Tangerine (4 page)

Later in the afternoon we drove up Route 89, past new developments with new walls and guardhouses, past a long row of high-tension wires, to the adjoining campuses of Lake Windsor High School and Lake Windsor Middle School. All the way there we seemed to be riding side-by-side with black storm clouds.

"I hope we get in before this rain starts," Mom muttered as we turned at Seagull Way into the enormous blacktopped parking lot of the campus. We drove past the long, windowless two-story high school and around the football stadium to the middle school. The middle school office is located in a one-story building that looks like the younger brother of the high school building.

We made it inside just as the first bolts of lightning cracked around us. While Mom gave my name to the secretary, I looked through a glass door at a field full of small wooden shacks. They take up most of the space between this main building and the steel bleachers of the high school football stadium. "I wonder who gets put into those shacks," I said, turning toward Mom. She was now standing with a tall, thin woman with jet black hair.

The woman eyed me coldly and said, "All seventh and eighth graders are in portable classrooms. The main building is for sixth graders only."

Mom did not look pleased. The woman continued, "I'm Mrs. Gates. I'm the principal here at Lake Windsor Middle School."

Mom extended her hand. "I'm Caroline Fisher. This is my son Paul."

"Hello, Paul," she said. "What can I tell you folks about Lake Windsor Middle?"

"We were hoping to see exactly where Paul will be going next week. He has problems with his eyesight—he's legally blind—so we were hoping to make a dry run today."

Mrs. Gates looked hard at my glasses. She seemed to be trying to think of a way out of this, but she finally said, "I see. I see. All right, let's take a quick tour."

Mrs. Gates and Mom took off at a fast walk. I followed slowly, angry at Mom for calling attention to my eyesight. She wanted a tour of the place because she's nosy and wants to see everything for herself. It wasn't because I can't see, because I can. I can see just fine.

"We call this the Building," Mrs. Gates explained. "It contains the main office, the cafeteria, the library, and the sixth-grade classrooms."

"Don't you have an auditorium?" Mom asked.

"The cafeteria doubles as the auditorium."

"What about a gym?"

"When we need to, we use the high school's gymnasium."

"But where do you have your PE classes?"

"Oh, we always have physical education outdoors, on one of our fields."

"And when it rains?"

"Then we have it indoors, in the classrooms."

"Surely they don't do jumping jacks in those wooden portables."

"No. On a rainy day the PE teachers will most likely concentrate on other parts of their curriculum, such as health care or good nutrition."

We were outside now, facing the portables. There must be forty of them, all connected by a system of wooden walkways—the kind of boardwalks you see at the beach—only these stretch over some sick-looking grass and a lot of brown dirt.

Mrs. Gates was speaking rapidly. "Each portable is, of course, air-conditioned. As you can see, all of the buildings on our campus are grounded with lightning rods for our afternoon storms."

Mom eyed the field with alarm. "How would you ever know if there were some emergency out here?"

Mrs. Gates turned to her and asked, "Like what?"

I froze. Even I could hear the annoyance in that voice.

Mom locked eyes with her. "Does it really matter like what? Do I really have to provide you with an example of what constitutes an emergency?"

Mrs. Gates retreated. "No, of course not. Each portable is connected to the main office by a telephone and a public-address system, and each has its own pull alarm in case of fire."

We all stared at the crisscross of wooden walkways until Mrs. Gates asked, "What brings your family to Tangerine?"

"My husband's job. He's the new Deputy Director of Civil Engineering for the county."

"I see."

Large drops of rain started to fall around us, so we headed back inside. Mom prompted me, "Paul? Do you have any questions?"

"Yes. Do you have a soccer team?"

"We do. We have an excellent soccer program—a boys' team and a girls' team. We play against all the schools in this area. Are you a soccer fan?"

"I'm a soccer
player.
" I corrected her. "I play goalie."

We were now back at the main office; Mrs. Gates led us through into her private office. "Mrs. Fisher, I'd like to get you to fill out an IEP for Paul—an Individualized Education Plan. Being vision impaired, Paul is entitled to take part in our IEP program. Basically we identify Paul's situation, set specific goals for him to achieve, and note any special needs he might have."

Mom started to read the form. I stepped outside to show that I wanted no part of that conversation. I spotted a glass trophy case and went to check it out. The biggest trophy was for last year's boys' soccer team. It said,
FIRST PLACE,
T
ANGERINE COUNTY SPORTS COMMISSION.

Mom came out of the office briskly. We ran through the cold rain to the car. Once we were inside and belted up, she said, "So, what do you think of Lake Windsor Middle School?"

"I don't know," I mumbled, staring out the window.

We drove back past the field of portables, but Mom suddenly hit the brakes.

"Look at that!" she cried.

The field was now completely flooded, like a rice paddy. The brown water had risen to within inches of the wooden walkways. We both shook our heads in disbelief.

Then I decided to answer her question about the school. "I guess if they have a decent soccer team, I'll let them slide about not having indoor classrooms and not having a gym."

"Yeah!" Mom sputtered. "Not having a gym, or an auditorium. Two more facts apparently overlooked by your father. And what am I supposed to do? Send you to school every day in rain gear? With an umbrella?"

Mom would never say it, but I bet we were thinking the same thing.
What else has Dad "overlooked" about Tangerine?
We drove on in silence, except for the pounding of the rain, from the flooded campus of Lake Windsor Middle School to the flooded streets of Lake Windsor Downs.

All four of us were back at the high school–middle school campus today. The head coach, Coach Warner, was holding a three-day tryout camp for the football team before the start of the school year.

