The Heartbeat of Halftime Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  1 - SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH–1972

  2 - THE BEGINNING OF A LONG SEASON

  3 - MAYBE WE SHOULD JOIN THE BAND

  4 - SPRAY CAN’S LESSON

  5 - HEAT’S WAY

  6 - THE FORCES OF NATURE

  7 - THE GARBAGE DUMP

  8 - AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM

  9 - MAKE THE ADJUSTMENT

  10 - SOMETHING TO PROVE

  11 - THE LEGEND OF ED STEBBINGS

  12 - THE HEARTBEAT OF HALFTIME

  13 - LOOKING FOR LEECHES

  14 - THE PRICE OF WINNING

  15 - ALL FOR ONE

  16 - WHAT LOVE WILL DO TO YOU

  17 - THE CRAZY MAN

  18 - UNCHARTED TERRITORY

  19 - ON THE ROAD

  20 - THE HARD WAY

  21 - HOW TO PLAY FOOTBALL

  22 - TACO BELL’S CRASH

  23 - THE BIG SCAB

  24 - THE FIRST PLAY-OFF GAME

  25 - WINNERS PAY

  26 - THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

  27 - WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS

  Also by

  Copyright Page

  1

  SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH–1972

  I wanted to start this story back before everything got bad with my pop. Maybe way back to that Saturday morning when he loaded me into his old Buick, told my mother he was off to the hardware store, and, instead, signed me up to play football for the first time in my life. That was three years before Taco Bell banged his head on the wrench shelf in his pop’s garage and had a vision of playin’ for the Minnesota Vikings; before Heat had any thoughts about livin’ with his brother in Alabama and never playin’ football again; and before any of us even knew Spray Can. But Spray Can said it wouldn’t be right to start back that far on account that he wouldn’t be in it, and he likes to be in things from the beginning to the end or not at all. That’s how he is. So I won’t start with Pop, or Heat, or Taco Bell. I won’t even start with our initiation of Sparky, how Heat had puppies in his basement that would squirt out little smelly puppy piles that covered the floor like land mines, and how we made Sparky take off his shoes and socks and find his way out of that basement with the lights off. I won’t tell you all that ’cause Spray Can wasn’t there to see any of it, ‘specially Sparky’s toes and in-between all oozin’ with yesterday’s stinky puppy chow.

  I got a whole closet full of notes, some pages of our playbook, and some words I wrote on paper I got from the first girl I ever got a kiss from. Coach put an edit to the whole thing when I got it written, and before that, Spray Can sat with me for a whole Saturday puttin’ the scraps and notes in piles to make it chronological. That’s when we talked about a beginning.

  We decided a good start would be that first day of practice, the first day any of us saw Spray Can. It was almost the end of summer. Heat’s dogs were near grown up and sat in the shade watching us on the hot field. Spray Can got there late and was standin’ in his torn-out jeans and wearin’ no underwear or shirt, waitin’ his turn to get his football pads. He never wore socks, not on that first day, and not even when it turned cold. He was standin’ right in front of me and the first thing I notice is a long black oil stain across his back.

  “You get hit by a car or somethin’?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said, twistin’ his head back to get a look at the slick on his back. “I hadda help Ray thwitch a transthmission before comin’ over.”

  I later found out that Ray was his pop, and although I thought it was funny that he would call his pop by name, what really got me that day was the way he said “switch.” His tongue came clear out of his mouth and nearly turned over makin’ the s sound. It was like it got all confused, flopped out from behind his teeth, and only came to its senses when there was a load of spit hangin’ off the tip. Then the word flipped out with the spit and sprayed me on the side of the face. I can’t even remember his real name, ’cause from then on we called him Spray Can. I nodded, and didn’t wipe off my face till he had turned around. Guess I knew I had a whole season of showers ahead of me, and, well, if Spray Can turned out to be a player, then I didn’t want to do anything to discourage him. Lucky for him he did turn out or we’d a put a rag in his mouth right away.

