by Rich Wallace
“I got nine goals this year,” Joey says.
Herbie nods. He’s still grinning. “And one assist.”
“Yeah.”
“Just making sure I’ve got the count right.”
“You got it right.”
“Pretty good ratio,” Herbie says.
“I’d say so.”
Dusty has come over now, and most of the team is gathering around. “What’s your point, Herbie?” he says. Dusty plays forward, too, so he probably feels under attack.
“No point. Just thinking how much better we might be if we had an offense instead of a star.”
“Maybe you just wish you were the star, huh?”
“Maybe,” Herbie says. “Maybe not.”
Joey chimes in again. “There’s a reason we play offense, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“You think you get stuck playing goalie because you’re a good soccer player?”
Joey’s getting pissed, and Herbie can sense it. He’ll keep it up until Joey either starts swinging or walks away. I’m enjoying it—Joey deserves this—but I notice Coach walking toward us from the bus.
Joey makes another stupid-ass comment about the good athletes playing up front. “I’d like to see you run like we do, cigarette man,” he says to Herbie.
Herbie puts his hands over his heart and staggers backward. “God, what biting sarcasm,” he says. “I can’t take it.”
“Right, loser. You can’t.”
Coach has reached us now, but he doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Herbie, then at Joey, then at me. “Everybody get on the bus,” he finally says. “Except you, Herbie.”
We walk slowly to the bus; I can hear Coach yelling at Herbie about acting stupid. Joey’s glaring at me hard. I glare back.
“Nice new friend you got,” he says.
I just look away. Aren’t I allowed to have more than one friend? I take a seat by a window next to Rico and nobody says anything. We just look out at Coach and Herbie, back on the field. Herbie starts running laps. Coach walks over and gets on the bus and stares straight ahead. Herbie does five laps around the field, then walks to the bus, takes his time getting on, and sits in the seat in front of me. He turns and gives me a big grin as the bus pulls out of the parking lot.
Saturday night we all meet at Herbie’s bench—Rico, me, Hernandez, Herbie. The count is at seventy-six, but it’s slowed down considerably. The town has yielded most of its regulars already; the final candidates will be surprises.
It’s a dull night. There’s a party going on somewhere, but it’s mostly juniors and seniors. After a while Rico and Hernandez decide to walk over to the Mental Court for some hoops.
So it’s 10:30 and just me and Herbie are sitting there.
“Too early to go home,” I say.
“It’s always too early for that,” he says.
I say yeah, but then I start thinking about it. If I did go home I’d probably watch TV with my parents or hang in my room and read. It would be even duller than sitting here on the bench, but it wouldn’t be horrible. I get the feeling that it wouldn’t be quite the same at Herbie’s house.
“You ever go home?” I ask.
He gives me a puzzled look. “What, are you kidding?”
“No.”
“Yeah, I go home.”
I nod.
He sticks a cigarette between his lips and starts digging in his coat pocket for his lighter. “I try to see Pete as little as I can,” he says. Pete is his father.
“Yeah.” His father beats him up sometimes. Maybe his mother, too.
He gets the cigarette lit and blows a bluish stream of smoke straight up. “He’s a fine man.”
I just nod some more. Part of me wishes I could say I know how it is, say that my father is a son of a bitch, too, that he’s bitter and that he cuts me down and slaps me around and thinks I’m a loser. But none of that is true. Not in my case.
A car pulls up in front of the bench and stops. It’s my parents’ car, but Tommy is driving. Tony Terranova rolls down the passenger window and says, “Gentlemen.”
“Tony,” I say.
“Hi, guys,” says Shannon, who’s sitting between Tony and my brother in the front seat. She leans across Tony and says, “Seen Joey?”
“Hours ago,” I say. “I thought he was with you.”
“He was supposed to show up at Debbie’s,” she says. That’s the party house. Obviously Joey never got there. I don’t think Shannon’s all that distressed about it.
