Gym Candy (3 page)

"Nothing happened. Rooney doesn't know anything about football, that's all. He's stupid and I'm quitting."

He drove in silence for a while. At a red light, he looked over at me. "You need to play on a team, Mick."

"Then I'll play on another team," I said.

"You can't play on another team. The teams are set by where you live. It's Rooney's team or no team, and you're not quitting. So get over it, whatever it is."

As soon as we walked in the door, the phone rang. It was Bull Tinsley, one of my dad's old football friends. Tinsley had extra tickets for the Mariners game. My dad put his hand over the receiver and turned to me. "He's got one for you, too," he said. "You coming?"

I shook my head.

I didn't eat much at dinner. After my dad left for the game, I went upstairs to my room, took out my Game Boy, and sat on my bed holding it, not even turning it on. I kept thinking about what Rooney had said about my dad:
The talent of an all-star, the attitude of a punk.

What did he mean? What was he talking about?

Around nine I opened my bedroom door, stepped out into the hallway, and tiptoed downstairs. In the living room my mom was drinking tea and watching a Christian television channel. I went back upstairs and turned on the radio. The Mariners game was only in the sixth inning. My dad wouldn't be home for hours.

I slipped into the computer room. I'd done searches on all sorts of things before, but I'd never done one on my dad. I'd never even thought of doing one on him. I had his trophies, his pictures, his scrapbooks.

I opened up Google and typed in "Mike Johnson San Diego Charger running back." I hit Return and the screen filled with sites. I read down, searching for one that fit. And there it was. The dates and names matched.

I clicked on it and was taken to an article from the
San Diego Union Tribune.
The headline read
ROOKIE GIVEN UNCONDITIONAL RELEASE.
I read through it, slowly. Lots of it I knew. The career as a Washington Husky. The selection in the third round.

But after that, everything was new. All through the Chargers training camp, my dad had been in trouble. There had been fights with teammates and arguments with coaches. There had been missed team meetings, an arrest for drunk driving, and another arrest at a
dance club in Tijuana. On the football field in the preseason games, there were blown blocking assignments, fumbles on kickoffs, personal fouls. "He just didn't have what it takes to succeed in the NFL," the coach said, explaining why he'd cut my dad. "It's as simple as that."

I didn't sleep much that night. I lay on my bed, confused and angry. That stuff my dad had said about an ankle injury—it was a lie. How many times had I told my teammates what a great running back he'd been as a Husky? How many times had I said that if he hadn't been injured, he'd have been a star in the NFL? How many of them had known the truth? Some of their fathers must have known all along. They must have followed his career as a Husky and his flameout in the NFL. They'd have told their sons. And if some of my teammates knew, that meant all of them knew. Kids probably talked about my dad and me all the time, talked about us and laughed.

I woke up early the next morning, ate breakfast by myself, and then returned to my room, shut my door,
and just sat on my bed, being mad all over. Around ten my dad knocked. "You want to toss the ball around?"

"I don't feel like it," I said through the locked door.

"You're not quitting, Mick. I mean it."

"I just don't feel like playing football right now. I'll play later."

He went away, and I thought what a hypocrite he was, telling me that I had to play. What had he done? Drunk, and missed meetings, and gotten in trouble with strippers in Mexico. He was married to my mom then, too. She had told me that they got married while they were still in college.

A few minutes later he was back at my door, only this time he was pounding. "Get out here, Mick," he said. "Right now."

"I'll play catch later," I shouted.

"I'm not talking about that. I want this door open now."

He was mad, but I was mad, too. I stomped across my room and opened the door. "What?" I said.

He grabbed my arm, yanked me into the spare bedroom, and pointed to the computer. "Have you been checking on me?"

My face went red. "No," I said.

"No? Then what's this?"

The browser was open. He moved the mouse until the cursor hovered over Go. He dragged the cursor down to History and then he clicked. A couple of clicks more and the
San Diego Union Tribune
article was on the screen. "So tell me again—you weren't checking on me?"

