by Edward Bloor
Larry interjected, "She got punched or something, right?"
"Right. The East German hit her in the eye going over the first hurdle. Betty finished fourth in her heat and didn't qualify to go on."
Larry reached his fist over to demonstrate next to my face. "This German punched her right here. Knocked her off her balance. You could see it on the replay."
Mr. Donnelly picked up the story. "The U.S. coach protested, but nothing came of it. That was it. She was out of the competition."
Larry said, "Yeah. It was a bad break. And then she ran into the boycott."
"Right." Mr. Donnelly explained for my benefit. "Two years later the U.S. boycotted the Olympic games in Moscow, so none of our athletes got to go." He stopped and stuck a finger into the middle of my chest. "But all that aside, Betty Bright was great, and she had a great amateur career. We were proud to have sponsored her. She got a free ride through college out of it. She got scholarship offers from all the big schools. She chose Florida A & M so she could stay close to her family."
Mom, Dad, and Erik walked up behind Mr. Donnelly. He turned and said, "What? You're leaving so soon?"
Mom smiled. "I'm afraid so. Busy, busy, busy."
"Hey, it was great to meet you, Erik." Mom, Dad, and Erik smiled. "And it was great to meet you, too, Paul." Mom, Dad, and Erik all pulled back at once, as if in group shock, as if that was the craziest thing they had ever heard. We said a couple more good-byes and hustled outside, ready to run in case the mosquitoes were still there. They weren't.
Erik walked up and opened the passenger-side door of the Land Cruiser. I don't think Arthur expected that. He looked up quickly, his eyes wide and startled in the dome light. He scooped something shiny from the dashboard into a plastic bag as Erik closed the door. Then all was dark inside again. The Land Cruiser's engine roared to life, and they pulled away.
Mom, Dad, and I walked home through the smoky air. We all had come up with things to say to Mr. Donnelly, bright and clever things. But we had nothing left to say to each other.
When we got to our house, Dad unlocked his car, reached in, and pressed the garage-door opener. The door slid up for us just as we reached it. We all ducked inside quickly, but I stopped myself at the kitchen door. I had to stop, and I had to look back, because something was nagging at me. Troubling me. A memory?
Mom called back to me, "Will you get the garage-door button, please?"
One of them must have turned on the message machine, because I suddenly heard my grandmother's voice. She said, "Caroline, your father and I are talking about taking some vacation time down in Florida..."
I heard those few words spoken in Grandmom's flat voice. I heard them deep inside me. I never heard the rest of her message. I stood still in that garage, staring back out at that driveway. And I remembered:
Standing in our garage in Huntsville, staring out at the driveway. Grandmom and Grandpop came walking up. They each carried an overnight bag in one hand. Erik suddenly appeared on the driveway, so they stopped to say hello to him.
Mom was standing next to me. I remember her bending over and whispering, "Paul, darling, don't say anything bad to Grandmom and Grandpop."
They resumed walking up to where we stood. Grandmom looked at me and then leaned back, as if to see me better, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Grandpop leaned the other way. He bent right over, right in my face, and said, "What the hell happened to your eyes?"
Mom told them, "We can talk about it inside. The important thing is that he's going to be OK."
I remember them all going in, leaving me staring out at that driveway. Leaving me to stare out at Erik, who was staring back in at me.
Tuesday, November 7
We had our last home game today, against Manatee Middle. They hadn't won a game all year, and they had been recently trounced 8–0 by Lake Windsor Middle. They looked terrified to be on the same field as the fearsome War Eagles.
I got to start the game at left wing because Nita was out with the flu.
At about two minutes into the game, Maya hooked a thirty-yard shot right into the net. The goaltender never even moved. At five minutes into the game, she did it again. But this time the ball hit the right post and came bouncing back at chest level, right across the mouth of the goal. I dove at it and connected with my forehead, right above the glasses. I hit the ground, and the ball sailed into the back of the net. A beautiful highlight-reel goal.