Erik, of course, didn't need to try out, but he was there anyway. Dad had brought Erik to meet Coach Warner earlier in the summer. Dad had knelt down and held the ball for Erik to drill fifty-yard field goals, one after another, while, according to Dad, the coach's jaw had dropped lower and lower.

Now Dad and I were standing next to the coach—not that either one of them was aware of me. I was watching a huge bird of prey circling overhead, like a hawk. But it wasn't a hawk. I knew that. It was an osprey. (I know the difference because of a science project I did last year. Could a vision-impaired person tell the difference?)

The players were doing calisthenics under a troubled-looking sky. As black clouds gathered in the west, Coach Warner explained to Dad, "I've never had a good placekicker before, but I sure could have used one last season. We lost four games by a grand total of seven points."

"Those days are over," Dad assured him.

"Antoine Thomas was the whole show last year. He was the go-to guy on every play. He ran for over a hundred yards eight times."

"That's pretty impressive."

"I even had him running back kicks. But I'm not going to do that this year. He's just gotten too valuable. If Erik can give us five or six points a game, then I can save Antoine for quarter-backing."

"Oh, Erik can give you that. He averaged nine points a game last year, and he was only a junior. He scored fourteen points in one game. That was the game when he kicked the forty-seven-yard field goal."

I remembered that game back in Houston. Erik was on the front page of the sports section the next day. I think it was the proudest day of Dad's life.

Dad told Coach Warner the thing about Ohio State—how he regretted that he hadn't been big enough to play football there. Coach Warner nodded sympathetically, like he agreed this was some kind of tragedy in Dad's life. I don't understand that.

Then again, I don't understand why Dad loves football. I've played football, real football, in the junior league. It's boring. You just stand around most of the time waiting for somebody to tell you what to do. And in the end, some guy like Erik who hasn't even worked up a sweat can come in and grab all the glory. It doesn't work that way in soccer.

Erik used to play soccer. He was really good, too. This was back in Huntsville, back when he was nine and ten years old. He took all the penalty kicks for his team. That's how he learned to kick so hard, drilling those penalty kicks into the back of the goal net. When we moved to Houston, when Erik was eleven, he realized that football was the star attraction. He took to kicking a football, soccer style, into a small net that he set up in our backyard. Day after day, in rain and cold and heat, Erik worked on perfecting a two-step kick.

Up until then, Dad wasn't much into sports. Once Erik started getting good, though, Dad became transformed. He started talking about his high school football career and, of course, his regrets about college. He became obsessed with football, especially with placekicking. He learned how to hold the ball for Erik, spinning the laces away. For a while, he tried to get me to hike the ball to them. But I never really cooperated, and they soon dropped me from the routine.

We watched the Lake Windsor players break into groups for timed sprints. Mom came up and stood with us for a minute. I knew that she was really there to tell me to get in the car because a thunderstorm was coming. She said, "A storm's coming," to Coach Warner, but he just smiled and agreed with her, "Sure is!"

Mom pointed out some people to me. There was Mike Costello, and there were his father and his brother standing on the other sideline. There was Arthur Bauer, the guy Erik had over to the house yesterday. There was Antoine Thomas, the quarterback.

Mom quickly grew impatient to get me to the car. On the way to the parking lot, she said, "Those boys shouldn't be out there in a thunderstorm."

"They have to play in all kinds of weather, Mom. Sometimes you get caught in a blizzard. Sometimes you get caught in the rain. It's part of football. It's part of soccer, too."

"Why can't they practice in the morning, when it doesn't rain? This is ridiculous. When you know that it's definitely going to rain at exactly the same time every day, you can't really call it getting caught in the rain, can you?"

I had to agree. "I guess you're right. It's like the afternoon tree-watering time around here. But there aren't any trees anymore."

We climbed inside the car just as the first big drops of rain rapped against the roof.

"Look at your father! What is he doing out there?"

"I don't know."

"He's just going to stand there and get soaked?"

"Looks like it."

"This isn't Texas. They have their own weather in Florida, and we all need to change our attitudes about it. People shouldn't stand outside in this kind of rain. Just listen to that!"

The rain was beating down so loud now that it was hard to hear Mom's voice.

I sat thinking for a minute and then hollered, "I'll bet the people who used to live here, the people who grew the tangerines, were really happy with this weather. That's why they were here, right? To grow tangerines?"

"Do you mean, it's nice weather here if you're a duck?"

"Yeah. Or a tangerine. But now it's all upside-down, you know? It's all messed up. The rain clouds show up every day, just like they're supposed to, but there aren't any tangerine trees. Just people. And the people have no use for the rain clouds. So the clouds go around looking for all the tangerine trees. They can't find them, they get mad, and they start thundering and lightning and dumping the rain on us."

I had the feeling Mom knew what I was talking about, but all she would say is, "Clouds don't get mad, Paul."

We sat in the beating rain noise for a few minutes, then it abruptly stopped, like some annoying little kid had stopped banging on a pan. The sun came out, and the steaming heat rose up all around us. "Great," Mom muttered. "Now it's sauna time."

"You need to lighten up, Mom."

"Oh, is that right? You're the one getting attacked by disappointed rain clouds. Why don't you lighten up?" Mom looked in the rearview mirror and added, "Look! Soccer players!"

I turned around and, sure enough, behind the field of portables was a small group heading toward the middle-school soccer field.

"That's Mike Costello's brother in front. His name's Joey. Go ahead, Paul, catch up to them. Teach them a few things."

"Yeah, maybe I will."

I hopped out and followed the group. There were four guys ahead of me kicking a ball around. I walked up and stood right in the goal.