“Shit, Housen,” he ordered after a moment, “pull yourself together.” He slapped his face a couple of times, rolled his shoulders.
Nobody knew what to do, especially not Principal Cody, who occupied the space between the podium and the wall. A few of my teammates started whispering.
“Hey Rex,” Daryl mumbled, “do something about your dad, would you?”
“This interview is over,” Housen said, his voice cracking as he left the podium.
By the time he meandered back to the table, I was already gone.
Those wind sprints really helped.
The first time I missed a field goal we were up by nine with six seconds left and it didn’t really matter. But the second time – the second time Coach Housen overlooked first stringer Bryan Markum and told me to get my “sweet little heiny” in there, that he’d had a religious vision in which Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary had assured him that I would “kick us to thy holy victory,” – we were down by two (8–6) with about three minutes left. I hadn’t even been paying much attention to the game. I’d heard a lot of shouting about Markum’s making a couple of field goals, but ever since halftime, Daryl and I had devoted ourselves exclusively to putting Pop Rocks in our Gatorade and daring each other to drink it.
“How much you wanna bet your stomach will explode?”
“How much you wanna bet?”
“Yancey,” Coach interrupted, “take us home, huh?”
Home? Was the game already over?
He snapped and pointed to the field.
“Get in there.”
I looked out at all those grass-stained players with their hands on their hips and wondered what they wanted with me.
“Field goal, Yancey!” Couch explained. “Now move it!”
I couldn’t figure out what I’d done with my helmet, so Daryl let me borrow his. It was too big. It made me look like a bobble head. I sort of bumbled past the rest of the team on the sidelines, excusing myself – “Sorry, pardon me, my bad, watch your feet there . . .” – as I hopped over their cleats.
I took the field – only the third time all season – and tried orienting myself with the goalpost.
Okay. The bleachers are there and the football is here, so according to the Transitive Property . . .
After finding my bearings, I huddled around my newfound team. Everything reeked of bad breath and crotches.
“So what’d I miss?” I asked them, wrapping my arms around the two people closest to me. They pushed me away.
“You gonna make this or what?” asked linebacker Trent Gordon, a beefy kid who looked like the aftermath of a failed attempt at the world’s first human-bull hybrid.
“Sure,” I nodded.
Why not?
Then, we broke from the huddle, and I made up some elaborate equation involving wind direction and ball speed and the velocity and degree to which my foot would most likely come in contact with its target.
I took five steps backward, two to the left, just like Bryan Markum had taught me.
As the official stuck the whistle in his mouth the other team called a time out.
“Oh for crying out loud,” Coach hollered, his hands above his head. “Yancey, run that sweet ass over here for me!”
I ran it over.
“Now look,” he said, a hand clasped to my buttocks. “They’re just trying to freeze you up. That’s all this is. Look at ’em all huddled up over there. Just a bunch of little ladies. They’re not saying a goddamned thing. You know why they called a time out? Freeze you up. Get you nervous. Get those butterflies really pumping in your stomach.” He began spanking me to the rhythm of his words. “But don’t – smack – get – smack – nervous.”
Smack, smack.
Coach’s hand on my ass had proved quite distracting, and between all the smacking all I’d heard was: “freeze you up,” “get you nervous,” “butterflies in stomach.”
“So what are you waiting for?” he asked, bestowing me with one final spanking. “Get in there and do it.” He sort of chased after me to try to squeeze in one last ass-slap, but once more, the wind sprints served a purpose.
I took five steps backward, two to the left.
The official blew his whistle.
I kicked.
The crowd roared.
And as the stadium lights highlighted every fleck of sweat, every tensed muscle, every held breath, the football trickled somewhere in the high weeds near the fence.
My father called home on a Tuesday. I remember.
“Rexy!” he cried. “How’s it hanging? How’s football?”
“Okay,” I said. “How’s . . . painting?”
“Eh, not so good, really. Turns out it wasn’t painting I needed. I thought I needed painting, but you know what I really had a hankering for?”
“What?”
“A sports car! Who knew, right?”
“You bought a sports car?”
“Mmmhmm,” he said proudly. “Mazda Miata. The poor man’s Ferrari. You’re gonna love it, Rexy. Trust me. The salesman called it an orgasm on wheels. You know what that means, right?”
“Oh,” I said. “That sounds . . . neat.”
“Hey, is your mom there? Can you put her on for me?”
I handed it over to Mom. She was smiling so wide I thought her face might break. In fact, maybe it did because she was crying.
“A what on wheels?” she blushed. “Honey! Please!” she said, lowering her voice, “Rex’s standing right here.”
Dad mumbled something else.
“Really?” she asked, brightening. “Yes, well, I’m sure I will, too.”
She nodded, smiling, tears streaking down her face, smearing her make-up.
“Well when can we expect you . . . Uh-huh . . . Sure! No, that’s perfect . . . I know he’s really missed you, too . . . Yes, a lot to talk about . . . Yes . . . but it’s over? For good?”
I wandered into the living room where I didn’t have to listen.
“Okay,” Mom agreed. “Well, we can’t wait, either . . . Back to normal sounds fine.”
