Guys Read: The Sports Pages (12 page)

And like I said, my dad has no editing function. We lasted three sessions before every other person in the group, kids included, returned telling Seymour that Hector Mack had squealed every word spoken in confidentiality to the entire county.

My family was expelled from a
child abuse
group.

The social worker informed Mom that either Dad had to move out of the home until he could complete anger-management classes, or I'd be placed in foster care. I voted for foster care, but it was two to one and Dad took up residence above the Chief Café, where he immediately started an extramarital affair with Rosie Swatch, who also doesn't have an editing function. Carline Mack, who is
way
tougher and meaner than Hector, battered my head because it was my fault he had to leave (“Blake? You little moron. No dog is named Blake.”), but she did it from the back so you couldn't see the bruises. She learned that in the child abuse group. Social services was footing the bill for the room above the Chief, so Hector held on to that, then snuck down the back alley around midnight every night to live with us. Rosie Swatch stayed in the room, unbeknownst to my mother, “to make sure no hotel robbers ripped off his stuff.” Hector didn't have a pair of underwear at the Chief. His “stuff” was Rosie. So I got whacked on the head by both Hector and Carline. Carline hit me because if Hector had never moved out (my fault) he wouldn't have fallen under the spell of the temptress Rosie Swatch, and Hector hit me because he was afraid to hit Carline.

Might I just say here that if you're tempted by the likes of Rosie Swatch, you have a bigger problem than simply a missing editing function. Rosie Swatch weighs a pound more than a Buick. And she bathes about as often as my cousin Reggie runs his own Buick through the car wash. Before she started Weight Watchers her steady boyfriend was Smoky Yardley, Sherman's most eligible, least desirable bachelor. When she brought her dress size down to XXXXL, she dropped Smoky like a hot rock and picked up the next-least desirable guy, Hector Mack.

You may be thinking, if you've stayed with my story this far, this Devin Mack kid is a bit politically incorrect, that you shouldn't pay attention to his offensive drivel because he's got no sense of appropriateness. Well, tell you what. I'm nobody around here—around my house, around school, around town. Want to point out someone's Walmart shoes for ridicule? Devin Mack. Want to stuff somebody into a wastebasket and hoist him on top of the lockers? DM's your guy. Wanna trick someone into looking like a giant butt head in front of the coolest girl in school? Mack, Mack, he's our man….

But fear not, Devin Mack, we have an antibullying policy here at Sherman High. We have signs that read bully inside a red circle with a slash. Who would
dare
defy such a thing? We have antibullying T-shirts, baseball caps, bumper stickers, backpacks, coffee mugs, drink containers. We have a new character word of the month,
every month
. (We used to have one a week, but I guess the English language is short on character words.)

We had an antibullying bake sale.

Sherman High School is against bullying.

Right.

You can bully me with a
look
. If you're a girl you can bully me by smiling when you walk by, then letting me hear you giggle to your girlfriends the minute you pass out of my peripheral vision. You can bully me rolling your eyes when I answer a question correctly in class. Hell, you can bully me when you don't even know I exist. You can't hurt me physically; you'd have to break the law to hurt me more than I've been hurt. First time I was in foster care, before I even remember, it was because Hector punched me in the stomach. It's in my CPS file. I was three, and he threw me onto the floor to prove to Carline he didn't love me more than her (no proof should have been necessary). He told her he slugged me so hard he thought he felt the floor against his knuckles.
Through me
. I guess
that
proved he loved her. She told on him. It's right there in the file.

Naw, the hurt for me is humiliation.
Threaten
to humiliate me, you
own
me. Problem is, and this doesn't speak highly of my character, if
I
get the chance to bully, I jump on it. Wanna find the biggest pool of bullies? Go where the victims are. Know why? Because bullying feels good. And it feels twice as good if you're the target most of the time. Hence the political incorrectness. I call Rosie fat, Smoky Yardley (and my parents and Herbie Waldron and legions of deserving others) dumb, and Coach Shuster ugly because I don't care. I can say anything I want.
I. Don't. Matter
. If Devin Mack bullies you, you won't even know you're being bullied.

