Chapter 20: School’s End

Dad didn’t say anything to me the next day, so we must have covered our tracks. At least the back seat in the SuperCrew was wide enough for us to lay semi-flat on. We still drove around in the cold air with the windows down.

Monday at school I saw Coach Summers and gave him the news. I was out for a week, and would be reevaluated afterwards, so I might be able to play if we won next week and went to State.

“I won’t let you back on the field until you bring me a release from the doctor,” he told me. “That includes practices.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I won’t have a player die on me, Grim. It’s just a damn game!”

“Yes, sir, I understand. Does that mean I’m off the team?” I asked.

“No, just out for the week. I want you to show up for practice and for the game next week. Feel free to wear your jersey, but you can wear regular clothes underneath. You can work with the team and tell them how you messed up reading the plays on the last game.”

“I’m really feeling the love, Coach!” I replied drily.

“You’ll get over it, Grim,” he replied. “Seriously, you can be on the sidelines with me and Coach Walters, helping out. Your teammates listen to you and respect you. We’ll figure out something for you, but it won’t involve any scrimmages or contact, not until you’re healed up.”

“I can do that, Coach. Hey, just how good was my brother? He says he got the game ball.”

“Come to practice and watch, and then you tell me.”

“Yes, sir.”

I figured I didn’t need to wear my jersey during practices, so I left that in my game bag. After school we did the normal Monday practice routine, which was to review the last game and who did right and who did wrong. We weren’t going to get better, said Coach Summers, if we didn’t face facts honestly. I would be in for my share of the critique, but he was fair and spread it around.

Out on the field, it was strange to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was the first game I had ever missed. I was healthy and in good condition, and while I’d had my share of colds and flu over the years, nothing major had cropped up during football season. It was weird watching the defense from the sidelines and seeing somebody else calling plays. It was a completely different perspective.

We had only two games to go in the season. Our next game was Friday, December 5, against the winner of one of the other groupings. We were playing the top-seeded team from Region One, Lowndes High School, which was from way the hell down in Valdosta. This time Matucket High lost the coin toss to see where the game was played. We were going to Valdosta. Valdosta was practically on the Florida line, it was so far away. In fact, no matter which way we went, either over to Atlanta and south through Macon, or straight south down through Columbus and Albany, it was over four hours away, and that was in a car. Do it in a lumbering school bus and we were probably talking a five-hour trip, longer if you figure in a bathroom break or two. The game was scheduled for 6:00 PM, so the school buses left at 11:00 AM. We weren’t figuring all that many fans to follow.

Lowndes was a big school, at least twice our size, and they had a stadium large enough to seat 10,000 spectators. I mean, this was a real stadium! They called it the Concrete Palace. They also had a new coach, who had supposedly sworn blood oaths and sacrificed virgins to pagan gods so that the Lowndes High School Vikings would become the greatest football team in Georgia. For a brand-new coach to get to the state semi-finals was a big deal. They were supposed to have a tough and balanced team, and if they could whip us, they would be headed to the Georgia Dome for the state championship. The Pioneers were considered the underdog.

Mrs. Hollister had buses available for fans to take to the game, but you had to buy your ticket ahead of time. If you bought a ticket you could go to the game, and you could get out of school early. Pack a lunch and a dinner, though, because stops would be minimal, and meals weren’t being served. The return trip would be in the middle of the night! Kelly wanted to go, but I told her it was going to be a long ride, and I would be riding the team bus, at least on the way down, and she couldn’t ride with us. My parents were taking the day off, and they were driving down, but Bobbie Joe was old enough now to take care of himself, and he had a key to get into the house. In fact, our folks were talking about staying the night in Valdosta and coming home on Saturday. What the hell there was to do in Valdosta I had no idea, but maybe they were just planning on a night out without the kids. If Mom was giggling on Saturday, we’d know why.

Friday, I helped load all the crap on the buses, and off we went. We ate on the bus and had a couple of potty breaks along the way. It was still over five hours of travel. By the time we got there most of us were going stir crazy, singing The Wheels On The Bus and Ninety-Nine Bottles Of Beer while making strange noises to each other. The temperature was down in the forties, and rain was threatening. I had long underwear on, along with a heavy winter jacket and a knit cap.