Victor pulled me to my feet, shouting, "Yeah! Yeah! Come on, let's get another!"
We lined up again quickly, as we always do. The Manatee coach called time-out and came running onto the field to talk to the referee. We had to stand there and wait while the referee signaled Betty Bright to join them. It wasn't until then that I noticed the storm overhead. It had blown in quickly, darkening the field and lowering the temperature. A bolt of lightning shot down; the thunder followed almost immediately.
The coaches' conference broke up, and the Manatee guy waved his players off the field. They seemed eager to get away from us and back into their bus. Betty Bright called us into a circle. "The coach says they can't play in any lightning. It's their school policy."
Victor said, "So they quit? That's the game?"
"No. Right now it's a rain delay. Let's all get inside and try to keep loose."
We ran into the building and congregated around the double doors in the back. The referee, a tall woman with short blond hair, came in behind us just as the rain hit. Victor went up to her. "Yo, ref, what's up with this? Are we gonna have to play some kind of rain-out game?"
The referee wrote something into a little notebook. She replied, "Nope. This is it. You play today, or it goes down as 'No game' in our book."
"What's that mean?"
"It's like it didn't happen."
Victor grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me dramatically. "What about Fisher Man's goal?"
The referee sounded sympathetic. "It didn't happen. Not if we don't play at least half a game."
"Man!" Victor pounded angrily on my back. "We were gonna murder these chumps! It was gonna be, like, fifty to nothing. I was gonna up my numbers!"
Betty Bright kept looking out the window. She said, "It doesn't matter. We might play. If we don't, we're still undefeated"—she paused to point at Victor—"and untied."
"And untied" was a reference to Lake Windsor Middle School and what had happened to them yesterday. Up until yesterday, they'd had the same record as us. Then they took that bus ride to Palmetto Middle School, Home of the Whippoorwills, and got stuck in a 0–0 tie. Maybe they couldn't handle the dirty play, or the acorn throwers.
We hung around near the back door, shuffling in our cleats, for twenty more minutes of pounding rain. Finally Betty Bright called out, "There they go!" We crowded by the doors, and I could see the red taillights of the Manatee bus receding in the rain.
Victor turned to the referee. "They quit, right? It's a forfeit!"
The referee shook her head. "No. Not under these circumstances. You could never have played in this weather."
"We play in any weather, lady. We're the War Eagles."
The referee handed a piece of paper to Betty Bright. "I guess that's up to you. But this is a 'No game' today. All right, Coach?"
Betty Bright nodded. She signaled for us to gather around. "Nothing more we can do here today. Maya, Paul Fisher, good going with those goals—but they don't count, so we have to forget about them. Everybody get up to your classrooms and get changed, with no horsing around. We have practice tomorrow, our last practice. We have a game on Friday, our last game."
Victor interjected, "Lake Windsor, home of that Gino chump."
The coach replied, "Lake Windsor, home of the only other undefeated team. But they couldn't put the ball in the goal yesterday."
"Yeah. They shut out that Gino fool."
"You forget about him, Victor, or you'll end up the fool. You concentrate on us putting the ball in the goal. If we get over there and lose o
ur heads, lose our focus, we lose everything that we worked for."
"But we could win it all, too. Right?"
"That's right. Remember, all of you, we have the better record. The title is ours to win. Like they say in the big leagues, we're in control of our own destiny."
Wednesday, November 8
I must have made an impression on Mr. Donnelly. We're all over the front page of today's Tangerine Times sports section. There is a long article about middle school soccer and a "Looking Back" feature about Betty Bright at the Pan American Games.
First the soccer article. It named the top three scorers in the county. Maya Pandhi, of course, is number one, with 22 goals. But check this out—Gino Deluca and Victor Guzman are tied for number two, with 18 goals apiece. The article goes on to point out that Maya herself has scored more goals than most of the teams in the county. The scoring total for Tangerine Middle School is an awesome 52 goals, which is already ten above the previous record.
