Winning the City Redux

by Theodore Weesner

  Slamming the door, the coach glares. “Act tough with me, young man! Act tough with me, you will never be on any team in this school again!”

  Dale knows on the Coach’s words that his defeat is real and final. Still he bawls out, “Why are you mad at me!? What did I do? You act like you’re mad at me and I didn’t do anything!” Don’t cry! Dale is telling himself, fighting against bawling, fighting tears even as he knows his eyes to be brimming.

  Looking at him, the man takes a breath. Dale knows he’s going to be different then, and so he is. “Dale . . . calm down now. Please calm down?”

  “Joe said,” Dale tells him. “Joe said they’re using the gym, and I’m not on the team. How can I not be on the team? It’s my team. Do they think I’m not good enough?”

  “Hold on now, okay? I’m going to tell you exactly what it is. Do you hear me? I’m going to tell you exactly what it is that has happened. Then I want you to get a hold of yourself and get on to your class. Will you do that? Will you? If I tell you exactly what it is and why it isn’t as bad as you think it is? I’m going to speak the God’s truth, Dale. If I do that . . . will you get a hold of yourself and go on to class? Will you? Yes or no, young man? I want you to answer me!”

  His face a wreck, Dale looks, doesn’t like being manipulated and doesn’t reply.

  “I’m telling you I will tell you what the situation is. You should be flattered is what you should be. You hear what I’m saying? Dale, do you HEAR what I’m saying!? You should be flattered, is what it is . . . but I’m not going to tell you what has happened until you say you hear me and will pull yourself together and go on to your class! Can I tell you what has happened, or not? Can I? Young man, I want you to answer me!!”

  “Yes,” Dale blurts out. “Yes!”

  “These things happen. They happen just like this, and they’ll happen at other times in your life, too. They’ve happened to me, to everyone. Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you hear what I am saying!?”

  “Yes . . . Yes!”

  “It’s not that you aren’t good enough. Okay? It’s not that at all. What it is—between the two of us. What it is—you’re a little too good. You understand what I’m saying? You play a little too hard and you’re a little too good, is what it is.”

  “How can anybody be too good? I don’t get that at all.”

  “Listen to me, will you? Will you? The man cannot have you on his team, or his own son will have to sit on the bench. You see what I’m saying? He couldn’t put you on the bench, because every-one would know it didn’t make sense. He wants a team for his sons to play on together. Can you blame him for that? The older boy, he can do okay, because he’s big and learning fast. But the younger boy wouldn’t get to play much at all, not if you were there. What his father wants is to teach him to do what you do . . . to be a playmaker! You see what I’m saying? Teams are often put together like that. Good lord, it happens all the time, at every level. Do you see what I’m saying? Do you see why you should be flattered?”

  “That doesn’t make it fair,” Dale utters. “What team am I supposed to be on, if I’m not on my own team!?”

  “Hey, listen. I told you the truth—just as I said I would. You agreed—if I told you exactly what it was—you agreed that you would get yourself together and go on to your class! Didn’t you agree? Didn’t you? I’d like an answer if you don’t mind! Didn’t you?”

  “What you’re saying doesn’t make it fair.”

  “These things happen. They always have and always will. Nor is there one tooting thing I can do about a City League team anyway, as you well know. My advice is to be happy you’ve learned a lesson like this at this point in your life, instead of later! You can sign up with some other team, any one of which I’m sure will be pleased to have you. Mr. Bothner, after all, has come in with a sponsor, with uniforms, a whole program. He gets to have a choice in who is on his team! If you have a complaint, it’s with him, not with me, as you well know.”

  The man is guiding Dale to the door, refraining from touching him, Dale knows, disliking him as a fourteen-year-old in the way, in the past, that he placed a hand on his shoulder to say he liked him. Herded out, Dale manages, “It still isn’t fair.” There comes an eyes-raised impatience, a shaking of the man’s head on closing the door in Dale’s face, and a closing of his own eyes as the knife hits home and he feels faint in his knees.

