Fighting in the Shade Page 4

  After a time of calm and rest, his parents fought again. He never asked his parents about their trouble. He did not think they would tell him, and he was afraid they would. He spent the hot summer days alone in his bedroom reading or doing push-ups. He jogged at night in a nearby park. At least he could get his body ready for the coming season. Football was a world run according to plan, of violence controlled, of honor earned with others in bonds of courage and loyalty. A team was like a family. In football he hoped to write the book of a Billy Dyer no one could abandon.

  Billy’s father turned from the stove holding a pan of steaming soup. He smiled and gave his son a small bow. “And now, sir, our elegant repast.”

  Billy looked into his father’s tired brown eyes. Even in the pictures he had seen of his father when he was a young man, the ones taken after the war, he seemed to have just awakened from unrestful sleep. The war had taken something from him, some vitality that nothing in his life afterward could restore. Maybe that was what had hurt Billy’s mother so much. In the time just before the divorce, Billy had caught her looking at his father like she wondered who he was.

  Once he had come home from a jog in the park and found her sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of whiskey in front of her. Her lips were loose and her voice was slow when she said, “Billy, I’ve got some advice for you. Don’t ever love a girl with missing parts. They don’t sell spare parts for people.” When she saw how the words tore into him, she tried to smile and pass it off as a joke. When she saw that he knew she wasn’t talking about girls, she whispered, “Sorry,” closed her eyes, and finished her drink in one long swallow.

  After the divorce, she delivered what Billy’s father called “The Big Surprise.” Instead of taking Billy with her, she told David Dyer, “You take him. You can’t live with me. Fine. I can live without you. But you’re not going to be free to do whatever the hell you want. I’m going to be free. You’re going to take care of your son.” Billy didn’t have to hear his mother say this through the walls. She said it in front of him in the Florida room of their new house. Then she walked out the door to a taxi nobody knew she had called, carrying a suitcase nobody had seen her pack.

  His father’s law practice did not prosper. He came and went at odd hours, making the living he made, and never talked about it. They moved from the neighborhood Billy loved into a small, shabby house only a few streets away from transience and crime. The divorce made Billy and his father sojourners at the edge of disorder, but Billy made the JV team. And on those hundred yards of disputed ground, in the hard shell of helmet and pads, on lines of chalk, in round huddles and in the elegant designs of plays and the wild abandon of collisions, he found not what his parents had taken away, but something just as good. At least he thought so. And now he was trying out for the varsity.

  “Would you like a root beer?” his father asked. “I bought some for you.”

  And you bought more scotch, Billy thought. From a brown paper bag, his father produced a bottle with two Scottie dogs on its label.

  Billy said, “Naw, just water.”

  “Don’t say naw, son. You know your mother doesn’t like it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His father uncorked the bottle, poured scotch into a glass, then sat across from Billy. He wobbled his eyebrows. “A little canooper to ease the tensions of the day.”

  Billy smiled and raised his glass for a toast. The swelling above his ear hurt so badly that, for a moment, his father disappeared from the chair in front of him and he was alone in the dingy kitchen. Then his father returned, his eyes already soothed by the whiskey, already relaxing.

  Billy gathered his courage. “Dad, who are the men who came to watch the scrimmage? I mean, beside Sim Sizemore’s father.”

  “They’re prominent men, Billy. The men we talked about today.”

  “How do you know them?”

  “As colleagues. Let’s say I know them as colleagues. Men of the legal fraternity. I work with them.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Legal things, Billy.” His father drank again and smiled the wizard smile. “Things you wouldn’t understand.”

  As he often did, Billy smiled at his father’s smile, and that, he thought, was how they did it. How they moved along from day to day.

  Billy’s father settled into the green overstuffed chair. Billy turned on the television, adjusted the rabbit ears for the best reception, and sat on the couch. His father had finished his second scotch as they washed dishes, and now his third was on the armrest by his right hand where two black cigarette burns told that he sometimes dozed. Billy had taken aspirin for his head. The Gillette Fights was their favorite show.

