Painting the Black

by Carl Deuker

  We won the coin toss and Curtis carried the opening kickoff out to the thirty-five. On the first two downs Kittleson ran twice, picking up about five yards total. On third and five Josh had Santos open over the middle, but threw the ball high. Around me, kids groaned and then went back to eating popcorn and joking with one another. It was the opening minutes of the first quarter. I was the only one who was worried.

  And I stayed worried, even though Cleveland didn’t do much of anything. They were slow and small, and a first down was a major accomplishment for them. But throughout that quarter Josh couldn’t get our offense into gear either. One drive stalled when he missed on a third and three pass in the flat to Curtis that even I could have completed. And the next drive ended when he fumbled the snap on two consecutive downs.

  “They’d better put Ruben in pretty soon,” a kid a couple of seats away from me said. “This Daniels is doing nothing.”

  The guy next to him nodded.

  Josh was still at QB when we got the ball back early in the second quarter, but everybody in the stadium knew something good had to happen or he was out of there.

  On third and four at our twenty-six, Josh dropped back and uncorked another wild toss that sailed over Curtis’s head and out-of-bounds. Even worse, after he’d released the ball, he’d taken a vicious hit from a blitzing safety. The guy had stuck his helmet into Josh’s ribs and had driven him to the ground.

  For a long time, Josh lay on the turf, his hands cradling his mid-section. Canning hovered over him, and so did the trainer. Finally he stood, and applause came down from all around the stadium.

  That’s when I saw the yellow penalty flag. “Unsportsmanlike conduct: roughing the passer,” the referee announced. Then he marched off fifteen yards.

  You wonder about sports sometimes, about whether one play can change a whole game, even a whole season. Take that penalty. Say the guy doesn’t cheap-shot Josh. We have to punt, and on the next series Brandon Ruben is playing quarterback. But those fifteen yards gave us a first down, and they gave Josh another chance.

  He made the most of it, too. It was as if that late hit had somehow knocked all the nervousness out of him. On the very next play he hit Santos for fifteen yards. Kittleson busted one for another ten yards, and then Josh hit Wilsey on the numbers for thirty-four yards and a touchdown. After that the rout was on. We led 14–0 at the half; 29–7 at the end of three quarters. The final score was 35–13.

  Saturday night can be a tough time to catch a bus. I had a long wait for the Fifteen, so I didn’t make it to Godfather’s until nearly an hour after the game. I searched the place, but Josh wasn’t there. I bought a large Pepsi, found a booth, and looked out the window. I wanted him to show while the excitement of the game was still in his blood.

  The minutes crawled by. I finished my first Pepsi and bought another one. Still no Josh. I found an old newspaper and flipped through it once, twice. I looked at the clock on the wall. It had been two hours since the game had ended.

  I chewed on the ice at the bottom of the cup. Fifteen more minutes passed. One of the workers came over. Did I want a pizza or a sandwich or another Pepsi? I shook my head. He wiped the table clean. I waited a couple more minutes, then slid out of the booth and walked home.

  It was after midnight, so my parents were both in bed. I could hear my father snoring as I tiptoed past their room and upstairs to my own. I turned on the radio, lay back, and thought. I hadn’t been up there five minutes when I heard a car pull up in front of Josh’s house.

  I slipped over to the window and pulled back the curtain. It was Jamaal Wilsey’s red Pontiac Sunbird. A door popped open. Josh got out. He pounded the roof of the car with his open hand twice. Wilsey sped off, honking his horn and cranking up the stereo.

  I won’t say I wasn’t mad at Josh, because I was. Who wouldn’t be? Godfather’s had been his idea, not mine. But I was mad at myself, too. Mad for being so stupid. Because I knew what had happened. I’d known it the whole time I was sitting at Godfather’s.

  You win a game and your teammates are your whole world. Your parents don’t count; your girlfriend doesn’t count; and some guy you threw a baseball to in the summer doesn’t count. You want to be with the guys who played.