My brother gets out of the driver’s side, but the car is still running. He comes over to the bench. “What’s going on?” he says. He shakes hands with Herbie, who he hardly knows.
“Nothing,” I answer. “Party any good?”
“For a little while,” he says, gazing down Main Street. “I wasn’t into it.”
He notices that I’m looking at the car, trying to assess what’s going on with Shannon. Tommy turns to look at Turkey Hill, so he’s not facing the car, and he motions with his head for me to come around the other side of him.
“We’re just giving her a ride home,” he says quietly. “You wanna come?”
I shrug. “I guess.” I turn toward the bench and say, “Herbie, wanna get off that bench and cruise around a little?”
“Gee, I dunno,” he says. “It might throw off the balance of the universe if I abandon this spot.” He gets up, though, and reaches for the back door handle. He and I get into the backseat, and Tommy pulls onto the street.
We do a few loops of the town, not saying a whole lot. Shannon turns around and leans toward Herbie, slapping him on the knee. “Heard you and Joey almost got into it the other day,” she says, smiling.
“No big deal,” Herbie says. He puts up his fists and kind of rolls them around. “Just a little sparring, you know. A manly exchange of words.”
“Yeah, so I heard.”
“Just parrying back and forth,” Herbie says. “Two worthy opponents.”
She’s kneeling on the front seat now, turned completely toward us. She shakes her head and laughs. “You crack me up.”
We wind up driving all the way to Weston and back, just for the hell of it. We get doughnuts. It’s about 11:45 when we drop her off. Herbie gets out on Main Street and we drop Tony at his house. Then me and Tommy head for home.
“Nice girl,” he says after we’ve gone about two blocks.
“She’s fantastic,” I say, immediately wishing I hadn’t.
He smirks a little and nods slowly. His smile gets a little bigger.
“Shit,” I say, just to myself. Tommy punches me on the arm and turns up our street. But when we get to the house he keeps going.
He turns toward River Road and makes a left, past the cemetery and up the hill into farm country. “You gonna ask her out sometime?” he says.
I shrug. “She’s kind of … I don’t know. Joey’s like … you know.”
He tilts his head back and forth. “Joey didn’t even show up tonight,” he says.
“Did that piss her off?”
“Didn’t seem to.” Tommy looks like he’s thinking hard.
“Remember when I was a freshman and I had to beat Tony to make the varsity?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“I did beat him. He didn’t like it, but we stayed friends,” he says. “Better friends, even.”
I see the point he’s trying to make, but I don’t agree with it. “I think that’s different,” I say slowly.
He’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”
“She’s over my head anyway.”
“Is she?”
“I think so,” I say. “The thing is, she ought to be over Joey’s head, too.”
“You’re probably right. Thing is, Joey doesn’t think so.” He starts drumming with his fingers on the steering wheel. “Then again, maybe he does.”
I nod. Tommy pulls into a driveway and turns the car around. We don’t say much the rest of the way, but I feel okay. No
t about Shannon, but about myself. Tommy doesn’t have all the answers, but he has more than I do. He sees my situation more clearly than I can.
You need people like that in your life.
An Insider’s Guide
Some night if you can’t sleep, get up and take a walk at three o’clock in the morning. Sneak out of the house without making a sound, and stick to back streets so you can duck into the shadows when a cop car goes by. Here are some things you might see if you stay out for an hour:
— Two doctors in green scrubs standing on the loading dock outside the hospital’s emergency room, smoking cigarettes.
— The skinny guy with funny teeth who runs the Chinese takeout place, in the driveway behind his restaurant, hosing down cabbages.
— Night-shift guys at Sturbridge Building Products, taking a coffee break in the parking lot.
— A prominent attorney walking an incontinent dog.
— Me.
13
ELEVEN MUSKETEERS
We figured we’d start off the second half of the season in a big way, trashing Weston North on our home field. There’s a few dozen people here to cheer us on. And we shut these guys out last month.
