Gym Candy (7 page)

Thirty-four ... thirty-three ... thirty-two...

We had enough time; we'd get the play off. Three yards—that's all I needed. Three yards.

Everything slowed. I remember seeing the faces of the fans in the end zone, knowing that they were screaming but somehow not hearing them. "Hut!" Drew called, and I heard that. The center snapped the ball and I broke left. I caught Drew's pitchout in stride, my eyes on the end zone—it was so close I could taste it.

I saw number 50, Foothill's best linebacker, shed his blocker; I felt him hit me. All I had to do was keep driving with my legs and they'd carry me forward. It was just him and me, and there was no way one guy could bring me down, not with so much on the line.

That's when I felt the turf slipping out from under me. It was like being in a nightmare and wanting to scream but not being able to. I could feel myself going down, feel the ground rushing up at me. At the last instant, I reached the ball forward, trying to stretch over the goal line. I had to break the plane. I had to.

And then I was down. I looked at the ball, looked at my hands stretched out as far as I could reach.

I was twelve inches short.

Foothill ran a quarterback sneak, the final seconds ticked away, and then their guys started grinning and laughing and piling onto one another, celebrating their perfect season, their trip to the playoffs. I watched for a little—we all did—and then dragged myself into the locker room and changed into my street clothes. The whole time, I kept reliving those final seconds, kept feeling the turf give way. If only the field had been better. If only my spikes had been longer. The victory had been right there.

Finally I headed out. Downs had said that if we wanted, we could go home with a parent and skip the team bus. In the parking lot, I looked for my dad. Half of me hoped he hadn't waited, but he was there, standing by his Jeep. I got into the passenger seat. "You want to get something to eat somewhere?" he said.

I shook my head.

We drove over the Evergreen Bridge and took I-5 toward Green Lake. The whole way, neither of us spoke. When we reached Phinney Ridge, I broke the silence. "You saw what happened, didn't you?"

"I saw what happened."

"I mean with the turf. How the turf came out from under me? You saw that, right?"

He looked over, shaking his head. "Don't do it, Mick."

"Don't do what?"

"Don't go making excuses. That's BS. That's just total BS."

"I'm telling you what happened. I'm not making excuses."

"What happened is, the linebacker stopped you," he said. "What happened is, he was stronger. It was one-on-one, and he beat you. That's what happened." He took a breath and exhaled. "Look, Mick—it's okay to lose as long as you learn from it. So learn from it. You're close, but you're not there. You've got speed; you've got quickness; you've got knowledge of the game. More power in the red zone—that's the last thing."

I felt the anger rise, but I didn't answer.

When we got home, I showered and then climbed into bed. No way could I fall asleep, though. I let my eyes run over the posters on the wall. Walter Payton, Jim Brown, Eric Dickerson—the greatest of all time, and I had thought that someday I'd be one of them.

What a joke that was. With my teammates watching, with my dad watching, with every eye in the stadium on me, I'd failed. Completely and utterly failed. I'd been
so sure of myself, so certain that if I got my chance, I'd make the most of it. How stupid! How like a third-grader! As if I were the only guy on the field with dreams. That linebacker who stopped me—number 50. Before the game he had probably dreamed of making the big hit to save the game for his team. So why did his dream come true and mine go up in flames? What had he done that I hadn't? Why had I failed? Why had I come up a foot short?

There was an answer. I tried to keep it from coming, but there was no holding it back.
You don't have the talent,
a voice whispered—my voice.

I looked at the posters on my walls, and I wanted to tear them all down and throw them away. It was as if the great running backs were on one side of a door and I was on the other, and the door had been slammed shut in my face, slammed shut and locked tight.

Monday I hung out with Drew and DeShawn at lunch and in between classes, and they kept telling me the loss to Foothill wasn't my fault. "It's just because your run was the last play that everybody remembers it," DeShawn said. "If it hadn't been for what you did earlier, we wouldn't have had a chance to win. Besides, did you see the arms on that guy who hit you? They were like my legs. I swear to God, he had to have been on steroids. I think half their guys were."

