When the Men Were Gone

by Marjorie Herrera Lewis

  The crowd stood and cheered.

  “We’re here to support y’all,” a man shouted.

  “We ain’t a girls’ team!” shouted another man.

  “Don’t embarrass the boys!” yelled yet another man.

  With every shout, the crowd—which I figured to be close to five hundred people, the vast majority men—cheered. Heads were nodding. People were whispering. Facial expressions revealed solidarity. Certainly, I must have some allies in town, I thought, but for some reason they seemed to have stayed home.

  John looked at me. I had nothing to say. The entire display was disappointing but mostly hurtful. The town I’d grown up in, the team I loved, the boys I taught—all had turned their backs on me. Had they spit in my face, I would have felt no worse than I did as I listened to the shouts, the anger, and the vitriol.

  “Let’s get out of here,” John said.

  He grabbed my hand, and as we were about to stand and leave, a door in the far-right back of the room opened.

  In walked the football team. Underclassmen dressed in street clothes and seniors wore their maroon-and-white game-day uniforms, BROWNWOOD splashed across their chests. Jimmy walked in first and shouted, “Hold the vote!”

  Everyone turned. The whispers started: What’s going on? What’s this about? What are they doing?

  As the underclassmen scattered among the crowd, the seniors walked to the front of the room, directly in front of the school board. All seven seniors faced the crowd. Jimmy, standing in the center of the seven boys, turned to face the school board.

  “We know why you’re here, and because you’re here to cancel the season, there is something we want you to witness.”

  Jimmy then turned, and while standing among his fellow seniors, he faced the crowd.

  “Most of us started playing football when we were in junior high,” he said. “For years, we’d come to Lions games, dreaming of our turn, our senior year, wearing the school name across our chests for one last season. We have a coach, and if you hadn’t noticed, she’s sitting in the back of the room. Yes, she. But because that’s not good enough for you, for the seven of us standing here, it’s over. We are here to take off our Brownwood Lions football uniforms for the final time in our lives, and we want you to watch.”

  In unison, they took off their heavy leather helmets.

  The crowd gasped.

  They took off their jerseys.

  The gasp got louder.

  As they began to unlace their shoulder pads, someone shouted, “Stop!”

  The seniors stopped and looked in the man’s direction.

  Then another man shouted, “Wait!”

  Then the shouts started coming from everywhere.

  “Hold the vote!”

  “I can’t watch it end! Not like this!”

  Jimmy, Bobby Ray, Kevin, Charlie, Jake, and Willie appeared elated, when I noticed they all looked over at Roger Duenkler. Roger was the only senior who had taken his shoulder pads off.

  Roger looked at the remaining six seniors and then at his dad, Moonshiner, who was gesturing with his head as if to say to Roger, Let’s get out of here. The room went silent.

  Moonshiner then stood up and shouted, “She’s got y’all fooled! She forced Moose out, and I witnessed it. I caught her hiding out in the parking lot during football practices taking notes on everything she thought Moose was doing wrong. She hired him just to make it look good. She’s been planning this all along.”

  Moose, standing in the back, shouted, “It’s true!”

  The crowd turned. I was shocked. I had never forced Moose out. I’d done everything I could do to make it work.

  “You can’t deny it, Tylene,” Moonshiner said. “It’s over.”

  With a cane in his right hand keeping him steady, Moose, who was known to use a cane only when extreme fatigue had set in, walked down to the front of the room and took the microphone.

  “It’s true, she was the coach all along. She was keeping her promise to me,” Moose told the crowd. “I was in over my head, so she spent an hour and a half under the sweltering sun, keeping notes, so she could meet up after practice to help me. She mentored me. I was never the coach. It was always Miss Tylene, whether she knew it or not.

