“You’re kidding, right? I’ve never heard of a Dr. Knight in this town.”
“His practice is in Mapleville.”
“No offense,” I said quickly. “I had no idea what your dad did. I’m sure he’s a nice guy and a very good dentist.”
She smiled at my awkward apology. “Actually I sort of agree with you that it’s a little creepy. He wants me to follow in his footsteps, but it’ll never happen. I might end up as a doctor, but there’s no way I’m going to spend my life looking into people’s mouths. He doesn’t take no for an answer, and sometimes he can get really stubborn.” She broke off as we reached the mall and headed up the escalator.
* * *
The comedy I had picked was horrible. The jokes were so lame that no one in the theater was laughing. After half an hour people started filing out, and Becca touched my arm and whispered: “Enough?”
“Let’s go,” I agreed.
We joined the stream of people fleeing out the exit. “You really know how to choose them,” she said.
“Dylan told me it was good. But then again he has no taste.”
“Clearly,” she agreed.
I glanced up at a clock. It was just a little before ten. I didn’t want our first date to fizzle out so quickly. “Do you want to do something else? It’s still early.”
“What did you have in mind?”
There wasn’t much to do in our town, even on a Friday night. “Bowling?” I suggested.
“I hate bowling more than you hate dentists,” she told me.
“Then you choose.”
Becca thought for a minute. “Let’s go see Shadow.”
“Look out the window,” I said. “It’s night. No sun, no shadows.”
She laughed. “Shadow is my horse.”
“Does he see visitors this late?”
“They have evening lessons at the stable on Fridays. We can just make it. Come.”
We hurried to get our bikes and headed over to Brookfarm Stables. I had driven by it many times, but I had never been inside. I followed Becca through the front gate. She waved to the guard, who waved back, and we biked up a long driveway.
We rode past a lighted riding arena with a lesson going on. Beyond it were dark barns.
Becca led me to a side entrance and hopped off her bike. “We don’t have to lock them up,” she said. “I’ve been coming here for years and it’s totally safe. We just need to make sure we’re out by ten-thirty when they lock the front gate.” She slipped in the door and I followed her.
The barn was dark and had a musty stench of everything having to do with horses. Becca switched on a row of bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling and led me down a narrow corridor past dozens of gloomy stalls. The horses were on their feet. Some of them were eating oats, but most were standing silent and motionless. Occasionally I saw tails twitch and heads swing in my direction.
“Do they sleep standing up?” I asked.
“It’s not really sleep,” she told me. “They’re napping.”
“How come they don’t doze off and fall over?”
“They were originally prey animals,” she explained. “They had to be able to run from predators so they developed the ability to lock their legs and rest standing up. That way if a predator came, they could wake in an instant and break into a run. They nap for fifteen- or twenty-minute stretches all day long, standing up. Every so often they need to lie down for an hour and really crash.”
She stopped by a stall, and I saw the outline of a horse, facing away from us. “Shadow,” she whispered just a bit louder. “Hey.”
The horse recognized her voice and swung around to face us. He was one of the bigger horses in the barn, and had a reasonably kind expression on his brown-and-white face given that we had just woken him up. He stepped over near the bars of the stall, and Becca reached in and fondly patted his nose. “Hey, boy.” Shadow nuzzled her hand and then looked at me. “Talk to him,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what to say to a horse. “Hello, Shadow.”
“Go ahead and pet him,” she urged.
Shadow looked me over, and I think he was wondering who the hell I was and what I was doing with his girl. “He’s jealous,” I told her.
She patted Shadow’s nose. “Jack’s okay,” she told the big horse. “Please don’t bite him.”
I reached out and tentatively patted Shadow’s nose, and he let me. My hand brushed her hand. “Did you once tell me that Shadow hurt his leg?”
She nodded. “Five years ago. They wanted to put him down. I wouldn’t let them. My father kept telling me I had to do it, that it would be for the best in the long run. That’s one of his favorite sayings—‘It may be painful now, but it will be better later on.’ But there are a lot of ways of excusing cruelty…” Becca’s hand trembled. I noticed she was breathing a little fast.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No,” she said. And then she started to cry.
I didn’t know what to do. I was in a dark barn on a first date with a girl who was shivering, and tears were streaming down her face. This wasn’t in the first-date manual. She pulled her hand back from Shadow and wrapped her arms around herself, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped fifty degrees.
“Should I go get someone?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I’ll be okay. Sorry,” she said, gasping as if she were having trouble breathing. “I have these sometimes. They pass. Sorry, Jack.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry,” I told her. “Was the movie that bad? Or is it me? Did I say too many stupid things?”
Becca smiled through her tears. “No, you’re fine. I’m the one who’s a mess.”
“Can I help?” I asked.
I watched her take a series of short breaths, inhaling and exhaling at regular intervals. When her breathing got more regular, she said in a low voice: “I haven’t told this to anyone else, but my parents aren’t getting along.”
“That sucks.”
She nodded and took a couple more breaths. “It’s been bad for a long time. But lately it’s gotten much worse. And … I just can’t handle it sometimes.”