"You think so?" I said, looking first at DeShawn and then at Drew. "You think they were on steroids?"

Drew shrugged. "I don't know. You hate to call somebody a cheater without any proof, but some of those Foothill guys were just too damn big."

For the rest of the day, my mind kept going back and forth. Was number 50 a cheater? Were a bunch of them cheaters? Had they stolen the victory? Or was I being a poor loser by making excuses?

***

Toward the end of the day, a rumor started going around that Coach Downs was quitting. "Probably they'll blame that on us, too," Drew said, only half joking.

Downs was a PE teacher as well as head football coach, but he had a sub Tuesday and another one Wednesday, and both days he'd had meetings with the principal and the athletic director. Then on Thursday came the announcement: All football players were to attend a meeting after school.

At two-forty I went into the commons and pulled up a chair at a table where Drew and DeShawn were slouched, heads down. Our table was way in the back and in the far left corner, away from everybody. I looked over at Matt Drager and Aaron Clark. They were sitting front and center, right where we'd have been if I'd scored the winning touchdown.

Coach Downs came in at two-forty-five, accompanied by Hal Carlson, the custodian. Carlson, a burly black man, was a decent guy, but I had no clue why he'd be standing next to Downs, unless it was to chew us out about something going on in the locker room. About forty other guys were sitting at tables around us.

Downs strode to the front of the room and raised his
hand to settle everyone. "This is hard for me to say, so I'll just say it. I won't be coaching here next year. I've got an opportunity to become offensive coordinator at Pacific Lutheran, and I can't turn it down."

Downs let the murmuring go for a minute or two, and then he raised his hand again. "You guys have been great, and Shilshole High has been great. You're going to beat Foothill one of these years, go to the playoffs, and take it all. I know that, which makes leaving hard. Fortunately there is one thing I don't have to worry about. I know I'm leaving the program in good hands." He turned and looked at Hal. "Most of you know Mr. Carlson as the head custodian here. Starting today, he's also your head coach."

Guys looked at one another in shock. From the front table I heard Clark laugh out loud. "This is a joke, right?" Drager called out. "Hal's not really our—"

Downs started to answer. "This is no—"

Carlson cut him off. "Coach Downs, I'll handle the meeting from here."

Downs looked at him, pursed his lips, and then nodded. "You're right," he said. Then he turned back to us. "I'll be around school until the end of the semester. Stop by my office anytime you want."

He walked to the door, turned back again to wave, and then left. As soon as the door closed behind him,
Hal's eyes homed in on Drager. "Would you like to repeat that question?"

Drager didn't back down. "I asked Coach Downs if he was joking."

"About me being the coach?"

"Yeah, about you being the head coach."

"You're Drager, right? And you're Clark?"

They both nodded.

"Running back and quarterback, right?"

Again they nodded.

"The kids who got arrested?"

The smiles disappeared.

"Well, Mr. Drager and Mr. Clark, I will be reviewing your case in the next few weeks to determine what your future status on this team will be. Once I've acquainted myself with the facts, I'll let you know whether I will allow you the privilege of playing football for Shilshole High next year. As of now, you remain suspended. Since this is a meeting for team members only, you will have to leave."

Aaron Clark laughed nervously. "Are you kicking us out?"

Carlson nodded. "I'm kicking you out."

Drager and Clark exchanged a look, smiled at each other and at their friends, then got up and left, slamming the door behind them. My eyes—everybody's eyes—had followed them on their way out. Once they were gone, we looked back to Carlson.

The fury was still in his eyes, but it was gone from his voice. "From now on, when you address me, you will call me Coach Carlson or Coach. As to team rules: there's only one word you need to remember, and that word is
respect.
Respect yourself, respect one another, and respect the game. Do that and you and I will get along fine. Don't"—he looked toward the door Drager and Clark had just slammed—"and you won't be playing for me." His eyes scanned the room. "All right then. Now I want to hear from you. We'll start with the guys at the table in the back. Tell me your name, your position, and your year in school."

