Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (48 page)

Had he been given the chance, he believed that he could have
had a career like the one he had had at Permian. After that he
believed he would have had a shot at the pros. He even tried to
walk on with the Cowboys in 1978, but they told him he was too
slow and didn't bother to give him a tryout.

"I wish I could have had an opportunity to play pro. Not a
ten or thirteen-year-old career, but maybe one or two years ...
and maybe get a different job."

At Permian it had been victory after victory. It was one exciting week after another, and the world seemed only to consist
of cheers and praise and glory and rules that had no meaning.
He made twenty-odd interceptions his sophomore year and in one game alone against Abilene Cooper took down five. It was
hard sometimes not to wish those days were back because there
seemed something so old-fashioned, so wholesome, so simple
and unfettered about them. It had all fallen apart after that,
and though he wished it had turned out differently, he wasn't
so much embittered by it as hurt.

"I'd do it all over again," he said. He looked up with those
sad eyes and then came the deep laugh out of nowhere that
didn't sound like a laugh at all, rising over the scratchy rattle of
"Ghostbusters" on the television screen.

Daniel Justis would have been another to receive a standing
ovation at the pep rally that night. He was All-State and had
also gone to State. But Justis hated the game of football and
wanted his son to do the same and had programmed him to
think that anyone who played it was a fool.

"I'm gonna have a negative influence on him," said Justis. "If
he wants to play, I'm going to steer him into every other sport.
I don't think he has to play football to get an education. He
doesn't have to play football to be somebody or not. Maybe in
my mind, I didn't think I was anybody unless I played football."

He was the first to admit that football had helped him become a dentist. It was also a nice drawing card for his practice
since just about everyone knew he had been the star running
back on a Permian team that went to the finals in 1970. It was
hard to forget, with the messages on the sign of Temple Baptist
that said GIVE ARLINGTON "JUSTIS," NOT MERCY or the banner
headline in Pearl Harbor black that said JUSTIS FOR PERMIAN,
22-19." But he still hated the game.

As he told it, it may have been because of the arthritis in both
hips or the one arm that was shorter than the other or the constant pain in his legs. It may have been because of the two separated shoulders. It may have been because he "threw up and
shit all over the place" before games with the realization that
"you're going out on the field and getting the shit knocked out of you." It may have been because of the coach in ninth grade
who thought he was faking a broken arm and wouldn't let him
leave the practice field until the fluid built up.

But it also may have been, as his wife Janet suggested, that
despite how much he hated it, or tried to hate it, he couldn't get
it out of his blood, and he missed the adulation and attention,
missed the woman in Dallas who had commissioned a black
panther statue for him, missed the Pearl Harbor-black headlines, missed the church-sign slogans.

"You live in a fairy tale for that one year of your life," said
his wife. "You're worshiped, and that year is over and you're
like anyone else.

"We all feel that our husbands have been unhappier with everything after they got out of it. You see your name up in lights
and people follow you and they put your name in the newspaper and then all of a sudden the season is over...."

It was a phenomenon that Trapper had seen dozens of times
before, a kid so caught up in it all that there was no room for
anything else, another kid for whom nothing in life would ever
be so glorious, so fulfilling as playing high school football.
Trapper didn't see the game as being a savior for these kids. He
saw it as "the kiss of death."

"These kids think they're invincible. They put that P on their
helmet and that black and white, they think nobody can kick
their ass. It doesn't matter what state you're from, how many
players you got on your team.

"They're popular. They're in very hot demand, like a hot
rock group. No matter what they do, it's a hit. Everything they
do is right. And they just can't find that again. What other job
can they find that has that glamour?

"What's the substitute? Find the substitute for it. The only
consequence of it is a mentally crippling disease for the rest of
your life."

Trapper knew the amount of sacrifice that kids went through
to be Permian football players, how they were willing to play, with the blessing of their parents, with broken feet and broken
ankles and broken wrists.

"How much better would it be if they concentrated that into
school?" he asked. "How much better would it be if they concentrated it into a job?"

A graduate of the University of Iowa, he had been a student
trainer there on a wrestling team that won the national championship. Iowa was a wrestling-mad school, but the intensity
was nowhere near what it was in Odessa over football, the relationship nowhere near as intertwined.

Trapper loved Friday nights as much as anyone, he got
caught up in the game as much as anyone. But he always had
another season to look forward to if this one didn't happen to
work out.

He knew these kids had no soft cushion. The second the season was over they became vague, fuzzy shapes, as indistinguishable as the thick clouds that skimmed across the sky into the
horizon. They might come back to the locker room after a big
game. Their favorite coach would give them a big, sincere hello
and then quickly drift off because of more pressing needs, and
they would paw around the edges of the joyous pandemonium
and it would become clear that it wasn't theirs anymore-it belonged to others who had exactly the same swagger of invincibility that once upon a time had been their exclusive right.

