War and Watermelon (14 page)

She shrugs and smiles. “Cool.” And then she goes into the locker room.

I head into the bathroom and run the water until it turns cold, then splash some on my face and wipe it off with the front of my T-shirt. I look at myself in the mirror. Feeling good.

The game-winning touchdown. And great teamwork.

I'm starting to like junior high school.

I
'm still awake when Ryan comes home from work, watching
The Honeymooners
in the family room with Dad. Mom went to bed an hour ago. It's the one where Ralph and Norton get handcuffed together on the train to the Raccoon convention.

Ryan is wearing that red headband again.

“You didn't work in that thing, did you?” Dad asks.

“No. That'd get me fired.” Ryan opens the refrigerator and takes out the pitcher of lemonade. “Of course, that would probably be the best move I could make.”

“Getting fired?”

“Sure. Who needs that job anyway?”

Dad gets up from the couch and walks to the kitchen. I stay where I am on the love seat, but I can hear every word they say.

“Listen, buddy. The guy who needs that job is you.”

“What for? As if I'm making some great career move by stacking bags of frozen string beans.”

“Right. You'd be much better off just watching TV all day.”

“That job rots.”

“So find a better one. The corporate world is falling all over itself trying to find
high school graduates
like you.”

I can hear Ryan pouring the lemonade. There's a pause, then he sets the glass down with a
clink
. “I should travel,” he says. “Go see California or something.”

“In that car you don't have.”

“I could hitch. Or take a bus.”

“With that money you're not earning.”

“I am earning money.”

“Right. By working.”

I can hear them glaring at each other. “You don't get it,” Ryan says for about the hundredth time this summer.

“Listen,” Dad says. “What I get is that it's very easy to think big when you're seventeen and you imagine that your future is unlimited. But you're in total denial, Ryan. September ninth is four days away. The government has a nice birthday present waiting for you. It's called a draft card.”

“You think I don't know that?”

“There's been no evidence that you do.”

“I'm not buying into their fascist system, Dad.”

Dad's voice gets loud now, and very intense. “You bought into it the day you were born, buddy. You're an American. You think I want you going to Vietnam? You think I'm happy that you haven't done a damn thing to avoid that?”

“I
am
doing things, Dad.”

“Like what?”

“Like speaking out against this stupid war.”

“To who? To Brody? To the back-end losers at Shop-Rite? Tell me who, Ryan. Your genius friend Skippy?”

They're quiet for half a minute. Ryan mutters, “This is a pointless conversation.” He comes into the family room and flops down on the couch.

Dad comes, too, but he just stands behind us and stares at the television. Ralph and Norton are now trying to go to sleep in the same bunk, since they can't get the trick handcuffs undone. Usually we'd be laughing our heads off, even though we've seen this episode fifty times. But we all just sit there in silence.

Ryan slowly pulls the headband off and sets it on the coffee table. I catch his eye and he frowns, then lets out a sigh.

I switch the station and we catch the end of the sports report; the Mets split a doubleheader with the Phillies. Then they repeat the top news story of the day: The U.S. Army has brought charges against a lieutenant for the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai last year.

There's an episode of
The Burns and Allen Show
on channel 11, but we just stare at it for five minutes.

Dad clears his throat. “You know, Ryan, it's admirable when someone stands up for a cause they truly believe in. Martin Luther King, the Kennedys. But it's chicken shit when a kid just sits in a safe environment—Mommy making his dinner every night, Daddy paying the bills—and makes a lot of noise without taking any action. At least—at the very least—you need to get yourself into college as soon as possible and give yourself some cover. There's a real world out there, buddy. Realer than you want to know.”

Dad heads upstairs. Ryan lies down and stares at the ceiling. Then he shuts his eyes, and I just look at him for a few minutes. The laugh track on the TV show is going strong, but I don't pay attention. He rubs his eyes.

Ryan sits up and nods at me. I can tell Dad shook him up. He carefully folds the headband into a square. Then he goes back to the kitchen and returns with another glass of lemonade. He uses the folded-up headband as a coaster.

“Did you want anything?” he asks softly.

“No. I'm good.”

He nods again and chews gently on his lip. “He's right,” he says eventually. “You do have to take action. . . . And I plan to. Just not the way he wants me to.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “I don't know yet. More than just speaking out, I guess. Something that'll make more of a difference.”

“Oh.”

I should get to bed; we've got another game tomorrow night. But I wouldn't be sleeping anyway, so I'd rather stay here with Ryan. He's been there for me. Teaching me how to shoot a basketball or cook a hot dog. Taking me to the movies, even when he goes to the drive-in with Jenny. Giving me things like a Giants jersey he got too big for, or a flashlight when I was four and scared that there was a monster in my closet.

Now he's scared. I'm scared, too.

We might as well sit here together.

O
ur second game is a rare away one at night. It's at Hudson City, which has a lighted field like ours.

On the bus ride over, the cheerleaders go through all the players' names. I brace for my own: “Rah rah Brody Winslow!” I don't think half the cheerleaders even know who I am. I'm not sure any of them do. At least they act like they don't if I pass them in the hallway at school.

Not that I care that much. They're kind of stuck-up. But I seem pretty much invisible to girls on the whole. Except maybe Diane. I'm not invisible to her, but I don't know if I'm just a humorous guy who sits next to her in school or somebody she could get interested in.

Tony nudges me when he hears Stephie doing the cheer for my name. I elbow him back harder. She's going out with Lorenzo, apparently.

Most of the guys are staring out the windows or at the back of the seats in front of them. Very intense. We heard that Hudson City won big last week. Much bigger than our one-point squeaker. So everybody's quietly getting psyched up.

