by Kyell Gold
I don’t want to talk about Fisher’s erratic behavior in front of Gena, even though I’m sure she knows, but I don’t have a chance to get Lee alone before Gena declares the steaks almost done and calls Junior in to set the table. I do hazard a low whisper saying, “He’s touchy,” which I hope is too quiet for Gena to hear over the bubbling of the water under the steaming vegetables. Lee flicks his ear, then nods and reaches over to take my paw.
Gena asks Lee to pick a wine, so we wander into the dining room, where Junior is setting forks beside plates. “How much do you think a house like this in Yerba would go for?” I ask Lee as he peruses the wine rack.
Junior stops and looks right at me, his ears up. “Are you getting traded to Yerba?”
“Uh, no.” I gesture to my fox, who’s pulled a bottle out to examine the label. “He got a job there with the Whalers.”
“Oh, cool.” Junior goes back to setting the table.
Lee slides that bottle back, pulls out another, and keeps that one. “You guys have had to move a few times,” he says with his eyes on the teenager as he sets the bottle on the table. “Pretty tough, huh?”
“It’s okay.” Junior gives a very teenaged shrug.
“I just moved down here, too.” Lee leans on the table, his forearms reflected in the polished wood. “And now I have to pack up everything again and move to Yerba.” Junior doesn’t say anything, so Lee goes on. “It’s different when it’s my choice, I know, but it’s still a pain. I have to make all new friends and stuff. You play football down here?”
At that, Junior does nod, and when he finishes with the silverware, he looks up at Lee. “I made junior varsity. I’ll be varsity next year. If we stay here.”
“You play end?” Like your dad, Lee doesn’t say.
Junior shakes his head. “Tackle.”
“Oh, hey, that’s a hard position. Left or right?”
“Right.” The young tiger perks up a bit.
Lee talks about some of the great right tackles in the league. One of them, a cougar named Mosely who plays for the Devils, is Junior’s favorite. I didn’t see much of him in the game we played against them, but I know Pike squared off against him a bunch. Fisher would have if he hadn’t been injured. I wonder idly if Junior ever practiced against his dad, if Fisher would’ve made him, if he’d have wanted to.
Gena brings the steaks in about ten minutes later, and Junior stops talking as soon as she comes in. “Go tell your brother dinner’s ready,” she tells him, and he slouches out of the dining room.
He only goes about five feet, though, before yelling, “Brad! Dinner!”
“I could have done that,” Gena says when Junior comes back and plops into his chair. But he doesn’t respond, and after an awkward silent moment, Lee asks her where we should sit. She points to a chair at the foot of the table and one just around the corner from it. “I’ll get Fisher,” she says, and walks out of the dining room.
Lee asks Junior about his other favorite players, but he just says, “I dunno.” So I chime in about Mosely and say how tough he was to play against, and when I mention the way he always set his feet and stayed low to the ground, harder to budge (the only thing I can remember Pike saying about him), Junior does perk up again.
Bradley comes in a minute later. As tall as his brother but more slender, he moves with the same athletic grace. I try to remember if Gena’s told us what sport he plays; I’m sure it’s not football.
He pulls out his chair and then spots us and freezes. “Oh, hey,” he says, whiskers flaring. His eyes register me and then linger on Lee. “Mr. Miski and…”
“Mister Farrel.” My fox smiles. “You can call me Lee.”
Bradley slides into his seat. “I was working on homework,” he says.
Lee asks what classes he’s taking, and he says it was math homework but refuses to elaborate, and silence grows again. It’s not helped when Gena returns alone. She looks around the room and I see her stop and pull herself together because she comes in behind the boys. By the time they turn, she’s got a bright smile on. “Your father will be here in a minute,” she says. “Let’s eat.”
She serves us all steak and hesitates before leaving Fisher’s plate empty. The steak is as good as we’d get in a restaurant, and I tell Gena so after a couple bites.