"I wanted to find out the real reason you never played in the NFL."

There, I had said it.

"So you go snooping behind my back?"

My mom must have heard shouting because she'd come upstairs and was standing behind him. "Leave him alone, Mike. He had to find out."

My father kept his eyes on me. "You think I'm a failure, don't you? You read one article written sixteen years ago and you think I'm a failure?"

"I never said that."

"Yeah? Well, that's what you're thinking, isn't it?"

"Stop badgering him, Mike."

"I'm not badgering him. I'm asking him a question."

"You are badgering him."

He glared at her, and then he walked quickly down the stairs. My mom and I listened as the front door opened, then slammed shut. His Jeep started up and we heard him drive off, fast.

Once he was gone, my mom went downstairs and I returned to my room. I picked up my Game Boy, but there was no way I could play anything. Around noon, my mom called me down to lunch. Everything looked the way it always did: The cut flowers were in the vase in the center of the cream-colored table in the kitchen. My sandwich, a sliced apple, and a chocolate chip cookie sat perfectly arranged on a rose-patterned plate. A glass of milk was just to the right. Across from my food were my mom's bowl of plain yogurt with blueberries and her cup of tea. Everything neat and tidy, the way she liked it.

I managed to eat half of the sandwich and most of the apple. She finished about the same amount of her lunch. When I was done, I scraped my plate clean and put it in the sink. I turned to go back upstairs, but my mom stopped me. "Sit down a minute, Mick. There's something you need to hear."

I sat.

For a moment she looked out the window at our rosebush. Then she turned back to me. "All those things you found out on the Internet, I know they hurt you. But your dad didn't kill anybody. He didn't rob a
bank or burn down a building. I want you to remember that it's just football. Okay? Just a game."

I started to answer, then stopped.

"What?" she said.

I shook my head. "Nothing."

"Tell me."

"It's more than a game to him, Mom," I said. "And it's more than a game to me, too."

She frowned. "Only if you let it be, Mick."

***

My dad didn't come home for dinner that night, but my mom told me not to worry. "He called. He drove up into the mountains, to Roslyn. I told him to rent a cabin and stay the night. He'll be back tomorrow."

I ate half a hamburger for dinner. Afterward, I kept going through what I was going to say to him when he came back. I'd try not to be mad at him, and for a while I'd convince myself that my mom was right, but then I'd get mad at him all over again. All that stuff about his ankle sprain. He should have told me the truth.

He returned Sunday afternoon. We ate lunch together, a fresh bunch of flowers in the center of the table. My mom acted as if everything were normal, but he was stiff, like a stranger, and my stomach was in
knots. I was afraid I'd throw up if I ate, but I was afraid if I didn't eat he'd ask me what was wrong. I picked at the cheese sandwich, ate most of a banana, and drank half my milk. After lunch I started back up the stairs to my room, but his voice stopped me. "Let's go for a drive, Mick," he said.

His Wrangler is a hardtop, but with the windows down plenty of fresh air blows through. He drove out across the Aurora Bridge, to West Seattle, and down to Alki Beach. On the way we talked about nothing: the sunshine, the Seahawks, the Mariners.

He parked along the water at Alki. We walked on the pathway above the beach for a half-mile or so. Then he spotted a picnic table. "Let's sit down," he said. Puget Sound was a glittering dark blue, its islands a dark green, the sky dotted with puffy white clouds. It was an incredible day, and I couldn't have felt worse.

We sat across from each other. He had a toothpick in his mouth, and he'd chew on it a little, then take it out, and then chew on it some more. Finally he flicked it onto the beach. "That article you read? Everything in it was true. I was a screw-off, and it didn't start with the Chargers. All through high school and college, I dogged practices, was late for meetings—had no work ethic at all. None. But I was the best running back around by
far, so when game time came around, the coaches found a way to get me on the field. Then I got to the pros, where there were guys as good as me. I pulled the same crap, and the Chargers got rid of me just like that." He snapped his fingers. "I couldn't believe it. Sometimes I still can't believe it.

