, with Anderson trampling right over his chest. Open was the hole, Anderson leading the ballcarrier at a gallop right up through the seam toward my left. I shifted, planted, and took Anderson on at full strength.

  Crrrasshhh.

  I thought I was going forward when I connected with Anderson’s shoulder, but somehow I was keeling backward, looking into his face mask and the sky beyond it, and then the blur of a running back leaping over me to greener pastures.

  Anderson had me good and down, then good and forearmed for good measure, then I had a hand jammed up under his chin strap bouncing his head back, then he had a big hand inside my face mask and away we went, snarling and snorting.

  We were pulling and pounding at each other’s helmets as I rolled him over and then he rolled me—and as stupid as it is to be punching a helmet, we were both wildly doing just that when it seemed like fifty football players and coaches and heavy machinery and Tasers and fire hoses got in there and pried us apart.

  It was amazing.

  ***

  “I admire your spirit, gentlemen,” Coach said, his arms folded and his red baseball cap tipped way back on his head. The field was completely cleared of people, and we were sitting on the bench. I knew it was going to go like this. Publicly he had to pretend to be angrier than he was, but privately this is exactly what coaches want to see.

  “Thanks, Coach,” I said.

  Coach Fisk had his face at about the midpoint between my left ear and Anderson’s right, but was staring straight ahead like he was talking to somebody way beyond us.

  “Your decision making, on the other hand, makes me want to horsewhip you in front of a full stadium.”

  I might have been inaccurate about his feelings.

  He just hovered there, letting the words fizz, while the three of us held our positions. Until a screech broke the calm.

  Phweeeeeeeet!

  He blew so hard into his coach’s whistle, police whistle really, it would have knocked me over if I were in front of it. It just about punctured my eardrum. Anderson and I both groaned and rubbed hard at our ears.

  “That, gentlemen,” Coach Fisk said as he fell back into normal Coach speechmaking position, “is the sound of the whistle that signals the stoppage of play. I expect all players, but especially top-­of-­the-­food-­chain players, to learn that sound and to learn how to respond to that sound. Regardless of whether it is in real game-­time action or in practice, my players heed that sound, or my players do not play. Is there anything ambiguous in that statement?”

  “No, Coach,” we both said enthusiastically.

  Anderson slyly turned his gigantic head in my direction and opened the sound-­making hole. “Ambiguous means not understand—”

  “Really?” I cut in, “I thought amBIGuous was what happened when you took too many ster—”

  “Great, men,” Coach cut in. “Great. Camaraderie, good-­natured horseplay, team building, that’s what I like to see among my leaders. Now, shake hands and make up for the first and last intrasquad altercation of the season.”

  Anderson looked like this was killing him, which was a bonus. For my part, I was happy to shake his hand. Not out of love but out of thanks. He was doing more for me as an athlete than probably anybody, even Coach.

  I stuck out my hand. He took it.

  Lord, he was strong. We shook long, and we both squeezed, but jeez, I was starting to feel the cartilage in my hand crackle and hoped I was the only one who could hear it.

  Phweeeeeeet, Coach screeched with his whistle, hurting my ears again but making my hand eternally grateful.

  I would not forget that sound again.

  Subs and Scrubs

  “Maybe you’d do better lifting the weight with your belly, man,” I said at just the right make-­or-break moment between Dinos and the last rep on the bench press. “Seriously, aren’t you embarrassed about the way you look?”

  “Rrrrrrrraaaaaawwwww!” he shouted loud enough to rattle the wire-­reinforced windows right out of their frames. He got that weight up one more time without any physical help from me. I was expecting some gratitude.

  Instead, he popped right up off the bench and got strangely close to my face.

  “Okay, so you’re a stud. You’re Starlo the Stud. Do you really need to be a jackass now just so everybody gets it?”

  I was stunned stupid. Dinos was always the last guy to take that kind of ribbing seriously.

  “Calm down, man,” I said. “What happened in Greece to make you come back all sensitive about yourself all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not all sensitive about myself,” he said, going so far as to poke me in the chest as he said it. “I’m sensitive about you. I mean, it’s great to have a whiff of confidence, but Arlo, you smell like shit so far this year.”

  For the first time since football started up again, I was back on my heels. Dinos, my best friend whose name wasn’t Sandy, was putting it to me in a way I shouldn’t have had to tolerate from anybody.

  “I’m not that bad,” I said.

  “You are exactly that bad.”

  I was starting to get mad. “Well, maybe I was doing it for your own good, Dinos, ever think of that? Maybe I have to push you a little harder because I see what’s happening to you, and I don’t want to see you stuck with the subs and scrubs for your senior year.”