  CHAPTER 17

  IT’S TIME FOR AFTER-SCHOOL PRACTICE BUT DALE CANNOT go. With Burkebutt, Sonny Joe, the others, maybe Mr. Bothner showing up again, Dale isn’t able to do it. Nor is he able not to do it, despite knowing Mr. Bothner isn’t likely to show up. Why show up now, when he has picked off for his sons what he came to pick off in the first place?

  Dale has never not gone to practice in his life. He’s a returning starter, a co-captain and team leader, loves his sport more than anything. Will Burkebutt kick him off the scholastic team, too, if he doesn’t come to practice? Panic stricken, filled with self-doubt and second-guessing, he’s too crazed with the shock and hurt of what is happening to change clothes and walk into practice. Removing his bag from his hall locker, turning away from the gym, he moves to exit the building through the teachers-only utility door that leads to the parking lot and ball fields to the rear, pushes on head down, because what he’s doing has him breaking in defeat and about to sob.

  He stifles the gasping sound until he’s through the door and on a ramp down to the expanse of parked cars. Turning between rows of cars, heart bursting, he begins to sob. There between cars, he goes to his knees on asphalt between car doors and handles, suffers heartbreak on collapsing and sobbing into one hand. All the same he continues gasping against crying, against being heard, while bawling helplessly all the same.

  Is it his fault? Did he forget who he is? How could he have gone along like he was one of them with their Sunday School classes and Sunday dinners rather than Coney Island dogs in the middle of the night? How could anyone forget who they were, especially someone who thinks he’s a leader because he thinks of things and tells others what to do? His sobbing persists, against his effort not to cry. All is lost and the stupid knife is inside, cutting his stupid heart in half. How easy it is, at last, to see why they left him off a team with uniforms, a program, a coach, the use of the precious school gym he’s been sweeping every day for nearly three years as part of a dream to which he never belonged in the first place. How foolish it’s been of him to have grown so proud and bossy.

  Under a dim sky, as he continues gasping and swallowing tears . . . there comes from behind, from between cars, a woman’s voice saying, “Dale Wheeler . . . is that you? What in the world? What are you doing?”

  As Dale hunkers on the pavement in added shock, the voice comes closer and he can neither escape nor make it go away. “I thought I heard a wounded animal. Are you hurt? You didn’t get hit by a car?”

  Keeping his stricken face concealed, Dale cannot contain added gasping as Miss Furbish angles to examine the problem, to identify, if she can, the assault or crisis or accident one of her homeroom students is suffering.

  “I’m okay,” Dale blubbers, wanting with all his heart not to weep or be seen.

  “Can I get someone to help? Is there something I can do? Suppose I go inside and call your mother?”

  “I’m okay . . . really.”

  Miss Furbish declines to leave, as much as he wishes she would. Remaining above him and his miserable face, she asks, “Is your mother at home? Dale, where do you live?”

  Not knowing how to answer, having no wish to answer, Dale says nothing.

  “I don’t mind going inside to call her.”

  “I’m okay,” Dale blubbers again.

  “I think I should go inside and call your mother.”

  “No, you don’t have to,” Dale blurts.

  “Dale . . . I think I should.”

  “I just live with my father,” Dale gets out. “I’m okay.”

  “Well is your father at home?”


  “He’s at work.”

  “Where is he at work . . . where do you live?”

  “Down near the stadium, but it’s okay . . . really.”

  “If it would help, I could drive you home.”

  “That’s all right . . . I’ll be okay.”

  “Dale, I’m not going to leave you in this parking lot in the state you’re in. Would you like me to get a male teacher to help?”

  “No, please.”

  “Your father works where?”

  “He works at Chevy.”

  “Can I call him there?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m okay, really.”

  “I’m either going to deliver you to the principal, or telephone the police . . . or the hospital. You need some help.”

  “I’ll walk home, really,” Dale begs of her.

  “I’m not leaving you here. Please, get on your feet.” Briefcase in hand, Miss Furbish extends a hand to his elbow in her attempt to help. “Let me help you.”

