Every Happy Family by Dede Crane Page A

you.”
    â€œYeah, sure.” Killer’s always gushing high-flying compliments.
    â€œShe lost her parents and sisters, you know, in some freak train accident in Japan. She was like, eleven.”
    â€œSatomi?”
    â€œYeah. Lives here year around.”
    â€œThat sucks.” Beau hates stories like that. Makes him want to hit something.

    â€¢â€¢â€¢

    It’s halftime and an enraged Coach Dugan has called a huddle. Sweaty and mud splattered, the players stand with their arms wrapped around each others shoulders and encircle the coach. “Not fucking good enough.” He whips off his ball cap and drills it into the ground. “Who’s your check, Moore?”
    â€œTwenty,” mutters the guy on Beau’s left.
    â€œFucking look at me when I’m talking to you.”
    Lyle Moore lifts his head, his arm tightening around Beau’s shoulder. Beau’s arm tightens back.
    The coach’s face is flushed, his cauliflower ears inverted conch shells, his nose something deflated. Dugan is a god among coaches. Under his five-year reign, St. Paul’s has won more rugby games than any school in North America.
    â€œThen why do I see number twenty pussy-skipping down the field ?” Dugan’s saliva warms the side of Beau’s face. “Everybody pulls his own weight and stays on his check.” His eyes lands on Beau’s. “That one tackle was yours, Wright.”
    Beau was distracted by a woman on the sidelines wearing a purple jacket like Pema’s. “Y...y...y...yes, sir.”
    â€œY...y...y,” says the coach, then moves on to a grade twelve named Mick. Beau seethes, hating himself.
    â€œA little late, Mick,” says the coach.
    â€œIf it wasn’t for fucking Phan,” says Mick. Andy Phan, one of their own, was the touch judge who called Mick’s try incomplete.
    â€œWere you fucking Phan?”
    Nervous laughter loosens the circle.
    â€œRemember, you’re only as good as your team.” Dugan doesn’t seem to realize that he’s stepping on his ball cap, pushing it into the mud. “You’re one machine out there. One.”
    â€œOne,” echoes the captain, and the team follows a beat later.
    â€œIt’s a question of?”
    â€œHonour!” they bark in response, their deep voices deeper on purpose.
    Dugan gives them a sad, even loving, smile, as if any second he might tear up. “Show me what I know you can do.”
    Beau’s never had a coach who cared about the game as much as this man, and by extension cared about him as a player, and can’t help but want to please him.
    From the start of the second half, Beau is absorbed to the point where anything beyond muscling towards one united goal is background noise. He makes every one of his tackles, two huge kicks downfield and a crucial fake-then-pass to Mick, who scores. When he plays well, he’s free from thinking about things he has no business thinking about. This is why he loves the game, why he needs the game. And what always amazes him is how he can never tell which comes first, his playing well or his team playing well. Chicken or egg, Coach Dugan is clearly the wise rooster.
    Though they lose four tries to three, Dugan’s ecstatic in the dressing room. “That’s what I like to see,” he booms, “one pumping heart out there. One heart.” Smiling so broadly Beau can see a molar missing on one side, the coach thuds his chest with the butt of his fist. It isn’t the first time Beau makes note of the size of his fist.
    â€œWe’re going to need that same aggressive teamwork Thursday when we play the Irish lads. Play it forward in your brain. Just like you played now...play it forward.”

    Eyes open behind the blindfold, Beau reaches towards Satomi’s face but doesn’t find it. A second later, she takes a firm hold of his hands and draws them down on top of her head.
    He smiles his