Losers Take All, Page 2

  “Your story?” I asked, trying not to stare too intensely at her extremely pretty hazel eyes.

  “The one I’m going to tell about myself in my college application essay,” she informed me like I was clueless. “Perfect grades aren’t enough these days. Twenty thousand applicants to the top schools have nearly perfect grades and test scores. You need a story to set you apart. And mine is about horses, and how I helped raise one named Shadow that had a damaged hind leg, and nursed him back to health, and won ribbons riding him. I’ve already written the essay. It’s called ‘Knight and Shadow.’ I don’t need another sport and I can’t afford to waste three hours a day on a stupid team I’ll never play for.”

  “It’s not as if Muhldinger’s offering you a choice,” Dylan told her.

  “There’s always a choice,” Shimsky announced, sounding like he was preparing to lead a revolution. He had suffered a lot—getting beat up all the time. In sixth grade his nose had been broken by a creep who’d rammed his face into a garbage can. Our town has its tough side—the jocks rule, and if you don’t show them respect you pay. It had made Shimsky tough and crafty in his loner way. “Whenever there’s a rule there’s a way around it.”

  “Not this one,” Dylan said. “This is about legacy and tradition. The school board confirmed the new policy. My mom was the only ‘no’ vote. Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines and get ready to suffer. The lunatics have taken over the asylum and we’re at their mercy.”

  “We’re all dead meat,” Frank agreed. “Sports roadkill. If I go out for shot-putter, do you think they’ll make me run laps with the track team? I could run one lap, or maybe two, very slowly on a nice fall day.” Frank was being optimistic—he runs about as fast and gracefully as a fully loaded garbage truck grinding up a steep hill in low gear.

  “I heard the track team ran ten miles a day last year,” Becca told him.

  There was a moment of unhappy silence as we looked at each other and pondered what senior year would be like with Muhldinger in charge of our school.

  And that was when Mr. Psilakis, the night manager, hurried up behind us and started screaming: “Get to work, all of you! I don’t pay you to gab. Jack, a table of ten just left a royal mess. Shimsky, there are two orders of nachos getting cold. Nobody likes cold nachos. Becca, we’re shorthanded at the registers. Let’s go, move your butts!”

  I hurried over to the royal mess and started clearing up half-munched french fries and greasy bits of uneaten cheeseburger. Frank ambled up next to me, picked up a discarded onion ring, studied it as if debating whether he should pop it in his mouth, and then tossed it reluctantly into my tray of garbage and dirty dishes. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” he said.

  “I just don’t get why they’re doing this,” I told him. “Why don’t they just do their legacy thing and leave the rest of us alone? What happened to live and let live?”

  “Ours is not to reason why,” Frank answered. “Ours is just to join a team and die.” He hesitated and then said softly, “Jack, your father was one of the first at the board meeting to jump to his feet and start clapping.”

  “No big surprise there,” I muttered, picking up a broken ketchup bottle and turning it upside down in my tray to avoid the jagged glass edges.

  Frank lowered his voice even more. “After the meeting broke up I saw him talking to Muhldinger, and I heard him say something about you trying out for the football team. Muhldinger was nodding his head. Sorry, but I thought you’d want to know.”

  3

  “This is not really tackle,” Rob Powers told us. The park was empty because of the summer heat, and as the sun dipped lower the shadows of old oak trees reached out inch by inch across the grassy field, as if getting ready to trip us up.

  Twelve of us had shown up for this “friendly game,” and now that I was here I could tell that it would be neither friendly nor a game. “So it’s two-hand touch?” I asked nervously.

  “Not exactly,” Rob said. “We call it half-hit. Which means you’re trying to bring each other down, but not do any serious damage. You don’t need helmets or pads for half-hit—just have fun out there.”

