Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

  He nodded, but I could see I had made him tense just by asking the question.

  “You have nothing to worry about, Lloyd,” I said, shoving him sideways because when a guy shoves you sideways everything’s probably fine. He stumbled, maybe a little more than an aspiring soldier should. Still, probably fine. “You’re smart, and your fitness level at this point would probably get you into the space program.”

  He smiled a little bit at that, but it was work. “I don’t test well,” he muttered just before we reached the school steps.

  “Hey, fatass!” I said, genuinely excited to see Dinos standing there, deep Greek tan coating his face, arms, and legs, and Greek cooking adding inches to his middle.

  “I am aware of my obesity,” he said, stepping down and bear-hugging me. “It’s not my fault that every Greek person I met treated feeding me like it was an Olympic sport. . . . Hey, Lloyd, how are you?” he said, reaching over me and giving my brother a nice warm greeting like I hadn’t seen anybody else do in quite some time.

  “Hi . . . Dinos, welcome back,” Lloyd said, completely failing to make it sound sincere. Jeez, no, Lloyd. I was touched, honestly, at how much he was valuing our summer together, but this was already embarrassing.

  Dinos ignored the awkwardness and started in on the curious change in his European bowel movements compared to his North American ones as we walked into the gym. Normal was back.

  We started working out every day. The gym was getting busy as people began returning from whatever summer trips they went on. The buzz and energy of the place was great, and I was glad to be working out with Dinos again, even if it made Lloyd silent and suspicious and hostile. The Brodie bonding was gone now, and I had a few moments of regret. But that was that and it was done, and now that life was getting back to normal and noisy it was easier and easier to simply ignore him.

  I was happy to have him joining in, fitting in. But the territorial intensity was not something I could handle.

  On Friday, when I got ready and headed out to the gym, Lloyd was elsewhere.

  My brother would have to be his own keeper.

  ***

  The weekend was taken up with the first organized football of the season, and I was crazy anxious and crazy prepared for the two-­a-­days in the sun.

  It was almost easy. Lots of guys were in shape, but nobody had outworked me, I could tell, and nobody ever would in the future. I almost took a sadistic kind of satisfaction watching them drop like potato sacks when hamstring cramps seized them right in the middle of a stride. Others were running hobbled and holding their sides with abdominal cramps. There were enough guys on their hands and knees puking along the sidelines, you could have thought it was just one more scheduled team activity.

  It was great to be back.

  SOPHOMORE YEAR

  Varsity

  “So everything’s going your way, is what I’m hearing,” Sandy said. I had gone early to her house so we could walk to school together the first day, and I guess I’d been boasting.

  “I didn’t think I was putting it that . . . overconfidently.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about that. You’ve earned the right to crow. This is your time, and it isn’t overconfidence if it all comes true. Which of course it will.”

  “Was I really crowing?”

  Sandy took my hand and squeezed it with a little pulsating action while we walked. “I’m glad you still worry about stuff like that anyway. It means you might be savable after you finish being a big-­head jock football star.”

  “Thanks. That was kind of you. Not that there’s going to be any finish. Not for a very long time, anyway.”

  I could feel alterations to the pulse as she pondered that. I waited for the results.

  “You mean this year, and junior and senior years,” she said.

  “Hey, I won’t even know if I’ve made the varsity until tomorrow afternoon. Let’s not get ahead of this already.”

  There was no real chance that was going to slow her forward progress on this.

  “So you’re talking college, then? You’re planning to play college football?”

  Might as well just go for it. “Yes. And only big-­time Division One programs will be considered. If I intend to play pro ball, nothing else will do me any good.”

  “If you . . . Well, I have to admit, Arlo, you aren’t bashful about it at this point.”

  “Oh, but I am. I’m loaded with bash,” I said, trying to inject some humor into what was rapidly becoming a dangerous situation. She looked straight ahead, focused and serious like she was working out a math problem at the blackboard. “You should have seen the last two days of workouts. More bash than the next two guys put together.”

  “Yeah, that’s very cute,” she said as we passed along the old familiar low wall and turned to mount the school steps. “Your ambition is a little scary. But at least it’s out in the open where I can see it.”

  We walked straight through the doors, where she turned left down the corridor to her homeroom.

  “Oh, you’ll see it all right. You’ll see it up close and every step of the way, Miss Sandrine, ’cause you’ll be there for the whole ride.”

  “Maybe,” she said, waving me away toward my own homeroom with two hands.

  Maybe?

  “Hey, man . . . hey . . . hey . . . hey, Brodie.” I heard it all the way down the hall, already more than I heard any such greetings my entire freshman year.

  Yes indeed, a whole new ball game now.

  ***

  By the time the rosters for freshman, junior varsity, and varsity were posted beside the locker room entrance, there was no real suspense.

  Still, when I crowded in with scores of other sweaty, desperate football hopefuls to check if my name was where I needed it to be, I was shaking with nerves.

  But there it was: Arlo Brodie/Sophomore/Linebacker/Varsity.

