by Eric Kester
“Hector knows there are things you can’t control,” Brett went on. But now Dad started to cough violently. Again, the entire auditorium craned their necks to see the commotion. People giggled. People whispered, passing on to their neighbor the information about the identity of that jackass in the back.
Brett had that kink in his neck again, the same that he had whenever Dad was at practice and Brett couldn’t stop glancing at him on the sideline.
He paused to wipe away a streak of sweat that had tumbled down the side of his temple. “And while it’s true that you can’t control everything, you can at least control your reaction to it.”
“Hell yeah!” came a shout from the back. “That’s how youse do it, slev—seven!” Dad took another swig, but this time the bottle slipped from his hand and clanged to the floor. It rolled down the aisle and he hobbled after it, grabbing underneath his left thigh to help his leg pivot faster in the socket of his bum hip. The bottle rolled to a stop a few seats away from where Haley was sitting. I looked at Brett. He didn’t seem to know whether to keep speaking or let the moment pass. He wiped more sweat from his brow.
Suddenly, it hit me. I had to do what nobody else would: I had to get Dad outta here. It was my duty. My responsibility. I was going to walk right up the aisle, grab the bastard by the arm, and walk him right out of the goddam auditorium. I was going to step up and do for Brett what he didn’t do for me when Trunk was pummeling me in the shower. I was going to do it. I swear it.
* * *
Later that night, I was lying in the bottom bunk, staring up at the plywood under Brett’s mattress. He wasn’t moving, but I could tell from the cadence of his breath that he wasn’t asleep. After I realized that I wasn’t going to muster the courage to apologize to Brett—to tell him that I should’ve stepped in to stop Dad, that I was going to, but was paralyzed—I started to think about the past, started to think about Mom. Dad’s drinking had always been an issue, but red tide brought out the worst in him. With the fishing boat docked there was just way too little money and way too much time for him to think about all the things he could’ve been but wasn’t. I thought about how the saddest part of The Iliad is when Hector prays that his son grows up to be a better man than his father. I wondered if Brett had read that part.
Anyway, I was lying in bed thinking about last red tide and how Mom was here for it, and I started to remember how whenever Dad grabbed his coat and started to stumble out our door—headed to the bar, the football game, wherever—my mom would call him back in. Where are you going? she’d ask. I can smell the liquor on you from here, she’d say. Then they’d get in a huge fight, and Dad would smash things and say things that he couldn’t take back. Mom would usually end her night in tears, but she always accomplished her goal, because Dad would end his night passed out on the floor and not cruising around town, making his sons feel ashamed.
Tonight, Mom would’ve been brave enough to stop Dad. She would’ve blocked him from even leaving the apartment. She would’ve protected Brett, would’ve succeeded where I failed.
But I promised myself that tomorrow night would be different. Tomorrow, it would be my turn to block for Brett, and I wasn’t going to let him down again.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
The blank white envelope taped to my locker was from Trunk. I was sure of it. It wasn’t there when I got dressed before the game, but now as I returned to the locker room at halftime wet and muddy and bloody, I immediately noticed the envelope. It hung from the top shelf of my locker ominously, waiting for me.
From the moment I saw the envelope, I knew I wasn’t going to open it. Even though this note could’ve settled the quandary, long debated by scientists, of whether Trunk could actually read and write, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of twisting the knife of humiliation that had already been jabbed in me, again and again, during the first half. I also knew that no matter how acidic and biting his words were about me and my putrid first-half performance, he would’ve been right. And I couldn’t face that.
We were still in the game, at least, down 10–7 to Blakemore. I sat on the chair in front of my locker and watched Brett and our offensive coordinator in the far corner of the locker room huddle over the playbook and make adjustments to it. They spoke in quiet but adamant tones and made hurried scribbles in red pencil, slashing up a game plan that just couldn’t work when your right tackle can’t block for shit. As they revised the game plan, Brett didn’t even seem to notice the two trainers frantically repairing his tattered body. One washed a gash in Brett’s forearm and stopped the bleeding by plugging it with what looked like a clump of sawdust. The other trainer took off Brett’s left cleat and sock before unfurling an entire roll of athletic tape to wrap and stabilize his swollen ankle. At one point Brett pointed to something in the playbook with his left index finger and noticed that his fingernail, raw and bleeding, had been ripped halfway off. With the pointer and thumb of his good hand, Brett pinched the remainder of the torn fingernail and slowly pried it off. He flicked away the fingernail and returned his focus to the playbook.