I had to admit; Lowndes High did things right. Somebody was there to greet us when we arrived, and we were shown to the visitor’s locker rooms, which were neat and clean and warm. No using the girl’s locker room. They had a statue of a Viking in their stadium! Still, it was very, very strange to be at a game and in the locker room, and not gearing up. I mostly kept my mouth shut and stayed out of the way. The guys were talking trash and bragging each other up, but I wasn’t really part of it this time. I felt like a real third wheel. I hung back when they were called and ran out onto the field and followed along with the coaching staff.

Playing in the Concrete Palace was unreal! There must have been 4,000 Viking fans on their side. On the Pioneer side we had maybe 200. We were a small but vocal block of purple in the stands, and they were yelling, ‘GOON SQUAD! GOON SQUAD!’ when we came out. I had to smile when I saw our trusty banner waving in the breeze. ‘EAT ‘EM ALIVE AND S*IT OUT THE BONES!’ I wondered what the Vikings thought of that.

Their colors were red and white, which would be easy to differentiate from our purple and gray. When it came time to flip the coin, Speed Demon looked at me and then at Coach Summers. “Who’s going out with me?” he asked.

Coach looked at me curiously, and I shook my head. “I’m not playing, and I’m not dressed. Send out Brax. He’s earned it.”

Coach smiled and nodded, and then pointed at Brax. “Get out there, Mister Hughes. You can fill in for your deadbeat friend here.”

Brax laughed and I flipped him off. “Really, really feeling the love, Coach!”

“You’ll survive. Now we get to see if what you’ve been teaching your brother and the other guys has sunk in. We win here and Monday you pass your physical, this time next week you’ll be taking the field at the Georgia Dome.”

“First we get through today,” I answered.

“First we get through today,” he agreed.

Watching the game from the sidelines was interesting. I could walk around, and I got a very different view of what was happening during defensive plays. You could focus on certain positions and players differently. Two things became immediately apparent. First, Lowndes High had a very good team. The Vikings were tough, and they deserved to be there. However, I had to be honest about it and say that I thought the Eagles last week were tougher. Maybe it was because Region One was smaller with less competition, and maybe because their new coach hadn’t been able to work any magic on them yet. They had gone 8-2 for the season, with a cumulative score of 212-130, which wasn’t quite as good as our 10-0 record and 338-92 cumulative score. In any case, I thought that we were going to win.

The second thing I noticed was that Jack the Ripper was a great middle linebacker. To put it bluntly, as a sophomore he was better than I was as a senior. What would he be like when he finished growing? Give him two more years and my little brother would be going Division I himself. He was very large and very strong and very fast, and he was better than I was at reading the defense. On several occasions I would be thinking to myself about calling a particular lineup or defense, and he would do something different, and he would be right. Watching him play made me both proud and jealous. I decided that once the post-season was over, and injuries wouldn’t bother us, I would have to kick his ass for being better than me!

It wasn’t a blowout like some of the games we had played in, but we did win. The Vikings kept it competitive, and if we made a mistake, they were going to capitalize on it. Fortunately, we were relatively healthy. Will Tyrell was back with us, his twisted ankle all healed up, so we had our kicking game back. I was out, but we had enough linebackers in the second string to fill in. Coach Summers was using them to shuttle plays and ideas out to Jack, and I could see him talking things over with Antwan and the others. Ultimately, we won, 34-20, with no new injuries. The Vikings were going home for the season, and the Pioneers would be going to the Georgia Dome next Friday night.

The Pioneer fans made up for their lack of numbers with an outsized level of cheering. We started heading over towards the locker room when I heard somebody yelling, “JACK! GRIM! OVER HERE!” I don’t know if Jack heard it, but I looked around and saw my folks down at the bottom of the stands, waving frantically. I waved back and grabbed Jack and dragged him over.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Congratulations! You did great out there!” gushed Mom.

“You fellows did real well, real well,” agreed our father. “Next week will be it, the state championship in Atlanta. Congratulations.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said. Jack echoed me a second later.

“We’re going to go have dinner and stay the night-,” said, Mom. “-but we wanted to say it was a good game. Pretty exciting!”

