Ghosts of Tom Joad (9 page)

We had this thing called two-on-one drills. One guy would get the ball and have to run straight into two other guys just in front of him. They were supposed to try and knock the ball loose, make you fumble it, which was the point of the drill. It was rough, especially when you were the smaller part of the triangle, or when the other two knew each other and set up to hit one high and one low. But you did it to toughen up. Coach set Ron up again, handing him the ball with two big seniors in front. Ron ran like he was supposed to, and they knocked the ball loose. Usually then Coach would cuss you and call the next three. But that time with Ron, he blew his whistle and said, “Run it again, same boys.” Ron lost the ball. Run it again. Again. And again until on the fifth try Ron didn't get back up. He just laid on the ground, I think the wind knocked outta him or something. Coach stood over him, yelling to get up and run it again. “Get up or I'll fuckin' throw your fairy ass off this team.” I think Ron was even crying by this time. We all just stood around in a circle. I guess we could have helped him up or something, but we were scared and it really wasn't any of our business, right? But man, old Ron caught his breath and we all heard him: “You can't throw me off the team. And I can't quit. But I won't get up.” It was all quiet, and nobody expected Coach to say nothing and just walk off, leaving Ron there, but that's what he did.

Coaches worked hard to make us winners, and they tolerated nothing from us when we didn't pull our weight. Polanski would stand on the blocking sled drinking pop, making it that much heavier when we had to push it across the field. Seeing him drinking that cold pop when we weren't allowed to have water
made us angry and, he said, meaner for the game. I can remember the water condensing on the outside of that bottle, every drop and detail. I would have begged, I would have twisted Ron Curry's arm off, to lick some of that cold water from that bottle on those August days. But Coach would take a long pull just to piss us off and say, “You haven't earned your drink.” And we'd push him across the dry grass and eat dust until we knew we'd at least earned his respect. It was a good thing, though we hated it while we were there. “You play how you practice,” he said, “and you live the way you play the game. Yesterday's touchdowns don't win tomorrow's game.”

Most mistakes got you push-ups or laps around the field. The worst screw-ups and Assistant Coach O'Brian took you out behind the stands to “move the hole.” He had a hole dug in the hard clay near one end of the bleachers, and then he'd mark the ground somewhere further away. You'd get a shovel, walk to the mark, pick up a load of dirt and carry it to the hole. Throw it in. Do that enough times and the old hole would get filled and a new hole would be where you did the digging. You moved the hole. O'Brian, if he liked you, would make the two holes only a couple of yards apart, and if he really liked you he'd put one of them by the fence, where the water pipe had broken two summers ago and the earth was still soft. But if he was mad at you, like you missed a tackle or forgot your gear, man, he'd put those holes in the sun at opposite ends of the bleachers and you'd be out there all afternoon sweating blood. O'Brian said a lot of men were created in those yards between the two holes, and we believed that. I never knew what happened to that guy.
Coach Polanski had his heart attack right there on the field that one game like everyone knows, but O'Brian just disappeared.

G
UYS LIKE MULEY
never saw through it. Man, even now he didn't see how they failed us. We wanted those men, Polanski and O'Brian and the others, to be our heroes. We all knew our dads too well, saw their flaws, watched them fight with our moms, watched them get told what to do at work, watched them beg for a broom to stand up with after their trained work left Reeve for some China guy who would do it for a few cents an hour so that everyone in America could afford a big-screen TV; even Dad bought a forty-two incher for the Super Bowl one year. But we came to know that Polanski and the other coaches weren't nothing more than anyone else, they were just high school teachers in a small town, and not even good teachers. People like Muley still buy into the myth, still want to think of 'em as legends, talk about football, march in the Memorial Day parades and say God bless.

