After my route the next morning, which I biked so fast and amazing on my new bike (especially fast past Aleah’s), Grandma, me, Andrew, and Jerri drove to Madison to drop Jerri off at the airport. On the way, Jerri didn’t say much. Grandma did.
“Your mother just needs time to get her thoughts together. She’s not going to a hospital, you understand. It’s much more of a resort.”
“Mom, come on,” Jerri mumbled.
“It’s a beautiful place. She’ll get a lot of help from psychologists, but it isn’t really a hospital.”
“Mom,” Jerri said.
“It isn’t! She’s going because she wants to get better. She’s free to leave whenever she feels ready. There are no locks on the doors, except at night, and there are hiking trails, and she can call home whenever, and she’ll have Internet. She’s going to have a wonderful time.”
“It’s a mental healthcare center,” Jerri said.
“Yes,” said Grandma. “It has a swimming pool.”
“Can I go?” Andrew asked.
“Do you need mental healthcare?” Jerri asked.
“I’m pretty sure,” Andrew replied.
“No, Andrew, you can’t,” Grandma said.
I was sitting in the front seat because I’m so tall. I turned to look at Jerri and Andrew. They were smiling at each other, holding hands.
We dropped Jerri off in front of the airport. I pulled her suitcase out of the back of the SUV and put it on the sidewalk. Then we hugged. Then she hugged Andrew and Grandma. She turned, walked five steps away, then turned back.
“Make sure you look on my bed, okay? Sorry I kept it hidden.”
“What?” I asked.
“Andrew knows,” Jerri smiled.
And then she was gone through the doors.
When we got back in the SUV, I turned around, looked at Andrew, and asked, “What did she keep hidden?”
Andrew was staring out the window.
“I bet it’s her goddamn diary.”
“Oh. You boys should have your mouths washed out with soap,” Grandma Berba said.
We drove the hour or so home in total silence. I missed the new Jerri, not just the old.
***
Of course, we both beelined for Jerri’s bedroom after getting home.
And Andrew was right. Sitting in the middle of Jerri’s made bed was the diary. Andrew and I stared at it.
“Jesus,” I said. “You think that tells her whole story?”
“She used to carry it around with her all the time, remember? She was always scribbling in it, and she wouldn’t let me touch it.”
“Me either.”
We walked over. Andrew picked up the diary. He opened it. There wasn’t a single word on any page, just a bunch of really bad sketches, most of which were cats.
“What in the crap?” Andrew said.
And then we started giggling and then laughing and then totally howling. We laughed so hard that we almost missed the picture stuffed in the back cover. It dropped out while we were laughing. I bent down and picked it up.
In the picture, my towering Jew-fro dad smiled huge, his arm around a really young and pretty Jerri. In the corner, overexposed because I was much closer to the camera, my Jew-fro toddler head smiled like the moon.
“He’s smiling,” Andrew said.
“Yeah” was all I could get out.
On the back of the picture, Jerri had written:
Your father wasn’t as terrible as Grandma says.
Shhh. 6:47 a.m. She’s sneezing upstairs. Shhh.
Must end this dark, dark tale!
You like breakfast?
You know what? Football is a very tough game. You use every muscle in your whole body. Of course, that’s good stuff for a squirrel nut who is twitchy in every muscle of his whole body.
You also get beat to hell, which is why I’m so sore now.
We started practice doing two-a-days. That means we’d practice for a couple of hours in the morning, break for lunch (and to sleep), and then practice again in the afternoon. The first week was without pads, only our helmets. We did tons of conditioning work. Everybody sucked air except for me. I could go and go and go. Run and run. I could hit the blocking dummies and the sleds with the same squirrel nut power every time. I heard Coach Johnson say to another coach, “He’s as advertised. Motor doesn’t quit.” But biking back and forth from practice, even on my new, fast bike, almost killed me. I was exhausted. By the end of the week, Cody was driving me.
