The Heartbeat of Halftime Page 5

  “I didn’t give up today,” he said after thinking about it for a bit. “I get into something, you know, I wanna see it through … beginning to end. My thumb just hurt bad, that’s all.”

  “Is that what you were trying to prove when you came back?” I asked him. “That you could play with a hurt thumb?”

  “Maybe at first,” he said. “But then I started thinkin’ about Ray.”

  Spray Can looked at me then.

  “Ray don’t come to my games. I thought about that. And I thought, What if he was here? What if he was standin’ over on the sidelines with the rest of the parents? What if he got up early to drive me, to say thtuff like ‘Have a good game’? You know, football thtuff. That’s what I was thinkin’ about. I wanted him to see how I was playin’. Maybe I was tryin’ to prove somethin’ to him, even though he wasn’t there.”

  Spray Can’s flashlight found another leech, stretched out but pullin’ itself together into a ball.

  “Is that what you think about?” Spray Can asked me.

  “No,” I said, reaching into the water and scooping up the leech.

  “Well, what do you think about?” Spray Can asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, letting the leech attach itself to the back of my hand and try to break the skin, suck some of my blood. “I guess, I guess I think about losing. I don’t want to lose.”

  We were both quiet for a moment, watching the leech.

  “I get tired of people taking things away from me,” I said.

  “Least you had it to start with,” Spray Can said. “Ray … he’s always been gone.”

  “We don’t got much between us, do we?” I said.

  “We should get us some dogs, that’s what Heat’s done.”

  I pulled the leech off my hand and threw it into the water. We sat quiet for a moment, watching the leech slowly sink through the murk. Then Spray Can shined the light under his chin and made a scary face. It made me laugh. I guess it was his way of cheerin’ me up. It made me sorry I had picked on him the way I had during the game. But I didn’t tell him that. I couldn’t. Not yet anyway.

  14

  THE PRICE OF WINNING

  Everybody knows your name when you win a game. Somethin’ happens. It’s like you were sitting in the back of the class all year and one day the teacher puts you up front where everybody can see you. My English teacher, Miss Krone, said it has something to do with stardom.

  “Everybody likes a winner,” she said.

  “Well, we’ve only won two games,” I said.

  “That’s all it takes,” she answered. “Stardom can be funny that way.”

  Stardom can also be funny in who it picks. Sometimes it’s the last person you’d expect. Somehow, Taco Bell got all of the spotlight. Maybe because he was bigger than the rest of us. He ate up all the attention the way he would a whole watermelon. After the first win, we never saw Taco Bell again without someone talking to him about the great game he had, as if he’d done it all by himself. And the girls, that was the worst part. None of us had quite figured out girls yet. So when they started talking to us before we were ready for it, we didn’t know why. Why were they all the sudden interested in us? No one was ever interested in what we were doing. It was strange having girls notice you overnight like you won the lottery or something. I’m not saying they all did, just a few. Katie Crofts was one, and she had a friend from Switzerland, a foreign-exchange student named Leisl, living at her house for a few months. They were the two most interested. I didn’t think much of it, but soon as Taco Bell discovered it, he started acting like Elvis.

  Taco Bell’s not real smart, and he’s kinda slow to change. But once he catches on, there’s no stopping him. First he wore a clean shirt to school, you know, just to try it out. It was after he caught Katie looking at him, staring really; she’d had to stare to make sure he knew she liked him. The very next day he wears a shirt with no food stains or mud marks and Katie asks him to help her with her science. Next thing we know Taco Bell is struttin’ through the halls with his hair combed and singing “Jailhouse Rock.” He even started washing his face before comin’ to school.

  I guess girls will do that to you. It’s just that, well, Taco Bell never seemed the lovestruck type. He’s more the doughnutstruck type. He’ll do anything for a doughnut. Once we were riding our bikes out behind the pastures and there was a dead cow. It was all bloated and covered with flies.