We were meant to be unhappy. Lose your job to an Asian sweat shop, but think you're ahead because prices come down, all's well until next month when bigger and better is on sale. I bought a cell phone and one week later got a letter from the company about upgrading to a newer model. You're not pretty enough (buy makeup), you don't smell right (deodorant to smell less, perfume to smell more), your car, your house, your electronics, your porch, your boat, your RV, your dick are all too small. Work hard and you'll get what you want, people say, but in some impatient reality you're just chasing things. It's the
government's fault for not gettin' off your back and it's the government that has to stimulate the economy, but somehow you don't get ahead either way. You're told it's the American Dream, but you end up just like a little bird, mouth open squawking for more even after you learn it ain't coming.

I came to know that O'Brian was a sadist, or would have been if he stopped drinking long enough to put in the effort. In the end, he was just another mean drunk like my dad. He drank and slapped around his wife, drank more feeling bad about slapping her, then came out there on the football field to take it out on us. The cycle of life. How'd we know all this? He told us, over and over, as we moved that hole. Most times, it was punishment for something we did, real or imagined or created, but a lot of times it was punishment because of us, just for being there reminding him he was weak and imperfect and drank more than he should have. All fathers are scary, and I was scared as shit of my old man, but I never feared him the way I feared O'Brian. I also know what happened, even though Muley still don't—somebody told me on this bus. The school board called the parents to a meeting kids could not go to, to hear about an “incident” O'Brian had with one of those girls people said wore too much makeup who always followed him back to his office, and he ended up moving to Monroe, where he sold life insurance instead of teaching at their high school.

You know, I saw Ron again, on the bus. I hadn't seen him since the last time we humiliated him in front of some girls in the cafeteria, pulling his underwear up outta his pants. Pretty funny, really.

“Ron.”

“Go to Hell, Earl. I'm only on your fucking bus because my old man made me.”

“Ron, easy man, I'm sorry. I'm sorry we picked on you back then. It's cool now—I mean, we're all grown up, water under the bridge, right?”

“Earl, fuck your water crap. You take that bottle of water next to you. Now you pour it out. Apologize to it, say you're really fucking sorry for messing it up. Apologize like you mean it, okay? There, you feel better Earl? Fuck you Earl, fuck you, you apologized and you feel better, but the bottle is still empty. Nothing you can say can get that water back in. Stuff you did doesn't fucking go away Earl, not ever.”

“C'mon Ron, I said I'm sorry for what we done to you.”

“Say it again, Earl. Fucking say it until you breathe blood. You ain't never gonna be done.”

“Look Ron, we picked on you 'cause Coach was always picking on us. We did it just to make ourselves feel better, man, it didn't mean nothing really.”

“So now you feel better Earl?”

“Ron, c'mon, it was just in fun. Didn't mean nothing, right?”

“You go to Hell Earl. I ain't gonna sit here and let you feel better. You didn't earn it, you didn't mean it, and you ain't gonna get it from me. You stood by when you coulda' helped me, fuck, you did more than stand by, you joined in with Muley and Tim and Rich and all those other bastards, and you did it just so you'd feel better picking on someone when you got picked on. You remember that one day I got knocked around in those two-on-one drills? I went home and swallowed half a bottle of orange baby aspirins, the only thing in the medicine chest,
hoping to kill myself. Instead, my old man made me puke them up then beat the shit outta me. Well, you go to Hell man. I wish they'd broken your arms that day in the shower, your neck too. Okay Dad, I got on the bus with him, like you said. Can I get off now?”

Ron was talking about my last day of football ever. We were all in the shower, one big tiled room with shower heads all around. We were tan from the summer, white butts and brown backs. Soap came in bars, good for washing and better for throwing at each other. Once that started, everybody went at it, some aiming high for a bloody nose shot and others looking to whack you in the nuts. A good shot to the nads could bring a guy down, and one time Tim even puked a little, he caught it so hard. He fell down and everybody turned and threw soap at him on the floor, even me and Muley. That was hilarious and we still talk about it, even on this bus years later.

