Gut Check

by Eric Kester

  And that’s when it clicked. Brett and I were both underestimating Grayport’s best, most invincible quality: its endurance. The ESPN money from this game would go a long way, but what would happen if we didn’t have it? Would red tide beat us? Would we just give up? Would we crumble into the sea? Of course not. We were going to survive, because that’s what Grayport does.

  The town couldn’t die.

  But Brett could.

  I shot up from my spot on the ten-yard line and ran toward our bench.

  “Wyatt!” I heard Brett scream from midfield. I kept going, and he broke into a sprint after me. He knew what I was about to do.

  I got to the doctor first, almost slipping on the mud and straight onto my ass when I braked my momentum.

  “You’re the independent medic, right?”

  “That’s right,” the doctor said from under his umbrella. “You okay? You seem upset.”

  “I’d like to report a possible—no, a definite—concussion on our team.”

  Someone grabbed my shoulder and pulled me violently backward. “Wyatt! What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m doing it, Brett,” I said fiercely. “Get out of my way.”

  Brett shouldered himself in between me and the doctor.

  “My name is Brett Parker and I’d like to be evaluated for a concussion.”

  The doctor looked at Brett gravely. “Okay, son. Come with me.”

  * * *

  It took me a second to realize that the powerful blast in my ears was not the sound of my mind exploding, but the sound of a literal explosion. I didn’t see the source, but the crowd in the stands was scrambling frantically, some pointing to the sky, others ducking under their seat for cover. Suddenly, an object the size of a snowball smacked into the top of concussion doctor’s umbrella and bounced to the muddy turf. He crouched down and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. It was a chunk of something shiny and a little rubbery. Its surface was dark slate gray and immaculately polished, as though it were an ancient stone.

  “What in god’s name?” the doctor exclaimed.

  “I think that’s a chunk of a whale,” I said, just as another piece of debris walloped down next to us. It was spongy, pink, and slimy.

  “Is that—is that a piece of tongue?” the doctor asked in disbelief.

  I swiveled around and looked toward the end zone wall. Hanging in the air above it, like a remnant cloud of smoke of an exploded firework, was a fine red mist of pulverized whale guts. Chunks of the demolished sea beast continued to rain down onto the field—a piece of blubber here, a sliver of organ there, a gooey mass of unidentifiable nastiness over there.

  The explosion had been so powerful it blew open a hole in the side of the end zone wall. It was the size of a cannonball, and red ocean water spurted through it with the force of a fire truck’s hose. The waves from the storm continued to ravage the now weakened wall, which was sprouting new leaks by the second.

  Then it broke open entirely.

  My entire team sprinted away as a tsunami of ocean gushed onto the field. As the red sea cascaded down, all the other players, coaches, and officials scrambled up into the stands, desperately seeking higher ground. The doctor, Brett, and I did the same.

  By the time the water leveled out, the field was covered in a foot of foamy red water. Dead fish were floating everywhere. Thunder cracked down from the sky.

  Then the stadium speaker system hummed on:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we regret to inform you that this evening’s game between Grayport High and Blakemore High has been canceled due to … whatever this is.”

  The crowd didn’t need to be told twice—they evacuated the stadium in a hurry. The flood continued to get higher and higher. I joined the throng of people running up the aisle toward the exits.

  “Hey, Wyatt!” someone hissed.

  I peered down a tunnel to the concourse and saw Nate’s head poking out behind the abandoned Poncho Pete booth. He waved me over.

  “Holy shit, Nate,” I exclaimed when I got to him. He was absolutely dripping in red, syrupy whale gloop.

  “Everyone okay out there?” he asked.

  “Yeah, seems so. Just pretty wet.”

  “Phew. My calculations were a little off. The explosion was bigger than expected.”

  “Wait—you had something to do with this?”

  Nate grinned. “Methane whale.”

  “What?”

