Tangerine (23 page)

We dove through the door, nearly capsizing a glass trophy case in the foyer. Around the corner, in the great room, a videotape of a Florida Gators football game was playing on a big-screen TV. And there sat Erik—composed, casual, wearing his football-hero smile. He was on a long couch with Mr. Donnelly and two other men, who Mr. Donnelly introduced as Larry and Frank. Erik stood up when the others did, like a gentleman would. Everything seemed to be going exactly as planned. Larry and Frank were smiling. They seemed to like Erik; to be impressed with him; to be ready to support the Erik Fisher Football Dream in any way they could.

Mom looked around and said, "So where is Arthur?"

Erik seemed genuinely surprised by the question. He said, "Arthur? He's out in the truck," as if to say,
Where else would he be?

But Mr. Donnelly called over to his son, "Terry! Go outside and tell that boy to come in."

Erik waved at Terry Donnelly and said, "Nah. Nah. He doesn't want to come in. He smells too much like bug spray."

Mom sniffed. "Now that you mention it, so do you."

Erik pulled his shirt up to his nose and sniffed, too. "Bauer always has bug spray in the truck. In case we want to go mud runnin'."

Mr. Donnelly said, "Yeah. Those swamp skeeters'll eat you alive."

The conversation went on like that for a while. Erik remained charming. Larry and Frank remained impressed. Arthur Bauer remained in the truck.

Mr. Donnelly turned out to be a nice guy. And a good host. He didn't sit there listening to Erik all night. He talked to Dad about Old Charley Burns and the parties he used to have in his skybox. Then he talked to Mom about the concerns of the Architectural Committee.

I drifted back over to that glass trophy case to examine its contents. A lot of it seemed to be rinky-dink stuff that Terry Donnelly won as a kid. But there were a couple of old things that belonged to Mr. Donnelly. Suddenly he was at my elbow, saying, "I keep my Heisman Trophy out in the garage." I laughed, and he continued. "Now, what about you, Paul? Are you a kicker, too?"

"I play soccer, sir."

"Ah, then I suppose you
are
a kicker. Do you play for Lake Windsor Middle?"

"No, sir. I play for the War Eagles—Tangerine Middle School."

He opened his eyes wide. "I remember! Betty Bright's team! You have those all-star girls playing for you, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"How is your season going?"

"We're number one. We're undefeated. We're breaking all county scoring records."

Mr. Donnelly looked at me with increasing interest. "And you're doing all that with a mixed boy-girl team?"

"Yes, sir."

He nodded. "I've known your coach for a long time. She's an extraordinary person. Does she ever talk about her track career?"

"No, sir."

"No? Well, let me tell you, Betty Bright is the greatest track and field athlete ever to come out of this area. She ran the hundred-meter dash and the hundred-meter hurdles; she threw the discus and the javelin; she did the high jump and the broad jump. She did it all, right over at Tangerine High."

"Did she ever play soccer?"

"No. Not to my knowledge. She became famous as a hurdler. I mean really famous. The
Times
started a fund to send her to the U.S. Olympic trials back in 1978. She made the team, too! She competed in the Pan Am Games in Buenos Aires the next year." Here Mr. Donnelly turned to the men who were watching football. "Do you guys remember that fund drive we had for Betty Bright?"

Larry got up and joined us. "Sure. She's the runner."

"The hurdler," Mr. Donnelly corrected him. He turned back to me. "I remember Larry and a bunch of us at the newspaper office one Saturday afternoon watching Betty Bright on
ABC's Wide World of Sports.
You know—the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. And there she was! It was a great feeling. Our paper had gotten behind her cause, and now there she was!"

Larry interjected, "She got punched or something, right?"

"Right. The East German hit her in the eye going over the first hurdle. Betty finished fourth in her heat and didn't qualify to go on."

Larry reached his fist over to demonstrate next to my face. "This German punched her right here. Knocked her off her balance. You could see it on the replay."

Mr. Donnelly picked up the story. "The U.S. coach protested, but nothing came of it. That was it. She was out of the competition."

Larry said, "Yeah. It was a bad break. And then she ran into the boycott."

"Right." Mr. Donnelly explained for my benefit. "Two years later the U.S. boycotted the Olympic games in Moscow, so
none
of our athletes got to go." He stopped and stuck a finger into the middle of my chest. "But all that aside, Betty Bright was great, and she had a great amateur career. We were proud to have sponsored her. She got a free ride through college out of it. She got scholarship offers from all the big schools. She chose Florida A & M so she could stay close to her family."

Mom, Dad, and Erik walked up behind Mr. Donnelly. He turned and said, "What? You're leaving so soon?"

Mom smiled. "I'm afraid so. Busy, busy, busy."

"Hey, it was great to meet you, Erik." Mom, Dad, and Erik smiled. "And it was great to meet you, too, Paul." Mom, Dad, and Erik all pulled back at once, as if in group shock, as if that was the craziest thing they had ever heard. We said a couple more good-byes and hustled outside, ready to run in case the mosquitoes were still there. They weren't.

Erik walked up and opened the passenger-side door of the Land Cruiser. I don't think Arthur expected that. He looked up quickly, his eyes wide and startled in the dome light. He scooped something shiny from the dashboard into a plastic bag as Erik closed the door. Then all was dark inside again. The Land Cruiser's engine roared to life, and they pulled away.

Mom, Dad, and I walked home through the smoky air. We all had come up with things to say to Mr. Donnelly, bright and clever things. But we had nothing left to say to each other.

When we got to our house, Dad unlocked his car, reached in, and pressed the garage-door opener. The door slid up for us just as we reached it. We all ducked inside quickly, but I stopped myself at the kitchen door. I had to stop, and I had to look back, because something was nagging at me. Troubling me. A memory?