The locker room was dim, quiet, and intense. Coaches and players were focused on preparing for the second half, but it was impossible to ignore the air of communal resentment toward me. Crooks called together a group of linemen to go over some adjustments, but left me sitting at my locker in the corner and didn’t say a word to me. Nobody even so much as looked my way—other than that goddam portrait of Dad on the Wall of Fame. He was seventeen years old when the picture was taken, but his scowl in the photo was identical to the one he wore all first half as he watched the game from the stands with the Boston College scout. Even in black and white, the photograph captured Dad’s hard, penetrating eyes, which now glared at me as I hunched on my chair and took discreet puffs from my inhaler. I thought about my great-uncle Wyatt and how nice it would be to punt my life in Grayport and move out to Arizona, like he did, to open up his asthmatic lungs and feast on the region’s oxygen-rich air. I’d never met the guy—never even spoken to him—yet sometimes I felt more connected to him than to anyone else in my family.
I had fifteen minutes of halftime to somehow reconcile the horror of the past two quarters with the future of the next two. I don’t know how else to describe what I was feeling other than that I was scared. Growing up, Dad always reminded us that playing scared gets you hurt because when you’re scared you start to hesitate, and when you hesitate your opponent becomes the hammer and you become the nail. But what he never mentioned is that for a lineman, playing scared doesn’t just get you hurt—it gets your quarterback hurt, too. It leaves him bloody, beaten, and swollen, with pieces of him literally on the locker room floor.
Leading up to the game, I’d anticipated—even had come to terms with—playing nervous. But nerves are also a source of adrenaline, and I’d been hoping that this rush, coupled with my hate for Derek Leopold for the cheap shot he laid on Brett last year, would magically combine into some mildly effective play.
But I hadn’t anticipated something: I couldn’t hate Derek Leopold. To hate someone, you needed to be at odds with his values and have friction with the core of his humanity. From the moment I lined up across from Leopold, though, I realized that this guy—this thing—had no humanity. His eyes were huge, black, and depthless, and they stared ahead with a terrifying … I don’t know, absence. His body wasn’t flesh and bone but an indestructible mass that made your very soul feel tiny and pointless. Play after play, he hunted Brett with the ferocious single-mindedness of a creature that wasn’t doing this for fun, or survival, or for any reason at all other than that he was made to pursue, to hurt, to kill. There was no rivalry between him and me. I was merely a small obstacle in his hunt, and he discarded me over and over with ruthless efficiency: a shoulder slammed into my jaw; a quick step toward me followed by an impossibly graceful spin move, leaving me grasping at the air where he’d just been; a bull rush straight into my chest, driving me backward into Brett like
I was a rag doll. Whenever the whistle blew and Leopold stood over Brett, he didn’t celebrate. He didn’t acknowledge his teammates. I swear he didn’t even breathe. So no, you couldn’t hate Derek Leopold any more than you could hate a wild animal. All you could do was fear him.
It wasn’t raining but the fog was the thickest I’d ever seen it. At the end of halftime we all lined up two by two and made the short walk back into the stadium and onto the sidelines. Following tradition, Brett led us out with a lantern, and following instinct, the crowd erupted in a deafening cheer when they caught sight of the warm, orange glow pulsing like a beating heart through the curtain of fog. But unlike the raw burst of joy that thundered from the stands in the first quarter when Brett connected with Ranger for our lone touchdown, this cheer felt strained, maybe a little desperate, like the entire town was imploring us to win. With red tide we needed the lift, but games against Blakemore always carried extra weight. It wasn’t just that they were our toughest competition and that the winner of this game typically went to an undefeated season and league title. It was also that Blakemore, despite being just ten miles down shore from us, was everything that Grayport wasn’t.