  “You never heard of the exploding whale phenomenon?” he asked. “Wikipedia it sometime. It’s pretty cool—except the dead whale part, of course. That’s just sad. But basically, it works like this: As soon as a whale dies, it starts decomposing at a superfast rate. As a byproduct of the decomposition process, there’s an enormous buildup of gases. Including methane. A lot of times it seeps out harmlessly into the atmosphere. Other times it stays trapped in the carcass, making it a powder keg of pressure.”

  “You’re legitimately insane, you know that?”

  “Insane, or insanely awesome?”

  “Insane.”

  “Well, let me finish. Everyone was talking about the beached whale at school, right? So, being the morbidly inclined individual that I am, I went down to check it out during lunch. And there it was, just decomposing next to the wall. The idea hit me right away. But there was a problem: The incoming storm was going to wash away the carcass from the beach.”

  “I’m guessing you had an idea for that, too.”

  “The championship flags,” Nate stated proudly. “I lowered each one and threw their ropes down to the beach. I had to dig a little bit of sand out from under the whale to loop the ropes underneath its corpse. I threw the ropes back up to the top of the wall and tied them to the flagpoles, so when I was done, that bad boy was fastened securely to the wall. It was really secure to the bases of the flagpoles. So many championships, so many ropes and flagpoles. The whale was essentially pinned against the wall. The rest was easy. I just waited at the top with my fire spear for the right moment to puncture the organic bomb.”

  “Fire spear?”

  “Just a piece of driftwood whittled down to a point, lighter fluid, and a match.”

  “You scare me a little bit,” I said, smiling. “But I am really glad you’re you.”

  “You haven’t even heard the best part.” Nate grabbed the backpack at his feet. He was wired with energy, and might’ve been the next thing to explode if he didn’t slow down. The backpack was covered with whale goo, but the papers and books inside were clean when he unzipped it. Nate wiped his goopy hands on my wet jersey, and then pulled out a large stack of papers.

  “The ESPN contract,” I said.

  “The ESPN contract,” Nate repeated, grinning. “Take a look, if you’d be so kind, at Section Three, Paragraph Eight, Clause B.”

  He handed the contract to me, and I read aloud: “In the event that GRAYPORT VS. BLAKEMORE must be canceled due to an accident or catastrophic event resulting from natural causes, then the network shall file an ‘act of God’ insurance claim and distribute to each town the complete sum of payment originally agreed upon.”

  I looked up at Nate, stunned. “Did anyone see you trigger the explosion?”

  “Nope. As far as anyone knows, this was an unfortunate, disgusting, and fairly awesome natural phenomenon that occasionally occurs when natural gases accumulate in a decaying sea mammal.”

  “So we still get the money?”

  “We still get the money.”

  I beamed down at the contract. “Unbelievable. An ‘act of God.’”

  “No, my friend. An act of Nate.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  The thought of the body fat forceps made me queasy, but on this visit they remained in the scout’s duffel bag. All he pulled out was a fountain pen and a letter that was printed on official Boston College stationery. He placed them both on our kitchen table. They gleamed brightly in the glare of the overhead light, which flickered back to life earlier that morning foll
owing Dad’s payment to the electric company. Mayor Pickney had wasted no time distributing the ESPN funds to Grayport’s fishing families. Brett seemed a little agitated when the lights had switched back on—he winced at the glare that penetrated his foggy head—but I myself found the surge of energy uplifting. Finally, it was beginning to feel like we were emerging from the darkness.

  “Shame what happened last night,” the scout said to Brett. “I was excited to see what you could do on such a big stage. But to be honest, with all the national attention and promotions this game got, we feel that we need to step up to the plate and make you an offer now before others start knocking on your door. Hell, some are probably booking flights right now to come watch your next game. But we hope you remember that we’ve been interested in you from the beginning, and we hope you view this commitment letter as a powerful show of faith in you and your ability.”

  Brett stared at the pen a moment, and then picked it up. “And this includes admissions assurances for Wyatt?”

  “Oh yes, Waldo will be taken care of.”

