Losers Take All

  My father had grilled up bluefish using his favorite recipe, and she asked for seconds. “I love the sweetness,” she told him. “What’s that flavor?”

  “Mayo and citrus,” he explained. “It couldn’t be fresher. The blues are running and I pulled it out of the water this morning.”

  Becca surprised me by saying, “My father used to have a boat down at the shore and caught everything from mackerel to makos, but he always said if he could only catch one kind of fish it would be blues.”

  “When you hit a school of them it’s like nothing else,” Dad said enthusiastically. “What kind of boat did he have?”

  Up to now Becca had been guarded about discussing her parents, but when it came to fishing trips of years past she seemed to relax. “A seventeen-foot Grady-White. He kept it in Tom’s River, and took it out as often as he could from March to October. I used to go with him a lot when I was ten and eleven. He had favorite spots in Barnegat Light, and farther out all the way to the lumps.”

  “What happened to the boat?” Dad asked.

  “Hurricane Sandy smashed it up. It was insured and he could have replaced it, but he loved that boat and I don’t think he’s fished since then.”

  “Sometimes you just have to let something you love go,” Dad told her.

  After that, the two of them got along well, and I could tell he liked her and was proud that his son had a smart, cute girlfriend. We finished off several pounds of bluefish and put away most of an apple pie, and it was just about time for Becca to leave when she brought up the team we were trying to start.

  “Soccer?” Dad asked me, as if I had just told him I was taking a rocket to Jupiter.

  “It’s the most popular sport in the world,” I answered, trying to keep things light. “Played with a round ball by more than two hundred million people.”

  “I’m familiar with it,” he said, “but I didn’t know you played.”

  “Well, I’m not ready for the World Cup,” I admitted.

  Becca cut me off. “We’re gonna play it together,” she told him. “Our team is gonna be co-ed. But we need your help.”

  He looked from her to me. “So this is a setup?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” she contradicted me, and grinned at my father. “We’re ganging up on you, Mr. Logan.”

  “Maybe you’d better just do what they want, Tom,” my mother said with a smile.

  But Dad didn’t think it was funny. I knew he would be polite because we had a guest, but he wasn’t on board with this at all.

  “The thing is,” Becca told him, “we’ve done everything we can. We’ve got a faculty coach and we’ve signed up fourteen players. But Principal Muhldinger says our coach isn’t on the full-time faculty and that fourteen aren’t enough. Which is ridiculous because we’ve got a full team and three subs.”

  “I guess the rules are the rules,” Dad said, and that was his way of saying we were done talking about it.

  Becca didn’t follow his game plan. “But none of those are real rules,” she pointed out. “He invented them to mess us up.”

  “Why would he want to do that?” Dad asked.

  “Because of me,” I said.

  Dad looked at me, a little surprised. “Go on.”

  “Muhldinger has it in for me because I’m a Logan and I didn’t join his football team. So he’s torpedoing our soccer team to get back at me.”

  “That sounds like his style,” Dad agreed, glancing quickly at my mother. “Brian has a long memory and he always had a mean side. And I think I heard something about a door being demolished.” I hadn’t told them the details of my visit to the principal’s office, and Dad had never mentioned the door till now. He said it with a faint smile.

  “I was thinking maybe you could give him a call,” I told him. “Ask him to let us have our team. If you ask him, he’ll say yes.”

  “Probably,” Dad admitted, and he looked just a little angry. “But you shouldn’t ask me that in front of your friend, because it puts me in a position I don’t care for.”

  “We’ve had such a nice dinner,” Mom jumped in quickly. “Why don’t we take a break from this and finish off the apple pie?”

  None of us could have possibly eaten more pie, and Becca confessed: “It was my idea to ask you, Mr. Logan. Jack didn’t want to. But we’ve done so much to get this team going, and you’re our only hope now.”

  “Tom, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give Brian a call,” Mom suggested hesitantly.

