Pipe Crew XI

Becka scampered out from under me, grabbed her clothes off the floor and dove into bed, yanking the covers over her head. The footsteps stopped outside the door. Then I heard muffled talking. A hand turned on the doorknob and I thought our dad was going to burst in, but instead it opened only a crack. I heard my mother’s voice.

“Let them be. I am sure they were just making fun of us. They can hear us through these walls you know.” Thank God for mothers.

“They can? Oh Christ. Maybe I should go in and explain it to them.”

“Really Peter? You should go into your children’s bedroom and tell them that you are fucking their mother and the screams they hear are perfectly natural. I need to hear this.” I could hear her coming down the hall and the door clicked shut. Then I could hear both of them suppressing a good laugh as their combined footsteps retreated down the hall. Becka moved silently back to my bed.

“That was close!” she gasped. I could see well enough to see she had taken the opportunity to get dressed. “It doesn’t matter, Paul. I would still love you. Even if dad does find out and beat you to within an inch of your life.” She gave me a kiss and disappeared back to her bed. When my heart stopped racing, I finally relaxed enough to go to sleep.

We had Franklin High in the second round of the playoffs. They were eager for a little payback for the beating they took earlier in the year. When we beat them back in September, we had Jack Baldwin with his brothers James and Joe to help. Jack got his leg badly broken against a piss-poor team and his brothers got kicked off the team for a dirty retaliation play. Now Jack was itching to get out of traction and back to school. His leg was finally mended well enough that he thought he could start hobbling around on crutches, but Centerville High has three stories and stairs everywhere. He wouldn’t be able to get around much. When he returned, the principle decided to let Jack stay in the library all day and have his school work delivered to him. He would be surrounded by cute little high school girls all day and loving the attention, so I guess there was a little silver lining in his cold dark cloud. Without football, Joe and James had already started wrestling practice, where the coaches were exceptionally hard on them for their serious lapse in judgment.

Practice for the week before the Franklin rematch was brutal. Coach Kennedy wasn’t taking any chances. Franklin had knocked us out the playoffs the previous year and we had thoroughly dismantled them already once. Now it was Franklin’s turn to get some payback. Even though we had identical 10-1 records, our head-to-head record gave us home field advantage. If you wanted a ticket to that game, you were out of luck. They went on sale at noon on Wednesday and were sold out before 1 pm. Additional portable bleachers were brought in to put the students behind the end zones. It was a madhouse. I thought there were a hundred thousand people there, and I’ve had more than ten thousand swear to me they were there, but the official capacity was only nine thousand.

It was wet that night. And cold. Perfect northwest weather for football. Our field had a heavy crown for drainage, which kept the middle of the field playable, but it left both sidelines six inches deep in muddy rainwater. The game was scoreless at half time and both teams were so muddy that the only way to tell us apart was the color of our helmets, which the pouring rain kept somewhat clean. All the rain didn’t dampen the spirits of our fans. Both sides of the field were loud the entire game. The end zones were filled with sopping, screaming teenagers. I get goose pimples just remembering that night.

Our first score of the second half came on a belly dive by the fullback. Franklin was used to Spud faking the carry and then blocking the linebacker, so when Spud came through the line, pretending to carry the ball, they all made a beeline for me. Spud missed his block on the linebacker and then kept lumbering up the hill toward the goal line. When the free safety realized that Spud had the ball, it was too late. Spud isn’t fast, but he is strong as a bull and heavy. His cleats sank in deep and he kept his legs moving, dragging the ineffective free safety the last ten yards into the end zone for his first carry of the game and his first touchdown. Ever.

Franklin made the mistake of throwing the ball in the vicinity of Harold Handell and he intercepted and slipped and slid for fifteen yards before being tackled. We had the momentum and the execution. It took us five minutes to march the thirty yards for the second score of the night. Up 16-0, Franklin had no choice but to try and throw again. This time Greg Chapman stepped in front of a quick slant, the ball squirted up off his muddy chest and hands and then dropped back into his flailing arms like a loaf of bread. He got blasted out of bounds inside the ten and slid another fifteen feet before nearly drowning in a puddle. We ran the double stack right and marched in for the score on the next play. We failed on the double try and had the lead at 22-0. Franklin couldn’t get on track and we killed the clock for most of the fourth quarter. The score stayed the same. We were now one game away from a state championship showdown.

The two teams met at midfield to shake hands. We looked so ridiculous, caked in mud and sopping wet. It wasn’t that bad. Franklin wished us well, hoping that we would continue to win until we took state. It would be small solace that they had lost twice to the state champions, but they were trying to make the best of their broken hearts.

We were so muddy that coach made us take off everything but our girdle pants before going into the locker room. Back in those days, you wore a pair of elastic shorts that held your hip pads and tailbone pad. Nowadays, they uniform pants have spots sown in to hold those pads. When all you are wearing is girdle pants and sock, you can’t help but look like a baby in a diaper. But we looked like diapered babes as a team, so it made it alright.

I took a hot shower at the school to try and get warm and wash off all that sticky mud. We all lingered in the shower, oblivious to our families still waiting outside in the rain. Then the team filed out of the locker room in twos and threes to join fans and families in the parking lot. There was a big crowd still waiting. As I exited, Dale Stanton, the sports writer for the Centerville Gazette-Times buttonholed me. He wanted to interview me about the upcoming game the following Friday night against Bishop Newman. I flushed red and didn’t know what to say. I had never spoken to a reporter before and Coach Kennedy was perfectly clear about his stance on his team talking to the press. It was absolutely forbidden. I was about panic or to mumble an answer, I was certain which. Then I heard a familiar voice booming from across half the parking lot.

“Dale Stanton, leave that kid alone!