by Don Bajema
I sat there in my underwear and socks with the huge helmet wobbling on my head, a ridiculous stranger. These other guys looked like giants; thick cords ran up and down their wide brown necks. Whiskers collected beads of sweat. They looked at me kind of funny. Each pair of eyes would dart at me; each pair assessed me as nothing — that bugged me. I lifted the helmet off my head and put it on the floor as nonchalantly as possible — I had noticed that no one else was wearing his. I reached down for one of my cleated football shoes. At that instant, a huge foot sent it spinning along the concrete floor. I got so nervous I nearly fainted. My brain struggled frantically to determine if this was intentional or accidental. What challenge or warning should I declare? How could I get out of this without looking more absurd than I felt, which was very absurd? Without looking up, I crouched down, staring at the floor, and stretched a few small steps, reaching for my shoe. I could see a thousand tails on a thousand dogs tucked under a thousand chicken-shit dog butts.
A thick-wristed hand intercepted the shoe and handed it back, saying, “Sorry, Red, here ya go.” “Thanks,” I peeped without looking up. Red. I hated to be called Red. This guy didn’t know my name, sees my red hair, red freckles, red nose, and assumes my fucking name is Red. Plus, I knew that if he had intentionally kicked my shoe again, I would have chickened out.
I hid my burning face and pretended to need something in my locker. I dove way in, smelling at least eight years of athletic tradition at Wilson High School. My thoughts echoed, “This is not a good start.”
My father never taught me a thing. He hardly ever said anything to me. He never put his hand on my shoulder, never extended it in a handshake, never even slapped me with it. He saved that for my mother. It was clear that he thought I didn’t exist, wasn’t even worth the bother.
He was a hero. He was compromised by his war experiences, but he still walked with the stride of a leader of men. He drank too much, and he was pretty fucked up when I was younger. He was a sergeant-at-arms with cannonball biceps. He used an “Aw-shucks” style of humor that stung like hell but was really funny anyway. He was always making me laugh and hurting me at the same time. He had rock-a-billy hair and sloped powerful shoulders, stood six foot four, and smelled sort of randy with smoke and beer. He always got smiles from the women that knew him, and furtive glances and a smile from any who didn’t. He accepted this as his due and kept walking. He never walked next to me or my mother. He had an old M-1 in his closet with a chunk kicked out of the stock near the grip where an Italian’s bullet had ricocheted. He had a glass eye. He cracked his knuckles, belched his beer and watched lots of football on T.V., and was drunk all the time.
We were going into the second hour of tryouts. The grass was shining. The ground was soft; the sprinklers had been on early that morning. The sun shone with surreal heat directly above. We’d heard speeches from coaches and listened to stars of last year’s team urging us to win again. With the team in a tight knot in the center of the field, upperclassmen were impressing younger boys with references to parties and dances that followed last season’s games — the emphasis was on “pussy.” I looked at my feet. I’d never so much as held a girl’s hand. The father of the only girl I had a chance with wouldn’t let me see her. I began to hate these stars with their girlfriends, their own cars and their friends to eat lunch with.
The sidelines were deep with kids. Several parents walked up and down talking easily, fathers with chests expanded in vicarious pride. A ring of girls stood on the thirty-yard line. They were dressed casual, in revealing hot-weather clothes; they had tanned silky skin. They seemed to be having a subliminal conversation from the waist down with some of the older boys, secretive and tentative. As far as I could tell, this looked like the big time.
We’d been told that we were going to close out the practice with “contact drills.” I had heard “men from boys” muttered at least twenty times in reference to these contact drills. We had been racing each other by positions earlier, and I had always been pretty fast. The stars from last year’s team seemed a little upset when I kept winning the races. Some of the guys were friendly about it, but they already knew they were slow. The ones that thought they were fast were pissed. I knew the coaches liked speed, and they began to pay more attention to me. The stars didn’t like that much, either. I felt the tide turning against me.
