Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash
“Hey, Coach!” I hollered as I walked up the hallway with the rest of my classmates, Coach Willis standing guard at the double doors of the cafeteria like an overfed sheepdog. “Looks like I’m off the team.”
“What’s that, Rodriguez?”
“I’m failing your wife’s class.”
“No, sir,” he said with a wry grin that hid beneath his upside down V of a thin salt and pepper mustache and accented a short, egg-shaped body always clad in the elastic blue and gray BIKE apparel that stretched around his rotund waistline, “you’re not.”
Bigger and more athletic than the average eighth-grader, I had proven my meddle down in the trenches, if not in Mrs. Willis’s social studies class, where my steady academic decline had culminated in my first F since that semester in sixth grade, soon after my cousin John Paul and his hundred and one joints came to live with Mom and me. I’d of course heard about football players getting free grades and taking steroids – it was all over the news – but this was junior high. And considering I wasn’t a quarterback, running back or receiver, I didn’t think I was all that important to the coaching staff. Still, I couldn’t have been more pleased. Not only did I avoid confirming Mom’s suspicions about her once little straight A mathlete, I got to keep playing for a school where, like some sort of twisted sociological experiment, I had been bussed in to spend the rest of my adolescence sidled up to rich kids – mostly white or Jewish – with big houses, fully stocked pantries, luxury cars and country club memberships not usually privy to a poor kid from the north side of the I-10.
“Thanks Coach!” I hollered, shuffling backwards toward the Salisbury steak aroma that permeated that part of the old school building.
Coach winked, then put an index finger to his mustache and mimed a hush.
I pulled an invisible zipper across my mouth and threw away the key with a wink and a smile, then got in line with the other baying sheep.
* * *
A year later, we were across the street, playing for the Mustangs of Memorial High School, where a whole bevy of middle-aged sportos wore the same stock uniform as Coach Willis, except white and red of a school known for producing a steady stream of contenders. The 1987 varsity team was no different.
Not that I was big or fast enough for that steroid-driven squad, most of the other guys in my class having matched my early growth spurt, if not surpassed it entirely. So they stuck me out on the corner of the freshman A-team defense since the middle of the field proved a little too hairy for my very average 5’10” frame, especially next to kids willing to risk their mental and genital health in order to bench 400 pounds by year’s end.
But I was more than cool with my new assignment because cornerbacks get interceptions and sometimes even touchdowns. And everyone wanted one of those.
* * *
“Slocum! Rodriguez! Crump!”
“Yes, Coach!”
Coach Denny is the defensive coordinator for the varsity team, the head coach of the JV team and the cornerback’s coach for the freshman A-team. He stands slightly hunched over at about six-foot two with a medicine ball for a belly and parts his short burnt orange hair – just a few snips away from a crew cut – to the right.
“You boys come with me,” he says in his thick east Texas accent.
“Yes, Coach,” we say and trot over to the far side of the practice field, helmets in hand, no longer surprised by the agility in Coach’s fifty year old legs. We like to joke that lugging around all that barbecue and beer help his beefy calves keep all that tone. That or maybe he was one hell of an athlete back in the day.
“Now let’s go over what we learned this week.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Rodriguez. You cover me off the line.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Slocum, you snap the ball.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“And Crump,”
Crump is the B-team quarterback, a rail thin pretty boy with a metal-head mullet.
“Yes, Coach.”
“Try not to throw too many ducks.”
We all chuckle and get in our respective positions: Crump setting up behind Sloke; Coach and I about 10 yards down the line of scrimmage, facing each other and ready for action.
“Ready?!” Crump calls out. “Go!”
Sloke snaps the ball, and Coach sprints right at me as I back peddle, waiting for him to make his move. Five yards upfield, he plants his right foot and cuts left.
I plant my left foot and pivot my body forty-five degrees to the right, shadowing him as the wobbly pass floats down to Coach’s ready fingers and reach my left arm around his wide torso and bat the ball away at the last moment.
“Nice job, Rodriguez. Nice play!”
“Thanks, Coach!”
“Just make sure you don’t get there before the ball.”