  So there we were, the first day of practice, standin’ in the heat, puttin’ on somebody else’s pads, waitin’ to get our own sweat on ’em so they’d be ours for sure. We waited while coach checked off our names with each piece of equipment. Then we went into the drills that nobody can do, ‘specially the linemen. They’re all crammed in pants that hold only half their parts, so stuff is rollin’ out everywhere, and they wear huge shoulder pads so their arms don’t hardly bend; and they have to run backwards, sideways, on all fours, and through old tires. Looks more like a clown rodeo than a football practice. Then there’s the skill positions, guys like me, who are so skinny Coach has to tape our pants on and stuff socks under our shoulder pads. We’re the speed and agility of the team. Well, most of us. Some are just plain skinny. We all stumble around like we just learned to walk while Coach shakes his head and kicks us in the butt every time we fall down.

  Coach always wore clothes that were twenty or thirty years old. And they were always the same. A white, short-sleeved shirt with a black tie and pants. When it got cold, he threw on an overcoat and a felt hat like detectives wear. His glasses usually hung from his neck by a piece of string and they were always falling apart. So when he talked to us, he was usually putting them back together with a piece of wire or tape. He talked a lot about how it was when he played football. No helmets, no fancy pads. And he looked away a lot, like he was always forgetting something.

  Anyway, we were practicin’ on a field we had to share with the junior-high school band, and they sounded as bad as we looked. Every now and then the racket they were makin’ sounded a little like a melody, but it was drowned out right away by the dyin’-cat sounds they made more often than music. Coach would yell above the moans comin’ from the dented instruments, quoting Greek poetry about war and victory and destruction.

  “The days of victory pass as the blink of an eye!” he would scream. “But the nights of preparation last forever!”

  Then he’d make us all run a lap while he stared up at the mountains in the distance as if the very gods of the universe were watching his handiwork. He always had a cockeyed smile when he stared off like that. It made us think he was either gettin’ some kind of answer to his prayers, or he just farted. And maybe that was his answer, because we weren’t much of a team.

  We’d been together three years, except for Spray Can. And we’d never had a winning season. In fact, we’d won only two games. The first game we won when half the other team was in a car wreck on the way to the game. They stood at the scene of the collision nearly till halftime. By the time they got to the field, we had scored two touchdowns against their six-man defense. The second game we won that same season when the other team’s coach was arrested for not payin’ child support. It happened in the first quarter; cops drove right onto the field and cuffed him. Kind of rattled his team and we beat ’em by a touchdown. That was the year we began to wonder about miracles.

  By the end of our fourth year, the one I’m gonna tell you about, most of the team were believers of the truest sort; some even had sacred charms, like a piece of turf from the university’s practice field, or a roll of toilet paper from the same store they say Vince Lombardi stopped at to ask directions on his way through Utah. It was the year of one of the greatest miracles ever witnessed by a football team, or any team, or any person. It was the year of the “holy transformation,” as Coach would tearfully say after the last game. “The year the hands of
the great football god gathered together an unwitting band of heathens and transformed them into football disciples.” It’s not how I would’ve said it, but when it was over, even I knew we’d never see another season like it. “I have only been a tool, an instrument in the hands of a higher power,” Coach went on to say; then he walked off toward the mountains and we haven’t seen him since.

  But on that first day, that first practice, he was nothing more than an old English teacher with a megaphone and a clipboard. Word is he taught somewhere in the Midwest before comin’ to Utah to retire and fulfill his lifelong dream of coaching football. We didn’t have many dreams that early in the season, so we adopted his. He had this dream of winning. It was a dream we had given up long before we met him. I don’t think we even knew what it meant, or what we would have to give up to have it. Pop said, “Winning is the greatest feeling in the world.” But he didn’t say it until he was sure we weren’t losers anymore. Pop always was careful about what he said. Mostly he just threw me the ball, showed me how to hold my hands, cut to the outside. And when he couldn’t throw anymore, he talked with his hands. He had big hands that fanned out like a bird, that would wrap slow around a ball. He knew football, my pop did. Better than anyone else I ever knew.

