The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

  I have kept my father’s film of that game and have watched that ninety-seven-yard dash up the sidelines a hundred times and will watch it a hundred times again before I die. I watch the boy I once was and marvel at his speed as I observe his progress in the grainy, surreal image of the film and run my hand though thinning hair. I try to recapture that moment when I ran toward the end zone, entering into my own territory, now pursued vainly by frantic boys in blue jerseys. The crowd took possession of me at the fifty-yard line; I felt it in my legs, that dreaming hum of human voices urging me toward speed, toward the highest thresholds of those ecstatic running days. I ran as a Colleton boy who had brought his town to its feet, and there is nothing happier on earth than a running boy, nothing so innocent or untouched. I was gifted and young, uncatchable as I sprinted down the sidelines followed by a referee I left in the dust. Swift and dazzling through the light I ran, past the eyes of my screaming father, who followed my progress through a glass aperture, past my twin sister leaping and twisting on the sidelines, cherishing the moment because she cherished me, past my mother, whose beauty could not disguise her shame at who she was and what she had come from. But at this moment—mythic and elegiac—she was the mother of Tom Wingo and had given the world those legs and that speed as a gift, and I crossed the forty and in the next second the thirty, sprinting past my life as a boy toward the end zone. But as I watch this film, I often think that the boy did not know what he was really running toward, that it was not the end zone which awaited him. Somewhere in that ten-second dash the running boy turned to metaphor and the older man could see it where the boy could not. He would be good at running, always good at it, and he would always run away from the things that hurt him, from the people who loved him, and from the friends empowered to save him. But where do we run when there are no crowds, no lights, no end zones? Where does a man run? the coach said, studying the films of himself as a boy. Where can a man run when he has lost the excuse of games? Where can a man run or where can he hide when he looks behind him and sees that he is only pursued by himself?

  I crossed the end zone and threw the ball fifty feet straight into the air. I threw myself down and kissed the grass. I ran to Caesar’s cage and rattled the bars. “Cheer, you yellow son of a bitch.” Imperially, he ignored me.

  Then Luke caught me up in his arms, lifted me off the ground, and spun me around and around. Luke and I, at last, had our waltz.

  We kicked off and I knew from the way we swarmed all over the ball carrier that this was our night. On their first play from scrimmage, Luke met their fullback head on and drove him back five yards into the grass. The whole right side of the line was in on the tackle when they tried a power sweep around the end. Luke blitzed and threw the quarterback for a seven-yard loss on the third down. Our whole team was on fire and we pounded each other on the shoulder pads and helmets, embraced each other after every play, and screamed encouragement to the lineman who made the first hit. There were unquenchable titanic fires loose on that field, a sense of recognition and payoff and destiny.

  The punter kicked a fifty-yard punt that went out of bounds on the fifty-yard line.

  Now I planned to set Benji loose. When I was scoring the touchdown Benji was at the bottom of the pile getting his eyes thumbed, his leg bit, and his dander up.

  “Benji, we’re going to teach these poor crackers about the merits of Brown versus the Board of Education. Tackle slot right on four. Break.”

  I always felt a bit sorry for the kid who played across the line from Luke. At the beginning of the game he would be a nice strapping healthy kid, and at game’s end he would be a paraplegic for at least a day. With Luke’s remarkable size and grace it was no accident that he discovered a natural affinity for tigers.

  As I approached the line, the word nigger had disappeared for a time from the vocabulary of the North Charleston Blue Devils.

