The Right Kind of Stupid

by John Oakes

  The players took the field, and the game got underway. A few of the healthy school's band members had assembled into a ragtag but effective pep band. During time-outs and possession changes, they were belting out their versions of popular pep-band classics like "Tequila!," while the cheerleaders performed their routines on the running track surrounding the field.

  The performances of football staples like cheerleaders and pep bands had always gone so easily unnoticed by Cody, both live and on television. Watching them now it terrified him how coordinated and hardworking those crews were. How was his group going to stack up against that with less than two days' preparation?

  When halftime came close, Cody escorted the crew out of the stands and off to one side of the field where they met up with Raul and a few other boosters to begin final preparations. As soon as the teams left the field, Cody and the boosters ran out to begin putting down cones and using lengths of yellow ribbon to mark the modified end zones and sidelines in the middle of the field.

  When they were finished, the pep band started playing a designated dramatic song and Winton, dressed in a dark blazer, led the two teams of six out to the field. One team wore red practice jerseys and one team wore yellow. Glen was dressed as the referee and was holding a small football. One other man Cody had never met was dressed well like Winton.

  Cody and the other boosters ran off the field toward the concrete wall below the stands, and the announcer enthusiastically heralded the impending competition.

  "And now give a big round of applause for your Tiny Tacklers!"

  People cheered, but then the volume increased as people realized that it was not just a kid's game. Cody stood with his back to the base of the stands. He saw the two teams take a knee on either side of the modified field.

  "Carter Greenfield," the announcer called out, "your fans will root for the red team and Albany fans you'll root for the yellow. There will be two five minute halves in this game...Now for the coin toss...Yellow takes possession on their 35 yard line."

  The game play was a little choppy in parts, but the teams began to find their rhythm. Cody was surprised at the crowd reaction. People seemed nearly as involved in this game as they were in the real game. School pride was on the line in either event. That had been Winton's idea, to have each school root for one team. He claimed it was always important to build tension in a performance.

  At the half, it was Red Team 7-Yellow Team 14.

  The two teams went to their respective sides of the field. The "coach" of the yellow Albany team produced a microphone from somewhere. Cody looked with concern over to Raul who just gave him a big thumbs up.

  "Come on Albany," the yellow team captain said encouragingly out over the stadium's sound system. "Look at that scoreboard. We're up by 7 points. These Carter Greenfield hacks got nothing on us." The Albany side of the stadium erupted in applause, while the Carter Greenfield supporters booed at Albany. Cody could hear cries of "You suck!" and "Albany Blows!"

  The yellow team coach finished his pep talk, and then Cody saw Winton stand from his team's huddle. He also produced a microphone. Dramatic music began to play. A hush fell over the crowd. Winton paced in front of his players, back and forth, until the crowd was dead silent in anticipation.

  "I don't know what to say, really," Winton said in a voice that was huskier than his own. Cody looked around for some idea of what was happening. Did Winton forget his part of the skit?

  "Three minutes left until the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today."

  Cody released an in-held breath. For a split second, he'd thought Winton had gone off the rails.

  "Either we heal as a team, or we are going to crumble." Winton balled his hand into a fist in front of his face.

  "Inch by inch, play by play 'till we're finished." Cody heard whoops and laughs in the crowd behind him.

  "We're in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me." The soundtrack playing behind Winton's speech began to get more dramatic. "And we can stay here and get the stuffing kicked out of us," Winton continued, "or we can fight our way back into the light!"

  A louder cheer erupted from here and there in the stands.

  "And we can climb out of hell. One inch at a time." Winton held up a finger. More scattered cheering mingled with stomping and clapping in the Carter Greenfield stands.

  "On this team, we fight for that inch," Winton intoned. His voice was low and powerful.

  "On this team," Winton said with increasing conviction, "we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch." He paused just long enough for a reaction from the crowd. Whoops and claps were springing up everywhere. It finally dawned on Cody that Winton was doing a pitch perfect impression of Al Pacino giving his locker room speech from the movie Any Given Sunday.