We'll be kicking off to start the game, so I trot over to the opposite sideline and bounce up and down a few times. Hudson City's in red jerseys and black helmets. You can see the Empire State Building across the river from the field and the high-rises of Jersey City a little ways down the river on this side.

The Hudson City guy across from me is a lot bigger than I am. Mitchell kicks off and I angle away from the sideline, waiting for Sarnoski to pass me. Two Hudson City players move to block him, and I dart past them all and get over to where I'm supposed to be.

I do a perfect box-and-in, but the action is on the other side of the field. Looks like Tony got in on the tackle.

I run to our sideline and join him in front of the bench.

“Totally nailed the guy,” Tony says, pulling off his helmet. He heads to the watercooler and gets a cupful. “Saved a touchdown.”

Didn't look that way to me. That whole side of the field was well covered. But let him think that if he wants to. It's his first real contribution of the season.

We get back on the field midway through the second quarter after Esposito dives into the end zone. The coaches kept him out of the scrimmages all week to make sure his ankle would heal, and he seems fine now.

This time the returner comes straight up the middle. It's tempting to head toward him, but my job is to protect the sideline. Good thing, too, because his teammates throw a couple of blocks and he turns my way. Sarnoski makes the initial hit, but the guy is still moving forward. I hesitate for a split second, remembering that penalty, but then I throw myself at his waist and wrap both arms around him. He goes down.

My teammates are clapping and yelling as we run off. “Good coverage!” Coach Epstein calls, though not directly at me.

We're up 7–6 at the half—the exact same score as last week's final. Looks like it'll be too close again for me to get any playing time outside of the kickoffs.

But Esposito scores again in the third quarter, and Ferrante scrambles around the end for a touchdown late in the fourth. Still, I'm surprised when Coach says, “Where's that mini-backfield?”

He waves me, Tony, and Salinardi over. “If we hold 'em here and get the ball back, you guys are going in,” he says. “Just run the ball and
hold onto it.
Basically, we'll run out the clock.”

I try to swallow, but my mouth has turned bone-dry
.
So I get a cup of water and hold it in there. Then I swallow it, but I'm so nervous it nearly comes back up.

The opportunity comes with 1:19 remaining, after a Hudson City drive stalls at our forty.

“They'll be coming at you with everything they've got,” Coach Epstein tells us. “Hold on to that ball.”

Salinardi is stuttering in the huddle. This game is probably out of reach, but a major screwup would make things dicey. “Umm . . . twenty . . . no, forty-three,” he says. “On two.”

That's a handoff to me.

I put my hands on my knees and stare at Tony's back. He'll hit the hole first. All I want to do is gain a couple of yards and kill the clock. Nothing fancy.

Tony lunges to the right. I follow him. But Salinardi pivots to the left. I stop cold. He wraps both arms around the ball and goes down hard.

“What happened?” he says as we huddle up. “Forty-three is to the left!”

I shut my eyes. I know that. But Tony went the wrong way and I stayed behind him. “My fault,” I say.

He turns and looks at the clock. Hudson City called time-out as soon as he was tackled, so we've still got 1:08 left.

“Thirty-three,” he says. “Tony. To the
left
. On two.”

Tony scrambles forward and gets back to the original line of scrimmage. Hudson City calls its final time-out. It's third-and-ten.

Colaneri comes running onto the field, sending Tony off. “Coach says don't pass,” he tells Salinardi. “Hand off to Brody.”

“Okay,” Salinardi says. “Forty-four.”

“Follow me,” Colaneri says, not looking at me. “We need yards.”

The handoff is clean and I hug the ball. I get a nice block from Colaneri and churn through the line. I see daylight to my left, but it closes quickly, so I keep running straight and a linebacker hauls me down.

“Nice run!” Colaneri says, yanking me to my feet. I look over at the sideline and see that I'm halfway between the sticks. So it's fourth-and-five, but now the clock is running.

“Let it go,” Colaneri says in the huddle. He's taken over; Salinardi is just listening. “I'll call time-out with about twenty seconds left. Then you just hand off to me. Game over.”

So that should be it for me. I line up behind Colaneri, then run behind him as he charges into the line. He picks up seven. First down. The seconds tick off and we celebrate.

“Great win!” Magrini says, running onto the field with his helmet held high.

“Two-and-O, baby!” Ferrante yells. “Out of sight!”

We're rowdy all the way home. Somebody says something about going to Lovey's for pizza. I hate pizza, but I figure we should walk down that way and hang out a while.

Tony's kind of angry. “Why'd he yank me out?” he asks. “I'd just made a huge gain.”

The gain was two yards, but that
is
huge compared to a loss. “He had to get a message to Salinardi to keep the ball on the ground,” I say. “That's all.”

“Yeah, I guess. But he could have taken you out. You're the one who messed up on the first play.”

“That's because I was following you.”

“I was being a decoy,” he says.

“That's not how the play works.”

He laughs. “I know. I forgot. But you shouldn't have; you were getting the ball!”

“Just as well,” I say. “There was no hole. Joey got clobbered.”

Tony shrugs. The bus comes to a stop and we pile off.

“You got money?” Tony asks.

“I got a dollar in my sock.”

“Buy me a soda at least?”

“Sure.”

We duck into the Garden State store and get two cans of 7UP. By the time we reach Lovey's, it's full. So we just stand outside—not exactly part of the scene, but not totally removed from it, either.

I keep thinking about my run. First official carry of my career. Five yards. A statistic nobody can ever take away from me.

We watch the constant stream of cars and buses for about twenty minutes, just sipping our 7UP and leaning against the front of the pizza place.

“Had enough?” Tony asks.

“Yeah.” I look into Lovey's. Every table is full, most of them with football players and cheerleaders. They're all laughing and eating.