Mr. Hart’s son didn’t act like a child born into any sort of privilege. Perhaps he developed this awareness thanks to the many hours he spent among boys who were not born into the same comforts, boys who needed double the effort to make up for their lack of fortune. Or perhaps because he had a father and a mother who had warned him about his privilege all his life, parents with the sense and devotion to send him to Brownsville in the first place. Success required a convergence of various circumstances working out in a person’s favor. All Hart’s parents could do was try to maximize their son’s chances.
Hart’s childhood was one of routine and stability, with the luxury of days blending together. There was Mr. Hart parked in the car-pool line one fall afternoon, no different from the fall afternoon before or after. There were Hart and his sister, Brianna, climbing into the charcoal Dodge Charger. They went to McDonald’s and ordered 20 chicken nuggets, which Hart and Brianna dumped onto Styrofoam plates and shared while doing homework at the dining-room table. With practice in two hours, Hart was restless. He had four homework assignments, and his father said that they would not leave for Betsy Head until all the assignments were finished. First was a history reading. His father wiped down the kitchen counters and quizzed him on what he was learning while humming to the R&B music playing on the speakers in the background.
“That’s crazy,” Hart said. “Spartans were taught to steal but they were punished if they got caught. So you were allowed to steal just so long as you didn’t get caught.”
Hart spoke with an earnest wonder. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table, peering down at the gray papers, his eyes quickly scanning the lines.
“Oh dang, that’s crazy,” he said, looking up toward the kitchen again. “To test their courage, their teacher sent them out with no light in the dark to run errands, and they would just have to do the best they can. Basically, what I’m picking up from this is the Spartan culture was survive the best way you can and don’t get caught.”
When he completed the assignment, Hart shouted, “Done!” and his father replied, “On to the next one!” Before beginning the next one, Hart took a break to practice his signature on a blank sheet of notebook paper, until it was nearly covered top to bottom, his name scribbled in several different styles. “I need to figure out my signature,” he said quietly and seriously. A worksheet was next. And then two short essays, on a poem about a raven (not the famous one) and an article about an indigenous wood-carver in Alaska. Then, finally, a chapter from a book, Beauty and the Beast. Through it all, Hart tried, without success, to persuade his father to let them head out.
“I’ll finish it tonight,” he said.
“You’re not gonna wanna touch that work after practice,” his father said.
By the time the homework was done, they were running late.
“Go upstairs, put a shirt on, and take two puffs of ya asthma pump and get down here,” Mr. Hart said. “Let’s move. You’re moving like a snail here. Got work to do.”
Practice was starting in 15 minutes and the drive over took 30. Hart rushed up the stairs, his heavy feet pounding the hardwood. Kanye West’s “All Falls Down” came on the speakers, and Mr. Hart turned the volume up. It seems we living the American Dream.… The prettiest people do the ugliest things, on the road to riches and diamond rings.
Traffic was light, and so was the mood in the car.
“I wanna go to Stanford,” Hart told his father, as they passed the housing projects on Pennsylvania Avenue, which took on a red-orange tint under the setting sun. “Or Syracuse. I would love to go to Yale, but their football team is not that good. But if I got a scholarship then I would have to make the toughest decision: football or school. But I could be a star at Yale and they’ll still hear about me and I’d go to the NFL.”
“School first, then football,” Mr. Hart said matter-of-factly.
He knew he didn’t need to lecture his son about this. The boy had always seemed to take his education seriously. Recently, he’d joined an engineering club that made robots to compete in citywide competitions against other schools. Hart was the only black kid in the club. Most of the other kids were Southeast Asian, Chinese, or white. After a few weeks in the club, Hart contemplated shifting his post-NFL career path from law to engineering. “That’s where the money will be at,” his father told him. But at the same time, Hart knew his father understood his passion for football and supported his football dreams.
Mr. Hart had played football for many years after high school, not in an organized league but in the games his New York City Department of Correction team played against the New York City Police Department and the New York City Fire Department and against other corrections departments in Texas and Florida. He loved football. He loved that every play brought a new physical and mental challenge. He loved the feeling of knowing that an opponent feared him. Mr. Hart claimed that he’d never felt fear on a football field, and if this was true, it was a trait he had passed down to his son.
His son’s era was different. While Mr. Hart only had to worry about the opponent across from him, his son also had to consider the long-term consequences of all those hits. Hart prided himself on keeping up with current events, and he’d heard about the national concern about what football did to the brain. Just that month, he’d seen on the news that NFL officials admitted in federal court that they expected nearly a third of retired players to suffer severe cognitive problems at “notably younger ages” than the general population. Less than a week after that news dropped, Hart read that a 16-year-old boy from Long Island had collapsed after a big collision and died three days later.
“A kid just died from a hit,” Hart said in the car on the way to practice. He paused, fiddled with a loose thread hanging from his football pants. “If you do proper technique and all that, keep ya head up, you can keep yourself safe,” he continued, then paused again, staring out the window at people in the cars on the highway, random lives with their own unknowable fears, dreams, and destinations. “I dunno,” Hart sighed. “But still, you face a lotta danger playing football. I think it’s changing, though. Like basketball. You used to be able to hand check a guy, use your hands. Can’t do that anymore. Football changing, too. Not as rough as it used to be.”
