Muckers (3 page)

It’s been a while since I rode my bike across the field. If you’re not careful, that’s just asking for flats. Our field is made from that slag—basically, mushed-up gravel that the Cottonville smelter belches out after digesting all the good stuff. There’s no such thing as lawn in Hatley. Nothing without skin sharp as barbed wire has a shot here. When they first made the field, they dumped a layer of dirt on top of the slag, but it didn’t take long for the rocks to work their way back up. They were at the surface by the next season, so folks just gave up.

“O’Sullivan, get your skinny red butt over here,” Coach yells. “I hope to God there’s still some muscle under all those freckles.”

So I’m the only red-hair on the squad.
Big deal
. That doesn’t mean my butt’s red. Everybody’s got a nickname. Mine’s Red. Everyone calls me that.

“Hey, Ugly Red Butt. Hurry up. It’s comin’!”

Except for Cruz, who makes a habit of sticking “Ugly” in front of everything else he calls me, especially when he’s steamed. But he’ll use it when he’s happy, too. And it’s hard to tell the difference if he won’t show you his eyes.

I can’t believe Cruz is here before me. He’s never early. Usually it’s just the freshmen at this hour and Melvin Sneep, the puny junior who can’t seem to grow. Coach asked some of us seniors to demonstrate drills and I thought I’d be the first one here. I lean my bike against the bleachers, knowing what comes next, but the new kids have no idea.

The train whistle signals the start and it still scares me every time. I should know it’s coming and Coach Hansen
knows it’s coming, timing his verbal assaults in between the shrill sounds. He’s laying it on real thick for the rookies like we’re in boot camp or something. But I don’t mind. Cruz and I are racing the train that’s headed for the depot next to the pit beside us, only we’re really racing each other as we jump through two rows of tires thrown on the slag.

The new kids are yelling their faces off, thinking that one of us can actually beat the rumbling machine, but the train always wins. This time, though, the cockiness of being seniors makes it real close. Cruz is a wingback and a faster runner than me at any distance, but somehow my foot pops out of the tire before his. Then I lunge toward the goalpost to make sure I beat him.

“Hey, Ugly, maybe we should trade places and
you
carry the ball.”

“Nah, too small.” I can’t say much else—I’m awful winded—and my legs feel like they’re still pumping even though we’ve stopped. “They’d tackle my red butt in two seconds flat,” I finally gasp out.

“One second.” Cruz laughs.

“Hey, boys!” Coach yells. “Time to show the bus who’s boss.”

Whenever the school bus is available for practice, Coach drives it over and uses it as a piece of equipment. We don’t have a blocking sled so we push the bus around the field. And Coach won’t let up just because you’re a quarterback.

He goes over to Wallinger, his assistant, who’s working with the new guys to see how they’ll do, though I doubt anyone’s gonna get cut—I count seventeen of us on the field. Coach points to a doughy freshman, then picks out three of us, the whistle slung around his neck bouncing from one pec to the other as he demonstrates the move.
And I wish Coach could play for our team like he did for Missouri State. From what I can see, he’s the only one on the field with muscle that’s meaty—the kind we’re gonna need to take the state and finally win the Yavapai Cup. The only one who comes close is Tony Casillas, our guard (he made All-State last year). The rest of us—even the new senior, Rudy Kovacs, who gives us some height—can’t be thirty-five pounds more than Rabbit, tops. Can you win a championship with that?

Coach grabs the wheel to control the steering while we push. It usually takes four of us to get it moving. This time it’s me, Cruz, Tony, and that freshman who’s more fat than scrawn.

The three of us make like we’re heaving pretty hard, only we’re not, and the poor freshman’s face turns bright red as he tries to move the load on his own. You can see the blood vessels popping out of his neck, and then his knees buckle and he crumbles under the bus.

“What’s going on back there? Did we lose the kid already?” Coach looks peed off at us through the rearview mirror.

The knees of the wobbly freshman are dripping blood onto the slag and I don’t think he’ll make it. I want to tell him to keep going, that if you don’t you’re sunk. But he’ll have to learn for himself. We’re hanging off the side of a mountain exposed to the desert’s blazing sun with the heart of our town ripped open, churned up, and processed into copper. We play football on the discarded part—the gunk that gets delivered back to us from Cottonville—so what do you expect … a carpet of rose petals?

I motion for Cruz and Tony to pick the kid up and try it again for real. By the time we get the bus going, the brake
light comes on, which is annoying since we still have to push until Coach blows the whistle. And I don’t like the feeling of futility, or somebody jerking me around. But you have to play by the rules. And all you can do is learn to work around the slag. Discover where the worst parts are—like Hell’s Corner—and how to push your opponents into that ground.

“Keep goin’, Ugly,” Cruz grunts at me. “Can’t win if we don’t push.”

With every useless heave, Cruz also reminds me we’re one step closer to winning the championship. And I know Coach has been through a lot. Got cut up pretty bad in the war and it left an ugly scar on his head.

The whistle finally blows and we collapse against the wheels, wondering how we’re going to make it through the rest of practice. Our starting eleven is now all here, the guys who will grind through this gravel every day for the next two months, no matter what. Nick Managlia, our fullback, runs over and hands the freshman a towel for his bloody knees. Managlia’s eye looks even worse. It’s dark as a blackberry.

“Stairs get you again?” Cruz growls.

“Lay off,” I tell him. Cruz doesn’t understand.

Coach climbs down from the bus and looks at Managlia. “What happened to you?” he asks.

“Took a tumble on my bike.” But Managlia won’t look up at anybody, especially Coach.