  The crowd must have known too. They began to stomp in unison, building with the growing intensity of the music.

  STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

  "We CLAW with our fingernails for that inch. 'Cause we know, when we add up all those inches, that's going to make the daggone difference between WINNING and LOSING."

  Winton gave the slightest of pauses, like singers do toward the end of the National Anthem, willing the audience to fill the void with raucous cheering.

  "...Between LIVING and DYING."

  Cody could hear people in the stands saying the words with Winton, like reciting a prayer in church.

  "That's football guys. That's all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?"

  Winton's red team burst to their feet, arms in the air, jumping and shouting their agreement. Cody heard an eruption of cheers from the stands behind him, horns blasted and people were screaming and stomping still. Cody looked back to see much of the crowd on its feet.

  Raul was clapping and jumping with the rest of them.

  Cody laughed.

  The two teams ran back out onto the field. Thousands looked on and cheered as the red team fought valiantly for four minutes to tie the game at 21. This was not just some show anymore, Cody could tell. Bloodlust hung in the air. Each school wanted to see the other broken and their team victorious.

  In the final play, the red team's quarterback shovel passed it to the running back, Ace, who hurled the ball over the defense for it to land in the end zone caught by the quarterback himself.

  The final second of the game ticked away. Carter Greenfield had won.

  The crowd reacted as if they had just won the real game, no, more like they had won the league championship.

  The pep band broke out the fight song and a hundred students rushed the field with such exuberant glee that Cody was afraid that the players might get crushed. But the students just started jumping up and down around them and dancing and cheering. Perhaps the students were just happy their red team had won. Perhaps some fully appreciated just how much the Tiny Tacklers had saved the day.

  Either way, Raul knew and he grabbed Cody and gave him a violent hug, shaking him from side to side. Raul was saying something, but Cody could not quite make it out.

  Out on the field, the mass of bodies parted for a moment and Cody saw a cheerleader bend down to hug a beaming Ace. She held him tight, stood and twirled around and around, Ace's feet kicking in the air.

  Chapter Sixteen

  BSU

  Colorful leaves fell down onto stone-paved walkways to be kicked and trodden by students bustling from one class to another. Many students wore the Brown State brown and gold colors that Cody loved so much.

  Cody stopped walking to gaze up at the Bidley Bible Building.

  "Goddam monstrosity."

  "Don't go cursing here," Jason said.

  "It's not church."

  "No," Jason admitted, "but it's hallowed ground...sort of."

  "If it's so great, how come you didn't finish your bible degree?"

  "A man's gotta follow his true path when he hears its call."

  Cody pondered that. "I'm glad you did. The only profession that could have made
you more insufferable than you are now would be ministry."

  Despite the more colorful segments of life found on most college campuses, at Brown State, Southern Baptism pervaded all. More often than forays into subculture, Cody had found himself being dragged to one or another bible study or campus Christian group, if not by Jason, then by sweet-faced girls with little gold crosses on their necks. He was aware of and fairly resigned to the ironies involved in chasing women who were devout in their convictions, especially about sex before marriage. On the other hand, he'd really, really wanted to get laid. It was a recipe for getting nowhere with women as good as any Cody had ever cooked up.

  The Bidley Bible Building was the beating heart of Brown State University. It was also seven stories of austere and authoritarian cement that reminded Cody of the soviet-era buildings he'd seen in video games. It was, on this day, backdropped appropriately by morose grey clouds.

  "I'm just saying the building is ugly as sin, okay. It's a free country."

  "Well, go take your bad attitude somewhere else. I took the day off work for this."

  "This trip was your gosh-danged idea! You harangued me into it."

  "Hey, Jack. I'm trying to help you start making some real money. Remember that whole 84 million dollars? Remember that?"