So the threat I face at the far end of this meat-grinder drill isn't the crushing blow about to register inside my helmet. It's the humiliation, the complete sense of incompetence.

Coach slaps the ball into Rich's gut. I get into my three-point stance and wait for the whistle. Rich and I stare past the face masks into each other's eyes.

“Time,” Rich yells. He holds up his hand.

“What …?” The whistle drops from Coach's mouth.

You have to be a player of Rich Saxon's status to interrupt one of Coach Bull Shuster's football practices.

Rich drops the ball and walks toward me, motions me to stand. He drapes an arm over my shoulder pads and walks me away from the team. “You can do this,” he says.

I can barely breathe. Adrenaline is overflowing, almost buckling my knees. I was
ready
.

He puts his mouth close to my earhole. “Remember what I told you the other night. If you hit me high I bowl you over. If you hit me low you'll get my knee in your helmet.” He taps his stomach. “Right below the numbers,” he says. “Have faith.”

Faith.

“Couldn't you just, like,
go down
?”

“No can do, buddy.”

“Why not?”

“This is football,” Rich says. “It's what I do. It's who I am. Rich Saxon does not
go down
.”

We're headed back toward the drill. Rich slaps my butt. “Faith.”

So here's the deal with Rich Saxon. He's about to hurt me. When I hit him I will feel an electric current from my neck down through my feet. My arms, which I'm supposed to wrap around him and hold on for dear life, will be rendered useless at the moment of impact. I will feel my fingertips slide powerlessly down his torso, waist, thigh pads, calves, cleats, air. I will hear the whistle. I will hear, “Again!” But I can't hate him. How do you hate a guy like Rich Saxon? He tried to help me. He told me how to tackle him, gave me my best chance to succeed. But he is thirty-five pounds heavier and at least one evolutionary life-form more adept at this game I have grown to hate.

I don't care about the electricity, don't care about the rush of paralysis, don't care about my body hitting the grass empty-handed. I care about “Again!” and the derisive scowls of my teammates as they watch me drop once more, once more, once more into my three-point stance, many of them grateful it's me and not them, but unwilling to salute my sacrifice.

I hear Rich's voice in my head. “Faith.” I take a deep breath. I have faith—faith it will finally get dark, gratitude that our field doesn't have lights.

“Hitter Mack,” Rich Saxon says to me a couple of nights ago at Hugo's Little Store.

I recognize irony. “Scaredy-cat Saxon,” I say back. It's after eleven p.m., and I've got an hour left in my shift at Hugo's unless the bus is late, in which case I have until it gets here. Greyline Stage comes through every other night, usually before midnight, and Hugo likes to stay open in case some gluttonous passenger wants to load up on Snickers bars and corn chips and ice-cream sandwiches for the last three hours of the trip to Boise. Hugo says if you cater to flatlanders in the off-hours when they really need you, they'll favor your establishment over others when they come back through on their summer weekenders into the sticks. I don't bother to tell Hugo that if you're riding the midnight Greyliner toward Boise in the fall, there's a pretty good chance you don't have the means for a summer weekender in the sticks, because he's paying me a little under minimum wage and I'm saving every penny I can for my escape fifteen minutes after my high school graduation, which, if Mandy Roberts will let me look over her shoulder on the Latin test, should happen in about two and a half years.

“How you holdin' up?” Rich says now.

“Okay, I guess. How about you?”

“Holdin' up just fine,” Rich says.

I nod. “What can I do for you?”

“I'm talkin' about football,” he says.

That doesn't quite connect to my question. I can't do anything for Rich Saxon in football.

“When I asked how you're holdin' up. I was talking about football.”

“Oh,” I say. “Got it. More like needing someone to hold me up, but I'll live.”

“You know,” he says, “it's all in your head.”

I nod.

“And here,” he says, thumping his fist against his chest.

I watch him over the counter. “Make a muscle,” I say.

“Scuse me?”

“Make a muscle.” I point to his right arm. “Pump up your biceps.”

He does, and a hardball appears above the crook of his elbow.

