by David Wright
I’d walk around. The Latin Quarter. The Bastille. Les Halles. Sometimes I’d stop in a café and have a Diabolo Menthe (mint syrup in limonade, which isn’t lemonade at all but more like a French version of 7-Up) or a Monaco (limonade but this time with a red syrup called grenadine). I’d watch folks, the passersby or those drinking wine at the bar and chatting with the barman, or the clusters of college students at the tables outdoors, even in winter, smoking cigarettes and talking and laughing.
Those would be my days. A great trip. Nothing like I would have expected and a diversion from all that was happening back home. That coming Wednesday, me and the rest were set to go back.
After the coq au vin (I had seconds!), me and Georges and Françoise moved to the living room for dessert—a strawberry tart that looked awesome, the glazed fruit in spiral rows on top of a yellow cream filling. Françoise brought in a tray with a stack of small dishes on it—and also Champagne glasses. She sat on the settee beside me and began slicing the tart, but Georges left the room, and when he came back, he was carrying a bottle of Moët and a saber, and I was like, A saber?
He stayed standing, all formal and serious, so that it didn’t fit. “In France, we toast important occasions with Champagne,” he said in French. “Today is special for us, for we have welcomed into our home a person who has touched us most deeply.”
And I remember thinking, Is he talking about me?
Françoise was standing beside him then, all smiles, and he went on. “We have only known you, Freeman, these few weeks, and we know that in many ways it must be a difficult time for you, to be away from your home. But during this time you have become a son to us. We hope we have been family for you too.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Merci,” I said. “Merci.” And I meant it.
Georges, still all formal, took that saber and, holding the Champagne at the base, ran the saber in one fluid swoop along the bottle from bottom to top. There was a clink! and the head—cork, surrounding glass and all—just popped right off, straight up, and hit the ceiling. Foaming liquid bubbled out, and I couldn’t help myself. I blurted, “Oh, merde!”
FREE
I didn’t hardly sleep that night, partly because of the Champagne, but it was more than that. A dream woke me up at, like, two, and I never got back to sleep after. I still remember it. There was a huge stadium, and no light but that from the moon. The whole scene, it was more Lord of the Rings than Super Bowl. The stands were packed with trolls and muscled-up dwarves, humans too, but all gnarly and greasy-haired, the whole lot of them in leather tunics and waving giant swords and battle axes and such, standing and roaring at each other, one army on one side and folks from the other army opposite, some invisible dividing line keeping them apart. Who knew what was at stake? I didn’t. All I knew was that I was in a mass of folks I didn’t know, hating them others over there.
I can’t remember how this came to be, but a small group of us—five or six—were sneaking through the passageways under the stands, by where the concessions and restrooms should be, concrete corridors and pipes overhead dripping water and hissing steam, because we realized—suddenly—that we were on the wrong side, that ours was the one opposite us. And besides, the whole thing seemed kind of ridiculous—all the beefing and posing that none of us could make sense of. Working our way to the proper side, we decided to just find the exit instead, to get on out and away from all the madness.
But then someone from the stands spotted us. He pointed, and raging folks started streaming down the exit ramps toward us. We broke away, running as fast as we could down the long concrete corridors. They overran one or two of us right off, but I got out into the open, onto an empty parking lot, headed for the gates. They were fast, but I was faster. But then there were some in front of me too, coming suddenly out of nowhere. I thought I could deke them—I hoped I could—and then everything went black.
I remember thinking that was the end of the dream, that I was awake. But when my eyes snapped open, I wasn’t in Marie’s room, where I’d been sleeping, but back in the stadium, in the middle ground between all those folks raging and roaring at each other, and now they were all—both sides—roaring at me. I couldn’t move; maybe I was trussed up or something. I couldn’t even turn my head from side to side. I just stared straight ahead. Then somehow my view of the scene panned back, and I could see it from above. From there I could see that my head was chopped off and on a stick, dripping blood and dangling ragged strands of neck meat! And I was screaming…
There wasn’t any more sleeping after that. But it wasn’t just the nightmare that kept me up. It was my thoughts churning. I just lay there in the dark, looking around the room—at the chest of drawers that stood against one wall, at the sink in the opposite corner—and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about home and why I had left.
