Keeper (17 page)

My father’s was one of three crews cutting trees on the upward slope of a long, low hill. It was a new section, so the machines hadn’t churned up the ground too much, but there were streams of tea-colored water running down off the hill. After an hour the team had set everything up and felled a big hardwood. It was a good tree, worth the work. The trunk was thicker than I am tall. The sawyers and the saw-monkeys went in and trimmed it. By now my father had started to look pretty sick again. What had happened, I think, was that whatever was in that green stuff had got him a bit drunk again, which is why he’d seemed so confident talking to Hellman. And when that wore off, he felt worse than ever. But he was stubborn and wouldn’t quit.

The crew got the cables fixed to the great trunk of the tree. By now the ground along the sides of it had been mushed up by the loggers’ feet, and the saw-monkeys were slithering around and swearing, their waterproofs fouled with red mud. The winchman, a guy called Torres, started the winch motors and began taking up the slack so that the cables came up tight. It was at this point that my father came up to the winch. He looked terrible, and Torres told him so. My father told him not to worry and to run the motors at slow speed; he didn’t want the trunk coming fast down the slope in this sort of weather. Then my father walked off and disappeared. Torres told Hellman he reckoned the old man had gone off out of sight to throw up again, not wanting anyone to see him do it.

Torres ran the winch at slow speed, and the cables tensed and twanged like the strings of a huge guitar. The trunk shifted, and the mud beneath it made a sucking noise. Then the trunk stuck, somehow. Torres eased the motors off and on again, trying to get the thing moving, but nothing happened. He was worried and peered through the drifting rain for my father, who was nowhere to be seen. So what Torres did was crank the winch motors up to half speed for five seconds, to try to jerk the trunk free. It worked. The trunk bucked slightly and then started to move down the slope. It came a bit quicker than Torres would have liked, but it was okay. Then everything went wrong. The tree skewed and slid sideways. The top end of it came slicing down the slope, cutting through the undergrowth like a blade through grass. Torres knew the cables wouldn’t hold, so he hit the release button and let the trunk go where it wanted to go. It turned and tumbled and finally came to a stop about sixty yards to the right of where it was meant to end up. What stopped it was one of the shallow gullies that were spewing water down the slope. The trunk rolled right into it.

It took Torres and the crew another hour to reposition the winch and the cables and drag the tree down to the foot of the slope to where the tractors could get at it. Twice Torres sent saw-monkeys to find my father, but there was no sign of him. Then, when the trunk had been dragged out, one of the boys spotted my father’s green and orange jacket half buried in the mud at the bottom of the gully. So he scrambled down to pick it up. He couldn’t do it. The jacket wouldn’t come free of the mud. So he braced his legs and grabbed the collar with both hands and heaved. It was when the back of my father’s head lifted out of the sludge that the boy realized my father was still inside the jacket. The big hardwood had rolled right onto him and crushed him face down into the gully where he’d gone to throw up. That’s how he died.”

Faustino pressed the
stop
button on the tape recorder.

E
L
GATO WAS
leaning back in his chair, his arms stretched out in front of him, his fingertips resting on the edge of the table. He stared blindly at the World Cup. Faustino was content to let this grievous silence continue because he was busy thinking.

Faustino was not what you might call a sentimental man, but he was baffled by the calmness with which El Gato had related the story of his father’s death. Just as, earlier, he had been baffled by the detached way he had described those . . .
what
? Experiences? Hallucinations? His friend’s coolness was, of course, one of the attributes that made him the best keeper in the world, but Faustino found himself wondering if such self-control was, well,
unnatural.
Sometimes he didn’t seem to be living in quite the same world as everyone else.

On the other hand, there was no doubting the emotion Gato had shown when he had spoken about parting from the Keeper. Faustino was struck by the contrast. The man who had just related the death of his own father so matter-of-factly had been on the verge of breaking down when he’d talked about saying goodbye to an apparition. This goalkeeper was a damn sight more complicated than any soccer player had the right to be.