  I handed off to Benji Washington, the first time a white boy had ever handed the ball to a black boy in my part of the world. He broke off tackle (Luke had done something like eat the boy in front of him), spun off a linebacker who cracked into him, shot off the end who tried to arm-tackle him, then in a series of astonishing moves of such swiftness and deception, he danced into their backfield, wiggling, frenetic, untouchable, and cut suddenly against the flow, reversing his field; then dashing past the right defensive back to the sidelines, then cutting hard, he raced the whole North Charleston team for the end zone. Three players had shots at him but all three misjudged his speed. As we slow-footed boys followed him to the goal line, we had scored our second touchdown in less than two minutes. I could feel the ambivalence of the Colleton crowd, and for a moment, there was nothing but polite stunned applause. This was a white crowd, southern to the very bone, mired in all the inhumane traditions of our time, and something in them wanted Benji to fail, even if it meant the team had to fail. Some of them probably even wanted Benji to die. But somewhere in that seven-second dash, resistance to integration weakened just a tiny bit in Colleton. And every time Benji Washington carried the ball that night, the southerners’ awesome love of sport won out over the bruised history that had brought the fastest human being in the American South into our backfield.

  When the team surrounded Benji, half killing him with their punches and slaps, he said to Luke, “God, these white boys are slow.”

  “Naw,” Luke answered, “you were just scared they’d catch you.”

  I learned that night that with Benji Washington in the backfield I was a much better quarterback than I was meant to be. I sent him through the line or around end thirty times that night. I watched him break up the middle for five, sweep end for twenty-five, slant off tackle for eleven. In the third quarter, I sprinted to my right on an option play, watched the defensive end overcommit himself as I faked a lateral to Benji. I darted through the hole over left tackle and angled toward the sideline until I was hit by the outside linebacker. As I fell, I flipped the ball to Benji who caught it and in a straight pure celebration of speed raced down the sidelines for eighty yards, untouched by human hands.

  In the fourth quarter North Charleston rallied for two touchdowns, but they were hard-earned, furiously contested scores. Both times they scored on long grueling marches down field and both times their fullback broke over from the one-yard line after being repulsed twice before. With the clock winding down and with us leading 42-14, our band played “The Tennessee Waltz” and as North Charleston broke for their huddle, they found us dancing helmet to helmet at the line of scrimmage with the crowd singing the words in the bleachers.

  Then the whistle blew, ending the game, and our town was on us. They burst onto the field and we walked back to the locker room crushed and pummeled by a thousand students and fans. Savannah found me and kissed me on the lips, laughing when I blushed. Luke tackled me from behind and wrestled me on the grass. Three North Charleston linemen fought their way through the crowd and shook Benji’s hand. Their middle linebacker apologized for calling him a nigger. Caesar began roaring again and was joined by the crowd. My father filmed it all. My mother jumped up into Luke’s arms and he carried her like a bride all the way to the locker room, her arms wrapped around his neck, telling him how wonderful she thought he was, how proud she was.

  In the locker room, the team threw Coach Sams into the showers fully clothed. Oscar Woodhead and Chuck Richards picked up Benji and carried him almost reverently to the shower room, where he was baptized in the ritual waters of victory. Luke and I were lifted and carried, too, until the whole team, ecstatic and triumphant, stood dripping and screaming on the tiles as photographers snapped pictures and our fathers lit cigarettes and discussed the game outside the locker room.

  After I showered I sat on the long wooden bench beside my brother, dressing without speed, feeling the sweet, postgame ache creep into my body like a slow-moving drug. I put on my shirt and had difficulty lifting my left arm to the top button. My teammates were putting on their suits and the room was aromatic with
steam and sweat and aftershave lotion. Jeff Galloway, the left end, came up to me, brushing his dark hair straight back.

  “You going to the dance, Tom?” he asked.

  “We’ll probably drop by for a while.”

  “You’re not going dressed like that, are you?” he asked, looking at my shirt.

  “No, my real clothes are hanging out in Caesar’s cage, Jeff,” I answered. “Of course I’m going in these clothes.”

  “You guys have got the worst sense of style I’ve ever seen. Why don’t you wise up and buy a couple of Gant shirts. And you’re the only two guys at the school who don’t wear Weejuns. Man, everyone on the team’s got Weejuns.”

  “I don’t like Weejuns,” Luke said.

  “Yeah, I bet you like those shit-kicking tennis shoes a lot better,” he said, laughing as I laced up my shoes. “What kind of shirt is that you’re wearing, Tom?”

