Hit Count

by Chris Lynch

  The cool shower felt fantastic enough that I could have stayed in there for a couple of days. But as I relaxed into it I became more aware of the time getting away, which made me anxious, which made me hurry, which made me queasy, which made me slow down again. It was one cycle that truly did deserve to be called vicious because the more I wanted to make things right for Dinos the less able I was to actually do it.

  As I lay down on the bed I still held some hope that this could work out. I’d go to his house once I felt right. I’d have missed the ceremony, but once I saw him and told him face-­to-­face how it was an accident we would be good again. I closed my eyes. Just for a few minutes. To finish the job, charge my battery, get me right.

  My phone beeped me a message.

  I opened my eyes, getting my bearings yet again. I had the fogginess of having slept for a day and a half straight, though I was sure I hadn’t slept at all. I got my phone off the night table.

  It was from Dinos. Best thing about being a hs grad? Do not have to hang with jerk punks anymore. Sorry not to see you today. Have a great summer. Cuz I sure will. STINYGIASOU! That’s good health. Or maybe screw yourself in Greek. Let’s say it’s both.

  His trip. He was leaving right away. His Greek trip. As a graduation present his folks expanded it to include Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy. How could I forget that? He told me. When he invited me. To the graduation.

  I hit the call back button immediately. “Pick it up,” I insisted to the phone. “Don’t leave me twisting.” It rang. I twisted. It rang. I deserved it. It stopped ringing and invited me to leave a message. I opened my mouth to start, heard in my mind how weaselly I sounded, and hung up on my sorry self.

  Stinygiasou

  Have a good summer. Good health.

  As it turned out, I think it must have meant to screw myself. As I drove myself harder and harder through the long solitary summer, I had to get used to the fact that I was never going to be completely alone because pain was going to be my workout partner now. Muscle tweaks and aches were par for the course when you upped the intensity like I did. Fine.

  And if near constant headaches were part of the price, too, well bring them on. Can’t be a linebacker if you can’t live with a ringing head anyway, so I was already on top of things.

  I had no real summer to speak of, apart from the gym. Sandy left shortly after Dinos, and there would be no visiting her on Nantucket this year because she wouldn’t be there. Her family decided for a change to go to a place called Half Moon Bay. In Northern California. For the whole summer. I wouldn’t say that they decided to put a whole country between us this year, and to stay even longer, because of anything to do with me. But since I couldn’t concentrate on anything else except getting lean and strong, I think Sandy’s great escape actually saved us. Saved us, from me.

  Lloyd and I passed each other during our comings and goings, and while we were mostly just taking care of our own business, I had to say he looked good. Not just sober-­good but also with a humanness that came across in little things like “Hello, Arlo,” which for the first time in some time didn’t sound like I should be waiting for a punch line, or a punch.

  By the third week of August I was ripped. I was lean and strong, and furious. I wanted to hit more than I had ever wanted to hit, and if football camp didn’t get here quick, I was ready to just go out into the street and start taking on moving cars like they were tackling sleds. It was good Sandy was far away, and Lloyd was doing his thing, and Ma and Dad were taking a hands-­off approach to a household that was finally allowing them to do that for a while.

  Because every day I felt a little less able to talk to people. I was angry and anxious and counting on the idea that getting back to football would make me right again, since the end of football was really the beginning of this.

  ***

  “You’re really going for it?” Lloyd asked me on the morning of the day that had taken so long to arrive. Just when I thought we’d all settled into a permanent pattern of quiet coexistence with everyone functioning independently and inconspicuously, Lloyd showed something else. He was tuned in to what I was doing, and merely picked his moment when he had something to say.

  “Of course I’m going for it,” I said. “Did you ever really think otherwise?”

  “Can I come in?” he asked from the doorway while I did a few last torques with the medicine ball.

  “Who are you, Dracula now, needing to be invited? Come in.”

