Jane Two (6 page)

“Okay, new man on kickoff return, and he gonna be joining Tommy in the backfield. 'Tween the two of you, we might just have a shot against these Yellow Jackets.”

As the Yellow Jackets assembled on the other side of the field after their warm-up, I saw Kevin still sitting and staring, The Plank from our garage door jutting out of his Firebird. I stared until Jane walked right in front of it, but just as quickly as she appeared, she was gone. She seemed to escape during my blinks. I recalibrated, tracking her every possible move in my peripheral vision. Her next likely resurface at her current speed would be the bleachers. I estimated it would take her fifteen seconds to surface from the crowd and climb the stands into full view. But instead, she appeared in ten seconds on the opposite side of the stands. She tended to warp all my processes that I fell back on to calculate time, speed, arrival, and general physics. All of my best tools and abilities seemed to run and hide in her presence.

I took my first kickoff that day and wound around my pursuers just like I was running into the Milans' front yard. I found my way to the sideline and started pulling away from all the Yellow Jackets, heading straight for the end zone. As they drifted farther behind, I quit looking over my shoulder—and that's when I saw her. Her bright yellow sundress almost stopped me in my tracks; it was the exact same shade as my pursuers. That color should've slowed me down, but it just pulled me faster and faster. She was sitting in an aluminum lawn chair with green and yellow webbing right next to her dad just outside the end zone. In that moment, I wished I had had a quarterback's face mask on my helmet, so she could see clearly who I was. I wanted her to know that
this
was me, and not the kid who nearly hanged himself by his red scarf in class. I wanted her to know
this
me. I wanted her to know that number 24, who was racing toward the end zone, lived right across the ditch flanked by our fences. As I approached the goal line, she slowly stood up from her chair, toppling it over behind her, with her hands clasped as if in prayer. And as I entered the end zone, she was hugging herself and bouncing up and down off her heels. I wanted to stare at her forever as I slowed down to a stop directly under the goalpost, but I also wanted her to see the name on the back of my jersey. I prayed for my prayer to race past hers and get up there first, for her to know everything that I felt about her. I didn't know what she was asking for, but I didn't want it to divert attention away from what I wanted her to know. I gently placed the ball on the ground, just the way my Grandaddy had told me to.

I had never scored a touchdown in a game before, but my Grandaddy had told me exactly what to do when I did. He told me to never spike the ball, or do any goddamn jig in the end zone when you score.

“Nope,” he said. “You just politely hand the ball to the ref or gently set it under the uprights and walk away, like you goddamn
expected
that shit to happen. Jigs are for people who surprised themselves. You gonna score, boy. I'm telling you right now, so no need to be surprised when it happens. And when they see that even you ain't surprised, they'll know that you can do it again and again. I ain't surprised by the greatness in you, 'cause me and your daddy the ones that put it in there.” He knew more about me than even I did. And I guess it made sense. After all, like my Grandaddy used to say to me, “The only reason you ain't a rattlesnake is that you momma and daddy ain't rattlesnakes.”

I took as much time as I could placing the ball on the ground and had a wonderful plan to nonchalantly swing around and jog back to the bench, giving Jane ample time to read my name in bold print across my shoulder blades—but then I got hit by the first wave of my celebrating teammates. The impact took my breath away,
far
away. I went down hard as they all piled on top of me to celebrate. I was underneath our entire team in a complete panic, trying to collect a lungful of air and not lose sight of Jane in her beautiful yellow dress. I don't know if it was the claustrophobia or the fact that my lungs were completely compressed by fifteen teammates, but I lost consciousness. I woke up on the sideline with my Grandaddy staring through my face mask.

