Muckers
Authors: Sandra Neil Wallace
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction based loosely on actual events that occurred in Jerome, Arizona, in 1950. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Sandra Neil Wallace
Jacket art copyright © 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf
Photograph reproduced on the jacket is of the actual Jerome Muckers team.
Map copyright © 2013 by Graham Evernden
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wallace, Sandra Neil.
Muckers / Sandra Neil Wallace. — First edition.
pages cm
“Inspired by a true story.”
Summary: “Felix O’Sullivan, standing in the shadow of his dead brother, an angry, distant father, and racial tension, must lead the last-ever Muckers high school football team to the state championship before a mine closing shuts down his entire town” —
Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-375-86754-5 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-375-96754-2 (hardcover library binding) — ISBN 978-0-307-98238-4 (ebook)
[1. Football—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 5. Copper mines and mining—Fiction. 6. Grief—Fiction. 7. Race relations—Fiction. 8. Mexican Americans—Fiction. 9. Arizona—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W15879Muc 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2013003537
The text of this book is set in 12-point Adobe Caslon.
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
To the 1950 Jerome Muckers football team, their beloved coach Homer Brown, and Principal Lewis McDonald, for those letters
.
And to the Arizona mining town itself, for putting up such a howl
.
mucker
(
noun
):
1.
one who shovels loose rock or muck into the mine core, sorting the ore from waste.
2.
a vulgar, ill-bred person.
3.
the name of our team.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER
22, 1950
BEFORE DAYBREAK
I COME TO THE SHANTY
in the Barrio from behind, dipping under the broken shutters so the late-October moon won’t cast a shadow and wake up Cruz. Then I suck in my breath—there can’t be more than two feet between us—and tread lightly onto the porch. What I’m holding belongs to him, but Cruz is too stubborn for me to do this face to face.
And persuasive
. I admit he almost had me convinced about the mine. But there were things Cruz believed in all along that he shouldn’t have and ones that I should have and didn’t. Like the football season. Cruz sure was right about that. He knew it before we even started, back in August, when Rabbit and Coach and Angie were still here and only a miracle could make winning possible. It was so hot and dry in Arizona then, you could watch the dust and the smelter smoke fighting each other just to get to the top of the mountain.
We were fighting, too, down in the slag below like all Muckers do. Not against the Commies in Korea or the ones that Sims and Superintendent Menary were hoping to find in Hatley. We were fighting to win football games—Mexicans, Slavs, and Anglos like me.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Win six games in seven weeks, going undefeated against teams bigger and better than we were, and make it to the state championship game. Teams with real uniforms and grass fields. Every one of those quarterbacks was better than me. That’s what I thought. And I sure knew my brother, Bobby, was better when he played for Hatley High. But that’s not what Cruz or Coach or even the town believed, though I wanted no part of their praise. Looking back, we all had different reasons for winning. But once we found out about the mine, what we wanted more than anything was not to lose. Because the only thing worse than losing is being forgotten.
1950 HATLEY MUCKERS FOOTBALL SCHEDULE
| Friday Aug 25 | RIM VALLEY | HERE |
| Friday Sept 1 | PRESCOTT | THERE |
| Friday Sept 15 | COLDBROOK | HERE |
| Friday Sept 22 | COTTONVILLE | HERE |
| Friday Sept 29 | KINGMAN | THERE |
| Friday Oct 13 | FLAGSTAFF | THERE |
HATLEY’S BODY PARTS
THURSDAY, AUGUST 10
4:32
P.M
.
IN THE DISTANCE, AS WE
drive up from Cottonville, she looks like a pair of tanned knees. Sunburned and gnarled. Scraped bare from millions of years of abuse by the desert sun and now us.
But Cruz says the mountain above our town looks more like a woman lying down, tits up. One spread out, the other firm and pointy. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never even seen tits up close. Well, maybe once. But that was by mistake during Mexican pool hours, looking for Angie. And I’ve certainly never felt them.
Anyway, the old prospectors christened her Nefertiti, after the Egyptian queen. And the mountain must have been beautiful once, back when she was covered in pine. That was some time ago, and none of us call her that anymore since Cruz came up with the nickname Nefer
-titty
.
Cruz pulls the Lucky Strike from behind his ear and lights it, nursing the convertible wheel with his knees and
blaming Nefertitty’s sagging on old age instead of the mine cave-ins. He points to the taller, perkier tit, in case me and Rabbit couldn’t tell the difference.
We’ve been calling Sal “Rabbit” since second grade. Not that he’s fast. No one’s quicker than Cruz. Or because Rabbit’s ever been with a girl either. (You know how rabbits can breed.) It’s because of the harelip, which is why Rabbit can never look angry. It’s as if the deformity’s given him a moral compass somehow that stops him from doing anything halfway mean. Not even when he writes about our games in the
Pick & Shovel
.
Rabbit stretches for Cruz’s cigarette from the backseat, but there’s no way he’d smoke it. Instead, he makes a branding motion with the lit end toward the mountain, as if he’s about to mark a steer. Because the other tit—the lopsided one—has a stone tattoo on it forming the letter
H
. We can take the blame for that. It’s been a school tradition since ’24 to brand the mountain with the spirit of good ol’ Hatley High. That’s when Principal Mackenzie led the Muckers to the Northern Crown. They nearly took the state, too, but those Phoenix refs had other ideas. Now we paint the H once a year no matter how we play, to keep the spirit of the town alive.