Jack looked at me for a second. “How are we getting home from school?”

“Excellent question.” I turned to face our parents.

“Your mom and I drove over to the school and left the Sienna in the parking lot. We drove the truck down. When you get back to Matucket you can take the Sienna home. We’ll be home tomorrow. Have your keys?” asked Dad.

I checked my pockets, and they were on my key ring in my coat pocket. “We’re good.”

“You boys going to be good on the way home?” asked Mom.

“We’re probably going to be asleep!” replied Jack. It was already dark.

“Well, you boys behave,” she said.

“Sure thing. What about you two? Are you going to behave?” teased Jack. “Remember, no drinking, and make sure you’re home before your curfew!”

Mom giggled and said, “Don’t worry about us. You two are the ones most likely to get in trouble.”

“Smartass kids,” muttered Dad.

Mom hugged us both, and then left with Dad, still giggling. I simply looked at Jack and shook my head. We hustled inside, Jack to shower and clean up, and me to get out of the cold. A cold drizzle was settling in.

We didn’t screw around in the locker room, and as soon as we were ready, we piled onto the buses and took off. We formed a giant yellow convoy rolling north up I-75. It was dark as sin, as my grandmother would say, but heavy rain held off and traffic was light. Initially there was a lot of talk about the game, but after a bit everybody curled up on game bags and rolled-up jackets and slept as best they could. It was damn late by the time we got home. The spectators from the buses were pretty muted, and you knew they had been sleeping as well. Jack and I roused ourselves, loaded our stuff into the Sienna, and drove home. The only one awake to greet us was Duke, who whined to go out, and then came back in and went to sleep.

Kelly came over in the morning. I was still sacked out, but I heard the doorbell ring and grabbed a robe and went downstairs to let her in. “Hey, babe,” I said, yawning.

“Did I wake you?” she asked. “When did you get back?”

“I don’t know. Three? Three-thirty? Somewhere in there.” I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t have anything on except the robe and my briefs.

“Sorry, I didn’t know it was so late.” Kelly wrapped her arms around me. She had a twinkle in her eyes as she said, “You look pretty cute. You look like you’re ready to hop in the sack with a hot girl!”

I snorted. “Yeah, great idea, babe. Both my brothers are here, I share a bedroom with Jack, and my parents might be coming home anytime now. We did this once before, remember?”

Kelly laughed at that. “Should I stay or go home until later?”

I leaned down and kissed her cheek. My morning breath was bad. “Stay. I need to get human. You make some coffee and I’ll clean up and get dressed.” I pointed Kelly towards the kitchen, and she shrugged off her coat and went to become domestic. I headed up the stairs.

Jack was still snoring in our room, but Bobbie Joe was making wakeup sounds from his cubbyhole. I slipped into the bathroom before he could beat me to it. Twenty minutes later I was clean and shaved and slightly more awake. Coffee, a lot of it, was needed to completely come alive. I opened the door to find him sitting on the floor in the hall. “Took you long enough,” he said.

“Looks this good don’t come by accident. Perfection comes at a price,” I replied.

“Yeah? Then how come it took Mom and Dad three times to get it right?”

“I’m still trying to figure out why they bothered with you two when they already found perfection on the first go.” This was a standard argument for the two of us. Jack was the one caught in the middle, but neither Bobbie Joe nor I cared what he might think.

I went down the hallway to our room. Jack and I had basically just stripped off our clothes and fallen asleep on top of the covers. He was still snoring. I kicked his bed. “Wake up. It’s time for breakfast.” I nudged him a couple of times while I dressed.

“Oh, fuck you. Let me sleep,” he answered once he was awake.

“Sleep is for pussies. Coffee is brewing and we can make breakfast. Get your ass out of bed,” I told him.

He gave me a few more choice curses, but I ignored him. Jack was beginning to stir alive by the time I was dressed and out the door.

I found Kelly in the kitchen with an apron on over her jeans and sweater. “Isn’t this the scene of domestic bliss,” I commented.

“If you don’t want any coffee...,” she started.

“I don’t want coffee, I need coffee! First though, I owe you this.” I wrapped Kelly in my arms and gave her a very long kiss. “Now, I can drink some coffee.”