  He pulled back my collar and read the label.

  “Belk’s.” He sneered in disbelief. “A Belk’s polo shirt. Jesus Christ. That’s embarrassing. I’m nominating you two for Best Dressed in the Senior Superlatives. You’ve worn the same pair of khakis for two straight weeks, Tom.”

  “No, I haven’t,” I protested. “I’ve got two pairs of khakis. I alternate them.”

  “That’s pitiful. That’s just plain pitiful. Not at all cool. Not fitting the image at all.”

  “You don’t like our clothes, Jeff?” Luke asked.

  “There’s nothing to like, Luke. You guys obviously don’t care how you look. Practically all the guys dress up after the game. We not only play good football. We set the trends in the school. We walk down the hall together and all the girls and all the geeks in the band say, ‘Here comes the team, man, here comes the fuckin’ team and they’re looking good. Hell, Benji knows how to dress and he’s just a . . . ”

  “A nigger,” Luke concluded his sentence for him. “He’s gone now. Don’t worry, he just won the damn game for us, but you can go back to calling him a nigger again.”

  “Benji’s colored,” Jeff corrected himself. “He’s just a colored boy who’s been colored all his life and he dresses like a prince compared to you two guys. Belk’s, man, I mean that’s actually embarrassing that the co-captains go buy their vines at Belk’s department store.”

  “Where do you buy your clothes, Jeff?” Luke asked. “London-fucking England?”

  “No, man. Me and some of the boys ride up to Charleston and spend all day shopping at Berlin’s and Krawcheck’s. Men’s stores. Stores that specialize, man. Not Belk’s. You don’t shop at a store that generalizes, man. Anyone can tell you that. I mean, they got enough alligator belts hung up in the rack at Berlin’s that they could start their own gator farm. You ought to go up and just look around at those shops. You need to start developing taste.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have the same taste as you, Jeff,” Luke said, closing his locker door. “You don’t have to wear our clothes, so keep your mouth off ’em.”

  “Hey, this comes under the heading of friendly advice,” he said. “I got to look at your clothes, so I got a right to my opinion. Agreed? You know Coach made it a rule that we should all wear sport coats to school on the days of games. Don’t you love it? Three-piece suits in the morning, sweating in the trenches during the game, shower, throw on a little English Leather, then killing the girls with those three-piece suits at the dances. I got this three-piece at Krawcheck’s for under a hundred bucks.”

  “It looks like shit,” Luke said, pausing a moment to notice Jeff’s light blue suit.

  “Ha, it’s the best suit they got for the price. I guess those tacky khakis are a lot better.”

  “I like khakis,” Luke said sourly.

  “See you style setters at the dance. You probably won’t see me, boys. I’ll be surrounded by a couple of hundred broads trying to get their hands on my threads. Great game, though, you two,” Jeff said as he left the locker room.

  We could hear the dance band playing rock and roll in the school cafeteria. I shut my locker and snapped the combination lock in place. Luke did the same.

  “You want to go to the dance, Luke?”

  “Do you?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Me neither. Especially now that I think everyone’s gonna be staring at me, thinking ‘There’s that poor bastard wearing a Belk’s polo shirt.’ ”

  “I don’t mind that,” I said. “I can’t dance.”

  “Neither can I,” he said.

  Coach Sams stuck his head around the corner and said, “Lights out, men. Hey, Tom and Luke, I thought you’d be up at the dance. You guys might get raped after the game you played tonight.”

  “We were just going, Coach,” I said.

  “Hey, where are your sport coats?” Coach Sams said. “I told everyone to dress up for the game. You’re my captains for christsakes.”

  “Forgot, Coach,” Luke said. “We were too excited about the game.”

  “Hey, uh,” the coach said, punching Luke in the arm. “Hey, uh. Some game. Hey, uh.”

  “Hey, uh,” we repeated.

