Leverage (8 page)

“I'm not clearing a trench so you can run five yards and fall on your ass.” Jankowski grunts. “You want a little respect, rookie, now's the time to earn it.” His eyes narrow at me, angry for no reason at all. When I wear my helmet and pads, all my scars feel hidden and my stutter mostly dries up. I feel powerful at these times and not willing to take much shit.

“You just make a luh-lane,” I say, “or take the ball if you think you can do better. But Coach didn't cuh-call for a left guard sweep.”

Jankowski just grunts again and releases my face mask. I hear Terrence, our running back, snicker. Terrence's been in good spirits ever since we increased our lead by four touchdowns in the third quarter. He started smiling in warm-ups and now the game is one big party for him. It helps that Jankowski and I have been smashing open the line of scrimmage all night, allowing him to rack up huge yardage. I think everyone expected to win, but not by this much.

“On three, ladies,” Scott says. We clap once and break huddle. I line up two strides behind Scott's right shoe and scan the field. No wonder we're stomping Jefferson. Their entire line, except for one guy, Adams, is smaller than us. We might as well be scrimmaging against our JV team. Jefferson's defense sets up, but we've already broken them. Their helmets sag while they squat, waiting for the snap, expecting to get pushed around. Scott's been untouched all night, hitting his receivers almost every pass and throwing two sweet connections resulting in touchdowns in the first and second quarter.

“Ready . . . set ... thirty-five red ... two eighty-seven . . .” Scott calls out the cadence. I let my eyes wander the whole line so as not to give away where I'll aim or even if I expect the ball. Jankowski drops to all fours, his butt big as a mule's, each thigh larger than a freshman, and awaits Scott's command.

“Hut,” Scott barks, “. . . hut . . . HUT!”

The ball snaps up through Rondo's legs and into Scott's hands. He swivels around to make like he's feeding it to Terrence crossing in front of me but then jams the ball into my gut instead. I clamp down on it and steer for Jankowski's jersey. Jankowski's good to his word, blowing a hole through their line big enough to drive a car through. He single-handedly shoves three guys left while Peller tangles up Adams. I burn through the line break, twist away from a last-ditch hand clutch, and twenty yards of open field greet me like a prize. Jefferson's cornerback and safety, both downfield, are my only obstacles. I steam ahead, gaining momentum, expecting Jefferson's safety to try and cut me off, preparing for the hit ...

Terrence comes out of nowhere, racing up from behind me, and slams Jefferson's safety right between the jersey numbers. Their collision slides past my face mask like rain on a windshield. Fifteen yards to the goal line and I'm still charging as the Jefferson cornerback dives for my knees. I power up into the air and hurdle his outstretched body, my foot nicking his helmet, but I go past otherwise untouched. I coast into the end zone and then jog back, tossing the ref the ball before Terrence leaps up into my chest and hugs me like we just won the championship. Then Rondo lumbers down to meet me and head-butts my helmet. A gang of teammates slap my shoulders and helmet and buzz around me all the way back to the bench. A few more soda cups come flying out of the bleachers, like an offering, and Coach Brigs is there, beaming at me.

“Good boy!” He smacks my helmet with his clipboard like maybe he's proud of me, except I got no experience with that, so I'm not sure how that looks. For a second, I try pretending he's my dad but it disappears, like trying to glimpse a firefly after the glow dies.

“Hey, Brodsky,” Studblatz calls out, “looks like you might not be worthless after all.”

“Brodsky.” Jankowski stalks over to me. The other players move out of his way. “We might keep you around for a few more games.” He pounds my shoulder pad with the meat of his fist.

“Nuh-nice hole you opened up,” I say back.

“We can't give Terrence all the glory,” Jankowski says. We both ignore his bad smell for the moment.

“Okay, that settles it.” Miller comes over. “Looks like you're legit. But don't let it go to your head.”

“I won't,” I say.

“Now get ready to party,” Scott says, pulling out his mouth guard, “because tonight we're kings.”