  Even after I had all that I needed to know, I lingered there in the crowd of jostling bodies, guys pressing in, guys pushing to get out. Right in front of me, I saw the back of a head drop forward at the precise moment a guy I recognized from practice got the bad news. I had no doubt he was feeling the opposite of what I was feeling. From what I had seen of him on the field, he was a decent enough character, and it wasn’t his fault that he sucked. But I would have hated to be on the same team with him.

  “Aaahhhh,” Dinos spazzed in my ear as he piled on my back. He was celebrating, I could only guess, making the varsity after a very slow and worrying start.

  Dinos used his size and strength to clear a path that led us both out of the area and then out of the school altogether.

  “Feels pretty great, huh?” I said as we walked up to the corner of Centre, where he would turn right while I cut left.

  “It does,” he said, “but it would feel better if Coach didn’t warn me that I’d better deblub myself in a hurry if I expect to see any playing time.”

  “Ha. He didn’t say exactly that, though.”

  “Deblub. That is an exact quote, my friend.”

  “Harsh.”

  “We’d better get used to it. Much harshness lies ahead for us in Varsityworld.”

  “What us? I’m not fat. My life’s going to be golden.”

  We were stopped at our corner parting spot. “You know, I think that’s exactly what your life is going to be, Arlo. It looks bright ahead for you. Asshole.” He gave me a fist bump and said he had to run. “I promised Jenna if I made the cut I’d go over to her place and let her swoon and coo and whimper and tremble in the presence of my awesomeness.”

  “And you’re expecting her to do that, with the noises and all, yeah?”

  “No,” he said, crossing the street and waving over his head, “she’s gonna make ape noises at me like usual. But at least now I’m a varsity ape.”

  As soon as I was walking again, I found myself alone with my thoughts. The very first one was: with that one stroke, my name on that sheet, I had already surpassed everything Lloyd had ever a
chieved.

  I didn’t care to be alone with thoughts like that.

  He better get into the army.

  I pulled out my phone and called Sandy.

  “Let me guess,” she said without a hello in front of it. “Because you are so incredible, they jumped you from the Junior Varsity, right over the Varsity, to the Extreme Varsity. And because you are so special and on a different plane from everybody else, you are the only one and have to spend the year running around an empty field looking for somebody to bash into.”

  “I just shouldn’t have told you exactly when the cuts would be announced,” I said. “Then you wouldn’t have had the whole afternoon to spend making that up.”

  “You thought that took the whole afternoon? Now, that is not a compliment. It didn’t take more than an hour, I swear. Congratulations, Arlo,” she said in a tone that was altogether changed in an instant. It was warm and sincere and happy for me without even a hint of wise guy.

  “Thanks, Sandy. I know I was talking big and all, but I have to admit I was nervous when I went to find out.”

  “Ah, well, that makes it feel even more satisfying, right?”

  “Right enough,” I said.

  “So then why do you sound so flat?”

  I sighed. I was glad she asked, and in truth I probably called for this more than to tell her about the football. “Lloyd,” I said.

  “Right. It’s today.”

  “He was gone first thing this morning, and Ma started being a wreck over him a whole twenty-­four hours before that.”

  “Okay, so now you get to go home and tell your folks your news. Your father will love it. And your mother at least will be distracted by it.”

  “Hnn,” I said. “I never even thought of that, but you could be right.”

  I was within a block of the house, and wanted a minute to clear my head before seeing them.

  “Thanks, Sandy, I’m going to go now.”

  “Okay. Get in there and be a big distraction. The team’s counting on you.”

  ***

  You would think that being a clean-­cut, fit, and healthy, no drink, no smoke, no drugs, no-­nonsense fifteen-­year-­old guy with a strong work ethic, good manners, good grades, and natural athletic aptitude would satisfy any parent. That in most households I would be pretty much the model for what would be considered successful son building.

  You would think.

  My father was predictably proud, but I thought my mother was going to cry. I thought she was going to cry this morning and last night, too, so it wasn’t all about my announcement, but the announcement didn’t help, either.

  They were getting ready to go out to a movie because it was two-­for-­one night at the community theater, and on two-­for-­one nights they eat dinner early, then do the his and hers washing and drying tag team before sprucing up a little for their date.

  I caught them midspruce. I upended their spruce.

  “Ma, come on now,” I said as I watched her stare into her three-­mirrored vanity. All four views made my heart sink a little as her shoulders sagged, her mascara brush suspended in the air before her eye, and she squinted, like with a little stab or two of pain.

  “Emma,” Dad said, going to her and squeezing her shoulders. “Now, we knew this day was coming for Arlo. And we hope something is coming for Lloyd. They are making their way in the world.”

  He was trying to sound upbeat, but being my dad, he ended up sounding like a preacher needing to say something positive about a guy drowning. He’s swimming with God now. Or, he died doing what he loved, enjoying the ocean.

  “I’m fine,” Ma said, shrugging him off and going at her lashes again with a shaky hand. “Put on a little bit of cologne, Louis, will you? We have to get going.”

  He kissed her head and stepped lightly toward the bathroom.

  “A little bit,” she called.

  I approached her from behind, and all her eyes stared at me hard from the mirror. “Get away from me, you,” she said, “before you spoil my movie altogether.”

