Chapter 19

"Mr. Williams," a boy said loudly after raising his hand. "Can I use the hall pass?"

Bud tossed him the dark, splintered, foot-long piece of one-by-four with 209 painted on it and went back to walking the rows of his classroom. His students were bent over their desks, ballpoint pens or No .2 pencils writing as fast as they could, as they worked on the essay questions Bud had written laboriously on the blackboard that morning before school began.

"Remember," Bud said loudly, "you only have to answer three of those five. You've still got twenty minutes. Save some time to proof read like I showed you."

"Coach," said a student in the back row, "does number three say Jackson or Johnson?"

"You best sit in the front row, Jim. It says Jackson, like Stonewall Jackson."

Bud walked back to his desk and sat down, straightened out a pile of papers from his earlier class and sighed. The trouble with essay tests, he said to himself, was that I have to read them. But the principal insisted, one essay test every month at least, so Bud did it, one a month and this would do it for October.

He looked out over the thirty-some adolescent males, all in their blue shirts and skinny black ties, seeing mostly the tops of the their heads and a few worried faces chewing on pencils. I know how they feel, he thought as he took out his red pen and started scanning down the first paper. When he finished that one and wrote the score at the top, he glanced up at the clock. "About five minutes," he said. "Bring 'em up here when you finish."

At three-thirty, Bud stuffed all his essays into the leather brief case his former wife had given him when he told her about his new job. Then he went down to the coaches' room and changed his clothes.

He hung his corduroy jacket, white shirt and necktie in his locker, sniffing the shirt and hoping he could wear it again tomorrow. He pulled on his sweatshirt, donned his well-worn cleats, put the whistle lanyard around his neck and his red St. Thomas hat on his head. Bud jogged out to the practice field and found about half of his football team already limbering up, stretching mostly or jogging in large circles. He had exactly two-dozen players if everyone showed up, which was seldom.

He talked to his three would-be kickers, gave them a tee and had them go off to practice by themselves for a while, wishing he had somebody who knew how to punt or place kick that could coach them since none were very good although all of them could kick better than he could. Ten minutes later he had two sets of double lines going and both of his quarterbacks throwing short passes.

"Zing 'em," he yelled. "Fire that ball. Get on top."

Then he called his kickers in and worked on punt protection and punt returns for fifteen minutes or so, never happy with the results. They did their usual tip-drills and fumble recovery exercises and then he called them together and had his starting team put on red vests.

"We'll run through all our wing-right plays today, just half speed at first. Guards, don't step back when you pull. Blue team, you're on defense; Mike's in charge." He nodded at the sophomore linebacker who would soon be first team he was sure. "Mix it up; do some stunting." The defense only had eight people today, but they made the first-stringers work against a series of running plays.

An hour later, everyone, including the coach, was running forty-yard wind sprints and then they hustled into the locker room as the sun disappeared behind some Western cloud banks and the wind from the north had a bite to it. Bud's two team managers brought in the equipment and helped clean up the locker room.

Bud had his own shower in the office and by the time he had dried his short-cropped hair and put his white shirt back on, the place was empty. He stuffed his tie in his pocket, went around and picked up a few wet towels and tossed them in the hamper, got his briefcase and turned off the lights. He could still hear some of the more boisterous team members skylarking outside as he headed for home, a two-mile hike to a basement efficiency.