  “Thanks,” he said. It was all condensed right there, in the asking and thanking, how the Life of Lloyd was becoming something very different from what it had been. It was about the difference courts and counseling and community service under the super­vision of Mr. McAlpine could make to the evolution of one hard-­core knuckle­head punk like him.

  “You look good,” I said, only really noticing for the first time. Four months clean combined with his court-­ordered slaving for Jamie—performing janitorial services as well as leading training sessions for groups of even younger hard-­core knucklehead punks—had done him good. Enough good so that he at least didn’t look like the diminished, withered version of himself he had become. He wasn’t the force he once was, but this was progress for sure.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I try and work out as much as I can at the gym, whenever Jamie doesn’t have stuff for me to do. You should come down sometime.”

  “Thanks, but no,” I said, and dropped the medicine ball from too high. It made a loud, awful thump on the wood floor, and I felt like I was one of the blowhard grunting jerks who make far too much unnecessary noise in the weight room. If Ma were home, I would have to be apologizing big time. “Nothing personal, but isn’t McAlpine’s basically the bottom rung on the loser ladder at this point? I mean, doesn’t a person have to be sentenced to time at ’Pine’s?”

  Lloyd, being slow and thoughtful in another change from the past, frowned and nodded before answering. “Harsh, Arlo.”

  He was correct, too. I heard it as it was coming out, and yeah, I kind of surprised myself. Surprised but not bothered. Sometimes harsh is just the way it is.

  ***

  Coach Fisk looked almost surprised to see me when I walked across the field to shake his hand. If he ever seriously considered the possibility that I would pack it in without a fight for my football life, then he had forgotten everything he ever knew about me.

  “Arlo,” he said, shaking my hand hard, “good to see you. How was your summer, son?”

  “Excellent, Coach. Super. Rarin’ to go now.”

  He hesitated. “Well, now, you remember, there are hurdles—”

  “Let’s get to hurdling, then.”

  “Easy, easy there, big boy. Great to have your enthusiasm on the field again, but it will take a little more time to get all that sorted out. It’s not going to be just me making this call, Arlo. There’s a procedure. Medical folks have to be involved. Very specific examinations you are going to have to pass.”

  Even this conversation was making me anxious. I bounced up and down and then side to side on the balls of my feet, just the way I would when I anticipated a running play coming my way and needing to be stuffed. “Whatever you need me to do, Coach, let’s just get it done.”

  He reached out and grabbed my shoulders. He exerted substantial downward pressure to get me to keep still. “It’s not going to happen right now, okay? Things have to be arranged. To be honest, I wasn’t exactly prepared. . . .”

  “Why? That doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way I’m not gonna play. . . . Anyway, fine, whatever, just arrange it.”

  “In due time. Today it’s all just conditioning, assessing who’s in what kind of shape, you know the drill by now, you’re a vet. So just get in there, go through your paces. There’ll be no contact. I can clear you for that. Then we’ll take it from—”

  “Thanks, Coach,” I said, bolting for the far end of the field, where the entire squad of players and hopefuls were stretching for the full-­field, hal
f-­speed sprints that always kicked things off. I had not been this excited for the beginning of camp since . . . ever. Never, ever.

  “Do my eyes deceive me?” McCallum said as he pulled me into a big slapping hug.

  “They do not,” I said.

  “It walks, it talks,” Jerome said raising both hands high, slapping them into my hands, and holding on before I could even get out of McCallum’s grip.

  “It does a lot more than that, pal, I’ll tell you that,” I said, and the laughs all around were only quieted by the assistant coach’s whistle calling us into formations for the sprints.

  There were probably eighty guys, maybe a few more, and we lined up in groups of ten across. “Go!” the coach yelled, and the first group set off for the goal line. “Go!” he said, and the second group went off. It was a completely mixed bunch, fast guys and bulky guys, seniors and rooks all running along side by side by side. “Go!” the coach called to the fifth group, my group, with McCallum on my right and Jerome on my left.