  I pictured myself sitting at that center table of the cafeteria with Josh and all his football buddies, and I cringed. The whole thing was like one of those “What’s Wrong with This Picture?” puzzles. Only this puzzle wasn’t funny, because I was what was wrong. I was the fish flying in the sky; I was the square tire on the shiny new car. How could I have made myself so ridiculous?

  I took a personal inventory then. Baseball was what I was pointing for, so I looked at myself the way a baseball coach would. It was pretty depressing. I was out of shape—slow, weak, stiff—not exactly the guy you’d build your team around. There was only one good thing. Baseball season was five months off.

  10

  The next morning I got up right away instead of lying around. I dressed, brushed my teeth, and cleaned up a little. When I got downstairs my parents were sitting down to breakfast. “You’re up early,” my father said, surprised. I shrugged.

  My mother wanted to make me eggs, but I was in a hurry. I mixed up some of that instant oatmeal that tastes okay so long as you don’t have it too often. My parents sat sipping their coffee as I ate.

  “How was the game?” my father asked.

  “Good,” I said, shoveling in the oatmeal. “We trounced them.”

  “And Josh?”

  “He was great.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  I finished the oatmeal, took my bowl to the sink, washed it up.

  “Have you got any plans for today?” my mom asked.

  “I thought I might lift some weights,” I said, “stretch out, maybe find the rowing machine and work out on it. That sort of stuff.”

  My dad’s eyes lit up. “Good for you,” he said. “Good for you. I’m not sure where the rowing machine is anymore. But I know the weights are down in the basement.”

  So that’s where I went, even though I hate it down there. The walls aren’t finished off like in most basements, and we’ve had rats more than once. It smells damp and earthy, and if you’re standing by the furnace when the gas ignites, you feel as though a ball of fire is coming your way.

  The weights and the weight bench were tucked away in a back corner. I took a rag and wiped away about a million spider webs, then I cleared a space in the middle of the basement for the bench.

  Like most guys, I’d lifted off and on—mostly off—since I was twelve. And like most guys, bench pressing was all I’d ever cared about. I’d about break my back trying to heave some load of iron up, the whole time fantasizing about huge biceps, rippling back muscles, and adoring girls.

  But that morning I lifted the right way. Squats, curls, reverse curls, bench presses—all of them with medium weight and lots of repetitions.

  I lifted for about forty-five minutes. My muscles were so fatigued my hands twitched and my legs felt as though they had turned to Jell-O. Back upstairs I drank about a gallon of water, then went to my bedroom and got to work stretching.

  I sat on the floor and pointed my toes toward the opposite wall. My left ankle curved easily, but the toes on my right foot were still pointed toward the ceiling. I could barely get that ankle to bend, and it hurt like crazy. Still, I held the stretch for a twenty count. Next I pointed my toes toward my face and held that for twenty. Toward the wall; toward my face. Over and over. Once the ankle had finally loosened a little, I rotated my feet—first clockwise, then counterclockwise—through the whole range of motion. When I was done with my ankles, I worked on my legs, my arms, my back—doing the stretches right, the way Josh did them in the summer.

  After lunch my dad helped me get the rowing machine down from the loft in the shed. It wasn’t so much heavy as awkward. An arm smacked me in the head twice.

  I wouldn’t have known where to oil it or what kind of oil to use, but he d
id. “You can keep this in your room,” he said when he was satisfied he had it working as well as it could work. “Just shove it under the bed when you’re not using it.”

  I thought rowing would be easy—or at least easier than lifting weights or stretching. I set the resistance pretty high, put the timer on for thirty minutes, and started. What a shock that was! After five minutes or so I was gasping for air. I had to stop and make the resistance easier, and at the twelve-minute mark I had to stop and make it easier still. I was laboring, but I made the full thirty minutes.

  You always hear that being selfish is about the worst thing, that you should think of other people. That day I had thought about nobody but myself. And at the end of it I felt good, really good—better than I’d felt in a long, long time.