  Rob had been my closest friend once upon a time, before the school pecking order took shape. His father had played quarterback on the state championship team that my dad had captained. When they drank beers together, Rob’s father still sometimes called my dad “Captain.” Rob and I had hung out into middle school, and then we had gone in very different directions. I was scrawny, to use my father’s phrase, but Rob had sprouted muscles, not to mention chiseled features, cat-quick reflexes, and a rifle arm. Now he was contending for the starting quarterback job, earning cash from modeling gigs, and dating a swarm of cheerleaders.

  He had called me up the day before and invited me to this friendly game, and he hadn’t hidden his real agenda. “One of our starting receivers just tore his ACL. Coach Muhldinger is looking for someone with good wheels to replace him, and your name has come up.”

  “Thanks, Rob, but I really don’t think I’m varsity material,” I had said.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to try,” he’d pointed out. “We’re not allowed to have team practices during the summer, but we’re going to have a friendly pickup game in the park—just an informal toss and catch kind of thing. No coaches, just some of the guys. Why don’t you come and give it a run, and see where it leads?”

  My dad had been in on the plan. “Just try,” he encouraged at the breakfast table the next day.

  “Dad, I’ve got iron hands.”

  “Cover them with receiver’s gloves.”

  “Do I look like a football player to you?”

  He lowered the sports section and glanced across at me, as if evaluating me with his gray eyes. At forty-five he still had the muscular body of an All-State running back whose toughness was legendary in our town. His nickname had been the “Logan Express” and people who’d seen him play said that it had taken three or even four tacklers to bring him down. If a knee injury in his senior year of college hadn’t ended his playing career, Dad would have turned pro. It was hard to know what he was thinking as he looked back at me, but he said: “Sure.”

  “I thought I was scrawny.”

  “The point is there’s one thing nobody can teach and that’s speed.”

  My mother had been listening to the conversation, and she gently said: “Tom, if he doesn’t want to do it, don’t push him.”

  “I just want him to try,” Dad told her. “Is that such a horrible thing?”

  So here I was, giving it a try.

  Rob wasn’t the only varsity player who had shown up. Sprinkled in with seven of us newbies were five starting members of the football team who had come, presumably, to check us out. Coach Muhldinger—or perhaps I should say Principal Muhldinger—wasn’t there, nor were any of the other dozen or so assistant football coaches. So Rob and a guy named Barlow were running the thing.

  They staked out a grassy rectangle with orange cones and divided us into two teams, and I was put with Rob and four other guys I didn’t know well. We huddled up around him before we kicked off. “Stay loose,” he told us, “no pressure at all, guys. But it’s still a chance to show what you’ve got. So if you go in for a tackle, make sure you wrap him up and bring him down. You never know who might be watching.”

  I looked past him, to the parking lot, and saw a big man get out of an SUV and sit down on a bench near a duck pond that offered a good view of the field. He was too far away for me to see his face clearly, but he had the bulk of a weight lifter, and even from this distance I could see that he had no neck. Another tall man strolled up and sat next to him. He was wearing a cap that shadowed his face, but I could tell it was my father.

  We lined up facing the other team, with Rob in the center, holding the ball. I tried to stay calm. There was nothing to lose. I didn’t even want to make the stupid football team. If I did well it would be fine, and if I screwed up it might be even better. The June day had been
sweltering—nearly a hundred degrees—and even though the sun had started to sink, it was still steamy hot. I felt a sweat break out on my legs and arms and across my chest, and took a few quick breaths.

  Rob gave me a wink, as if to remind me of Gentry’s motto: “Just go for it.” And then he took two steps and kicked off into the setting sun—a twisting kick so high that the ball seemed to disappear for a second in the purple clouds, soaring over the receiving team’s heads. As they scrambled back to pick the football up, we raced toward them, and I found myself in the lead.

  I’ve always been fast. It’s my saving grace as a mediocre athlete—the thing that partially makes up for my scrawny build and lack of coordination. I’m not the fastest in our school—there are probably two or three sprinters on the track team who can edge me out over fifty yards. But that evening in the park, when six of us sprinted across the grass toward the other team, I quickly took the lead.