  So that first practice we finally get through the equipment and the push-ups and the lectures on discipline and the agility drills, and start to scrimmage. By then, the band had given up trying to carry a tune and march at the same time, so they were just marching like broken wind-up toys back of the end zone. We had banged heads for a few plays and Coach wanted to throw the ball a bit, see what we had. I lined up wide in the backfield to run the deep post, Flame lined up even wider, and we crossed a few yards out to shake the D-backs. It always worked too: The D-backs would stutter-step and we’d gain a yard or so on ’em. Then Bam would drift a wobbly spiral deep for me or Flame to run under and it was six points, at least in scrimmage. Well, bein’ the first practice, the D-backs didn’t have their feet yet and they crashed right into each other. Flame was laughin’ so hard he cut his route short. That left me all alone running for the end zone. Bam launched one that seemed to hang forever while I raced under it. And just as it was about to drop safely into my arms like a loaf of bread, I tripped over a resting clarinet player and plowed headlong into the mute and spastic band.

  It took some time to pull myself out of the tuba. I had to take my helmet off first, then wrench it free with the help of Flame, who was still laughing. Taco Bell showed up to help, then Bam, Heat, and finally Spray Can.

  “I always wanted to be in the band,” he sprayed. “I sthwear.”

  2

  THE BEGINNING OF A LONG SEASON

  We walked home the long way that day, wonderin’ to ourselves if we would win a game that season, or if we’d have to suffer through every single Monday lunch period as the garbage dump. See, we were all in the eighth grade. That meant we still had to eat lunch with Ed Stebbings. Fat Ed was in our same league, an Olympus Titan too, but he played for the team a year older. So I guess it bugged him when any Titan team didn’t win. All last year he’d bombed our lunch table with mashed potatoes, carrot Jell-O, and drippy ice cream every time we lost. Seems we spent the whole autumn sitting in someone else’s leftover lunch.

  “I guess Fat Ed’ll be back,” Flame said.

  We all looked down at our feet then, or at the canal we were walkin’ beside. The canal moved slow and stinky. It was full of leeches, and sometimes in the summer we’d play war on the banks, throwin’ huge stones in the smelly water tryin’ to splash each other, or we’d gather rotten produce from the grocery store and fire that at each other like great moldy bombs; but never during football season. When the season began we gave up the wars and saved our fight for the games. Even though we were losers, we still loved the game and fought each one as if we had a chance. And when we lost, we suffered the lunchroom barrage with dignity.

  “He’ll be back,” said Bam. “And he’ll be bigger … bam! … just like that.”

  “Least I got a ice cream last year,” Taco Bell said.

  We all looked at him, tryin’ to figure out what he was talkin’ about.

  “I got a ice cream when Ed threw it at me. It was only half gone and it landed on a clean part of my shirt, so I ate it.”

  We all laughed. Taco Bell will eat anything. And if there isn’t any food around, he picks at his own scabs and nibbles on them. More than once we’ve caught him at it, and the only answer he ever has is, “Well, I’m hungry.” Then he chews away like there’s nothing wrong with it.

  “It was good, too,” he said about the ice cream. “It was!”

  We started shoving him then and someone got the idea to push him into the canal. But he was big, and he took us all on like a madman.

  “I can’t get wet!” he screamed. “I have to go to my piano lesson!” That made us try even harder, but it was no use. We finally gave up when Spray Can and Taco Bell knocked heads. Taco Bell didn’t notice much, but it raised a lump on Spray Can’s eyebrow large enough to hang a dish towel on. Spray Can just sat down and instead of crying about it he let us all watch it grow.

  “Wow,” said Taco Bell. “It’s as big as a peach … with ice cream!”

  Even Spray Can laughed then and we all walked home after decidin’ that if Ed Stebbings and his fellow food throwers started in again this year we’d stand Taco Bell out front to gobble up any incoming. Taco Bell seemed willing enough, so we left it at that, not thinking about it again until we lost our first game.