  “And one other thing,” Moose said. He paused and then walked toward the hallway door, the door the board had entered with their tables and chairs. Moose opened the door and the crowd gasped, and immediately I knew why I had been unable to reach Moose throughout the day. At the entrance sat Stanley in his wheelchair. His partially amputated leg heavily wrapped, Stanley slowly wheeled himself through the doorway. Moose stepped beside him and pushed him to the center of the room. Jimmy ran to his brother. They embraced, and both began to cry.

  “Look at me,” Moose said to the crowd. He then lifted his cane and hung it on his right wrist. “Look at Stanley.”

  Stanley was still in the embrace of his brother.

  Pointing to the seniors with his left hand and holding the microphone in his right, Moose said, “We are their future.” And then he paused.

  Wiping away tears with the back of his left hand, Jimmy walked back and stood with his teammates.

  “They are the present,” Moose said. “Don’t give them their future before they have finished with their present.”

  Despite Moose’s plea, Roger walked up to his father, and together they approached me.

  “My son will never play for a dame,” Moonshiner said. He then turned to his son standing beside him.

  Roger handed his equipment to me and then glanced back at his teammates, and I recognized conflict splashed across his face. I knew Roger tried to please his father, so I was disappointed but not surprised when Roger followed Moonshiner. Together they walked toward the exit.

  “I’m with you, Moonshiner!” someone shouted. One by one, men sitting throughout the room began to stand and walk out.

  “I’ll have no part of this,” one said to me as he headed for the exit.

  “These boys would be better off hog-tied than playing for a woman!” shouted another. The discordant men gathered at the back exit. Moonshiner opened the door and they poured out, while inside we could hear in the distance the sound of a plane flying into our airfield. We knew another body was likely on board, this time carrying the remains of a soldier from a neighboring town.

  At that point, with roughly two dozen men having left, the room fell silent. It was broken only when a handful of men who had just walked out opened the door and walked back in—the sound of the plane piercing their hearts, I figured.

  Through it all, I hadn’t noticed that Mr. Redwine had moved from his seat in the back and taken over the microphone. He called for attention.

  “We just heard another plane flying overhead,” Mr. Redwine said in a mellow and heartfelt tone. “Is there honestly any need for more discussion?”

  Buck Taylor called for a vote. I could feel the tension in the room. The conflict. It cut through the remaining crowd like a knife into a melon. Torture.

  The vote, which no longer focused on canceling the season but on proceeding with me as coach, passed—not unanimously—but once the final vote was counted, many in the crowd swarmed Stanley. I, too, got caught up in the throng of well-wishers, and for a moment, I forgot that I had just been officially named coach. A few minutes later, I was cajoled to speak, so I walked down to Buck, and he handed me the microphone.

  I masked my emotion by remaining composed and kept my message brief. “Too many goodbyes,” I said. “It’s time we play some football. Thank you.”

  Just as I returned the microphone to Buck, I heard Jimmy shout out, “Lions!” The crowd joined in unison, and by the time Buck had gotten the room’s attention, all he said was “Now let’s get out there Friday night and support the team!”

  Finally, once John and I had made our way out to the truck, and John got the motor running and the school was far behind us, I cried.

  Thursday

  I woke up early. I h
adn’t slept well, and when I arrived at school by seven o’clock, I was bristling and still frazzled by the events of the previous night. I parked and sat in my car for several minutes, gathering my emotional strength before walking down to the field to greet the nearly dozen men who had a week earlier committed to spending the morning preparing the field for the season opener.

  I prayed for strength and exited the truck, and then I walked to the field. I thanked each volunteer individually, although I had trouble putting aside the picture in my mind’s eye of so many of them excoriating me just the night before. Because I had administrative duties to tend to, I had asked Wendell and Moose to supervise the fieldwork, which included cutting grass, pulling weeds, and chalking lines. Before heading back to my office, I walked the field for a bit to survey its texture. At one point, I looked down and noticed my heels had sunk deep beneath the grass, and it triggered a thought.

  I recalled that the rules of football allowed for a field’s grass to be between one and three inches tall, and I figured the taller the grass, the slower the surface. Our boys had practiced only a handful of times, and they weren’t quite up to speed. I pulled Moose aside.