  “It’s Wyatt,” I said. “W-Y-A-T-T.”

  “Wyatt, of course,” the scout replied.

  “Alright then,” Brett said. “Let’s do this.”

  He signed the letter of intent and pushed it back across the table to the scout. I looked at Dad—or Henry—or whatever he was to me now. He was leaning against the fridge, arms crossed, with a weird, crooked smirk tugging against the skin of his face. I wondered how he felt watching Brett reach the very milestone that he himself had just missed back when he was in high school. Was he proud? Jealous? Relieved? At this moment, was he thinking about Brett’s life, or his own? I decided that for fathers, maybe there is no difference between the two.

  I hadn’t really spoken to him since that night I almost punched him. There was little chance he even remembered the conversation. I didn’t know yet whether I was ever going to bring it up with him, but honestly, I didn’t feel a rush to make a decision on that. In a little over two years I’d have an escape from him and this apartment, which was all I needed right now. Sure, it wouldn’t be fun living at home during that interval. I’d never respect Dad. I’d always dislike him. At times I’d feel like I hated him. But now I was able to look at him differently, able to see him as a third-party observer would see him. And what I saw was a tired, defeated old man. I saw a guy who’d faced Life and wasn’t up to the challenge. Not unlike me versus Derek Leopold, Henry versus the world was a mismatch, and it was hard to know how much of that was his fault. So I was able to feel sorry for him, and that glint of light in my black hatred for him would at least be enough for me to navigate the next two years of living alone with him.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Some lazy bastard had stuck a spatula covered in chocolate icing into the serving bowl of vanilla frosting, but the mismatch didn’t faze me because honestly I wanted each flavor equally, and this unexpected commingling of frostings could work out for me very well indeed.

  I was sitting next to Brett at an empty table in the soup kitchen. News of the ESPN insurance money had spread, and as they always do to celebrate (usually for football wins) the soup kitchen set up a make-your-own-cupcake station. I’d been quietly keeping surveillance on it, and let me tell you, it’d been a long eight minutes waiting for the crowd around the station to clear out. See, when it comes to crafting my ideal cupcake, I need physical, emotional, and spiritual space. What I don’t need is a mob of people elbowing me out of the way just so they can assemble their cupcakes all haphazardly with no respect for even the most fundamental principles of art like uniform sprinkle distribution.

  But I have to confess, when the crowd dispersed and I finally approached the cupcake station, the magnitude of the moment got to me. I mean, I completely froze up when I looked at all those rows of cupcake bases—chocolate and vanilla and red velvet—just waiting to be frosted, dozens of empty canvases that contained within them the burden of all possibilities. I stood there for a long, long time.

  “You know the soup kitchen closes at nine, right?” The voice came from behind me. I was in such a dreamlike trance it almost sounded like Haley’s. Then I turned and saw that it actually was Haley. Never good bumping into your crush during a cupcake crisis of existential proportions.

  “Hey,” I said tentatively, trying to regain my bearing on reality. “I didn’t know you came here.”

  Haley shrugged. “Sometimes. Tonight I brought my little sister.” She turned around and motioned toward a girl, about ten years old, sitting alone at a table. The girl’s peppy ponytail countered her slumped posture as she prodded a slab of rubbery chicken with a spork.

  Haley turned back to me. “So are you going to get one?”

  “A little sister?”

  “No, silly. A cupcake.”

  I surveyed the jubilee of confection that lay before me. “I’m carefully weighing my options,” I said. “You can’t just dive in without a strategy. That’s how cupcakes get hurt. That’s how dreams get broken.”

  “A real cupcake tactician. I like it.”

  “It’s a high-stakes process. For the base of the cupcake there’s chocolate, vanilla, or red velvet—an impossibly tough call that’s humbled far greater men than me. Then I have to choose between vanilla and chocolate frostings, then choose again between chocolate and rainbow sprinkles. A lot of pressure, even for an experienced cupcake tactician. The potential combinations are endless.”

  “Twelve. There are twelve potential combinations.”

