I only did Saturdays, not after school, with Coach having homework rules and Angus being the enforcer. She didn’t like me being at practices, but Coach said a boy can’t stay cooped up, so. I couldn’t put my own clothes in the washer at the house, but I bagged up dirty team laundry like my life depended on it, and watched varsity guys running drills. Figuring out plays if I was able. Fast Forward was long gone, but these guys had good hands, hard hitters. Coach at practice was a different human. Knees bent in a crouch, eyes sharp, he’d watch guys run a drill or complete a pass, and I’m saying he saw them. Memorized them. Picking out a fumble or even the risk of one, yelling at them to run it again and not screw up this time. Run it again, they did. Twenty times if need be. Where was sleepwalker dad? That guy we had to step out of the way of so he wouldn’t walk through us like doors? Not in the Five Star Stadium. There he fired on all cylinders, riding his Generals till they gave him the shine he wanted, then telling them they were the best of men. Clapping them on the back as he sent them off the field to go shower up.
And one of the men was me. I was three years from any shot at Generalhood, and miles from knowing my ass from any hole in the ground. But one day after he dismissed the team and we’re loading up equipment, Coach yells, “Damon, heads up!” and here comes a ball at my face. I catch it, goddamn miracle, and go to put it with the other balls but no, Coach says let’s throw some passes. Him throwing, running me down the field to see what kind of legs I have. What kind of wind. Now let’s see your arm. I’m shitting myself trying to remember anything Fast Forward ever showed me about holding the ball, using my field of vision. Giving my all.
My all was no great shakes, but Coach made me want to die trying. The big teeth finally fit his mouth, and busted out shining like sun through clouds. Unforgettable. The way he looked past my arms and legs into the soul of the General I might be, totally tuned in on me and the ball between us, curve of a wrist, turn of a head. And I saw the General he’d been on this field once, pumping a crowd, flashing those teeth at some girl in the stands that would steam up his truck in the postgame ceremony. Angus’s mom, I thought. Wondering, was she a cheerleader or what.
But no. Being one of Miss Betsy’s girls, no window steamer. Angus said they’d met at UT Knoxville where he went on a football scholarship. Running back, one year, then tore up his shoulder and had to major in education. I wondered if Angus even knew this other person her dad woke up to being at practice. I hoped she did. Then I thought about it, and hoped she didn’t.
School took a wild turn, thanks to this one teacher Mr. Armstrong. He was seventh-and eighth-grade English, so not my teacher, but also guidance counselor, meaning he’s looking out for the bigger picture on kids that are headed for trouble.
At Jonesville Middle they’d just dropped me into classes, and it took me one hot minute to go down like the Titanic. Math, pop quiz: “Simplify the expression using order of operations blah blah rational numbers.” A page of numbers and stuff not even numbers, like freaking code. “Here’s your simplified expression,” I wrote on my blank answer sheet: “Fuck me.”
I scratched that out before the teacher collected them up, so I didn’t get sent to the principal. Just straight directly to the dummy class, where I got acquainted with the gentlemen in the sideburns and unlaced size thirteens. We all moved together, a big slow herd, from Howdy Doody math to remedial everything and a lot of study halls where our reading material was Hot Rod Magazine, Muscle Machines, Car & Driver. Or Allure and Cosmo if girls, because we had females among us. Instead of sideburns, some serious racks. Our destiny was the Vo-Ag track in high school where we’d shuffle to the vocational center for auto mechanic classes or if girls, beauty school. So who cared if we read magazines all day? Getting a jump on our career ladders.
Being new though, I was supposed to check in with Mr. Armstrong. It took him some weeks to work me in, due to other kids needing him to testify for them in juvie court. Busy man. I’d settled in with my new crowd of Jonesville dogs that were not pups but hot bitches and guys that could pass for beer-buying age. Friends with potential. And the freedom to draw in my notebooks all day, unpestered by education. Then comes Mr. Armstrong to rock my boat.
This much I’ll give the man: he didn’t lecture me about not living up to my potential. He’d got hold of my DSS records going back to the hospital interviews of Mom’s OD, or before. I’d had one foot in the custody-removal shitpile since birth. I told Mr. Armstrong if he’d read all that, he knew more about me than I did. He said no, he didn’t, that nobody ought to pretend to know how I felt. “Here’s what I do know,” he said. “You are resilient.”