I tossed the telephone books into a trash bag and then walked it out to the curb. The garbage trucks wouldn’t arrive for another two days, but at least I could count on them to be there.
After several unsuccessful attempts, I finally proved Coach Housen, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary right: I sailed a ball squarely through the goalposts. It didn’t matter. We were down by forty-two.
Our team dinner was held two weeks later, at a pizza place where the servers wore red and white checkered hats and spoke with fake Italian accents.
“Mama mia!” they cried every time you ordered. “Wouldja like-a side-a breadsticks with the nacho cheese?”
All our parents were there, and Coach Housen seemed a little overwhelmed by the nearly two to one adult to adolescent ratio.
Our parents were busy chitchatting about things unrelated to football. That same day, our English teacher, Ms. Steinberg, had assigned us a book with the word “cock” in it, and Adam Green’s mother had made it her personal mission to get the book pulled from the curriculum. She was passing around a petition, asking people to please refrain from spilling marinara on it.
Dad was there, his arm around Mom, and all I heard him say was, “Cock, cock, cock. I guess I just don’t see what the big deal is.”
After that, everyone thought he was just about the world’s greatest dad; they didn’t even know about his mug, or his vanishing act, or the video game he brought me upon his return. When one of the fathers asked why he hadn’t been at the games, Dad mentioned something about a “soul-sucking business trip.” He didn’t mention anything about impressionist painting; he’d simply slipped back into our lives like a turpentine-soaked paintbrush.
Housen stared at the menu for twenty minutes or so, occasionally jotting a note on the kid’s menu with a blue crayon.
“Ready to order?” the waitress asked for about the hundredth time. She’d long since dropped the acc
ent.
Housen sighed. His eyes caught mine.
“Just order some pepperonis,” I coached. “Everyone likes pepperoni.”
He nodded, closing the menu.
“We’ll do that. We’ll take a coupla pepperonis,” he told her. “And a coupla those meat lovers, too.”
Housen handed her the menu before excusing himself to the bathroom. Ten minutes passed, and since I wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back, I slunk in after him.
I found him there, leaning against the sink, practicing his end-of-the-year-speech in the mirror.
He stopped when I entered.
“Rexy, hey there,” he said, glancing at me through the reflection. He folded his speech and returned it to his pocket. “Pizza here yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. He cleared his throat. His face had whitened, sweat stains permeating his collared shirt.
“Just rehearsing,” he explained. “Want to make sure I tell your parents how you all went out there and really nabbed ’em by their dongers this year,” he chuckled, slapping my shoulder. “Dincha?”
I hesitated.
“You know, Coach. Sometimes people think that the things you say . . . well, that they sound sort of gay.”
“Gay?” he laughed. “What could possibly be gay about football?” I didn’t mention the guy-on-guy dog piles or the naked showers that followed.
“Well, like when you tell us to ‘whip their dicks’ sometimes. ‘Nab their dongers’ would be another example, I guess.”
He pulled the blue crayon from his pocket and began revising his speech.
“You goddamned kids. Ten years ago no one would’ve bat an eye. Now, I can’t even say ‘dongers’ without the PC police riding my asshole . . .”
“Not that you have to go and change everything,” I explained. “Just maybe be careful about what you say. Especially because Adam’s mom is kind of a nut and . . . well, you know her. She’ll probably make everyone sign a petition or something. Against gay people.”
Coach’s nose flared. He snapped the crayon in his hand.
“Gay,” he repeated, shaking his head and staring into the sink. “Suddenly I’m gay because I’m molding you boys into hard men.”
“Hard, Coach?”
“Oh, let me guess: that’s gay, too, right?”
“I wouldn’t call it . . .”
“Am I some kind of . . . gay because I want you to have a winning season? Cuz I want to teach you a few fundamentals about the game?”
“Coach, maybe I didn’t say it right. All I was trying to say was . . .”
He grabbed me by my shirt collar and pulled me into the parking lot.
“Wind sprints,” he shouted. “Count ’em off, Yancey.” I stared out at the half-filled lot. A family excused themselves and walked past us.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Count ’em off!” “Coach, maybe later, okay?”
I started to brush past him but he stopped me. He put his trembling hands on my arms and held me there.
“Come on, Coach. They’re waiting for us.”
He breathed heavily, then let his hands drop to his sides.
“We’re a team, Yancey,” he said, his eyes closed. “Remember back when we were a team?”
I snuck past him, taking a seat beside my father.
Housen had a box of trophies and, thankfully, didn’t award me any of them. I was already “sucking Housen’s ball sac,” according to Trent Gordon. But not anymore.
Adam Green took Most Valuable Player and a tight-end named Richard Vix unsurprisingly took Most Improved.
“Hey, they don’t call him tight-end for nothing,” Housen chuckled when Richard rose to collect his trophy. He caught himself too late, but nobody thought anything of it but me.
Then, Housen started in on his speech, omitting most of the parts about crotches and groins and tight heineys. It made for a pretty short presentation. He just elaborated on how we should be proud of our 8–6 record, how it was a team effort built on grit and dedication, and how there was no “win” in “team.”
