Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (45 page)

"No," one of them objected. "When a horse pulls up lame,
you don't waste a bullet on him." There was unrestrained
laughter and the three enjoyed the analogy of comparing
Boobie to an animal. It was repeated.

"You don't waste a bullet on a horse."

Only Nate Hearne had a different perspective on it all. His struggle to keep Boobie on the team when he had tried to walk
out the door during halftime against the Rebels wasn't some
act. He understood the psychological pain Boobie was going
through, how unimaginably hard it was to sit there and watch
someone else perform with brilliance a role that had once been
his. He understood Boobie for what he was, a kid who had been
through so much in his life that just to be standing in one piece
was a terrific accomplishment. But he also understood the
world of high school football: when Boobie got hurt, he became
obsolete.

"He needed special, special, special attention, but he wasn't
going to get it because he wasn't healthy," Hearne said. "He was
expendable because we had a heck of a running back."

It was as simple as that.

When Bookie came home from the hospital, everyone was an
enemy, an adversary, a contributor to the wreck of his senior
year. Late that Saturday night, he and his uncle began to argue
with one another in their home on the Southside of town. They
traded words, their shouts echoing through the tiny rooms.
There was a flurry of accusations, both of them lost in the misery of what wasn't and the painful reality of what was, Boobie
feverish, despondent, with a puffed-up knee that no longer
contained the God-given gift of speed as sweet as the wind, L.V.
heartsick at how all that work, all those attempts to mold his
nephew into the next winner of the Heisman, all those hours
spent teaching him the spins and the jukes and the angles for
the corner, had ended up like this.

At ten-thirty, Boobie announced that he was going over to
his aunt's house. L.V. told him he was crazy to get up and go
somewhere after major knee surgery.

"I'm through working with you," said L.V.

"I'm through with you," said Boobie.

"Then get your stuff out."

And Boobie did just that, because nothing meant anything to
him anymore, not even his uncle.

L.V. waited for him to return. It had just been an argument and surely he would come back once he calmed down, once he
got hold of himself. But then hours went by and then a day,
and then another one and then another one. And it became
clear to L..V. that there wasn't much use waiting for the crooked
front door to open on Boobie standing there with that infectious smile on his face begging for forgiveness.

He wasn't corning back.

L.V. felt pain. He felt anger. He felt rejection. But like everything else in his life, he ultimately accepted it as another disappointment that would somehow settle in, just like the wall in
Crane that fenced him and the other blacks in like cattle, just
like not being able to play high school football because he wasn't
allowed to go to the white school, just like not being able to find
a job. "I miss him, but as time goes on, I'll learn to live with it,"
he said. "It kind of wears away, but it's somethin' you think
about all the time. Boobie was just like my own."

Boobie came by the house after about a week. L.V. was livid
and told him he was never going to make it, but Boobie was in
no mood to listen. He packed up the rest of his stuff and just
left. When L.V. looked into his room, it was bare. Boobie had
taken virtually everything with him, the poster of his idol Michael Jordan, the one of Lawrence Taylor that had been given
to him by the coaches as an inducement to play defense, even
the recruiting letters that had once glowed so powerfully.

But the dream still floated, still beckoned, as beautiful and
elusive as the green light at the end of Gatsby's dock. "He's got
the physical ability to play pro football," said L.V. one afternoon, lingering by the practice field even though Boobie wasn't
there. "Everybody in the world knows that. But he's got to have
the mental attitude. I hate to see it all go up in smoke. Three
or four more years, I would have had 'im ready.

"It's it bad situation," he said, his voice as soft and sorrowful
as an autumn leaf slip-sliding to the ground, "hut I'll let it go."