It must have been a good kiss because Kelly had a flustered look on her face. “When do your parents get home? I’ll chance your brothers catching us!”

I laughed loudly at that. “I won’t! You’ll just have to wait until later, babe! That’s all we’d need!” Kelly had been busy with Mister Coffee. I poured myself some coffee and inhaled it, waking up just from the aroma. I took mine straight up, no sugar or milk, while Kelly drank hers very sweet and creamy. “We need to get started on breakfast,” I told her.

“You can cook?” she asked.

“I am a full-grown man of Georgia!” I announced. “If there is one thing men of Georgia know, it’s how to cook pigs!”

“You can cook a pig?”

“Well, bacon and sausage, at least. What do you say to some waffles and bacon and sausage? I figure if we both get involved, we can burn the house down twice as fast.”

“Sounds yummy!”

Kelly didn’t really know where stuff was, but I got everything out of the refrigerator and the pantry for her. After that I went to work with the swine-related products, and she made waffle mix according to the directions on the back of the box. When Bobbie Joe wandered through, I put him to work setting the table.

“How many plates?” he asked.

“Just four. I don’t know when Mom and Dad are getting back, but it probably won’t be until after lunch,” I answered. “They were planning on getting a late dinner and staying the night.”

“What in the world is there to do in Valdosta?” asked my brother.

“Not much that I could see, but by the time we got there it was dark. Maybe the place turns into a tropical paradise when the sun comes up.”

Bobbie Joe set the table for four. I plugged in the waffle iron and gave Kelly the instructions, since each iron was different. “When the light goes off, put in a ladle of mix. Then, when the light goes off again, it’s ready.”

“Got it!” she said.

Jack stumbled through at that point. He was clean but looked bleary. “Man, those guys hit hard! I feel like death warmed over.”

“Now you know how I felt last week.”

Bobbie Joe asked, “So who won?”

Jack and I stared at him. “You don’t know? You weren’t listening to the radio? You haven’t read the newspaper?” I asked.

“Sorry, no. I watched TV last night,” he answered.

“Go get the paper, you little shitweasel!” ordered Jack.

“I swear to God; we’re taking away your man card!” I added.

“Hey!” Bobbie Joe protested.

We continued the verbal abuse until Bobbie Joe grumped and went out to get the paper off the front lawn. He had it open to the Sports section by the time he returned. “Hey, congratulations! This means you’re going to State next week, right?”

I was just on the verge of answering when the phone rang. “Explain it to him,” I told Jack. I grabbed the phone and answered, “Hello?”

“Hi, sweetie, just checking in. You boys all right?” It was our mother.

I muted the phone with my hand. “It’s Mom.” To my mother I said, “Just fine, Mom. The fire department got everything under control just a few minutes ago, and Bobbie Joe and Jack are at the hospital. We’re just fine.”

“Smart-aleck!”

“What’s up, Mom?”

“Just checking up on you. Your father said to get the beer kegs and dancing girls out by the time we get home.”

“When’s that going to be?” I asked.

“Sometime this afternoon. We’re going to get breakfast and leave afterwards,” she answered. Then it got strange. It sounded like she was cupping the phone, but I heard her faintly giggle and say, “Jack! Behave! Not while I’m talking to the boys!” There was some more giggling, and a muffled squeal. I was simply staring at the phone, and then Mom said, “I have to go now. You boys behave.” She was giggling as she hung up the phone.

The others were staring at me as I stared at the phone. “What’s wrong, Grim?” asked Kelly.

“Hmmm?”

“What’s wrong? You look surprised or something.”

I hung up the phone and scratched my head. How to answer that one? I gave her an amused look. “Remember what you were suggesting this morning, for us?” Kelly blushed and swatted my arm. I pointed at the phone. “I think Dad was getting frisky!”

“Oh, my God!” groaned Jack.

Bobbie Joe added, “I think I’m going to be sick!”

Kelly grinned at me. “You think so?”

“If Mom and Dad are holding hands when they come home, and Mom is giggling - I’m positive!”

“I’m not sure I can eat now,” protested Jack. “My sensitive young mind is ruined for life!”

