Chapter 18: Senior Year

Our first game of the season was at the end of the month, the last Friday of August, the 30^th. It was a home game with North Cobb High, from up in Kennesaw. They were from a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, and North Cobb was a big school, certainly bigger than us. That was important in high school football, since the more students you had, the more likely you’ll be able to find better players. I commented on that to Kelly once, and she said something about Gaussian distributions and standard deviations. I just looked funny at her, and she said, “It means you’re right. The more students, the more likely they’ll be to have a significant number of large and fast players.”

“I thought that’s what I said.”

“You did.” She laughed and wrapped me in a big hug, and I didn’t feel bad about her being smarter than me.

Size or not, we stopped the North Cobb Warriors in their tracks. The final score was 17-6, with Speed Demon scoring a pair of touchdowns and Dix Vercolo kicking a pair of points after and a field goal. The Warriors only managed to get a couple of field goals. That does not mean it was a walkover. We had to fight for every yard and every down, the entire game, no letup. After one tough set of downs in the fourth quarter, by which time we were up 17-3 and it was looking like a lock for us, Boyd said, “Them sumbitches don’t got no quit in ‘em!” That was about as eloquent a description as I could have come up with. As he said it, he was gasping for air. I was gasping just as bad and didn’t have the strength to argue with him. Our asses were dragging when we left the field at the end of the game, and if we won, we had to earn it the hard way.

A week later we took on Douglas County, in Douglasville. That wasn’t a far drive for us, maybe a half hour at most and it was all highway driving, and there were a lot of Matucket fans who showed up. Amusingly, the uniforms for the Douglas County Huskies was purple and white, a lot like our purple and gray, so there was just a sea of purple surrounding us in the stands. I commented to Jack that it would be just like our folks to end up on the wrong side of the field. He replied that if we saw a pair of purple-clad fans flying from one side to the other, it was probably them. Then again, it might be some Douglas fans on the Matucket side.

Regardless, the Huskies weren’t in the same league as Matucket. We were all over them from the start of the game. By halftime we were beating them 21-0 after scoring three unanswered touchdowns and points after. In the third quarter Coach Summers began cycling in the second and third-string squads, but we still built the score up to 30-6; we had added another touchdown and point after, and a safety, while they squeezed in a touchdown on our third-string defense but missed the point after. Halfway through the fourth quarter the refs called it and we went to the Mercy Rule. We still got another touchdown, a point after, and a field goal. Final score Matucket 40, Douglas County 6.

I also became a coach myself, at that time, coach of the fat camp team. When school started, Clyde Wilcox asked me to help him lose enough weight to make it into basic training. “You want me to help you lose weight?” I asked.

“Hey, man, you’re the most in-shape guy in the program,” he replied.

“Yeah, but I have to work out and train for football,” I protested.

“Man, you gotta’ help me! I’ll never do it on my own!”

I sighed. The odds against me doing this were long, but I had to give it a try. Sergeant Donaldson was always telling us we had to do things as a team. In fact, if you fucked up, not only did you get punished, but the odds were that your entire team would get punished. You had to rely on them as much as they relied on you. If one person failed, that meant that everybody failed. On the other hand...

“If I do this, you have to be serious! There will be no fucking off! Is that clear? I don’t want to be an asshole about this, but if you don’t follow through, you’re just going to waste both of our times.”

“I gotta’ do this, man!” he replied.

“Then meet me after school out on the field in your gym clothes,” I told him.

He immediately balked at this. “After school? I’ll miss the bus!”

“So what?” I replied heartlessly. “You want to lose the weight, but you don’t want to change what you do? Then you’re not serious. If you’re not there this afternoon, don’t ask me again,” I replied.

I figured that would be the end of it. If he couldn’t even spend the time to try to lose the weight, he wasn’t going to make it anyway. I was surprised, however, when I went into the locker room after classes ended and found Clyde standing there. He looked ridiculously out of place amongst my fellow football players. Clyde was, to put it mildly, soft. “I’m here. I called my mother at lunchtime, and she said she would swing by after work and pick me up.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Why aren’t you in your gym trunks and shoes?” He looked shocked at that, so I added, “What did you think we were going to do? Get changed and get out to the field!” Clyde moved around the corner to his locker and began working the lock.