Still, Faustino had begun to see a way of handling the mass of stuff that he’d taped during the course of the night. Three articles, not one. The first one would have to be about the jungle and the Keeper. Gato would probably insist on that. But Faustino thought he could put a bit of spin on the story, just enough so that the readers might believe it while understanding that he, Faustino, didn’t. The second article would deal with the logging camp and the death of Gato’s father. Good, solid human interest stuff. The third would be Gato’s view of the World Cup Final. (And there was still that to do, dammit. It would be dawn soon. He hoped the goalkeeper still had enough steam in him to talk through the video of the game.) The more Faustino thought over this scheme, the more he liked it. A three-day running exclusive on the man who was, for the time being, anyway, the most famous person on the planet. Sales of
La Nación
up by at least thirty percent. Selling the story around the world. His boss would love it. And getting three exclusives for the price of one, that was exactly her style, the cheapskate. Faustino began to consider the size of the bonus he might be able to scam out of her. He started to feel very cheerful.

As sadly as he could manage, Faustino said, “I had no idea your father died such a terrible death. I am so sorry.”

Gato tipped his head in acknowledgment but said nothing.

Carefully, Faustino said, “I’m surprised that I knew nothing of it. Never read about it anywhere.”

Gato smiled a little. “It happened in the middle of nowhere. Loggers get killed every day. The story didn’t make the national papers. And I’ve never spoken about it. Until now.”

“Can I use it?”

“Yes,” Gato said. “I want you to.”

Faustino did reasonably well at hiding his pleasure.

“But Paul,” Gato said, “we’ll not use
this,
if you don’t mind.”

“This” was the photograph. Gato flipped it casually back into the box file and closed the lid. Then he tapped the third file and said, “So what’s in this? Which bits of me have you got in here?”

“Stuff up to about 1998, I think. Your coming back, the years with Coruna and Flamingos. Then everything is on hard disk. Even pictures, up to and including us —
you
— winning the World Cup.”

“So,” Gato said, “you think you have everything you need?”

Faustino’s face was all pained apology. “There’s one more thing I’d like to do. Something I’ve
got
to do, really. If you have the energy.” He looked at his watch. “I tell you what, the cafeteria here starts serving breakfast in forty-five minutes. It’s usually pretty good. If you can give me another three-quarters of an hour, I’ll take you down there and treat you to what they call the Full Works, which I’ve never managed to finish. Deal?”

“Sounds good,” Gato said. “What do you need to do?”

“I’ve got the World Cup Final on tape over there. I’d like to go through bits of it with you. Especially the penalty shootout, obviously. Is that okay?”

“Yes, sure.” The keeper smiled. “In fact, there are a couple of things I’d like to see again. I didn’t watch any of the replays.”

“You didn’t?” Faustino was incredulous. “There’s been nothing on TV since. You must have seen it.”

“No.”

“You amaze me, you really do. Okay, drag that chair over. The video is ready to run.”

The two men arranged their chairs in front of a big flat-screen TV. Faustino picked up a remote control and thumbed a couple of buttons. The room was swept by sound, the German national anthem against wave after wave of roaring from the crowd packed into the vast bowl of the stadium. The pictures came from a hand-held camera tracking along the faces of the German team.

Faustino said, “We don’t want to watch this, I presume. This machine has a really quick fast-forward. Shall we watch the Masinas goal that put us one up?”

“No,” El Gato said. “Let’s skip to the second half, when Lindenau scored the equalizer. I’d like to see that.”

Faustino looked sideways at his friend. “You want to watch yourself being beaten?”

“Yes,” El Gato said. “It doesn’t happen that often, after all.” And he laughed.

So Faustino pressed a button on the remote, and tiny players ran frenziedly around the screen. After a while, commercials, loud and lurid, flashed across the screen, followed by men gabbing in a studio. Halftime. Then more crazed rushing about by players in white shirts and purple and gold shirts.

“Here it is,” Faustino said, stabbing the remote.

The video steadied and slowed. The screen showed the German forward, Lindenau, receiving the ball, a long pass that came over his shoulder. Gato said, “Let’s go back a bit. Walter Graaf, their keeper, does something fantastic just before this.”

Faustino rewound. Players ran frantically backward. The ball went the wrong way, returning to each player who kicked it. Faustino hit another button, and time started going the right way again.

