Max the Golden Boot

by Joachim Masannek

  The cab driver lifted his head slowly to look at me. Actually, it felt like he looked through me. I wonder why he didn’t think I was a potential customer. Could it have been my red mohawk? I flashed him another smile and without a word, the jerk pressed a button, and the window whispered up.

  The convenience store owner, on the other hand, marched straight at me as soon as I entered his store.

  “No. No way I’m serving you. Forget it.” He grabbed me by my left ear and pulled me out to the street. “I know what you’re up to! No shoplifting in my store.”

  “But I don’t want to steal anything!” I protested. “I just need to find Forest Park.”

  “Yeah? Forest Park? That some kind of code word?” the store owner said. He pulled my ear until it was as long as a giraffe’s neck, and yanked me out onto the sidewalk.

  As soon as he let go, I straightened myself up and ran away. Who was the genius who said that school was where you learned life’s lessons? Ha! Real life was different. Very different. Particularly for kids with a bright red mohawk and an oversized black biker jacket.

  Coach Fred Buckman may have claimed that I was cross-eyed and squinted a lot. But that wasn’t true. I wasn’t cross-eyed. And I didn’t squint.

  The fog around me was what I always saw, and it was always too thick to see other players when I had the ball. That’s why I didn’t pass to anyone else. Got that? I was so angry—at the cab driver, the shopkeeper, Coach Buckman. Why couldn’t anyone just help me out?

  The anger felt good. It took care of my fear. In my fury, I walked and walked and suddenly I found my way back at the square. Now I could see the sign across the subway station that said Logan Square, and I finally knew where I was. Whew! On the map, below in the subway station, I found Forest Park, and finally took the subway train in the right direction. At Logan Square, I got lucky. A tram came right away, and twenty minutes later, I was in Brighton Park.

  The Curse of Mickey the Bulldozer

  When I first stepped into the street, I immediately discovered that no one was going to give me the star treatment. First off, no one knew me here, and second, I wasn’t a star. At least, not yet. The people seemed to turn to stone when they saw me, and when I approached one of them, he began to stutter.

  “Excuse me, where is the Devil’s Pit?” I asked, mustering up my friendliest tone of voice. But he just stared at my bright red mohawk as if I had come straight from hell.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered and then ran away.

  An older woman even threatened me with her crutch.

  “Go away! Go back to the Grim Woods with you! I command thee! Back to the Graffiti Towers!” she was acting as if she was holding up a string of garlic and I was Count Dracula, the vampire.

  I had no idea what she was talking about. I wasn’t going to the Grim Woods or the Graffiti Towers. Whatever they were. I wanted to go to the Devil’s Pit. But that seemed scarier than all the rest. Finally, I noticed a bunch of guys with weird haircuts and weirder clothes. You know, like monster garden gnomes? Only alive. They were weeding the flowerbeds around the subway station. I approached one of them. I swear, he looked exactly like Godzilla or maybe it was King Kong.

  “Excuse me?” I asked in my most polite voice. “Do you know how to get to the Devil’s Pit?”

  The big guy looked shocked. He broke the handle of the spade in his hands as if it was a matchstick. Although the guy was obviously very strong, he shivered with fear.

  “Mickey!” he yelled. “Mickey! Get over here. Bring the guys. All of them!”

  He wouldn’t stop staring at me. So I stared back. I noticed he had “Unbeatables” embroidered on the back of his jeans jacket. While I tried to figure out what it meant, the ground started shaking.

  I spun around. As the shaking grew more intense, I heard the breathing. It sounded like an elephant seal was dumped on the streets of Brighton Park. And then someone tickled it.

  I turned again as a hulking, menacing shape loomed out of the fog. Compared to the creature in front of me, Coach Buckman looked like a bald Bambi.

  The Darth Vader shirt barely covered his fat belly, and his tiny beady eyes sat like black coals between beefy cheeks. “Uh—hello?” I swallowed. “D-do you guys know how to get to the D-devil’s Pit? I am looking for the Wild Soccer Bunch home field.”