One by one, players stood and gave the required information. Now and again Carlson would ask a question. "What do you bench-press?" Or "How fast do you run the forty?" Or "What's your vertical leap?"

It took time, but Carlson questioned every player. When he finished, he folded his arms across his chest. His forearms were huge—a lineman's forearms. "A week from Saturday, we're going down to Tacoma to watch the 4A championship game. I've arranged for a bus and I've got tickets for all of you. Attendance is required. You got a date with your girl, change it. And don't even ask me if you can bring her." With that, he turned and walked out.

Drew, DeShawn, and I left together. When we were clear of the other guys, Drew looked at me. "Wow!" he said.

"Do you think he'd really kick them off the team for good?" I said.

Drew shook his head. "He's just trying to scare them."

"I don't know about that," DeShawn said, smiling. "My money is on a suspension, which means you two sorry souls are going to get a second chance."

Drew turned to me and punched me a few times on the arm. "He might be right, Mick."

At school the next day, Brad Middleton told us that Carlson had once been head coach at Snohomish High. We went to the library during English class, which gave me a chance to go on the Internet to check it out. Snohomish High had a good Web page, so it was easy to find their head football coaches. Sure enough, there was Carlson's name. He'd been head coach for nine years. Every one of his teams had had winning records, and two of them had gone to the state playoffs. He'd coached his last team five years earlier, and they'd
finished 7-3.

I stared at the screen, wondering why he'd quit. Maybe he burned out, or someone got sick in his family, or he hated the athletic director. Whatever the reason, Snohomish had gone straight downhill once he'd left. The bell sounded. I logged off, gathered my books, and headed toward my Spanish class. In the hallway, I spotted Coach Downs. "Good luck next year, Coach," I said.

"Hey, thanks, Mick," he said, and he fell in step with me. For a while neither of us spoke, but as I started down a side hall, he stopped me. "You know, Mick, you could be a terrific player. You've got great moves, great speed. You just need to bulk up a little, get stronger. Hit that weight room harder and there's no telling how far you can go."

"I will, Coach," I said.

He clapped me on the shoulder. "Good luck to you."

I hustled to get to class before Ms. Koss called roll, and just made it.

I hadn't paid much attention to what Downs had said; I figured he was just talking to talk. But as Spanish class crawled along, what he'd meant came home.

He was telling me I was weak. That's what it amounted to, when you cut through all the polite
garbage. And that's what my dad had said, too, though I hadn't heard it that way. They were telling me that it wasn't enough to have moves and speed. In the red zone, in those final twenty yards, power was the name of the game. Not speed, not agility, not finesse. Raw power.

Saturday night was the state 4A title game. Drew wasn't crazy about going; I heard him and DeShawn complaining that they were going to miss some movie with Natalie Vick and her friends, but I wanted to see the game. My dad always said that you couldn't be the best until you knew what the best looked like.

And Pasco was the best. Early in the season they'd beaten Long Beach Poly, a powerhouse team from California, had gone undefeated through their league, and had defeated Foothill 20–16 the week before. Pasco had a running back named Ivan Leander who averaged ten yards every time he touched the ball.

I was the first player in the Shilshole High parking lot, but I wasn't there long before Middleton and Jones showed up, and then a bunch of other guys came. The
last two were Drew and DeShawn. We were expecting a crummy yellow school bus, but a luxury Gray Line bus pulled into the parking lot. Even after the door opened with a hiss, nobody stepped inside. "Is this for us?" somebody called out to Carlson.

He turned and looked back at us. "Time to go, men."

Tacoma is thirty miles from Seattle, but with traffic the ride took an hour. Nobody much cared. Everybody was laughing and talking loudly, having a good time.

The Tacoma Dome holds twenty thousand and was about half full. Carlson had us sit as a team on the fifty-yard line high above the field. "You can see plays develop better from up here. Pick out the guy playing your position and watch him closely. He's who you want to be."

The Pasco players raced out of the tunnel first. As they ran they let out a wild man roar that grew louder and louder until it exploded into the word "Bulldogs." After that came a crazy howling as they crammed into an ever-narrowing circle and jumped all over one another.