"So I came back to Seattle, my tail between my legs. I managed to land a job on sports radio, and a few years later you were born. That was quite a moment, seeing you. I looked in your crib and I thought:
He's not going to end up like me, wasting his talent.

"I know I've worked you hard all these years. Your mom says I put too much pressure on you, and I guess I do. But you're good at football, Mick. Really, really good. I don't want you to get so mad at me over this that you quit."

I shook my head. "I'm not going to quit. I love football. It's just..."

"Just what?" he said.

"It's just that I don't get why you didn't tell me earlier."

He laughed grimly. "That's easy, Mick. Everybody I see at the radio station, friends of your mom's, friends of mine, they look at me and they think:
There's Mike Johnson. He could have been great.
You looked at me
and your eyes said:
That's my dad. He is great.
" He paused. "I couldn't give it up."

We sat for a little longer, neither of us saying anything. Finally, he stood. "So, we're okay?"

"Yeah," I said. "We're okay."

"We'll still throw the ball around now and again."

"Yeah, we'll still throw the ball around."

On the drive home, neither of us spoke. I don't know what I thought. I didn't hate him; I wasn't really even angry. But things would never be the same. He'd never be as big in my eyes as he'd been, never take up so much of my world.

After that he still gave me advice on technique and strategy, and we still tossed the ball around the park, though we didn't do that as much. The change wasn't in what we did but in what we didn't say. He never again described the big plays he'd made on the football field, and I never again asked him about them. They were all in the past, buried. It was unspoken, but we both understood that the games that mattered were the games yet to be played—my games.

So much had happened over that weekend that I forgot how angry Rooney had been until I returned to the practice field Monday. I considered telling him that I was going to stop smarting off, that I was different from my dad, but what good are words? I'd show him.

That practice, I pushed myself to outperform everyone, especially Drew Carney. Running drills, agility drills, strength drills—I took him on. If he made it through the tires in twenty seconds, then I was going to do it in nineteen. If he managed thirty pushups, then I was doing thirty-one. If he ran the four-forty in fifty-five seconds, then I was clocking fifty-four. After two hours, Rooney blew his whistle. "Good practice, men," he called out. He turned to me, and our eyes locked. "Very good practice."

As I walked toward the parking lot, Drew fell in stride beside me. "That was fun," he said.

"What?" I said.

"You trying hard like that—it made practice better."

"Yeah, I guess it did," I said.

"A bunch of us play flag football at Crown Hill Park in the afternoons. A kid named DeShawn Free is always there and usually there are some other guys who go to Shilshole High. You should come around."

***

After I ate lunch, I walked to Crown Hill Park. They had even teams, but Drew made the other guys make room for me, even though it meant going six on five. I had a great time that day, and after that I played flag football with those guys every chance I got. The games turned out to be more competitive than our league games. About half the guys were on the Shilshole High varsity, and they were determined to push me and Drew and DeShawn around, which made us determined not to be pushed around. We kicked our effort up a notch, and pretty soon Drew and I started clicking together. Handoffs, pitchouts, swing passes—you name it and we were right in sync. It was as if we'd been playing together all our lives.

That harmony should have carried over and made us tough to beat in Pop Warner, but the league has a rule requiring the coach to play everyone on the team for at least one quarter. Most of our second-stringers were new to football, and it showed.

When Drew was at quarterback and I was at running back, we'd march down the field, slicing through the defense. But at the start of the third quarter, Rooney pulled us, and we'd stand on the sidelines and watch the other team demolish our second string. Sometimes when we came back into the game at the start of the fourth quarter we'd rekindle the fire and win. But lots of the time we'd never find our rhythm. Drew would throw an interception or I'd fumble and our opponents would sneak away with a victory.

After we'd lost some game we should have won, my dad would be stone-faced, his eyes angry. That was okay with Drew and me, because that's exactly how we felt. But Drew's dad would come over, a big smile on his face, and talk about how exciting the game had been. "Sportsmanship, that's what is important, boys. The winning and the losing don't matter."