But the first quarter’s almost over and we’ve barely crossed midfield. North is putting on some pressure. Their right wing is dribbling toward me, and I attack. He crosses it to another forward, who takes a long shot that Herbie catches. Herbie looks downfield, but heaves it over to my side. I’m shielded by that same wing, and he gets control and starts cutting in from the sideline, a step ahead of me, bearing down on the goal. I catch up and go into a slide tackle, but he steps on the ball and stops short, and I’m on the ground and he’s past me. He chips it toward the center, and their striker heads it into the goal.
Dusty bumps into me as he jogs back into position. “What the hell kind of a tackle was that?” he says.
I stare at him. “It’s called defense.”
“It is, huh?”
“Eat shit.” See if I pass to him later.
Herbie calls over the defenders and the midfielders at the end of the quarter. “Tighten up,” he says. “They’ve had six shots on goal already.”
“We’re overcommitting on defense,” Rico says. “Don’t challenge if you can’t win the ball. Hold your ground.”
“And clear the friggin’ ball,” Herbie says. “At least twice we made little girlie passes right in front of our net that could have cost us.”
Coach yells for us to line up for the kickoff. Rico trots next to me as we head downfield. “That Dusty’s one hell of a guy, huh?”
I sneer. “Yeah.”
“Joey, too,” he says. “They’re two one hell of a guys.”
Second quarter starts out okay. We get the ball down into their end, at least. Trunk tries to pass it through one of their midfielders, and it gets deflected out of bounds. I race over and grab the ball for a throw-in. Dusty’s got room ahead of me, but I throw it short, back to Rico. He slides it to me, and I dribble downfield. I could pass, but I don’t, moving the ball up the touchline.
I race past the wing who beat me before, but a midfielder comes up and taps the ball out of bounds. I scoop it up and throw it down the line, where Mitchell controls it and pokes it toward the center. Joey gets it, dribbles twice, and takes a shot from too far out. It bounces off a defender on my side and I race to control it. I’m out of position, but I’ve got the ball and an open path to the goal.
I’m sprinting now, racing with the ball, but a wall of three defenders is closing in, squeezing me toward the corner. I stop, do a full turn, and penetrate toward the center. I hear them yelling for the ball—Dusty, Trunk, Joey—but now I’m surrounded. I can’t shoot or pass.
They clear it out of there, and suddenly the ball and three North forwards are way the hell ahead of us, streaking toward our goal. Three quick passes and it’s in our penalty area. Hernandez falls down, Herbie cuts toward the ball, and a softly rolling grounder squeaks past him and crosses the goal mouth.
They’ve got a guy waiting, he taps it home. He’s offside, but it doesn’t get called. It’s 2–0 and Joey and Dusty are both in my face this time.
“What the hell was that?” Joey says.
“Penetration,” I say.
“You ever hear of passing?” Dusty shouts at me.
“Yeah. But I didn’t know you had.”
Joey grabs Dusty’s arm and leads him away. Then he turns to me. “Suck it up,” he says.
I let out my breath and nod.
Joey comes over and punches me lightly on the arm. “Good hustle,” he says. “Keep it up.”
Coach chews us out good at the half. We haven’t made a meaningful pass the whole game and we’ve made some blatantly stupid defensive errors.
I haven’t played this badly since I was about nine.
As we’re walking back onto the field Joey comes up beside me. “What gives, man?” he says.
“Don’t know.”
“You gotta get me the ball.”
I nod. “And you gotta give it up sometimes.”
“Right. Now let’s get this done.” He claps his hands and starts jogging. “Let’s get it done!” he shouts.
But we never do get it together. Joey manages to score late in the third off a corner kick, but North gets it right back. We lose 3–1 and walk off the field shaking our heads.
“This sucks,” Dusty says to no one in particular, although he’s looking my way. But he keeps walking. I slow down and drift into a pack with Hernandez and Herbie.