She trembled again and I put my arm on her shoulder to steady her. “Okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay,” she said. “I just need a little time.” We were silent for a moment, and then slowly we leaned into each other until I was holding her and she was holding me. And we stood together like that in the dark barn for a few minutes, and gradually her breathing became normal again. “Sorry I unloaded on you,” she said. “Thanks for not thinking I’m a complete wacko and running away.”
“As long as you don’t put your fist through a door, I’m not going anywhere,” I told her.
I pulled back and looked at her face. Her hazel eyes fixed on me, still wet with tears. For a crazy moment I thought she was going to kiss me, but she just pressed close again, and then there was a loud snort that broke the moment.
I glanced over and Shadow was staring right at us, and he wrinkled his nose at me. “Definitely jealous,” I said.
Becca looked over at her horse and laughed. “Maybe he should be,” she said. “Come on, Jack. They’re going to lock the gate. Let’s go home.”
9
Our Lions had just been named by a major newspaper as the high school football team to beat in the whole state of New Jersey, and the town was throwing itself a big party before the season even started.
The gym seats a thousand people, and it was packed to the rafters. A banner read in giant letters: FREMONT LIONS—TRADITION, PRIDE, POWER! The varsity players had been called out onto the darkened gym floor one by one, with a drumroll before their names and a spotlight strobing their path. They were now standing together on a raised platform in their red-and-gold jerseys, in three imposing rows. In front of them the cheerleaders had formed a pyramid that looked just a little smaller than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Muhldinger sat in the middle of the raised platform with the president of the board of education and the ma
yor, watching the goings-on with a proud smile.
I was not out on the floor with the football team. I had turned that honor down, and I sat with Dylan, Frank, and Becca on a middle bleacher, dreading what was about to happen. My friends couldn’t understand why I had dragged them to this late-summer pep rally. “There’s a reason I need to go, that I can’t talk about,” I had told them. “But you guys have to come and support me.”
“If you need us so badly, why don’t you share your secret with us?” Dylan had demanded. “Why do we have to pretend to cheer for Muhldinger’s meatheads?”
“Yeah, if we’re gonna miss one of the last afternoons at the lake, don’t we deserve to know what the hell’s going on?” Frank agreed.
“You’ll understand soon enough,” I promised them.
Becca had also been reluctant to come. She hated Muhldinger and everything he stood for, but I pointed out I’d risked everything to pat her dangerously jealous horse, so she had to come to support me. We had gone out on a few more dates, and Frank and Dylan were starting to accept her as part of our little group. Becca probably found them strange, but she seemed to enjoy occasionally hanging out with my two nutty friends.
The four of us were sitting in a row, clapping noticeably less enthusiastically than our neighbors, as Muhldinger stood and walked purposefully toward the mic.
“Hey,” Frank said to me, “your whole family has the school spirit bug. Even your bros showed up.” He pointed to where my dad, mom, and two brothers sat at the very front. “Why are they all dressed up?”
I saw Becca following the direction of his finger with interest. She had never met my parents, or my two brothers. Carl was sitting next to Anne, and my oldest brother, Billy, was there with his wife, Charlotte, and their two young kids.
It felt very strange to see them sitting together in a group and for me to be so far away. It had been my choice, but now that it was happening I didn’t like the feeling at all.
Before they could ask me any more questions, Muhldinger grabbed the mic, ripping it from its stand like a hungry bear harvesting a cob of corn from its stalk. He looked around at the big crowd for a moment and then brought the mic to his lips. “Let’s hear it for Fremont!”
The answering applause swelled to a deafening roar. At least a solid minute must have gone by with people clapping, hooting, and whistling while the cheerleaders shook pom-poms and turned cartwheels and the gym’s sound system blared the music to the school fight song. The last line of the song is: “Fremont High will rise to the sky, to be number one!”
“LIONS NUMBER ONE,” Muhldinger shouted above the din, picking up the final refrain. A chant began: “NUMBER ONE, NUMBER ONE.” He pumped his ham hock of a fist in time to the chant, and people started stomping on the bleachers.
“Can we leave now?” Dylan asked. “Before I go deaf or this building collapses?”
But the roar was ebbing, because Muhldinger was holding up his hand for silence. “My friends,” he said. “Thanks to all of you for giving up a summer afternoon to show your support for our Lions. The reason we’re number one now is because of all of you, but we also owe a huge debt to those who’ve gone before us. And of course I’m talking about Arthur Gentry, who is watching over us today and always. As I’m sure he would say: when this new football season starts up, let’s ‘Just go for it’!”
There was another explosion of cheering. I had to admit that Muhldinger looked completely at ease in his role of school leader, at least when it came to football. “But we also have other Fremont heroes to remember,” he reminded us. “And I’ve decided that my first official act as your principal should be to do something that’s only been done once before in the history of Fremont High.”
I tensed up. My arms were locked straight, my palms on my knees, while the balls of my feet pressed into the wooden bleacher floor.
Muhldinger walked toward the front of the platform, which brought him closer to the crowd. “Today,” he said, “we’re going to honor one of the best players to ever walk through the halls of our school, not to mention tear up the football field. I’m talking about the all-time rushing leader at Fremont High—the Logan Express—Tom Logan!”
