Necessary Roughness (12 page)

“Whoa, you’re messed up.” Jimmi took a step back.

“You have no idea, asshole. Come on. Take them.”

“Chan …” said Mikko, now that he saw what I was intending to do. “Don’t let these guys get to you. Look, we’re in the middle of the season. If you hurt yourself—”

“I know what I’m doing!”

But did I? A large knot in the grain could stop me. If Jimmi or Rom moved the boards at the last second, I’d be dead. The skinny bones connecting the knuckles to the wrist would split like twigs. I’d seen it happen before. But all I wanted to do was break those boards, as if I’d be breaking Rom’s head at the same time.

Jimmi was starting to look relieved.

“I knew you were chicken,” he said.

I looked at the two of them standing there holding the boards.

When you dive off a high board, the square of
water below looks so small, impossibly small. Just like when you hit a board, it looks hard, impossibly hard.

Crack!
A horrible, terrible, splintery sound. Raw pain shot through my hand, up my arm.

The boards fell to the floor.

“Oh geez,” breathed Jimmi.

“Wow,” said Leland. “If only you could do that in a game.”

Rom just laughed.

Everyone wanted me to show how I did it, but I went home soon after that. I somehow felt dirty, like I’d flashed everyone on a dare or something. I didn’t feel the way I thought I would. Mikko didn’t say much to me either. He seemed kind of disappointed in me.

I think the store must have been doing halfway decent, because Abogee hired a night manager, Greg, so that Froggie’s 24-Hour Express could start living up to its full name. Before, we were closing at midnight. O-Ma also declared that she would take Young and me to the mall in Little Moon Bay so we could get real jackets, now that the temperature was only in the forties and fifties during the day. I said I’d wait for my letter jacket, which, the coaches said, we juniors would get early this year so we could wear them to the state tournament. God willing.

“Okay, guys, the F-S dinner is going to be this Saturday,” Coach announced as we all luxuriated in the stink and steam of the postpractice locker room. Rom’s newest ritual was to stop taking showers a whole week before a game so his pads— and his hide—radiated the most lethal smells. Poison gas. He smelled worse than the bums who used to
come into our store for quarts of malt liquor.

“We’re doing the dinner a little earlier this year so you juniors can get your letter jackets. Also, because we want you to spend a little quality time with your old men before we concentrate on practice. It will be this Saturday at the VFW, seven thirty. That means coats and ties, for the uninitiated.”

“Letter jackets—sweet!” someone said.

“What’s F-S?” I said to Mikko.

“Father-son,” he said. “You bring your dad.”

Father-son. For the wildest of moments, I imagined I’d ask Abogee to come to the dinner with me, and he’d say, “Son, I’d be proud to. When is it?”

But then I realized that was only an episode of the sitcom in my head,
The Lovingly Wacky Kim Family,
which had absolutely no bearing on reality. For starters, Abogee would never call me “son.” And could you imagine what he’d be like at a football dinner? Especially with dads like Mikko’s around? Abogee would probably go around spouting his favorite antifootball sayings.

“Anyone can build muscle, but building brain is more difficult.”

“Football
is so popular in this country because it provides people with an excuse to drink beer.”

“In Korea, grown men would not waste their time fighting each other over a tiny ball.”

Uh-uh.

“Coach, I don’t think my dad can make it. He has some stuff to do at the store that day.”

Coach looked at me.

“Maybe Mikko’s dad can adopt me for the night,” I suggested.

“Your father owns Froggie’s, right?”

I nodded.

“That must be a lot of work.”

“Uh-huh. Sure is.”

“Well, tell him I hope he can come. But if not, I’m sure Rip would love to have another son.”

Chan Ripanen. For a second, I couldn’t help thinking how nice that sounded.

When I asked
ALL-PRO
if I could go to dinner with him and his dad, he said sure, but he gave me a bit of a funny look.

“Too bad your dad’s going to be busy.”

“Yeah. The store takes up a lot of his time.”

“Looks like it. Looks like you and your sister help out a lot too.”

“I guess so.”

Okay, I felt a little guilty about dismissing Abogee without even asking him. But it was more like I was doing it for him, doing my usual job of trying to figure out what would best please him—or at least preserve the uneasy peace between us—without actually telling him what was going on.