  I must have said the magic word. As if frozen, the elephant seal and his devoted henchmen stood still. Their eyes squinted suspiciously.

  “Did I say something wrong?” I was concerned. “I’m sorry if I scared you!”

  “No, you didn’t scare us! We’re the Unbeatables!” said the elephant seal, the guy whose name I later found out was Mickey. Obviously, he was their leader. He stepped back. “Nothing scares us. Now take a hike.” Then he did a weird thing and said in a normal, non-Darth Vader tone of voice, “If you want to get to the Devil’s Pit, just go down that road next to the flower shop, then keep going straight. That’s the shortcut.”

  The fear I saw in the eyes of each of the Unbeatables told me that he wasn’t kidding. For some reason, I must have looked like a predator. I don’t know, maybe a redheaded T. Rex? Did dinosaurs have mohawks? Anyway, they sure wanted to get rid of me as fast as they could, and they thought that if they lied to me, I’d be back, even hungrier.

  That’s what was rattling around in my thoughts as I did them the favor and marched on. When the fog lifted near the flower shop, Mickey the bulldozer yelled after me.

  “Be careful! That Wild Soccer Bunch is a pack of really nasty guys!”

  “Got it,” I said and walked on.

  By then, I was feeling great. These guys had to be wilder than wild, or else monsters like the Unbeatables wouldn’t be shaking in their boots every time you dropped their name. I didn’t just walk anymore; I paraded. I paraded down the street and up a hill, and as I crossed the peak, there it was. Dissolving out of the fog like Treasure Island—the Devil’s Pit, the stadium of the Wild Soccer Bunch.

  The Devil’s Pit

  I stood in front of the gate in awe, reading the sign above. The Devil’s Pit!

  Holy goalie! I had always wanted to see this place and now, here it was looming in front of me!

  I shouldered my soccer bag. Armed with my bright red mohawk and oversized biker jacket, I walked through the gate. Mickey’s warning was long forgotten. I marched deeper and deeper into the territory of the Wild. On my left stood a hot dog stand and an old RV. In front of me, an old barrel rested underneath a black umbrella with bright orange letters that spelled VIP Lounge. I whistled when I saw it. Next to the barrel was a tall wooden post topped with a bunch of lights.

  Impressive! The Wild Soccer Bunch not only had a real stadium, they also had real floodlights! The lights were pretty basic, but still, the stadium was far better than anything the field at SC Lawndale had to offer. Here in the Devil’s Pit, things were different. The Wild Soccer Bunch owned it. I have to admit, this place was pretty cool.

  My deep awe distracted me so much that I didn’t notice how quiet it was until they were all standing in front of me. The entire team was there, staring at me as if I was an alien that had just stepped out of my spaceship. For a moment, I was an ice sculpture and didn’t move a muscle. But then I saw Larry, the coach, and he smiled at me. Very cool! I had never seen such a welcoming smile from any of the three coaches who cut me from their teams. Or from my father, who reserved that kind of smile for the day a talent scout from the Furies drafted me on to their first team. Larry’s smile was warm and it encouraged me. But I didn’t smile back because in the neighborhood where I come from, you have to stay cool.

  “Hey! It’s me! Max!” I said in a solid voice, nervously chewing my gum. “Where d-do you change around here?”

  The Wild Soccer Bunch didn’t say a word. Kevin and Danny stared at me as if they could see right through me. But I was used to it. Where I come from, if they don’t hate you, something’s wrong. Plus, no one likes a star player showing up out of nowhere. I figured
I was threatening their position. So, I coolly looked around for the locker rooms myself, and when I couldn’t find them, I marched to the sidelines.

  “L-Larry invited me,” I explained. “L-Larry is your coach, right?”

  I sat down on the grass and changed. I was cool as a cucumber. I had to be. But Kevin and Danny balled their fists and looked at their coach in rage.

  “Is this true? Did you really ask him to come play with us?”

  Larry pushed his red baseball cap back onto his neck.

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” he admitted. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Problem?!” Kevin yelled. “I have a big problem with it! Since when do you decide who plays with us?”