  Half rising, Dale blubbers, “I’m okay, really.”

  “You’re not okay at all. I am not leaving you here.”

  “I’ll just walk home. Please.” Not wanting his admired teacher to see his devastated face, Dale looks away from her on getting to his feet.

  She helps him by holding his elbow in one hand. “I am driving you home, so you can stop saying you’re okay. Listen, Dale, I know you’re in a crisis and I am not going to let you walk off by yourself! That is not going to happen! Please do as I say.”

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 1

  LIKE STRANGERS ON AN AWKWARD DATE, THEY RIDE IN HER car (a plain maroon Buick, Dale has noticed) without speaking. Shepherding him in on the passenger side, all but pushing him in, she goes around to the driver’s side, reaches her pocketbook and shoulder bag into the rear, gets behind the wheel and, positioning her glasses, backs the car around. She rises in her seat—she is not a big woman—and drives without speaking.

  “I’ll get out at a corner,” Dale tries to have her know. Not wanting her to see where he lives near factory buildings and parking lots—behind the stadium and close to Lower Downtown—he adds, “I’ll be okay, really.”

  Glancing his way after a moment, she says, “Your father works second shift? What do you do, fix your own meals?”

  Sort of nodding, Dale says as before, “Anywhere along here is okay.”

  “Dale, listen . . . I’m quite aware that every student at Walt Whitman does not live on Welch Boulevard. There is no need to be embarrassed about where you live.” As Dale doesn’t respond, she adds, “I know you’re a good student, and a good person. Which is how I judge people, not on their social status.”

  Dale hunches, glances to the small woman behind the wheel with her glasses on a lanyard.

  More silent driving follows as she seems to not be taking streets to where he lives. From something she said in class, he guesses she lives near downtown herself, in one of the old mansions that has been converted to apartments and offices and fills the streets on this side of Chevrolet Avenue, apart from the factory buildings, parking lots, the bars and diners, the river and bridges connecting into Lower Downtown near where he lives.

  “Tell me, please, what it is that had you breaking down like that in the parking lot? Maybe I can help.”

  There is the reality all over again of his crisis—the knife in his heart, being denied a place on his own team—questions he has no wish to examine, least of all with her.

  “If it’s something you could speak more comfortably to a male teacher about, I would be happy to set up a meeting for you. Otherwise, you should understand that getting something off your chest always helps with difficult experiences.”

  She glances and returns her focus to driving from her slightly perched position while Dale—at a loss for what to say—declines to reply. “I hope you’re aware that you can trust me with any confidence, however serious it may be,” she adds.

  “I’ll be okay,” Dale gets out, no matter a mini-gasp telling on the nearness of another helpless collapse to his strained words.

  They roll on and he senses Miss Furbish glancing his way, senses his eyes filming with added loss and emotion. Says again in his need to get away, “You can let me off here. This is fine.”

  “Dale . . . what I am going to do,” she tells him. “I am not going to leave you on your own! That is what I am not going to do! What I am going to do . . . is give you a bowl of soup. That’s what I am going to do . . . and is what you are going to do, so don’t even think about arguing the point. Then, when you’ve settled down, you can walk on home. I live on Garland Street, which is close enough to the stadium. You can walk from there, so you won’t have to feel self-conscious about my seeing where you live. Okay?”

  When Dale doesn’t reply—not knowing what to say to his admired teacher—she says, “I’m not leaving you on your own in the state that you’re in.”

  “It’s okay,” Dale tries to have her know, sickened at the prospect of eating soup or any other kind of food. “I know how to look after myself.”

  “Dale, I’m your teacher and I know what is best. It’s either some soup, and some recovery, or I am taking you directly to Hurley Hospital. I know your crisis is real.”

  Miss Furbish drives on. Dale’s crisis—his rejection from his City League team and now Miss Furbish seeing him in his miserable defeat and threatening to see his ratty life and home—only has him feeling worse. He tried appealing to Coach Burke and look what happened there. The idea of telling anyone anything, especially Miss Furbish, feels impossible. The hurt is bad enough, and despite her advice to him to unburden himself, calling it up for her or for anyone isn’t something he feels able in any way to do.