Brax’s locker was a couple down from mine. “What the hell is Fatso Wilcox doing here?” he asked.

“He asked me to help him lose some weight, and I told him I would help,” I explained.

“What do you care, and why?”

“Because he’s joining the Army after graduation, and he’s too heavy. He needs to lose a lot of weight.”

“So what!”

I looked at my buddy. “So, I’m going into the Army, too. I have to help him. He fails, we all fail.”

Suddenly that stopped Brax in his tracks. He was the first person outside of my family and Kelly who I had told that I was enlisting. “You’re joining the Army?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah, at the end of the year, after graduation.”

“Why?”

“Why not! It’s not like I’m going to be having any college scouts chasing me down. You and Speed might be doing that, but you know they’re not going to be looking for me.” By now several other guys were gathered around, listening to me. “What’s left? M-Triple-C and a job at the Wal-Mart distribution center? Screw that.”

“Holy shit! You’re serious, aren’t you?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’ve been talking to a recruiter for almost a year now.”

“Holy shit!”

We finished suiting up and went out to the field. It had rained earlier in the day, but now it was just a light mist. Clyde was standing over on the sideline looking confused. I went over to him. “We’re going to be doing some warmup calisthenics and then some laps. You stay over here and do what we do. Just try not to break anything,” I told him.

“It’s raining,” he complained.

I shrugged. “Well, if you can guarantee that the Army will only fight when it’s warm and sunny, then feel free to stop.”

Clyde’s eyes popped open at that, but I ignored him and went over to the rest of my team. Before I got there, Coach Summers called for me. “Reaper, front and center!”

I trotted over. “What’s up, Coach?”

He nodded towards Clyde. “What’s Wilcox doing here?”

“He wants to start working out and lose some weight. I told him to do what we do and stay out of our way.”

“Since when do you make the arrangements about what happens on my practice field?”

“Sir?” It never occurred to me that Clyde wouldn’t be allowed to work out.

“Get back there and lead the warmup. I’ll deal with this.” He pointed me towards the rest of the squad, and he walked across the field to tell Clyde to go home. Well, I thought it was a good idea but maybe it wasn’t, after all.

I led the team stretching and getting the kinks out, and then we did some jumping jacks. After a minute of those, I turned around and found that Clyde was doing them standing next to Coach Summers. We continued through some sit-ups and push-ups and squats and thrusts. Clyde did them as well, slower and fewer and not very well, but he was doing them. Then Speed was ordered to lead us on a few laps around the field. We all headed out, and Coach motioned for Clyde to follow. He only managed one lap before stopping and gasping for air, but he didn’t quit.

After that, Coach returned and ordered the assistant coaches to have us begin doing our drills and scrimmages. He went back to the sidelines and watched us, but every now and then I saw him talking to Clyde, who then began doing a few push-ups.

Clyde hung in there through the rest of the practice, even if it was only because he had to wait for his mother to pick him up. By the time the practice ended, it was beginning to drizzle, so we headed inside for a hot shower and to get dressed. Clyde looked like death warmed over. He balked at the idea of showering with us, however.

“Get over it, Clyde,” I told him. “You think they have individual showers in basic training?” I might not know what the hell I was getting into, but that was something I was pretty sure about.

Again, Clyde’s eyes popped open, and he went to his locker and stripped down, and went to the showers. Yes, a few guys made a few jokes at his expense, but I gave a few of them a look and shook my head in a ‘Knock it off!’ gesture.

Afterwards, he came over to me in the locker room. “You going to be here tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll see. Clean your shit out of your locker and take it home to get washed. Bring it back tomorrow, clean.” I was packing some of my stuff in a gym bag and showed him. “Where do you live?” He gave me an address that I didn’t know, but he said it was a couple of miles away. “Okay. Tomorrow morning you walk to school,” I ordered.

“Walk to school? That’s too far!” he protested.

“Well, if you can guarantee that the next war we fight will be next door, then fine. Otherwise, you start walking to school. The average person can walk three to four miles in an hour. That’s a simple half hour walk. Figure it out.”

“Christ!” he groaned.

“And another thing. What do you eat for breakfast?”

He blushed at that. “An Egg McMuffin.”