I had found out about getting the France scholarship the same week I signed the letter of intent to play at Iowa State: at the end of November, right before Thanksgiving. The recruiter came to our house in San Antonio with my coach, Coach Calley. It was the recruiter’s third time over, and he told me and Mama about the academic programs at the university and about my good prospects of starting early, and he laid the papers out on the coffee table and set a fancy pen over top of them. He gave me a maroon Cyclones cap once I’d signed.
Mama closed the door behind them after they left, and no sooner had the latch clicked than she started jumping up and down and clapping her hands. Tookie and Tina came out from the back, and they were pogoing too. I’m not even sure they knew exactly what it was they were carrying on about. Me, I couldn’t help myself—I pumped my fist in the air.
“I’ma be a college baller!” I said.
“I’m going to be a college baller,” Mama corrected me, but she was steady pogoing in place.
“We’ve got to call your father,” she said, and she went over to the PC on the card table in the corner. Mama sat in the chair and Skyped him while me and Tookie and Tina scrunched around her, squatting beside her so as we’d all fit in front of the webcam.
Pops’ face filled up the screen, the collar of his camo fatigues framing the bottom border. He was in Iraq, his third deployment, this time at Joint Base Balad, outside Baghdad; he worked on jet engines. It had to have been, like, three thirty in the morning over there, but a couple of soldiers were playing Ping-Pong over his shoulder.
Pops looked like he knew what was coming. His mouth moved before the words could catch up. “So how’d it go?”
“Just great,” Mama said, and she started to explain about the full ride and about the engineering program being nationally ranked, but Pops cut her off. “Let the boy tell it, Verna!” Even all grainy in the webcam, and in the weak lighting of the Quonset hut, his face was lit up. The corners of his mustache seemed pushed up onto his temples, so broad was his smile.
“Coach Horton, the recruiter, said they’re graduating three corners and a safety,” I told him. “Ain’t nothing but two sophomore corners and a redshirt freshman on the whole squad.”
“There aren’t but two sophomores,” Mama corrected me.
I knew how to say it proper, but saying it like that for Pops seemed right. See, football was always me and Pops’s thing. I’d been balling since I was “knee-high to a pup,” as he’d say, and before the war Pops would come to every game. He’d grade my play. Good stick on third down, or, all stern-like, You’re slacking on kick coverage. That kind of thing. Pops would be scrutinizing every detail.
He hadn’t really seen me play since I’d grown into my chest and college recruiters had started coming around, so I wanted to catch him up as best I could.
He said, “So you’ve got a good chance to play your first year?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Tookie had gone back to his room, to play Game Boy or some such, but Tina’s tiny hand was steady holding mine, and she was smiling Mama’s smile. “Especially if I enroll in January and go through spring ball.”
&n
bsp; “You got the credits?”
“Sure enough. And a three-point-six GPA.”
Mama said, “My Freeman’s going to get to go to university!” Then she added, “What a week. First the award to take the trip to France, now this.”
I pulled the brim of the Cyclones cap even lower over my face, told Pops about the scholarship, not bragging, just saying.
He moved in closer to the camera, his face blocking out the Ping-Pong game, like he could reach on through, put his hand on my shoulder. “Son,” he said, “you’ll make the Cyclones a better team and get to go to college, something your mama and me, your aunts and uncles, never got a chance to do. Boy, you are going places.”
» » » »
My school group had the day free, what with us having just two days left, and I decided to walk to the places around the city I had liked best. The loud-honking and lively Champs-Élysées first. Then over by Montparnasse: gray stone walk-ups and lots of bookshops and cafés everywhere. After that I took the metro to Montmartre, to the Sacré-Cœur, the white stone church that looks like those pictures of the Taj Mahal.
