by Cole Alpaugh
“He says that people should be made into food after we die. He says that dead people don’t need to take up so much room and that the planet only has so much space.”
Chase stifled a laugh, but Mitra was obviously upset. Chase knew it must bring back troubling memories, ones she’d rather their daughter not have to deal with.
“My teacher says we go to heaven when we die, but Grandpa says … well, he called it a bad word having to do with cow poop. He said if it were true, heaven would be just about the scariest place ever, a bunch of dead people walking around. I sure don’t wanna go to heaven.”
“Your teacher meant to say that she believes a person’s soul goes to heaven,” Mitra explained. “Not their whole body.”
“I wouldn’t want to eat dead people, anyway. What if you found out it was your uncle? How come you don’t have brothers and sisters, Mom?”
“Because your grandfather only wanted one little girl,” Mitra told her. “I was his one and only sugar plum.”
“He says he made you in an experiment.” Tylea opened her hardcover book and hunted for her place. She scooted down to put her knees against the back of her mother’s seat. “But I saw pictures of your mom before she died. Grandpa keeps them in a drawer next to where I sleep at his house. She looks just like you.”
Chase took his eyes from the narrow country road that had cost the lives of so many wandering pets. Mitra’s head was turned away from him, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. Her mother had been the original taboo subject of their marriage. If her knuckles hadn’t been so white he might have dared ask again what she really knew of her mother’s fate.
As soon as they pulled into the shaded driveway, Doctor Bam’s front door burst open. They were greeted by loud rock music and a short, stocky man hoisting a lumpy sack with a dark stain at the bottom.
“I’ll ride in back with the star footballer!” Doctor Bam squeezed past Mitra. He wore a new lab coat, was recently shaved, and looked to have attempted maneuvering a comb through his wiry hair.
“We call it soccer, Grandpa. Football is a different sport.”
“Do you know, young lady, what my country does to its soccer players who do not win?”
“Dad, please.”
Chase had backed out of the driveway, taking extra care over the speed bumps installed in front of Doctor Bam’s house. He suspected the township had targeted this stretch in particular because of the doctor’s notoriously erratic driving habits.
“I’ll tell you what they cut off when your mother is not listening. Here, have a cookie.”
“She can’t have sweets before a game.” Mitra’s tone was stern and supposedly meant for her daughter, but Chase knew it was more to protect Tylea from having to reject the offer. Tylea was aware of the risk of taking food from her grandfather.
“Then turn on the radio,” Doctor Bam ordered, and Chase heard the sound of the cookie being shoved back into the dirty plastic sack. “What are athletics without music? What is life without music?”
Chase rubbed his left temple with his thumb, relieved to have Mitra’s father singing along behind him instead of talking. “It’s just one game,” Mitra had promised. And so much better than an afternoon spent inside his house, surrounded by peculiar smells and the same scratchy records played too loud while brown things were served in deep bowls.
Chase began to relax as he settled in for the drive. The spring and summer had flown by, his secure email account remaining empty. Not a peep from DB6 or anyone at the CIA, which was fine with him. He welcomed their silence, as he welcomed it from Mitra when it came to Bernie. Even as a newlywed, he’d been anxious between assignments, worried that the jobs would dry up, each passing day more certain he’d been replaced. But now he dreaded that an assignment would take him away from what he needed most in his life—an uninterrupted season on the soccer field with fourteen girls in crisp new uniforms, a season with his Tylea.
As moms and dads pulled into the community park fifteen minutes before practice, Coach Chase was already placing corner flags and laying out obstacle courses of orange and yellow cones.
“Devon’s here,” Tylea would say, as she helped arrange the small cones in an arc around the goal mouth for a new drill he had planned.
“Claudia’s here.” She announced each arrival of her friends, her teammates.
During her first three seasons, Tylea had been happy picking clover and testing buttercups rather than running after the ball. She’d been one of the kids who Chase was just happy to see leave the sidelines and her mom’s lap, tears barely held back. Players started in the Under 6 division, four and five-year-olds herded up and down miniature fields by coaches in what looked like a rugby scrum, the black and white ball somewhere in the middle.
As seasons passed, the players would learn about making and using space; then the games took the shape of real soccer. Chase kept the set of cones in his Jeep to mark off fields at the empty school playground down the road from the library. They could practice there, even if it was just for a half-hour between errands. When the other kids were playing t-ball and little league, Tylea was juggling and dribbling, building her skills.
As soon as the snow disappeared in April, a few of her friends would take the after-school bus to her mother’s library, change into shorts and old t-shirts in the bathroom, then cleat up, grab their water bottles and balls and hike to the field. They’d cross the busy county road, then cut through the town’s water company with its snarling guard dog. They continued on through backyards and out into the park where Chase would set up a short field and scrimmage for two hours before it was time for dinner and homework. Every week a few more girls joined. Soccer was co-ed in their part of the state until the kids turned ten—much too old in his opinion—so they made their own niche for the girls to play among themselves. They started with eight girls and ended with more than twenty.
When league play began in late-summer, Chase moved Tylea up an age level to compete on an all-girl team he’d volunteered to coach. But she wasn’t sure about leaving the co-ed team and playing against older girls.