  Dad thought it over for two seconds, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Then he told us, “Sorry. I’d like to help you guys out, but I won’t make that call. Now it’s getting late. Jack, are you going to walk Becca home?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Come on, let’s get going.”

  But she was just as stubborn as he was. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Logan, why won’t you call him?”

  Dad managed a tight-lipped smile, but he clearly did mind her asking. “I can see that you’re a very determined young woman, and I’m sorry I can’t help you guys out. I don’t have Brian’s mean side, but he and I do agree on a lot of things about life and sports—particularly when it comes to sports at Fremont. Soccer’s not my game and I don’t know anything about that team you’re trying to start, so it’s not my place to throw my weight around. Please come back and have dinner with us again soon, and tell your father that if he ever wants to go fishing for blues I’ve got a friend in Waretown who has a boat we can take out anytime.”

  My mom walked us to the door and shook Becca’s hand. “Come back soon,” she invited. “And stop by the library this week so I can show you that new novel.”

  “I will,” Becca promised, and then we were out the door and walking through the darkness.

  We walked in silence for a few blocks, and then Becca took my hand. “Sorry I made you do that.”

  I closed my fingers over hers. “My dad can be a real hard-ass.”

  She surprised me by saying, “I’ve read about lots of heroic tragic figures, but he’s the first one I’ve actually met in person.”

  “Tragic because he’s too stubborn to make one stupid phone call to help his son out?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “He’s the guy everyone in this sports-crazy town wants to be—the one who gained the most yards, ran the fastest mile, and could have played in the NFL. But he never got to do it because of an injury. What happened to him?”

  My voice dropped, even though there was no one else listening. “In his senior year of college he led his team to a bowl game. One of the minor ones, but still. He was one of the best Division One running backs in the nation, projected to go in the first few rounds of the draft. But in the last practice before that bowl game he got into a freak collision and busted up his knee.”

  “Couldn’t they fix it?”

  “They did,” I told her. “He can run on it. But he could never play in the pros.”

  “Wow,” she said. “What does he say about that?”

  “Nothing. What I just told you I’ve picked up from my mother and my brothers, but I’ve never talked about it with my dad or heard anyone bring it up with him.”

  “Probably because you all sense that he’s got to be an incredibly strong man not to go crazy with bitterness,” Becca guessed. “God, living in this town where he was such a star, his number is retired, and he’s surrounded by his old trophies…”

  “All that gives him pride,” I told her. “He’s either coached or come to every game that my brothers and I have ever played, in any sport. He stands on the sideline shouting and shaking his fist, and he relives his glory days through us—or at least he did through Carl and Billy. I haven’t given him much to cheer about.”

  We reached her house. It was set back from the street behind a row of bushes, and I could see that there were lights on. “Thanks for walking me home, Jack.”

  “Should I come in and say hello to your parents?”

  She hesitated, tempted,
and then she seemed to think better of it and said: “Let’s leave that for another night. C’mere.” And she drew me into her driveway, in the shadow of her old garage. “You’re lucky,” she said softly. “Your parents are so sweet together.”

  “They get along okay most of the time.”

  She stepped closer and I could feel her breath on my face. “Don’t you see the way he looks at her?”

  “Maybe it was because she’d just baked him an apple pie.”

  “He adores her,” Becca said, and suddenly she was very close. “And he should. Your mom’s great. And her son’s not so bad. Good night, Jack.” She reached up and kissed me lightly on the lips and pulled back.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she whispered. She pressed forward for a much longer kiss, and I nearly passed out in her arms. “Good night,” she finally said, and headed up the walk.

  Oh man. I don’t think my toes touched the ground all the way home—I just floated. But when I reached my house, my father was waiting up. “Let’s talk,” he said.

  I followed him into the family room, and he pulled the door closed. “Your girlfriend’s great,” he told me with a little smile. “I can’t imagine what she sees in you, but there must be something.”