It was cool out but not cold; I was fine in just my Huskies letter jacket. I sat on a green wooden bench in the park at the base of the long staircases that led up to the church. The parks here aren’t parks the way I know them. They’re mostly gravel-covered paths, and the grass is off-limits. Guards in two-toned blue unis with blue box-hats blow whistles at you if you step out onto the green. Still and all, these ladies—young moms and African nannies and Swedish au pairs—brought their kids. The kids were overdressed—in coats and scarves and knit hats—for a winter that seemed like it wouldn’t ever come. They freed themselves and ran and made a ruckus like Tookie and Tina would if they were here. The ladies, pushing the empty strollers, followed behind, picking up the cast-off clothes.
I flipped open the paperback that Ms. Glassman had given me: A Moveable Feast. She thought I’d like it, and I did. In it, Ernest Hemingway, this writer we read for English, remembers his time in Paris in the twenties, before TVs and Game Boys and such, when he wasn’t but a couple of years older than I am now and trying to be an author. Romantic times.
Sitting there, the book open but not reading it, I got to thinking about when I had told my boys—Ahman, Jamaal and Juan—about Iowa State. It was the day after the recruiter’s last visit, and we were sitting on the back of the bench at the bus stop on the way to school, our feet on the seats. I didn’t say anything, just pulled the Cyclones cap out of my book bag and put it on—sideways, cool-like.
My boys popped up off the bench and tossed out high fives and jostled me.
“For real?” Jamaal said.
“Big 12 football, that’s sick, ese!” said Juan.
I had made All-District the year before, and ever since, my boys, all my teammates, expected me to represent at the next level, for the team, for our school. Huskies pride. And it felt good to step up like that—it did, for real.
I put the Cyclones cap back in my bag. Ahman must have sensed there was something else. “What about UT?” he said. “What about wearing the burnt orange?”
UT—the University of Texas—is a factory for NFL defensive backs.
Ahman played corner opposite me, and me and him had been balling together since Pop Warner. Even back then we’d always be jawing about going pro, picking off Tom Brady in the Big Show. But after recruiters started coming around, standing in a group in the bleachers, asking after me, well, we got to thinking that maybe it wasn’t just empty boasting.
Still, I said, “How’m I gonna pass on a full ride for a chance at a scholarship?” I added, “A bird in the hand,” like if I parroted Pops maybe I’d actually believe it like Pops wanted me to.
Juan got my back. “True that. Beats two in the bush.” Him and me were co-captains. He was our rush outside backer, all bull-necked and broad up top but narrow-hipped and long-legged. “My papa had a chance to train for TAC resource management.” His pops was air force too. “Woulda meant a promotion to senior master sergeant, but we’da had to transfer out to some base in South Dakota, and he just said no.”
“For real?” I said. “Your pops is separating?”
“As of next summer.”
And I remember thinking, Dang, I wish my pops would quit the military. I had that exact thought right then, like an omen.
Across the street, there was a line outside Lulu B’s taco trailer, like always, construction workers in jeans and boots mostly, their big mud-spotted Ford F-250s lining the road. One’s hard hat was camouflage, to look like a military helmet.
“But rising in the ranks,” Ahman argued, “being the best he can be, ain’t that why he joined in the first place? Ain’t that what we’re all supposed to try to do?”
And I knew that was true too. Working hard to live my dreams.
Jamaal, one of our receivers (when he actually got a chance to play, that is), jumped in. “Iowa? For real, Free?” He was snickering. “That’s the bunghole of America.”
They busted out laughing, all Fat Albert, arms and legs pumping the air.
Jamaal was Dumb Donald if ever there was one.
“Man, how you know Iow-a from Iow-bee?” I told him. “You can’t even read a map.”
“Ooh, snap,” he shot back. “You really busted on me there.”
And they all kept yukking it up. My boys.
But Jamaal was right. Ames, Iowa? Seriously?