  "Yeah," Cody admitted grudgingly. He looked down at the paving stones beneath his feet. "I remember the 84 million dollars."

  "Well, then I need you to buck up. What you were doing with the pep rallies was cute and all, but it's never gonna make you a cool million in a year."

  They'd had a good thing going with Tiny Tacklers, Cody thought. He and Winton had organized five pep rallies and another half-time show in the last week and a half alone. Cody had rarely had so much fun in his whole life. He had something to do every day with people he liked, and their job was basically to get kids jacked on school spirit for their football team. It felt good and wholesome as apple pie.

  But Jason had not wasted a moment before poking holes in it.

  "Come on, son. Get with me here. Getting into the college scene will make you some fast cash that you can use as capital for a better long-term scheme." Jason was prodding two fingers into the palm of his other hand. "Because even with the college scene, people will get bored with it eventually."

  "What about Survivor?" Cody spread his arms out in exasperation. "What about the Wheel? The Price is Right? They've been going on forever."

  "We've been over this. We ain't the main event, Cody. People will always eat salad, but ranch dressing will eventually go out of style."

  "Never," Cody said and pointed a finger.

  "No matter how far we take this, even if we get ourselves into the Super Bowl, where do we go from there? We go back to doing high school games? Basketball? Girls Fast-pitch Softball? It can't last."

  Cody sighed. "Why are you such a Debbie Downer? When you wanted to sell glow-in-the-dark sex paint at the kiosk, you wouldn't listen to a word from us. But now that I got a good thing going, all you wanna do is trash it."

  "Code-man, I ain't trashing it! Even if you could do it forever, there isn't enough money in these shows. It's great fun I'm sure, but how much have you made off all the work you fellas did so far? Tell me that."

  "I dunno exactly," Cody said. Jason and Winton had been negotiating the deals and handling the money since the first show.

  "I can tell you. You personally accrued $3,570." Jason paused for effect, "at the height of football season. Now even if you could keep that up, which you can't, multiply that respectable sum over a year. It ain't nowhere near a million."

  Two pretty girls walked by and shot a look in their direction. Jason straightened and flashed them a smile.

  "Can't we expand and maybe get gangs going in Dallas or Austin?" Cody asked.

  "Cody, no matter how hard or fast you scramble with this, it just don't have the staying power. A year ain't a lot of time. We gotta work smart."

  Cody stood in silence for a moment. He took a deep breath and started walking again.

  "Now don't go all turtle-shell on me," Jason said walking with him. "I ain't trying to discourage you. You know we gotta cash in and move on."

  Cody kicked at a red leaf on the ground as they walked. "Yeah. Got it. Now can we get this over with? I ain't a salesman and I don't like this plan."

  "No one is asking you to sell anything. Leave that to me," Jason said. "But you have a job to do."

  "I know."

  "Say it."

  Cody harrumphed.

  "My job is to meet with a highly respected athletic director of a Big XII institution and get him hammered on a Wednesday afternoon so you can make your pitch."

  "When you say it like that it makes it sound seedy. It's called schmoozing and it's a legitimate, time-honored business practice. And of the few skills Cody Latour can boast, it had better turn out to be one of them."

  A whole flock of sorority girls passed them by, all in some arrangement of fleece jackets, black tights and Ugg boots.

  "When did girls start wearing really tight tights when the weather turned cool?" Jason asked. "Did they do that so much back in our day? Dang if I wouldn't have appreciated it."

  "I can't remember. But you sound like a dirty old geezer."

  "I'm not old," Jason said. "I'm stately."

  Most things about campus hadn't changed though. Cody saw the hippies, the fratters, and the inevitable huddle of Arab exchange students smoking cigarettes together in between classes. Middle-aged students pulled rolling suitcases behind them instead of wearing backpacks. And the Art Department was still allowing students to install their creepy work around campus. In the spot where a sculpted dolphin had lain dead and twisted in a drift net for most of his senior year, there now stood a 7-foot-tall, brown, paper-machet figure of a demon or something. It had a tortured face, wings and a coiled tail at the base. It looked like shit, like actual poop. They might have been going for a snake-like tail. But there was no doubt about it, they had just ended up making a giant poop demon.