  “Have them mow down to three inches. Not a centimeter lower,” I said.

  Moose lifted one eyebrow, smiled, and nodded.

  INSTEAD OF HEADING straight for my office, I stopped in on Mr. Redwine. I wanted to thank him for his support, something I knew was prompted only by our shared grief. But the moment I walked into his office, I knew something was wrong.

  “It’s Roger,” he said. He slammed his fist on his desk.

  “Please don’t say,” I said.

  “Roger is a brave boy, but I’m certain his father had him by the collar.”

  “No, no, no, no, no!” I shouted. Through clenched teeth, I asked, “Why? Why did he do this?”

  “One more year,” Mr. Redwine said. “All Roger needed was one more year, but Gil has always had his own way of doing things.”

  “I am so angry,” I said. “Why? Mr. Redwine, I just don’t understand.”

  Mr. Redwine shook his head and handed me a tissue. I left his office in tears.

  I WAS SO upset, I didn’t get much accomplished for the next several hours.

  By afternoon, I had pulled myself together. When practice was about to begin, I greeted the boys as they entered the field house and told them to put on the pads. I had to change my approach. Throughout the week, I had the boys work primarily on conditioning, technique, and skeleton drills, but with the game just a day away, the boys needed to practice in full pads. This was not ideal, twenty-four hours before kickoff, but I couldn’t send them out there Friday night without any full-speed experience, no matter how brief.

  Before we started, I gathered the boys at midfield and had them stand in a circle around me.

  “Thank you,” I said. I spoke slowly, pausing and swiveling to look into the eyes of each boy. “Last night, you reminded me—you showed the town—that we know something no one else seems to understand. We’re a team. We are a team. But, as you saw last night, Roger left us. Boys, he also left town this morning. Mr. Redwine informed me that Roger took the early train to Dallas. His plan is to enlist. I wanted you to hear that from me.”

  I looked into the shocked faces of the boys. Jimmy removed his helmet and slammed it to the ground. I took a deep breath and let the thought rest. We remained silent, surrounded by the humming of the cotton plant. A few moments later, I broke the silence.

  “Boys, we have a big game tomorrow. So let me tell you what I know about Stephenville. Their halfback, Red McNeil, can shuck the shoes right off a defender.” I turned to our linebackers and defensive backs. “Don’t be that defender. They also have a quarterback who can survey the entire field in a split second.”

  Just then, Bobby Ray’s hand shot up. I gave him the floor.

  “Mitch Mitchell ain’t never played a down of A-squad football, Miss Tylene,” he said. “Sat the bench all last year.”

  “That’s right, Bobby Ray,” I said.

  “So how can you know he can see the field?” he asked.

  “He plays piano.”

  The boys laughed.

  “Anyone here play piano?” I asked. “Raise your hand.”

  No one did.

  “Picture this, fellas. A young man sitting at the piano, his feet pumping the pedals, his right hand tapping out a tune, his left hand playing chords—neither hand going in the same direction or even doing the same things. And his eyes—where are they? They’re locked on the sheet music. Now you tell me he doesn’t have a finely tuned brain.”

  The circle stayed quiet.

  “The boy can see the field, I can promise you that,” I said.

  I began to snap my fingers. “One.” Snapping simultaneously on “one,” I then said, “Two, three. One,” snapping again on one, two, three. I looked at the boys and urged them to join in, which they all did. “One, two, three, one, two, three.” As we tapped out the beat, I nodded my head to the beat of my snaps.

  “See what I mean, fellas? He’s got the beat. So how do we counter that? We go six to the bar.”

  “Six to the bar? What does that mean?” Bobby Ray asked.

  “Technically,” I said, “it’s an irregular signature. It means unusual, odd, or complex. For us? It means unflappable. One step ahead. Try this.” I counted faster, snapping my fingers on every odd number. “One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Come on, boys, one, two, three, four, five, six. See how much faster that feels?”