  “I am a sub! I’m perfectly happy being a scrub. If Coach gave me more snaps, I’d ask if I could give them to somebody else. I’m going to the University of Wisconsin – Madison next year because I’m putting in the work to make that happen and I can’t wait. Football will have no part in my life. Football is for numbskulls. You know why I’m playing football this year? Two reasons. First is that it’s a laugh and a nice part of my portfolio of senior year experiences. And second, because my best friend is a numbskull.”

  “Okay, fatboy, now you listen to a couple of things—”

  “No. No couple of things. I have committed to this unreasonable workout schedule with you even though I don’t need it anymore because it’s our thing, and I am supporting you while I can. So you can puff out your chest for the rest of the world and act superior to everybody else if you want to, but you cannot do it to me. And the next time you say something to throw me off instead of hollering brainless encouragement like you’re supposed to when I’m trying to complete my last rep, I will take that steel bar and whatever plates are on it and as my final, final rep I will shove the whole show right up your ass.”

  Holy hell.

  “Holy hell, Dinos. Jackass, and shit smell, and numbskull?”

  He nodded, right up closer to my face than I would ever again let a guy get.

  “You’re gonna miss me,” he said.

  And only at that exact second did it occur to me that I would, possibly, in the future. Right now it was only out of respect for our history that I held back from pile driving his fat head right into the concrete floor.

  ***
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  “Not as much as I’m gonna miss him,” Sandy said as we sat on her porch and I related the whole thing to her. “Who else is going to force anything like that kind of humility on you?”

  That was not at all what I was aiming for in sharing this story with her.

  “One, nobody’s forcing anything on me. And two, what’s humility ever done for anyone?”

  She rushed her words then, like that airspace had to be filled right away. “Please tell me that was a joke, Arlo. No, really, please.”

  I pulled her close to me because I thought that was the smart thing to do.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Sandy, I’ll tell you anything you need me to.”

  I thought, wholeheartedly, that I had said a really good thing there.

  But when she yanked out from under my grip—and true to her word, she had gotten even stronger over the summer—and disappeared into her house with nothing more than a sharp “Night,” I had to consider otherwise.

  The nightly walk between Sandy’s house and mine was suddenly a lonely and uncertain thing. I had managed to piss off both of my most reliable supporters, just when I was hitting my stride everywhere else. Maybe this was going to be something to get used to, with every year, with every new level and bigger stage. People would get used to it. We’d all adjust. If I was just patient, people would catch up and everything would be fine.

  “Again?” I said, finding Lloyd in my bed when all I wanted was to fall into it. “What is going on? Get out of there. I need to crash, Lloyd, right now, and I have no time for any more of this nonsense from anybody today. I mean it, get the hell out. Now.” I shoved the side of his head, and he still didn’t stir.

  “Can’t you just leave him alone?” Ma said from behind me.

  I spun toward her. “Are you joking?” I said. “Ma, the freak has come into my room and stolen my bed, and you are telling me to leave him alone?”

  She looked at me as if I were blowing snakes out of my nose rather than being the only rational person in the room.

  “You have everything, Arlo,” she said. “You are on your way to getting everything you have ever wanted. Everything you both ever wanted. Can you show just a little kindness and leave him be for now? Would it be such a big sacrifice to just trade rooms for tonight?”

  “No, Ma,” I said to her tired and sad face because you’d have to be an even bigger jackass, stink breath, numbskull than Starlo to say all the things I was thinking to that face.

  “Good boy,” she said, then patted my cheek and headed off to her own room.

  “Good boy, big man,” I heard at my back.

  I entered the hallway and ran right into Dad, who was standing there with a scowl and an opinion. “Maybe he’s the way he is because of crap like this, Emma,” he said.

  “Don’t start, Louis,” she said, brushing past him on the way to their room.

  We stood looking at each other. “You don’t have to do this, son,” he said. “I’ll go in there and haul him out myself, rather than see him get away with what he’s doing to—”

  I reached out and squeezed his arm, to reassure him, thank him, and quiet him. He was right but Ma was frazzled, and it was going to be a serious no-­win for everybody if we blew this up. Instead, we were going to have to live with a win-­for-­Lloyd, whatever it was he was playing. “Just for tonight, Dad, we’ll let it go. But thanks. And good night.”

  “Good night,” he sighed, and turned away.

  “Good night,” Lloyd chirped.

  I was fortunately tired enough that I was able to walk away, and to make my way through whatever state his room was in, fall down onto the bed, and reach unconsciousness before I had to think too much about it.

  I thought I was dreaming unpleasantly, but then I realized my dreams at their worst never came with that smell.

  “You have everything, big man,” he was saying, and my eyes opened to the sight of boxer shorts that should have been changed five days ago hovering six inches in front of me. “Do you have to have my bed, too? Can you leave me nothing at all, big man?”

  I had no idea how much I had slept, other than to know it wasn’t nearly enough. But like a radio-­controlled zombie, I heeded his wishes, because of Ma’s wishes, and got out of his bed and his room and his wicked way.

