Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

  After that I was made to play cornerback for several pass-­protection run-­throughs. Cornerback! It looked like a game of keep-away on the elementary school playground when we’d take the lunch of the nerdiest kid in the class.

  Wherever you are, nerdiest kid, I apologize with my whole heart.

  When the rest of the squad took a break after a particularly exhausting stretch of no-­huddle, shotgun-­formation plays, I got no break. Although being the water boy, carrying the cooler around to each player to get him a drink, was kind of a break compared to everything else.

  I was chop blocked, sandwich blocked, blindsided, and pigpiled. One time when I thought I had actually broken through the line to rush our second-­string quarterback, it turned out they were all just copying a scene from an old movie. I jumped high to block the pass attempt, and he just drilled me straight in the crotch with the ball.

  I took it, every bit of it, with a shut mouth. The fact that I didn’t have the breath to spare on words did not diminish my grit.

  When the whistle blew to end the day, something happened that I had not expected.

  Every guy, everywhere on the field, broke into applause. They clapped loud, and held it for a good minute, and it even choked me up a little, making me raise one arm with great effort to acknowledge it.

  As they started walking toward the locker room, big buff Anderson ambled toward me. I was suspicious, naturally, but he made a point of extending his hand well before he reached me, indicating his peaceful intentions.

  “How’s it feel to be a star?” he said as we shook.

  “Oh, just the way I’d always imagined it,” I said.

  “I’m glad,” he said, finishing the shake, then blasting his left flat palm into the middle of my chest.

  I flew over backward, my feet in the sky as my shoulder pads dented the earth. The remaining players who saw roared laughter on their way off the field.

  “What on earth are you smiling about?” Dinos said when it occurred to him to come and check if I was breathing.

  “I love football,” I said.

  In the locker room I dressed slowly, gingerly, under the mockery of the shining Starlo banner.

  “Oh, stop milking it already, will ya?” Dinos said impatiently. Everyone else was long gone, and he wanted to be likewise.

  “Hey, I could have been killed out there today,” I said, finally zipping up my jacket. I didn’t want to tell him I really couldn’t move any faster.

  “Oh, you could not have. We had careful instructions on how and where to abuse you since we will have need of your services again this weekend. You’re just sore because we tapped some of the muscle groups you don’t ordinarily use. Like failure and humility.”

  “Haha,” I said. I pointed up at the banner, my head doing its swimmy thing for a second. “Can you take that thing down before we leave? Some of those animals will see it there tomorrow and forget that we already taught me the big lesson.”

  He laughed but jumped right up to yank the thing off the wall. “And that lesson was . . . ,” he prompted, as if I could possibly forget. I was forced to repeat it twenty times while four fatasses sat on my prone body—including one on the side of my helmet—before they would let me up.

  I went into zombie voice. “Football is a team game. No star shines brighter than the galaxy. I do the dance of the sugarplum fairies when nobody’s watching me.”

  Dinos laughed robustly for the twenty-­first and most gleeful time yet. “I wrote that last part,” he said, helping me up from the bench.

  “Of course you did,” I said. “Who else would have known about that?”

  I had a lot of time during the short, slow walk up Baker Street to fill Dinos in on the day’s other highlights and my sudden inability to get along with the women in my life.

  “Hell, man, you did have a busy day.”

  “Yeah,” I said, exhaling heavily. “I can hardly keep up with myself.”

  “You’re gonna wear out some pants legs with all the groveling and apologizing you’ll be doing.”

  I bristled. Of course I would apologize, but we didn’t need to make this out to be bigger than it was.

  “It probably sounded worse the way I told it to you.”

  “Uh-­huh. Did you grab Sandy’s arm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you angry when you did that?”

  “Yeah.” We were stopped on the corner, where we’d go our own ways. “Come on, Dinos. What about with Jenna, have you honestly not once—”

  “Honestly,” he snapped. “Not once.”

  It was the most serious I had ever seen him.

  He started walking away.

  “Hey, aren’t you the guy who’s supposed to help me feel better about myself when I’m feeling low?”

  “Stop being low, dude, and start being yourself, then everybody will feel better,” he said over his shoulder.

  In a day loaded with ass whippings, that was an ass whipping.

  Not too surprising that Sandy didn’t answer calls and texts from me, which was why I was already walking toward her house as I was attempting them, even though I would be late for dinner. When I rang the doorbell several times and nobody answered despite lights being on all over, I just dug in and rang some more.

  Then, my phone alerted me to a text. Don’t want to see you right now. Don’t want to talk to you. Go away. Don’t make it worse.

  I stepped back from the door. I stood there looking the house up and down like if I could just somehow show how serious I was, how much I meant business, then something would have to give. Like my powerful will combined with good intentions would cause doors and windows to fling themselves open and welcome me inside.

  That didn’t happen. I stood there for several minutes, growing angrier, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing my fists.

  “Sand-­riiiine!” I bellowed up into the air.

  My text alert sounded within seconds. I said don’t make it worse. Dad wants to call cops. Go home now or I might let him.

