“Do it again, Chaka!” Ramsey shouted.
But Chaka kept walking to the back of the line.
“Do it again, Chaka!”
Chaka ignored him, eyes straight ahead, hands on his hips.
Ramsey began a lecture about discipline and how Chaka and the rest of his teammates lacked it. Chaka turned his head to Ramsey and, with cold eyes, yelled, “So?!”
“Shut the fuck up,” Esau said, without raising his voice.
He walked up to Chaka and stood face-to-face with him.
“What’s your problem, man?”
Chaka said nothing, avoiding eye contact.
“You got a problem. What is it?”
No answer.
“I’m asking you a question. Talk.”
Still nothing. The other Pee Wees glanced over, careful not to hold their stares too long, pretending to mind their business. Of all the boys on the team, the coaches believed that Chaka had both the most long-term athletic potential and the highest short-term risk of falling to the streets. He was very tall for his age and very thin, which, to Coach Chris, meant that he had a “good frame” to build on once he started seriously lifting weights in high school. The boy was more skilled at 12 than his older cousin, Brandon Reddish, had been, and that young man was now a starting defensive back at Syracuse University. Chaka was a sweet boy, generous and warm with those he cared about, usually shy and polite with adults. He carried an innocence and curiosity that occasionally pierced through the cool swagger he presented to the world. He was an impressionable boy, and this worried his coaches. They often saw him hanging with older kids at the Betsy Head playground on weekends and evenings when he didn’t have football. He’d show up to practice with fly new clothes, and when teammates asked how he got them, he turned defensive. “Every time I see him in the park he wearing a new pair of sneakers,” Donnie had said before one practice.
“That’s ’cause he rob people,” Esau joked.
“I don’t rob!” Chaka corrected, with an aggression that caught Esau off guard. “I got money!”
When Donnie asked him how he got his money, he wouldn’t dignify the question with a response. Esau knew Chaka well enough to know that he turned cold at the slightest hint of disrespect. He was a boy who valued respect above all and knew enough to give it in return. So, on the night before the Brick City game, Esau’s voice was calm and direct.
“Show some respect, man,” he said to Chaka. “Would you ever act like that to your father?”
Chaka shook his head. Esau could sense the boy’s icy shield beginning to melt.
“That shit ain’t cool, man. Football’s about more than just catching the ball. You gotta block and you gotta tackle. So what’s your problem?”
“Nothing.”
“You obviously have a problem. He was yelling at you to do it again and you just kept walking. What is the problem?”
“I didn’t want to go.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t tackle him.”
“What do you mean you can’t tackle him?”
Chaka shrugged.
“Who is Oomz? Who is Oomz?”
Another shrug.
“Exactly. If you afraid to tackle Oomz—come on, man.”
Chaka nodded his head. He went to Ramsey and apologized. They shook hands and practice continued.
THINGS FELT PRECARIOUS.
Isaiah stood at the front of one of the two lines, gripping the ball in the crook of his right arm, as Oomz crouched down at the front of the other. Isaiah had been running hard and hitting hard all week. While some of his teammates complained at first about how hard Ramsey was on them, Isaiah kept quiet and did the work. Eventually, his teammates stopped complaining and followed his lead. “We need this shit,” Isaiah said. He was stunned by how badly they’d been beaten. He watched the East Orange game over and over, nitpicking through the film. All week, his brother, Shaq, walked past his room late at night and saw him sitting up in his bed, eyes locked on their mother’s iPad. “He watched it like twelve times,” Shaq said. “At least once every night since.” Isaiah welcomed Ramsey’s insight and passion, and he believed a hard practice like this was exactly what his team needed. Ramsey shouted “Go!” and Isaiah ran forward and Oomz angled toward him and their helmets collided with a loud smack as Oomz tackled Isaiah to the ground.
“Woooo!” the parents along the fence howled.
Isaiah pushed himself up to his feet slowly. He adjusted his helmet and took a few wobbly steps in the wrong direction.
“Yo, you got a headache?” Andrell said. “You walking to the wrong line.”
“I’m good,” Isaiah said, turning around and heading to the other line.
Along the fence, Dwight turned to the other fathers and said, “They gon’ have concussions before the game. All of ’em.”
“It’s hitting season!” Mr. Hart said.