I’m almost done when we all stop at the sound of footsteps in the living room. Fisher kicks something plastic and curses loudly, and because I’m looking past the boys at the living room door, I see their ears flatten. A moment later, Fisher fills the doorway, but he doesn’t come in. His eyes light on me. “Dev,” he rasps. “C’mere.”
Gena looks up and says, “Don’t you want steak?”
“Later.” He doesn’t look away from me. “Come on.”
I look guiltily at Gena, but what am I going to do? I mumble, “Excuse me,” and get up, walk around the table behind the two silent boys, and follow Fisher through the living room back to his den.
“Shut the door,” he says when we’re inside, and I comply while he crosses to his desk. There’s a laptop on it now that wasn’t there before, and he just stands there staring down at it.
“What’s going on?” I say finally.
He growls something unintelligible and spins the laptop around, pointing down at it. As I step forward, he turns and looks out the window, then up at the glass case holding his championship memorabilia.
There’s an e-mail program open to a message that it looks like just came in an hour ago. It’s from David Rodriguez, the Firebirds’ General Manager. I feel weird about reading the e-mail, but Fisher clearly wants me to, so I skim the paragraphs that are showing, and then I slow down and read them more carefully, because holy shit.
“Because the Crystal City staff are involved, we can’t just keep this in the organization. I’ve talked to the team’s doctors and they say that your return next year was 50-50 anyway. If you retire, we’ll make sure you get some of the money left on your contract, and you get to keep your reputation.
“Fisher, you’ve only been a part of the family here for a couple years, but John feels very strongly that we should take care of you. If you choose not to retire, then we won’t be able to do that effectively and John may opt to just cut all ties at that point. I’m not saying that would definitely happen, but if I were you, I’d retire. You’ve had a great career, and I’m sure next year Highbourne will want to bring you in for a celebration of the ’99 champions just like they did with the ’98 team this year.
“Give me a call tomorrow and let me know what you’re thinking.”
“What’s this about?” I scroll up the message, but there’s no indication of what Rodriguez is talking about. He just makes allusions to something that happened in Crystal City.
Fisher turns and glares. “They’re forcing me to retire. Can’t you fucking read?”
“What happened in Crystal City?”
“What the fuck does that matter? They’re just using it as leverage, trying to get out of paying me. I’m gonna call Leroy—fuck, I mean Damian—and get him to lean on them.”
He sweeps the air with his paws as he talks, something that isn’t familiar to me in all the time I’ve known him. Then he slams a fist down on the desk so hard the laptop jumps and rattles, and that tightly bottled frustration, that is familiar and oddly reassuring in a way.
“It matters,” I say, trying to keep calm but at the same time bracing myself for a fight, “because the kind of leverage matters. If they’re pulling up some bullshit thing to get you to retire, you can fight it. You can play another season for sure, I don’t give a shit what the doctors say.”
“Damn right.” He stalks back and forth behind the desk, coiled energy, tail lashing like he’s about to pancake a tackle and leap on a quarterback. “I should just tell Damian to start looking at other teams. I bet Pelagia would give me money, no questions asked. I used to play with a couple of those guys.”
“Pelagia stinks,” I say. “You don’t want to go there.�
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“Better than here.” He hits the desk again, though not quite as hard. “I thought this team was different, but they’re just like everyone else. Who gives a fuck if you’ve won a championship? It’s all about money.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, you told me that when I came here.” I glance down at the message and the numbers catch my eye. “I can’t believe they’re making up that ‘fifty-fifty’ bullshit. Your leg was fine.” But then I remember what Lee said about the somatotropin and the steroids and an ugly suspicion crawls up my gut. I can’t ask him flat out about it, though. I can’t.
He kicks the desk then. “That fucking boar. I’d like to rip his tusks out and shove them up his ass.” Another kick, harder. “I could’ve made it through the season, could’ve made it through the championship. What the fuck do I do now?”