  When I got home, my father was asleep in the chair by the window. Mom was gone, and he kinda half stirred when I shut the door.

  “That you, Wing?” he said sleepily. Even Pop called me by my nickname. Maybe he expected me to grow into it.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Pop,” I said.

  “How was the first practice?” he said, lifting his head off his shoulder to look at me.

  “It was okay, I guess.”

  “It’s too early to tell,” he said, trying to smile. “Could be, could be a good year.”

  “Yeah, right. Is there dinner?” I asked, changing the subject and heading for the kitchen.

  “Your mom left you a sandwich in the fridge. I wanted to come by, you know. The first practice is always fun to watch. I, I was just too tired. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You didn’t miss much.”

  I found the sandwich then and went in to sit by Pop. I told him about the man-eating tuba, and about Coach’s speeches and this new kid Spray Can. I told him almost everything that happened at practice because I know how much he loves football. He played in college, not a lot because he had a bad hip from a collision in a high-school game. So by the time he got to college, his best years on the field were already spent. He must’ve wanted to play one more season so bad, but just couldn’t.

  “I’m the fastest on the team this year, Pop,” I said.

  “I thought Heat was faster than you.”

  “Not this year,” I said, trying not to be too proud. “I got him by a whole stride.”

  “Well,” Pop said, rubbing the side of his face ’cause it needed a shave. “You have grown; that happens. You’re still awful skinny.”

  “Don’t matter,” I said, laughing. “They can’t hit me if they can’t catch me.”

  Pop agreed, and we both laughed about it. Then I told him how big Taco Bell had gotten and he wasn’t surprised about that at all. He’s seen Taco Bell eat too. We would’ve kept talkin’ until Mom got home, but Dad was pretty tired. I helped him out of his chair and he said maybe I was stronger than I looked. He limped off to bed then and I sat down in his chair and looked out the window, looked out at the dark the way he would and wondered what it would be like to wait for a boy to come home from football practice, wait to see him walk up the drive, wait to see him wave, wait for him to come through the door, wait for the cancer to take my body away from it all and leave nothing but an empty chair in an empty room. I think that
’s when it was hardest, the first few weeks after we found out how short a time he had left with us. Maybe not even as long as a football season.

  3

  MAYBE WE SHOULD JOIN THE BAND

  For the first three weeks it felt like it would be the longest season in history. We learned fourteen plays, and we did them over and over and over again on the hot, dusty field. And there was the band, always moaning in a sad way, clanging together and stumbling, never moving in one precise motion like bands are supposed to. They were like us. Bumping into each other, trying to learn how to march and play at the same time, trying hard to be a team. They complained, we complained. And when the practice was over we all sat together in the shade of a dying elm tree and waited for our parents to pick us up or for the energy to come back to our muscles so we could walk home. We were an odd bunch then; I think we all felt like misfits. The band that nobody wanted to hear, the football team that no one came to watch. It was kinda funny in a way, because somehow it made us friends.

  The first two games were the worst I’d ever seen, or played. We didn’t score, we didn’t stop anyone from scoring, and the band played the national anthem so badly most folks didn’t even know what they were playing. After the second loss, when we were all sitting together under that elm tree after a long Monday practice, Coach walked over and stood in front of us. He didn’t bother stepping out of the sun; he just stood there and looked at us for a long time: the band, the football team.

  “Well,” he finally said, looking at the drummers and horn players. “If we lose another game, why don’t you trade places with these guys in pads?”

  Some of them kinda laughed. Farts and Fats looked at each other. They were twins. Farts played football with us, and his brother played the tuba. They looked at each other as if to say, “Sure, why not?” Maybe some of the other guys were thinking that same thing, that we might as well trade places. But most of us sat there wondering if we could ever win on our own. Not because of a car accident, or police intervention, but because we earned it. I guess we had lost so many games we had gotten used to it, we expected it. We expected to show up, make a few tackles, run a few plays, watch the other team celebrate, and go home. We expected to go to school the next day, sit at our lunch table, the garbage dump, and have garbage rain down on us like we deserved it.