“Cuz when you rearrange the letters,” he clarified, “it doesn’t spell win. I guess you could spell ‘meat’ or ‘tame’ or ‘meta,’ but you can’t spell ‘win.’ Not with those letters.”
The parents nodded.
“But the real turning point in our season,” he continued, “had to be when ol’ Rex Yancey sailed that perfect field goal right between the crossbars. Remember that kick? Against Davenport? The kid’s got a leg on him, am I right? Anyway, thank you very much.”
Housen sat down and sipped his lemon water. A few of the parents clapped. Dad tousled my hair, then turned to the rest of the parents and said, “I gave ’em that leg, you know.”
After dinner, everyone dawdled in the parking lot while Mrs. Green tried to fill out the snack assignments for the upcoming basketball season.
“You trying out for basketball?” Dad asked. Daryl and the others were busy playing monkey-in-the-middle with the Most Improved trophy.
“Naw,” I said, watching them. “I don’t think so.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t know. The coach sort of sucks. He makes everyone run till they puke.”
“Builds character,” Dad pointed out. “Puking always builds character.”
We leaned against Dad’s Miata while Mom continued chatting up the mothers.
“How’s she been?” Dad asked, fiddling with his toothpick as he watched her gesturing to the others.
“She’s been okay.”
He nodded.
“I didn’t slip off because of her. She knows that.”
“Okay.”
“Not because of you either,” he added. “I just . . . I got this itch. Sometimes you just gotta scratch it, know what I’m saying?”
I didn’t.
Eventually, the three of us rendezvoused, scrunching ourselves into the tiny car. Mom sat on my lap.
“Buckled in?” Dad asked.
“Buckled!” Mom smiled. She was trying hard to love him more than ever.
Nearby, Coach Housen carried the empty trophy box to his Blazer, blocking the center lane of the lot.
“Move it or lose it, pal!” Dad honked, revving his engine. He didn’t even recognize him.
I slouched low in my seat as we screeched past, hiding behind my mother. In the rearview, I saw Coach remove his hat and clasp his hands before him.
Dad shouted so we could hear him over the wind.
“She’s pretty nice with the top down, isn’t she?”
A year later Dad drove off for an oil change, only he never came back. His paintbrushes and easel were still in the garage so we didn’t bother calling Vermont. In fact, we didn’t call anyone. He was no longer worth the long distance.
I graduated from the eighth grade later that year, and at the closing exercises Principal Cody called my name for the Faculty Prize, an award sort of like a sportsmanship award for academics, to the guy who got a lot of Cs but seemed to work pretty hard for them. Later that night, we had punch and cookies by the tetherball courts behind the school.
We were having a good time when I noticed Housen far off near the baseball field, chalking the lines with the roller.
I wandered over, watching him from behind the aluminum bleachers.
Housen started work on the third baseline, then wiped his brow and leaned against the backstop.
He turned, spotting me.
“Well look who it is! Mr. Rex Yancey in the flesh!”
I came out from hiding.
“Heard you took Faculty Prize. I told ’em you were a hard worker. Christ, I’d been saying it for years.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
He shrugged, spitting into the dirt, then rubbing it in with his shoe.
He continued chalking. I followed a few steps behind.
“Ever seen one of these?” he asked, pointing to the roller.
“I’ve seen them.”
“You ever use one?”
I shook my head.
“Here.”
He handed it off to me.
“Now the trick is to get the lines nice and straight. Just keep your eye on the base ahead of you. That’s the trick. If you look straight down at the chalk your line will be all cockeyed.” He rephrased: “It won’t look . . . good.”
I nodded, working the roller up and down the dust.
“There you go,” he coached. “Nice and easy, give her a generous dusting.”
Far off, by the tetherballs, fathers were gathering their sons beneath their arms, telling jokes, smiling.
“Got any summer plans?” he asked me, breaking my stare.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I’ll probably mow some lawns. Try to save some money. For college or something. I should start early.”
He nodded.
“Well there’s always a football scholarship. I wouldn’t rule that out entirely.”
“Naw, I really should just mow, probably.”
He laughed, patting my shoulder. “There you go again, always doing things the hard way, aren’t ya?”
I nodded.
He looked at me as if trying to solve a riddle.
“All right, give me that,” he said at last, commandeering the chalk roller. “I’ll take ’er from here. Get the hell out of here. Go enjoy your summer. Be a kid. Raise some hell.”
“I’ll try.”
“You better do more than try!” he laughed. “Mothers lock up your daughters, you know what I mean?” he winked.
I nodded.
“Get on, then,” he shooed, waving me off, and continued chalking the lines.
But I didn’t.
I just planted myself on the bleachers, waiting.
Around town, people were turning on bug zappers and lighting citronella candles and extending hammocks between the lengths of trees. They were waiting in line for ice-cream cones or filling out job applications or shooting baskets in somebody’s drive. They were sliding into backyard pools and riding skateboards. Pyramiding the charcoal on the bottoms of grills and adjusting the sprinkler heads. Walking barefoot. Drinking orange sodas. Dodging the low swooping bats.
Meanwhile, I just sat on those bleachers. And I’d sit there for another half an hour or so, until he finally exited the shed and noticed me there.
Sightings Page 9