  “Hey, uh. Hey, uh. Hey, uh,” he said, grinning at us both. “Hey, uh, some game.”

  We walked with him to the back door of the locker room and watched him throw the switch that extinguished the lights on the field.

  Luke and I walked toward the music.

  When I try to recall my mother’s voice as a child, it is lifted in a grave euphorious lament of our economic situation; I hear her chansons and plainsongs of her ineradicable belief that we lived out our days in the most hideous poverty. I could not tell you then if we were poor or not. I am not sure if my mother was miserly or frugal. But I do know that I would rather have asked to suckle her right breast than ask her for ten dollars. The subject of money caused a new woman to be born in her soul; it also diminished her in her children’s eyes. It was not because she didn’t have it; it was because of how she made us feel when we asked for it. And I always suspected there was more of it around than she claimed. I always feared that she simply loved it more than she loved me. But I never knew.

  The lack of a sport coat began to obsess me and the morning following the North Charleston game I went to her after breakfast and said, “Mom, can I talk to you?”

  “Of course, Tom,” she said as she hung up the wash in the back yard. I started hanging wash beside her. “I want you always to feel free to talk to me.”

  “Can I do some jobs around the house?”

  “You’ve already got your jobs assigned.”

  “I mean, to make a little extra money.”

  “I don’t get paid for all the work I do around the house, Tom,” she said. “Think about it. If I got paid for cooking and cleaning and keeping everyone’s clothes in nice shape, there wouldn’t be enough money left over for food, now would there? But I wouldn’t think of taking money for my work. I do it because I love my family.”

  “I love my family, too,” I said.

  “You know we’re having some difficulty, don’t you?” she said in a whisper, one of those binding asides, intimate and conspiratorial, which made you a member of my mother’s most earnest thoughts. “Even though the shrimp are running good, your father’s buying the gas station and the tiger has put us into a very bad situation. I don’t like to tell you this because I know that you worry so much about me. But we could go bankrupt at any time. I try to tell your father. But what can I do?”

  “I need to buy a sport coat.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said, her mouth full of clothespins. “You don’t need a sport coat.”

  “Yes, I do,” I answered, feeling as though I had just asked for a sailing yacht. “Coach Sams wants us to wear sport coats on the days of games. It’s a rule. Luke and I were the only ones on the team who weren’t dressed in sport coats yesterday at school.”

  “Well, that’s a ridiculous rule and one that we won’t follow. You know about last year’s bad shrimping season, Tom. You know
how much your father lost in his gas station venture. You know all of this and yet you don’t mind making me feel bad about having to refuse you. What you don’t know is how I’m struggling just to keep our heads above water. Now it’s not that we can’t afford sport coats, it’s a matter of priorities. Your father would go through the roof if he heard you asked for a sport coat now. It’s selfish of you to even think about it. Frankly, I’m surprised at you and more than a little disappointed.”

  “All the other guys have sport coats. We could buy them second-hand somewhere.”

  “You’re not all the other guys. You’re Tom Wingo and you stand head and shoulders above all the rest. Those other boys may dress nicer, but my sons are the captains of the team.”

  “How come Savannah always has nice clothes and Luke and I always have to dress like we were going to work on the shrimp boat?”

  “Because Savannah’s a girl and it’s important for a young girl to put her best foot forward. And I don’t feel the least bit guilty that I sacrifice to dress my daughter appropriately. I’m surprised that you resent it and don’t understand why it’s necessary.”

  “Why is it necessary? Tell me that, Mom.”

  “If she’s going to marry a proper young gentleman, she’ll need to dress with distinction. Gentlemen from fine families wouldn’t think of courting a girl who didn’t know how to dress. Clothes are the first thing that attract a man to a woman. Well, maybe not the first, but one of the first.”

  “What’s the first thing a girl looks for in a young man, Mom?”

  “Certainly not his clothes,” she sneered. “Clothes mean nothing on a man until he’s out in business or joins a law firm. A young girl looks at a man’s character, his prospects, his family, and his ambition.”