“You know injuries are part of the game. Sometimes you get lucky and nothing comes along for years. You got a bad break and you know, you just deal with it.”
“I was dealing with it!” He drops both paws to the desk, leans on them, and glares at me.
Time to back off. “What…” I take a breath. “What kind of ‘reputation’ thing are they talking about that might happen if you don’t retire?”
The intensity of his glare does lessen. “Doesn’t matter. It won’t be news. Who the fuck cares about it? Everybody has shit they don’t want out in the open.”
“But—”
“Hey!” He narrows his eyes. “What if the team told you to retire or they’d announce you’re gay? What would you do?”
“They already know.” I’m trying to keep calm, but it’s hard to follow the thread of the argument. “And I’m not at the end of my career.”
“No,” he says, “you’re not at the end of your career, so maybe you should just shut the fuck up with the advice. You have no idea what it’s like because you got another ten years ahead of you at least. You don’t have the curtain staring you in the face. What am I gonna do if I’m not playing football, huh?”
His tone keeps rising, getting more and more belligerent, but at least he stays on the far side of his desk. I’m tense, ready in case he doesn’t. We’ve scrapped a couple times before, but always in the locker room. I don’t want to fight in his house. So I say, “Relax.” It’s both an answer for the future and the immediate now.
“Relax. Relax? What does that mean?” His claws are out again, but he’s just swiping at air. “How am I supposed to do that when they’re attacking me like this?”
“Look.” I try to stay calm myself. “I know you can still play. But maybe take a year off? Lots of guys retire and then come back. It sounds like Rodriguez is offering you an easy way out.”
“Easy.” He stares down at the laptop, then swats the screen closed, picks it up, and looks like he’s going to drop it in the garbage. He thinks better of it, though, and just puts it into one of the drawers of his desk. His voice rises as he shuts the drawer. “It’s never easy. You know what people say about those guys who come back from retirement? ‘Courageous,’ and ‘battling age,’ and all those other shit words you say about people who are going out when they shouldn’t be. Once you retire, that’s fuckin’ it. You can come back and have people laugh at you. Otherwise you’re done. I’m not ready to be done. I’m not!”
He yells that last bit, swipes impotently at the air, and then, before I can say anything, collapses into his desk chair rubbing his head.
“You don’t have to be,” I say, thinking about maybe coaching or commentator positions, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are shut and his fingers press against his head like he’s trying to hold it together. “Hey, you okay?”
“Fine,” he snaps.
“Fisher.”
He doesn’t stop rubbing, but his eyes open, and the anger is gone. They’re just tired. “Don’t tell Gena. I get these headaches now.”
“You should see a doctor.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. He starts up out of his chair and yells, “Doctors! If I tell them, they’ll just force me to retire. They’ll…” But the pain overwhelms him and he drops back into the chair, pressing paws to his head. “Fuck.”
“Jesus, Fisher, how bad is it?”
“It’s just a fucking headache, okay? I got knocked in the head, I get headaches. It happens.”
How many other retired players have recurring headaches? Hal might know. I shift on my feet and shelve the question. “Is that why the doctors think you shouldn’t come back?”
“Hey, mind your fucking business. I didn’t ask you here for a medical opinion.” His growl still has force, even when his body is slumped in the chair.
“Why did you ask me here?”
He opens his eyes and looks up from between his paws. “What should I do?”
“You’re asking me?”
“You see anyone else here?”
I shake my head. “I mean, Lion Christ, I don’t know. What comes out if you don’t retire?”
“I told you it’s no big deal!” He lifts his head long enough to roar it at me, and then winces like he’s hung over and just heard himself shout. “It’s…it’s no big deal,” he repeats, more quietly.
“If it’s really no big deal,” I say, “then ask them if you can be traded. But if it is a big deal, then maybe you should take the retirement.”
“Oh, what the hell do you know?” It’s still soft, but there’s a growl behind it, that same force that intimidated tackles for a decade and a half.