  “I don’t!” Larry said, soothing them. “Max practices with us today. You don’t want him on the team? He’s not on the team. You decide.”

  “You should have warned us, Larry! We already have 12 players!” Danny protested. “And that’s too many already.”

  “Yes, yes,” Larry said, pretending to be bored. “We have plenty of players for this year. But what happens when you move on to the next division? What happens when you play on the big field? Eleven on eleven. Not eight on eight.

  “Okay, but so what?” Kevin said. “When we need a player, we’ll talk about it. Why now? And why him?” Kevin pointed at me, but I was used to that too. I was used to all sorts of things.

  For some reason, I had this strange ability to make people hate me. But this time the hatred came a lot sooner than I expected.

  Larry shrugged.

  “I don’t think it’s ever too early to look for new players. You know, not every player fits with you guys.”

  “You got that right!” Kevin announced victoriously. “This ball hog definitely doesn’t fit our team style of play.”

  That’s when I got a little nervous. I was still tying my cleats, but my eyes and ears were fixated on Larry. He turned to the girl on the team.

  “Zoe,” he asked, “does that remind you of someone? How about you, Fabio? Would you be on the team if they had treated you the way they are treating Max? Diego, you hated Fabio with a passion. And all of you would have loved to send Zoe straight to hell.”

  That shut them up. Kevin looked at his feet and dug holes in the ground with his toes. After a moment, he threw a scornful look at Larry, and shouted, “Fine. Let’s give him a shot. But remember this,” he said as he turned to the other players, “Every new player puts one of us on the bench.”

  A Dozen Rivals

  Kevin’s threat hit home. It would have been a beautiful late summer afternoon had the air not been filled with tension. Sparks flew between the Wild Soccer Bunch and me, and Larry didn’t do much to ease the tension. He didn’t split us into two teams and start a scrimmage. Instead, he decided on an open fight. The Wild Soccer Bunch—against me!

  Without any explanation, he staked out a field, seven by twelve yards. Then he grabbed two cones from his hot dog stand to serve as goals. But he didn’t put them at each end. He put them back-to-back in the center of the field.

  “One-on-one,” he said. “Whoever scores the first goal, wins. Winner stays on the field. Got it?”

  It was a duel. Me against each of them!

  “H-hold on, L-Larry!” I said. “W-why are the goals in the w-wrong place?”

  Kevin and Danny rolled their eyes as if I had asked why the sky was blue.

  “So you get instantly in to 50-50 to fight for the ball with your opponent,” Kevin said with a smile.

  “Did you get that?” Danny grinned, as if I was the biggest nitwit under the sun. “Or is this too complicated for you?”

  Like I said: I’m used to this treatment. I just nodded politely. But when Larry called me to the field, my knees went weak.

  “Max! Please come over here.”

  I had to stand next to him, right in front of all the others. Larry took his time. He looked at one wild guy after another, cleared his throat, pushed his baseball cap back, and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

  “If you find Max so threatening, then we should treat him accordingly. He is challenging each and every one of you. He starts and stays on the field until one of you beats him.” He turned to Danny. “Not too complicated for you, is it?”

  Danny looked away.

  “Deal!” Kevin accepted the gauntlet. “But I get to decide who plays him when.”

  “That all right with you, Max?” Larry asked me.

  I wanted to say no. But I was too cool for that.

  “Okay by me. But they’re going to have a better chance of winning the lottery than beating me.”

  Larry looked at me for a long time and I don’t know if I saw a smile there or not, but then he looked at Kevin and drilled him with his eyes.

  Then it began.

  First, Kevin sent Fabio to the field. Fabio, the wizard, the son of the Brazilian soccer pro, was great. He was supposed to win the duel in the first round. And he was the right man for the job.

