Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (34 page)

When he returned to practice and discovered his reduction
in status, he was livid. It wasn't supposed to be this way, not his
senior year. "They made me wear a white shirt," he said after ward. "They jacked me. If I don't play, I'm not gonna suit up.
You know me. If I suit up, I want to play."

On the field, the coaches were as gentle with him as ever,
treating him once again as an explosive time bomb that could
be set off by the slightest impulse. When Boobie went up to
Coach Belew and asked him if he was going to play that Friday
night against Midland High, Belew gently told him that they
had to make sure he was ready, make sure his knee could take
the stress of a live football game. But off the field in the coaches'
office after practice, Belew couldn't believe the nerve of Boobie
to ask such a ridiculous question.

"Did you hear what Boobie said to me? He asked me if he
was going to play Friday," Belew told the other coaches. "It
would be a miracle if he can play this year. It's a tough road to
hoe, coming back from knee surgery and playing in the same
year. It would be suicide to let 'im play."

It raised the question of why he was out there at all, since it
had already been determined that Boobie would need knee
surgery after the season. For the team, his return appeared to
be a no-risk proposition. If he came back, it was a gift, a pleasant surprise. If he didn't come back that was okay because they
had found someone who had not only replaced him but surpassed him.

But for Boobie, the risks were enormous. If he did play well,
it might rekindle the interest of recruiters, who had gone on to
whore after other tricks. But by playing there was always the
risk of further damage to his knee, as well as the psychic damage of having to adjust to being a bit player in an extravaganza
that had originally been written for him.

Initially there had been nothing but the blindness of hope, as
if a magic wand would appear and make his knee pure again.

"I can't wait to come back," he had said shortly after the arthroscopic surgery that was done at the time of the injury. "Put
on that knee brace and fly." He felt certain he would regain his
role as starting fullback by the Odessa High game, when the
stadium would surely be rockin' 'n' rollin'. But it was a belief
only he held.

"He thinks he's gonna be ready for OHS, but he's sadly mistaken," said Trapper. Initially, he had been surprised by the
dedication with which Boobie worked toward rehabilitation.
But like most everyone else associated with the program, he
had little real faith in him. When the reality of the injury set in,
when it became apparent to Boobie that there was no magic
wand, the grueling regimen of rehabilitation became more
frustrating and futile.

"That was out of his nature for him to do that too hard, out
of character," said Trapper. "You have to be thinking that he's
seen the handwriting on the wall-the team hasn't fallen apart
without him."

When the Odessa High game took place, Boobie was still in
street clothes. Watching the pre-game warm-ups, he seemed
devoid of any emotional connection to the team, his infectious
self-confidence dissolving into detached coldness, an observer
peering in on something that had no place for him. "Nah, I'm
not that excited," he said as the stadium began to fill up, and
during the game he said almost nothing but looked on glumly
as the team moved effortlessly ahead without him.

He came back to practice the following week to the shame of
a white practice jersey, and he had no role in Permian's 42-0
trouncing of Midland High.

During the next week, when it became clear he was going to
get a chance to play, his mood alternated. There were glimpses
of the old Boobie holding court once again in the locker room,
turning to Jerrod McDougal and addressing him with "Hey,
Baby Ostrich Head Face." There were also glimpses of his finding the game of football a difficult struggle. During one of the
early morning practices in the gymnasium, he was pushed
while running with the ball. After the play, he turned around
and hurled the football at the offender.

That Friday night against the Abilene High Eagles, he suited
up with the familiar paraphernalia: the high-top Nikes, the silver stockings, the white TERMINATOR X towel. He watched from
the sidelines as Comer scored the first two touchdowns of the
game, one on a three-yard run and the other on an eighty-eight yard run where he broke up the middle on a trap and just outran everyone else to the goal line. Boobie stood behind the
other players glassy-eyed, his hands clasped.