  As I raced ahead of my teammates, I wondered why I was doing this. It was almost as if a little voice was shouting: “Stop. You don’t have to do this. You hate football. None of these guys are your friends. Not even Rob—don’t kid yourself. You don’t have to prove anything to Muhldinger—he’s a sports Nazi, just like Becca said. Your dad should just accept who you are, or it’s his problem and not yours. Slow down and let somebody else get there first.” That’s what the little voice said, and I heard it as I ran, but my arms were pumping and I was flying over the grass. Instead of slowing down I sped up, and quickly pulled away from my teammates.

  The football rolled deep into what would have been their end zone if the field had been lined, and stopped in tall grass. Barlow got to it first and could have just downed it. But he chose to pick it up and run it out, and I slanted toward him.

  One of their players tried to block me, and I dodged around him. Barlow saw me coming and shouted to his teammates: “C’mon, you losers, block for me.” One of the losers threw a nasty block at me and the bony point of his right elbow dug into my ribs, but then I was past them all and facing Barlow one-on-one. He was about my height but not scrawny at all—a star running back, one of the co-captains of the varsity team, and a furious competitor in every sport known to man.

  I darted toward him, and he held his ground, watching me come on. The truth is I wasn’t even thinking about tackling him—I figured my job was just to contain him till my teammates arrived to help.

  Barlow faked right and went left, and I bought the fake for a half second and then reversed direction. My feet got tangled with each other, and as I took off after him I tripped myself. I knew that any second I would do a face-plant into the grass and look like the biggest clown since the Three Stooges stopped making movies.

  I fought gravity and my own clumsiness, and somehow I kept running for three more steps, if you can call that running. It was halfway between a sprint and a dive—I was already nearly horizontal and my arms were windmilling for balance.

  And then I couldn’t fight it anymore and went down hard, chest first, but at the very last second my arms grabbed on to something and I held on.

  In my battle to stay upright I had forgotten all about Barlow, but my three-step dive to the grass had made up the distance to him, and my thrashing arms had wrapped around his knees. Instead of the clumsiest dry-land belly flop in the history of Founders’ Park, I had by sheer luck executed a nearly flawless open-field tackle of the football team’s starting running back.

  We both went down hard and rolled over on the grass. I let go of his knees and lay there for a second, stunned. Then Rob’s excited voice crowed above me: “Way to hit, Jack. That was awesome, man. A safety on the first play of the game!”

  He pulled me up, and my teammates surrounded me and thumped me on the back. “Great stuff!” “Massive hit, Logan.” “You’re the man.”

  Barlow walked over, wiping mud off his forehead. He muttered, “Good hit,” and tapped me on the shoulder, but there was a sharpness to his voice and his dark eyes didn’t look particularly friendly.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “That was a safety,” Rob reminded Barlow. “We get two points and you guys kick off to us. Nice way to start a game, huh?”

  Barlow made a growling sound deep in his throat as he turned away.

  We lined up for their kick, and a kid named Garrett caught it and ran it back. Rob moved us up the field with two short and accurate passes. He pointed to me in our third huddle. “Three complete and we get a first down,” he said. “It’s your turn, Logan. Slant right. I’m going to count your steps. On your fifth step stop short, turn back to me, and the ball will already be in your chest. Got it?”

  “Five steps,” I agreed. “Got it.”

  “It’s a timing play,” he said. “Can’t miss.”

  Our huddle broke and we walked toward the line together. “Don’t drill it,” I cautioned him softly. “I don’t have the best hands.”

  “You’re playing like a beast,” he whispered back. “If you get daylight after you catch it, turn on your jets. The way you’re going, you’ll get a shot at a starting job.”

  I slid the receiver’s gloves my father had bought me out of my pocket and pulled them on over my sweaty hands as I walked back to the line. Those two words kept tap-dancing around in my head. Starting job. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t a star receiver on the Fremont football team. Not me. Not close. Not ever. Tap, tap. But still … starting job. Playing before crowds. Cheerleaders at parties. Tap, tap. I glanced at the duck pond. The two men on the bench hadn’t budged. My father pulled out a bottle of water, tilted himself a drink, and stared right at me.