“Christ, that shit will kill you, Clyde, even if the Army doesn’t! No more of that shit! Stop at the store on the way home and buy some apples. That’s your breakfast tomorrow morning.”

He just groaned at this. I clapped him on the shoulder. “You do this, Clyde, basic’s going to be a piece of cake. Or don’t and go figure out something else to do next year. It’s your decision. Make the right one.”

Clyde took off. Speed looked over at me from his locker. “That boy’s the Pillsbury Doughboy! You ain’t never going to get him in shape.”

I shrugged. “I ain’t the one who’s going to get him into shape. If he does this, he’ll be the one to get himself into shape.”

“Man, you are crazy! You got as much a chance of whittling him down as you do of catching a pass!”

“Fuck you, Speed! Fuck you!” I laughed.

“No! Fuck you, Stonehands!”

We argued and tussled a bit until Coach told us to knock it off and get out.

The next morning Clyde caught up to me in homeroom. “I did it. I walked to school!” he said proudly.

“Good. What’d you eat this morning?” I asked.

“An apple, like you said.”

“And what else?” I pressed.

Clyde gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you eat a McMuffin and an apple?” I knew the answer by the guilty look on his face. “You must not want to lose any weight, Clyde. From now on your breakfast is only an apple, nothing else! No shakes or soda, either. You get thirsty, you can drink OJ or coffee. Nothing else! Got it?”

“Christ!” he groaned.

“Look me up at lunch, too.”

I wasn’t sure what my plan was for this. If nothing else, maybe he’d wise up and decide to quit. Across from me, Bo Effner was laughing at me, so I flipped him the bird. How the fuck did I get into this mess?

At lunchtime, I was sitting at one of the football team tables, a place sort of restricted to the team and their girlfriends and the cheerleaders. Wilcox came over, looking nervous at entering our realm. It didn’t get better when Tony Vancuso, said, “What are you doing here, Fatso?” Moose joined in on this.

“Knock it off!” I said. “I invited Clyde over.” I turned back to Clyde, who was carrying a brown paper bag. “You bring your own lunch? Let’s see.” I grabbed it out of his hands and peered inside. It was about what I figured, one small sandwich and a mountain of junk food. “You’re kidding me, right?” I asked him.

Wilcox at least had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Yeah, well...”

“You want to do this; we are changing what you eat. You can’t eat a bucket of lard every day and expect to be anything but lard! Do you see me eating that stuff? Do you see any of us eating that stuff?” I’m not saying we were perfect, but we did eat better than most kids our age. Coach Summers demanded it of us.

“Uh, no,” he answered sheepishly.

“Do you want to lose the weight or what?” I demanded.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay, here goes.” I dumped his lunch bag out on the table in front of me. He had a ham-and-cheese sandwich, which was fine, but he also had a bag of chips, a bag of cheese poofs, and a Twinkie. There was a round of laughter around the table. I threw the sandwich back in the bag. “This is for you, Clyde!” Then I grabbed the chips and tossed them to Brax, sitting a couple of seats down from me. “Brax, dessert!” I turned around and tossed the cheese poofs to Bo, sitting at the table behind me with his girlfriend. “Hey, Bo, incoming dessert!” I looked down the table to Moose and Tony and wagged my finger at them. “No dessert for rude boys!” Both laughed at me. I dropped the Twinkie package on Kelly’s tray. “Sweets for the sweet!”

“You’re sweet!” she replied.

I turned back to Clyde. “No more of this crap. Tomorrow, you bring the sandwich and an apple. If you’re hungry, bring two sandwiches and the apple, or one sandwich and two apples. Got it?”

“Yeah,” he groused.

“Clyde. You do this, you’re going to make it. When the other guys at basic get sent home, you’ll be staying, got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, eat your lunch, and no cheating. I’ll see you in the locker room after school.”

He looked crestfallen, but nodded to me, and went and sat down. I opened the package of Twinkies and gave one to Kelly, and then ate the second. Around us people were razzing me and giving me a ration of shit. The bottom line was that everybody thought I was nuts, and that Fatso Clyde was a lost cause. They were probably right, too.