  “She’s a big fan of you, or at least your bluefish,” I told him. “Listen, I’m sorry we pressured you. I knew it was a bad idea. I should go to bed now.”

  “I called Brian,” Dad told me. “Your soccer team is a go.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. “Wow. Thanks. I really appreciate it, Dad.”

  His face turned unexpectedly serious. “Don’t make me regret it. It was a harder favor to ask than you know. Make sure you don’t embarrass me.”

  I didn’t exactly know what I was committing to, but I nodded and stood up. “I won’t. I promise. Good night,” I said. “And thanks again.”

  He held his hand up to stop me. “Jack, there’s something you should know. It’s about your mother.”

  I had no idea where this was going.

  “Many years ago he used to date her,” Dad told me.

  “Muhldinger?” The world rocked for a minute. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “They were in the same class in high school. I was three years older. When I came back from college I took her away from him and married her. That’s always been between us.”

  “But he looks up to you so much,” I said. “The first thing he did as principal was retire your number.”

  “That’s football,” Dad told me. “There’s always been lots of mutual respect when it comes to sports. And he’s a new principal so he probably wanted to do something that would be popular in the town. But on the personal side we’ve had our rough moments. It wasn’t easy for me to ask this favor from him, and he wasn’t too enthusiastic about giving you guys the green light. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I told him. “Wow. I thought Mom had better taste.”

  He grinned. “She must’ve had a soft spot for big dumb football players.” And then he looked serious again. “But let me give you one piece of advice. I got you your team but I can’t help you anymore, and this isn’t over yet. Brian doesn’t like you, and I wouldn’t underestimate him.”

  12

  In the mud pits to the side of Gentry Field, the football team was hitting the tackling sleds. We were several hundred yards away, but the sounds of jarring collisions reached us on the afternoon breeze, along with shouted commands from the assistant football coaches: “Slam that dummy. Keep your legs moving. Drive it into the mud.” Occasionally I even heard Muhldinger’s growls: “You wanna play for the Lions? Show me what you’ve got.”

  The cross-country team streaked by us like a herd of antelope, with Delaney, their tall, redheaded coach, running right with them, checking his watch. “Everybody under seven for the next mile. Come on, guys. Nice and relaxed. Lift those knees. Let’s go!”

  Our team had gathered for the first time, and we weren’t running, or even walking. We were sitting on a grassy hill, beneath the branches of an oak tree, listening to our coach.

  “Some preparatory matters,” Percy said. “The athletic department tells me we need a team captain. Does anyone have any suggestions?”

  There was a moment of silence and Dylan raised his hand. “I nominate Jack.”

  “What are you doing?” I whispered. “I don’t want to be captain.”

  “You’re the one who got me into this,” he whispered back. And then he said out loud to everyone: “Jack’s a great guy and the Logans are famous athletes in this town, so the sports Nazis should like the sound of him as our captain.”

  “I second the nomination,” Becca said.

  I looked from my best friend to my girlfriend—they were ganging up on me. Before I could think of a way to turn this down, Percy said: “By a show of hands, how many of you think Jack would be a good team captain?”

  Every hand went up.

  “So voted,” Percy said.

  “Congratulations, captain,” Dylan whispered.

  “I’ll make sure you regret this,” I promised him.

  Meanwhile, Percy had moved on from voting to a lecture. “I thought it might be useful to begin with a historical overview,” he told us. “The earliest derivations of soccer seem to be from the Greek sport of episkyros, which the Romans renamed harpastum…”

  Right then, I decided that Percy was going to be the perfect coach for us. I half listened to his history lesson, which was actually pretty interesting, and looked around at our team. There were fourteen of us sprawled on the grass. On my right, Frank had finished emptying a bag of pretzels into his mouth and lapsed into an afternoon nap. Becca and her friend Meg, a girl with freckles who had a great singing voice, were on my left, covertly checking their cell phones. Dylan was picking blades of grass and tossing them into the breeze. Shimsky had earbuds under his long hair and was listening to some classic punk rock and ignoring everything that Percy was saying.