  “I’ll give you four doughnuts if you go sit on that cow,” I said. I was only joking him. I didn’t think he’d do it. But he did. He walked right up and sat back on that smelly carcass like it was his living-room couch. He sat there long enough for the flies to cover him too. Then he stood up, brushed himself off, and said, “Let’s go have a doughnut.”

  I thought about that when I saw him sitting at the same library table with Katie. She was sitting right next to him. I looked at him and thought maybe someone offered him a doughnut to sit by her. I imagined flies all over his face and then him saying something like “All right, pay up.” But he never did. He just sat there, looking at those drawings of dissected frogs and laughing when Katie made faces.

  Leisl was different. She didn’t speak very good English, and she didn’t really act like the other girls. She didn’t giggle or pass notes or play with her hair. She also didn’t know anything about football. So I was surprised when she came to football practice with Katie. They sat over in the shade under that big elm tree where Coach had asked us if we wanted to trade places with the band at the beginning of the season. It seemed strange to me. If they had heard that speech, they never would’ve come back. But there they were, sitting like they were waiting for some great thing to happen. It never did. We ran our drills, learned new plays, scrimmaged. But they were there, every night. And every night we said a few words to them, waved, and walked home like we always do. Taco Bell always stayed a little longer and talked to Katie. Then he’d run to catch up with us about the time we got to the canal. And he always had this big grin on his face that made us want to throw him in with the leeches. Finally, one day, we decided to test his devotion.

  “Hey, Taco Bell,” Bam said. “We’ve all been talkin’ it over and, well … bam! … I don’t know what to say.”

  “What?” said Taco Bell.

  “Here’s what’s up,” I said. “We have a deal for you. Each of us will give you one doughnut every day until Christmas … that’s four doughnuts a day …”

  “If?” asked Taco Bell, his eyes as big as cinnamon rolls.

  “If you never say another word to Katie,” I finished.

  I’ve never seen Taco Bell so confused. He paced back and forth, holding his face and kicking gravel into the canal. The rest of us stood there, holding our mouths and trying desperately not to laugh. Taco Bell was in agony. “Yes … no … yes … no,” he kept saying, looking at his hands as if they had the answer.

  “On weekends too?” he asked. “You’ll give me doughnuts on weekends too?”

  “If that’s what it takes,” Bam answered.

  Taco Bell groaned. Then a sad look came over his face and he sat down on the bank and stared at the murky water.

  “Looks like he’s made his decision,” Bam said. “Told you it wouldn’t take long.”

  Taco Bell looked up at us then. “I guess,” he said in a quiet voice. “I guess I’ll have to go without doughnuts for a while.”

  We were all speechless. Taco Bell was in love.

  15

  ALL FOR ONE

  All love aside, we had a job to do. We had to mark the end zones and we had to do it right. We had to call on as much power from nature as we could muster. We were playing Cyprus on Saturday. Undefeated Cyprus. We needed far more magic than four bladders could hold.

  We called a team meeting.

  Just after the sun went down, they started to show up. It was Friday night. We’d had a light practice that day, run through some plays with a dummy defense, then gone home to eat dinner and think about t
he game the next day. Bam passed the word at practice and they were there, all seventeen players standing under the elm tree wearing their “Prove it!” shirts. Bam addressed us first.

  “We got a game tomorrow,” he said. Then he was quiet for a long time. “We got a game with a team we have never beat. They got that halfback, Conrad. Loves to run the ball … bam, like that. Loves to score touchdowns then toss the ball to one of us. Last year he scored, then jogged down the sideline and handed the ball to our coach. Remember that? Bam! I do. I remember every time we’ve ever lost. I don’t need any more of those memories.”

  Bam looked around then, at all of our faces. He looked in our eyes.

  “I won’t take nothin’ short of a win tomorrow,” he said quietly but with a strained voice. “I won’t. I show up tomorrow, it’s to win. Bam! Heat has somethin’ to say.”