It doesn’t intimidate me. “You asked me here.”
“And now I’m asking you to get out.” He reaches for his phone. “I’m going to call Damian.”
I leave him sitting behind his desk, and return to the dinner table. Lee is keeping the conversation going, but it stalls when I come in. “What was that about?” he asks. Gena clearly wants to know but isn’t going to ask.
“The team’s, uh.” I look around at the three other tigers at the table, all staring at me. “They sent him a message about next season and he’s trying to figure out what to do.”
Junior throws his fork down. “I’m not moving again,” he says. “I’ll stay with George. He said I could.”
“Calm down,” Gena says. “Nobody’s talking about moving.”
“We could all just stay here and Dad could go live in another city.” Bradley sounds more reasonable. “A lot of players do that.”
“Just settle down.” Gena tries to follow her own advice. “I’ll talk to your father and we’ll figure it out. We want you boys to stay here and finish high school if at all possible. We’ve already talked about that.”
That calms them down, but their fur stays prickly. They ask to be excused when they’re done, and both run off upstairs to work on homework. I take Junior’s chair, across from Lee and next to Gena, and we drink a little more wine because Gena’s still hoping Fisher will come to dinner.
“What was it really about?” she asks in a low voice, when we all have full glasses again.
“The team wants him to retire,” I say. “He doesn’t want to.”
“Oh.” She relaxes and smiles. “That’s not so bad. If he retires, we can just stay here.”
“He’s not really interested in retirement.” I weigh how much of our conversation to tell her. “He thinks he can play another couple years.”
“Why does the team want him to retire? His contract’s not that bad.” Lee, ever sharp, leans forward across the table.
“There’s some…” I look between the two of them, then at my fox. “She knows what you told me about, right?”
“She’s the one who found it.”
“Yeah, well…it’s just a guess, but I wonder if the team found out about it somehow. Rodriguez’s e-mail sounded like there’d be a media thing, something embarrassing, if Fisher doesn’t retire.”
Gena sags and drops her head into her paws. “Oh, no,” comes muffled between her fingers.
Lee rubs his whiskers. “Would retirement be so bad right now
?” he says quietly. “Gena, you have enough money set aside, right?”
“He’s going to hate it.” She lifts her head and steeples her paws in front of her nose. “He’s already hit Bradley, and this won’t make anything easier. At least the boys are at school most of the time.”
Lee and I exchange looks, but can’t think of anything to say. His ears perk a moment later, and then I catch Fisher stomping through the living room again. He comes in and sits down at the dining room table at the far end from Gena, eyes the steaks, and grabs one. Without saying a word to any of us, he cuts and eats a bite, then another.
“How is it?” Gena asks.
Fisher takes another bite. “Lukewarm,” he says while chewing.
Silence sets over the table, broken only by Fisher’s eating. He eats about half the steak and then looks up at us. “Well?” he says. “What were you talking about? It was me, wasn’t it?” He glares at Dev. “Just came in and told them right away, huh?”
“I told them you were offered retirement by the team.” I bristle back at him. “They asked why you wanted to talk to me. What was I supposed to say?”
“You coulda said it was private.”
“Yeah, well.” Gena looks even sadder, and it makes me angry even though I know it’s not my place. “I assume you woulda told Gena eventually, and I tell Lee everything. We waited ’til your cubs were upstairs.”
At the mention of the boys, he stops eating. “Good,” he says. “They don’t need to know about this yet.”
“They’re afraid we’re going to move.” Gena says it slowly.
We all wait for Fisher to say that they’re not going to move, but he just takes another bite of steak. “If another team makes me an offer…”
“We can’t move the boys again. If it comes to that, maybe we could stay here and you could go—”
Fisher shoves his chair back. “Yeah, maybe that would be better. You think? You going to live without me while they finish high school? That’s…” He snaps his jaw shut, stands up, and walks into the kitchen.