G
uys, you may think you're alone out there, but you're not,” Coach Nelson says from twenty feet up the rock climbing wall. It's on the north side of the gymnasium and Coach Nelson built it before I attended school here. He basically drilled and bolted hundreds of pieces of rock chunks to the brick wall to create foot- and handholds to simulate a cliff face for climbing practice. It goes all the way up to the rafters, thirty-five feet high. He offers a class in the summer to all students, but because we gymnasts have the inside connection and we're naturally good at climbing, he lets us climb the wall for fun a few times during the season and then takes us on a camping trip for real climbing in July.

“They say gymnastics and rock climbing are individual sports but I don't believe that for a second,” Coach Nelson continues. He's dangling by one foothold and one handhold, letting the other side of his body swivel out into space while he looks down at us. “No man is an island,” he says. “Do you know who wrote that?” he asks. While we chew on the question, Coach Nelson turns back to the wall and expertly scurries over and up another four feet. The harness clipped around his waist and thighs connects to two ropes that ripple as he moves. The ropes go up into the rafters through bolted pulleys and drop down to the floor, where Bruce is holding them. Bruce tracks Coach Nelson's ascent with a lifeguard's watchfulness.

Coach Nelson now dangles from only one small rock handhold, his Popeye forearm flexing as three fingers form a claw attaching him to the wall. He swings a leg and catches a small rock chunk with his toe, then holds the position like he's been spattered by a giant flyswatter.

“It's tempting to pretend you don't need anyone else, that your work and your score are yours alone,” Coach calls down to us. “You pretend if you do poorly, you only hurt yourself, and if you do well, the glory is all yours.” Coach Nelson grapples with a few smaller chunks bolted into the wall, then reaches with an outstretched hand for a piece of round stone that is beyond his splayed fingertips. No way is he going to grab it—and then somehow he does and pulls himself another two feet higher. He's almost at the top now. “But glory is no fun if, when you look around, you have no one to share it with,” he calls down to us. “Make no mistake, gymnastics is a team sport. We count on each other in this gym: to spot each other on tricks, to offer advice and guidance on better technique, to push each other to do an extra strength set, to lead by example. The judges count the three best scores, not just your score. Remember that.”

I glance around at my teammates and every set of eyes follows Coach Nelson as he makes his way upward. Some guys sit on the thick vaulting mats, some stand, some work on their hamstrings and straddle stretch, but all faces tilt up to watch Coach Nelson's progress. Since everyone but Ronnie and Pete—the two freshmen—have attempted the wall climb, we know how impossible it is to do what Coach Nelson makes look so easy. Only Bruce has made it all the way since I've been on the team.

A small bell jingles.

“Most importantly,” Coach Nelson calls down from the top of the wall, where his outstretched hand flicks the dinner bell attached to the rafter—good for a free KFC meal with Coach if any of us can repeat the performance—“you need your teammates to be around when you need help because just when you think you've conquered the world all by yourself, something comes along and sweeps you right down to the bottom . . .waahhh . . . oh . . .”

Coach Nelson begins waving his free hand theatrically and then slips from the wall. He plummets eight feet before the ropes on his harness snap taut. The pulleys squeak, and at the other end, Bruce's arms flex as the momentum of the winding ropes lifts his anchoring body four feet up in the air. Gradley reaches over to help stop the rope and pull Bruce back down to the ground.

“Good catch, boys,” Coach Nelson calls down, seeming to enjoy hovering in the air in the harness. Paul Kim reaches for the rope after the fact and Bruce, Paul, and Gradley slowly play the rope out through their hands, lowering Coach Nelson to the ground. When his feet touch, he unclips the harness. He claps his hand on Bruce's shoulder. “Thanks again.”

Bruce nods, looking like he just aced a test.

“If your captain can catch your coach, he'll damn well catch you,” Coach Nelson says. “The old cliché is true. There is no ‘I' in ‘team.' You see a teammate needing help, you help him. You see a teammate goofing off—in the gym, in class, outside of school at a party where he might get hurt or hurt others—it's your responsibility to step up and help him.” Coach Nelson cracks a grin at Fisher. “And, no, Fish, that doesn't mean help him drink more.”

“Aw, Uncle Jesus.”