A fat red-faced coach screamed, “ALRIGHT — on the thirty YARD LINE.” The two stars beside me started making television-sounding war cries. I got disgusted and jogged over to where they were lining up. This is what they had been waiting for. I noticed how much bigger the other players were. I also noticed the pairs of eyes that stared at me, and the knots of players looking my direction and talking quietly among themselves. A coach came over and asked me what position I was trying out for. I just said, “Defense.” Two guys made derisive sounds. I looked at them; they looked at me. I didn’t like them; they didn’t like me.
Two days earlier I had been sitting in the front room with my dad, the curtains drawn. He was watching a team from his home state of Texas playing the rival state, Oklahoma. My mother came from Oklahoma. As a result, she was subjected to merciless teasing from my dad. Especially when he’d been drinking. We were the Okies. I was born in El Paso. He was born north and a hell of a lot closer to Oklahoma than I was, but to him I was the “goddamn Okie.”
There he was, sitting in the dark watching the football game — silent, emotionless, intent. His hips and back would jump involuntarily as he watched the athletes smashing into each other. He popped numerous beers, which were in a neat row beside the Lazyboy chair and were removed silently by my mother at odd intervals.
I sat down in a chair near him, watching him and hoping he would want to talk to me about trying out for the team. He was a big star halfback in high school. Trophies, scrapbooks, the whole bit. I didn’t care if he got drunk and told me about his five-touchdown night again. But he didn’t say anything. The game on T.V. was pretty good. The lead changed hands several times, the players were making great runs, the hitting was vicious. Sometimes the camera would pan the stadium packed with delirium and pretty girls. Oklahoma won. Dad stood up and glared at me, spun a tight circle, sat back down and said, “Goddamn it, goddamn Okies, every one of ’em halfbreed morons.”
They started interviewing Number 43 from Oklahoma. When the kid said where he lived, my dad said, “Just down the road from your mother.” The T.V. showed three plays the kid made, an incredible run with an interception and two hits near the goal line on the Texas halfback that had my dad saying, “Oh, man.” The Oklahoma coach put his arm over the shoulder of Number 43, who looked like he was in elementary school, kinda skinny, with a big ol’ grin. The coach said a couple of nice things about all the players on his team and then, referring to the kid who was now dodging a few towels his teammates were throwing at him because he was on T.V., said, “It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
My dad looked over at me, and his hand switched off the T.V. “Didja hear that? Truer words were never spoken.” Then he walked out to the front yard. I didn’t follow him. I went down the street to see some friends who came from Texas and Oklahoma too and were proud of it. I tried out the thing the coach said on the boys and it went over with them like a new motto.
I was pulling off my jersey, it was stuck to my pads with sweat. I was grass-stained, scraped up and laughing to myself because I couldn’t believe how good I felt. Every time I lined up for my turn during the contact drills I could hear my father, “Didja hear that. . . ?” I’d watch the players’ faces as they came swaggering up to the line and I saw that look change to fear the next time. I saw many faces alter and self-doubt cloud innocent eyes. I kept feeling an impact on them that they obviously knew nothing about. Before too long they were trying to protect themselves instead of trying to run over me. That made it worse for them. I just did w
hat I was supposed to do, like I’d seen the kid do on T.V. In the locker room I kept how I felt to myself. I wasn’t saying anything to anyone. I wasn’t putting my head in my locker either.
Someone I didn’t know was helping me out of my jersey; when I turned to thank him, he was gone. My eyes searched the room, and any eyes that met mine looked down at the floor. I wanted to ask them what they were afraid of, but I knew it would be a long season, and in a few weeks they would see me as a teammate instead of someone who was going to knock their dicks in the dirt every practice.
The red-faced coach yelled out the practice times for tomorrow’s tryouts. Then he looked at me. “Way to go out there, Red. Where do you come from ?”
I said, “Oklahoma.”
BEST TIME OF THE DAY
The hot air is building outside of Wanda Monroe’s house. Inside, the hint of a breeze flows in drafts over the living room’s parquet floor, carrying with it the smell of Bruce’s floor wax, and causing the dust mice under the furniture to swirl in silent tiny tornados. A Gibson is leaning in one corner of the room. A television is surrounded by a couch, a worn Lazyboy and a rocking chair. Behind the couch is a large dining table with mismatched chairs: two aluminum, one wooden, a couple of stools and a broken high chair.