  11

  I got up early Monday morning and did pushups and sit-ups, and then stretched. I took a shower and planned out the rest of the day. There was school and weightlifting and the rowing machine and homework. And there were more sit-ups and pushups, and more stretching. In one day I’d gone from having nothing to do to having too much. But I felt good about it, good about making a commitment to myself.

  In the hall before school I saw Josh. There were about ten people around him, so I went right by. But when he spotted me he broke free and came over to me. “Sorry about Godfather’s,” he said. “I got hung up.”

  “No problem,” I answered.

  Rita Hall playfully tugged at his sleeve, drawing him toward her. “We’ll talk at lunch,” he called. “I want to hear what you thought about the game.”

  Lunch.

  All morning I stewed about it. I couldn’t sit at the center table of the cafeteria, couldn’t be the flying fish, the square wheel. No way in the world. I didn’t belong there, had never belonged there. But I wasn’t sure how to explain it to Josh.

  Then, during third period, an idea came to me—library. I could tell Josh I had to study during lunch, and then grab something quick in the cafeteria in the final ten minutes before afternoon classes started.

  It was a perfect excuse because it was true. I was falling behind in chemistry, and I had stuff for Mrs. Beck too. Still, I was sure Josh would argue, that he’d tell me I was his best buddy, and that I had to eat with him.

  I paid even less attention to the discussion in Ms. Hurley’s class that day. Class ended and we headed down the hall toward the library. When we reached it I stopped. “I’m going to do some studying.”

  “Now?” he asked, his eyebrows raised quizzically.

  “Yeah,” I said, my throat dry. “It’s a good time to get a computer.”

  He shrugged. “Well, see you around.” And a second later he was down the hall and gone.

  I pushed open the library doors and found a vacant computer station by the window. I turned it on, but I didn’t even load up a program.

  Everything had worked out exactly the way I’d wanted, but as I sat in front of the computer, I felt as if someone had taken a syringe and drawn half of the blood right out of me. All that stuff about my being his best friend was just talk. Not that the other guys—Jamaal or Bethel or Colby—were his friends either. Josh was like the sun, and the rest of us were like planets. We revolved around him. We got light from him, and we reflected some of that light back to him. But we were puny next to him. Unimportant. It wasn’t his fault; it wasn’t our fault. It was just the was.

  At twelve-twenty I flicked the computer off and walked down the empty hall to the cafeteria. There was no line, but there wasn’t much food either. I grabbed a turkey sandwich and an apple, paid, and then sat down in a corner. I took a couple of bites out of the sandwich before I looked out across the cafeteria. There was Josh, right in the center of everything, laughing and joking. I finished my sandwich just before the bell.

  After that, every day was pretty much the same. I’d see Josh before Ms. Hurley’s class. We’d talk a little, and then after class we’d talk some more. But when we reached the library, he went his way and I went mine. There was a solid line between us now, a solid line where there used to be only a blurred one, if there was one at all. I knew where I stood, and while that didn’t feel good, at least it felt true.

  12

  The West Seattle game started at six on Friday. I hustled home from school so I could get my workout in and still catch it. I lifted weights and rowed. While I was stretching my right ankle, it suddenly seemed to come free, as if some scar tissue there had finally popped. It felt so much better I kept stretching it and stretching it.

  I’d been at it for a while when I heard the front door open and, a minute later, my mom’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “Are you up here, Ryan?” she called.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I said, opening my door and stepping into the hall.

  “It’s after six,” she said. “I thought you were going to the game.”

  “I guess I lost track of the time.”

  She smiled. “Well, I’m glad you did. It’ll be nice to have you home. We haven’t had a Friday night together in a long time.”

  It wasn’t bad either. My dad came home about ten minutes later. We three went out for pizza, then caught a Bruce Willis movie at the Oak Tree Cinema. There were no arguments at all.

  Saturday morning I heard a loud pounding on the front door. When I opened it, I found Josh standing on the porch. “What did you think of the game?” he asked excitedly.