“You don’t want any waffles?” quizzed Kelly.

Jack grabbed for the plate. “I’ll suffer through. Jeez! Mom and Dad? I don’t want to know!”

The others wanted to know the evidence, so I replayed the conversation for them, which they all found both vastly amusing and conclusive proof. After breakfast Jack was detailed to do the dishes, and Kelly hung around with me at the house. Mom and Dad got home around half past two, and as I predicted, Mom was giggling. I just looked at the others and we started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Mom asked. That just got us to laughing harder.

Once my folks were back, Kelly and I took off, simply to keep from laughing at them all afternoon. We went out to her Miata, and halfway to her house I realized I should have taken Mom’s Sienna. Then again, if we took the Sienna, that would be proof positive that I was planning on going parking with Kelly later. That sort of thing was simply physically impossible in a Miata! I mentioned that to Kelly.

“I didn’t think of that either! What do we do about, you know, later?”

I shrugged. “I’m tapped out of ideas, babe. It’s too cold and wet to take the blankets out up at the lake.”

“Let’s worry about it later. Come on. Let’s go over to the Pizza Palace and see who’s around.”

The rest of the day we simply goofed off. We saw a few people over at the Pizza Palace, then went to the mall and did some Christmas shopping. Afterwards we dumped our stuff in her car and went back inside for a movie. Eventually we ended up back at Kelly’s house. It was late, and her mother was already up in bed, but the lights were still on. When we came in the door, her mother yelled out, “Kelly, is that you?”

“Yes, Mom! Grim and I are going to watch some television.”

“Good night!”

“Good night!”

Then Kelly grabbed me by the hand and pulled me down the stairs to their family room. She whispered, “If we’re quiet, she won’t hear us!”

I smiled at her. “You’re out of your mind! She’s going to kill us!”

“No, that would be Daddy, not Mom. Afterwards I can take you home.”

“She’s going to hear us for sure. She’s going to hear you for sure! Hell, the neighbors will probably hear you!” I countered.

Kelly had a very simple answer for this. She stepped back slightly and peeled off her cable-knit sweater, leaving her amazing breasts barely contained by a very small and lacy bra. “You sure I can’t change your mind?” She smiled and unbuttoned the top of her jeans. “Hmmm?” she asked, smiling.

“I swear, going into the Army will probably be safer for me!” I grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and handed it to her. “Here, if you have to scream, scream into this!”

Kelly laughed. “I love it when you make me scream!”

“Aaaagh!” I groaned.

I won’t lie and say it was my finest performance, since I was constantly worrying that Mrs. O’Connor was going to wander in on us. Still, Kelly seemed most appreciative, and she really did scream into the pillow a few times. Afterwards we dressed and Kelly drove me back to the house. That would be probably our only chance for romance for a week. Sunday night was out since we had school on Monday. Then we had school right through Friday, and Friday night was the Georgia State Championship. If we hadn’t chanced it at her house, it would have been a dry couple of weeks for us.

I think the entire school was crazy that week. All that anybody could talk about was the upcoming state championship. The game was that Friday night, December 13, and was played in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome. The game would start at 8:00 PM, and we were playing Parkview High, from Region Eight. Parkview was in Lilburn, an Atlanta suburb on the eastern side of the city, and they were going to be tough. They were twice our size, had more money, more facilities, and more of anything else you could mention. They had won the state championship the last two years, and they expected to win it again. So, it seemed, did everybody else!

That wasn’t anything new to us by now. For the last two years the newspapers and television stations had been treating Matucket High as a bunch of hillbillies who needed to mind their manners around their betters. In the last two years we had won twenty straight regular season games and six out of seven post-season games. We were the Region Three champions two years in a row. We had two definite Division I picks on the team. According to the stats we were the toughest defense in the state. Most of us were wondering just what it would take to be considered as something other than the perennial underdogs. Even an even match would be considered an improvement!

I took an afternoon off on Monday and Mom took me to the hospital to get checked out. I couldn’t play without a permission slip. It was going to be my last game, and I wanted to play it on a real field, in a real stadium, in a real championship. It was for all the marbles. I got my slip and made it back to school in time to give it to the school nurse and Coach Summers. He smiled and sent me to the locker room to get ready for practice.