I loved practice at first. It was almost as good as running up the big M. But I wanted be sort of straight with myself about it. It wasn’t clear at all that I could play football, even though my motor wouldn’t quit. I met with Coach early in the week after afternoon practice and asked him to cancel videotaping for Rivals.com and asked him to cancel the meeting with the University of Wisconsin people.
“I don’t really know how to play football, Coach,” I said. “I’d like to make sure I’m good and I like it before anybody makes a big deal out of me.”
“I can respect that,” Coach said. “If this thing works out the way I expect it will, there will be plenty of time to talk recruiting later.”
I asked him how Ken was doing at Iowa.
“Kid got his ass handed to him all day long yesterday,” Coach said. “That’s good. High school comes too easy for good athletes sometimes.”
“Oh,” I nodded.
“You know, he really appreciates that you didn’t come after him after the stunt he pulled, Reinstein. I appreciate it too. You’re a class act.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
***
Football is also confusing. That first week, even though I’d looked at the playbook a lot over the summer, most of the time I had no idea where to go. I sort of ran around.
“Study your plays, Reinstein. Got to get them down.”
I was embarrassed, so I didn’t tell Coach I’d already studied the plays.
The only time I knew where to go was when I got the ball, but that wasn’t always good either. Cody would hand it to me or toss it to me, and within two steps, I was past the linemen, and they hadn’t even started pretending to block yet (we didn’t have pads on, so there was no real contact).
“Be patient, Reinstein. Run under control until you see your hole.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what my hole was.
In the second week, though, after I looked at the playbook every night for like three hours (Andrew couldn’t believe I’d sit there staring at it so long), and after we got pads on, things began to make more sense. With a defense in the way, the linemen could plow guys to the side and make holes that I could run through. I could understand that. I found my hole! Sometimes! If I got lucky, there would be a hole, and I’d run through it very fast. But if I didn’t get the ball, I still got lost, and I’d end up sort of wandering around. Sometimes, Coach Johnson would yell at me to get my head out of my butt. It didn’t make me mad when he yelled that. I agreed. I didn’t enjoy having my head in my butt.
Everything was so quiet at home during these weeks. It was sort of rhythmic and automatic. I’d get home from practice beat. Grandma Berba made big meals that I ate like I was starving. While Grandma cleaned up, Andrew played piano, and I looked at the playbook. Then, around 8:00, Jerri called and told us about horseback riding or the pool or walking in the mountains, whatever she did for fun that day (none of the other stuff). Then I called Aleah to talk to her before she started practicing. Then I’d go to bed. In a blink, it was time to get up for Gus’s paper route. I was so exhausted, I barely noticed I was sleeping.
The only thing that changed was the amount of time I talked to Aleah. Every night, it seemed, the call got longer. Aleah was very sad to be back in Chicago. Everything there reminded her of her mom. Her apartment felt really empty, and she missed Bluffton’s poop smell. She missed me, and she missed the paper route, and she missed riding her bike wherever she wanted. In the second week of football, though, she got sort of exciting news. The college really loved Ronald. They were going to try to bring him back. “Daddy says it’s a good possibility!” Aleah shouted. The idea got me so excited I actually didn’t sleep one night (almost all the rest, I slept like a rock).
The third week of practice, two-a-days were done, and we did less conditioning and more plays. Play after play after play. I got really confused. Seriously. I fumbled a bunch and went the wrong direction and ran into people and dropped passes and missed blocks. On Friday, Cody, Karpinski, Reese, and I went out for pizza.
“Don’t worry about it. It will come, man. We’ve all been playing forever, so it all makes sense. You’ll figure it out,” they told me. But I could tell they weren’t sure I’d figure it out.
I had a very nervous night after that because the next morning, just six days before we were to play our first game against that Jay Landry bone-breaker dude and St. Mary’s Springs, which is a big school near Milwaukee that made the state semifinals the year before and had—I heard this again and again—most of their players back, we had our first full scrimmage.