  Bam sat down and put his hands on his head as if he was trying to keep himself down. Heat stood up slowly. I could tell he had thought about his speech all evening. I could tell he wanted to talk about the forces of nature, about primitive rituals, about the way one dog will challenge another, about marking your territory and sticking to it, fighting for it. But he didn’t.

  “Dogs will mark what’s theirs and fight to the death over it,” is all he said. Then he looked to me as if I was supposed to help him.

  “That’s why we’re here,” I said. “To lay claim to what’s ours, to mark our territory so those boys from Cyprus know they got a fight comin’.”

  “How do we mark it?” one of the lineman asked.

  “Same way the dogs do,” I said. “We pee on whatever’s ours.” I looked everyone in the eyes then. Some laughed, but it was stomped out by the seriousness of the meeting.

  “Pee?” the lineman said.

  “It works for dogs,” Heat said. “It works for all animals. It’s a force of nature.”

  And with that, all seventeen of us made our way across the practice field and onto the game field, the field that was used only on Saturdays. We made a circle in the end zone, crossed swords for half the load, then ran to the other end zone trying not to mark our jeans before laying claim to the other half of the field. It was glorious standing there with all my teammates, calling on the forces of nature, looking up at a star-filled sky that would soon give way to the sun and the sounds of football. It was like we were preparing for battle, each of us counting on the other, yet alone in his thoughts, listening to his own heartbeat.

  That was the closest we ever felt as a football team. We had never really felt a part of anything else. For years we had been together because we were losers. For years we had been the Titans that couldn’t win a game. We were together because that’s all we had. We couldn’t do anything else; they wouldn’t let us. If we tried baseball or basketball they’d say, “Oh, you’re on that team that can’t win a football game. You sure you want to play basketball?” I guess people make up their mind who you should be and they won’t let you be anything else. The only one who can change it is you.

  So when we took the field the next day against Cyprus, we were looking for some change. Cyprus had beat us every year for three years in a row. All they had to do was give the ball to Conrad and he’d score. Then he’d thank each of us as he made his way back to the huddle for the extra-point try.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he’d say. Then he’d score again. When I told Spray Can about Conrad, he got wild eyed. There’s nothing Spray Can hates worse than a poor winner. All during warm-ups I’d sneak up behind Spray Can and whisper in his ear hole. “Thank you,” I’d say, and Spray Can would go crazy.

  By the time we kicked off to start the game, Spray Can was like a wild animal in a football suit. He made a beeline for Conrad, who was waiting for the ball to fall out of the air. I only remember two Cyprus guys who tried to block Spray Can; he plowed through them like a rocket blasting through a stand of trees. Boom! Boom! The others stepped out of the way. By the time Conrad saw Spray Can, it was too late. He didn’t even have time to fake. Spray Can hit him like a freight train. Boom! The ball popped loose, and Spray Can rode Conrad all the way to the ground while the ball tumbled out of bounds. Then Spray Can smiled into Conrad’s face mask. “Thank you,” he said while Conrad groaned.

  It was a long time before Conrad got to his feet.

  In three plays, Cyprus would have to punt. It was the first time they had ever punted against us. We got the ball at about midfield and it took us six plays to score. We didn’t pass, we didn’t even run the sweep. “Let’s beat ’em where they’re strongest,” Coach said. So we ran right at ’em. Nothing but power football. Me and Heat traded carries up the middle. Eight yards, six yards, eleven yards a carry. Finally I broke one loose for eighteen yards and it took Heat the next two carries to punch it into the end zone. We were only seven minutes into the first half and already we were ahead by a touchdown. Everybody on the sidelines started howling like dogs.

  But the game wasn’t over yet. Somehow Cyprus got it together enough to keep us out of their end zone for the rest of the half. Their offense threw everything they had at us, but our defense held. So when we sat in the shade for halftime, the score was still seven to nothin’. Coach had little to say.

  “This is the time,” he started. “This is the time to prove it. It’s never over. You weren’t done last week when you won. You’re not done now. You got to go back out there to prove to yourselves one more time that you are winners.”