“Yes, Coach!”
“Alright, Slocum. Your turn!”
“Yes, Coach!” he shouts, and we trade places.
* * *
“Clark got Bridgette and Brandy.”
“Are you fucking kidding?”
“I wouldn’t kid about Brandy…or Bridgette.”
“That lucky fucker.”
“Yep.”
“I wonder who I’m gonna get?”
“Prolly Latresa.”
Haha!
I’m not sure how other schools sweetened the pot for their weekend warriors, but at Memorial every boy that strapped on pads, from varsity to freshmen B-teamers, got two of his own personal cheerleaders called Powder Puffs as an added incentive for kicking ass out on the field of battle. It’s not like they walked around with short dresses and pom-poms, but they were given our combinations so they could decorate our lockers with streamers, ribbons, baked goods and candy on the Fridays leading up to our Saturday games. And we weren’t supposed to know their identities until the homecoming dance, but some of the boys already knew and either bragged about it or kept their mouths shut according to the hotness of the puffs in question. I was totally clueless but of course assumed some prime hotties had jumped at the chance to give me all the goodies I could handle. Maybe not a Brandy or Bridgette White but at least a Sarah Billop, or Laura or Linda Wilkinson – all blondes, by the way – girls with an inner beauty that radiated out through their kind, pretty faces.
* * *
“Blue forty-two! Blue forty two!” barks Andrew Clark, a wiry six-footer with blue eyes and hay-colored hair. “Blue 42! Ready, Go!”
I’m on the left edge, in front of Tim Lynch, a tall wide-out with hands of glue.
The center snaps the ball and my receiver runs up to block me as the rest of the offense sweeps away from us. Clark fakes a handoff to his diving fullback and spins and sprints back toward my side of the field.
“Bootleg!” Sloke hollers at the top of his lungs.
“Bootleg!” the coaches second.
I struggle but manage to sidestep Tim’s block as Clark hits his stride and plows his helmet into mine and me into the sideline – payback for that lick I put on him last year.
“How’d’ you like that, Rodriguez?!” he snarls.
I stumble up from the ground, my head ringing like when John Paul gave me a whiff from a small medicine bottle with the word “RUSH!” written across it.
I don’t like it at all. Well, maybe a little.
* * *
The Monday before our first game, I got to school early and went to my locker, excited to see just what kind of goodies I got from my Powder Puffs, but also looking for clues as to which girls had done the giving.
“Oh, hi!” cried Rebecca Swanson, a clean cut brunette dressed like a PTA mom in a long pleated skirt and a thin fall sweater over a white turtleneck.
Her partner, best friend and fashion consultant, Carrie Wentworth, finished taping the last streamer, her pale skin turning pink beneath her nerdy, red bangs. “Oh, hi Oscar! Sorry, we’re a little late.”
They smiled at each other and giggled.
“That’s OK,” I sneered and reached my bitter hand down between the two seemingly smitten girls and snatched the red and white-ribboned, filled to the brim lunch sack from my still-open locker. “I can at least grab what really matters here, and we can pretend like this never happened.”
My crestfallen sponsors gasped as I walked off, forfeiting any rights to such support, moral or otherwise, for the rest of the season.
* * *
“Hey, Dee-Boy,” I said to the recent transfer student from Louisiana, a 6’1” 180 pound black kid built like the brick and mortar locker room where we suited up for practice. “Did you know your name is actually pronounced Du Bois?”
“My name is Deboys.”
“Yeah, I know. But the ‘s’ means it’s supposed to be Du Bois, as in W.E.B.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Yeah, but you’re from Louisiana, which used to be part of France, so…”
“I aint French,” he said with a glare that told me I might want to shut the fuck up.
“Got it,” I said and did as I was told.
* * *
“Twenty-four blue! Twenty-four blue! Ready, go!”
The center snaps the ball.
Clark turns to his right and fakes the handoff to the diving fullback, then runs down the line to read the defensive end, who stays home and forces Clark to pitch the ball to a streaking halfback not named Du Bois.