  We were running at half speed, an arm’s distance between us. It was August hot, the kind of heat you can feel coming down from the sun and up from the ground at the same time. I felt the first drops of sweat rolling down from my scalp before I hit the fifty-­yard line. A little early, but I always liked sweat. We had just run through the first, then the second line of players coming back the other way, each group passing through the other with marching-­band precision.

  “You gonna be all right?” Jerome asked me.

  “What are you talking about, man? Of course I’m gonna be all right.”

  We passed through the third group.

  “Okay, okay, it’s just, wantin’ to make sure, is all.”

  I felt a small bump as I shouldered through the fourth group.

  “Better watch where you’re going there,” McCallum said as we reached the far end and stopped for our short breather. “Football field can be a dangerous place, if you recall, Mr. Brodie.”

  “Nah,” I said, “somehow I forgot all that stuff. Probably for the best anyway.”

  Before we stopped goofing, it was time for us to head upfield again. “Go!” yelled the second assistant coach at this end.

  We went, and the excitement was making our whole line move faster than we had the first time. Guys started yelling as we gained ground on the bunch just ahead of us. We were laughing and taunting them and they picked up speed as the first, then the second group passed through us in the other direction again, and I turned to Jerome, who was smiling broadly, just like I was feeling inside, just like I always knew this was going to be, for senior starters on a great football team and who knows what all in front of us.

  “Heads up!” I heard, just before the impact.

  It wasn’t stars, it was rockets, and it was drums in my head as I lay there on my back, then up on my elbow, feeling around my face for broken bones or blood. Around me there was hell kicking off, Jerome going crazy, bellowing and launching himself at somebody.

  “Anderson, chicken-­shit scumbag . . . that was on purpose, goddammit!” Jerome yelled, grabbing big Anderson around the neck and driving him backward.

  McCallum and several other guys jumped in and started pulling them apart, while Anderson yelled back, “No, no, no, he wasn’t looking, he ran into me, it was his fault. I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “I can fight my own battles,” I said as I got halfway up, then fell back down. I immediately attempted to get up once more, but there were many hands suddenly keeping me seated until I stopped trying.

  The fight was broken up, and the players dispersed to other parts of the field. One of the assistant coaches was down on the turf with me, waving an ammonia capsule under my nose. My head cleared, quickly but partially, stars now, not rockets, and I pushed the capsule away.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said.

  “Okay, Arlo,” he said.

  “It was just, the guy weighs about a million pounds, y’know, and I ran into him, totally blindsided. He’s probably right, my own fault. Live and learn, right?”

  “Right,” the assistant said without a lot of enthusiasm.

  I put out my hand, and he helped me to my feet. We got me successfully up, where I stood, a little unsteadily, looking at the ground for several seconds before he let me go to stand on my own.

  “See?” I said. “Fine. Good to go.” I took a step forward, still looking down, so I bumped right into him. “Ha,” I laughed. “I really do have to look where I’m going.”

  Then he grabbed me. In a hug, that was such a hug, it scared me with what it was all about. Then as I looked up I found out what it was all about, even as it became a new kind of hug entirely.

  It wasn’t any assistant.

  “It’s all over, son,” Coach Fisk said. He was holding me close to him, with one hand cupping the back of my head. The side of his face pressed right up to the side of my face while he spoke softly right down my ear. “There won’t be any assessments. I wouldn’t care what they said. You’re a brave kid, Arlo, but I won’t watch this happen. I won’t allow it to happen. That’s that.”

  That’s that.

  I was so weak, I didn’t even try to answer him back. Already, I couldn’t even act like a football player anymore. I felt it all over my stupid face as I just went and cried. And cried. Like a damn baby.

  Brand-­New Man

  I had to tell my mother, of course.

  “I didn’t expect you to cry, Ma,” I said, muffled though I was by her arms wrapped around my big healthy, mostly pain-­free head.