As they sat in his Jeep before sign-ups, she said, “You worry about me getting knocked down by the boys.”
“That’s true. It happens a lot.”
“I get back up.”
“You’ll play on all-girl teams when you’re older, anyway.”
“I’ll miss playing with Max and Ryan. And even Harrison.”
“I’ll miss coaching them. But the kick-arounds have been fun, right?”
“I like walking to the field from the library. I like playing with the girls.”
“This whole season will be just like that.”
“Will I be a captain?” Chase had handed out little felt patches in the shape of the letter C for a parent to sew onto the shoulder of three of his players each season. His captains were chosen for hustle and for gathering cones at the end of practice. It was the captains who the referee called out to midfield for pre-game coin flips. While giving last-minute pep-talks to his huddled team, he’d observe his three captains out of the corner of his eye as they trotted out, listened to instructions, and watched the coin being tossed. They’d decide on a goal to defend, shake hands, then jog back for their “One, two, three, team!” chant.
“I’ll need someone to show the new girls all the things we’ve been learning.”
“Like Cruyff turns and shielding?”
“Right.”
“I can show them, but some are already in middle school. They won’t listen.”
“A captain figures out a way to make her team pay attention,” he told her. “Being a captain still means picking up cones, but it’s also about being a leader, especially now that you’re older.”
“You’ll help me figure it out?”
“Yup, that’s what a coach is for. Some of the girls on this new team haven’t played much soccer before. I need a couple of girls who aren’t afraid to get up in front of everyone and demonstrate moves.�
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“But don’t act like a know-it-all, right?”
“That’s a good starting point.”
“When I nutmegged that kid last year he got mad and knocked me down.” She’d worked hard to learn to dribble the ball between a defenders legs and then sprint around them to receive her own pass. It left the defender embarrassed, sometimes even angry.
“Well, if you nutmeg an older girl, she might get mad and knock you down, too.”
“But I’ll still try and nutmeg them, right?”
Chase made Tylea a captain the season after he murdered Bernie. Mitra had sewn a captain’s C on the left shoulder of her uniform. The extra responsibility seemed to boost her confidence. She treated soccer less as a sport than a math problem—something she knew she could solve.
“That girl always dribbles to her left, Dad.” And he’d see she was right. “Number four always back-pedals and doesn’t challenge. I could take her deep for a cross to Sarah.”
And she would.
Despite his uncertain future and whatever DB6 had in store, the worries disappeared on Saturdays. All Chase’s concerns hovered around the best way to keep his center forward from being trapped offside, although he now had a potentially volatile Iranian scientist along for the ride. Chase had witnessed his father-in-law’s version of cutthroat Monopoly with his granddaughter, had seen him hurl a vase at Vanna White for refusing to expose letters he was certain were correct.
“The sky looks as though it is having a nightmare.” Doctor Bam was leaning forward between the front seats as Chase pulled into the entrance road of the other team’s field complex. Dark clouds rolled across the treetops, but the forecast only mentioned light showers. It had rained on and off all week and the field would be muddy.
Before Chase switched off the engine, he turned to prepare Doctor Bam for the team the girls would be facing. “We’re playing what’s called a ‘select team’ today. Our parents know to be extra supportive of the girls because it’s a program that has cuts, more like an all-star team.”
“So we will make them fall hard in miserable defeat,” Doctor Bam said. “It will be an even greater victory!”
“Courtney’s here,” Tylea said, pulling on her shin guards and folding her socks down over them.
“There’s no misery and no great victories. This is a chance for our girls to play their very best,” Chase tried. “Our league schedules matches like these to give them an opportunity to improve by playing over their heads. It isn’t about winning or losing in any of the games, and especially not today.”
“Nonsense. Today will be triumph!”
“Brianna’s here.”
Chase saw flashes of yellow behind their car, knew his entire team was arriving.
“You have to behave,” Mitra warned, taking his hairy hand in hers. “Promise you’ll cheer nicely? This is about the girls having fun.”
“That one in the enemy uniform looks like Saddam Hussein,” Doctor Bam said, wagging a finger, but at least his voice was low.
During warm-ups, Chase smiled at his wife, who had blown him a kiss from the far sideline. Her father was still clutching the dirty sack, making what looked to be friendly offerings to the parents. Chase chose not to consider what type of animal protein was inside the lumpy cookies.
As expected, the team of all-stars ran the score up early, and each wave of subs did just as much damage as their starters. Shots that didn’t find net gonged off the cross-bar, and their forwards charged the rebounds again and again. Chase had all eleven players back defending against a scoring frenzy. His goalie and fullbacks were hanging their heads each time the ref whistled a goal and walked the ball to midfield for another kick-off.
Across the field, parents were cowering away from Mitra’s father, giving plenty of room to the lunatic shouting what must be vulgar threats in a strange language. Chase thanked god the man reverted to his mother tongue when drunk or distraught. Mitra was doing her best to calm him.
It was six to zero as the whistle blew for halftime. The teenage referee jogged over to their sideline. “It’s okay if you guys wanna quit.”
