Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

  By the end of the first quarter we were down 21 – 0, and that didn’t fully reflect the extent of our humbling. Their second string quarterback was in by the second quarter, and defensive replacements were coming in each time the unit came back onto the field. Which wasn’t a lot, since even their backup offense was having their way with us.

  It was 35 – 0 late in the second quarter when I first heard one of our defensive line starters ask out of the game. He claimed a sore groin or some crap, and Coach took him off with a groan. One running play later, another of our guys pulled the same thing—this time it was Dinos.

  I screamed at him as he limped off. “Are you kidding me!” I shouted, storming after him as if I were pursuing one of the other team’s runners. “You get in like one out of every ten plays as it is, and you’re asking out?” He halfway turned in my direction and gave a whatever shrug.

  I kept coming, enraged at him, until Coach took several steps in my direction, pointing at me with his arm fully extended and his voice definitive. “Get out to your position, Captain. Now.”

  “Oh, I will,” I said, arms waving and feet stomping. “Somebody’s got to have the balls to play these guys, right?”

  Back on the field I had to force myself to let go of it all. Focus. The only thing left in a game like this—especially one that still had a lot of humility ahead—was to do yourself proud. Do your job, hold your ground, don’t quit.

  And if you can make those other guys feel it a few times, that’s something.

  I would make them feel it.

  I was so deep in my game, in my world within world within world, that the whole game began to feel like it was being played in a tube that only included the central one-­third of the field. A pass play evolved perfectly formed in front of my eyes. The big fullback hesitated, held off like he’d be blocking for the quarterback, then suddenly released. He sprinted out of the backfield and, six yards up, turned, timing the play brilliantly with the QB. He reached up and the ball was there in his hands.

  Except that I was like the third partner in that play because I timed it just as perfectly. The instant he turned to go upfield, he barreled point-­blank into the tackle I had been building to all my life.

  It was close to spontaneous combustion as we cracked heads and everything else as hard as humanly possible. The ball shot straight up into the air while the fullback dropped to the ground like he had been bazooka’d.

  I never even went down. I stood over the guy, probably looking like one of those showboat jerks I would never be, but I was kind of stunned and stuck there. It was quite a crack.

  “Okay, dude?” I said as he rolled slowly from his back to all fours and I saw him shake his head around a little.

  “Think so,” he said. “Helluva pop.”

  “Yeah,” I said, patting him lightly on the helmet as I turned toward our bench.

  Only when I did, the effect was stringy, whirly. Everything bright in my vision kind of strobed out with the movement of my head. I shook it a couple of times, back and forth, and it kept happening. I bent a little at the waist. Worse.

  One of our guys ran past me and pounded my shoulder pad.

  “Hellacious hit!” he yelled, running on.

  Pain shot through my head from the shoulder smack or the shout, or both. I didn’t move. The ground looked fine, gridded like it should look. It was only a bit of a shock to the system. I would just stand still for a few seconds.

  Then there was a tugging at both of my elbows, and a couple of teammates were easing me off the field.

  “I mean, it was a great hit and everything,” one of the guys said, “but the bow was a little excessive. They need the field for a football game.”

  I laughed when they did, a little embarrassed at how that must have looked. I wondered how long I had been out there.

  “Are you sure?” was the next thing I heard.

  “What?” I said.

  The skinny guy who was apparently qualified to be team trainer because he was a phys ed major at the college and this was his internship was leaning into my face.

  I was sitting on the bench with no idea of how I got there.

  “Really? Because in a blowout like this there’s no reason to go on risking your neck when you’ve already done your part.”

  “What are you asking, do I want out? Of course not. I mean, thanks, but I’m fine. Day at the office, that’s all.”

  I was already feeling better. That’s how it worked. And no way was I asking out. No way. This is where a man shows his stuff. Right here.

  “All right,” the trainer said. “But just keep in mind, these things matter. They add up. There is a limit to what the human head can tolerate.”

  Thanks, Ma. I saw her then, waving that foolish file at me, and I wondered how much of that a human head could tolerate.

  “Not a linebacker’s head,” I said, feeling like I had definitively settled that little wits-­test.

  If nothing else, I frustrated him enough to make him go away.

  But I wasn’t heartbroken when the whistle blew just then to end the first half.

  I played every last defensive snap of the second half. I made a bunch of tackles and every one made my head hurt.

  Random Access Memory

  “Ya, right,” Dinos said when he finally noticed that I hadn’t noticed that he wasn’t talking to me. It was our last pre-­Thanksgiving practice, mostly a walk-­through and some easy running. I was doing laps on the oval, and he came alongside me looking for an apology of some kind.

  “Seriously, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t remember it like that at all.”

  “Arlo, you were screaming at me, in front of the whole place, humiliating me for coming off the field. The guys on the other team were laughing their heads off. I don’t need to get slaughtered on the field at this point in my football life, and I don’t need shit from you about it, either. My life is out there,” he said, pointing at a lovely cloud that looked a lot like himself. “Yours is here,” he said, pointing at the field. “So don’t be a jerk to me ever again.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” I said.

  “I am not.” He started laughing, which made me feel better. So even though I still did not remember the incident, I was happy to apologize.