  Billy and his dad exchanged the glances of connoisseurs. These nights, their shared delight was to discriminate between headhunters and fighters who attacked the body, boxers and counterpunchers, classical and modern styles, the journeyman and the truly talented, and, most of all, the courageous and the timid. For even in the small gray window of the television it was obvious when a man who walked the streets a god to ordinary men was intimidated by another man whose gaze was fearless. That this could happen even before gloves were ritually touched at the center of the ring was a marvelous and humbling message for a man and a boy.

  Henry Hank and Johnny Persol were on the card, and the crowd in faraway Madison Square Garden rumbled with a special expectation. Billy’s father sipped scotch, smiled, and said, “Ah, the sweet science. An old master at the top of his form and the young pretender. This’ll be a good one, son. This one will go down in the record books.” Billy nodded, smiled. If there was no more scotch, it would be a good night. They would sit together, faces pale in the cathode light, and watch two men decide who was best. Billy and his father. Their hearts would beat fast, their voices rising in praise and protest, and they would curse fate and clap for courage.

  The stirring theme song played, and the cartoon parrot strutted across the grainy screen asking, “How are you fixed for blades?” The boxers grappled and danced. Billy’s father gave rapt attention, and Billy felt a giddy joy. His father threw his own punches at the air, yelled at the screen, the color of his face rising as the action heated in the waning seconds of the round. “The body!” his father called, aggrieved. “Go to the body. Bring his hands down, then go for the head… No! No! Don’t drop the left.” He rolled his shoulders and rocked in the chair until scotch sloshed from his glass and cigarette ashes dotted his white shirt. At intervals, the pretty girl in the bathing suit walked the blood-spattered canvas in high-heeled shoes carrying the placard that told the round number. Billy and his father smiled indulgently at the invasion of the sacred precincts of violence by the soft flesh of woman. Though he knew these were precious times that Time would take away, still Billy felt the joy. And nothing else mattered until the last bell rang.

  Most nights, sleep took Billy like a giant hand snuffing out a candle, but tonight he lay restless, wondering. So much had happened. The fight with Charlie Rentz, his injury, the girl in the white Plymouth. His father asking him to quit the thing he loved the most. And the men in dark suits at the top of the bleachers—the tall one had noticed Billy Dyer, even seemed to know him.

  The rooms of Billy’s mind darkened as his body released the day’s exhausted energy. But restless wondering roamed the dim spaces. Who was the girl? He would see her when school started. Seen enough? Had he offended her?

  As the giant hand hovered above the candle, Billy’s eyelids grew heavy and his flickering mind whispered to him, Careful. Be careful of Charlie Rentz now. He’s crazy mean looking for any provocation.

  Billy whispered back, But Sim Sizemore is the mystery. Why does he settle on me a special dislike? Sure, we’re rivals and I’m the newcomer, but these things don’t seem enough. Is it what people call an animal hatred? Two breeds—rich boy, poor boy—glaring across the gulf of species?

  Today you backed Sim down in front of Rentz. You made it worse.

  I fought for
Joey Olsen.

  Well, you fought.

  Billy saw again the clenched face of Joey Olsen as Charlie Rentz ground cleats into his hand. And the candle went out.

  SEVEN

  For a week, Billy stood on the sidelines in a clean uniform kicking sandspurs out of the gray earth, watching the starting offense come together into a functioning unit, boys who knew one another’s moves and trusted one another to do the eleven dirty and dangerous jobs that made them a team. Sim Sizemore played well, Billy had to admit, though his blocking was fair at best, and he often pulled up in badly disguised terror before the worst hits, pretending to stumble or miss.