  Then he asked each one of us. “Are you a winner?”

  “Yes!”

  “Prove it!”

  “Bam?”

  “Yes!”

  “Prove it!”

  “Wing?”

  “Yes!”

  “Prove it! Prove it right now!”

  He asked every one of us. And we all answered. Then he stopped, and for a long time he looked over at the other team across the field, sitting in their own spot of shade.

  “What do you think they’re thinking?” he asked us. “What do you think they’re planning to do?”

  He let us think about that for a moment.

  “Do they want this game more than you do?” he asked.

  “No!” we shouted.

  “Do we want this game?”

  “Yes!” we shouted.

  “Then let’s go prove it.”

  We ran back to the sidelines and waited for the kickoff to start the second half. As I lined up on the field, I could hear my heart pounding. I knew then that I was going to get the ball.

  It was a line-drive kick that I had to scramble to pick up. It put me out of position, away from my wall of blockers. I didn’t have much of a chance, but got what I could. I spun off the first few tacklers, but the third hit me so hard I thought I’d lost all my insides.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  So, word had spread. I popped up quick, even though I wasn’t breathing. Then I handed him the ball. I knew it was going to be a long second half.

  Up until the last three minutes it was nothing but a defensive game. Then Cyprus started moving the ball. They gained two first downs and were past midfield for the first time all game. Conrad was back. They pitched the ball to him in what could’ve been the darkest moment of the game. He swung right, but instead of turning the corner, he stopped, set up, and threw the ball deep. We all froze and watched the ball spiral toward a tall split end who was running all alone for the end zone. The ball floated out ahead of him, it seemed to be waiting for him, hanging there in the air … . The split end was fast. In just a few long strides he made up the space between where he was and where the ball was going. He dove to make up the last few feet, arms outstretched, the end zone beneath him like a deep green pool. Waiting for that pass to drop was one of the longest moments in football history. The ball fell out of the sky and into the fingertips of the tall split end. His hands seemed enormous. He caught it. No, he dropped it! He couldn’t hang on, and the ball slipped through his fingers and bounced out of the end zone while the split
end belly-flopped onto the turf, mashed his face mask right into the ground where the night before we had all formed a circle, called on the forces of nature, and marked our territory.

  He lay there on his stomach for a moment, clearing the grass from his face mask. Then he shook his helmet.

  “Oooh, yuk, this stinks!” he cried.

  It was a cry that rallied our defense, gave them the extra strength to hold their ground for the next three plays. Second down and two yards to go, and the defense walled up at the twenty yard line. Nothing, not an inch. They stood their ground, howling and barking and growling. On the last play of the series, Cyprus pulled up to pass again. But Spray Can blitzed, and before the quarterback could even set up, he was smothered by the stocky son of a mechanic.

  With thirty seconds left in the game and our offense taking possession, Bam had only to bury the ball after one play. He went down on one knee, and while the clock ran out we all stormed the field. It was the first time Cyprus had lost to Olympus for as long as anyone could remember. It was also the first time that season I didn’t look for my father on the sidelines. Suddenly it felt as if the whole world had changed somehow.

  16

  WHAT LOVE WILL DO TO YOU

  No one wants to do much on Saturday after you’ve lost a game. But when we started winning, all that changed. We hung out at the field longer, took our time getting home. And after we had showered, we ended up meeting at Spray Can’s, ’cause Ray had a pop machine that cost only a dime. Sometimes Ray was there, under one of the cars. Hours would pass by and all we’d see of him was his feet. But mostly he was gone, chasing down a part somewhere or fishin’ the Weber River by himself. When it got too cold to fish, Ray would sit by himself, tying flies. No one said anything to him, and he didn’t say much to us. Only to Spray Can. And when he talked to his son, he never even looked at him, just gave him some order or reminded him of a chore that wasn’t finished. And if we were there, we always helped Spray Can get the work done.