Call Me by My Name by John Ed Bradley Page B

hurdled over the Mike linebacker, who’d come charging hard with his head down. Tater stumbled forward for a few yards before dropping a hand to the ground to right himself, then he found a seam that led him along a diagonal path to the end zone.
    The play developed so quickly that I was still blocking when the crowd noise reached me.
    Watching the game film with the team the next day, Coach Cadet used the clock on the locker room wall to time how long it took Tater to score from the instant he abandoned the pass and started to run. Even with the moves he made, he’d covered a distance of seventy yards in nine seconds.
    â€œThat’s movin’, boys,” Coach Cadet said to applause, even as Tater sat expressionless in the middle of us.
    The run ended and he crossed the goal line and dropped to a knee, ball still gripped in his arm as a silent prayer issued from his lips. Miss Nettie had raised Tater a devout Baptist, and he kissed his clenched fist and pointed to the sky before hopping back to his feet and tossing the ball to the nearest official.
    There was bedlam in the stadium. I spotted Angie running up the sideline, chasing after Tater along with Patrice and the other cheerleaders. Then I located Mama and Pops high in the seats. She was standing and cheering with all the other home fans—all of them but Pops, I should say. He was sitting with his chin in his hand, like someone who’d just been awakened from a nap and didn’t appreciate it.

    Tater scored three more touchdowns in the second half—one with his legs, the other two with his arm—but our defense still couldn’t stop them and we lost despite his heroics. The stadium usually cleared out quickly, with only a few sympathetic parents waiting for us outside the dressing room, but tonight several dozen people were there, all of them anxious to see Tater out of uniform.
    I was walking directly in front of him, and I felt their weight as they closed in. He reached a hand out and grabbed my shoulder, and the commotion grew louder as we pressed forward. We eventually made it past the ticket gate and reached the place where Mama and Pops were waiting by the bus that would take the team back to school. It’s a peculiar thing to hear people cheer for you after you’ve lost, but it had been that kind of night. I noticed a clutch of New Iberia’s fans, dressed in yellow and black. They’d stuck around for their own look at Tater with his helmet off.
    Pops wasn’t impressed to see us, but Mama hugged us both even though our jerseys were soaked with sweat.
    â€œWhere’s Miss Nettie tonight?” she asked Tater.
    â€œShe had to work.”
    â€œOn Friday night?”
    â€œShe babysits when Mr. and Mrs. Miller have to go somewhere.”
    â€œBut we sat not far from the Millers in the stadium tonight.”
    Tater didn’t answer. The Millers had the pleasure of watching their no-talent son Marco sit on his helmet on the sideline the entire evening, while the sole guardian of the game’s star player was assigned to caring for the rest of their snotty-nosed kids.
    We’d almost reached the bus when Angie arrived. She wrapped her arms around me first and had to wait for Patrice to untangle herself from Tater before she could congratulate him. Black girls had never registered with me until I was forced to go to school with them, but now whenever I saw Patrice and she cast her big green eyes upon me, I lapsed into silence and nervous trembling. She was “ black black,” as Pops would say, and yet she spoke with the heavy local patois, which would suggest she came up in a Cajun home. Cajuns were white people, and this was another revelation about attending school with Louisiana’s black kids that I never could’ve anticipated: Many of them had accents as stubbornly French as my own.
    I might’ve found Patrice bewitching, but there was no way, even without Tater in the picture,