The article didn't waste any space describing the records of the lesser teams in the county. There were only two records worth talking about—Tangerine is 9–0–0; Lake Windsor is 9–0–1. The article concluded, "The championship will be decided at tomorrow's big game between the War Eagles and the Seagulls at the Lake Windsor field."
The feature on Betty Bright was more of a picture essay. It had a color snapshot of her in a Tangerine High School uniform. It had a wide-angle photo of her posing with other members of the U.S. Olympic team. And it had a grainy black-and-white photo, taken off a videotape, showing her in midstride clearing a hurdle. Another hurdler's fist extends from the left edge of the photo, right into her eye. Her face is twisted, punched, to the other side. The caption below it says, "A controversial non-call in Buenos Aires."
After I finished reading the essay, I began to worry. Did Betty Bright mind the publicity? I thought about her meeting at the practice field with Mr. Donnelly and the photographer, and Shandra Thomas's frightened run from their camera. Did Betty Bright feel the same way? Did she mind this painful memory being plastered across the front page of the newspaper? Did she mind having to relive that punch in the eye?
Friday, November 10
Today's game, like all away games, began out on the circular driveway at Tangerine Middle. As usual, we gathered around the bus with our cleats slung over our shoulders, waiting for the bus doors to open. What was unusual was the crowd. The people who turned out for our home games—parents, little brothers and sisters, and other locals—had turned out for this game, too.
When Betty Bright opened up the bus door and called out, "Count 'em up, Victor," a caravan of at least twenty-five cars and trucks, including the green Ford pickup, fell into place behind us.
Everyone was quiet, subdued, as we rolled out of the parking lot. Nita was back, sitting with Maya, although she didn't look too good. Neither did Shandra, who was sitting right behind them. She had her forehead pressed against the window and her eyes closed. Was she not feeling well? Was she lost in thought? It was hard to tell.
As we drove past the packing plant and into downtown Tangerine, Henry D. started to tell me about last year's game with Lake Windsor. "It came down to the last game last year, too. That's why they're our archenemy now. They came here last year with the same record as us, 9–1. They beat us in the last game, on our own field."
Victor was listening. He called over, "You tell him about that, Henry D." He raised his voice. "Anybody else who doesn't remember needs to hear about this, too. They stole our championship last year, on our own field, in our own backyard. They must die for that."
I said, "What was the score?"
Henry replied, "Four to one," but then Victor picked up the story.
"Ignazio was last year's captain. Dolly's brother, Ignazio. So Ignazio scored a goal in the first half and we were in control, all the way. We must've had twenty shots on goal to their two." Here he stopped and looked around accusingly. "But in the second half, we let down. We got overconfident. That Gino dude started doing things on his own. He'd get the ball at mid-field and take it all the way into the goal. Nobody stopped him! He scored three goals in the second half. And that Chinese dude got one."
I figured he was talking about Tommy Acoso. I said, "He's Philippine."
"Yeah, whatever. Whatever he is, he took the penalty kick after Ignazio finally flattened that Gino kid's butt." Victor's eyes narrowed as he recalled the moment. "It was like a joke to him. I heard him tell that Chinese dude to take the kick, 'cause he was tired of scoring."
Victor grew silent, reliving last year's game, getting angrier and angrier. We drove on, an old bus and twenty-five cars and trucks, toward the developments west of town; toward the developments where I live.
It was strange. Very strange. I was driving past the sights that made up my ride to and from school, every day. But today I looked at them through the hostile eyes of a War Eagle.
Victor had chilled out some, and he started to comment on the scenery. He talked as if he had never been out this way before in his life. "Check it out. It's like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous out there."
Others started to get into it as we caravaned past the Villas at Versailles.
"Check out that gate, man! What is that?"
"That's gold. Look, they got gold on that stuff!"
"That's beautiful, man. That looks like a movie."
They were all sincerely amazed at this stretch of road, this stretch that I took for granted. It was like a movie—like a movie set, anyway—painted on plywood and propped up by two-by-fours. As phony as an Erik Fisher football hero smile.