I wondered both where Jane had gone, and how Kevin had known. I needed Jane to know things about me—everything, in fact. I wanted her to know that I was the one who scored, but to forget that I was also the one who got knocked unconscious. I wanted to explain to Jane how I was flat-footed and knock-kneed from age three to seven, but that I was still really fast. And that I was dyslexic from kindergarten through third grade, but that I was still smarter than they knew. I wanted her to know that I got put in the slow class and had to wear clunky corrective “dress-style” shoes but that I was still pretty damn good at sports. I wanted her to see that I
had
to wear those shoes and not that I chose to. They weren't the ones with metal braces, but still, they were hideously embarrassing to me. I always wanted Levi's and Converse sneakers, but they didn't sell them at Sears, and you couldn't put them on layaway. I wanted her to know that when I wrote
yekciM
, and my mom got scared and started crying, that I wasn't scared at all. And that I knew the doctor was an idiot when he suggested a special school and to not expect much academically from me. I believed I was fine. I knew it. Shit, I could write everything and anything not only frontwards, but backwards as well. Simultaneous inversion, that was my normal. I wanted so badly to tell Jane that although they placed me with the special needs kids in level four, I was smart. I just needed her to understand, in case she knew about my level four.

In case she'd seen or heard, because the principal insisted on keeping the level four door open all the time—
lest there be an incident
—so you'd see who was “in the dummies,” as the kids called it. My comprehension was fine. I just transposed letters. I wanted Jane to know that I scored better than most in everything when it was discussed verbally, and that my eyes were just giving my brain faulty information. My calculator was accurate. I just needed to relabel my keys. I was mortified when I'd have to go to that “special room” with huge windows for thirty minutes every day before lunch to do a mix of body mechanics, visual, and reprogramming exercises. I wanted her to know that I dreaded those thirty minutes, when the entire school would walk by the windows of that fucking room heading for lunch, and see me lying on the floor staring at a ball swinging back and forth from the ceiling to reset my brain while a nurse with a pencil doodled on her paper and I tried to mute out everything around me.

The public display and remarks like, “Oh, Mickey's got dyslexia,” petered out, and didn't really bother me because I knew in my gut that I was good and good at stuff. I wanted Jane to know that I may have had a pang of angst about it off and on, but generally I'd ignore most of it. Just like I felt in my gut that I might be faster than Tommy. It hadn't yet occurred to me to beat him because I was only ever told to keep up with him. I was taught to be respectful when adults said
this is how it is
. I was obedient, and so very literal. I didn't actually know for sure if I could beat Tommy, because I hadn't tried to do it. In fact, I accepted his entitlement as faster, since the coaches had always said that Tommy was the fastest on the team. I just figured he wasn't really going as fast as he could truly go when we ran at practice. I figured they knew something I didn't. I figured Tommy was faster than me because Coach Gasconade had said so since I was six years old. And I wanted Jane to know for certain that that was the very last time I would ever let someone else tell me who I was.

Our next game was a rivalry against the Angleton Red Devils. As we did at the start of every game, we were all to stand in a line, helmets off and over our hearts, facing the opposing team about five feet in front of us. I scanned the crowd for Jane, but couldn't find her anywhere. I took my helmet off and covered my heart as every other player had—except one. The Red Devil directly across from me stood there with his helmet still on and his hands on his hips as our national anthem began to play. My dad and my Grandaddy had both served in the military, so not removing a cover for our anthem was not an option that I had ever been made aware of.

“Hey, you gotta take your helmet off,” I said.

“Shut up faggit,” came back.

I truly couldn't believe what I was hearing, looking to the benches to see if anyone else was as shocked as I was. Not that the Devil had called me a faggit, but that his helmet was still on. I wondered if anyone was going to do something. I wondered if they would stop the national anthem and have him remove it before starting it again. It was how I was raised. Not removing your lid was anathema to my values.

“Hey, take it off right now,” I told him.

“Duddn't concern you, fuckin' fag,” he shot back.

No one was going to do anything about this kid. I placed my helmet on the ground, approached the Devil, grabbed his helmet, and started to assist him in its removal. Initially, he resisted, and everyone in the stands stood up for what threatened to be a two-team brawl. Both lines started to break up and move around like they were preparing for a fight, when I finally got that helmet off. Coach Gasconade yelled to get back in line, everybody obeyed, and I went right back in line and picked up my helmet as everyone else resumed the proper formation, palms over their hearts.