I

PERMIAN BEAT AMARILLO TASCOSA IN THE FIRST ROUND OF THE
playoffs with ease, 31-7. Then the team flew to El Paso by chartered jet to face the Andress Eagles. Everything seemed off that
night. The temperature was freezing with a bitter wind and
little flecks of snow, and the ten thousand or so fans in the
stands of the gigantic Sun Bowl looked like little bits of paper
swirling in a vacant street. Gaines, usually so silent and focused
on the strategy of the game, prowled the sidelines with fury. He
had gotten his reprieve and made it to the playoffs, but there
was no room now for mistakes or sloppiness.

"That's horse crap and you know it! ... Crap! Absolutely
horsecrap! Can't make a foot because you can't block anyone,
Mannix! ... Quit tacklin' like a girl, Ivory! ... Hustle off the
field! Get your heads out of your ass!"

His anger extended to the locker room at halftime, when the
score was only 21-7 in Permian's favor. He yelled at Winchell
for throwing two interceptions. He yelled at Steve Womack and
Billy Steen for not being able to tackle anyone. Then he started
screaming at the top of his lungs and it didn't seem like some
calculated tantrum.

"We're not gonna win a state championship playin' like that! We are
not going to win a state championship playin' that way!"

Permian was easily victorious with a 41- 13 score, but if the outburst was designed to steer the players toward greater discipline, it didn't work. Back in Odessa, the players celebrated
with a party at one of their houses (since they had traveled by
chartered jet, they got home way before their parents, most of
whom made the 286-mile trip by car), and there were reports
of one player wandering around dead drunk in the middle of
the field house parking lot at three in the morning.

The following Wednesday, with school out for the Thanksgiving break, the players found a mysterious note in their lockers when they came in for morning practice to prepare for the
third-round playoff game against the Irving Nimitz Vikings.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE 1988
PERMIAN PANTHER
FOOTBALL TEAM

Gentlemen:

It has become quite evident in the last few weeks that the 1988 edition of the Permian Panthers is blessed with a great deal of physical
talent. Impressive performances have indicated this and many of your
opponents will testify to your physical prowess. But we f ear that your
continued success is in much jeopardy.

What we make reference to is the obvious lack of moral integrity
and discipline among several members of your group. It has become
painfully evident that the winning of a State Championship is not a
high priority of every member of this team. The primary goal of many of
you appears to he seeing how intoxicated you can become, while others
of you try to see how many rules you can flaunt and get by with. The
tradition of MO jO was built over a period of several years. Each succeeding team has contributed to this tradition. All of them have not contributed, for example, the 1986 team, but the vast majority of the teams
have contributed in many different ways.

Al this point in time all the 1988 team is doing is feeding off of
what was done in previous times. As a team, you have not made a single
contribution to the tradition. In fact at the present rate of decline this
Saturday will probably be the end ofyouur season and then you will join
the 1986 team in history. That place is marked by a large sign with one
word on it

!!!!!!!LOSER!!!!!!!!

Senior class, the choice is yours. No one can play the games for you.
Yort must make a commitment to winning the remaining games or be
prepared to have the .stigma of being called a loser attached to your
team for the rest of history.

The letter was unsigned, but most of the players suspected it
had been written by one of the coaches.

"I know those cocksuckers wrote it," said Jerrod McDougal,
the key tip-off being the use of a four-syllable word. "Intoxicants, that's a coaches' word."

He didn't find the letter amusing at all. Here it was, the day
before Thanksgiving, and there they were on a field that had
turned from lush green to stunted yellow, practicing, just as
they had done the day before, and the day before that, going
over the Nimitz defenses, 80 Loose C-5, 80 Solid C-5 Invert
Weak, 68 Storm C-3 Man, and the Nimitz offenses, Right Pro
Strong, Right Squirm, Right 'rite F Bump to Unbalanced, until they were blue in the face, just as they had done for every
other opponent, like they were robots or something, or mechanical arms on an assembly line. They had started practice in
the middle of August, those wretched two-a-days when every
muscle ached and it wasn't unusual to lose five or six or seven
pounds from one practice to the next, and they were about to
play their thirteenth game of the season. It was impossible not
to feel mentally and physically exhausted. But more than that,
they were also scared to death.