  “Good boy, big man,” said my personal sandman, again.

  Big man would not be good boy much longer if this kept up. Ma or no Ma.

  Hits and Lists

  Two days before our opening game of the season, Coach made me defensive cocaptain.

  On our team it was an almost completely ceremonial title, since Coach Fisk made every important decision himself from the sidelines. But still, it meant something. It meant he had faith in me. It meant the other guys were going to look to me as a leader. It meant I was excelling not just among this group here but also in the bigger picture, because he announced that I was the first junior ever to receive the honor.

  That meant the most to me. That meant Coach considered me special.

  And making captain was on my Hit List.

  “What is this stupid thing?” Lloyd said, laughing in a not so nice way as I walked into the house all pumped up with the news.

  He was walking again out of my bedroom, holding a small notebook. The Hit List.

  He was coming straight in my direction, with his head down so he could keep reading and cackling.

  He used to know better than to keep his head down like that.

  I burst forward just as he started to look up, and I cracked the top of my skull right into his forehead, sending him sprawling backward across the floor.

  He was lying on his back, his head and shoulders across the goal line and into my room, when I stood over him. He was wincing with pain, still grinning like a jack-­o’-­lantern, and incredibly, still reading.

  “Does that say MVP?” he croaked, turning the notebook toward me so I could help him out.

  I snatched it out of his hand.

  “You should reverse a couple of things, though. You shouldn’t marry Sandy before you go number one in the NFL draft.”

  “Lloyd, cut it out. Stop digging around in my stuff.”

  “It was right there out in the open, in the third drawer down underneath all your underarmor big man shirts.”

  I crouched down low to him. “Why are you doing this stuff? Why are you all of a sudden obsessed with being all into my shit?”

  He stopped grinning, increased wincing.

  “I was the big man, you know, big man? I was your big man. I’m the one who showed you how to hit.”

  He waited.

  As far as I was concerned he could keep waiting. I liked him right down there where he was.

  “You probably ain’t even doing it right,” he said. “Not since I haven’t been there to show you. They’ll figure you out, then they’ll bring your chicken ass down. I remember, don’t forget. I remember how scared you were. Don’t forget. You should add to the very end of that list: Everybody figures me out and I crawl home to Lloyd.”

  Every molecule of me was voting for the same thing, and that was to give Lloyd such a pummeling that he would remember nothing else his whole life.

  But fortunately something smarter, something better, overruled the impulse and I stood up. I stepped over him into my room, and slowly pushed the door closed, plowing his head and shoulders right out into the hallway as it shut. “Stay out of here or else, Lloyd.”

  He laughed as he slowly bumbled to his feet. “That act might be working on the rest of the world, big man. But you know you’re powerless with me. I own you.”

  His laughter was fading as I punched my door hard. Then it got twice as loud.

  At least I could now stop pretending that the head-­butt didn’t also punish me. I cupped both hands over my skull and flopped down onto the bed.

  ***

  Friday, the last practice before opening day, Coach shut me down.

  “What?” I hollered at him as I came off the field
while man-­on-­man blocking drills raged on behind me. I adored man-­on-­man blocking drills.

  “Calm down, Mr. Brodie, calm down,” he said in a not-­so-­calm voice of his own that reminded me cocaptain was still not superior to Coach.

  “Sorry, Coach,” I said. “I just don’t understand—”

  “You’re ready.”

  “I sure am,” I said. “Ready for anything and everything, which is why I want to be back out there banging.”

  “Which is why you’re gonna stand right here next to me for the rest of practice and observe. You don’t need to be using up any more of your bang on our own guys.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Coach, I feel like I’ve got enough bang for everybody.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, turning his attention back to the guys on the field.

  “Yeah, but Coach . . . ,” I started, but he continued watching the guys and made a pointing gesture with two fingers, indicating I should be doing the same.

  “You see big Anderson there?” he said as the monster lined up across from Dinos.

  “Kind of hard not to.”

  “Watch after the snap. Watch his feet.”

  The center snapped the ball, the quarterback took it and started into his usual very deep drop back. His linemen pulled back into the mobile force field of beef that gave him time to read the field, find an open receiver, plant and unload a throw strong and accurate enough to connect. Dinos was as usual no more than a minor threat, and I watched Anderson’s feet the whole time he dominated my pal.

  Anderson had great feet for such a hulk. Light and fast, seeming like they were always moving but always somehow rooted as well.

  “He has good feet,” I said, trying to be accurate without being generous. “But to be fair, Dinos has ridiculously small feet, so the balance matchup there is way one-­sided.”

  Pass completed, and the players lined up again.

  “That it?” Coach said, unamused. “If that’s your idea of analysis, Captain, you might not go all that far in this business after all.”

  The center snapped the ball. The quarterback dropped back.