  As I marched down the stairs, I growled almost as loudly as I had howled her name.

  I heard the familiar motor coming a couple of seconds later. The perfect ending to the perfect day. Lloyd pulled up beside me. He whipped off his helmet.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “What’s taking you so long? Starlo’s gotta make a big diva entrance or something?”

  “That Starlo shit’s gotta go,” I said.

  “Well, he’s got a special dinner waiting for him right now.”

  “Humble pie?” I said.

  “I imagine you’d choke to death on one bite of that right now, big man. So you’re lucky she only made your favorite beef and black bean stew.”

  That was my favorite, a long time ago, back when I was a quiet, good kid with manners.

  I started quick-­stepping toward home.

  He revved and caught right up.

  “You can’t walk,” he said. “She’s hired LB Courier Services to deliver you back personally, and you ain’t costing me a payday.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I don’t have a helmet.”

  He reached down into his opposite side saddlebag and produced a helmet.

  I laughed out loud. It was an old chipped and scarred football helmet I didn’t even think still existed. Then, just as quickly, I stopped laughing as I lost myself in feeling the surface of the thing. I ran my fingers lightly over it, front, back, sides, locating and remembering every ding. It was like a map, of the old us, and one by one each collision, each assault—and each lesson that came along with them—returned to me clearly.

  He really was teaching me, while he was killing me.

  I swung a leg over and got on the seat behind Lloyd. The sides of my head throbbed as I fitted the helmet down on my skull. “This thing is ancient,” I said. “I can barely get my head inside it.”

  “Whose fault is that, big man?” he said, peeling out rapidly an
d forcing me to grab on to him for safety.

  ***

  “I always deliver,” Lloyd said, sweeping the door open and marching in ahead of me.

  “Just barely,” I said after experiencing the current state of his operating skills up close. Maybe it was the extra weight, but I felt like I was doing the balancing for him.

  Dad was waiting at the table, looking up at me angrily as I stuffed the old helmet like a handoff into my brother’s gut. I went into the kitchen to Ma, who had her back to me, as if the stew that should have been served an hour ago needed any more tending.

  I tapped very lightly on her shoulder and I hardly gave her a chance to turn fully before I grabbed her up in my arms. I put everything I had into that hug, short of crushing her ribs. I lifted her right up off the ground, buried my sorry face in her neck, and just held her there, through resistance, into reluctance, and finally through to the point where the hold was mutual. I held her, all shut up and sniffling, unable to say what I needed to but unable to let go, either.

  “All right,” she said finally, softly but not weakly.

  I still held her there until she made me put her down, punching lightly on my shoulders.

  Structures

  I spent the next week making an effort to avoid the jerk-­jock stereotype that seemed to be creeping into my profile. I concentrated on not offending anybody who didn’t deserve it, on making sure the manners I had always taken pride in were kept as sharp as my reflexes. And I made sure my football intensity didn’t dip at all while at the same time distancing myself as far as possible from Starlo.

  On most counts my life was back on track. The team won again, with me leading a quietly efficient, vicious defensive effort that allowed only three points. And I didn’t have a single disagreeable interaction with anyone who did not go by the name Sandrine.

  I tried every which way to apologize for being a brute, but she stonewalled me every which way. Calls and texts ignored and unreturned. Inside and outside of school encounters suspiciously nonexistent. She was putting work into avoiding me. Even dream Sandy didn’t like me.

  I wished so badly that she could somehow see, like with a heart-­and-­soul monitor or something, how I really felt, because every time I thought about how I grabbed her, meaning thirty times a day, my disgust with myself grew.

  I sent her a card. I had never sent a card before. Not ever, to anyone, for any occasion. Well, maybe one in second or third grade when we exchanged them in class just before Valentine’s Day. Even then the cards were tiny, I only wrote my name inside, and I handed out thirty of them. Way different. This was me I had mailed away.

  I didn’t hear from her.

  Who was I kidding, that life could be back on track without Sandy on board?

  ***

  We’d entered the fourth week of football season. One of the precious truths handed down from generation to generation of football players at our school was that there was a lot of slack given to varsity starters after games. Especially if we won. I had been sleeping in, pretty late on Mondays and tapering down as the week wore on. On Tuesday I would have gotten myself to school to see the beginning of third period.

  But my dad came in before I was even out of bed. I knew right away things were not how they were supposed to be. This was my dad, who was always out of the house before I woke up, even when I used to wake up early, who hated talking about anything unless he absolutely had to.

  “Dad?” I said, bolting upright. Blinking to clear away the red haze. “What’s wrong? What is it? Where’s Ma? Is she okay?”

  He stood about three feet away, with a folded sheet of paper flapping in one hand. “Oh, God,” he said, coming quickly to my childish side. “She’s fine. She’s at work. I’m sorry for scaring you like that. . . . Is that how bad it seems when I wake you up on the odd morning?”