Mom called back to me, "Will you get the garage-door button, please?"

One of them must have turned on the message machine, because I suddenly heard my grandmother's voice. She said, "Caroline, your father and I are talking about taking some vacation time down in Florida..."

I heard those few words spoken in Grandmom's flat voice. I heard them deep inside me. I never heard the rest of her message. I stood still in that garage, staring back out at that driveway. And I remembered:

Standing in our garage in Huntsville,
staring out at the driveway. Grandmom and Grandpop came walking up. They each carried an overnight bag in one hand. Erik suddenly appeared on the driveway, so they stopped to say hello to him.

Mom was standing next to me. I remember her bending over and whispering, "Paul, darling, don't say anything bad to Grandmom and Grandpop."

They resumed walking up to where we stood. Grandmom looked at me and then leaned back, as if to see me better, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Grandpop leaned the other way. He bent right over, right in my face, and said, "What the hell happened to your eyes?"

Mom told them, "We can talk about it inside. The important thing is that he's going to be OK."

I remember them all going in, leaving me staring out at that driveway. Leaving me to stare out at Erik, who was staring back in at me.

We had our last home game today, against Manatee Middle. They hadn't won a game all year, and they had been recently trounced 8–0 by Lake Windsor Middle. They looked terrified to be on the same field as the fearsome War Eagles.

I got to start the game at left wing because Nita was out with the flu.

At about two minutes into the game, Maya hooked a thirty-yard shot right into the net. The goaltender never even moved. At five minutes into the game, she did it again. But this time the ball hit the right post and came bouncing back at chest level, right across the mouth of the goal. I dove at it and connected with my forehead, right above the glasses. I hit the ground, and the ball sailed into the back of the net. A beautiful highlight-reel goal.

Victor pulled me to my feet, shouting, "Yeah! Yeah! Come on, let's get another!"

We lined up again quickly, as we always do. The Manatee coach called time-out and came running onto the field to talk to the referee. We had to stand there and wait while the referee signaled Betty Bright to join them. It wasn't until then that I noticed the storm overhead. It had blown in quickly, darkening the field and lowering the temperature. A bolt of lightning shot down; the thunder followed almost immediately.

The coaches' conference broke up, and the Manatee guy waved his players off the field. They seemed eager to get away from us and back into their bus. Betty Bright called us into a circle. "The coach says they can't play in any lightning. It's their school policy."

Victor said, "So they quit? That's the game?"

"No. Right now it's a rain delay. Let's all get inside and try to keep loose."

We ran into the building and congregated around the double doors in the back. The referee, a tall woman with short blond hair, came in behind us just as the rain hit. Victor went up to her. "Yo, ref, what's up with this? Are we gonna have to play some kind of rain-out game?"

The referee wrote something into a little notebook. She replied, "Nope. This is it. You play today, or it goes down as 'No game' in our book."

"What's that mean?"

"It's like it didn't happen."

Victor grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me dramatically. "What about Fisher Man's goal?"

The referee sounded sympathetic. "It didn't happen. Not if we don't play at least half a game."

"Man!" Victor pounded angrily on my back. "We were gonna murder these chumps! It was gonna be, like, fifty to nothing. I was gonna up my numbers!"

Betty Bright kept looking out the window. She said, "It doesn't matter. We might play. If we don't, we're still undefeated"—she paused to point at Victor—"and untied."

"And untied" was a reference to Lake Windsor Middle School and what had happened to them yesterday. Up until yesterday, they'd had the same record as us. Then they took that bus ride to Palmetto Middle School, Home of the Whippoorwills, and got stuck in a 0–0 tie. Maybe they couldn't handle the dirty play, or the acorn throwers.

We hung around near the back door, shuffling in our cleats, for twenty more minutes of pounding rain. Finally Betty Bright called out, "There they go!" We crowded by the doors, and I could see the red taillights of the Manatee bus receding in the rain.

Victor turned to the referee. "They quit, right? It's a forfeit!"

The referee shook her head. "No. Not under these circumstances. You could never have played in this weather."

"We play in any weather, lady. We're the War Eagles."

The referee handed a piece of paper to Betty Bright. "I guess that's up to you. But this is a 'No game' today. All right, Coach?"

Betty Bright nodded. She signaled for us to gather around. "Nothing more we can do here today. Maya, Paul Fisher, good going with those goals—but they don't count, so we have to forget about them. Everybody get up to your classrooms and get changed, with no horsing around. We have practice tomorrow, our last practice. We have a game on Friday, our last game."

Victor interjected, "Lake Windsor, home of that Gino chump."

The coach replied, "Lake Windsor, home of the only other undefeated team. But they couldn't put the ball in the goal yesterday."

"Yeah. They shut out that Gino fool."

"You forget about him, Victor, or you'll end up the fool. You concentrate on
us
putting the ball in the goal. If we get over there and lose our heads, lose our focus, we lose everything that we worked for."

"But we could win it all, too. Right?"

"That's right. Remember, all of you, we have the better record. The title is ours to win. Like they say in the big leagues, we're in control of our own destiny."

I must have made an impression on Mr. Donnelly. We're all over the front page of today's
Tangerine Times
sports section. There is a long article about middle school soccer and a "Looking Back" feature about Betty Bright at the Pan American Games.

First the soccer article. It named the top three scorers in the county. Maya Pandhi, of course, is number one, with 22 goals. But check this out—Gino Deluca and Victor Guzman are tied for number two, with 18 goals apiece. The article goes on to point out that Maya herself has scored more goals than most of the teams in the county. The scoring total for Tangerine Middle School is an awesome 52 goals, which is already ten above the previous record.