Sitting on the table are condiments: salt and pepper shakers, mustard and ketchup squeeze bottles, a large pour-type sugar container and a paper napkin dispenser. Everything that you would find in an all-night roadside diner. The floor is littered with newspapers. On a coffee table nearest the couch rests an empty cereal bowl beside a huge ashtray heaped with butts. A dusty old fan sits in one corner. On the floor beside the rocking chair, an ancient Zenith radio buzzes.
Wanda Monroe walks into the living room and stops, looking out the screen door into the twilight. Her hair is thick and black, shoulder length. Her eyes are also black, her skin is brown, her lips full. She has wide full hips, a narrow waist, long muscular legs, huge hands, and firm breasts that have weight. She is a thirty-five-year-old exhausted mother of five. Her hands are pressed into the small of her back. She emits a slight groan as her pelvis sways forward. Tentatively one hand rises to her face until one long finger sweeps the sweat from her forehead and flicks the drops onto the tiny squares of the screen. She stares out the door, her eyes losing focus. Slowly the hands that seem to have a purpose of their own in their slow and constant movements press into her back again. Her eyes clear for a second. Timed with the slow tilting of her head they again lose focus and stare into the floor. The hand lifts slowly to her lips, her little finger flicks like a slow switchblade, and the long sharp nail traces the indentation between her bicuspid and an incisor. She stares out, wondering for the ten thousandth time how she got here. In this early transition into night, the years from her youth and the present become blurred. She closes her eyes and listens to the voices in the neighborhood, calling children home for dinner or delaying a request in the interest of some other chore. “Be there in a second. . . . I’ve just got this last section to wax.” Calls back and forth across the street. “Janet, is Jack over there ?” “No, he and Eddie and the dogs were heading for the canyon last I saw them. That was about two hours ago.” “If you see them, tell Jack that his dinner is cold. Hey — oh, never mind, I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
Wanda can listen and hear her own mother calling her from a time when she was a lot happier and a lot less lonely back in Oklahoma. Her eyes closed, Wanda calls up all the sights of the street she grew up on. Darkness sets on that remembered street and she sees the headlights of her older brother’s Plymouth jumping down the road leading to their home. She sees the face of her brother’s best friend asking her if she didn’t want to come along with them into town. Her heart hammers inside her chest. She hears her brother’s friend urging her, “Yeah, Wanda c’mon. We’ll let ya sing.” How she had felt herself split in two, a scared shy daughter, fearful of the mere idea of going into a place like that, and the other side thinking, “Shit yeah, I’ll sing alright, I’ll sing until you won’t ever hear anything else . . . but my singing.” She went. She had her first husband three months later, her first child six months after that. Rock-a-bye baby. Wanda heard the voices inside of the liquor store, she remembered the look in his eyes when he came running out, heard herself saying . . . “Oh, my God no.” She saw the gun in his hand, and his laughing face. Saw her brother stumble over the confused farmer in the doorway. Heard the car doors slam after the tires had already begun screeching. Felt his hands press her onto the floor of the back seat and heard her brother saying . . . “Get down, Lyle, here it comes.” She remembered the muffled explosions and the sound like a beer opener popping into the trunk of the car. She remembered the kiss he gave her when they crossed the state line and he whispered “Welcome to the Lone Star State.” She knew right then and there she’d never see her mother again.
The buzzing radio annoys her. She walks over to the rocking chair, slumps into its cushions and adjusts the radio to the Top 40, hoping to hear Brenda Lee. Instead, the weather report, “Expect temperatures to increase over the next three days as the seasonal Santa Ana winds are expected to drive temperatures above 100 degrees.” Something makes her laugh her frequent good-natured chuckle, and the fingers of her hands pull through her long hair.
Eddie Burnett knocks softly against the screen door with one knuckle. Before Wanda can reply, he walks into the room. The knocking serves as a formality, giving him permission to proceed as though he were one of the family. Which in nearly every respect he is, and has been since he was seven years old. Eddie is wearing black pointed shoes with white socks, Levi’s and a poorly ironed button-down shirt. His hair is not behaving. Instead of the sleek order it held for a few seconds as he left the bathroom mirror, it has reverted to an explosion of orange haystack. Eddie seems mildly concerned with this condition and attempts to plaster it into some sort of part, but each gesture becomes increasingly halfhearted.