I get around Lynch and turn up field and ram my head into the transfer’s cinder block thigh and spin into the ground, ripping the facemask from my helmet now on sideways, my nose poking through the earhole and that same ringing rush.
* * *
Our school bus rolled into the parking lot of the big stadium where I had played in the Spring Branch I.S.D’s “Super Bowl” for my second grade Ridgecrest Comanches, giving me a small jolt of much-needed pride in the face of my skittish performance on the practice field that week.
I was still a bit sullen about the Powder Puff debacle and looked forward to making up for it by dotting my new helmet with the skull and crossbones stickers Coaches passed out for kicking ass when it mattered most. And this time I wasn’t some faceless lineman blocking for someone else’s glory.
* * *
Andrew Slocum and I bookend a line of eleven players stretched across the Mustang 30-yard line, our kicker in the middle with his right hand held high.
The ref stares at his watch for a long moment, takes a deep breath and blows the whistle.
The kicker drops his hand and we all sprint past the 35 as he boots the ball up in the air to way to the Stratford ten.
The return man catches the ball drifting toward my sideline, where a few other Spartans make a wall. All eyes upfield, none see me looping in from the sideline.
Left. Right. 30. Left. Right. 20. Left. Right. 10. Hold the edge. There he is. The wall. Him. Wall. Him? Wall?! Him! Him! WALL!!!
I throw myself sideways into the blocker’s legs.
Bodies fly.
No way he made the corner no way.
I look up as the return-man is finally forced out of bounds up by the fifty.
Fuck!
The coaches glare at me as I run to join the defense, setting up a good forty yards further downfield than it should be.
* * *
“36 Red! 36 Red!”
The Spartan’s have the ball on our twenty with one-minute left in the second quarter, looking to go up fourteen to zero by halftime.
I crouch down across from my receiver about ten yards off the line.
“36 Red! Go!”
The center snaps the ball.
The quarterback drops back.
I backpedal.
The receiver sprints five yards, stops on dime and turns to catch a perfect spiral.
Hit him! Hit him! HIT HIM!!!
I duck and give the guy a half-hearted hug as he runs by on his way to six points. Café Ole, indeed.
“Touchdown!” hollers the line judge.
“Yeah!”
“Yeah!”
Gold and green high-fives abound.
Godammit!
* * *
Coach Peters tried to talk us up, despite our ineffectual offense and a defense that played well enough minus a couple of key missed tackles by a certain shell-shocked cornerback. As such, I sat at the very end of the long aluminum bench on the sidelines, about 5 yards away from the rest of the defense.
The stench of failure on me, not even Sloke – whose mom and dad I play tennis with – tried to wrangle me back into the fold as I tried to reconstruct the spine that Clark and Deboys had pummeled on the practice field.
The whistle blew and the coaches got everyone to huddle around to stick their hand toward the center.
Still on the periphery, I put my hand on my counterpart’s hefty shoulder pad as Coach Peters shouted, “Go! Mustangs!”
I echoed the cheer and spotted Coach Denny talking down at Coach Johnson from up behind the guardrail that protected the spectators from the six-foot drop to the sidelines. The much younger special teams and offensive line coach just nodded and looked down at the ground like a kid being scolded.
Eager to prove myself worthy of the time and training he’d put into me, I thought it best to apologize for my pathetic display and rededicate myself to the cause.
“You’re kicking off to start both halves?” Coach Denny asked incredulously.
“I told Clark what to say,” Coach Johnson said in his defense. “I can’t very well be out there holding his hand during the coin toss too.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Coach Denny said, shaking his head. “In all my years….”
“Won’t happen again, Coach.”
“I’d very much like to see that,” he said and watched his subordinate slink away.
“Hey, Coach,” I said, ready to make my little speech.
Coach Denny looked down at me, his expression going from disdain to outright loathing.
“Rodriguez!” he growled like a master yanking on a choke chain.
“Coach,” I yelped.
“You played like a real pussy out there!”
“But Coach,” I said, my heart suddenly in my throat.
He turned away from me and walked up the concrete stairs that divided a hundred rows of mostly empty aluminum bleachers mirroring the overcast sky.