A spotlight picked out my father, and everyone in the gym seemed to look at him except for Becca, who glanced at me.
“They wanted me to be part of the ceremony,” I whispered to her. “I said I’d come and watch with my friends.”
Muhldinger walked over to where my parents and brothers were sitting. He was still talking to everyone in the gym through the microphone, but he was now looking at my father: “Six thousand two hundred and twenty-three yards. A hundred years of Fremont football and nobody else has even come close to that. And I gotta tell you, I saw him play, and I carry that memory around with me. It reminds me of what we can be if we try hard enough, and refuse to lose. So let’s not talk about it anymore—let’s see it!”
A big screen lowered behind him, and a football game from years past conjured to life on it. I sat forward—I had seen lots of film of my dad playing college football, and even a few grainy clips from his high school days, including a ten-second dark and poorly filmed version of this famous play that had put a last exclamation point on his brilliant high school career. But these images on the big screen were so bright and lifelike that I almost felt like I was on that snowy field when Fremont broke their huddle and lined up for their final play of the season.
Fremont had the ball at the East River twenty-two-yard line. The clock showed seven seconds left, and we were losing by five points. There was time for one more play, with the state championship on the line. The Fremont quarterback hiked the ball, rolled to his right, and handed it off to number 32. My dad tucked the ball away and charged forward, but he was hit behind the line of scrimmage. The tackler bounced off him like he had tried to bring down a tank, and Dad roared toward the East River goal line, twenty-two yards away.
An East River lineman dove at him and got a straight-arm for his trouble. It was like a punch to the face mask, and the lineman’s head snapped back as he fell to the snow. The footage we were watching was soundless, but I could almost hear the impact of my father’s straight-arm reverberating across the years, and the one thousand people in the Fremont gym seemed to all hear it also. They let out a collective gasp.
Fifteen yards to the goal line. Dad was motoring in heavy traffic. He was following a lone blocker, but when that blocker stumbled, Dad darted away toward the left sideline, completely exposed. A big East River tackler grabbed him from behind, wrapping both arms around my father’s waist. He should have been able to pull Dad down, but somehow number 32 dragged the guy with him.
At the ten-yard line, a missile struck. A high-flying East River player flashed in at shoulder height and exploded into my father’s right side. The impact spun Dad around but somehow he stayed on his feet. The airborne tackler latched on to my father’s right arm. So there were two of them clinging to him now, but the Logan Express chugged forward to the eight, and then the seven.
This was where it got a little hard to believe. Two more East River players hit him high and low from opposite sides. It was hard to see exactly where they grabbed on, because Dad was wearing the opposing team like an outer layer. His red-and-gold shirt was almost completely hidden beneath East River blue. Our gym had gone quiet, and watching, I felt a cold tingle down my back, as if a bit of the snow from that long-ago afternoon were sifting across two decades onto my spine.
Five yards to go. Four. The East River players were getting desperate. You could see them not just holding on but trying to trip him up and drag him down. But the engine that carried them forward refused to quit.
Dad neared the goal line, and a wall of East River brawn was waiting for him there. Three gargantuan players reared up in his path, and their body language said clearly: “Thou shalt not pass.”
Dad hit that blue wall at the one-yard line, and for the first time he lost his momentum and was pushed back. We were watc
hing the play in regular time, but the action seemed to slow to second by second. My father was knocked backward and looked like he would sink down beneath all that weight and fall a few inches short. Then he found some secret reserve of strength, and he surged forward again with a tremendous second effort. And this time, incredibly, the wall in front of him sagged and buckled.
Ever since my teeth had been mashed I hadn’t been able to think about football without feeling furious. I’d turned down the team and rejected my father’s shirt and his legacy, but when the silent gym came alive with cheering I found myself cheering, too. I couldn’t deny the pride I felt at what was happening on the screen.
The four players clinging to my father and the three more in the wall all had hands and arms and legs wrapped around him, but somehow number 32 reached the plane of the goal line. He seemed to freeze there for a heartbeat, neither in nor out, teetering on the brink, as if the football gods wanted this moment time-stamped and immortalized.
Then he burst forward into the end zone and fell to the ground with what looked like half the East River team on top of him. The referee raised both arms signaling the winning touchdown, and the crowd behind the end zone went berserk. The camera panned to a few shots of celebrating spectators and then returned to my father, who had climbed back up to his feet.
His helmet had been ripped off, and his long black hair glistened with snow as his mouth opened wide and he gave a shout of triumph and raised both fists high over his head. He stood like that for a long second, alone in his moment of glory, and then his teammates mobbed him and the tape cut off.
Twenty-seven years later the Fremont gym was rocking with applause. Muhldinger walked into the audience and grabbed my father’s arm and made a little joke out of hauling him to his feet. Dad is a shy man who usually shuns the spotlight, but this was his moment and he seemed willing to just go for it.
A drumroll sounded, and then a spotlight led him out onto the gym floor to where Barlow—the varsity co-captain who had slammed me to the ground in Founders’ Park—stood holding a red-and-gold shirt with the number 32. I was pretty sure it was the very shirt that Muhldinger had ordered for me—the one I had refused to wear.