  “Sorry, man. Sometimes when I get in the heat of battle . . . I don’t even know what comes out of my mouth. Won’t happen again.” If it even happened that time.

  I’m not sure I was even supposed to remember that kind of thing anyway. I didn’t remember the seventy-­two million miles of road running or the seventy-­two million push-­ups, sit-­ups, stretches, biceps curls, triceps extensions, bench presses, and shoulder presses or the seventy-­two million whatnots that put me in position to blast lights-­out hard into another guy who was just as built as me but who maybe only did sixty-­eight million of each of those things.

  I remembered the events, as opposed to all the connective tissue between them.

  I remembered the hits.

  I remembered the get-­ups, when I got up, from those hits.

  And I remembered the times when the other guy didn’t get up, not right away anyway, or not so steady on his feet anyway.

  Which was why I needed more events. I was homicidally bored standing on the sidelines. I needed to get myself onto the field more. So for the last couple of weeks of the season, I convinced Coach to let me also work out with the offensive unit, as a tight end. Partly due to the fact that we had crap tight ends, he went for it. We knew I could be a good blocker and could read defensive schemes as well as anybody, so when it turned out I also had decent hands and even enjoyed the job, I was in.

  It wasn’t linebacking. Because nothing else is. But it wasn’t half bad.

  The problem of being on the sideline for half the time—seeing the action without being able to feel it, hearing the pop of pads, the crack of helmet on helmet—that problem was solved, and I was complete.

  And that game, on Th
anksgiving, provided the extra bonus of Burgoyne. Even Dad decided he had more important things to do than come this year, and that was fine. I knew I was good at this point, and didn’t need to be watched, to be told by people in the stands. The only people I needed to measure myself by were right there on the field with me.

  Kind of my mirror image, Burgoyne was a tight end who also moonlighted as a linebacker, so we would be facing off all day long. He was a half-­decent player, but when I’d gone up against him before I thought he was a fake. Intimidation and cheap shots but no real guts. Guys let his reputation beat them. If you took him on, it was another story.

  I didn’t like Burgoyne, or the undeserved attention he had been getting in the Citizen since I had become a regular reader of the sports page.

  We were trying to grind them down with our running game, so both of our backs were getting a lot of work. Tyrone, our fullback, was a horse, but because of the size of their line and the stupidity of our scheme, he was getting only a yard or two at a time. Because of a quad injury to McCallum, we had to play our backup halfback, Rafferty, who sucked.

  The point, anyway, was to draw them in, and set them up for a deep throw at the right time.

  It wasn’t working.

  Tyrone was gang tackled by five guys almost as soon as he touched the ball. Just about every linebacker. But not every linebacker. All-­conference Burgoyne wanted no part of Tyrone, even with half his team already riding on his back. He had no problem going after Rafferty, though. He leveled him twice. That’s what he would do. Clothesline a guy, blindside him, chop him, spear him, pile on, as long as the guy was a certain type of guy—and little Rafferty was that kind of guy.

  Blood-­boiling stuff to see.

  The score was tied. Fourth quarter. Late. Possibly.

  I was a capable tight end. An outstanding linebacker, a capable tight end.

  So I was surprised when our scrambling and terror-­stricken quarterback saw me just before the pack swallowed him. He threw me a dying quail that managed to flutter into my hands right over the middle about eight yards upfield.

  Once I gathered the ball and turned, I almost squealed with joy.

  Because of the blitzing and too much Tyrone, most of their defenders were behind me, and the one big, bad inside linebacker I had in isolation.

  He was not even strictly in my path, if I wanted to get to the end zone, and he didn’t seem to be in any rush to get into my path, either.

  So I helped him.

  I would replay this one in my head, in the future, on my good days and on my bad ones. The look of shock on Burgoyne’s face when I ran straight at him, which was nothing like a straight line to six points. Then, just before contact, I saw the other thing, the lean in my direction, the look of determination that I thought was mine alone.

  Bam!

  I knew for certain I never hit anybody that hard. It was similar to how a car must feel when it meets a pedestrian at a good clip. The first crack, of his helmet into my chin. Right up under the face mask and driving it backward. Torquing. I counted the crunching clacking of individual vertebrae. Six.

  People would talk about hearing that stuff. After injuries. Heard a pop. A crack. A snap. Always sounded like cereal crunching to me. Stupid. Lying. You don’t hear those things. Drama. Just shut up and play the game. The game is killer enough. You don’t need to big it up, put bells on it. No rocket bursts, no snap-­crackle-­or-­for-­God’s-­sake-­pop.

  Until it happens. Rib cartilage, jaw, spine, shoulder—all spoke. Raspy, devilish. So loud, so loud. Screaming inside me and out. New pains splintered nuclear over the whole trip—up, then horizontal, then very, very down—and it seemed so long, so torture-­like, it would just go on dividing pains into pains until I hit the turf.

  Coach

  “Next year, son,” Coach Fisk said to me as I sat on the bench in the locker room after everybody else had gone.

  I didn’t know how else to play, though. And Burgoyne responded exactly the way he should have.