*  *  *

I was doing some extra-credit reading for English when Abogee emerged from the trapdoor like a jack-in-the-box.

“How is football?” he said, hoisting himself into my room and sitting down on the floor.

I was stunned by two things: He was speaking English, and he was voluntarily uttering the word
football.

“It’s okay,” I said, as naturally as I could.

“I meet Coach, that man, Do-Sun.”

“Coach?”

“Yes-u. He come into store today.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So this man, Do-Sun, say you good at football.”

I sat up in a hurry. Not at the news that Coach thought I was a good player—which was thrilling in itself—but something else really threw me.

Abogee actually sounded a little proud of me.

I had a weird sensation. It was one of those feelings where, for the fleetingest of moments, you think everything’s going to be all right. Like everything, even between me and Abogee.

“So did Coach tell you about the father-son dinner Saturday?”

Abogee nodded. “I will go,” he said.

I was just about to tell him how happy I was that
he was coming, when he said, “This man also be you and sister calculus teacher next year.”

Oh.

“Maybe we should bring Young along, so we can butter him up at the same time.” I knew my sarcasm would be lost on him.

“So I have Gary work Saturday evening,” Abogee said. He got up stiffly, his joints crackling and popping like mine did during morning practice. He disappeared down the stairs, and the door sprang shut behind him.

I shook my head to clear it before settling back down to the books. I would be bringing Abogee to the father-son dinner. How about that.

“What are we expected to wear to this dinner?”
Abogee said to me. He actually sounded a bit bewildered. I’d already told him nice clothes, but I guess that wasn’t enough.

“A tie,”
I said.
“Nice white shirt, pants.”

Abogee dug into his drawer and dug out a heinous turquoise-and-yellow clip-on bow tie, which looked like a butterfly poised for flight.

“No, a real tie, like this.”
I pointed to the classy red-silk number that Young had bought me last year for my—our—birthday.

Abogee sighed, but dug out the one tie he owned, the one he wore to weddings and funerals back in L.A. He knotted it first, then slipped it over his head like a noose. I noticed that his neck no longer filled out his shirt collar, so the tie hung a little low, like a necklace.

Abogee also seemed to have grown more white hairs since we’d been here. His hair, raven-black,
showed the little white shoots really plainly to the eye. Still, when I stepped back and looked at him in his coat, tie, and pants (shoes would come later), I was struck, as I was from time to time, at how good-looking he was. Tough, sort of like a Korean Clint Eastwood. He probably doesn’t know this, but I hope my face will look craggy like that, after I get older and some of this baby fat melts away.

I’d never been inside the VFW before. It was a brick building squatting by the side of the highway with a big sign:
VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS.
In front it flew the American flag, the VFW one, and a huge black POW/MIA flag. On Saturday nights the place filled up for bingo and country/western dances. On weekdays you might see old guys in flannel shirts limping into it.
ALL-PRO
said that the guys at the VFW, along with the Elks and Rotary clubs, were the ones who raised the money for our new Riddell helmets.

Tonight there were plenty of cars in the lot. I recognized the Hunchback—Leland’s banged-up Omni hatchback—Rom’s red pickup, Kearny’s sporty Firebird. Abogee parked Lou next to the Hunchback and actually made the Hunchback look good.

We made our way past the bar and TV lounge into a hall filled with tables covered with white paper. Name tags in swirly writing told us where to sit. Everyone looked scrubbed and presentable—almost
too presentable. I was used to hanging out with everyone stinking, retching, and burping, looking imposing in helmets and pads and ground-in dirt. Now everyone looked smaller, more like kids and less like warriors. It was vaguely disappointing.

Abogee studied the walls, which contained murals: furious orange, red, and green scenes of battle, painted comics style. I took him to our places and checked out the tags next to us. We were going to be sitting next to
ALL-PRO
and his dad.

“What’s this?” said
ALL-PRO,
looking at the other tags. “Romulus Kreeger? Jimmi Joseph Beargrease?” He looked like he was considering moving them, but then he turned to Abogee.

“Hi, Mr. Kim.” He held out his hand. “Mikko Ripanen. Remember me?”