Still, Clyde showed up that afternoon and worked out with us during practice, even if he still looked as dreadful as yesterday. At least if he died on school grounds his family couldn’t sue me. His lunch the next day was better. That afternoon he showed up at practice with a guy named Barry Towson, another overweight potential recruit. I just shook my head and told Clyde to tell him the rules and routine, and that he had to bring me his lunch for inspection the next day.

Within another week’s time I had a total of six guys dieting and working out. Coach Summers began doing weekly weigh-ins, just like Sergeant Donaldson did. He also put charts up on the wall of his office, with their names and the amount of weight they were losing, along with some other stuff, like the number of push-ups or sit-ups they could do, and their speed at the mile run. Some of the guys on the team still made fun of them, but amazingly, they all started to lose some weight, and their times and performance all improved. When Clyde lost ten pounds, we had a small celebration for him.

In any case, I was doing that stuff on the side. My real job was left linebacker, and we had to win some games. Our next game, the third of the season, was the big one. East Matucket High was coming to Matucket. We had always been a grudge match, but after last year’s thumping, it had been raised to a whole new level. We were probably the biggest rivalry in Georgia by now.

For a week now the newspaper and the local television stations had been playing it up. Coach Summers had given us all explicit orders to keep our fat, fucking mouths shut! He and Mrs. Hollister gave out a bunch of bland bullshit statements, like how it was just one more game, how either team could win, how we played it one game at a time, and one play at a time. It was like in the baseball movie, Bull Durham, where old pro Kevin Costner is telling newbie Tim Robbins, that he had to work on his clichés. Coach Summers was giving out with all the football clichés.

On the other hand, East Matucket was really worked up. They planned on coming down to our level this year, and pounding us into the dirt, which was where thugs and goons belonged. They had an experienced team, mostly seniors this year, just like us, and any injuries from last season were healed. In no uncertain terms, they were pissed at us and despised us. Various quotes predicted anywhere from a ten- to twenty-point margin of victory. Like us, they were undefeated so far this year, but that was not all that it seemed. So far, the Matucket Pioneers had outscored the opposition 57-12. The East Matucket Warriors were nowhere near as victorious. Their first game was against the Douglas County Huskies, which they won by seven points, versus our thirty-five-point margin. Then they beat the East Coweta Indians by four points. Their scoring so far was 33-22. I didn’t think they were anywhere near as impressive as they thought they were.

Which was not to say they might not give the Pioneers some trouble. We were warned to keep our cool, that the Warriors would be pushing the limits of trash talk and bad sportsmanship. They would run down us, our families, our girlfriends, and everything else they could think of to make us lose our cool. We could count on unsportsmanlike behavior when buried in a tackle. They would be trying for injuries.

The madness started early on Friday. It was a game day, so the team was allowed to wear their jerseys to class. Even Bo Effner, our Coach’s Assistant, had a coaching shirt, a purple and gray short-sleeve sports shirt like the coaches wore. I think every other student in school wore a purple Goon Squad t-shirt to class that day. Mindy Hampton had been selling t-shirts like crazy since the start of the school year. I don’t know what her cut was, but she could bring a couple of dozen shirts to school in the morning and be sold out before lunch - and that didn’t include the orders she was taking on the side!

Matucket didn’t have a visiting team locker room, and East Matucket was barely ten minutes away by school bus, so the Warriors arrived already dressed. They had plenty of fans with them. I think half the police department was there, and they were busy patrolling the stands, the parking lot, and guarding the school. Nobody wanted a repeat of the behavior we had enjoyed a year ago.

We ran out onto the field through our breakaway banner. The home team side of the stands was just a sea of purple and gray; the visiting side was nothing but the blue and white of the East Matucket Warriors. The place was a madhouse. You couldn’t hear yourself think. The Warrior banner, which wasn’t a breakaway but was raised on poles with the team running out under, had their motto ‘WARRIORS FOREVER!’ The general opinion of everyone in purple was that this was pretty lame compared to ‘EAT ‘EM ALIVE AND S*IT OUT THE BONES!’, but that was now up in the stands, banned for the sake of decency. They were screaming it out anyway, along with ‘GOON SQUAD! GOON SQUAD!’