“For real, yo,” Ahman said, insistent. “A chance at UT is still a chance, man. More than most get. Be all you can be, Free. How you not gonna try?”
Juan cut in. “Whatever, y’all. If you two,” he said, pointing his carrot-thick finger first at me, then Ahman, “don’t step it up on Friday night against the Connally QB, won’t none of this mean nothing no ways.” Then, just to me: “Coach Calley will have your cojones, Iowa State will revoke their scholarship, Ms. Glassman will kick you off that trip, and you’ll end up bussing tables over at Gabriella’s Taqueria ’cause won’t nobody want to know you no more no how.”
It was supposed to be motivational, I guess.
But he was right. We were playing Pflugerville-Connally the upcoming Friday for the chance to make the playoffs, and the Cougars were for real, undefeated and ranked number one in the district. Their quarterback was All-State, headed to play at Purdue. Beating Connally was about me beating their QB.
That’s what I was thinking about sitting on that bench at Montmartre, and I kept replaying it on the subway back to Georges and Françoise’s. What do I do next? I asked myself. Enroll at Iowa State, or wait for the fall and walk on at UT, fight for a scholarship?
Up in my bedroom, I put on my sweatpants and running shoes, my letter jacket and a cap to keep me warm. Why shouldn’t I go on up to Villeneuve, see if these boys could ball? Why not? It would be just another adventure, like old Hemingway had lived. And I’d have a good story to take back home, to tell my boys about.
FREE
I misjudged the time it would take to get from Georges and Françoise’s place to Villeneuve and then had a hard time retracing my steps to find the stadium. When I walked up, practice had already started. There were about forty players and a handful of coaches. Matt, the Canadian I’d met the day before, was in full gear and lined up at QB, directing the offense in shell drill. It wasn’t the Big 12; in fact, some bits were kind of slapstick. But it wasn’t all bad either.
I watched Matt take a snap and drop back, then slip out of the pocket and take off. Homey thought he could run the rock. And he was wearing number 15—a Tebow wannabe, I was willing to bet.
The Arab, Moussa, saw me on the sideline. He pointed me out to one of the coaches. They jogged over, Matt just behind them.
“Glad you came out,” Matt said, taking off his helmet.
He had black hair that fell to his shoulders, a ready smile. He spoke English as easily as French—his English was kind of formal though. He introduced me to the head coach, Coach Thierry, who threw out his
hand for a soul handshake, like the Arab had the day before, and I was like, Tsst. Please.
But I gave it back all the same. “Vous pouvez parler en français,” I told them—You can speak French.
“Bien,” the Arab said, but then he went on in English. “Eight interceptions! You had very much a good season.”
“Pardon?” I said.
“I googled you. I had quite a difficult time guessing the spelling of your family name.”
“An African king, eh?” Matt said, kind of smirking.
Pops was born a Compson. “My father took the name Behanzin when he joined the air force,” I explained. “After high school.”
Matt was steady smirking, like that was funny or something. “You ready to run some drills?” he asked.
I put my senior-class ring in my jacket pocket, dropped the jacket on the sideline and lined up at corner. First we played a two-deep, and I squatted in the underneath zone. Matt tried to lob a pass over my head, like he wanted to test my springs. I got springs. I picked his pass, took it back the other way.
Play after play, he kept throwing to my side. They had some speed at receiver but no real skill. I made a few more plays on the ball.
We broke into individual position drills. I went with an African brother named Celestin, who was coaching the DBs. He ran us through some hip openers, breaking right and left on his command. Some of the other DBs who weren’t directly involved in the exercise tossed a ball around, rugby-style, so I started a tip drill with them. Celestin had the whole group do it.
Then the offense scrimmaged the defense. Without a helmet or pads, I had to watch. I stood beside Celestin and the defensive coordinator, a guy they called Le Barbu—“the bearded one”—even though he was clean-shaven. He and Celestin discussed the best call for each situation, but before making it to the defensive captain on the field, they would look over toward me, to see what I thought or some such. Like, did I agree.