  Billy tried to be cheerful and learn what he could without playing. His head stopped hurting, and long before the week was over he felt ready to play. On Thursday morning, Dr. Runkle examined Billy and gave him a letter to Coach Prosser. In the locker room, Billy handed the letter to Coach Rolt, who took it with an official flourish and carried it to Prosser’s office. Billy heard the murmur of their voices, then Rolt emerged. “Okay, kid. The big guy says you’re back.” As Billy turned to follow the last stragglers into the burning light, Rolt added, “Hey, Billy, Sizemore’s looking good. You got your work cut out for you if you want to play this year.”

  “Yes sir, Coach Rolt.” Billy ran to catch up.

  That day and the next, Billy played and sometimes played well, subbing for Sim Sizemore, but he was a half-step behind the other guys, his timing off and his memory of the plays vague. By the end of the second day, a long day of running plays, Billy was exhausted, hurt in all of the old ways, but feeling good, starting to get it back. As he ran off the field after cutting Charlie Rentz down with a flying body block, Sim Sizemore, coming back in, muttered, “Good lick.”

  At the sideline, Billy caught his breath, his helmet pushed to the top of his head. Coach Leone walked over and gave him a hard fist in the breast plate of his shoulder pads. The loud whack pulled the eyes of exhausted subs to Billy. “Good sticking out there, Dyer. The boy is back!”

  Leone walked away before Billy could say anything. But you didn’t. You didn’t say anything. The coaches were gods. They said and did what they wanted, and boys were pleased as dogs were pleased when scraps were tossed. Billy looked up and thanked the low, burnt-yellow heavens. I’m back. Then he saw the four men in business suits.

  They had quietly taken their places again on the top row of the bleachers. Coats thrown over pine boards, ties loosened, they lounged in brilliant white shirts, watching. The tall one, the man who had nodded to Billy the day of his injury, smiled down at him now and waved. Billy smiled and waved back.

  At one o’clock on Saturday, the Spartans sat on benches in the locker room wearing only pants and pads. To Billy, they looked like half-humans, more canvas and Bakelite than muscle and bone. Coach Prosser stood before them, holding a clipboard. Coach Rolt and Coach Leone leaned against the wall. Eddie Doerner, the manager, stood next to Prosser. In front of Doerner were cardboard boxes full of red and blue jerseys. The smell of the new cloth was the aroma of heaven. Billy had heard about this ritual. That it was done the same way every year. Forty boys, starters and subs, would make the team. These fortunate few would be granted red and blue and then march out to play the final practice game.

  Billy watched Prosser, then thought better of it. Better not to meet those eyes, show them the sickening eagerness in his own. His stomach felt like a sack of live snakes. Down the line from him, a boy he knew from JV, Lane Travers, a tackle, heaved up from the bench and ran for the toilet. Then came the growling, choking sounds of his vomiting.

  Prosser cleared his throat. “All right then, men. It’s been a long, hard August. We took you on—Coach Rolt, Coach Leone, and me—as a bunch of fat, overfed, out-of-shape drugstore cowboys and mama’s boys, and we’ve turned you into football players. At least we’ve made a pretty good start with most of you.”

  The boys who knew they had made a good start looked at Prosser with pride, or slid their eyes to one another with a knowingness they felt they had earned. Some, who knew they had failed, stared at the floor, or looked into themselves at cowardice, or clumsiness, or stupidity. Wiping his mouth with a forearm, Lane Travers emerged blinking from the toilet, his face pale.

  “Sit down, Travers,” Coach Prosser said. “Now you’ve got mama’s baloney sandwich out of your system.”

  Travers sat, stared at the clipboard in Prosser’s hands.

  Prosser continued, “Boys, I’m proud of you. You’ve come together as a team, but we’ve got a lot of work to do before we’re ready for Seminole. They’re gonna be out for payback. You all remember the whupping we gave them last year?”

  A few shouts of “Yeah!” and “Go Spartans!” but mostly the boys were silent.

  “All right, let’s get down to it.” Prosser looked at the clipboard. “Red team defense.” In a prayerful cadence, he began to call names. As he did so, Eddie Doerner, enjoying the throbbing nerves and drawn faces of the boys who would soon be his masters, handed out jerseys. Billy watched as boys grasped these trophies and held them to their chests, two or three lifting the bright cloth to their faces, breathing in the new smell. Sudden tears streaked some faces.

