him, like I knew him from somewhere other than this picture. It was a hard feeling to shake.
I crept past the carpenters and out of the building without being seen but got back five minutes late for science class. The room was dark, and nobody said anything when I slipped in and sat down. They were watching a documentary about snakes. A black mamba was making short work of a frog. Brian would have loved it.
Usually I get a surge of adrenaline before a game, but now that I really needed one, it didn’t come. I crammed my clothes into the locker. My football pants didn’t havepockets, so I had to tuck the carving into the belt, cinching him in so he wouldn’t fall out.
Whatever the groundskeeper had done to the mushrooms hadn’t worked. They were thicker and fuller than yesterday and blanketed the field. When we trotted out to warm up, there were already enough kids in the bleachers to do an Owls cheer—“Who’s going to win? Whooo? Whooo?”—but the cheering fell silent when a few Owls players tripped and fell. I managed to stay up but did have a hard time finding my balance. The problem was obvious—our cleats were getting stuck in the spongy mass of mushrooms that covered the field.
“We can’t play on this,” one of the players complained, and a few others grumbled in agreement. Down at the other end of the field, the Blue River Oxen were having a lot more fun than we were, bouncing up and down on the mushrooms and laughing. They’d arrived but hadn’t changed yet. They looked like little kids in one of those inflatable castles, and that gave me an idea.
“Take off your cleats,” I suggested, and sat down on the field to take off my own. I ran across the field and dropped the cleats by the bench, enjoying the springy feel of the caps. It really
was
like being a little kid in a fun castle.
I noticed Dad and Brian in the bleachers about three rows back. Dad had never seen me play before, because he’d lived in Boston since I’d started getting playing time. I didn’t think Brian had ever seen me play either. I waved, and they waved back.
“Score a touchdown!” Brian shouted. He must not haveknown I was a defensive lineman, or he didn’t know that meant I wouldn’t ever score a touchdown unless I recovered a fumble or something.
Allan was there too, sitting by himself. I wondered why he wasn’t sitting with Brian. Maybe he didn’t want to hang out with a lowly fourth grader in front of his classmates.
The other guys kicked off their cleats too, and we went into our warm-ups. The QB kept lobbing the ball a little high so the receivers would have to spring up to get it, then take exaggerated tumbles across the spongy mats nature had given them.
“I think I’m faster than usual,” Jake said, sprinting across the mushrooms to midfield and back again. He was probably slower, but he was right that it
felt
faster, with our legs bouncing off the rubbery mushroom caps.
And that’s how we played the game. The only players who wore shoes were the kickers. Jake took the opening kickoff to about the thirty-yard line (we couldn’t see the numbers) and got bounced on his back by a defender. He dropped the ball and it was picked up by an Oxen player who fumbled it himself a few seconds later. Our guys finally fell on it and ran a swing pass on the first play from scrimmage. It ended up as a touchdown, defenders diving and missing all over the field as the halfback lumbered by. The whole first half was like that: wild plays and pratfalls, touchdowns and turnovers.
“This game is a joke,” Tom said in the locker room during halftime. Maybe he was saying that because we were losing by thirteen points.
“We can get it back,” I said. It was a high-scoring game.I’d lost track of the exact score, but thirteen points was nothing.
“The game is a joke,” he said again. “I don’t even care if we win. It’s a joke. It was a joke without Randy anyway, but it’s now an even bigger joke.” He
I crept past the carpenters and out of the building without being seen but got back five minutes late for science class. The room was dark, and nobody said anything when I slipped in and sat down. They were watching a documentary about snakes. A black mamba was making short work of a frog. Brian would have loved it.
Usually I get a surge of adrenaline before a game, but now that I really needed one, it didn’t come. I crammed my clothes into the locker. My football pants didn’t havepockets, so I had to tuck the carving into the belt, cinching him in so he wouldn’t fall out.
Whatever the groundskeeper had done to the mushrooms hadn’t worked. They were thicker and fuller than yesterday and blanketed the field. When we trotted out to warm up, there were already enough kids in the bleachers to do an Owls cheer—“Who’s going to win? Whooo? Whooo?”—but the cheering fell silent when a few Owls players tripped and fell. I managed to stay up but did have a hard time finding my balance. The problem was obvious—our cleats were getting stuck in the spongy mass of mushrooms that covered the field.
“We can’t play on this,” one of the players complained, and a few others grumbled in agreement. Down at the other end of the field, the Blue River Oxen were having a lot more fun than we were, bouncing up and down on the mushrooms and laughing. They’d arrived but hadn’t changed yet. They looked like little kids in one of those inflatable castles, and that gave me an idea.
“Take off your cleats,” I suggested, and sat down on the field to take off my own. I ran across the field and dropped the cleats by the bench, enjoying the springy feel of the caps. It really
was
like being a little kid in a fun castle.
I noticed Dad and Brian in the bleachers about three rows back. Dad had never seen me play before, because he’d lived in Boston since I’d started getting playing time. I didn’t think Brian had ever seen me play either. I waved, and they waved back.
“Score a touchdown!” Brian shouted. He must not haveknown I was a defensive lineman, or he didn’t know that meant I wouldn’t ever score a touchdown unless I recovered a fumble or something.
Allan was there too, sitting by himself. I wondered why he wasn’t sitting with Brian. Maybe he didn’t want to hang out with a lowly fourth grader in front of his classmates.
The other guys kicked off their cleats too, and we went into our warm-ups. The QB kept lobbing the ball a little high so the receivers would have to spring up to get it, then take exaggerated tumbles across the spongy mats nature had given them.
“I think I’m faster than usual,” Jake said, sprinting across the mushrooms to midfield and back again. He was probably slower, but he was right that it
felt
faster, with our legs bouncing off the rubbery mushroom caps.
And that’s how we played the game. The only players who wore shoes were the kickers. Jake took the opening kickoff to about the thirty-yard line (we couldn’t see the numbers) and got bounced on his back by a defender. He dropped the ball and it was picked up by an Oxen player who fumbled it himself a few seconds later. Our guys finally fell on it and ran a swing pass on the first play from scrimmage. It ended up as a touchdown, defenders diving and missing all over the field as the halfback lumbered by. The whole first half was like that: wild plays and pratfalls, touchdowns and turnovers.
“This game is a joke,” Tom said in the locker room during halftime. Maybe he was saying that because we were losing by thirteen points.
“We can get it back,” I said. It was a high-scoring game.I’d lost track of the exact score, but thirteen points was nothing.
“The game is a joke,” he said again. “I don’t even care if we win. It’s a joke. It was a joke without Randy anyway, but it’s now an even bigger joke.” He
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