Then that day took a bad turn. I was givin' and getting in about equal portions when I slipped. I hit the floor in a funny way, sort of ankle first somehow, and for a second everything went white. I must have shouted and cursed, but between the water runnin' and everybody yelling, even I didn't hear myself. Some, then all, the boys saw me down and chucked soap at me. At some point my yelling must have got loud enough, 'cause they stopped and somebody called for Coach Polanski. Everyone kind of backed off, lining the walls and shutting down most of the showers while I just laid there. I once sliced off a chunk of my hand trying to open a paint can with a wood chisel instead of a screwdriver, and that was a kind of slow-motion pain, taking a moment or two as I watched the blood pool out
before it hurt. This one was some hot thing starting in my ankle but feeling more like it came from deeper inside me, an everywhere kind of pain. Polanski, fully dressed, felt my ankle and said out loud that something might be sprained bad and for one of the guys to call a doctor. He chased the boys out of the shower while they was still all wet, and the last thing I remember lying there on the shower floor was him walking over in his special coach shoes to a dripping faucet, rubber soles squeaking on the wet floor, and him shutting the water off.

When I got dropped off from the doctor in front of my house, my dog came running out. Dad said he could never figure out the point of cats, so we didn't have one. I had had the dog, however, for a long time, changing its name from stupid kid stuff like Hot Wheels and Spider Man to what I thought was cooler names such as Thor or Killer, but the rhythms between us had been set for so long that she'd answer to just about anything out of my mouth. Even so, when I came home with my ankle still half-wrapped in tape she approached me with some caution, kinda working her way toward me instead of running straight out the door. She pulled up short and sniffed at me, almost like I was different. Must've been the smell of the athletic tape; dogs are sensitive to change.

Inside, the TV was on without nobody in the living room when Dad came in from work. I had gone up to my room for the bed, and was watching the old black-and-white, the picture making my room all blue that late in the afternoon. I heard Mom send Dad upstairs without him even washing up, a big deal in my house.

“Your mother told me you hurt yourself in practice today. Hurt bad?” I had started to pull the tape off because it itched. Dad looked at my ankle, kind of touching it around the sides like he was checking tomatoes at a roadside stand. He saw the black and blue marks up my leg from where the soap bars hit, and poked at them a little with that crooked finger with the top missing. It was kind of creepy, like I was imagining it burned or something wherever he pressed, but truth was, I didn't feel nothing.

“Naw. It don't hurt too bad. Itches a little 'cause of the tape.”

“That's my boy.”

He left. Down to the kitchen for a beer. I wasn't supposed to, but I could hear him and Mom in the kitchen through the open heating grates. You could look right through them, too, they was just a hole really for the hot air to rise through. No blowers then.

“He don't look bad,” said my old man.

“Doctor said he could start moving around by tomorrow if it don't hurt him. Just a nasty sprain. It ain't too bad considering.”

“That's good.”

“Doctor also said no more football this year. Can't chance hurtin' it again for a while.”

“That's too bad Sissy.”

“I know you didn't want the boy to go away next year, but you could at least—”

“I don't need to hear it. He wasn't good enough anyway. Let him work for a while, better for him.”

Mom backed down like she always did. I heard Dad pull open the refrigerator before Mom spoke again.

“Don't touch that food. It's for the party tomorrow.”

“What party?”

“With Stan and Lori. You known for a week.”

“I ain't in the mood for a party. Me and Stan had some words. Anyway, I thought you'd cancel it now on account of Earl messing up his ankle.”

“What for? He's gonna be up and around by morning.”

“Well, you might think of another reason, 'cause we ain't gonna have no party here. I'm gonna go watch TV.” And I heard him go off to the living room as Mom shouted after him. He was never a warm or happy man for sure, but alcohol frayed whatever leash he kept on himself.

Mom was talking past loud at him across the house. “We're gonna have the party tomorrow night. I want to have it. We're gonna have it Ray, and you're gonna be there. I don't give a shit if you and Stan ain't getting along 'cause this ain't for you two anyway.”

I was sick of hearing them fight, and I yelled down the grate to Mom to be quiet, that I was trying to sleep. I heard her throw something in the garbage as Dad turned up the sound on the TV, and I put the pillow over my head to make it all go away.