The Heartbeat of Halftime

1
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH-1972
I wanted to start this story back before everything got bad with my pop. Maybe way back to that Saturday morning when he loaded me into his old Buick, told my mother he was off to the hardware store, and, instead, signed me up to play football for the first time in my life. That was three years before Taco Bell banged his head on the wrench shelf in his pop's garage and had a vision of playin' for the Minnesota Vikings; before Heat had any thoughts about livin' with his brother in Alabama and never playin' football again; and before any of us even knew Spray Can. But Spray Can said it wouldn't be right to start back that far on account that he wouldn't be in it, and he likes to be in things from the beginning to the end or not at all. That's how he is. So I won't start with Pop, or Heat, or Taco Bell. I won't even start with ourinitiation of Sparky, how Heat had puppies in his basement that would squirt out little smelly puppy piles that covered the floor like land mines, and how we made Sparky take off his shoes and socks and find his way out of that basement with the lights off. I won't tell you all that 'cause Spray Can wasn't there to see any of it, 'specially Sparky's toes and in-between all oozin' with yesterday's stinky puppy chow.
I got a whole closet full of notes, some pages of our playbook, and some words I wrote on paper I got from the first girl I ever got a kiss from. Coach put an edit to the whole thing when I got it written, and before that, Spray Can sat with me for a whole Saturday puttin' the scraps and notes in piles to make it chronological. That's when we talked about a beginning.
We decided a good start would be that first day of practice, the first day any of us saw Spray Can. It was almost the end of summer. Heat's dogs were near grown up and sat in the shade watching us on the hot field. Spray Can got there late and was standin' in his torn-out jeans and wearin' no underwear or shirt, waitin' his turn to get his football pads. He never wore socks, not on that first day, and not even when it turned cold. He was standin' right in front of me and the first thing I notice is a long black oil stain across his back.
"You get hit by a car or somethin'?" I asked him.
"No," he said, twistin' his head back to get a look at the slick on his back. "I hadda help Ray thwitch a transthmission before comin' over."
I later found out that Ray was his pop, and although I thought it was funny that he would call his pop by name, what really got me that day was the way he said "switch." His tongue came clear out of his mouth and nearly turned over makin' the s sound. It was like it got all confused, flopped out from behind his teeth, and only came to its senses when there was a load of spit hangin' off the tip. Then the word flipped out with the spit and sprayed me on the side of the face. I can't even remember his real name, 'cause from then on we called him Spray Can. I nodded, and didn't wipe off my face till he had turned around. Guess I knew I had a whole season of showers ahead of me, and, well, if Spray Can turned out to be a player, then I didn't want to do anything to discourage him. Lucky for him he did turn out or we'd a put a rag in his mouth right away.
So there we were, the first day of practice, standin' in the heat, puttin' on somebody else's pads, waitin' to get our own sweat on 'em so they'd be ours for sure. We waited while coach checked off our names with each piece of equipment. Then we went into the drills that nobody can do, 'specially the linemen. They're all crammed in pants that hold only half their parts, so stuff is rollin' outeverywhere, and they wear huge shoulder pads so their arms don't hardly bend; and they have to run backwards, sideways, on all fours, and through old tires. Looks more like a clown rodeo than a football practice. Then there's the skill positions, guys like me, who are so skinny Coach has to tape our pants on and stuff socks under our shoulder pads. We're the speed and agility of the team. Well, most of us. Some are just plain skinny. We all stumble around like we just learned to walk while Coach shakes his head and kicks us in the butt every time we fall down.
Coach always wore clothes that were twenty or thirty years old. And they were always the same. A white, short-sleeved shirt with a black tie and pants. When it got cold, he threw on an overcoat and a felt hat like detectives wear. His glasses usually hung from his neck by a piece of string and they were always falling apart. So when he talked to us, he was usually putting them back together with a piece of wire or tape. He talked a lot about how it was when he played football. No helmets, no fancy pads. And he looked away a lot, like he was always forgetting something.