Abogee’s smile was a little stiff, as if he needed more practice to get it right. Still, he took ALL-PRO’S hand.

Across the room, Coach and ALL-PRO’S dad were rolling in some shared laughter, Coach bent over double, slapping his thigh, ALL-PRO’S dad going “Haw haw-HAW!” like I’d never heard him. The two of them had played on the Miners together, twenty-four years ago.

When we sat down to eat, Jimmi hadn’t shown up yet, but Rom had. His father introduced himself as
Dr.
Kreeger. He wore a nice three-piece suit and a ring with a diamond in it. Abogee seemed impressed.
Then he turned around and asked me in Korean where the bathroom was.

“That was a beautiful twenty-yard pass you completed last week,” Dr. Kreeger told
ALL-PRO.

“Dad, shut up. The coaches are about to speak,” said Rom.

My mouth popped open like a mailbox, but no one else at the table—including Dr. Kreeger—seemed shocked.

Dinner was mud-colored roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn. Abogee ate carefully, sawing each little piece of meat just so. My meat had been tough and gristly, and I left a bunch of chewed wads on my plate, but Abogee ate everything. For dessert we had Jell-O with pink foamy stuff on top.

As coffee was being served, the coaches started circulating from table to table. Dr. Kreeger got up and started saying hi to people at other tables. I just sat there with Abogee, both of us silent.

“Hi, Mr. Kim, glad you could make it,” said Coach. “Jann has worked really hard this year. We’re very proud of him.”

“Oh, my son terrible,” Abogee said, the briefest of smiles betraying him. Korean parents
always
counter a compliment to their child with an insult, to appear properly modest. “Chan, he lazy, not study. No good at football either.”

Coach looked from Abogee to me, as if he was trying to get a clue on how to take it. I thought for a second of letting him think that Abogee was mean, but I grinned back at him instead. He seemed a bit relieved.

“Jann’s not only talented, but he’s also a hard worker,” Coach went on. “I’ve never seen a kicker work so hard to get downfield.”

Abogee just nodded. I don’t think he could tell downfield from a shuffleboard court.

“Hey, Mikey!” Coach went on to talk to Mikko’s dad. “Oh, geez,” I heard Mr. Ripanen say. Soon the two of them were guffawing again, Mr. Ripanen clapping his hand on Mikko’s shoulder. They were talking about when the Miners went down to State—back when
they
were in high school. I guess Mr. Ripanen had caught the winning pass. The way the three of them were laughing, it was like they shared a secret language or something.

“Okay, quiet please.” Coach was at a podium set up in the front of the room.

You could have heard a piece of mooshy roast drop to the floor. A good coach is like that—he commands attention the minute he walks into a room. And he makes you want to do things for him not because he yells at you or shames you, but because you want to make him proud.

“It’s always great to be at the father-son dinner, to have the dads sharing in some of their boys’ accomplishments. This year we’re really on a roll. Of course, we’re not there yet, but our record up until now is something to be proud of. It just goes to show that if you work together, you can achieve anything.

“So in a show of faith, we have some awards for you hardworking juniors. We’re going to count on you to grow up, provide the leadership for the underclassmen next year.”

The coaches started handing out different awards. Mikko got “Best Arm for a Junior,” and when he went up, the coaches presented him with a black-and-red letter jacket. I almost gasped, it was so beautiful. The sleeves were thick black leather, the body heavy red wool with a big IR on the front.

“This next one is the Twinkle Toes award for our guy Jann, who comes out and kicks and then runs like hell to make the tackle. He’s not just twinkle toes for his magical kicking, either: He’s a real wiry runner, an excellent back. Greased lightning. This one’s for you, Kim.”

The applause picked me up by my armpits and escorted me to the front of the room. I came back with my prize—it felt like it weighed thirty pounds—and I couldn’t help looking at Abogee and grinning, a little. Abogee looked back at me and nodded. There is a drop of pride inside that Abogee statue somewhere, I think.

“We gotta get Thorson to quit calling you Jann,”
ALL-PRO
said, already wearing his new jacket. “It’s driving me crazy.”

“Did you have a good time, Abogee?” I asked as we got up to leave.