  Garrett stood over the ball. “Forty-seven,” Rob called out to him. “Sixty-five. Twenty-two. Hut.”

  Garrett hiked him the ball, and I slanted right. As I ran, I heard one of their players shout out, “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, watch Logan!”

  I was already on my second step, with a kid named Dumont trying to cover me. He was fast, but he knew he couldn’t run with me, so he gave me three yards of cushion off the line. I counted my steps—three, four, five—and slammed on the brakes. I turned back toward Rob and BAM, the football arrived by express mail.

  I hadn’t expected it that hard and fast, and I couldn’t quite hold it. It popped up out of my iron hands, and as I tried to grab it, other hands reached for it. Dumont had closed the distance, and he tried to grab the loose ball and run it in. I managed to get both my hands on it as Dumont’s momentum carried him on past.

  I realized that I was now alone, undefended, safely cradling the football. It was time to turn on the burners and run it in for a touchdown. Once I got going, no one on this field could catch me. I started to spin back around, toward their end zone, and as I was in mid-pivot, a freight train ran me over.

  The next thing I knew I was lying on my back on the grass, tasting salt and pebbles, and looking up at the purple clouds that seemed to twist and billow mysteriously, like a magician’s cloak during a good trick. I tried to stand up, but Rob told me to “Stay down, buddy. Jesus, look at his mouth.”

  I put my hand to my lips, and it came away crimson. I realized to my horror that I wasn’t tasting salt and pebbles but rather blood and my own busted teeth.

  “Sorry, Logan,” Barlow’s voice said. “Didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

  As the shock of the impact wore off, the pain came on in waves. I lay flat on my back and closed my eyes and made my hands into fists.

  Then I heard my father say, “Stay down, Jack. There’s an ambulance on the way.” And then more softly, in the closest he had ever come to a loving voice: “You did good, son. I’m proud of you.”

  4

  My two best friends stood by my bedside, but they couldn’t bring themselves to look at my mouth. Dylan was staring past me out the window where a gardener was mowing the hospital’s large lawn, while Frank had focused his eyes on a lunch tray on my bedside table that hadn’t been cleared yet. Given my condition, there wasn’t any solid food th
at he could snag, but there was an uneaten watermelon Jell-O that he was eyeing hungrily. “I didn’t even know hospitals had dentists,” Frank said. “But he did a pretty slick job. Wrapped you up like a Christmas present.”

  “Oral surgeon,” I tried to say, but it sounded like a frog croaking over a windy swamp. My dislocated jaw had been popped back into place by an oral surgeon, which I think is like a dentist on steroids. I had seen enough dentists, nurses, and oral surgeons in the past two days to last a lifetime. I’d lost track of the number of people who had come into my room, studied my X-rays, and poked around inside my mouth like it was an interesting renovation project.

  A bandage now wound around my head and under my chin to prevent me from opening my mouth too wide. Two of my front teeth had been knocked out, but one of them had been saved and brought to the hospital with me and replanted. Several more had been chipped and cracked and jarred loose, but they had been splinted to healthy teeth and were all somehow still rooted in my gums. I had also been diagnosed with a grade one concussion—the mildest kind, they told me, as if I should be grateful—and I was floating on pain pills.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Dylan advised me. “Stick with thumbs-up, thumbs-down. Are there any cute nurses here?” Dylan thought about girls a lot and talked about them as if he were highly experienced, but the truth was that he was almost painfully shy and didn’t have any success with dating in the real world.

  I gave him a thumbs-down.

  “How’s the food?” Frank asked, following up his own main interest.

  Another thumbs-down.

  “He can’t chew food anyway,” Dylan reminded Frank. And then as if on cue they both glanced right at me at the same moment—at my swollen face, bandaged jaw, and splinted teeth.

  Dylan shook his head and said, “Jesus, Jack, didn’t your mom teach you not to play in traffic? What the hell were you doing out there banging bodies with the football meatheads?”