  “Get out of here with your nonsense of numbers and logic,” I said, grinning. “This is a mystical space and you’re harshing the vibe.”

  Haley squeezed her eyes shut and pursed her lips.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m sending you vibes.”

  “Good vibes?”

  “Ehh, they’re mostly just decent vibes. You have to really earn my good vibes.”

  I could tell Haley was fighting back a small smile from the corners of her pursed lips.

  “And how does one do that?” I asked.

  “By making my sister a cupcake so delicious it will blow her mind.”

  “Blow her mind?”

  Haley opened her eyes and turned to face me.

  “Yup,” she said, taking a step closer to me. “Into a hundred million pieces. I want it to be so good she takes one bite and then afterward sees the entire world differently. She needs some, I don’t know, buoyancy in her life. Like, I want her to see the world the way an oil painter looks at a sunset, the way an astronaut looks up at the stars, the way…” Haley hesitated a second. “Well, the way you look at m…”

  She trailed off and we stood there silently and I looked into her eyes, which, now that I really saw them, reminded me of those rare, cloudless skies over Grayport Harbor at dusk, vast and glowing in a swirl of the deepest, most calming navy blues you could ever dream of.

  Haley reached up and tucked a stray twist of hair behind her ear. Her lips momentarily parted like she was going to say something. Then, in what seemed like a nervous jolt, she quickly spun herself from me and faced the table of cupcakes.

  “My sister likes red velvet,” she said.

  “Then she has a very refined palate. Red velvet is the flavor of the gods.”

  “So, can you make her one?”

  I stroked my chin in demonstrative contemplation. “No,” I finally said.

  Haley frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because one does not simply ‘make’ a red velvet cupcake. It exists already on a spiritual plane. To bring it into this world you must discover it and, in the process, also discover yourself.”

  Haley burst out laughing, a sound infinitely sweeter than the entire table of cupcakes in front of us. “Well then,” she said between giggles. “Can you discover two cupcakes for me and my sister?”

  I selected two red velvet bases and began my work, meticulously spreading vanill
a frosting on each one in a conical swirl. But as I crafted my masterpieces and explained my creative process to Haley, I was suddenly hit by a familiar sensation. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this happen to you, but sometimes I can, like, see myself, in the third person, from a short distance away, like my mind is a security camera on the ceiling observing Wyatt go about his business. Only I don’t have control over when this special view happens—it’s not some kind of superpower. It’s the opposite. It’s self-consciousness. And what I see from this zoomed-out perspective is never good. Like right then, all I could see was a fat kid next to a pretty girl as he hovered over a table of cupcakes, pontificating on the finer details of icing-to-cake ratios.

  I watched myself hand Haley two finished cupcakes. Then I saw her ask me a question that I couldn’t hear, and I zoomed back into my body.

  “Sorry, say that again?”

  “What cupcake are you going to make for yourself?”

  I hesitated. I noticed my hands had somehow ended up in my pockets, their typical refuge during onslaughts of self-consciousness. I reached one hand out and grabbed a vanilla cupcake base. “I think I’m just going to have a vanilla muffin. No frosting.”

  “Okay, Wyatt? Two things here. And they’re both really important.” Haley plucked the vanilla cupcake base from my hand and put it back on the table. She then grasped my free hand, and with her other hand she reached out toward my pocket and gently tugged my wrist, freeing my other hand from its hiding spot. She looked at me intently as we faced each other, our hands lightly clasped in front of our waists. We must’ve looked like a couple about to be married at an altar of cupcakes. “First,” she said. “Please, please tell me you don’t think a cupcake without frosting is a muffin.”

  I grinned. “But it is. I mean, look at those cupcake bases. They are indistinguishable from muffins.”

  Haley shook her head slowly and spoke in mock disappointment. “Wyatt, Wyatt, Wyatt. Those are so not muffins.” She let go of my hands as she motioned to the trays of cupcake bases. “Those are just cupcakes without frosting.”