Apparently, a scrimmage is like a game but doesn’t count for anything. Our first team offense played against the second team and vice versa.
And I was totally lost. Things were really fast, and when I tried to go as fast, I’d get ahead of my line and get tackled without going anywhere. It wasn’t easy to tackle me, I mean. It took the whole defense really. I wouldn’t go down without fighting, but it just felt like I was running through mud all the time. There were always defensive players on top of me. “Slow down, Reinstein,” Coach kept shouting. But I couldn’t. Everything was too fast.
The starting offense couldn’t do anything against the second team defense. Even Cody and Karpinski were misfiring. It was terrible. Everybody was demoralized. Coach Johnson’s face was completely red.
I told Aleah on the phone that night that I just didn’t get football.
“Maybe I should stick to track. You don’t have to think in track. You just run. Football is too complicated.”
“Keep practicing,” she said. “I can’t play hard pieces at first. My fingers feel dumb. But after I practice, I don’t even know the music is hard anymore.”
“Yeah,” I said, but I wasn’t sure. Practice had been fun, especially the conditioning. But actually playing didn’t seem fun at all (unless you like running in mud until a whole bunch of pee-smelling guys knock you down and lie on top of you).
On Monday, before we hit the practice field, Coach told all the lineman that they had to move faster to keep up with me. They all looked at the ground. Reese said, “We’re trying.”
“Try harder,” Coach shouted.
During practice, though, the same stuff happened. I tripped all over the line and couldn’t go anywhere.
“Goddamn it all!” Coach shouted.
After practice, Coach called me into his office. He handed me a DVD.
“Watch this tonight, Reinstein. It’s Walter Payton, maybe the greatest running back ever. Watch how patient he is. Pay attention to his footwork. He’s why I gave you number 34. I want you to be great.”
After dinner, even though I’d sort of had my fill of football, I popped the DVD in and watched…and watched…and watched…and watched…and, quite startlingly, I seemed to figure something out. Walter Payton played for the Chicago Bears mostly in the 1980s when my dad was in Chicago. He had a big fro and wore a headband and seemed to smile a lot. The DVD was titled
Sweetness
, maybe because he smiled so much. He died for some reason in 1999. “Sweetness,” 1954–1999. The DVD was mostly filled with highlights of him running the ball. And, most important, this hit me really big: Walter Payton ran with a football like Aleah plays piano. He was totally under control when he got a handoff. He took small steps to go slow, even occasionally reached out and put his hand on his lineman’s back to make sure he stayed behind his blocker. Sort of like Aleah when she played the simple birthday song for me, quiet and controlled. Then when the hole opened, the opportunity came, and, just like Aleah, he exploded forward. It was almost like he was falling, barely under control at all, and he was ferocious and unforgiving, and he crushed anybody who got in his way. There was no talking on the DVD, only bad music. I turned off the sound so it was completely silent. I’d watch a play in normal speed and then watch it in slow motion. It was so beautiful. Walter Payton running was so beautiful. Number 34. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was like watching Aleah, and seriously, I figured something out.
The next day in practice, when Cody handed me the ball, I took short steps and ran low and slow. If I got close to my lineman, I’d slow way down and wait. If it was a toss, I’d barely run until I saw where my tackle (Reese) was. Then when a hole opened, the opportunity, I uncoiled and exploded through.
“Holy cats!” Coach yelled. “That’s what I’m talking about!” He clapped his hands.
Reese looked much happier.
“Thanks, Rein Stone,” he said in the huddle.
***
I told Aleah about Walter Payton that night.
“I know who he is,” she said. “I’m from Chicago, you know.”
“He played football like you play piano.”
Aleah shouted to Ronald that I compared her piano playing to Walter Payton running.
“I love that kid!” Ronald yelled in the background.