  Cody had never been much of an artist, but he had explored a couple of lifestyles in college, including some unfortunate phases of halfhearted idealism. And like in a bad sitcom, each misadventure had been more or less about a girl.

  "I wish I'd joined a frat," Jason said, longing plain in his voice. "Those guys have a network for life!"

  "Why didn't you?"

  "I was afraid of the effect the party lifestyle would have on me."

  Cody furrowed his brow. "So you were afraid of acting the exact way you do now?"

  "I was a bit of a teetotaler," Jason said.

  "A bit? By the second week of rooming together freshman year, you'd got me all convinced I was going to hell for listening to secular music. You made me burn all my CDs, you prick."

  "We live in a digital age, now. I did you a favor." Jason shook his head. "I just look back and see such a lost opportunity to make business connections."

  "I thought you said you wanted to be your own man." Cody put his hands in the front pouch of his hoodie to warm them against the slight chill in the air.

  "No man is an island, Cody. It's basic cross-promotion."

  Like many of the terms Jason parroted from his business books, Cody understood what cross-promotion was even less than he cared.

  "Sounds gross. I heard that, during the hazing, those frat dudes drink shots out of each other's foreskins. Is that what you mean by cross-promotion?"

  "Those homo-erotic chest-thumping tales aren't true. Well, not here anyway. These Baptist kids are so circumcised they go in for touchups. Now, A&M, mind you, I hear some seriously bizarre shit goes down over there."

  Strolling along the same paths he'd walked a thousand times sparked waves of nostalgia for Cody, some from the comfort of familiar old things and some from the discomfort of remembering awkward younger years. Cody and Jason approached the library, which was surrounded by orange colored trees and grass that was green and lush from recent rains. Two guys with dreadl
ocks were tossing a Frisbee back and forth. And two other guys without shirts on were walking across a sort of tight rope they had strung up between two gnarled elm trees. Hippies liked the library for some reason Cody could not remember.

  "I kinda miss being a hippy," Cody said. "Even if it was only for the comfortable clothing."

  "Then why did you stop?"

  "I needed the peace and love vibes. But I just didn't know how to be with a gal whose legs were hairier than mine."

  After they passed by the library, their route took them to the Administration building and the offices of Garrett Kinland, Athletic Director of the University.

  Garrett Kinland was a large, stocky man who had played football at Brown State in the early '90s. His muscular frame was beginning to go to fat, and he was losing his hair, which he kept cropped short. Despite all, he maintained a ruddy, classically Midwestern appearance. They met him in his sixth floor office in the administration building and Jason offered to host their meeting over lunch. Kinland accepted with enthusiasm, seemingly a man who did not miss many meals.

  So far so good.

  They ate at a restaurant called "The Chopstick Grill" attached to a swanky hotel near campus. They thanked the Athletic Director for meeting with them, but he protested.

  "I always have time for alumni." He gave Cody a significant glance. "Please, call me Gary."

  "We don't have a sporting past with the school like you do, of course," Jason said. "But we're proud Bears, nonetheless."

  "Where would our athletic programs be without the fans?" Gary held up his hands and chuckled congenially.

  Cody and Jason both feigned a lack of appetite and decide to start with drinks. But Gary only ordered an iced tea.

  So Cody went to plan B, as they had rehearsed.

  "You know what, Jason," Cody said casually. "Why don't you go ahead and order the top shelf stuff, my treat."

  "No, my friend. It's my treat, including your top shelf stuff. Anyways, I drink swill," Jason nudged Gary jovially. "So how would I even know how to appreciate a fine top shelf whiskey?"