Hart was ambivalent about these changes. Perhaps they would in fact make the game safer for his generation. Or perhaps they would only make the game less interesting and less thrilling, pulling it away from the facets Hart enjoyed most. But Hart thought less about the future of football than he did about where he wanted to play football in the future. For now, still, it was a rough game that tested wills. Like his father, he loved that, and as his team gathered around Coach Esau with the score tied at the end of the fourth quarter, Hart looked across the field at the Brick City boys gathered around their own coach. Days later, when he thought back to this moment, he would wonder: When the talents were equal, what separated those who won from those who lost?
Shoulders slumped and heads were down in the Mo Better circle. The boys knew they had let the game slip away. Esau sensed this. He had seen this mind-set many times last season, a resignation that defeat was inevitable.
“We gotta become men now,” he said to the boys, his voice sturdy and crisp. “We messed that up. We gotta become men now.”
He looked at Isaiah, the boy who had carried them all season, the boy with number 2 on his jersey, and he said, “We going with two. Everybody else block. We got two plays: we gon’ run to the left, we gon’ run to the right. We gotta become men now.”
Days later, when Hart thought back to this moment, he thought about the Spartans, and how here was Esau sending them off into the darkness, and they had to find a way to survive.
IT WAS COLLEGE-STYLE overtime rules: one team got the ball first and then the other team had a shot to match or exceed their score, back and forth until a team emerged from a round victorious. Brick City won the coin toss and chose to begin on defense. Isaiah got the handoff up the middle o
n the first play, at the 10-yard line, but the hole he was supposed to run through was clogged, so he quickly turned and cut to the left, jogging parallel to the line, eyes scanning the field, locking on the empty stretch of grass between the cornerback and the linebacker. He burst into the open space, veering to the outside, striding past defenders, picking up speed all the way into the end zone. Beneath his helmet he almost laughed at how, after all that tension and drama, the score had come so easily. His teammates, hollering and smiling, engulfed him. The Mo Better side of the bleachers cheered, but it was a tempered joy, with guards up, the parents unwilling to release themselves, still pushing back thoughts of victory. 19–13.
Oomz felt relieved by the score. He had been pouting since his fumble, and when Esau was speaking to the team before overtime, Oomz stood in the back looking sad, his eyes off in the distance, his mind replaying his mistake. But now he was rejuvenated. From his inside linebacker position, he stared over the hunched lineman at the quarterback, and as soon as the quarterback took the snap and turned to hand the ball to the running back, Oomz ran into the gap in the middle of the line and hit the runner. Three more stops and they would win the game, Oomz couldn’t help but think. On the next play, Brick City faked a sweep to the right, drawing the defense in that direction, clearing the way for a run to the left. Oomz bit on the fake and by the time he realized his error, the Brick City runner with the leg bands was yards ahead of him, nearing the end zone with no defenders in front. Oomz dove, his arms swiping at the runner, catching him on the ankle and tripping him to the ground, the outstretched ball landing at the one-yard line. On third down, Brick City’s star runner went up the middle, into the pile of bodies, pushing forward. Oomz met him at the goal line, held his ground, and brought the boy down. Some Brick City players raised their arms, signaling a touchdown in hopes of influencing the refs. Parents in the stands did the same. When the referee peeled away the bodies, he found that the ball was just barely short of the goal line, nearly flush with it, save maybe two or three blades of grass. Everybody in the bleachers was standing now. Sharif Legree pulled out his phone and began recording. The boys on both sidelines crept to the edge of the field in nervous anticipation. Fourth down from inside the one-yard line.
“Yo, Hart, I need a big one!” Andrell yelled.
“Best game I’ve had all year,” the referee whispered to the volunteers holding the orange yard markers behind him.
“De-fense!” Mr. Hart chanted in the stands. “De-fense!”
The teams lined up, the linemen put their hands on the ground. Hart dropped into his stance near the middle of the line. He peeked up at the quarterback, then at the running back with the leg bands a few yards ahead, then at the offensive lineman just to his right, then at the one just to his left, then down at the ball, which was inches from his head, then back up at the quarterback. He had studied the quarterback all game. He thought he noticed something: The quarterback seemed to spend more time wiping his hands on the towel at his waist before plays when the ball was snapped on the second or third “Go!”—as if trying to lure the defense into jumping offside by slowing down his pace. When the snap came on the first “Go!” the quarterback wiped his hands on the towel with a single, brisk stroke. Hart had come to this conclusion sometime in the fourth quarter, but he thought maybe it was only his imagination; maybe his mind had formed a pattern that didn’t exist.
Now, he watched the quarterback quickly brush his hands on his towel before crouching down and beginning his cadence.
“Readyyyyy!”
Hart stared at the quarterback’s legs, through the space between the two linemen across from him.
“Seeeetttt!”
Hart rocked back, shifting more of his weight onto his legs, coiling like a snake about to strike.