This was our third game of the season, and our starting roster was now fixed. Coach Summers told us the beginning of that week. Jack the Ripper was now officially the first-string middle linebacker. Normally, the middle linebacker acts as the ‘defensive quarterback’, calling defensive plays and running the huddle. Coach called the whole defensive squad together and told us flat out, “Grim, you call the shots out there. Ripper, you don’t have enough experience yet. Are we clear on that?”

“I’m good with it, Coach,” said Jack.

I clapped my brother on the shoulder and said, “Just remember, I’ve taught you everything you know, but I haven’t taught you everything I know!”

Everybody, including Coach Summers, groaned at that. Jack had to push it though. “Maybe we should ask Kelly about that! Give her a chance to comparison shop!”

On our first scrimmage after that, I called a special audible, and the defensive line hit the dirt and allowed the entire offensive line to pile onto my little brother. He let out a single scream and was buried. I helped him upright afterwards. “You got anything else to say about Kelly?” I asked, grinning. Around us the rest of the team was laughing.

“No, I’m good!” he groaned.

Now it was game day, and we were on the field facing our sworn enemies. The Pioneer Marching Band played the anthem, we pledged allegiance, and the refs went out to the center of the field. Speed looked over at me. “Grim, it’s time. Game face on!”

“Game face on!” We pounded each other on the shoulders, and grabbed our helmets, and walked out to the center of the field. It was time to flip a coin.

The refs were separating us, which was probably a good idea. If it was heads, the Pioneers got to choose to kick off or receive, and the Warriors would get to choose which end of the field to play. If it was tails, things were reversed. The ref called it as tails, which meant the Warriors could choose, and they obviously chose to receive. I looked over at Speed and he shrugged, so I pointed to the south end of the field. “We’ll take south.” The Warriors, on the north side, would be facing towards the sun, at least in the earlier part of the game, so maybe that would help us.

The ref nodded and said, “Warriors to receive, Pioneers to take the south. I want a good clean game. Now shake hands and go to the sidelines.”

I hesitated to shake hands, as did Speed. The feeling was mutual, and the Warrior defensive co-captain spit on the ground at my feet. That wasn’t cool! The ref got right up in his face. “Knock it off, mister! You do that again and it will earn you an unsportsmanlike conduct and a boot out of this game! Is that understood?”

He only got a mutter in response, so he yelled it this time. “IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good! Now go! We’ll be watching all of you!” With that statement he also pointed at Speed and me. We glanced at each other and simply nodded in return.

As we walked back over to the team, I muttered to Speed, “What a bunch of douchebags!”

“These guys deserve a good thumping.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” We bumped fists and he headed to the sidelines while I stayed on the field. We were kicking off and I was acting as a blocker on our kickoff special team. I wasn’t fast enough to be a gunner - Brax had one of those jobs - but I was fast enough and strong enough to make myself a real nuisance if the kickoff returner got anywhere near me.

Dix Vercolo was the younger brother of Dax, who had been our right defensive end last year. He was a senior like me and was our kicker. He was pretty good, too. He wasn’t quite as good as Eugene Strackmeyer had been last year, who hadn’t missed anything all year until our final playoff game, but he was still pretty good. We all took our places, the ref blew the whistle, and it started. Dix nailed a pretty one deep into the Warrior’s left side, where one of their running backs caught it and advanced to only the 15-yard line before getting hammered by Brax.

And then it was game on. We spent about two-thirds of the first quarter going back and forth, up and down the field. The Warriors only advanced it to their 47-yard line before having to kick it back to us. Speed caught it and took it up to the 34, where we stalled and had to kick it back. The Warriors fielded it at their 34, and brought it back to our 47, but couldn’t move it closer, and their kicker wouldn’t chance a field goal. They kicked it back to us, and we got it back to the 47 again. Still, we couldn’t get anywhere with it, and we would need to kick it back.

I think both teams were spending the first few minutes of the game feeling each other out. The Warriors were tough, but they had been tough last year, too, and we had routed them. I talked it over with my fellow linebackers and linemen, and our consensus was that their quarterback liked to be sneaky, but he wasn’t all that good at it. He telegraphed his moves, and you could figure out what he was up to if you were smart. I knew that Speed and Randy Thibodeaux, our quarterback, were doing the same thing on the offense, trying to read their defense.