  I knew only a few of the other kids who had signed up, and they weren’t exactly imposing physical specimens. There was a flabby guy named Pierre, who had moved to our town a year ago from France and was a talented tuba player in the band. His father ran a bakery and Pierre looked like he enjoyed a few too many croissants for breakfast every day. Surprisingly there was Chloe Shin, our school’s ace record keeper, who updated the stats on the sports Web site for all the Fremont teams. She was barely four feet tall, wore thick glasses, and didn’t seem likely to set any records herself. And there was a nutcase with curly black hair named Xander Zirco whom everyone called Quirko because he talked to himself.

  I looked around at them and wondered where we were going with this bunch of misfits and oddballs.

  Pretty much everyone was wearing their normal clothes. I had changed into shorts and a ratty tee and had put on some old cleats I’d found in a closet at home. Percy had on lime-green sweatpants and a brown-and-red-checked sweater that looked like it had been through World War II, and his lecture on soccer was still going strong. “In 1848 the Cambridge Rules ushered in the era of modern soccer,” he droned on, “by prohibiting tripping, kicking, and carrying the ball. At that point soccer branched off from rugby, and became a popular school and college sport in England, and quickly began to spread throughout the world.”

  I was pretty sure Muhldinger wouldn’t consider this history lesson a proper practice. He had approved us on a provisional basis—he could cancel our right to exist at any time if we didn’t prove ourselves. Were we going to try to win at least a few games and get better the way most sports teams try to improve? Or was this a bunch dedicated to the fine art of losing?

  If we made a joke out of what our school cared about, Muhldinger would shut us down fast. And when Percy was done with the history lesson, what were we going to spend our time doing in practices? I have to admit that while I had gotten my teeth busted and wanted to rebel, I was still a Logan, and there was a part of me that thought if we we
re going to have a Dumpster soccer team it should at least be a half-decent Dumpster soccer team.

  Percy wrapped up his lecture on soccer history and moved on to our coming season. He set a whiteboard up on a stand and passed out copies of a schedule. “We’re looking at a six-game season,” he said. “Marion Day Junior High School in Aurora has agreed to a game next week—”

  Frank cut in. “We’re going to be playing a junior high school?”

  “Yes, that will be our opening match.” Percy nodded. “Their coach is from Birmingham—that’s England, not Alabama. We had a nice chat. And after that there are five high schools that have freshman teams that have agreed to play us. Does anyone have any questions?”

  “Blue house,” Xander Zirco said.

  Percy looked at him. “Excuse me?”

  Zirco was gazing off into the distance, as if he could see something in the treetops and the low-hanging clouds that no one else could. “I want to live in a blue house,” he said, and snapped his fingers so loudly that it sounded like a firecracker going off.

  It was pretty clear that he was off in his own fruitcake world. “Blue houses are indeed nice,” Percy said. “I grew up in one myself. Anyone else?”

  Meg raised her hand. “My cousin goes to Marion Day. It’s a girls’ school.”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t take them lightly. They were undefeated last year,” Percy said. “It should be a good first test for us. Now, I believe it’s time to actually kick the ball, so here it is.” He unzipped a duffel bag and gingerly took out a soccer ball as if it might explode if he touched it the wrong way. “Let’s go over the basic rules,” he said, turning back to the whiteboard, “and then let’s hitch up our shorts and give this ball a few kicks. The most important thing to know about soccer is—”

  He’d made it all the way to his favorite saying about hitching up shorts, but he never got any further. That was when the Lions pounced. Charging football players seemed to come from all directions at once at high speed, trampling the grass and the bushes, upsetting the whiteboard and its stand and knocking over several of our players. They were shouting, their red-and-gold helmets gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, and one of them kicked Percy’s soccer ball into a cluster of trees fifty feet away.