Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

  “Are we splitting up here, Sandy? Over this?”

  Thank goodness she now employed the head shake no in service of something good this time.

  “Let’s just take a break. For the remainder of the season. Makes sense, huh? You can just focus on your football, and I can just not focus on football at all.”

  My heart felt like there was a zipper on it, and it was being yanked hard up and down.

  “Makes sense, I guess. I mean, the way you say it, not the way I feel. Jeez, it’s only just October. That’ll be, including any playoffs . . . about two months. Arr, Sandy . . . Can’t I do something else, like collect litter or volunteer at an old folks’ home or something?”

  “Phwaa . . .” She covered her mouth at least while she laughed at me. “It’s not community service, Arlo. Get it through that thick helmet head of yours. It’s not punishment, and it’s not even breaking up. It’s kind of the opposite even. We’re trying to avoid a certain period of time when there’s a good chance we’ll have big fights about big things.”

  I laughed. “I’d never fight with you about anything.”

  “That’s sweet, Arlo. But I’m pretty sure even if that were true, if one person wants an argument bad enough, she can make it happen.”

  She looked sufficiently serious that I figured I’d ditch the wisecracking and the mush that wouldn’t get me anywhere anyway. “Did you just threaten me, Sandrine?”

  “I didn’t intend to, but I see how it could have sounded that way. It was a threat of good intentions, at least.”

  “Hnn,” I said. Growled, actually. “Two months sounds like a long time. Doesn’t it sound like a long time to you?”

  “It does,” she said, leaning close to me and making it that much worse. My heart felt like it was infested with fishing worms. “But we’re tough enough.”

  “Ahh, taking a shot at my toughness now,” I said.

  “It’s a pretty big target,” she said, and held out her hand.

  “I’m not shaking that thing unless you kiss me first. If you can’t even do that, like you mean it, then this is all just a—”

  “Shut up,” she said, and met my demands. Really, really nicely.

  Then, yup, we shook on it. That’s how mature we were about this, and civilized, and respectful of each other’s position on the subject. Even though her position was absurd.

  We didn’t need this. But I’d do anything for her. Except give up football.

  A Funny Thing

  I couldn’t stand the “take a break” idea.

  But I had to admit she was onto something. The only thing seriously competing with football for my attention had been Sandy. Add in feeling angry and helpless about the weird situation she put us in, and I reached another level entirely.

  I had more focus. I had more fire.

  I had more meanness. A lot more meanness.

  “Jeez Louise, calm down, will ya?” Dinos said after I dragged him out one morning to practice a few one-­on-­one maneuvers I had thought up. We were dressed in regular sweats, and he was wearing the fat oversized coach’s training pads, pretending to be an offensive lineman.

  I stopped bashing him. “What?” I barked.

  “What did I do to you?”

  “Nothing. What did I do to Sandy? Huh? She said this wasn’t any kind of punishment. But that’s exactly what it feels like, a punishment.”

  “Sandy?” he said, smiling slyly. “Oh, a picture emerges. . . .”

  “Pads up!” I bellowed, and he got them up just in time to avoid serious harm as I tore into him as ferociously as I had any opposing player all year. “Punishment!” I roared as I drove big Dinos back and back over the whole length of the field, and he was helpless to even slow me down. “Punishment! Punishment! Punishment!”

  It only stopped when I had driven him back through the end zone, under the goal posts, and off the edge of the field to the running track.

  “All right!” he yelled when I kept bashing. “Time out, time out.”

  “Sorry,” I said as I stopped, then walked a small circle with my hands on my hips and my heavy breathing clouding the air.

  “I think I need to revise your long-­term prospects a little,” he said, joining me in my little circuit like we were a couple of circus ponies. “Instead of the NFL, I think maybe prison could be an option if you don’t get a grip on yourself.”

  “I’m already in prison. That’s what this feels like.”