“Starting tomorrow, we all walk to practice,” Coach barks. “I can’t afford to lose any of you. Not one. I need everybody for the entire season.”

My arm’s already aching, even though I’ve been throwing all summer with Cruz. Guess it’s not the same without the bus and Coach Hansen yelling in your face.

MID-WEEK EDITION

Muckers Coach Rallies Players with Game Film

The Hatley Muckers football team took to Ruffner Field this week in preparation for their inaugural matchup against Rim Valley next Friday. Coach Ben Hansen wasted no time getting his boys in shape, handing them grueling drills that included sparring with the school bus and running alongside the ore train, which first-string quarterback Felix “Red” O’Sullivan looks to have beaten.

Hansen then marched his men to the high school auditorium for a film presentation in Kodachrome, demonstrating in living color just what they will be up against if the team takes All-Northern and battles the South at the end of the season.

Hansen showed footage of Phoenix United scoring on an 80-yard run to beat Flagstaff last year. If the Muckers manage to win the Yavapai Cup against the Southern championship team, the remarkable feat, attempted only twice before—first in ’24 led by Edward Mackenzie and Luther B. Sims Sr., and second in ’41 led by Robert O’Sullivan—would cap off the final season in Mucker history.

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MY LOCKER
’
S AT THE END
of the hall in the basement of our main building. I’m locker number 7, the last one on the top row before the staff john, marked
TEACHERS REST ROOM—PRIVATE
. The trophy case is directly behind it, made of cherrywood, with glass shelves lit up around the handful of sports trophies we’ve won, and Bobby’s closest to the top—right below the empty shelf where the Yavapai Cup is supposed to be.

Bobby’s trophy used to be golden, throwing flashes of corn-colored light clear across the hall. Now it’s coated in specks of oily blue, and the punter standing on top of the pillar kicking the football to high heaven is mostly orange with some dingy brown running through his jersey, the same as an old copper penny. I suppose nobody cares enough to bother unlocking the case every once in a while and polishing them up now that the school’s closing.

“Looks like they’ll be counting on you this year, won’t
they?” Principal Mackenzie says. He just walked out of the john and is standing behind me, eyeing the trophies, too. I can see him in the glass. But I heard the sound of him limping before anything. “That’s a whole lot of pressure, isn’t it?” he says.

“I know.” I don’t tell him that I can handle it, like I would Coach Hansen, because you can’t fool Mr. Mackenzie. He’s found a way somehow of keeping everyone’s secrets.

Ask anybody who they write to after they graduate and they’ll tell you it’s Mr. Mackenzie. Bobby wrote to him every week from the Pacific, and Cruz’s brother Manny did, too. Mr. Mac’s the one who gave me Bobby’s locker right after Bobby died, though I wasn’t even a freshman yet. I suppose he felt kinda sorry, watching me leaning up against the locker crying pretty badly the day after we’d gotten the news, and not being able to do anything about it except tell me that I could have it.

“The one on the bottom’s from my year,” Mr. Mac points out, tapping on the glass in front of the trophy marked
ALL-NORTHERN CHAMPS 1924
.

I ask him what’ll happen to them once the school shuts down.

“We’re not entirely certain yet, Felix,” Mr. Mac says, then he pauses, closing his eyes, as if he’s worn out or maybe feeling something that goes much deeper—like an aching sadness or a deepening regret. This school’s as much Mr. Mackenzie’s as it is ours—maybe more, since he’s principal on top of being a former student
and
a Mucker. He must be having an awful time of it.

“As long as it isn’t Cottonville, the kids will be able to stomach the new school,” I tell him.

“It might be,” Mr. Mackenzie says, and he adds how
consolidation’s an option the board must consider. “You do realize, Felix, that Cottonville isn’t the enemy, but merely an opponent on the playing field?” Which is what you’re supposed to say if you’re the principal standing in the middle of the hallway with a student.

But then Mr. Mackenzie looks at the trophies again and shakes his head, remembering how it feels to be a Mucker. Before he played at Flagstaff for Arizona State College, until the summer he worked in the mine and a runaway ore car tore up his knee.

“Just try to end the season in one piece, all right?” he tells me. “Oh, and I think you’ll find the locker arrangements satisfactory this year. We’ve grouped all the grades together so this floor won’t look quite so depleted.” Then that smile comes back as he hobbles up the stairs, and I haven’t a clue what Mr. Mackenzie’s aiming at.

I look at some of Bobby’s stuff that I keep in the locker. Mostly snapshots of him winning, some with his fellow marines at Iwo Jima, plus the Eagle Scout medal and the kimono they found in his duffel.

Cruz says all I need now is a candle and a picture of Mother Mary to make the shrine complete. That he could special-order me a heart-shaped
milagro
with all the thorns going through it from his uncle down in El Tiro.

I told him to screw off and be happy that his brother’s still alive. But I’m thanking Mother Mary now and Mr. Mackenzie, too, because Angie’s at her locker and that’s catty-corner from mine this year, in the 200 section.
Very satisfactory
.

I caught glimpses of Angie all summer while she was at the pool on Mexican days lifeguarding. I’d be on my way to teach swimming at Scout camp, walking as slow as I could without seeming like a loafer and wondering if Angie was
really looking at me. She’d have on these huge black sunglasses like the film stars wear, so I could never quite tell. But just last week on the final day of camp she said, “Don’t look so sad, Red. Maybe you’ll save somebody’s life today.”

So all I kept thinking on the way to camp wasn’t how to rescue one of those cubs from drowning, but about saving Angie from marrying anyone but me, and how giving mouth-to-mouth to those red lips of hers would solve it.