Anyway, we were practicin' on a field we had to share with the junior-high school band, and they sounded as bad as we looked. Every now and then the racket they were makin' sounded a little like a melody, but it was drowned out right away by thedyin'-cat sounds they made more often than music. Coach would yell above the moans comin' from the dented instruments, quoting Greek poetry about war and victory and destruction.
"The days of victory pass as the blink of an eye!" he would scream. "But the nights of preparation last forever!"
Then he'd make us all run a lap while he stared up at the mountains in the distance as if the very gods of the universe were watching his handiwork. He always had a cockeyed smile when he stared off like that. It made us think he was either gettin' some kind of answer to his prayers, or he just farted. And maybe that was his answer, because we weren't much of a team.
We'd been together three years, except for Spray Can. And we'd never had a winning season. In fact, we'd won only two games. The first game we won when half the other team was in a car wreck on the way to the game. They stood at the scene of the collision nearly till halftime. By the time they got to the field, we had scored two touchdowns against their six-man defense. The second game we won that same season when the other team's coach was arrested for not payin' child support. It happened in the first quarter; cops drove right onto the field and cuffed him. Kind of rattled his team and we beat 'em by a touchdown. That was the year we began to wonder about miracles.
By the end of our fourth year, the one I'm gonna tell you about, most of the team were believers of the truest sort; some even had sacred charms, like a piece of turf from the university's practice field, or a roll of toilet paper from the same store they say Vince Lombardi stopped at to ask directions on his way through Utah. It was the year of one of the greatest miracles ever witnessed by a football team, or any team, or any person. It was the year of the "holy transformation," as Coach would tearfully say after the last game. "The year the hands of the great football god gathered together an unwitting band of heathens and transformed them into football disciples." It's not how I would've said it, but when it was over, even I knew we'd never see another season like it. "I have only been a tool, an instrument in the hands of a higher power," Coach went on to say; then he walked off toward the mountains and we haven't seen him since.
But on that first day, that first practice, he was nothing more than an old English teacher with a megaphone and a clipboard. Word is he taught somewhere in the Midwest before comin' to Utah to retire and fulfill his lifelong dream of coaching football. We didn't have many dreams that early in the season, so we adopted his. He had this dream of winning. It was a dream we had given up long before we met him. I don't think we even knew what it meant, or what we would have to give up to haveit. Pop said, "Winning is the greatest feeling in the world." But he didn't say it until he was sure we weren't losers anymore. Pop always was careful about what he said. Mostly he just threw me the ball, showed me how to hold my hands, cut to the outside. And when he couldn't throw anymore, he talked with his hands. He had big hands that fanned out like a bird, that would wrap slow around a ball. He knew football, my pop did. Better than anyone else I ever knew.
So that first practice we finally get through the equipment and the push-ups and the lectures on discipline and the agility drills, and start to scrimmage. By then, the band had given up trying to carry a tune and march at the same time, so they were just marching like broken wind-up toys back of the end zone. We had banged heads for a few plays and Coach wanted to throw the ball a bit, see what we had. I lined up wide in the backfield to run the deep post, Flame lined up even wider, and we crossed a few yards out to shake the D-backs. It always worked too: The D-backs would stutter-step and we'd gain a yard or so on 'em. Then Bam would drift a wobbly spiral deep for me or Flame to run under and it was six points, at least in scrimmage. Well, bein' the first practice, the D-backs didn't have their feet yet and they crashed right into each other. Flame was laughin' so hard he cut his route short. That left me all alone running forthe end zone. Bam launched one that seemed to hang forever while I raced under it. And just as it was about to drop safely into my arms like a loaf of bread, I tripped over a resting clarinet player and plowed headlong into the mute and spastic band.
It took some time to pull myself out of the tuba. I had to take my helmet off first, then wrench it free with the help of Flame, who was still laughing. Taco Bell showed up to help, then Bam, Heat, and finally Spray Can.
"I always wanted to be in the band," he sprayed. "I sthwear."
Copyright © 1996 by Stephen Wunderli