  “Well, I meant a prisoner of the state, but prisoner of love must be pretty harsh, too. Come on, pal, this is enough for today.” He tugged me by my shirt and we walked the half lap back to the locker room.

  “I think I’ll run a mile or two,” I said as he veered off the track. “Want to join me?”

  “Nope. I don’t want to get in too good a shape or they might play me more, and that’ll make me too hurt or tired to enjoy my Sensational Saturday Nights. But by all means you should. Game time isn’t for another two days and you are giving off a whole lot of menace, my friend.”

  “I hate not seeing her, Dinos,” I said. “I mean, I really hate it. It’s worse than I even thought it was gonna be.”

  When, at that moment, my best guy friend started laughing, loudly and for real, I went cross-­eyed angry. “Are you trying to provoke me right into prison, Mr. Dinos?” I asked in a voice like a bear’s.

  “Nah, nah, nah,” he said, holding up the pads as if he could defend himself. “I was just thinking how on Saturday some poor unsuspecting sap of a running back is going to pay the price for your lonely heart. Ironically, Sandy is turning you into a better and even more ferocious football player than ever before. Coach says he might hold you out of the next couple of practices, just to make sure we have enough offensive players to take the field on Saturday.”

  I found myself smiling. “Coach said that?”

  “Something like, yeah. Anyway, do some laps there, Starlo, channel that ferocity. Meanwhile, since I am still allowed to talk to Sandy, I think I’ll go tell her how she’s making you an All-­World linebacker.”

  “Yeah,” I said, starting out on my lap. Then I threw it in reverse. “No! Don’t do that. I’m not crazy or ferocious or brutal or any of that. I’m normal. I’m a normal athlete playing a normal game. Nothing else, got it?”

  “Got it, Chief,” he said, saluting before walking away.

  “Oh, except, hi. Dinos, tell her hi, please, for me.”

  “Hi-­ho!” he called, and was gone.

  I lit out on the track at an impractical pace that there was nothing I could do about.

  ***

  I had more stamina, on the field, and in the weight room. First in, last out, every day. It was as if some kind of restriction had been lifted, a supervision order had been removed, and I was free to test the absolute outer limits of what might be possible for me both physically and mentally. So I went mental. I think maybe I even knew there was another level of brutal I could reach, but I had held back because I didn’t want Sandy to see.

  “What has gotten into you, young man?” Coach Fisk asked when he found me in the weight room late on the day before Thanksgiving. “I am well aware that you’ve taken your training right off the charts, and that’s jim-­dandy. Nobody appreciates ambition and effort more than I do. But it’s the Thanksgiving holiday now, lad. It’s not possible to pump yourself any greater between tonight and tomorrow.”

  “Ah, but conference playoffs . . .”

  “. . . can wait. So go spend some time with your family.”

  Right, the family. This would be the Thanksgiving I wished the whole day could be spent on the field. Lloyd will be wasted, Ma will be fretting, Dad will be quietly tensed up, and Sandy will be elsewhere. The team was my family this year.

  “Maybe it is possible,” I said with a laugh.

  “Go on home now,” he said in a voice that made it clear he did not disapprove of my line of thinking just the same.

  ***

  Twenty-­four hours later I was si
tting in the front passenger seat of Dad’s car, with the game ball in my lap. He could not stop smiling. We had won and I had been everywhere, in every play. He let every other car pass him or enter into traffic ahead of him. He was my only guest at this year’s Big Game, which made me a little blue. Lloyd was threatening to come, but he couldn’t get out of bed. Not that I cared much about that, but at least he would have been a distraction from the absence of Sandy.

  After a while, breaking his happy silence, Dad said, “It’s almost a shame we have to go home, son, because I feel like taking you out for a great big steak and a beer.”

  Steak and a beer sounded just great to me, since Sandy wouldn’t be with us this year and who knew what Lloyd would be up to by the time we got home.

  “Let me take a rain check and cash it sometime in the future, Dad.”