When the anthem ended, I turned to go on back to my place on the bench, when the Red Devil kid clubbed me in the back of my head with his helmet. I dropped like a stone right there on my ass, dazed. As I was flat out on the ground and still gathering my wits, Grandaddy approached, breathing smoke, and my Mamau was yelling from the bleachers at Grandaddy to sit down, he'd get himself a heart attack, and Grandaddy yelled back that he ain't sitting down ever, woman, in the name of justice.

Then other coaches and parents started yelling, and a brawl ensued. That is to say, all the coaches and parents from the opposing sides came running off the bleachers cursing onto the field, pulling players apart, yelling about what's right and who had offended whom first, all manner of
what-in-hell-about-our-Great-Nation-goddammit
.

I heard Coach Lew keening above the din, “Get her mitts off my goddamn medals!” Lew was gnashing and frothing to shield his Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

My parents reprimanded me, and Grandaddy sent everybody back to the stands when he signaled to James to blast the bullhorn, yelling, “Game on.” James's horn was deafening and Lew hit the turf, shielding his head with his arms. When people had gone back to their seats on the bleachers, Grandaddy gave Coach Lew a gentle boot in his side to get with it, and Lew sprang to his feet, looking around to see if anyone had noticed his fit of panic. Then Grandaddy walked to the center of the field where I was finally getting up on all fours and picked me up with one hand by the center of my shoulder pads, nose to nose, dangling me like a whelp for everyone to see. From afar, with his big trigger finger pointing right at my nose, it must've appeared aggressive, like my Grandaddy was reprimanding me. Sometimes there was a difference in what my Grandaddy spoke and what he meant, and sometimes there wasn't. But up close where only I could hear him, my Grandaddy always shared The Law.

“Don't you ever let me see you pick a fight with a little mouse-pussied fucker like that, but goddammit I'm proud of you, son. Ain't the right thing to do, but sometime you gonna see ya Grandaddy being proud of you fer doing the wrong thing. 'Fore you older, you gonna know the difference. I'll see to it. More recipe for my great-granbabbies. This part of the Boudin, so listen to me, boy. Just for today, I'm a let you pick any position you wanna play. So, you tell me…where you wanna be?” I blinked back at my Grandaddy as I saw James slowly making his way toward us, and again I knew what needed to be done…and it was the same thing that I wanted to be done. I told him, “I wanna play directly opposite of whatever position that little mouse-pussied fucker's playin'.” My Grandaddy stared into my eyes until I saw the tiniest grin escape his face. He said, “Now don't you tell ya Mamau, but ya Grandaddy gonna give you a PE on that one, 'cause that Devil
is
a little pussy. Okay, you see that piece'a shit on the field, you find him, line up opposite, and you crack him hard. So hard he remember that crack. You follow that little pussy even if he change positions till he leave the field. I love you, son. Now let's show 'em who we are.”

Grandaddy set me down, fire in his eyes, and yelled for the game to start just as James arrived. He stopped right in front of me and hacked something huge into his mouth from his lungs, then swished it around in his mouth before finally spitting it onto the field. “Nigger-cock, unnastand?” And I did.

I played a position that I'd never played before just to line up across from that Devil—downs that involved me completely disregarding the action at hand and solely focusing on cracking that little pussy as hard as I could. He was on the field a total of six plays that day, and spent the remainder of the game on the bench.

“Hey, you all right?” Lew Hoagie was extending his hand down to me, flashing a clear prediction of more rain.

Albeit covered in mud, I had padding and a helmet. Back then no one was too concerned about concussions unless you were dead on the football field. I lay down on the bench every time the other side had the ball, and held ice on my head.

The scoreboard read
Angleton Red Devils 35, Braeburn Bears 0
, and parents and spectators were hooting and hollering all around at this possible shutout. Lew dragged me into the huddle around Grandaddy and Coach Gasconade, my Grandaddy sending smoke signals with the cigarette and toothpick, a little bonfire dangling from his lips.