I looked down at my cleats and the Astroturf below, sheer will the only thing blocking the bile from shooting up into my skull to make hot, angry tears.
“Rodriguez!” shouted Coach Johnson. “Put your hat on and get out there! We’re kicking off again!”
“Yes, Coach,” I said under my breath and got ready to prove to everyone out there that day, particularly that piece of shit up in the stands, that I was no coward and worthy of the type of glory I’d imagined as a little kid, diving over the armrests of Mom’s Rent-a-Center sofas to catch a thousand game winning touchdowns.
* * *
The whistle blows.
Our kicker puts his hand down and we all run.
Left. Right. 50. Left. Right. 40. Left. Right 30.
Here he comes. Here he comes…
WHAM!!!
* * *
The blond Spartan let out a primal groan, like me during that second grade scrimmage, when the third grader ran full speed and rammed his helmet into my gut long after the whistle had blown; or the next year, when that kid for the Cowboys pointed at my crotch, whispered something to his teammate and then buried his helmet there the next play; or the year after that, when I got knocked out cold and came to at midfield, both elated that Mom actually made it to one of my games and mortified that she was out there on the field in her waitress uniform, name tag, afro-perm and everything.
But Mom now owned and ran La Iguana, a Tejano bar and hadn’t been to one of my games for years. So I watched the second half – along with most of another two and eight season – all alone from the end of the bench, coming in only for kickoffs, which were few and far between as we almost never scored.
And I’m pretty sure I could’ve requested a demotion to the B-Team, which seemed to be having a ball, with their proud moms dancing around the sidelines in “Killer Bee” costumes as Ronnie Turk, Latresa’s lightning quick twin brother, shredded one sideline after another, leading the “lesser” squad to a perfect ten and 0 season.
But my wounded ego shouted down any such considerations, especially considering that the year before, back at Spring Branch, I was the last boy cut from the district champion basketball A-Team, then having to play for the not-so-killer B-Team.
So I sat and waited for my shot at redemption that, as with my Powder Puffs, never came.
But the seasons turned and the following spring, seeing that I no longer had what it took to use my head as a battering ram, the coaches put me on the other side of the ball. And during those spring practices, I caught a deflected pass, then broke the tackle of the same Chicano newbie who had tried to teach my uppity, brown ass a lesson. I guess no one told him about the left hook I’d inherited from my big-rig driving, Gold Glove-winning, divorcé dad.
* * *
August 1, 1988: The phone rings as I lay in bed after another in a long string of weekends with my older cousin George – a freshman at U of H, who runs with some new wave clubbers that seem to run on a strict diet of vodka, vitamin C, and X from Thursday night to Monday morning.
The toxic trifecta still coursing through my veins, I roll over and grab the receiver off the bedside table. The too long, tangled up phone cord makes it harder than it needs to be to get on the other end of the cheap receiver.
“Rodriguez? Are you there?”
I groan a “Hello?” through my mangled gums, throbbing from a long night’s teeth grinding.
“Rodriguez?”
“Coach Johnson?”
“The one and only.”
I shake my head and chuckle and pull open the sundrenched curtain next to my bed – another sweltering day in the Bayou City with a forecast of 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity.
“What’s goin’ on, Coach?”
“You ready to suit up and start movin’ the ball for us, son?”
The heat waves shimmer up from the pothole-ridden parking lot of a complex bordered by the woods where I first smoked weed.
“Rodriguez?”
“Coach,” I say and close the curtains to an air-conditioned cave from which I supply certain factions of my schoolmates with as much high-grade MDMA as I can in a perpetual quest for popularity, money and girls, “I don’t play football no more.”
In January 2020, about to call it quits after 17-years hard literary labor, Oscar Rodriguez was encouraged to add a hundred pages to his novella and make it a memoir. This year/Two years later, after another round of rejections for the new draft, he got back on the Submittable train and published three more chapters in the print journals, Vagabonds: The Mad Ones and the Ponder and the Ocotillo Reviews, to go with a couple of online credits that came soon after the beginning of the lockdown. He sometimes jokes that all it took was Armageddon for him to get a little recognition…