  Somehow I couldn’t tell him I hadn’t gone, so I decided to bluff it. “It was great!”

  “Oh, I was on fire,” he said. “I could have hit a dime from fifty yards. Remember that one Curtis dropped?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah, sure, I remember.”

  “Right in his hands. Right smack in his hands. I don’t know how he dropped it. Still, five touchdown passes isn’t shabby, is it?”

  “No,” I answered. “Not shabby at all.”

  “Have you seen this?”

  He held the Seattle Times out in front of him. On the prep page of the sports section was a picture of him, arms raised, celebrating a touchdown. Crown Hill Crushes West Seattle 44–6! shouted the headline.

  “The guy interviewed me after the game,” Josh went on. “He says that if I keep playing like I can play, we’re a cinch to go 8–0. And if we beat O’Dea in that last game, he thinks we could take the state.”

  “Beating O’Dea isn’t going to be easy. I don’t think we’ve beaten them in twenty years.”

  He punched me playfully a few times. “Well then, we’re due, aren’t we? Aren’t we? I mean, they’ve got to lose sometime.”

  That reporter turned out to be right on the mark. Thursday Josh threw three more touchdown passes and we beat Nathan Hale 28–6. The next week Rainier Beach was the victim, 31–16.

  It was after the Rainier Beach game that I gave myself my first real test. I’d been working out steadily for three solid weeks. The ankle felt better than it had for as long as I could remember, and even in three weeks you can feel your muscles harden from lifting weights. My stamina was better, too. I was able to row forty minutes without stopping and without sweating like a pig.

  But I couldn’t row around the bases or up the third base line to catch a pop-up or to the backstop to retrieve a wild pitch. If I was going to play catcher, I was going to have to sprint, something I hadn’t done in five years.

  That Sunday I decided to give it a try. I stretched my ankle for a good long time, then went to the Community Center diamonds and jogged about a quarter of an hour around the outfield. Nothing hurt—not even a twinge, but I wasn’t kidding myself. Jogging and sprinting are two different things.

  I trotted to home plate and positioned myself in the batter’s box. I imagined a pitch coming, a fat curve ball I could hit. I swung a phantom bat at that phantom pitch, and then took off down the line.

  I meant to sprint. I really did. But I was so used to holding back that I’d forgotten, or was afraid, to run all out. I was going about eighty percent. No more. Three times the sa
me thing happened.

  After the third time, I walked the bases, shaking my ankle out a little. No pain at all. I returned to home plate, took a deep breath, and went all out, really sprinting for the first time in five years, stretching out in the last stride, trying to beat the throw from the hole.

  Bo Jackson made it from home to first in something like three seconds. I wasn’t doing that, not by a long shot. But I wasn’t taking six seconds either. And nothing hurt. As I walked home, I could have sung with joy. Josh, for all his touchdown passes, couldn’t have felt better than I did.

  13

  That was an amazing time. Everything seemed possible. Josh was living out his dream; I was getting ready to live out mine. I look back at those days now and wonder if I somehow could have stopped what happened later, if I should have seen it coming and done something about it. But the little things seem harmless. Who can know where they will lead?

  Take the lunchroom tables’ being pushed together. I didn’t see it happen. I came into the cafeteria the Monday after we’d beaten Lakeside 49–0 and it was done: three long tables right in a row. Every senior and most of the juniors on the football team were sitting at one of those tables. Josh was at the center of them all.

  Moving tables is against the rules. It’s got to do with gangs—with keeping large groups from forming. Whenever anybody else had pushed even two tables together, Mr. Phelps, the cafeteria supervisor, had pulled them apart. But Phelps looked the other way when the football players did it. You win six games and you get to bend the rules.

  It was strange what pushing those tables together did. Josh and Jamaal and Bethel and Colby and Brandon had sat at that center table all through the winning streak. Nobody would have called them quiet, but they weren’t out of control, or anywhere near it. But once three tables were pushed together, once five guys had become fifteen or twenty, everything changed.