“You know what’s really great about this team?” Herbie says after a minute. “Our sense of unity. The way we’re all pulling together.”
I’m still pissed, but I can’t help but smile.
“Total, unselfish dedication to the cause,” he says. “Eleven Musketeers.”
“It sure is great,” I say, looking around as my teammates trudge toward the locker room with their heads down.
“It’s a special kind of wonderful,” Herbie says, and I burst out laughing.
We’ve reached the locker room and Coach is waiting in the doorway. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks. “We just got our butts whipped and you guys think it’s funny?”
I turn solemn. “I wasn’t laughing about that,” I say.
“You shouldn’t be laughing at all,” he says to me. Then he turns and addresses the whole team. “You guys were pathetic out there today,” he says, pushing the door shut with his foot. “What kind of a team is this?” His voice is getting louder. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re turning this season to shit. We’ve got two factions here—you know who you are—and they’re working against each other. If you can’t straighten it out, then the JV guys will move up and take your places.”
He lets out his breath and slams his fist into a locker—not too hard, just to make a point. “Whatever’s going on, whatever personality conflicts you may have off the field, I expect you to leave it behind you when you step into your soccer uniforms. If you can’t do that, then you’ve got no business being on this team. Bones. Joey. Dusty. Whoever else is involved in this—I’ll bench your ass real fast if you play another minute the way you played today.”
He turns and leaves the locker room, and we all sit there in silence. Mitchell is the only senior on the team and he’s the captain, but he’s just staring at the floor. Joey’s got his arms folded and he’s glaring at Herbie. Herbie raises his eyebrows at him, like he’s waiting for him to speak. Joey just says “Asshole” under his breath.
“That’s helpful,” I say.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” he says.
“I know.”
“I was talking to your girlfriend.”
That’s so stupid that I just look away. Dusty stands and says, “Everybody shut up.” He steps out into the center of the room and looks around at us. He points a finger at Rico, then at me. “You guys aren’t getting us the ball.”
“You guys don’t know what t
o do with it,” I say.
“Bullshit,” he says. “You don’t wanna admit that we’re the reason this team is winning.”
“Guess what, pal. We haven’t won a game in two weeks.”
“Guess what, yourself. That’s when you stopped playing like a team.”
Other guys start shouting now, throwing in their two cents. After a couple of minutes Coach sticks his head in and yells, “Shut up!” The room turns deadly quiet. “Every one of you,” he says in a steady, angry voice, “get showered, get dressed, and get the hell out of here. When I see you tomorrow you’d better be ready to run.” He looks around the room for effect. “And you’d better be ready to act like a team. Or you won’t be one anymore.”
14
THE METHODIST POPE
We get no warm-up at practice today, no jogging or dribbling drills or juggling. Coach just tells us to line up across the goal line. Then we run line drills—sprinting to the eighteen-yard line, turning and sprinting back to the goal line, then up to midfield, back to the eighteen, down to the opposite eighteen, back to midfield, down to the far goal line, then all the way back to where we started.
“You’ve got thirty seconds to relax,” he says. “Enjoy it.”
We’re all bent over, hands on our knees, gasping for breath. Then he blows his whistle and we do it again, with him shouting at us to quit dogging it.
We do the whole routine eight times, and Trunk and Hernandez both throw up when we finish.
“Herbie,” Coach says. “You were last in every one.”
“I’m biding my time,” Herbie says. He wipes his nose and coughs.
“You’re what?”
“Conserving some energy.”
“You won’t have any energy when I’m through with you,” Coach says. “Line up.”
Everybody groans. “All of us?” Dusty says.
“No. Just Herbie. The guy who saved so much energy.”
Herbie sneers and shakes his head, but he walks up to the line. Coach blows his whistle, and Herbie takes off, maybe a little faster than before.
We’re late for work, but extra running is really no big deal for me and Joey. We kind of like it.