  I ran straight through that blocker and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She leaned right back into me, reaching a hand up to lightly touch my face. We looked at us there in the vanity.

  “How susceptible might you be to a little emotional blackmail over this,” she said, allowing herself a small linear smile.

  “Probably a whole lot,” I said. “But not enough.”

  “I won’t ask you not to play, for me, then.”

  “Thank you for that. I’ll be fine, Ma,” I said. I kissed the top of her head and let go. “And so will Lloyd.”

  See, right there. I did it. Overplayed my hand because we seemed to be doing well.

  Her eyes, all of them in all those mirrors, seemed to swell three times their size with welling tears. Then she made a shape with her hands, lacing her fingers together like she was holding a large orange. “Your little heads,” she said. “They were this big, and soft, and the smell . . . Lord, I think you both stayed bald an extra six months because I kept inhaling any hair that tried to grow.”

  This was really hard. I felt indestructible lately, but I wasn’t tough enough for this, I knew I wasn’t tough enough for this.

  “He’s going to be fine, Ma. I’m sure of it.” Saying it would make it true.

  “I want him to go, Arlo. I realize everything involved in this, and your father is completely right this time, it is a positive step in many ways. . . .”

  Good. Good, good, good. She’s helping her own self up out of this because she realizes I’m going to be useless.

  “But now I feel awful, for wanting him to go.”

  “Ah, Ma,” I said as she covered her mouth with her hand. “I feel so guilty,” she said in a manner that sounded as much like an accusation as a confession. I want him to go, too, but I won’t let myself feel guilty about it.

  She stood and faced me. Grabbed my arms.

  “You may look like a man, Arlo, but you are still my boy. You’re still a boy for a while yet.”

  “I am still your boy, I know that,” I said.

  “Good.” She kissed my cheek and pushed off me like launching a boat from a dock. She collected Dad and they headed out for their date.

  But I’m not a boy anymore was the thought I did not share.

  Fifteen minutes later, with my feet on the coffee table, a reality cop chase on the TV, one egg and tomato sandwich in my hand and another waiting on the plate, my phone went off.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Silence.

  “Obviously, I know it’s you, Lloyd. Your name comes up on the screen.”

  Near silence. Breath.

  “Did you call to stare at me, Lloyd?”

  “I’ll be staying over tonight,” he said. “Staying for a second day.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay, fine. Long day, huh? How’s it going?”

  This silence was one too many. Not right at all.

  “Lloyd?”

  “I think I forgot how much I hate multiple choice exams, Arlo.”

  Oh. Oh no.

  “You struggled, I guess.”

  “Nobody fails this test, man. I mean, nobody. It’s famous that way . . . like a joke. I can’t be that stupid, can I?”

  “You are not stupid.”

  “I scored below what I was supposed to. By a lot. It was like, I would stare at a question forever. Then the four choices with the little oval you were supposed to fill in for the answer, they’d start getting blurry, swimmy, moving back and forth a little. I had to close my eyes, then I’d open them and a whole ten minutes had gone someplace.”

  “You’re out of practice, is the only problem.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Maybe. You think?” His voice went quickly up toward hope, then down even quicker. “Well, anyway, they’re giving me a retest tomorrow.”

  “Good, great,” I said, despairing over his prospects. “Right back in the saddle. Best thing. You had just a bad day. Tomorrow you’ll be sharp as can be.”
/>   “I hope so,” he said sullenly.

  “How’d the rest of the evaluations go? All clear?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “Something in my medical they weren’t too crazy about. There was a thing with my balance, which is just stupid. And response time. And the way my eyes reacted to stuff wasn’t as quick as they like to see. I mean, come on, slow eyes? Who has slow eyes? Right there I knew, it was fixed, and the truth was they just didn’t like me.”

  “Come on, Lloyd, everybody likes you.”

  He just let a fat blob of a silence hover over that.

  “Okay,” I said. “If you still maintained any of your old friendships, you’d be a very popular guy. But still . . .”

  “The plan,” he said, “is to add a few more advanced tests tomorrow. Then, I guess, we’ll see.” He was saying the words of a trouper, but he sounded more worried than that. “I slaughtered their fitness drills, though, which is all they should need, goddammit. Don’t you think?”

  “Well, I think it’s great that you’re so fit.”

  “They have me rooming with a total shit heel here, too,” he growled loudly, “just to make it worse.”

  “Lloyd? Can the guy hear you?”

  “Yeah, but so what? He’s a shit heel. Oh, and the funniest thing of all? Besides fitness, the only other tests all day I know for certain I passed were those drug and alcohol screenings you were worried about. How funny is that?”

  That was very, ironically, funny.

  “Funny,” I said, barking it. “More than funny, though, it’s great, and who’d have bet on that result not too long ago?”

  Find pride someplace, man, for everybody’s sake.

  “Oh yeah, I’m proud as shit. So proud, I’m gonna celebrate. Reward myself for all my goody-­goody self-­fucking-­control. And I’ll tell you what, the bastards fucking better not try screening my blood tomorrow.”

  “No, Lloyd, no!” I shouted at him, even though I knew he was already gone. Well, I wasn’t going to tell him about making varsity just yet anyway.