“Hey, Wanda.”
“Hi, Eddie.”
“Boys here?”
“Nobody’s here.”
“Oh.”
Eddie sits down on the couch, passing up the Cosmopolitan for a Saturday Evening Post. He is feeling absolutely confused. Normally he would be saying, “Uh, see ya.” and be out the screen door. He finds himself sitting here in the front room with Wanda and nobody else home. He looks at the Cosmopolitan.
“Shucks, I was hopin’ to get a ride to the game. Don’t matter though, really.”
Eddie pauses for a few seconds and blurts out a comment that surprises him.
“I’m not ready to play tonight. It’s just. . . .”
Wanda leans back into the chair and crosses her feet on the coffee table. Her loose cotton dress slips up her leg for an instant, and she gently pulls it over her knee. She sees the breath catch in Eddie’s chest. It surprises her when she deliberately readjusts her feet and allows the dress to slip up her leg again. Eddie pinches a nostril with his thumb and forefinger, his eye darting in her direction. His neck feels funny. What was he saying?
“Well, Eddie . . . the boys tell me you’ve been just tearin’ it up in practice. Don’t tell them I told you.”
Eddie knows the boys would never acknowledge their admiration to his face but inside it makes him feel great, just thinking of them telling Wanda of his exploits. He thought he sensed a feeling of pride in them when they sat together at lunch even though the guys on the team and even some seniors saved him a place. But hell, what could he talk about with those guys? And the Monroe boys, well, they know more about what is really happening than any of those snobs, anyway.
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, yeah, sure I can play and all — and I want to play. But . . .”
Wanda is feeling more than the normal tension in Eddie tonight. She thinks she can recognize the feeling — something from her memory. It bothers her.
“They just now left.”
“Well, maybe I’ll walk. Don’t want to ask my Dad. He’s going to the game.”
She looks at Eddie as he cracks his knuckles. So that’s it. I don’t blame him. Wanda shudders at the thought of Eddie’s father hooting his drunken head off in front of a few thousand PTA types. It surprises Wanda that Eddie’s father could actually get it together to leave the house and arrive anyplace.
“Really?”
“Yeah, saw him with Buster and his moron brother coming out of the liquor store, hollering about seeing me tonight.”
Eddie tells himself that he doesn’t care what his father does. Everyone is going to find out what he’s like sooner or later anyway. But he doesn’t believe himself. He feels trapped. Maybe he — ah, hell, he has to play. What would he say to the coaches?
“He’s proud of you Eddie.”
“Yeah, he thinks he’s playin’ . . . uh, can I use the phone?”
“Sure.”
Eddie dials home.
“Hey, Ma. Dad there? Oh. So how ya doin’? No, I’m not excited. . . . The boys — yeah, was gonna get a ride. Naw, don’t worry about it. He was? Yeah, I know. It’s OK. How ’bout you? OK. I’ll be back late. Sherry’s. No, now that I’m playin’ her dad loves me. Yeah, her too. Milk and cookies, the whole nine yards. Weird, huh? He’s with Buster, I guess. I’ll call ya from Sherry’s. Yeah. Yeah, we’ll win. Both. Defense and offense. No. It’s better. If I thought I was gonna get hurt I wouldn’t be playin’, Ma. Don’t worry. He’ll be alright. Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ma. See ya in the morning. I will. Bye.”
Wanda has been watching Eddie intently. She cannot see anything about him that should make him an unusual athlete. He’s kinda skinny in fact. There is something inside that has always been there, and although he could get a little out of control sometimes, it didn’t seem to be anything he could use. He wasn’t as tough as her sons. Not even close. But her sons wouldn’t mess with Eddie either. The kid had a crazy streak. But he didn’t get it from his mother or father. Unless . . . his father. No. He wasn’t like his dad. Took after his mother, sorta. She felt so strange when she asked herself, “I wonder what this boy is gonna be like in bed?” It was a direction she didn’t want to go. But as soon as she’d thought it, she knew it was the direction she was going. She knew it was the direction she had been going for the last few months, maybe couple of years even if she didn’t want to admit it.