The boy glanced over his shoulder toward the crazy man in the white lab coat, obviously hoping they’d pack him up and cart him away as fast as possible.
“We don’t quit,” Tylea told the referee, and then looked around at her teammates for agreement.
“My wife will keep him under control,” Chase said, stepping away from the huddle with the boy. “Look, I understand if you have to call the game off. It’s his birthday and he wanted to come. But I want the girls to finish.”
“If he’s swearing, I’m supposed to have him removed.”
“He’s from a country where they cut things off the losers,” Chase said, but that didn’t seem to reassure the boy. “If she can’t settle him down, just blow the whistle and the game’s over. Fair enough?”
Chase went back to his girls, who were drinking water and resting in the wet grass. Some were crying, and others sulked. He told them the score didn’t matter; there were no standings, no record of wins or losses in their league. What counted was trying to win the ball each play, not trying to win the game. He told them he didn’t care how many goals the opposition scored, but to take this chance to show courage and demand respect.
As halftime ended, they circled up and put their hands in the middle.
“We can beat them, Coach,” Tylea said, and her teammates murmured agreement.
Chase knew they couldn’t win, but that they could try.
A few minutes into the second half, Chase’s center-midfielder dribbled past two defenders, then found her right wing open deep. Brianna brought the ball into the penalty area and sent a hopeful crossing pass to Tylea, who was cutting toward the goal on a diagonal run. It was a terrific play, but the defender was just too big. She easily out-jumped the little striker to head the ball out of the box to a teammate, who collected the pass and brought the ball safely over midfield.
Tylea and her teammates hustled back to help on defense. They fought for every ball despite being down by six goals. They charged each loose ball, challenged every forward run and made desperate clears from in front of their own goal. Against a team of all-stars, they had stopped sulking and played as if it were a scoreless tie.
Chase saw Doctor Bam sitting quietly in the mud on the far sideline, brooding, lab coat spread around him showing a constellation of brown freckles on his chest. He looked for Mitra, understanding for the first time what it must have been like for her as a child. Sure, she’d been raised to believe that life was meant to be spent hunched over in a laboratory, time frozen and practically meaningless; the father/daughter relationship a slight variance on that of professor and student. But that day Chase glimpsed something new—her father’s inability to understand something so fundamental in his world as a coach. The simple concept of teaching kids to have fun whether they were winning or losing.
With less than ten minutes remaining, Tylea was charging after a loose ball at midfield when she was tackled from behind, bouncing hard and sliding face-first. The referee whistled for a stoppage and gave a yellow card. Chase ran out to kneel next to his daughter as she battled back tears, her face muddy and scraped. She writhed silently on the sloppy ground, clasping one knee in both hands. He cupped her head away from the wet grass and waited to see if the initial sharp pain would pass, as the trainer was radioed to come from another field.
Chase glanced beyond his little girl to where Mitra was holding back her father. He had risen from the mud, red-faced, eyes filled with murderous rage. The young referee witnessed this, too, was keeping Chase between him and the crazy old foreigner.
“I’m okay,” Tylea finally croaked to the circle of hovering teammates. “It’s okay.” She rolled onto her knees in the muck, slowly rising to her wobbly legs. Slinging her arms over the shoulders of two teammates, she limped to the sideline. Once she was facing away from the other team, she let the tears flow quietly, in muddy rivulets on
to her golden uniform.
With two minutes to go and the score unchanged, Tylea dropped her icepack and stood next to her father on the sideline. They watched the long clearing balls, as the other team’s defense hunkered down and played everything safe to preserve the shutout. Chase was sure Tylea noticed the same open space about thirty yards in front of the opposition goal being left undefended. Their centerback was exhausted, hanging out at midfield, waiting for the clock to run out.
“Let me try it,” his little captain said, bending and flexing her knee, which had begun turning a deep shade of purple. “I can score.”
Chase called for a sub on the next throw-in.
Chapter 22
They were in their favorite spot along the wall in the deep end of the pool.
“Push me to the bottom!” Tylea would happily screech, over and over, as she took a deep breath and held her hands tight against her sides, legs together and toes pointed down, as straight as a pencil. She’d begin to sink, and Chase would put his hand on the top of her head and push, leveraging against the side of the pool with his other. Done just right, she would swoosh downward, cutting through the water like a knife, propelled to the bottom of the ten-foot pool. She’d flatten her feet out, squat and then push off the bottom, thrusting herself back to the surface.
They’d played this game a hundred times under the summer sun, surrounded by laughing and screaming children of families who lived here or rented by the season.
The pool dream first crept into Chase’s sleep later that summer. It started out vague, hard to remember, just bits and pieces. But each recurrence was more vivid, usually invading his subconscious in the hours just before dawn. It always began innocently enough, just him and Tylea spending an afternoon along the wall in the deep end.
In the dream, she wouldn’t stop at the bottom because there suddenly was no bottom. Just before disappearing into the cloudy blue depths she’d look back up at him and cry out, “No, Daddy!” He’d try to tell her not to speak, that she had to keep holding her breath. But all the air streamed out of her lungs in a long line of tiny bubbles which he recognized as trapped sobs. He could hear her crying as they popped all around him.