  Fabio was incredibly talented; he was born wearing soccer cleats. The ball listened to him, read his thoughts, and did things no soccer ball has ever done. It bounced off his foot onto his neck, and from there to his heel, slithered through his legs, jumped up on his knee, and from there to his head. Before I even knew what had happened, Fabio was three yards away from me ready to shoot. It was as if someone had teleported him there! But I didn’t panic. When he tried to shoot through my legs I squeezed them tight and at the very last second I blocked the shot. I saw his eyes. He couldn’t believe it. And that was good. His self-confidence was cracking. Now it was my chance to strike back. The ball was mine and I wasn’t going to let him get any piece if it. I pushed the wizard away with my body without committing a foul, hands tight at my sides, worked my way around the cones, then slammed the ball into his goal.

  That hurt. Fabio and the Wild Soccer Bunch made long faces. I was happy. But too soon. There was a reason Kevin was their leader. He was as cunning as a fox.

  Next, he sent Josh on the field, and as soon as I’d beaten him without much effort, he sent in Roger.

  Roger the hero tried hard, but he didn’t last more than 30 seconds, either. I felt good. My knees were strong now. I could trust my feet. But that is precisely what Kevin had expected. I became reckless and arrogant, and when Julian came onto the field, I didn’t take him seriously. Why should I? I had won against Fabio and Roger and Josh. Julian was no more than the next guy on the list. I was overloaded with confidence.

  However, Julian was not called Julian Fort Knox, the all-in-one defender, for nothing. Nobody got past him.

  How could I have forgotten that minor little detail? I ran into him constantly, because he covered me from all four sides. I lost the ball over and over again. But I was lucky that Julian was a great defender and not a great striker. He missed a clear shot twice. Ten long minutes later, I looked for a way to penetrate through this amazing defender who was all over me. I finally chipped the ball over his head and the ball rolled neatly into his goal.

  I could see everyone was stunned. They didn’t expect me to survive their best defender. I didn’t expect it either. But now my body was screaming with fatigue.

  I was dead tired.

  I knelt down and watched, trying to catch my breath, as Julian ran towards Kevin.

  “All is well!” he yelled as if he hadn’t lost. Kevin high-fived him. “Yes, as long as you are wild.”

  I was about to yell back, “Hey! You lost!” But I was too tired even for that.

  Diego was next.

  “Diego, just play as long as you can!” Kevin shouted after him, and looked me straight in the eye. “He’s on his last breath. And if you can’t do it, Diego, one of us will do it. I promise.”

  Kevin’s promise to Diego was a threat directed at me. If you’ve defeated four wild guys, and have eight more to go, the tiniest effort turns your feet to lead. Your breath is labored, your body gets heavy, and if someone like Diego the tornado plays y
ou, your chances of survival are slim.

  But I had no choice, right? If you were in my cleats, would you give up? Would you whine that this is unfair and mean? Of course not! Not in the middle of the biggest challenge of your life—especially if you want to be a part of the Wild Soccer Bunch.

  So I played on, and after seven hard minutes, Diego the tornado had to leave the field beaten—not by me. But by his own asthma.

  Next came Joey the magician, who kept me going for nine minutes until I finally scored.

  Kyle the invincible gave his best as goalie, but couldn’t score, and I made it finally. And then came Tyler, their number ten. A real nuisance. Victory seemed to be stuck to his shoes like gum. Three times he passed me; three times he hit the cone; and after 15 minutes, I got lucky when he accidentally diverted my shot into his own goal.

  That victory had been a great gift that I took gladly. I was tired beyond words. I thought I couldn’t go on any more as Alex the cannon, with the hardest kick of all, came running onto the field. Legs far apart, hands on his hips, his famously silent grin on his face. He didn’t need to speak to tell me what he thought of me.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for me?” he asked slowly.

  “No worries, I got plenty in the tank for you!” I clenched my teeth, jumped up, and sent him off the field in under a minute.

  “Yes!” I made a fist. “Yes, yes, yes!” But if I had impressed Kevin and Danny, they sure kept it a secret. When you are as good as I am, you are your own cheering crowd. But this time, I was all alone.

  “My turn now!” their fastest right-fielder, Danny, said happily and stormed onto the field. He stood next to me, waiting for Larry to throw the ball out.