He got into the game in the second quarter and gained four
yards on his first carry of the season. He got the ball again,
spinning for a gain of two yards, and then he blocked from the
tailback position as Comer scored his third touchdown of the
night to make the score 28-0 at the half. Comer had already
gained 125 yards on nine carries. Boobie had gained six yards
on two carries.

He carried the ball eight more times in the second half. It
was obvious he was tentative, the knee looming as if all the bone
and flesh and ligament and cartilage lay there exposed for everyone to take a shot at like some carnival game. "I think he's
scared, real scared," said Trapper from the sidelines as he
watched Boobie drag his leg a little hit and get up slowly from
a pile of tacklers. But Trapper had to admire his gutsiness. "I
think he's doing a lot better than I expected."

With a third and two at the Abilene 23, he took the ball on
the hand-off and suddenly all the justifications flooded back of
why he had once been touted as one of the ten best running
hacks in the state of Texas. He cut up the middle and broke
past several tacklers for an eight-yard gain and a first down.
The old fire was there and the indelible image of Boobie towering over hapless tacklers.

Watching him your heart rose and you began to believe that
he could do it, get it all back again, have the type of season that
he wanted so badly to have. But it was only a flash, a haunting
glimmer of what could have been. Several plays later, he left
the game limping with a cramp and did not return. In the
meantime, Permian scored an easy 49-0 win to improve its record to five and one and solidify its top-ten ranking in the statewide polls.

A year before against this same team, Boobie had had the
night of his life. He had gained 232 yards on eight carries. He
would have easily broken the Permian record for the most
yards rushing in it single game if Gaines, deciding the game was a rout, had not taken him out [Gaines said he hadn't known
that Boobie was close to the record]. But the performance was
still spectacular enough to earn him a mention in USA Today.
L.V. carefully kept the clipping, just as he carefully kept a pile
of other glowing clippings about Boobie from the Dallas Morning News and the Odessa American his junior year. On this night
against the Abilene Eagles, he gained forty-six yards on ten carries, and his return to action earned a single paragraph at the
tail end of the Odessa American account of the game. There was
no reason to give him more mention than that. Compared to
Corner, who finished the game with 138 yards, he hadn't done
anything.

For LV., watching Boobie play against Abilene had been
harrowing. On every play he couldn't help but worry that his
nephew would do further damage to his knee, even though the
brace (lid provide good protection. He saw the emotional effect
the injury was having on Boobie-the prolonged periods of depression as one Friday night after another just came and went.

"He wants to have that magic wand and have it be like it was
before [his knee] got hurt," L.V. said, but he knew that wasn't
possible.

He wondered if he was doing the right thing by letting
Boobie play at all. He had always risen to protect Boobie and
somehow make life right for him. He had fought for him and
with him, and whenever Boobie had veered off course he successfully put him hack on it. Early in the season, before everything had turned so hideous, L.V. had stood in the failing
afternoon light and silently watched Boobie perform. The
other boosters and parents and hangers-on traveled from one
end of the practice field to the other in friendly little packs. But
L.V. stayed off by himself, as if he felt he didn't quite belong.
Instead his eyes just followed as Boobie danced and weaved
and did all those things on the beautifully manicured, wellwatered fields that L.V. had patiently taught him. He didn't
have the look of a proud, gaping parent but the look of someone always there for Boobie, always keeping an eye out for him.

It had seemed so simple then, but now every option was fraught with painful uncertainty. Should he let Boobie playeven if it meant the risk of further injury-because it was the
only way he could still contend for a major-college scholarship?
Or should he put the dream in jeopardy and elect to have the
surgery done on Boobie now, before it was too late, before
there was more physical and psychological damage?

"High school is important, but this is a stepping stone," said
L.V. one day, sitting on a bench in the locker room of the field
house, surrounded by all the little pictures on the Wall of Fame.
"If he gets hurt here ..." The thought made him shudder.
Back home in a worn envelope were the letters from Texas
A & M and Nebraska and Oklahoma and all the rest that
glowed as powerfully as kryptonite. In his heart, he believed
the recruiters wouldn't run from his nephew just because of a
knee injury. With a little time, he'd be as good as new.