“When old guys like me tell you backup's coming and they're on the way, that the cavalry is coming, they're lying,” Coach Nelson continues. “No one's going to help you but you and your teammates. So, look around you. This is it. You guys rely on each other. This is your unit. This is what you have and that's more than most get, so consider yourselves lucky.”

We look at each other, our eyes meeting, and I feel close to my teammates. They may not be gunning for a scholarship like I am, and maybe they don't and won't train as hard as I do, but they respect this sport and they respect me when I'm up on the bars. They want me to get good scores like I want them to get good scores.

“First two weeks of freshman season is, mentally, tough as it gets,” Coach Nelson says. “You don't know anyone and you realize what we do in here is
hard
.” We all start laughing. “Now that we're past the two-week mark and you haven't quit, I want to officially welcome this year's freshmen Pete Delray and Ronnie Gunderson to the team. Keep up the good work.”

Coach Nelson walks over to a bag and pulls out two faded, really faded, cotton T-shirts old as dirt. They've been washed and worn so many times, the fabric is like tissue paper and the original silk screen is barely legible. FRESHMAN CAPTAIN IN TRAINING, the shirts read if you look close enough. Coach Nelson hands the shirts to Pete and Ronnie. Pete looks confused but Ronnie looks like if you squeezed him, soap bubbles would come out of his open mouth because he's so astonished he's getting the shirt. I can't help but smile watching Ronnie. It's how I felt last year when Coach Nelson handed me and Paul Kim the same shirts. We returned them (laundered) at the end of the season. I wore mine a lot. I mean,
a lot
. Way more than Paul did. Judging from Ronnie's face, he'll be wearing it every other practice. Coach's speech while he climbed the wall I didn't mind hearing again, either.

P
atti wastes no time using Coach's funds. Weekend after I hand her the sealed envelope Coach gave me, a moving van backs into her driveway and two guys in blue coveralls unload a fifty-two -inch- screen television that barely fits through her front door.

“Now we can watch you almost like in real life,” Patti says, fanning the cigarette smoke that's drifting up between us. “Coach Brigs tells me they replay the Knights' games on the community access channel every Saturday afternoon.” Patti takes a deep drag on her cigarette, squinting one eye as the ember glows hot red. “That coach of yours is a good man,” Patti says, smoke leaking out her nostrils and mouth as she talks. “And so nice, wanting to know how we're making out.”

I nod back to her. I like Patti mostly because she's harmless, far as I can tell. More important, she's got no angry husband, ex-husband, or boyfriend in the picture. Thin as a soda straw, she's the first foster guardian who doesn't make me flinch, even by accident. Lots of times I'll come home and find her asleep on the couch or smoking in front of the TV with all the lights out and a tumbler of whiskey on her coffee table, only the ice melt left in it. The smell of cigarettes and liquor can remind me of him, though, and make me shiver. At those times I'll kneel down beside her, take a good look at her face in the glow of the TV, and make sure she hasn't turned into him.

Sometimes I might catch Patti sobbing about her ex-husband, Earl, and what a dog he was, how he left her no choice but to foster kids for extra cash and how the kids kept complaining about how they were always hungry and so the state kept taking them away and how I was her last chance. I keep quiet when she's like that, not minding the sound of her whimpers so long as she doesn't turn into him, so long as I'm bigger than her. When she gets like that, I stop listening, start thinking about Lamar, about the time he told Crud Bucket to go to hell after the man came into our room drunk for the thousandth night. While Patti cries about Earl, I'll remember the way Lamar shouted it, like someone punched him in the stomach and he couldn't hold back the words any longer.
Go to hell!
Crud Bucket reached for him, then, reached both his neck and his arm in one stumbling motion. There's sounds that stick with you no matter what: Lamar screaming into his pillow. The soft pop of his collarbone while I scrunched under my blanket across the room. Dark silence broken by whimpers. It comes back real sharp whenever I listen to Patti cry over Earl.

“I'm guh-going to a party tuh-tuh-tonight,” I tell Patti while the movers wrestle the big TV into her living room. “Wuh-wuh-one of the guys is picking me up.”