  They didn’t answer. They were too engrossed in the syncopation. I let them enjoy the beat, but reminded them that they were not only tapping out a sequence, they were tapping out our pace.

  “Stay with that beat,” I said. “One, two, three, four, five, six. Think fast. Move fast. Remain one step ahead. One beat faster. Remember, our style is similar to Stephenville’s. But tomorrow night, we’ll play our game. They’ll play to our tune.

  “For now, for practice purposes, we’ll play a controlled scrimmage. We’ll play as opponents, so don’t be afraid to be aggressive. I’ll let you know when it’s okay to hit and when it’s not, but if any one of you hits at any time I have called for a no-hit play, you’ll be running the stands the rest of practice. Got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” they shouted in unison.

  I then huddled the offense. “H-crossbuck,” I said. I stepped back a few yards and blew my whistle, and began to clap on every odd number. “One, two, three, four, five, six.”

  Charlie snapped the ball to Jimmy. Jimmy kept his feet moving like he was traversing hot coals. He turned to his left, faked a handoff to Kevin, then continued to swirl his body, checked off a receiver, and while parallel to the line, he handed off to Willie, who ran off tackle. Albert moved in and pounded Willie, knocking him to the grass just a split second after the handoff. I was astounded. It was the first time I had been so close to full-contact football, and I was overcome by the sound of bodies colliding at full speed.

  From my seat in the bleachers, I had seen football as a beautifully choreographed game of chess, of wit. It was a thinking man’s game, and the smarter man prevailed. But standing on the grass, choreographing the movements myself, I realized the true brutality of the game. Yes, chess, wit, smarts—but also strength, sweat, and pain.

  With each snap, I could hear the crush—bone on bone, a chorus of elbows against jaws, knees against ribs. Leather-protected heads, but their noses and teeth and eyes were fully exposed. For the first time, I realized I both loved and hated the sounds.

  To block out the noise, I focused on each play with the precision of a seamstress threading a needle. I didn’t listen; I watched, playing Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” in my head to lessen the sound of the blows. After thirty minutes, I gathered the boys at midfield.

  “No more contact. You have a taste of game speed, so now let’s focus on assignments,” I said.

  I didn’t want to wear the bo
ys out a day too early, so with their pads still on, they spent the remainder of practice doing a walk-through. Once they were done, they assured me that their legs were fresh and that they were ready for Stephenville.

  The boys, each down on one knee, circled me at the fifty-yard line.

  “This is it, fellas,” I said. “Look around. It’s quiet. It’ll look nothing like this tomorrow night. Now close your eyes. Think about what you see. Think about what you hear.”

  I gave them a moment and then I asked, “What does it look like? What does it sound like? Okay, boys, open your eyes.”

  I looked at them and shouted, “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” they shouted.

  “The place is going to be packed. There’ll be newsmen, I hear from as far as Corpus Christi. We may not know entirely what to expect, but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that you will get heckled. Jimmy, what will you do?”

  “Ignore them!” he said.

  “What else?”

  “Play football!”

  “What kind of football?”

  “Brownwood football!”

  “Did you hear that, boys?” I asked. “Ignore the crowd. Play Brownwood football. And remember: Tomorrow night will be your night.”

  I reminded the boys of the pep rally and meeting schedule for the next day and told them to get plenty of sleep.

  “You’ve been through a lot, boys, but here we are. We’re still standing.”

  I walked outside of the huddle, then had the team lean in.

  “One, two, three!” I shouted.

  On that note, the boys yelled, “Lions rule!” They broke the huddle and ran to the field house. I walked to my truck, and just before I shut the door, I heard someone shout out my name. I recognized the voice.

  Chapter 9

  After a busy day in the office and a productive practice, I looked with great anticipation to a quiet evening at home with John. I had hightailed it to my truck and had just stepped in when I was called out by Moonshiner, who was hustling toward me. Once we made eye contact, he shouted, “This is on you, Tylene! This is on you!”