“And by the way,” he added, “I read the same article.”
My dad looked genuinely pleased to see Moose again. He pulled him into a big hug. “I don’t know if I should embrace you or put you over my knee for luring my son to run away from home.”
Moose looked really happy to see my dad too. “I’d agree, I deserve the latter,” he told him, “but I can’t take credit for Matt’s actions. You know that better than I do, Monsieur Dumas. Matt’s his own man.”
“You look great,” my dad said to him. “Like a flamenco dancer.”
In fact, Moose was way more dressed up than usual. With his hair slicked back, wearing dark cords,
a cardinal-red shirt and black bomber jacket, he had the allure of a Spanish movie star.
Moose and my dad had gotten close in Montreal. Lots of French Under-20s players came every year for our training camps, but Moose was the only North African. My dad took him under his wing. He spent hours teaching Moose how to read defenses and run good, precise routes. Moose said it was my dad who made him realize that he wanted to be a teacher, helping kids from his neighborhood.
My dad asked him now, “So how’s prep for graduation exams going?”
“The
bac
? So-so.” Moose made a face. “My dad rides me about spending too much time on sports. He doesn’t believe there’s much of a future in it.”
“Well, I’m not going to disagree. I tell Matt the same thing. There’s more to life than sports.” Before I could even say the thing about the pot and the kettle, he added, “Parents want better for their kids than they’ve had themselves.”
Inside the restaurant, Moose stiffened when the maître d’ greeted us. Moose never really seemed comfortable outside Villeneuve, which was probably why he rarely left it. He loosened again once we were alone at a table in the corner.
“It’s too bad your friend Freeman couldn’t join us,” my dad said.
“He had a big dinner with his host family,” I explained again. It was like my dad didn’t remember what I’d already told him. “Georges, the father, invited some family friends to meet him. A government minister or something.”
Moose looked surprised, though I’d assumed Free had told him too.
“What does his host father do?” my dad asked.
“A big businessman. For a telecom company, I think.”
In fact, I knew he was an exec for the national telecom company, Orange S.A. I’m not sure why I was being so evasive. Maybe it was Moose’s smirk, like this information confirmed something he’d always suspected about Freeman.
“Still, I’d have liked to meet him,” my dad said.
He sounded as suspicious as Juliette originally had been, as judgmental as Moose now looked.
“Freeman is a good player,” Moose said. “He’s also
very
American and a bit moody.”
“Look who’s talking, Mister Personal-Foul-Who-Blows-Up-at-the-Ref-Every-Other-Play,” I said.
“I’m not moody,” Moose said. “I’m spirited.”
My dad interrupted. “What do you mean,
very American
?”
“You know,” Moose said. “He’s kind of what you’d expect. His father is in the army in Iraq, and he believes America is the world’s savior and that all Muslims want to fly planes into American skyscrapers.”
“What?” I said. “He doesn’t think that”—even though Free kind of did—“not any more than you consider all Americans oil-thirsty capitalists.”
“Aren’t they?”
“That’s like me saying that all North Africans think the same. Like me calling you Moroccan when you’re Algerian.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m French,” Moose said.
“Are you two finished?” said my father, putting on his reading glasses and passing around the menus the maître d’ had left in a stack on the table.
We read them in silence. I didn’t know why I was defending Freeman so aggressively. I guess I didn’t want my dad to disapprove of my friendship with him, even though he’d probably never meet him.
After the waiter took our orders, my dad asked Moose, “Do you plan on coming back next summer?”
“To Montreal? I’d love to, but I still have to reimburse the Diables Rouges the money they lent me for last summer’s trip.”
“Just know that you’re always welcome to stay at my house,” my dad said. “I have a spare bedroom.”
Then he added, “To pay off your debts is very important. Staying free of debt, that’s the only way to be truly free, free from the control of others.”
And I couldn’t help it: I laughed.
“Someone trying to send a message?” I said.
“You’d do well to take heed of it,
petit gars
! The world’s not just fun and games, and it sure as hell doesn’t revolve only around you.”
I was as surprised as Moose seemed to be by the outburst. I stared off into the room.