“We ain’t gonna have nobody for the game tomorrow,” Dwight said. “We gotta cool off.”
How hard to push when the margin for error was gone? Nobody was certain. After more hitting and a set of wind sprints, practice was over. The boys walked off the field tired and covered in dust. In less than 24 hours, they would play Brick City—the biggest game of the year.
17
BRICK CITY
Late September 2014
TODAY OF ALL DAYS, DONNIE DIDN’T WANT TO BE LATE. He’d heard Coach Chris hyping the Brick City game for many months, and now it stood as a bona fide must-win game. He’d heard Esau remind the Pee Wees at practice that they had only 16 players, the required minimum, and needed every boy to show up. He’d heard his teammates say, over and over, that they had to win this game to make the playoffs. He’d heard parents talk about how this was homecoming week and a lot of people were going to be there and you didn’t want to embarrass yourself by losing in front of all those people during homecoming. With the other Mo Better age groups already eliminated from contention, Esau’s team was again the program’s last hope for postseason success.
Donnie told his older cousin, who was accompanying him and his 8-year-old brother Tarell to the game, that it was important they left early. He’d reminded her the night before, he’d been the first in the apartment to wake, and all morning he’d prodded her and Tarell to hurry up. Donnie’s cousin had attended South Shore High School, the location of the game, and she had no trouble getting them there from the Castle by bus. They arrived at the field around noon, five hours before the Pee Wee game and two hours before the Mitey Mite game. The bleachers were still empty. They were the first ones there, and it felt like the whole stadium was theirs.
Donnie and Tarell dropped their bags at the top of the bleachers, kicked off their rubber slippers, and ran onto the field in their socks. They brimmed with excitement and energy. Donnie didn’t like to spend time at home, where it was often crowded, hectic, and messy. He craved open space, and now here was 120 yards worth of artificial grass to run around on. They tossed around the football they had borrowed from their older brother. They chased each other, zigzagging around orange cones that randomly dotted the field. They hopped onto a gymnastics balance beam on the track and tried to walk from one end to the other. When he reached the end, Donnie jumped off and ran back onto the field. Then he stopped, crouched down, and casually leaped into a front flip, landing on his feet, before running to the 50-yard line and plopping onto the ground, where he sat with his arms looped around his knees, grinning and giggling. Tarell ran over and took a seat next to him. Donnie was glad to see his brother smiling.
Lately, Tarell had been getting into more fights at school and throwing more tantrums at home. “He just be mad at all the stuff we don’t have,” Donnie said. “I be mad too, but I be better at dealing with it now than he is. Like I be thinkin’ bout how the anger goes away. He not really old enough to think things like that.” One recent day at Betsy Head, Tarell took his anger out on a boy he knew from the neighborhood. Tarell was playing tag with several others whe
n this boy showed up, placed his backpack and a cup of applesauce on the ground, and asked if he could join. Tarell shouted, “No!” and began making fun of the boy’s clothes, a maroon polo shirt and black slacks. They traded insults. Then Tarell picked up the applesauce and slammed it down, brown mush exploding on the dirt. The boy claimed he knew karate and got into a karate pose, and Tarell made fun of that too. “I’ll knock the shit out of you!” Tarell said to him, and the boy replied, “You think I’m scared of you?”
Oomz, Donnie, and some other older boys at the park paused their football game to watch.
“It’s about to get lit!” one boy said. “Tarell ’bout to get beat up. That boy mad bigger.”
“Tarell don’t get beat up,” Oomz said. “I’ve never seen him beat up.”
Soon they were swinging at each other. Though the boy in the maroon shirt was bigger, Tarell hit harder, and after a few punches, Oomz and Donnie broke it up.
“I woulda knocked him out,” the boy said, his face twisted in anger, as Donnie calmly guided him away from Tarell. “That lil’ boy keep saying my mama got crabs in her vagina. He live on the street! He eat on the street! I bet he gon’ eat that applesauce on the ground!”
Tarell pointed at the boy, laughing loud enough for him to hear, saying to the other boys, “Look at that kid! He think he know karate! His mama nasty!”