But the Permian staff said there was no way a major college
would touch Boobie now unless he came back and proved that
he had recovered. He was damaged goods, like a crate of Florida oranges that had gone rotten in delivery, and the big boys
were not going to deal with him unless they had positive proof
some sweet juice could still be squeezed out of him, not some
mess of pulp and seeds.

Privately the Permian staff, with the exception of Coach
Hearne, didn't see any dilemma in Boobie's decision at all. The
doctor had cleared him to play, which in the coaches' minds
meant he could play. And all the things that went along with the
injury-the mental aspect of having to adjust to being a white
shirt substitute, the necessity of major knee surgery after the
season whether he gained one yard or a thousand, the fluid that
had to be drawn from it, the fear of getting hit on it-were
necessary prices to pay. Others had done it. He wasn't the first.
To a large degree, they saw him as selfish and undisciplined
and utterly undedicated to the great cause of Mojo.

"Playing to him is not what it's all about," said Trapper. "He
just doesn't want to play. Fuckheads can just play. He wants to
be number one. He wants to be the one with his name in the paper. He wants to be the leading rusher in District Four Five-A.
He wants to be the one they're talking about.

"I think he can come back. It's a mental block. He has blinded
himself. His attitude is, 'If I can't be the center of attention, I
don't want to be anything at all.' He's not just letting himself
down. He's letting the team down, he's letting [Gaines] down,
he's letting his uncle down."

"It takes a special kind of kid to overcome an injury like that,"
said Belew. "I don't think he'll ever do what it takes to be one
hundred percent."

Sometimes it sounded as if they were talking about a pro
player making a million dollars a year with a contractual obligation to play, not an eighteen-year-old kid playing for his high
school team who, to be here at all, had overcome abandonment
by his mother and foster homes and learning disabilities.

L.V. understood the team's interest, but he also understood
the needs of his nephew as well as himself. They weren't in this
so that Boobie could be a dutiful substitute, coming off the
bench to give Comer or Billingsley a rest. There was no ticket
to the promised land in doing that.

"I'd rather hold him out and let him take his chances in college. If it wasn't the football season, it would be much easier,"
he said in the silence of the locker room. But L.V. knew how
much emotion and energy had been wrapped into Boobie's senior year, how so much of Boobie's life, as well as his own,
seemed to hinge on it. How long had they waited?

L.V. gave one of his little laughs and lowered his palm until
it was about four feet from toe ground. "Ever since he was right
there."

He decided to let him continue.

Boobie played sparingly the following week in a 48-2 win over
Dallas Jesuit that upped Permian's record to six and one. He
ran the ball five times for fourteen yards and seemed even
more tentative than he had against Abilene High. He broke to
the right on one carry but had no acceleration at all and was easily tackled for no gain. He rumbled for five yards on another
play but went down before taking a hit.

The next Friday night, Permian met the Cooper Cougars in
Abilene. On the second play of the game, Comer went sixtyfour yards for a touchdown, his seventh of the season. Boobie
got his first carry of the game on the next series as a substitute
and scored his first touchdown of the year on a one-yard dive.
He was livid after the play and threw the football at a Cooper
player. Boobie said the player had pulled his face mask and
punched him in the face.

"You're a senior, you got to be able to handle that," Gaines
told him as he came to the sidelines.

"I ain't gonna sit there and let somebody hit me in my damn
face," said Boobie as he walked to the players' bench, his voice
strained and agitated. Early in the fourth quarter he scored
another touchdown to make it 49- 14. It was his last carry of
the night, giving him forty-nine yards on twelve carries. As at
the Abilene High game there were times one could see tiny
flashes of the old brilliance, but there were more moments of
watching him try to cut upfield into freedom, only to fall helplessly to the ground.