I roll up my sleeve and do the same. No hardball. “That's not in my head, Rich. Yours either. It's in your arm. Same with your other arm, same with your legs….”

“Size is not everything,” he says. “There's—”

“Speed,” I say, “and coordination and quickness—which is not the same as speed—and desire and a certain Cro-Magnon outlook. Rich, I went into a tattoo parlor the other day, asked them for one of those barbed-wire jobs around my right arm? Guy said he'd throw in the other arm free.”

“That's funny,” Rich says.

“And one calf.”

“That's even funnier.”

“My talents are wasted on the gridiron.”

“I'm serious, man,” he says. “You don't look like you're having any fun out there. Football is supposed to be
fun
.”

“Lemme buy you a pop,” I tell him, feeling kinda special because Rich Saxon is talking to me like I'm one of the guys. “Take a seat over here in our ‘restaurant' section.” The restaurant section of Hugo's is a round metal table with four plastic chairs where most people only stop long enough to put mustard on their almost-meat hot dog.

“Gatorade,” he says, “but I'll pay for it.”

“On me,” I say back. “That's why Hugo pays me under minimum. He knows I rip him off to buy friends.” I toss Rich a Gatorade.

He twists the cap, guzzles half. “You believe in God?” he asks.

I busy myself stocking shelves close by the table. “I don't know,” I say. “What's the difference?”

“Jesus?”

“If you believe in God, I guess you believe in Jesus,” I say.

“Only if you're a Christian,” he says. “I guess I'm just asking if you have faith.”

I don't know why I feel the need to be honest, but I do. I mean, Rich Saxon is hanging out with me. That doesn't happen.

I stop stocking the shelves and look him square in the eye. “Do you?”

“Keeps me going,” he says. “I dedicate everything I do to my savior.”

Man, could I use a savior. “No offense, Rich, but what does that
mean
?”

“It just means,” he says, “He's given me His best and I want to give my best back.”

“So you don't, like, ask Him to help us win or something, right? Or point to the sky when you score a TD?”

He gives me a
Duh!
look. “Why would I point to the sky? He knows where He is. No, man, I don't ask Him for anything, especially when it comes to football. What kind of a god would care about a football game when people are starving?”

“An
American
God?”

“You really are funny,” Rich says. “Naw, I feel blessed, that's all. So I give it back.”

Makes sense, I guess.

“No faith?” Rich asks again.

I start to say I have faith that telling God what I want just gives Him a list of things to make sure I don't get, but I don't want to sound like more of a wuss than I am. “Guess not,” I say.

“Not surprised,” he says. “I've been watching you on the field, hanging back, trying to stay under Coach's radar. No confidence.”

“It's that obvious, huh?”

“Only if you're looking,” he says. “You sure aren't the only guy out there trying to keep from getting hurt.”

I hold out my arms, look down at my scrawny body. “I'm not afraid to get hurt, Rich. I mean, I don't like it, but I've been … well, trust me. I'm not afraid to get hurt.”

He sits forward. “What
are
you afraid of?”

I wonder why I feel like crying. “Laughter,” I say. “Of the blast of Coach's whistle right before he yells ‘Again, Mack!' Then the laughter.”

As if on cue the bell above the rickety door jangles and in walks Hector Mack. My old man.

There's a fresh scratch down the side of his face and the faint smell of liquor on his breath—a deadly combination. His glare is trained at me as he takes the first few steps into the store, but he spots Rich and flips his
charm
switch, if you can call it that. “Rich Saxon!” he says. “How you doin', buddy?”

Rich stands, puts out his hand. “I'm okay, Mr. Mack. How are you?”

Dad shoots a sideways glance at me, but … “Good. I'm good. You guys gonna be league champs this year?”

Rich smiles. “It'd be the first time this century,” he says. “But it's possible, I guess.”

Dad gestures his head toward me. “Guess you won't be gettin' much help from Mr. Football here,” he says. “Worthless as a toothless pit bull.” He laughs, showing an equal number of existing and missing teeth. That passes for humor in Hector's world.