Donnie had tried to get tougher on Tarell, hoping it would harden him, make him better able to shrug off the nice clothes and new toys other kids flaunted. One evening, Tarell showed up to Betsy Head in full pads without knowing that there was no Mitey Mite practice that day. Donnie, who did have practice that day, punched him in the chest for being irresponsible. “’Cause you never be listening!” Donnie shouted at him in front of all the Pee Wees.
But now, as he and Tarell sat at midfield, Donnie wondered if maybe all his brother needed was space and calm, grass and quiet, time away from the sounds of gunshots and elevated 3 trains. He looked at his brother and couldn’t see a trace of the anger lingering within him. He saw a pure smile, a smile so wide and free that sweat dripped onto Tarell’s teeth. It was the first Saturday of fall but more than 80 degrees, the hottest day in weeks. The sun was high and the sky was clear and bright. Other boys began to arrive. Donnie and Tarell greeted them, then returned to the to the bleachers, where their cousin was changing her baby’s diaper.
“I’ma get so many tackles, it’s not even funny,” Donnie said to her. “I’ma hit somebody. I’ma hit they helmet off.”
From the top of the bleachers, Donnie and Tarell watched the stadium come alive. A ceremonial vibe soon took hold of the place. The stands filled quickly. Former Mo Better players hugged and caught up. Brownsville old-timers gathered on the walkway sharing stories. Down at the base of the bleachers, Coach Chris held court, regaling a crowd with tales of his glory days at this very stadium. He told them about how he played so well here because he knew the crosswinds, how he loved throwing to the east end zone because the wind was usually at his back, how he’d tossed many long bombs to his brother Ricky, the fastest kid on the field, thanks to his understanding of the wind. The people in the crowd listened with smiles, nods, and wide eyes, they laughed at his jokes, and when he said he had to move on to greet others, good host that he was, they slapped him on the back and told him they looked forward to seeing some Mo Better wins today. “Great day for football, huh?” Chris boomed as he worked his way through the people. “Great day for football!”
The day’s joy dissolved once the football got going. Brick City dominated the Mitey Mite game in the morning, and then ran up a huge lead in the Junior Pee Wee contest before the second quarter was over in the early afternoon. The Pee Wees watched this devastation from under a big oak tree behind the west end zone. Esau had corralled them there to keep them cool in the shade and far from the distractions of the bleachers. Frustration, anger, and gloom simmered in the stands. Parents and former players complained that Mo Better had fallen behind its competitors in Newark and East Orange. The golden years were long gone, went the whispers. On the Brick City side, where the shirts and hats were blue and silver, there was confidence and pride. For the second straight year, Brick City was proving its superiority over the legendary Brooklyn juggernaut. “They was really feelin’ themselves over there,” Oomz observed. When the Mo Better Pee Wees had crossed the bleachers on their way to the oak tree, a Brick City coach said to them, “Y’all know y’all not scoring.” The boys had kept on walking, without saying a word, until they reached the tree, at which point Naz said, “They coaches crazy. Can’t believe he said we not gonna score.”
“I bet we do score,” Oomz said. “I bet Isaiah scoring.”
“They not scoring,” Naz said. “How ’bout that?”
The boys stewed under the tree, their faces serious, quietly chewing sunflower seeds.
Time Out broke the silence: “If we lose—”
“Stop talking about losing,” Isaiah interrupted, his voice harsh and loud. “I don’t wanna lose!”
Esau was on edge, too. He felt the pressure of the game, knew the season hinged on this day. He chided the boys for eating sunflower seeds: “That shit’ll dehydrate you!” He chided Oomz for roughhousing with friends at the park earlier that week and mildly spraining his ankle in the process. Oomz aggravated the injury during tackling drills at practice on Friday night, and now he sat on the ground, his shoes off and right leg stretched out as Andrell wrapped his ankle in athletic tape.
“Yo, remember, we can’t afford any injuries today,” Esau told the team. “We only got sixteen. You just gotta get up and walk off. One injury and it’s a forfeit. So unless something is broke, you gotta just get to the sideline.”