  CHAPTER 2

  “YOUR MOTHER IS ALIVE?” MISS FURBISH ASKS AT A RED LIGHT.

  Dale nods. “She lives at Long Lake.”

  “She remarried?”

  “I think so . . . I’m not sure.”

  “How often do you see her?”

  “I just live with my dad. We never see her.”

  “She left the family?”

  “You could say that . . . ”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Oh, a long time ago. I was two, I guess. We do okay, me and my dad. I mean, they’re all alcoholics,” Dale adds. “My dad, my mother, too. But we been doing okay.”

  Miss Furbish gives no reply. Driving on, she says, “You cook for yourself?”

  “Sorta. And buy lunch at the cafeteria. I don’t eat that much at night because I usually go to the park to practice until lights out. And do my homework,” he adds, in realization of being with a teacher.

  “I’m aware that you’re quite a star.”

  “You are?” Dale says, feeling pained and proud at once.

  “You’re sure you can’t say why you suffered a breakdown in the parking lot?” she asks, turning onto Garland Street.

  Dale hunches. “Just something . . .”

  “I know it was more than just something,” she says, steering along. “I know you’re resilient, but you don’t have to go to extremes. Sometimes you need to let other people help.”

  Dale gives no response, does not know, again, what to say.

  Approaching a stop sign not far removed from the stadium opposite the buildings of Chevrolet Plants Four and Ten along the river, Dale tries again to extricate himself. “I can get off right here . . . you don’t have to fix me anything,” he says, asking permission.

  “I told you not to argue that point with me,” she says. “I know a breakdown when I see one, and I need to know that you’re entirely in control of yourself before you go off on your own. Okay?” she adds.

  She seems to smile, as Dale takes in her expression through his filmed-over eyes. Miss Furbish is a favorite because she’s easy to be around and he wonders if what she is doing might actually help. Might his stupid loss be lessened? Is there a way to reverse what has been done to him by Mr. Bothner, and by Burkebutt,
too?

  # # #

  TRACING OLD BRICK houses half a dozen blocks from where Dale lives in Lower Downtown, she turns into the driveway of a mansion converted to apartments and drives to the rear, where several cars are parked and a dim superstructure in crisscrossing wood provides stairways and landings up the rear of the building. Forcing himself to say something, anything, following her word to lock his door, he says, “I’ll take my bag so I can just leave.”

  Pausing near the front of the car, she says, “Bring. Remember when we did bring and take? Maybe revisiting a Word Power Challenge will help you get control of the crisis you’re suffering.”

  Dale cannot help smiling and adoring Miss Furbish for being strong, being on his side, and feels his eyes filming up yet again. It’s as if throughout this devastating afternoon he had forgotten the greater sway (in contrast to Burkebutt, Sonny Joe, Mr. Bothner) Miss Furbish holds in his mind over them all.

  CHAPTER 3

  FOLLOWING FROM A THIRD-LEVEL LANDING INTO A SPARKLING white kitchen with a white wooden table and chairs, she directs him to sit, while she adds, “I have some soup I’m going to heat up.”

  Dale sits as directed, placing his bag on another chair, while fear, heartbreak, self-consciousness rise within him again.

  After a moment, as she removes the tweed jacket she wore that day over a cream-colored blouse, tying on an apron, she looks at him in his windbreaker and says, “Take your jacket off, Dale. You can just hang it on a chair.”

  Dale does as he is told, and feels fitfully aware all at once that he is in a situation where he doesn’t know how to act socially. Flattered to be with Miss Furbish in her personal world, but also confused, it comes to him—detonates within—that he is here because his life has been smashed and he’s been excluded from the City League team to which he had given every dream. Hurt within his chest rises toward his eyes, making him want to die, in the face of which Miss Furbish, his homeroom teacher, is heating soup and being nice. How could he help adoring her beyond reason as he is doing?