Coach’s theme for the week was going back to the basics. Ignore the hype and the hoopla. “This is a football!” he started, imitating Vince Lombardi. If we remembered our assignments, if we remembered our plays, if we didn’t play stupid, then we’d win. We simply practiced our playbooks and concentrated on doing what we already knew how to do.

That is not to say the hype and hoopla didn’t intrude. The Georgia State Championship might not be the Super Bowl, but we did get reporters coming around. The Matucket Times-Dispatch brought in a reporter and a photographer, and Channel 9 sent over Brad Dillon with a cameraman, to do interviews. Since I was one of the co-captains, I was interviewed, along with Speed, Brax, and Randy. That was hilarious to us.

On Tuesday, before we headed out to practice, Coach Summers called us all into the cafeteria for a talk. He told us we were going to be meeting reporters who would be asking all sorts of idiotic questions, and that we had to behave and watch our mouths. Then he grinned and turned the meeting over to Bo Effner, which all of us found a little odd. Bo had a television set hooked up to a VCR, something he had borrowed from the Audio-Visual Department, and he turned it on. He hit a couple of buttons on the remote, and suddenly it was the scene on the bus in Bull Durham, with Kevin Costner telling Tim Robbins,” You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re gonna have to study them, you’re gonna have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down: ‘We gotta play it one day at a time.’”

Then Bo turned off the television. “Now, you have to learn your clichés!” He pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of his pocket and said, “Repeat after me! We gotta play it one day at a time. That’s right, everybody say it!”

We all looked at each other, but Coach Summers was going along with it, so we all said, “We gotta play it one day at a time.”

“We have to stick to our game plan.”

At this point I heard a chuckle from one side of the room, and we all repeated,” We have to stick to our game plan.”

“We have to leave it all on the field,” said Bo, grinning.

By now we had guys starting to laugh. “We have to leave it all on the field,” we yelled out.

Bo had a bunch more. “We have to give 110 percent.” “We have to play a full 48 minutes.” “We have to take care of the football.” There were even more, some tossed out by the team. More than a few of our responses were ridiculous. In any case, it broke the tension, and Coach sent us out to practice. The rest of the week we were tossing clichés back and forth to each other all day long. There was a reason why we were grinning when Brad Dillon interviewed us; we were using some of Bo’s clichés and it was all we could do to not start laughing on camera!

Still, by Friday I was just a bundle of nerves. Atlanta was a hell of a lot closer to Matucket than Valdosta was, and a lot of people would be attending. Kids and parents who wouldn’t go to a regular season game were going to see us at the Georgia Dome. That in itself was a big draw. We would be inside, out of the cold and wind and rain and snow and whatever else might be going on outside. There would be real seats, and real concession stands. A convoy of school buses would be bringing students and parents over, and the place would be packed with other people driving over. Jack and I would be on the school bus, but Mom, Dad, and Bobbie Joe would be driving in the Sienna, and they were bringing the O’Connors, Kelly and her mom.

It was a little over an hour’s trip from Matucket High to the Georgia Dome, but we left the school a little after five. The game was at eight but with Friday night rush hour, the always jammed Atlanta highways would probably be even worse. No way were we losing due to a forfeit because we were stuck in a traffic jam! We had some energy bars and beef jerky on the trip over, but at least a couple of us were too keyed up to even eat that. As we rolled out, it seemed like hundreds of cars were following us, all festooned with purple and gray, and with slogans painted on windows with shoe polish.

It was weird when we got to the Georgia Dome. The team buses rolled up to the player’s entrance. I’d been to the Dome before, to see the Falcons play, but this was totally different. We went through a different gate, parked separately from the rest of the fans, and went in a different entrance. We were able to walk out onto the playing field before we went into the locker rooms. We got out there and most of us just stopped and stared at everything. Some fans were already present, on both sides, but we ignored that. You could also see where the television cameras were being set up. Yeah, we were going to be playing live on one of the Georgia public television stations! I just stood there and looked around - and up! We were under cover! Outside the weather was cold and windy and rainy - just miserable! Inside it was warm and calm and dry.