The worry lingered at the back of every player’s mind. A single play, one awkward fall or blind-side hit or overextended stride, could end the game and cost the season. Many anxieties fogged their minds—about dropped passes, missed blocks, and fumbled balls; about making the mistake that ruined the season. Dreadful images from the week before pushed against their confidence. Isaiah tried not to think about the first-down catch on the deep out route. Chaka tried not to think about the touchdown pass that floated over his head. Naz tried not to think about the interceptions. Esau tried not to think about the Shut the fuck up! moment. Hart, like every one of them, tried to clear his mind and lock into the present: the long field in front of him, the teammates in purple jerseys packed around him under the goalpost, the rattle from the stomps on the bleachers, the smell of hot rubber rising from the turf, the rush of traffic on the street behind him, the stern and sullen face of Coach Vick, who stood before them with fire in this throat.
“We gon’ go out there and y’all gon’ represent the hood today,” he declared. “I got my behind whoop today. I ain’t never ran from an ass whoopin. But I got my behind whoop today. I need y’all to whoop that behind for me.”
More than 100 yards away, Brick City’s Pee Wees stood packed around the opposite goalpost, nodding along to their own coach, who maybe had fire in his own throat. They too had lost to East Orange, they too believed that the fate of their season depended on this game, and they too had a hood to represent. Dorian’s father, Dwight, had summed it up well during the hard and dusty practice the night before: “They’re similar to us,” he’d said to the other fathers. “Just change the uniforms and it’s like…” But he couldn’t finish the sentence.
BLOCKING AND TACKLING—these were the fundamental and essential skills in football. At many practices, over many years, Coach Chris had stood before his players and asked, “What are the two things you gotta do in football?” And his players answered, “Block and tackle.” All year, from the first practice in spring to the one on Friday night, the boys had dedicated scores of hours to mastering these two skills. They had practiced in T-shirts and in shoulder pads, on rubber dummies and on each other. Blocking and tackling were what separated a good athlete from a good football player. Chris had seen many boys—strong and f
ast boys with nimble legs and soft hands, who dominated their peers in sandlot football games—lose interest in the sport once they realized how much more there was to football than throwing, catching, and running with the ball. Blocking and tackling were fundamental and essential and rooted in violence. There were collisions on every play, and a boy who did not enjoy these collisions could not enjoy playing football. The violence was inherent to the game; it could not be avoided. And when Oomz kicked off the ball to open the first quarter, the 11 boys in purple and the 11 boys in white charged forward, and, like two armies meeting on a battlefield, the sides smashed together in a collection of individual collisions. Isaiah and his counterpart slammed into each other with a loud pop! and with such equal force that they bounced off of each other and stayed on their feet, and when the whistle blew they stared at each other for a few seconds, perhaps out of respect or contempt.
The defenses stood firm to begin the game. Mo Better drove the Brick City offense 10 yards back and then recovered a fumble. Brick City countered with an interception. The first quarter ended without a score. In the second quarter, Mo Better’s blocking began to hold, opening lanes for the star running backs. The offense marched, gaining its rhythm. With Oomz clearing the way, Isaiah ran to the outside for 30 yards, bringing the offense past midfield. On the next play, Isaiah cleared the way for Oomz, who burst for eight yards, but as he lunged through the defenders, fighting his way forward, the ball popped loose and a Brick City boy dove on it. The blue-and-silver side of the bleachers cheered at the clear fumble, but then fell silent when the referee ruled that Oomz’s knee hit the ground before he lost the ball. That silence turned to groans and grumbles seconds later, when Isaiah ran 40 yards before stepping out of bounds at the two-yard line. On the next play, Oomz shot through the middle for a touchdown. 6–0.
On the last play of the first half, Isaiah drilled the Brick City quarterback, igniting woooos! and claps on the Mo Better sidelines as the clock ticked to zero. The Brooklyn boys ran off the field, toward the oak tree, hopping around and slapping each other on the shoulder pads. The boys from Newark moved slowly and quietly with their heads down, before glumly taking their seats in a shaded patch of grass beside the bleachers. “Look at ’em!” Andrell shouted. “Look at ’em walkin’ around. They not used to bein’ down. Let’s take their heart.” On the first possession of the third quarter, Naz faked a handoff to Isaiah, drawing the defense to the running back, then lobbed a deep pass to Chaka, who was so open that he raised his arm at the 25-yard line and pointed to the sky all the way to the end zone. Joy had returned to the purple-and-gold side of the stands. After converting the point-after, Mo Better led 13–0.
Never Ran, Never Will Page 27