  “I’m not crying,” she said while clearly crying. She let go of me and occupied herself flapping all around the kitchen, getting dinner ready. Then I got the sunburst smile, which made me wish that I could laugh.

  “I figured if anybody was going to cry, it would be you,” I said to my dad who was sitting across the table from me.

  “I thought about it,” he said dryly, winking at me. “I still might. I’m working through it. I don’t like to rush into things.”

  “Good, sound reasoning there, Dad.” He was trying, and I was glad he was trying. Because I was sick when I thought how I had let him down. He had to feel that way, at least a little.

  Pasta now doing its thing on the stove, jumbo shrimp defrosting in the microwave, my mother came back at me.

  By the time she reached me she was crying again.

  “So you had a concussion,” she said kind of quavery and feeling all around my skull as if she thought concussions were something she could locate and examine for herself.

  “No, I didn’t. Never had a concussion. Not one.” There was no way I was going to say anything about hit counts.

  “Never had one diagnosed, you mean,” Dad said with extra­ordinary unhelpfulness.

  “Didn’t you have some emotions to process or something over there?”

  “Well, that’s true, isn’t it?” Ma said, plunking down in the worry chair with worry hands framing her worry frown.

  “Subconcussive hits, that’s what they concluded. Listen, the coaches have a lot of this kind of experience. They know what they’re doing. I’m fine. Fine, okay?”

  She kept me locked in her laser stare.

  “That poor boy from Kansas,” she said. “They talked about something called Second Impact Syndrome as maybe being a factor in his death. That’s very scary to me, Arlo. Second impact syndrome, do you know what I’m talking about?”

  I mean, God rest his soul and everything, the poor guy. But I was sure if he knew the headaches he had caused me, he would not be happy about it.

  “Yeah, Ma, I know. But since I never even had a concussion, you don’t have to worry about it at all. And, as a matter of fact, since nobody around here plays football anymore, you can probably give up that morbid hobby of yours now and start reading, like Better Homes and Gardens or something like normal mothers do.” At least I could give her back The File.

  She locked the stare on me again.

  “Does second impac
t syndrome need to involve an actual concussion, necessarily? Couldn’t this subconcussive thing—”

  “Ma,” I reached over to her, completely encased her small-­boned hands in my big-­boned ones. “I was kind of hoping the one real upside to my shortened career would be that we could enjoy this part. The coach shut me down for my own good, just like you would have. That’s one in the win column for you, isn’t it?”

  She looked at me, nodded, looked at me again. Then she got up and did a hip swivel half turn in my direction, poured on the full wattage of the happiness she was allowing herself, and just as quickly swished away again.

  It lit the joint right up, which was sweet. Except for it being a big fat diversion. I had too much to do, too much at stake, to be fighting battles every day with the well-­intentioned people who didn’t want me doing it.

  It was plain that she was celebrating a finality.

  There is no finality. Not when you have to hit, regardless.

  SENIOR YEAR

  Brutus

  My hands hurt.

  Doesn’t stop me punching, though. And I’m doing it right, I know I am because my lats are killing me even more than my hands. The torque is the thing. Grinding, grinding left hooks, right hooks one-­two-­one-­two until my entire core feels as if I’ve been rung like a sweaty, ratty wet towel. That, once you get it going, is an irresistible force. Nobody can stand up to it.

  Except Brutus. Brutus can stand up to anything. I can punch Brutus till the cows come home—meaning forever, since we never had any cows so they won’t be coming home—and he’d love me for it.

  I could be good at this. I could be great at this, I’m thinking as I roll smoothly from one foot to the other, from hard rights to hard lefts that have equal power and precision. Yes, I’m thinking, hitting harder, like I’m breaking out of chains and smashing down walls. Perfect sport. A man alone. Pure power. This is what a man does. Punch. A man does. Punch. A man. Does.