The rest of the meal went like that, me mostly silent, Moose and Dad seeming to have a pleasant enough time without me.
» » » »
When I showed up at his hotel the next morning to accompany him to the airport, my father was already standing outside, the old backpack he’d had since his traveling days in the ’80s at his feet. I was carrying my gear bag with me; I wouldn’t have time to go back to the apartment before our game that afternoon. We walked toward the Arc de Triomphe to catch the
RER
.
“What about those Anges Bleus?” my dad asked. “Are they any good?”
I knew he was genuinely curious, but by his tone of voice I could tell he was also trying to make up for his outburst at dinner in front of Moose.
“They’re ranked two higher than us. And they’re big—Gold’s Gym types. One-on-one, any one of them can pancake any of our guys.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“They have this
QB
from Ottawa, likes to fling the ball around.”
“Anyone I’ve heard of?” he asked.
“Alain Laplante or Lamarque—I don’t remember.”
He paid for our tickets at the kiosk in the
RER
station and shook his head, not recognizing the name. We walked toward the platform.
“They always start him in the first half,” I said. “Try to run up the score. To protect their lead, they hand the ball off to their star running back in the second.”
The train arrived, and we boarded.
“So what will you do, then?” my dad asked.
“Mix it up. The coaches and Free and I came up with the idea to shut down the pass in the first half. We’ll line up in our nickel and dime packages on defense and give them the run. Then I come out slinging in the second half, when their Canadian
QB
’s on the sideline and they can’t play catch-up.”
“That’s one stone-cold bluff,” he said.
“It’s a stone-cold world,” I said, sounding like Freeman.
“I wish you luck.”
We were switching trains at Les Halles station, from the A to the B line, struggling with our bags in the rushing mass of people.
“Don’t we make our own luck?” I said. “Isn’t that what you always taught me?”
He didn’t say anything, just pushed forward through the crowd.
We were sitting side by side on the train. My dad still hadn’t responded. Finally he said, “Promise me, Mathieu, that you’ll never run away again.”
He stared at me until I met his gaze.
“It’s okay to run
after
things, but not
away
from them. They always catch up to you.”
We sat in silence. The train we were on, an airport express, zoomed by Villeneuve-La-Grande but didn’t stop.
I pointed to the Cinq Mille projects. “That’s where Moose lives. Our field is right behind those buildings.”
“Now I understand why you prefer to live at Juliette’s. It looks like East Berlin before the fall of the Wall.”
You start to forget after a while, I thought. The bleakness just becomes normal.
I pointed to the parabolic antennas riveted to what seemed like every other window. “At least they all have satellite
TV
.”
“Great. They can watch Al Jazeera.”
“You sounded like Mom just then,” I told him.
My dad laughed. “I did, didn’t I?”
» » » »
I had to leave him at airport security. We stood there. I tried to act like I wasn’t choked up. Dad wasn’t even trying.
An old Air France 747 rolled by the giant plate-glass windows, on the other side of the metal detectors and X-ray scanners. I told him, “Between what I’ve gotten from the team and what I took, I still have about $450, tucked away at Juliette’s. I could send it to Mom as a sign of good faith.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s a little late for good faith.”
He removed his wallet from his back pocket and handed me one of his credit cards.
“In case of emergencies,” he said. “But
only
in case of emergencies.”
We hugged each other a long time before he finally let me go.
ANGES BLEUS (2–1) V. DIABLES ROUGES (2–1)
MARCH 14
At halftime, the score was 24–14 for the Anges Bleus.
“The greatest game plan in the world don’t mean squat when you’re losing by ten,” Free said as we exited the locker rooms at the Beach.
He was only half right. We were still in the game, so our plan was on track. Only now I had to produce the two scores we were down by, and I was a little banged up.
I had played safety in the first half, the fifth back in our nickel scheme, and on one third-down play I took on their running back, “Choo-Choo,” who had a good thirty pounds on me, all muscle. I stopped him, but he about broke me in two. Now I could barely turn my head to the left.