  We were both playing football. Playing it the way we had been taught at every level, by every coach, like the one right in front of me at this moment. Why be on the field if you don’t like to crash into other crashers?

  “That’s three serious collisions in the last four weeks, Arlo,” Coach said while the twerp of a trainer went through the tests again. The flashlight in the eyes, look here, look here, eyes up, eyes over, etc. I could pretty much give myself the tests by this point. But I thought it was just the routine. Thought it was just like stretching after the game, just what you did. Who knew they were keeping a tally? Who would have thought that weedy intern-­trainer’s clipboard had a purpose, and that he was watching everything we did and counting the hits, even in practice?

  “It’s time to shut it down, for your own good. Not sure how much of it is bad luck but, my man, you are snakebit. If trouble doesn’t come to you, you go find it—none of which is helped by your admirable but dangerous ability to play to contact on every single play. Are you listening? Do you understand me?”

  We finished the season in the second slot of our league table. That meant we had a conference championship game to look forward to the next week, and the chance to go on to the Eastern state tournament.

  “I’ll take the rest of the week off,” I said. “Then I’ll be ready for the—”

  “You will take the rest of the season off,” Coach said. “There will be other seasons, other years, other goals in your life, young man. You need to look out for yourself now. Arlo, I think you and I both know how good you could be. You could play this game at a high level. But right now, you just have to play it smart.”

  I found myself staring up into Coach’s concerned eyes. I was still wet from my shower, but my stuff was packed up for me by the little weedy traitor trainer himself, and my bag was in my lap and somehow my jacket was on me and zipped up.

  “Where’s your hat, Arlo?”

  It was cold outside. I had wet hair on my sore head.

  “Hats are for managers and trainers, not linebackers,” I said, thinking through my fog that this was not only funny but also likely to remind the coach of my toughness and commitment.

  He took off his own thick wool ski cap, the distinctive teal blue of the Miami Dolphins, and pulled it snugly down over my ears. His wispy fringe of sandy hair stood up all around the perimeter of his head like a sort of sad angel halo.

  “Take care of this,” he said, gently tapping the blue leaping dolphin patch at the front of the hat.

  “I’ll get it back to you, Coach,” I said.

  “Not the hat, dum-­dum,” he said.

  When I got home, in that lonely deep cold of the rawest evenings, I was surprised to find only Lloyd there. Then I remembered it was movie night for the parents.

  He was drunk and whatever else, multiple elses it seemed. Movie night was an opportunity for Ma and Dad to unwind and treat themselves in the middle of the week. It was Lloyd’s opportunity to do his version of the same thing, without them noticing.

  I was just stupid. I went to talk to him because he was my brother and he was there and my head hurt. My head really hurt.

  “What the hell is that?” he said as I stood in the doorway of his bedroom. He was messing with his stereo. When he was at a certain chemical balance, he could be messing with his stereo for hours. “Miami Dolphins?” he said, coming over and ripping the cap off my head in that signature big-­brother move that was simultaneously dehatting and a good hard smack. He tossed the hat into the hallway.

  I stood there. The smack hurt me enough to make my eyes bulge, wet and pulsing.

  Then I told him about my day and the collision and practice and what happened after. Because he was my brother, and they had taken football away from me like they had from him.

  “You got kicked off the football team? Because you hit your head?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, even as I lost the will to do so.

  “Well,” he said, backing m
e out the door, “welcome to the shit heap, big man.” He didn’t even have me all the way out when he slammed the door right in my face.

  I got my hand up—my hand absorbed the door, and my nose absorbed my hand.

  I bent down to pick up the Miami Dolphins hat that Coach was kind enough to loan me. The blood rushed to my head and I got back up before it flooded me. I didn’t feel well, on any level at all, as I shuffled toward my room.

  As I crossed the threshold to the bedroom, I flipped on the light. Everything went bright for a second until everything went black.

  ***

  I woke up in an awkward heap on the floor, my arms under me, my face propped some against a footpost of the bed. My head felt like someone was actually turning a big screw, driving it into the bone and brain with a turn, then a turn, then a turn.

  Eventually, through inch-­worming along the floor, I made it to the head of my bed without pulling any attention from anybody. I assumed hours had passed and my parents were in bed, but I had no interest in confirming that in the state I was in.

  I could not make it up onto the soft mattress, and just pawed at it a few times before giving up and laying my head on the rug.

  ***

  “I’m sorry,” my brother said, a desperate whisper in my ear. “I’m sorry. I went to the bathroom. Your door was open. I’m sorry they did this to you. Sorry, here you go.” He heaved and strained, getting me up off the floor, struggled, but then between the two of us we got me up and into the bed.

  “Be careful now,” he said while backing away, which even at the end of my horrendous day, my football life, my wits, and maybe my rope, I managed to find funny enough to laugh at.

  Ground Zero

  For three days I told everybody it was some nasty bad flu, and I was just bitchy enough that I was left mostly alone to be miserable in my room. And I was miserable with the lingering headache, jumpy vision, and a Dracula-­level reaction to strong bright light.

  But when those things started gradually lifting on day four, and five, and six, I didn’t actually feel better.