  “That’s a deal,” he said. I noticed him sneaking peeks at the game ball, like it was going to do something at any moment and he didn’t want to miss it. “It is Thanksgiving, right?”

  “Oh . . . I almost forgot, but I think you’re right.”

  “It’s a shame Sandy can’t come. She really brightened things up last year.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking out the window. “Yeah, she did, didn’t she?”

  “Why, by the way, can’t she be here? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I don’t mind. Sandy and I are great. It’s Sandy and football that aren’t on speaking terms.”

  “What about football?”

  “She doesn’t like the aggression of it, I guess. And she doesn’t like the way I play it in particular. And she doesn’t like the way I train for it, as in too much, too hard, too everything.”

  I was still looking out the window, but I sensed a change inside the car and looked over toward Dad. His happy smile fell away somewhere on the road behind us.

  “Everything okay, Dad? You all right?”

  He took a deep breath, then let it all out, all full of words.

  “You have done nothing wrong, son. Sandy is a lovely girl—and so is your mother, for that matter. But it almost sounds like you have done something wrong, and that’s just not true. From what I can see, you are doing it all right. Righter than anyone else on the evidence of it.” He reached over and tapped the game ball for emphasis. “You are a remarkable young man, Arlo, and I could not be prouder of you. So you go right ahead and continue to be remarkable, and go wherever that takes you.”

  I stared at him, this man of few words and even fewer these days, as he exhaled hugely again. And now he looked better. Maybe handing out unqualified praise was good for him and he should try it more often. But I could hear in there, that “righter than anyone else” and “could not be prouder” came with built-­in comparisons to his other son that couldn’t help but make me look better than I otherwise would.

  Too bad for both of them, I thought, that they didn’t have this.

  But he was also right. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  I was doing everything the best I could.

  “Thanks for coming, Dad.”

  He smiled that smile again. “Thanks for having me.”

  I slid the football over onto his lap. “Happy Thanksgiving, Dad,” I said.

  Right and Wrong

  Sandy was right the whole time.

  The season played out, and I never felt better about the game of football or my place in it. The game came naturally now because I did everything humanly possible to prepare for the games, and when you do that you cannot miss. I was wearing blinders from Monday through Friday because I was dedicated to nothing but training, and because it had become so hard for me to even see Sandy just in passing.

  We had one last game after the pointless two-­week layoff between the season’s end and conference playoffs. It felt to me like any other game. I did my job in a highly efficient, professional way and did not miss a single tackle all day.

  I played with menace but without passion.

  When the whistle blew and we had lost, I was largely unconcerned. I didn’t even know for sure what the final score was, but it wasn’t close enough to sweat about letting this one slip through our fingers.

  Then I ran to the locker room and through the door, knowing also that it was the official end of the season, and I ran to my locker and threw down my helmet and dug out my phone and pressed the right button and walked out into the parking lot while it rang just the one time.

  “Hi,” she said, laughing.

  “Hi,” I said, smiling hard enough that I knew she could hear it.

  ***

  The break seemed to have worked flawlessly. From the moment we reconnected that first week of December, we were hardly ever apart, and neither one of us wanted to be apart. I was always going to be at a disadvantage in this thing because there was no way she would ever be as gone on me as I was on her, but as long as she was half as gone that would be plenty. The halls had the usual pre-­holiday lightness, and I felt the added bounce of being known by everybody and treated special just for walking around. It was like the football gift that kept on giving, without the complication of football season itself getting in the way and mucking things up.

  We were like royalty. And our ball was the Christmas Dance held the Friday night when school had just let out for the holidays.

  “There’s dancing?” I said as we walked into the gym and I saw a mass of bodies milling at a midtempo pace in the middle of the floor.

  “Of course, it’s a dance,” Sandy said, covering her face with both of her hands as she giggled helplessly.

