He tilts forward so he can see down the bench to the running back, who has just hobbled off the field cradling a hurt elbow, steam rising off his body like a cup of coffee, curling up into the cold fall air. Henry wonders how it is he can suddenly feel his own heart beating in his throat. I’m the last of the Powell men to do something really do something so I can’t screw up I really can’t please God don’t let me screw this up, he thinks.
“Wake up, Powell!” The coach’s head flicks to the right only by an inch or so but communicates exasperation perfectly and Henry jumps up.
He stomps warmth into his legs, and at the sound of the whistle he shoots out onto the field, passing the wide receiver, who had gone in to give Henry a break and who now looks relieved to be coming out. Henry knows why: the smallest guy on the other team is still bigger than their running back, the Fridge, nicknamed more for his eating habits than for his resemblance to a professional football player. At first a source of profound embarrassment, Fridge now calls himself by his own nickname. “Hi, it’s Fridge,” he’ll say into the phone to a teammate’s mother. When she calls up the stairs to her son “Fridge is on the phone,” she momentarily forgets she is rapidly disappearing from her teenager’s life like a Polaroid in reverse.
The whistle blows again. Henry is aware that he very nearly bounces when he is tackled to the ground.
A hand dangles above his helmet but instead of reaching out for it he heaves himself up off the frozen playing field. You take hold of that hand and you might as well hang a LOSER sign on your back, he thinks. Henry moves back into position. Inhaling, he focuses. He looks over and across to the quarterback. Steve Wilson. Telepathically they speak … the words carried silently through the air, molecules of code that will separate this moment from all others. A ballet choreographed in an instant, this instant, one that will set Henry Powell on an entirely different, life-changing trajectory. They nod at each other and turn back to the game. Tick tick tick: time resumes.
Whistles … numbers called out … grunts all around … thumps of bodies hitting the ground.
But then this: Henry is free, the opposing players moving over to the Fridge, forgetting Henry altogether, as both he and Steve Wilson knew they would. The conductor has tapped his baton on the music stand and the ballet begins.
“Twenty-four!” The shout comes from a distance. To clue the others into the Wilson-Powell Plan. Wilson’s young voice cracks in hormonal urgency.
“Do it!” His coach is mouthing from the sideline. Henry’s legs propel him farther away from Wilson, getting him into place for the grand finale.
For if this catch is not made the game is lost. Like the last five minutes of a television drama at the end of the May season, the suspense hovers in the air and threatens to remain unresolved. The crowd swells collectively to the edge of bleacher seats—perhaps because the spectators sense the beauty of the choreography that is now apparent to all but the opposing team or, more likely, it is so cold the metal makes sitting nearly unbearable.
“Twenty-four!”
The play calls for him to catch the ball, zigzag over, run as many yards as possible and pass underhanded to the running back, Ted Marshall. It will be Marshall’s job to run the ball into the end zone. The coach’s voice seems distorted to Henry, like slow motion during the turning point in that drama when the main character accidentally falls off a ledge, her lover reaching for her in vain, calling her name that one … last … time.
His arms extend into the air. He tilts his head up into the dark sky and wonders for a moment how he’ll be able to see the ball against the storm clouds, which now seem pigskin-brown.
Thump.
The backslap, good natured though it was, startles him back to 1984 and causes an unfortunate cringe that is noticed all around. “That was something, Powell,” the man is saying, eyeing his own profile in the three-sided mirror. “No offense, but I never thought you’d make that catch. It was impossible. How many yards was it? Then the touchdown. Jesus. Incredible,” he sucks in his protruding belly and turns this way and that, eyes never leaving the mirror. “You should’ve seen it,” he says to his girlfriend, who is checking her watch. “After that the season turned around. We went to the state championship. Thanks to that. Scouts were there and everything. Hey, whatever happened to Teddy that day?”
Henry Powell shrugs his answer and throats are cleared. Neal Peterson, a former teammate, exhales, releases his stomach muscles, and turns away from his reflection. The stilted reminiscence comes to an end as they both knew it would. Henry, who is now kneeling with a wrist corsage of pins, to fold cuffs up so the pants will break just so.
“How about a little longer up front on the left—yeah, that’s right,” Peterson says. “Great. When do you think these will be ready? I’ve got to fly to Houston next week.”
“I can get them to you by Friday,” Henry says, rubbing another waxy white line along the fold in back. The pins are already in all the way around the pant leg—why bother with the white chalk on top of it, he thinks. He’s not as adept as his boss, Mr. Beardsley, and ends up rubbing the white line onto his thumb and index finger.
“You heard from anybody lately?” Peterson reaches back for his wallet with the scratchy Velcro flap that still holds despite years of crumbs and loose threads wedged into the black nubs. His jacket sleeves fall back down and Peterson is slightly annoyed to again have to winch them back up, above his elbows.
“Naw,” Henry says. He scribbles tailor notes onto the generic order pad Mr. Beardsley says must be on hand at all times, “in case of emergencies.” Henry wonders what kind of crisis would call for a white-green-pink triplicate of a guest check.
“Heard from Benny the other day. From Cancún, that fat bastard.” Peterson laughs, certain that Henry, too, appreciates Benny’s spirit of adventure. But to Henry, Benny is as anonymous now as he was back in high school. Henry cannot even conjure up his face. But to someone like Neal Peterson the cast of the Class of 1978 will remain photographically burned on the yearbook that is his brain.
“That guy’s crazy,” he is saying, “drunk off his ass in some Mexican place, calling me. Jesus.” Another admiring chuckle from Neal Peterson as his credit card slides back into place alongside another that reads License to Chill along the top, a Carlos & Charlie insignia underneath rattan-style letters spelling out Panama City. “You gotta come out with us, man. We’re hitting Blackie’s later. Mills’ll be there. And Smith-er-eens. And Figger. Remember him? He was two years ahead of us? Newton’s his last name—you know him. Yeah, you do. He’s the one with the sleepy eye who got the shit kicked out of him outside Carvel’s after that Homecoming game, whatever year that was. Remember? How could you not know Newton? Anyway, come out tonight. Blackie’s at ten. Catch you later, Powell!” His finger pointing, thumb cocking an invisible trigger, while the other hand lowers his Ray Bans back down off the top of his head to the bridge of his nose before pushing at the door clearly marked Pull.
The store windows at Baxter’s have sheets of amber plastic coating on the inside, to protect clothes from the sun’s destructive rays, but Henry sees, when Peterson hurries out the door after his girlfriend (humbled, he thinks, by the pushing-not-pulling thing), it’s cloudy out, stormy even, rendering Peterson’s sunglasses useless. But if Sonny Crockett wears sunglasses on dark days, Henry smirks to himself, so does Neal Peterson.
Henry detaches the pink copy of the guest check and folds it into the pinned-up slacks. Anticipating a long empty day, he sets the bundle aside so he’ll have something to do later.
The truth is Henry does know Newton. Figger. A man-child who had facial hair in eighth grade and told everyone Henry had VD when Henry refused to give him his A+ paper on Tess of the D’Urbervilles in ninth grade.
Of course he knows Newton.
The VD rumor caught fire and Henry found himself at home watching The Rockford Files while his fellow ninth graders were pouring Hawaiian Punch into small plastic cups