I watched it with them, amazed, too. Amazed that it could be out here, where once only citrus trees had been. I watched it all roll by until we pulled onto the landscaped campus of Lake Windsor Middle School.
I could see crowds of people as soon as we turned around the main building. People were ringing the soccer field. The crowd was two to three people deep on the home side and spilling over onto the visitors' side.
Betty Bright drove the bus onto the grass as the rest of our caravan veered off into the parking spaces. We bumped over the grass until we reached the corner-kick area on the visitors' side. That's where we parked. That's where we always park. The coach has made this same off-road trek at every away game, just in case we need to find shelter or make a quick getaway.
I looked out over the crowd, searching for familiar faces. There were a lot of them. Mom was standing with some other adults along the home sideline. Did she realize that I was a visitor? Joey was near her; so were Cara and Kerri and a bunch of kids from my old classes, from my old life. Mr. Donnelly and the long-haired photographer were set up at midfield. Coach Walski, bald as ever, was out with his players on the field, leading them in calisthenics. They looked bigger than I remembered. Gino, Tommy, and all of those eighth-grade guys seemed to have grown taller and stockier. They looked like a football team.
I pulled on my cleats and tied them tightly. "Listen up," the coach called. "Let me break it down for you. There are three things that we can do today—win, lose, or tie. If we win, the county title is ours; if we tie, the county title is ours; if we lose, the county title is theirs." Betty Bright stood up, all the way up, to the ceiling of the bus. "Let me tell you something else. You have outscored every team in the history of this county, and you are going to outscore this team today. OK, Victor. Lead them out."
She threw open the bus door. Victor strode to the front of the bus and jumped out, followed by his boys, and then the rest of us. We ran down the inside perimeter of the field. The crowd stared, but no one yelled or spit at us. Mom waved. Joey was busy looking the other way. Kerri was looking right at me. So was Mr. Donnelly, who gave me a big thumbs-up sign.
We turned and ran toward the visitors' sideline and heard the loud cheers of our caravan riders. At midfield Victor turned sharply and sprinted toward the center of the field, as he had done so many times before. Betty Bright was already there. We packed around them
and chanted our war cry.
"Who are we?"
"War Eagles!"
"Who are we?"
"War Eagles!"
The coach's voice rose up angrily, letting us know that our response was not yet good enough. "I said, 'Who are we?'"
We screamed back, "War Eagles," and fell into the frenzied chant that began each game: "War! War! War! War!"
We broke the circle, and the starting players took their positions. I looked around the field. All the people—the Lake Windsor players, the students, the adults—were staring at us with their mouths hanging open. In amazement? In disapproval? In fear?
The game began at that moment, in silence. I stood in a line with Betty Bright and the smaller substitutes, the kids who only go into the blowout games. I had never minded being a substitute on this team, until that moment. Just about everyone I knew could see me standing there, not quite good enough to be out on the field. I hoped Betty Bright understood that this was the school I used to go to; this was the team I used to play on.
I checked out the Lake Windsor goaltender. He was the same eighth grader who had named me Mars long ago, those many weeks ago. If things had been different, would I have been standing there in his place? Probably. Would I have made any difference? Probably not. They had won nine games without me, and they had played to one scoreless tie. This was a team that did not depend on its goaltender.
The action on the field started slowly. Both teams were sloppy, kicking the ball away. Victor seemed more intent on intimidating Gino than he was on getting the ball. Victor and Gino slid for the same ball near our sideline and got tangled up. The referee blew the whistle and called for a drop-kick, but Victor still had one more thing to say. He got right up in Gino's face and started jawing. Suddenly one of those big fullbacks they have—I don't even know his name—ran up and grabbed Victor by the hair. He spun him around and punched him, full in the face. Victor went down in a heap, hitting the back of his head on the ground. The referee lunged at the Lake Windsor player and grabbed him. He yelled to Coach Walski, "Out of the game! He's out of the game!"