I don’t know anything about geology or whatever, but for some reason Blakemore’s shores weren’t narrow and craggy and menacing like ours, but wide and sandy and welcoming. A meteorological wind channel along this section of Massachusetts blew all rainstorms out toward Grayport, so Blakemore enjoyed as many rays of sun as they had grains of sand. They didn’t have to rely on fishing because they had tourism, beach house rentals, and rich visitors from New York paying $50 for halibut that Grayport fishermen had caught and sold to Blakemore restaurants for a mere $10. Blakemore had rows and rows of large Victorian houses cluttered with expensive antique chairs, so you’re welcome to come inside but don’t you even think of sitting there or there or there or anywhere at all. They also had an endless supply of little blond kids so perfect and “cute” it was downright creepy. These little angels were constantly reminded by their teachers that they were as unique and special as a snowflake. And it was true that these kids were like snowflakes: They were extremely cold, and when you saw one you wanted to stick your tongue out at it.
Aside from Derek Leopold, who didn’t come from Blakemore but rather was spawned from a demonic alternate reality, the guys on their football team were mostly stuck-up pricks—dudes named River and Cricket and Bentley who rocked a million sweatbands as random and superfluous as their names.
So like I said: I wasn’t just letting down Dad and Brett with my putrid play, but the entire town.
At the start of the second half, the coaches tried moving me to the opposite side of the line, and for a few plays the deception worked: Through the fog the Blakemore coaches didn’t pick up on the switch, and for a few glorious minutes I got to block an opponent who wasn’t a demonic hell-spawn. But like a serial killer in a horror movie, Leopold eventually found me again, now lining up on my new side and staring ahead with his cold black eyes.
The game of counterpunches intensified as our coaches began exclusively calling plays in which Brett rolled out to the opposite side of Leopold and me. Blakemore responded by stacking that side with nine guys, leaving us no choice but to take our chances with plays toward Leopold. Essentially, it was me and Brett versus Leopold, but since I added nothing to the equation, the game was distilled down to a one-on-one bout between the two all-Americans.
Brett was well on his way for career lows in passing and rushing yards, but everyone in the entire stadium would agree that this was the greatest game he had ever played. Leopold was as inescapable as Death itself, but Brett never once flinched from the onslaught, defiantly waiting to throw until the last possible moment—even until Leopold had just planted his shoulder square into Brett’s chest—so his receivers could have those extra milliseconds to get open. Brett’s passes were short and quick and so were his runs, which never ended with him scampering safely out of bounds, but with a mangled pileup of bodies as Brett fought for those extra inches. Our running backs, meanwhile, had been getting stuffed again and again for short losses, so Brett began calling audibles for QB keepers. These runs were, essentially, nonrefundable appointments to meet Leopold three yards downfield in a cataclysmic collision that you couldn’t always see through the mist, but that you could always hear and feel.
Three or four yards a play was enough to get us a few first downs, but we couldn’t string together enough of them to get in the end zone. Good thing Blakemore was having just as much trouble offensively. Over and over their quarterback unleashed blind passes through the fog to receivers who had no chance of getting their hands on the errant throws. Unlike Brett, who almost seemed to feel receivers in the mist rather than see them, the Blakemore quarterback didn’t have a prayer. Soon they abandoned their aerial attack altogether. This allowed our defense to key on their running backs and swarm them like sharks on a wounded seal. But Blakemore was playing with a three-point lead, and as the clock ticked down into the fourth quarter, the Blakemore end zone, now completely invisible through the fog, felt like it wasn’t even there at all.
With just under five minutes remaining in the game, I committed an inexcusable penalty. It’s pretty damn hard to jump offside when the ball is meant to be snapped on the quarterback’s first “hut,” but I was so desperate to compensate for my lack of speed that I started my block on Leopold about a half second too early. Multiple referees whistled the play dead, and the crowd let out an immediate groan. At least with the heavy mist they probably couldn’t tell that I was the one who—
“FALSE START, OFFENSE, NUMBER SIXTY-SEVEN,” announced the head referee through the stadium speaker system.
