Beyond Lucky (5 page)

I hand him the blue pack. “Here, you wanted it. You do it.”

Mac rips the foil in his teeth. He pops the pink gum into his mouth. Then he spits it out. “Stale.”

“It's always stale.”

“But it should be fresh.”

On the top of the pack, there is a vintage Mark “Sparky” Hughes, from when he played forward with Manchester United—the first time. Even Mac has to admit—he is extremely awesome.

But the rest of the cards are junk. Mostly second-stringers—players like me, who sit most of their careers on the bench waiting for someone to quit or get hurt.

I put Sparky to one side.

Mac waves to a girl with long brown hair. She says, “Hi. How's it going?” And he asks, “Hey, Becky. What's the word?” He gets up to walk her to the corner. She looks like a lot of girls when they talk to Mac—extremely happy and nervous.

All the girls in our class think Mac is cute. They call him on the phone, just to talk. They think he looks like a movie star. The only time they call me is to find out who he likes.

That's easy to tell. When Mac talks to a girl he thinks is cute, he keeps his hands in his pockets. He shifts his weight from his left to his right. He looks up at the sky or ceiling and smiles so she can get a good look at the dimple on his chin. I don't know where or when he learned how to do this, but it is extremely effective. Even though his jokes are dumb, the girl always laughs.

Right now, Becky laughs.

He looks at the sky and grins until her ride comes.

I hold the last pack, the green one, rub it between my palms. The corner is torn just slightly. The lettering on the foil looks faded. Mac is right. Finding Wayne would be like finding a pearl in a swimming pool. And even if I uncover someone great, I cannot change what happened. Magic isn't going to make my life better. If I have to, I'll play another season at backup. Or maybe I should call the coach of the Super Two team. My horoscope was my horoscope even before I read it, and still, on the field, I stunk.

The Super Two is not the worst league in the world.

Mac sprints back, just before the Will's Beverage truck rumbles toward the intersection. We pump fists. “Beer Man.” The truck bounces over a frost heave and speeds through the yellow light.

Mac says, “That's my third sighting this week.”

“You are so lucky.” Will's Beverage truck is the coolest thing on four wheels, even better than a Hummer, or Mrs. Mac's last boyfriend's vintage Beetle bus. The truck is jet black with bright red lettering, and the chrome on the oversized tires is painted yellow. The horn sounds like a ship's; the engine is loud.

Beer Man wears mirrored aviator sunglasses and a Red Sox cap, even when it's cloudy. According to Sam, Will used to drive the truck himself. He claims that the first Beer Man to take over was Coach, but Coach swears that's only a rumor.

“So, what are you waiting for?” Mac asks. “Isn't this supposed to be your lucky day?”

I tear open the green foil. Mac looks over my shoulder. I reveal the first card. Mac grabs it out of my hand. “Hey. Check that out. Clint Dempsey.”

Mac loves Dempsey. In seventy-one games with the Revolution, he scored twenty-five goals.

We put him in the “keep” pile. The next two cards are excellent too.

Mac asks, “Who is Marcello Lippi? Have you ever heard of Lev Yashin?”

Sometimes I don't know how Mac calls himself a soccer fan. Lippi was the manager who benched Roberto Baggio. Love him or hate him, it was a bold move. And Yashin was the best goalkeeper to ever play the game—and that's not just my opinion—he was on FIFA's twentieth-century dream team. The guy was from Russia and had some of the best reflexes I have ever seen. I've got three Yashin cards at home. I will send this one to Sam.

“You know, I think this one is rare.” Mac grabs the Lippi, and the rest of the pack flutters to the ground. I drop to my knees to pick them up fast. I don't want any of them to get dirty. Or wet.

That's when I see it.

Third card from the bottom. A flash of blue. As in Revolution blue. With a vibrant red Revolution stripe.

Sun shining on a green field near Boston.

It is too perfect. Too predictable.
You will succeed.

I know before I see him, before Mac starts screaming, before he starts jumping up and down like we just won Olympic gold.

Wayne Timcoe, my hero, my brother's hero, is crouched on one knee, in front of a large white net.

It's Wayne—Wayne Timcoe—smiling at the camera. He was the greatest player to ever come off a Somerset Valley field.

Mine.

—Richard Nixon

The picture was taken at the beginning of his rookie season. It's the same one from
The Ultimate Year Book
.

The bio only tells part of his story.

After Wayne Timcoe graduated from Somerset Valley High and signed that contract, the town threw him a parade. I was a baby. Sam was younger than I am now. Dad took a picture of us, Sam cradling me in front of the newly painted billboard over the scoreboard: Home of Wayne Timcoe.

It's still one of my favorite screen savers.

The first stories I remember are all about Wayne. Sam loved to talk about him. “He had the biggest, best hands I've ever seen. He could anticipate a shot, like he knew where the ball was going—like he was inside the kicker's head. Once, I saw him stop three penalty kicks in a row. No lie.”

But the big leagues test you. In his fourth game of his rookie season, Wayne injured his ankle—a complex sprain. It was so complex that he never made it back to the field that season. The following year, he injured the other ankle twice. They sent him down; they brought him up. He would walk on the field, just to hobble off. The critics started saying “washout.”

Loser.

All promise. No play.

Beyond unlucky.

Sam swears he knew that Wayne was the kind of guy who needed adversity to get him motivated. He said, “Those announcers thought they knew everything. But they didn't know Wayne.”