  I was deeply embarrassed. What was I thinking? It was right there in the title the whole time, one of only two words and so, really hard to miss. Christmas Dance. Dancing would probably come into it at some point.

  “But I’ve never danced before,” I said.

  “Never?” Jenna squealed, coming up and taking my hand gently between her two as if her next words were going to be “So sorry for your loss.”

  The lighting in the gym was low, and they had some strobe thing going on, which also contributed helpfully to the camouflage, but still I could feel people looking at me. I felt even bigger and more public than I already was, and I could see in this situation why fame might not be all that desirable a thing.

  “We cannot have this,” Sandy announced. “Starlo can’t dance? Unacceptable.”

  A low-­level terror swept over me as she started tugging me toward the dance floor. I was surprised at how helpless this scene made me feel, and I put up no more resistance than a kite to her pulling.

  It only got worse when we reached the fringes of the dancing population and I stood like an oaf in front of a swaying and shimmering Sandy, who was looking electric in satiny blue, the low light doing nothing at all to dim her.

  I was mortified. Whether people were all looking at me or not, it sure felt like they were. Give me the football field any day.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, gesturing top to toe at the rusted tin man of me. “I’m spoiling everything. You should go dance with whoever you like, honestly, I don’t mind.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, “anybody I like . . .” She put her hands on her hips like the peppery type of actresses seemed to always do in old Hollywood movies. Then she spun to survey the dance floor, her swishy skirt fanning out to catch every last flicker of light to advertise her.

  I hated having my bluff called. Whoever the lucky guy was, I’d kill him first and then myself.

  And she knew it, too, milking the moment viciously.

  The song changed to something slow, and while this would still be no help to me, it made me bold and stupid.

  “Will you dance with me?” I said.

  Sandy swung around effortlessly, weightlessly. “You mean me?” she said, touching herself lightly on both collarbones with her fingertips.

  “Yes, Sandrine,” I said.

  She sidled up to me. “Is your oil can around here someplace?” she said much too loudly.

  I was definit
ely not imagining now that a good portion of the immediate crowd was watching, and enjoying, the spectacle.

  “Please?” I begged quietly in her ear.

  Pity, when you need it, is a fantastic thing.

  She firmly took my right hand and placed it on her hip, seized my big left paw in her right hand, and exerted a series of push-­and-­pull pressure moves that had me suddenly, for the first time, dancing.

  “How does this work?” I said, genuinely surprised at how she was able to make the big bulk of me do what she wanted it to do with just gentle manipulation.

  “There are wires that come down from the ceiling,” she said. “Now shush.”

  I did what she said, and happily shushed. And my body did what her body told it, and followed. I couldn’t even tell her what I was feeling as we glided—she glided, I shuffled—through this song and then the next two, which were different in rhythm and tempo but still the same to my dancing. I couldn’t believe how much more intense this was, this whole experience was. Sitting with Sandy, touching Sandy’s hair and her face, dropping my arm over her and keeping her tight and mine were already exciting to me in a way that nothing else ever was. I felt my face flush now, as I thought about what I couldn’t even tell her because I would sound like some mountain creature that just crawled out of the forest for the first time, but it was true, too. This, dancing, mixing, with Sandy like this was simply a whole other category of being with her. I wanted to throw my head back and roar and let the horrible gymnasium acoustics repeat after me for the whole night.

  But at least I understood that that was crazy. It was just dancing.

  “Are you having a good time now?” she asked when the third song morphed into a fourth and then a fifth, and we were the only ones who were slow dancing anymore.

  “Pretty good,” I said in my unconvincing croaky calm voice. At least I managed not to roar. “How ’bout you?”

  She didn’t say anything but laid her head flat against my chest, and pulled me tighter to her. I pulled harder then. She pulled harder.

  ***

  Apart from Sandy, the holidays themselves were not a lot of laughs around the Brodie household, but there wasn’t any mayhem, either, so settling for a draw was fine by me.