“Look at this,” Gato said. “Graaf is a great keeper. I’ve played against him many times. He’s steady as a rock. But watch this bit. He does something none of us expected him to do.”

On the screen Germany were defending desperately. They were one down with barely twenty minutes left. They needed to score.

“Look,” Gato said, pointing at the screen. “Here, here. The German defender, Effenberg, gets the ball but has no choices. He’s hemmed in, between the touchline and Graaf’s penalty area. So he passes back to Graaf. Now, nine times out of ten Walter will choose to hoof the ball up the field to give his defense time to reorganize. We thought that was what he would do here. So the players closing Effenberg down turn around and back off him. But what does Graaf do? Look, here it comes. Walter shapes himself up to make the long clearance, but instead of doing that he plays a soft pass back to Effenberg. Crazy! Our attackers rush back at Effenberg. And look — our midfield turns and starts to move up as well, thinking that Graaf has done a crazy thing. But what happens is that Walter rushes up to the edge of his penalty area so that he can take a return pass from Effenberg. This is the World Cup Final, and Walter plays a one-two in front of his own goal. Fantastic! He carries the ball fifteen yards or so, then looks up and hits a fabulous diagonal pass toward Lindenau, who is just onside. Lindenau looks as if he’ll take it on his chest, which would leave him with his back to my goal, but instead he dummies. He turns and lets the ball come over his shoulder. He leaves Carlos Santayana standing. He’s only got me to beat, and twenty-five yards to do it in.”

Faustino took a sideways look at Gato. The man was actually enjoying this! This was a video of how he almost lost the World Cup to Germany, and he was talking about it as if it had happened to someone else.

“It was obvious,” El Gato said, “that Carlos couldn’t catch Lindenau. So I had to come out and hope to get down onto the ball before Lindenau could get the shot in. At the same time, I knew that if I didn’t make it he would chip the ball over me, and there was no cover on the goal line.”

“You come out of the goal like a guided missile,” said Faustino, fixed on the screen. “Lindenau must have been terrified. He’s only a little guy.”

“I hoped to scare him,” Gato said.

The two men watched the slow-motion replay of Lindenau lifting the ball over the diving, spread-eagled Gato and into the goal.

“You see what he does,” Gato said, as the goal was replayed yet again. “He doesn’t chip the ball at all. In the split second before I reach him, he stops the ball dead — there, look — and spoons it over me with his right foot. So cool.”

“Okay,” Faustino said. “The score is one–all in regular time. No score in overtime. Shall we skip to the shootout now? Or do you want to look at the three incredible saves you made in the last fifteen minutes?”

“No. Let’s get to the penalties.”

The machine clunked and whirred. Crowd shots swept across the screen, then knots of players and coaches and substitutes formed and dissolved at lightning speed. Faustino thumbed the remote, and the screen showed El Gato walking at normal speed into the goalmouth to face the first of the sequence of penalties that would decide who became World Champions. For a couple of seconds he was the only player in the frame, a solitary figure moving through an intense wall of sound. Then the camera pulled back to show Dieter Lindenau placing the ball on the penalty spot, fussing slightly about the way it sat on the turf, then turning away to pace out his approach.

“He doesn’t look at you,” Faustino said. “Not even a glance at you. Or the goal.”

El Gato smiled slightly. “He knows better than to do that. Also, look at the way he runs up — he changes direction very slightly. I couldn’t read him or tempt him. I had to guess.”

“You guessed right,” Faustino said as they watched the ball fly into the net just above the ground, just inside the right-side post, just beyond Gato’s reach.

“Yes, I did. But I couldn’t get to it. For me, that’s the perfect place and the perfect height for a penalty. Ninety-nine players out of a hundred going for that shot will hit the ball with the inside of the foot, for accuracy. But that was a full-blooded drive he put past me, and it didn’t rise four inches. Very difficult to do. Great penalty.”

Faustino paused the tape. “Tell me how you felt at that moment,” he said.

The keeper shrugged. “Not desperate. I had four more chances, and I knew that Lindenau was their best penalty taker. The odds were still okay. But then everything changed.”