“G—”
At the first sound of it, Hart shot forward like a battering ram, and by the time the offensive linemen reached up to block him, he was past them, in the backfield, driving his helmet into the chest of the running back, drilling him into the ground. He heard the explosion of cheers before he realized what he had done. He hopped to his feet, raised his arms, and let out a roar. His teammates surrounded him, hugging him, slapping his helmet and shoulder pads.
“That was crazy!” Donnie said.
“I love you, Hart!” Time Out said.
They celebrated on the field, jumping and screaming, and once they had let it all out, they gathered around Coach Esau, who seemed unable to speak for a few seconds and just stood there, mouth agape, looking at his boys.
“I’m so proud of y’all,” he said. “Yo, I’m about to break into tears. Not even the win, but the way y’all fought back.” He paused, then shouted, “Who got my back?”
“I got yo back!” the boys replied together.
It was getting dark, and the stands began to empty. Parents streamed onto the field and into the parking lot. Coach Vick pulled Hart into an embrace.
“You gon’ remember this all ya life,” he said to him. “That play right there you gon’ never forget.”
From where they stood, near the spot where Hart had made the game-winning tackle, they could not see the Brick City boys beside the bleachers on the other side of the field, sitting on the ground, hands covering their faces, many of them in tears.
18
NONE OF Y’ALL GON’ DIE TONIGHT
Mid to late October 2014
OOMZ WAS IN A BAD MOOD. ANOTHER POINTLESS, DISAPPOINTING day at a school he hated. He had woken up that morning consumed by a feeling of dread for the hours he was about to waste in the classroom. His mother had begun researching more schools, inquiring about whether any of the good ones would take him. His mood had turned increasingly sour throughout the day, and he arrived at Betsy Head with a mean look on his face. He felt his energy drained by his frustrations. He dressed in his pads quietly, trying to ignore the boys around him.
Their mood was joyful. Teammates reminisced about the big win. Parents held their phones over the fence and showed off photos from the game. Coaches joked about the mistakes on the field that made them maddest and about how all is forgiven in victory. Oomz kept his eyes on the shoulder pads he was buckling, feigning a deep focus on adjusting the straps under his arms. He resented this vibrant energy and felt trapped by it. He was more relieved than happy about the win. He was ready to move on from it. After the game, his father had told him he was proud of how the team fought but disappointed by Oomz’s late-game fumble. Oomz couldn’t shake the memory of that fumble. He felt guilty for becoming so consumed by his individual mistake instead of reveling in his team’s achievement. He wondered if he should have skipped practice and gone home, but he figured he could clear his mind and lose himself in the repetition of football drills.
Practice did not lighten his mood. While his teammates ran their warm-up lap, Oomz alternated between walking and jogging. Chaka joined him. When Coach Ramsey spotted them, he ordered all the boys onto the ground for bear crawls—“crabbing,” in the team’s vernacular.
“Why we gotta do this?” Oomz said.
“It was you and Chaka!” Ramsey replied. “I watched you and Chaka damn near walk the whole damn lap. Y’all brought this on y’allselves.”
Oomz crawled at the back of the pack. Every few yards, he stood up and complained to Ramsey that his back was sore. Ramsey ignored him, and the next time Oomz stood, Esau shouted, “Yo, Oomz, shut up and crab!”
“I just—”
“Shut up and crab!”
“Until somebody take the initiative to stop all the bullshit, we gon’ keep doing stuff like this and not work on football,” Ramsey said.
“None of y’all even been to the playoffs yet!” Esau said. “None of y’all!”
At 4–1, second in the division and with the hard part of their schedule done, the coaches hoped to keep the Pee Wees sharp in the weeks until what everyone assumed would be an inevitable rematch with East Orange for the league title. Unless Mo Better’s Pee Wees lost
two of their final three games, they’d beat out Brick City for the division’s final playoff spot.
When Ramsey ordered them to drop for push-ups, Oomz lingered on his feet.
“Yo, get down!” Marquis said to him.
“Shut the fuck up!” Oomz replied.
Ramsey, eyes wide with fury, stormed over to Oomz.
“Ay! Ay! Get off this field if you gon’ act like that!” he said, shaking his head and rolling his shoulders back.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Oomz said defiantly.
After 45 minutes of conditioning, the football work began, but Oomz’s mood remained unchanged. During blocking drills, he was slow on his feet, shoulders slouched, head cocked to the side, as if broadcasting to the whole neighborhood that he was giving minimal effort. He brazenly stood out from his teammates, who hustled through drills and bounced on their toes, fast and crisp, in mid-season form. The coaches called him out, over and over, with both gentle encouragement and harsh shouts, but he made no effort and showed no interest. On the next round of push-ups, Oomz, again slow to the ground, barely bent his elbows, dipping his body down only two or three inches. His head was down, eyes on the dirt, so he did not see his father enter the park, walk onto the field, and stand a few feet away. His face steady, his hands in the pockets of his gray hoodie, Big Oomz stared down at his son.
“Do the push-ups,” he hissed.
Oomz’s face shot up, his wide eyes meeting his father’s. This was the first time Big Oomz had ever showed up to practice.
“You can’t do no push-ups like that,” Big Oomz continued. “Get down. Stop cheating yourself.”
“My back hurts,” Oomz murmured softly through his mouthpiece.
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