The stands were more empty than not. It was a cold, wet day. The Anges Bleus kicked the ball off to open the
third quarter. They’d learned their lesson in the first half and kicked it away from Free, high but not too deep. Sidi fielded the ball—and got hammered the instant he touched it. The scattered crowd went “Oomph!” as he got hit, then started to roar, cheering, even though it was our own guy getting clobbered. I could see the hoodie boys by the oak pumping their fists in the air.
“
Allez
, Sidi! Get up!” I heard over the crowd. “Show them you can take whatever they dish out!”
It was Aïda, in a red-and-white headscarf—the team colors—standing down the sideline a little ways. Sidi wobbled back to the bench.
“And that goes for you too,
mec
,” she growled at me as I passed, jogging out to our forming huddle. “Get it going!”
The Anges Bleus knew I was a little shaken up, so they came after me extra hard on each play. Still, I got us back in it on our first drive, hitting our tight end, a French kid named Jean-Marc, on two straight passes, then lofting a long one to Moose on a skinny post.
Anges Bleus 24–Diables Rouges 21.
Our defense forced them to punt on the next drive. Free brought it back to their forty, the punter pushing him out of bounds on our sidelines.
He flipped me the ball as he passed where I was standing. “Now go get ’em,” he told me.
And I did. We did.
The Anges Bleus kept putting eight men in the box, blitzing off the corner, trying to get to me. Our O-line did a great job, and I picked them apart. Five passes to Moose on five different routes: a hitch, a curl, a slant, a drag, a quick out. Mobylette ran it in from eight yards out.
Anges Bleus 24–Diables Rouges 28.
Their Canadian quarterback was on the bench, screaming at their offense to bury us. But we put eight men in the box too, with Free at middle linebacker so he could roam. He was too quick for their lineman to get to, and he took on Choo-Choo on every play. They tried a pass to change it up, and our defensive end, Chorizo (his real name was Felipe), came off the corner and stripped the Anges Bleus’ French
QB
, scooped up the ball and ran it in.
Anges Bleus 24–Diables Rouges 35.
It went on like that, Free and the D blowing up their offense, me picking apart their defense. Sidi was a little off after getting tagged on the opening kick; I kept throwing at him, and he dropped every ball. But Moose and Mobylette, everyone else, had a field day. Flag routes, stops-and-goes, even a flea flicker. We won 49–27.
» » » »
Almost the entire team, forty guys or so, goofed off in the locker room afterward, boasting about big hits they’d
made, singing group songs, laughing. Their retelling of the game went like this: all looked lost, and when Sidi got steam-rollered to open the second half, everyone expected more of the same. (“The line didn’t block for me!” Sidi protested. “Go screw yourselves!” And he stormed into the showers.) Then we turned it around the very next drive, the story continued. Like Drew Brees and the Saints in the Super Bowl. Like champions.
Outside in the parking lot, Aïda and Yasmina waited for us. Yasmina’s headscarf was team-colored too.
“You should’ve seen the faces of the Anges Bleus when they boarded their bus.” Aïda couldn’t speak a word without her fingers dancing on the air, restating her sentences in this other odd language. “They looked shell-shocked, like they couldn’t believe they’d lost to the lowly Diables Rouges.” And she laughed.
Others made their way over. Moose, Mobylette and the rest retold—yet again—the story of how David slew the mighty Goliath, one talking over the other. Even Sidi joined in.
Listening to them, I realized how much these guys were what my dad called “born underdogs.” It was like their daily lives were driven by one lone notion: to just get by, in the rough
cités
, at their sorry ghetto school, even in their huge families. But as much as fighting to get by was in their blood, the idea of prevailing, of coming out
on top, wasn’t. It was like our victory had stunned them even more than it had the Anges Bleus. All the pre-game bluster aside, the Diables Rouges would probably have been just as happy playing the Anges Bleus tough and losing in a squeaker. Deep inside, it was likely what they had expected would happen.
“Coach Thierry says the Caïmans, next week, are a much better team,” Free said to quiet things down. “Probably second only to the Jets.”
(His French had really gotten quite good.)
“They are,” Moose said. “They beat the Jets last year in the final and are undefeated so far this season.”