As a ref picked up the ball and paced five yards backward, the crowd’s groans transformed into throaty, resentful boos. Then chiming in clear as a church bell over the low growl of the fans came a punctuating “YOU SUCK!” from high up on the bleachers. Whoever shouted this was right. The crowd had had enough of me, and now the boos rained down from all 360 degrees of the surrounding stands. Crooks called me off the field, put his mangled claw hand on my shoulder, and politely invited me to “sit my fat ass on the damn bench.” The penalty had been the last straw, and in my place they substituted a backup guard who’d never played tackle before.
The boos hurt. Not gonna lie. But what I was most ashamed about was how I was actually happy that I’d been pulled from the game. Some guys want to be on the big stage. Some guys want the ball in their hands, the team on their shoulders, the mental welfare of the entire town on their conscience. I’d hoped that would be me, but at that exact moment I learned that it wasn’t me. With every ounce of my body I wanted to be back on the sideline. I even wanted to be back inside the Poncho Pete costume, watching the world pass me by through nothing but little cutouts for eyes. I was disgusted with myself.
My penalty turned a third-and-one into a third-and-six, and we failed to convert after Leopold batted down and almost intercepted Brett’s pass attempt. We punted to Blakemore’s twenty-one-yard line, and they swiftly bled out the clock with a steady onslaught of short but effective runs. We finally forced a punt after allowing two first downs, but there were only forty-five seconds remaining when Brett and the offense jogged back onto the field for one final shot to tie or win the game.
With no timeouts remaining and sixty yards to reach the end zone, we had to gain some big chunks of yards through the air. On the first play of the drive Leopold broke through the line, but Brett got the behemoth to bite on a pump fake. He must’ve known Leopold’s near-interception minutes earlier had made him overeager to go for another. Leopold jumped at the pump fake, buying Brett enough time to shuffle laterally and connect with our tight end twenty-five yards downfield.
For a moment there was pandemonium as the crowd erupted and the offense sprinted downfield to quickly begin the next play. But before Brett could finish calling his audibles at Blakemore’s thirty-five-yard line, the referees whistled a stoppa
ge in play. There was a moment of confusion as five thousand people tried to figure out the reason for the stoppage, but we soon learned the reason: A crumpled body lay moaning on the ground back at our forty-yard line.
A trainer ran out to the field, followed by Crooks. The two of them disappeared into the fog, and when Crooks got close enough to the injured player to see his identity, he shook his head and put his hands on his hips.
“Wyatt!” he shouted toward our bench. “Get your ass back in there!”
Oh jeez. Oh god. Oh jeez.
One of my legs had fallen asleep sitting on the bench, so I did this weird hobble run to the huddle. Behind us, the trainer was still treating the injured lineman—a victim, no doubt, of Leopold.
When I took my place in the huddle, Brett looked at me intently. “Dude,” he said. “Where’s your helmet?”
I hobble-ran back to the sideline. Where was my helmet?
I checked on the bench. Not there.
I looked by the water table. Nada.
Back on the field, the trainer had gotten the injured player to his feet and was helping him limp off. Panicked, I spun around when—there!—I saw a stray helmet in the mud under the bench; I went to grab it, then froze.
Taped across the face mask was a blank white envelope.
You gotta be shitting me, I thought. I quickly glanced around for Trunk, who must’ve been slinking around somewhere, waiting for me to open the envelope. The thought of the lengths he went to to torture me was enraging, and for some reason that anger felt kind of powerful—maybe something I could use on the field. So I decided to double down on the anger. I tore open the envelope and pulled out the note.
Only it wasn’t a note. It was a page from a textbook. I squinted at the small print. It looked like some science book. Biology maybe? I saw dozens of careful notes written in the margins, and that’s when it hit me: This was Nate’s handwriting. This was from Nate’s textbook. But why? I skimmed over the page, then saw a note scrawled in all capital letters: RIGHT HERE, DUMMY. A hand-drawn arrow pointed to a single line in the text. It was under a section titled “Genetics.” The beginning of the sentence was filled with some gobbledygook about alleles and diploid organisms, but it reached this conclusion, which Nate had underlined: