Home Field (2 page)

T
he boy cried helplessly in Dean's office. He wiped his face with his scrimmage jersey, but it was too sweaty to be of any use to him. Even without his pads, the boy's shoulders were unusually square and broad. He looked like a grown man, with dark stubble already arriving in the late afternoon. Dean remembered scouting him from eighth-grade Field Day. He was big even then, uncoordinated but strong, his thick black hair growing as wildly as his body and long enough for a ponytail. He threw the shot put like it was nothing much, something slightly heavier than a softball. His name was Laird Kemp. Dean stood on the sidelines and watched him, writing a summer conditioning regimen on the blue index cards he always carried in the side pocket of his windbreaker. He gave it to the boy and told him to try out for junior varsity football in the fall. Four years later, Laird was their middle linebacker, the linchpin of their defensive unit. And he was telling Dean that he was sorry, but his family was moving in two weeks. His dad's company—Mac Truck—had transferred him to another one of their corporate offices.

“I'm sorry, Coach. I know I should have told you sooner. I don't know why my dad has to take this job.”

“I'm sure he has good reasons.” Dean knew Laird's parents fairly well. Like Dean, they weren't originally from Willowboro, which was a significant line of demarcation. They were also better off than most and lived in one of the nicer suburbs outside of town. They liked football as much as anyone and gave generously to the Boosters, but it wasn't their priority. They probably wanted Laird to spend his senior year preparing for college.

“I don't want to go to a new school,” Laird said. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “I'm happy here. Things are good for me.”

“Things will be good for you in your new school,” Dean said. “I'll give a call to that coach over there. I'll tell him how lucky he is to have you joining his team.”

Garrett Schwartz, the assistant coach, appeared in Dean's doorway. “You're leaving? You can't leave! We need you!”

Typical Garrett: awkward, blunt, and easily excited. He was the athletic director in addition to his role as assistant coach. His slightly built figure was a familiar sight at the beginning of every game as, clipboard in hand, he checked to make sure the facility was clean, the scoreboard turned on, the bleachers pulled down, and the soda and snack machines stocked and lit. He checked in with the cheerleaders, the Boosters, the refs, the coaches, and anyone else he recognized. He always had a whistle and a stopwatch around his neck, the stopwatch strung on a gimp lanyard that the cheerleaders had made one year for Spirit Week. Dean had given his lanyard to Stephanie.

“Don't worry about us,” Dean said to Laird. “Go and shower. We'll tell the team tomorrow.”

“I can come to practice tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

Garrett began to brainstorm ideas for a replacement as soon as the kid was out of earshot. No one was as built as Laird—or as aggressive. That was the thing about Laird; even though his temperament was mellow, almost timid, he was ruthless on the field. Dean had a theory: Because Laird had always been big for his age, he'd had to learn how to be gentle, or risk hurting littler boys. When he played football, he could show his true strength.

“What about Jimmy Smoot?” Garrett asked. “He bulked up over the summer.”

“He's fast,” Dean said. “He's got a sprinter's build. You don't let that kind of speed go.”

“I'll put him down as a question mark,” Garrett said. “All the Smoots are linebacker material. It's in their genes. I went to high school with Jimmy's cousin. His nickname was Bear.”

Garrett knew everyone in Willowboro. He had lived in the area all his life. Dean had arrived when he was twenty-six. Even after fifteen years of coaching and a half-dozen championship teams, he still felt he was regarded as an outsider.

“Okay, here's an idea,” Garrett said. “I've actually been thinking of it for a while, but I sat on it because I know you don't like to poach from other teams.”

“That's a firm policy of mine,” Dean said.

“I know, but there's this pitcher on the baseball team, a junior, and he's a big guy, okay? Kind of a gut, maybe, but we can work with that. He's got a really fast pitch. He's already being scouted. His name's Devlin, Mark Devlin.”

“I know Devlin. He takes gym every year,” Dean said. “I don't want him getting injured.”

“But he wouldn't necessarily,” Garrett said. “And I think if we leaned on him, he would play.”

“You asked him already?”

“I ran the idea by him in the spring. I was at a game. He said he didn't see himself as a football player, but you should see him pitch, he's an animal. He'll hit the batters if he has to.”

“If he doesn't come here voluntarily, I don't want him,” Dean said. “Remember Tyler Shelton? He ruined his knee playing football. Lost a basketball scholarship because of my dumb sales pitch. Trust me, you don't want that kind of guilt.”

The phone rang and Dean picked up right away. It was Stephanie, reminding him in a sour voice to be home by four.

“I have a dinner shift, okay?” she said. “So please don't be late again.”

“You know I can't get home early on double days.”

“You're going to have to figure something out, because I'm only here one more week. Or did you forget that, too?”

The line went dead, but Dean said good-bye before hanging up. Garrett made a show of flipping through the papers on his clipboard.

“Everything okay?” He glanced at Dean quickly.

“I have to get home,” Dean said, ignoring Garrett's half-assed attempt at meaningful conversation. Garrett didn't really want to know. No one did. “Would you mind taking a look at the playbook? Find all the ones that we wrote for Laird. We're going to have to change things up.”

“I'll mark it and make a copy for you.”

“You don't have to do that. We can compare notes tomorrow.”

Dean left, grabbing his cap on the way out. He'd worn his
oldest one today, with the retired logo: a sunrise between two mountains with a small bird gliding in the corner. Now the bird—an eagle—was front and center, the mountains in the background. The sun had been removed.

Outside there were piles of grass clippings everywhere, but no mower in sight. The groundsman liked to start and finish his days early and was probably already at home on his deck, enjoying a cold one. When Dean first started coaching at Willowboro, it had been up to him to maintain the football and practice fields, a side duty he had thoroughly enjoyed, riding atop the whirring mower in the early evenings, feeling at once productive and leisurely as the sky above turned orange and then pink and then violet. He'd lime the sidelines in the dusky light and they would seem to glow. The next morning it would all be waiting for him in bright primary colors.

Dean always felt as if he needed August, as if these long days of practice, unfettered by academic or familial demands, were an interlude that restored him in some way, a time of simple feeling and nostalgia that connected the man he had become to the boy he had once been. It was the time of year when he felt that he knew who he was.

But this year that clarity was gone.

Don't try to get to the end of your grief.
That's what his mother-in-law had told him. She had moved in with them for a few weeks over the summer, and Dean still missed their late-night conversations.

Two teachers waved to Dean from the other end of the lot. Dean waved back vaguely. He didn't know the other faculty that well. He was sequestered in the east annex, where his office, the weight rooms, and the locker rooms bordered two
gyms, one large and one small. The teachers' lounge was at the other end of the school. That was fine with him. Although he taught PE, Dean didn't think coaching had much to do with teaching. He was more like a mechanic, or a horse trainer, like his father. The point was, he didn't consider his work to be intellectual. He'd never thought this was unusual, but Nicole had seized on it on one of their first dates.

“But the kids learn so much from you,” she'd said. “Of course you're a teacher.”

“All I care about is winning games. If they happen to learn something in the process, that's just a by-product.”

She'd laughed, but he wasn't going to be one of those men who claimed that football was “character building.” It wasn't a civilized sport. The training could be brutal. The players were often crude. He could think of few lessons that would serve anyone for a lifetime. It was a moment-by-moment kind of game. That was why he needed it now. All summer long he had been living “one day at a time,” as everyone advised. It was an act of will not to look ahead, not to think about all the ways his future had been destroyed. He tried not to look back, either, but that was harder. Everyone said he couldn't blame himself, but Dean knew they were all thinking the same thing, that it would never happen to them, that they would never
let
it happen. And at the same time everyone told him how shocked they were, how they had
no idea,
how they never would have guessed that someone like her, a woman so, so, so . . . they always struggled to say what had fooled them. So normal, perhaps. Or maybe: so undefined. So easy to project happiness onto.

Maybe they all just had crushes on her. Dean got notes of
condolence from her country club clients, most of them male, all of them recalling Nicole's sunny nature.
She always had a smile for me,
one wrote.
As if that meant anything,
Dean thought bitterly. He hated how grief made him cynical. The world, for him, was now full of shortsighted, awkward idiots.

Dean drove down Main Street, which was actually Route 40, an old road you could take west all the way to Utah. Or east to Baltimore. Dean could still remember learning the roads in the area, before everything became rote, before he met Nicole. There had been a time when he wasn't even sure he'd stay very long in this particular corner of western Maryland, this tiny town tucked into the skinny arm of the state. Even though it was several hours from his father's, it had seemed too close to where he'd grown up. Or maybe it had just seemed too small.

Willowboro had never been prosperous or historically significant. Unlike other nearby towns, which had hosted Civil War battles and bunkered generals, Willowboro's wartime role was to receive the bodies of the dead after the Battle of Antietam. This ghoulish task had taken place in the town's livery stables, now the site of Weddle's Nursing Home. The place gave Dean the creeps, but he had to visit it every October with his players. They would sing fight songs, and then Dean would give an overview of the season, with slides. It was called “A Night with the Coach,” and it was open to the whole town. The point was to get people to visit their infirm relatives, and it worked. Only Christmastime was busier.

Dean turned right at the stoplight, driving past the four businesses that were the cornerstones of Willowboro's social life: Asaro's Pizza, Mike's Video Time, Jenny's Luncheonette, and the post office. Willow Park was tucked behind them, a
small but quaint landscape with arched stone bridges, wooden pavilions, playgrounds, and, of course, willow trees—the grandchildren of the original trees, planted at the turn of the century. Before it was called Willowboro, the town was called Weddle, for its founding brothers. Dean thought that the dopey, sleepy-sounding “Weddle” was more fitting.

Willowboro was bounded by two stoplights, and the town quickly thinned out on either side of them, the sidewalks petering out to accommodate the shoulders of wider roads. The Legion Hall, with its beige siding and sloping black roof, marked the edge of town. The football banquet, homecoming dance, and prom were held there every year. A half mile past the Legion Hall was Shank's Produce, which was owned by Dean's sort-of in-laws, Vivian and Walter Shank. The Shanks were the parents of Nicole's first husband, Sam. Sam was buried ten miles from here, and after the Shanks moved away, they talked about getting him exhumed to a cemetery closer to them. Nicole thought they said things like this to get under her skin, but Dean thought they were just odd people. Stephanie liked them, though. And they were a good influence. He doubted she'd be going to a college like Swarthmore if they hadn't pushed her to apply.

The new Sheetz loomed ahead, bright red and yellow and simple in design, like something a kid would make with Legos. Dean stopped to fill up and then decided to go ahead and get some subs for dinner. It was the third time this week they'd had them, but it was the only thing the boys ate with any kind of appetite.

He ran into Jimmy Smoot in the parking lot. He was with a girl Dean didn't recognize and drinking a mouthwash-blue
Freeze. His Adam's apple bulged in his skinny, razor-burned neck and Dean thought that Garrett was wrong; this kid was not going to bulk up, not ever.

“Hey, Coach,” Smoot said. “You tried these? It's team colors.”

“You should drink chocolate milk after practice. You need protein with your carbohydrates.”

The girl crossed her arms. “Plus milk doesn't give you Smurf lips.”

“This is my sister, Missy,” Smoot said. “She's going to be a freshman this year.”

“
Melissa,
” the girl corrected. She was tall, like her brother, and had his rangy, broad-shouldered frame, which she accentuated by wearing oversized clothing: baggy jean shorts and a black T-shirt with the word
HOLE
on it. Layered over the T-shirt was a short-sleeved button-down, also oversized. The ensemble was intensely unflattering, but Dean recognized it as “alt style.” Stephanie had explained this term to him when she began to dress in the same way.

“Are you an athlete, like your brother?” Dean asked her.