  “Yes,” I said relieved, concerned, still in the dark about it all. “Sorry, but any weekday morning I see you, Dad, you might as well come at me in a black cloak swinging a scythe. And I still don’t know what the problem is, so could you please tell me what’s in the letter?”

  He handed me the letter. “It’s from the school. Your mother hasn’t seen it.”

  “Yeah . . . ,” I said, wary.

  “I thought you liked school, Arlo?” There was a shimmering sadness to him, where I might have expected anger.

  “I do, Dad. I like it fine.”

  He looked at his watch pointedly, then back at me. “And yet . . .”

  “Oh, you know, perks of the football job. It’ll wind down after the season’s over.”

  He gestured at the letter. “I think it needs to wind down sooner than that. It’s an early warning on overall attendance and two subjects. Biology? Son, you’ve always loved biology.”

  I finally looked at the letter, and the surprise number of absent days.

  “No way, Dad. They’re wrong. I haven’t been absent one single time so far.”

  “Read it all. If you haven’t signed in for homeroom, you haven’t officially been to school that day.”

  “But . . . ,” I started my protest, but Dad wasn’t having it.

  “Remember when you loved the beginning of the school year?” he said, ignoring my demonstration. “The new subjects, new shoes . . .”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” I said, hoping he’d just go away.

  He still wasn’t having it.

  “You’d even get all worked up about the new fall TV schedule. Remember that?” he said.

  “No,” I said with a dramatic sigh that made it embarrassingly plain I was just waiting for him to give up and go.

  With his usual composure, which probably masked more than the usual effort to hold it, he nodded, held out his hand to take the letter back. I offered it, and somehow that was the move that did it. He reached out and snatched the letter from me, crumpled it in his fist. He looked at it, then jammed it all scrunched into his pocket. “This is the only one of these I will ever keep from your mother,” he snarled. “Just so you know.”

  “So I know,” I said. He was apparently cutting me a break here. He wasn’t trying a sneaky guilt lecture or bringing in Ma, who surely would. And still, he was making me so mad . . . for daring to even be in my room. For daring to get angry at me, for whatever reason. I could control my own situation. I never failed at anything before, and the idea that I might start now was a joke.

  My father and the school with their stupid letter could just butt out and leave me to me.

  I knew better, of course, than to say that kind of thing to him.

  But I didn’t know how to keep my face from saying it for me.

  “Everyone is only trying to help you, son,” he said. “Maybe you should try to accept that, while it can still do you some good.” He nodded hard at that, at me, and walked out.

  “I’ll help myself,” I said after he had gone.

  And I immediately went to work doing exactly that. I grabbed my phone before even getting out of bed. I texted Sandy. I sent you a card. I never sent a card before. Did you not get it?

  I got up and got dressed for school, thinking about her every second and trying to force myself not to.

  I was eating bananas and toast and drinking a protein shake when my phone signaled a text.

  I dropped the shake right out of my hand. It thumped onto the table and tipped over, coating the surface in gritty, milky ooze while I picked up the phone and walked away from the mess.

  It was very sweet. I know you are not really that awful but there is some awfulness. I think the break last season was a good idea and good for us. I think it is a good idea again. Don’t write back cuz I don’t want to talk about it now. Good luck with the season. Don’t get hurt. Don’t be a jerk. I will miss you. Call me when it’s over.

  I just stared at the text for a while, rereading for something better that I might have missed. But it kept saying the same thing no matter what I tried to force it to say.

  It sucked. But it was something. It w
as better than it was before. At least we had a kind of understanding. A structure, a goal, a game plan. I could work with it anyway.

  So I worked. At my football, at my grades, at controlling the only things I could control because that would not include Sandy. Not until December anyway.

  It was simple enough to fix the attendance thing, but when I tried to bear down on the schoolwork, it was suddenly hard. Hard. I reached for it and it wasn’t there. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t remember. In a biology quiz that required us to arrange thirty different animals into their kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species, I got a D. I got a D. When I was eleven I used to do that for fun, writing it all out as fast as I could as soon as Animal Planet or Discovery or National Geographic identified the star of the show at the beginning of the program.

  It bothered me, that D. Then it didn’t.

  The thing about football was this: that you could always understand it, not just sometimes. The grid. The objective, the gaining and relinquishing of territory. The controlled aggression that gave it honor and nobility that supposedly related games like chess didn’t. Offensive and defensive strategies, game plans tailored around personnel, the array of different positions, their functions, and the amazingly varied skill sets and body types required to make all the modules of the great organism function. And of course, how the flawlessly delivered, devastating hit was the ultimate answer to everything.

  It was there, in its perfect form, even when nothing else was. And the more I understood the simple genius of the game, the more the sloppiness and complication of everything else made me angry. So I stopped caring about everything else, and concentrated on the one place where I felt like trying, always. Football made me calm, even when everything else was nuts.

  The first week in November we played a nonleague game against one of the powerhouse schools that go to the state Division 2 super bowl more years than not. It was our ninth game, we were 6–2, better than the team had been in years. This opponent was a tall order, a measure of how far we had actually come in relation to schools outside our conference. We liked our chances.