On Wednesday, everything seemed slower. I remembered my blocking assignments. I ran my routes. I took small steps and then exploded. “We’re getting there!” Coach yelled. We practiced against a scout defense that included a guy wearing a red jersey. He was supposed to be Jay Landry.
“This kid is a killer. You have to know where he is at all times, Cody. You got it?”
“Yeah, Coach,” Cody said.
That killer thing made me a little nervous. But the scout team Jay Landry couldn’t come close to me.
“Real Jay Landry is going to be a lot faster,” Coach yelled.
On Thursday, we barely practiced. We just walked through plays so we wouldn’t be tired for the game. I knew the plays. Then we watched video of St. Mary’s Springs. Oh my God. Jay Landry wasn’t the only killer.
At home, Grandma Berba made her lasagna.
“You need to carbo-load, Felton,” she said.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“I like Jerri’s lasagna better,” Andrew said, playing with a noodle.
“No offense to Jerri, but no way,” I said.
“Eat,” Grandma said, “You’ll need your energy tomorrow!”
“I miss Jerri,” Andrew moaned. Then as if they were psychically connected, the phone rang. We put it on speaker and ate and talked. Jerri climbed a big red rock that day using rock-climbing gear.
“I want to visit,” Andrew moaned.
“Soon enough,” Grandma said.
I felt sort of weird after Jerri’s call. She wished me good luck for the game. It was weird she wouldn’t be there, and it was hard to believe I’d be playing in an actual game against a really good team in 24 hours and that there would be people in the stands and that the other team would try to knock me down and break my legs. Weird. I was a little wound up.
I went out through the garage, pulled a lawn chair out into the driveway, and stared out down the drive and across the road. I breathed deep to relax. I could hear the drunk golfer dads whacking golf balls up on the course. I could hear a tractor driving in the distance. Someone squealed their tires around a corner (the Randles?). Just then a figure crested the hill on a bike. I stood up and took a couple of steps forward. The person coasted down to our drive and then turned and pedaled up toward the house.
“Holy…Gus! Gus! Hey!” I shouted.
Gus pulled up in front of me.
“Hello, my long lost friend. What up with you?”
His hair wad was gone. I could see his eyes.
“They made you cut the wad.”
“Yeah, it drove Grandma psycho, man. So Mom made me cut it.”
“That sucks!”
“You know, I kind of like being able to see.”
He got off his bike and walked over to me. Then stopped, stood there, stunned, shaking his head.
“Jesus Christ, Felton. You’re huge,”
“I know.”
“What the…? You got huge!”
“I know. Weird, huh?”
“I mean, you’re enormous!”
“I know.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Well.” I took a deep breath. This was sort of hard to say to him. “I’m the starting tailback on the football team.”
“Oh, man,” Gus said. He plopped down on my lawn chair, covered his eyes with his hands. “I should never have left.”
“Did your grandma die?”
“No. She’s fine.” He looked up at me, and we both laughed. I grabbed another lawn chair from the garage.
We sat out in the driveway until the sun went down. We had a good time. He told me about Caracas (no friends, no fun, bad food—he really liked it though). I told him about Jerri and Aleah and my dad. He was appropriately dumbstruck about Jerri (even though I wrote him—he didn’t know I was serious).
He apologized.
“I’m dumb. I got jealous because of your Aleah email and then the jock stuff. If I’d known Jerri really was going crazy, I wouldn’t have been such an ass. I think I wouldn’t have been. Maybe I would’ve been. I’m an ass, Felton.”
“You’re an ass? No. I’m an ass.”
“Yeah. No shit, Felton. That’s true.”
Then Gus said something sort of weird.
“I always knew your dad was huge. I remember him. You should have asked me.”
“Asked you what?”
“If he looked like you.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know. Probably,” he laughed. “He was your dad after all. I guess I remember he was a lot bigger than my dad. Really big.”
“He was big.”
Gus wasn’t exactly happy about all my new friends.
“They’re not bad, man. Seriously.”