  Prosser looked up from the clipboard. Eddie Doerner opened the second box. Billy closed parched lips and swallowed as Prosser began to read. “Blue team offense.” Again he said names like secrets, like biblical mysteries. The eleventh jersey went to Sim Sizemore who stood up to catch it as it flew above Billy’s head. After a pause while Prosser ran his finger down the clipboard, the twelfth name spoken was “Billy Dyer.”

  Sweet relief poured into Billy’s stomach, killing off the writhe and roil of fear. He took the blue from Doerner’s outstretched hand and pressed it to his chest. He had made the varsity. Now he could compete with Sizemore, show what he could do in practice, and with any luck, in games. When the last blue jersey was given, Billy looked at the boys who had not made it. They slumped here and there, their shocked or angry or humiliated faces as white as their football pants.

  Prosser’s eyes told nothing. They swept the boys blankly, right and left, then gazed up at the ceiling. He stood for a moment reflecting, prophetic, isolated, then slapped the clipboard against his thigh with a pop that made the boys jump. He raked them with his angriest gaze, and some rocked back as though he had struck them. Billy knew this anger was not for the boys. It was for the hard ways of this game he loved, they all loved. The ways it separated the strong from the weak, the merciful from the ruthless, for its own beautiful purposes.

  Prosser said, “I know you boys who didn’t make this year’s team are disappointed.”

  In front of Billy, Joey Olsen clenched his jaw and raised his chin an inch higher.

  “But there will be other years for some of you, and for some of you there will be other things to do. Good things. And I know this summer has helped prepare you boys for those good things. The JV team will start working out the second Monday in September, and I hope most of you sophomores will be out there giving it another try. You’ll get some growth, some strength, some speed, and some experience, and you’ll be back here as juniors. Give me a good season of JV ball, and I’ll give you a special hard look next summer.”

  Billy saw the shock in the faces of a few scrubs give way to grim determination. They’d play JV ball as he had done, and they’d be back next summer. Some, still choking on humiliation or anger, stared at Prosser as though they wanted to fly at him like wild dogs at an old stag. He had put them through this, this, and now they were simply to be dismissed.

  “Any questions now?” Prosser said, already seeming done with this moment, with these boys.

  No one raised a hand. No one spoke.

  “All right, men. Put on those jerseys and let’s go out and play football.”

  Prosser walked fast between the rows of benches and pushed his tall, thick frame through the doorway. Coach Rolt and Coach Leone followed him. And Billy heard the rustle of cloth as the boys
pulled on the red and blue. A few whooped and hooted, a few shook hands, most heaved silent, thankful sighs. The boys who had been cut rose to don street clothes and go home. Billy wiped the tears of gladness from his eyes and charged the door with the team.

  EIGHT

  Billy waited for his mother in the second-floor reading room of the public library. He was always restless before seeing her. He had picked the book in front of him, Birds of Coastal Florida, at random from the nearest shelf. He flipped through it with little interest, leafing through pictures: Roseate Spoonbill, Oystercatcher, Royal Tern. His sweating hands wet the pages. Nearby a man in a shabby gray suit wiped his face with a white handkerchief, sighed, and crackled the pages of a newspaper. There was talk of air-conditioning the library, but for now there was only an occasional breeze from the high, arched windows that opened onto the city park. Billy put the book down, flexed his bruised right hand, and remembered what his father always said about his mother.

  “Sir, have you seen your mother lately?”

  “No, sir. I have not, sir.”

  “Any plans to see her, sir?”

  “No, sir. But soon, sir.”

  “See that you do, sir. A boy does not neglect his mother.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And they would both laugh.

  Billy saw his mother secretly. At first he had not been sure why he kept their meetings to himself, but later he knew his reason. It was because she had changed so much. Because Sir could not go home and tell Sir how good she looked, and how happy she was to be free.