Trapper knew he would get paid for what he did no matter
what happened during the course of a season. If this particular
one ended Saturday in the quarterfinals of the Class AAAAA
Texas playoffs against the Lamar Vikings, there might be some
hurt, some disappointment at what could have happened, because this team clearly had the talent to go to State. But before
long the delicious anticipation of another season would come
again. A new set of kids, a new set of faces, a new set of hopes,
a new set of heroes would be paraded atop the shoulders of the
town as gloriously as the Greeks honored their gods.

"That's my salvation," he said. "What's their salvation?"

But he also knew it was too powerful, too intoxicating to ever
get away from, for those who played and also for those who sat
in the stands cheering week after week, month after month,
year after year.

"It's the Friday night addiction," said Trapper.

III

"This needle gonna hurt?" asked Ivory Christian as he lay on
a table in the trainer's room. "I hate needles."

"I know," said team doctor Weldon Butler.

"Don't look," said Trapper.

"It will give you some strength the second half," said Butler.

"I hate needles, Doc," Ivory said again, his voice quavering,
scared.

"I know, I do, too."

"I'm afraid of needles."

"Don't jump, Ivory. Make a fist and hold it."

He had come off the field at halftime against the Lamar Vikings exhausted and complained to Butler that he didn't know if
he was going to make it. He was quickly ushered into the trainer's room next to the dressing room and the door was closed.

Ivory, dressed in his uniform and smelling of sour sweat,
groaned as the needle attached to the IV bag slipped into his
vein. One of his feet hanging over the edge of the table began
to shake, and it was clear he was terrified. The IV bag contained a solution of lactose; such a procedure was a common
method of replenishing depleted body fluids. It also had the
psychological effect of making Ivory think that some magical,
power-packed supply of energy was coursing through his veins,
a miracle potion to get him through the second half of a game
in which a loss would mean the end of the season.

"Don't move," Butler said again. "You'll play the best second
half you've played all year."

"I hate it," said Ivory.

"How long is the halftime?" asked Butler.

"Twenty minutes," said Trapper.

"Long enough to get one in there," said Butler.

"I hate needles, man," Ivory said again. "They scare me."

But it didn't matter. The Lamar Vikings hadn't wilted at all
under the hot sun of Odessa. The Permian lead at halftime was
only 7-0, and the team could not afford to have an exhausted
Ivory Christian at middle linebacker. If an IV solution normally used in hospitals and at the scene of accidents was now
being used during the halftime of a high school football game
to ease complaints of exhaustion, so be it.

Only a month earlier, the atmosphere surrounding Ivory
had been so different. Sitting on the bench in the middle of the
last regular season game against San Angelo, he had said he
could care less if he played anymore. During halftime, one of
the coaches had criticized him for failing to play the trap correctly with the score 28-0 in Permian's favor, and he was seething over it. He was tired of studying the play sheets that filled a
thick notebook, tired of being picked at and probed and poked
for every detail. He was also upset when a fellow teammate at
linebacker, David Fierro, suddenly got benched after starting
all year.

"I do not like the Permian football program," he had said. "I
don't want to play six more games. I'm ready to go home.

"They think you're a super athlete just because you're black,"
he blurted out angrily. "They expect me to make the
tackle...." When asked if he wanted the team to win the coin
toss or not, he said nothing.

Later in the week, anger had given way to the familiar feelings of ambivalence. The playoffs were coming up, and he
knew from the year before how exciting that could be. But
there was also a part of him that truly wished the season was
over. He questioned his own commitment to the game, wondering if he hit as hard as he had in the past.

"If someone held me, or cheap-shotted me, or called me
something, I went off on 'em. No mercy. No prisoners. That's how I got my reputation as a brute." But he wasn't sure if the
same instinct was still there.

"Mojo used to be serious to me, before I got up here," said
Ivory. "It's just another football team to me now. It's got a winning tradition. It's got good players. But I got other things to
do besides football and getting people psyched up...."

His interest in preaching seemed as strong as ever; it was the
only area, as he saw it, that he could freely express himself. Just
as there was a part of Ivory that didn't think he hit people hard
enough on the football field, there was a part of Ivory that felt
he hadn't dedicated enough of himself to the church. He said
he looked forward to the moment football ended and he could
spend all his free time "working with Jesus, working with
Christ." He dreamed of someday becoming the pastor of the
largest Baptist church in California, with a congregation of a
thousand and a four-hundred-strong choir behind him. He
dreamed of how he would get a bachelor's degree in communications or business management and then a doctorate in
theology. He dreamed of the day people would respectfully address him as "Dr. Christian."

And then, with a phone call from a college football recruiter,
all those dreams began to fade away.

Around the time the playoffs started, Texas Christian University, a Southwest Conference school, spoke to Ivory. A recruiter told him they were interested and that a good showing
in the playoffs might cement a scholarship, and it was hard to
think about anything else after that.

Once the team got caught up in the playoffs, Ivory never
preached again. His aspirations in life also changed. He saw a
new light now, a new path, and it didn't come to him in some
fantastic, surreal dream, as the call to preach had.