Since then, I've read tons of articles about Wayne's third season. Most of them cite that this was the year Wayne Timcoe “learned the system.” Although I am not sure what “the system” means when it comes to defending an open net, I do know he started fifteen consecutive games. He finished with an eight and seven record. The cynics named him Most Improved Player of the league.

Sports Illustrated
made him their cover story, the week of April 22. That issue is wrapped in plastic in my bottom drawer.

His fourth year was huge. I've studied every one of his games on tape, and I know for a fact, the guy was in the zone. You can see it even on the small screen. He recorded three straight shutouts, and took his team all the way to the finals. It was the first year Sam started for the high school team. We had a party to watch the big game.

I have to admit, I don't remember actually seeing Wayne Timcoe save the game-deciding shot, pounding his fists in the air, although my dad has told me that right after that play, I put on my Superman cape, stood on a coffee table, and told everyone I would be the next great goalkeeper. And everybody cheered.

Since that day, I've watched what happened next at least a thousand times.

The scene starts out funny, men laughing and crying and jumping on top of each other after the clock ticks to zero. They are all so happy. They hug each other and rip off their shirts and pile up like we do in the backyard.

The mood changes fast. First, a few guys step back. They start waving people over. Another runs for help. Someone else puts his head in his hands. It is clear something is wrong. When the pile empties, only one blue and red jersey stays down.

Crumpled.

Face down.

The only movement: one thumb up.

Under that pile of men, Wayne Timcoe was trampled by his own teammates. They immobilized his neck, put him on a board, and took him off the field on a stretcher. In one celebration, his career went from perfect to bleak, his game went from dominating to back on hold.

But lots of guys get injured. And a lot of them come back. Bad luck is supposed to make you stronger. Adversity turns to grit. A torn Achilles tendon is not supposed to end your career. One concussion is not the end of the world.

Sam and I followed every operation and report. There were three surgeries, two for infection. He went to rehab. We paid attention to every rumor—from sightings of Wayne Timcoe in the gym, to reports of his taking drills on the field. He was lifting. He was running. He was going to parties in New York and Los Angeles with some singer.

First he was going to play in England. Then Italy. Then he announced he was taking a little time off to regroup. We were sure this was just a ploy. He was Wayne Timcoe. He was mounting the most amazing comeback the soccer world had ever known.

But that never happened. The articles stopped. He disappeared from soccer, from Somerset Valley, from the planet. Soccer found new goalkeepers. The World Cup came and went and came again. The league did not reissue his card. Soon there weren't a whole lot of people who still cared about Wayne.

But I still believed. So did Sam. So did Mac. We began collecting cards. We sat on my bed and created fantasy teams and talked about who was the best of each season, decade, and century.

We still hoped that somehow, he would come back to the game.

By then, I was playing four days a week. Sam became a firefighter. The day after his first big jump, he told me jumping out of a plane was even better than scoring the winning goal. “You're the soccer star now,” he said. “Move the poster to your room. For good luck.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “He's your hero.”

“He's our hero,” Sam said. “And he always will be.” We relived that last save and even a few of Sam's greatest goals. He said, “Remember, fight to the end for what is important to you.”

Wayne said that before every big game.

Now Mac stares at the card. He stares at me. I pinch him. He pinches me. We cannot stop screaming and laughing. He says, “I don't believe it. I absolutely, positively don't believe you found him.”

Somehow I manage to secure the card in my pocket. Somehow I manage not to throw up. Somehow I run faster than Mac all the way to our neighborhood and my house. I go straight up the stairs, three at a time, to my room. I look at our Wayne Timcoe poster, the card, the poster, the card.

I bend my knees.

I picture the ball.

I hear the cheers. For me. I hear people cheering for me. Sam was right—when you want something bad enough, anything can happen.

Anything.

You can break your leg.

You can jump out of a plane into a fire.

You can find the lucky card you've been looking for.

 

Coach calls after dinner. He asks me how my classes are going. “You feeling good about your work?”

I do.

He is glad. “Well, I'm calling to tell you I've made my decision, and you are my guy. You are going to start in the net.” His voice sounds a bit slow, so I check the Caller ID, just to make sure it is really him.

It is. It is really him. He is really telling me that I am the starter. And Mac is the captain. Everything we wanted is coming true right now.

“We play most Saturdays. Sometimes Wednesdays too. Mandatory practice every weekday but Monday. No excuses.”

Some way, somehow, I manage to maintain enough self-control not to drop to my knees and cry. My voice does not even shake. “Thank you for this opportunity. Is there anything in particular I should know about Green-view?”

“Focus on their center. The guy has shifty moves, but don't panic—he's all they have. He's at his best when he's in the corners. Remember last year, he stung Mischelotti with three corner kicks, and knocked us right out of contention.”

I remember that loss. “But last year, Eddie never played the post. Mischelotti thought he could do it himself. We left too many offensive players unguarded.”

Coach likes the way I think. The last thing he says: “Now that you're the keeper, you tell them where to stand.”

I put down the phone in shock. I'm the keeper.

I'm going to tell them.

I am the happiest person in the universe.

From downstairs, Dad yells, “Ari, are you still on the phone? Your mother says you need to practice your Hebrew.”

I yell back, “Don't worry. The starting keeper will get the job done,” and before I can say
Baruch Atah Adonai
, which are the first three words of every blessing in the Jewish universe, he is upstairs and he is jumping on me, and then he asks me if I'm okay, because he has just tackled me, and Wayne Timcoe, the poster, is looking down on us.