it was 1963. Anyway, he’s been with me ever since.” Peter Surley reached out to shake Danny’s hand, and Danny knew Peter Surley could see what Danny was thinking: 1963... 1963... nineteen sixty-three...
But Broomsie just kept on: “Big Lou here is our goalkeeper and you can call him Big Lou. Played at Cloppingshire Town in the Mid-Central Council Conference with Petie, the other Jimmy, and that Trevor there before I rescued them. Here’s Dave, Dave, and Kelvin, wingers all three of them. Three fastest men we have. Tons of pace, especially Kelvin there. Over there are the other Trevors. You need as many of those as you can round up, you know. This is Todd, Todd, and the other American, whose name is...” The other American identified himself as Dave. “Dave, that’s right, but it gets confusing around here, so we call all the Americans Todd. Only one of them is any good. I’ll not tell you who. And this is Juanito, Juan, and Carlos—two forwards and a backup goalkeeper. Juanito has been tearing up the local men’s league the last couple years—he’s on trial with us just now but I reckon we’ll sign him up. Fast as hell. Going to be the biggest surprise in the league this season, eh, Juanito?”
“Sure, boss,” Juanito said, though you could barely hear him.
“Boys, meet Danny Hooper. Danny, the boys.”
The boys nodded. Not one spoke.
Danny looked back at Molly, standing by her car. She winked. A bird sang. He missed England for the first time.
Danny wandered off Portland’s pitch in a haze. Still jet-lagged and thoroughly reality-lagged, he harbored a lingering feeling that maybe none of this was happening at all, that Dire Vale United was still coming to the Auld Moors, that maybe East Southwich Albion could still advance in the Cup, that Molly was an invention of his young English mind. Then he heard his name. “Hooper.” Danny stopped. “Hooper. Turn around, lad.”
It was Peter Surley, still sweating, walking toward Danny as slowly as an athlete could walk. Even the energy required of his pillowy form to shout Danny’s name seemed to slow his momentum. When he got himself close enough to Danny for polite conversation, he said, “Fancy a pint?”
Danny would have liked to smile. He’d have liked to laugh. Of course he fancied a pint. But he knew better. He was too new. Couldn’t yet show the weakness of a smile. That would come, but he still didn’t know who was who or what was what, so he tightened his jaw and squinted into the Portland glare and said the obvious: “Yes, I would fancy a pint.”
“Good enough then, big man.”
“When will this be happening, Mr. Surley?”
“It’ll be Peter from now on, son, and it will be happening now. Go on inside. Clean yourself up. I’ll do the same. Then we’ll cross the road.”
Well, Danny thought, there might be a swifty with a softening old football man after all.
They crossed the road to a tavern nearly within sight of the old stadium’s pitch. “Strangest town in the league is what you’ve found, Danny,” said Peter from across a table and a pitcher and underneath a muted television showing a basketball game that Danny couldn’t quite keep his eyes off of. “Other than them”—he motioned toward the screen—“the city isn’t used to being in the spotlight. It’s a frontier outpost, my boy, and in a frontier outpost, everyone’s here for a reason. Everyone’s looking for one last shot, or their parents were. Suspicious and polite people is what that breeds. No one asks too many questions, but everyone’s wondering who’s following you... and where they might be.”
“Who’s following you?”
“Oh, nice of you to ask, my boy. Just England, only England. The past. I’ve won this and I’ve won that back at home, played for every City and Town and County and United you could name—and they’ve always wanted more from me, always thought there was more to come. They just kept yelling, ‘C’mon, Surley! C’mon, Surley!’ as if there was always more I could give them. But there wasn’t any more there really. I always gave what I could, and it was never enough for them. I swear to you, I gave. But I’m slow, slow and methodical, so they always thought I was holding back. One day I get a call from dear old Graham Broome, who’s found himself a home in a town I’ve never heard of, and he says, ‘Peter, come play for me, where the game is an amusement instead of a religion, where they don’t even know the laws of the game. Bring your magic to a place that will love you for what you can do instead of regretting what you can’t.’ So I came. I’m running away, Danny, just like everyone else. But I’ve run to America, and they’ll always give you credit for that. You’re running too, ain’t ye, lad?”
Danny looked about the tavern. In addition to a couple of flannel-clad loners and a pair of suspender-wearing workmen, whose beer glasses competed for space with dulled silver helmets on the table before them, were two men in the corner, looking entirely out of place, wearing suits and ties. To Danny’s eyes, they looked a bit like Three, or at least like Three types, and they seemed to be staring right at Danny and Peter. Danny stared back at them, seeing if he could elicit a reaction, but they didn’t budge. “Don’t worry about them, kid,” Peter said. “They’re watching the basketball.”
“Mmm, I suppose they are, I suppose they are.” Danny inhaled half a glass of his watery beer, half believing Peter Surley, half wondering how much those men really cared about basketball. To distract himself, he asked Peter to explain Portland to him.
“They don’t need much, the people here, and they don’t expect much either. You go to the finest restaurants and you’ll see jeans and sandals and jumpers and T-shirts. They believe what they believe, and they reckon you can believe what you believe too. Live and let live around here. To these folks, the teams that come and the players who play are as intriguing as the circus. To the good people of a distant western port town, men who can scarcely walk the streets in their native lands without being accosted by adoring fans are wonderfully exotic, not frighteningly foreign. We aren’t any good, Danny, but these like don’t know good football from bad. They’re happy to give a strange new game a fighter’s chance and they love us for bringing teams from L.A. and New York and Chicago to their strange old place, like these basket men up here on the telly. They were a little slow to catch on, but we brought the Pearl of Brazil to Portland, me boy. We brought the Pearl, but we’ve a loyal following, Hooper, and I’ll tell you something—if we can win, Danny, if we can win...”
“So you like it here then?”
“Aye, Danny. I like it here. Paid vacation. I could score a hat trick of own goals against anyone but Seattle, and they’ll have me back. And you know it’s their bicentennial, Danny, 1976. Two hundred years. Two hundred years without us watching over them. They’re making a jubilee of it. Everywhere we go, you’ll see it. And you know they think we sound like Beatles when we talk. We’ll be the Englishmen in the heart of their star-spangled summer.”
“You didn’t seem happy on the pitch.”
Peter gave Danny a paternal look through the pint glass at his lips. “Look at me, Hooper. I’d have to lose one of myself to be at me playing weight. I’ll never look happy on the pitch. It’s not possible. But I am, lad, I am. No place I’d rather be.” He set his glass back on the table. “Now tell me, Danny, who’s following you?”
A small cheer went up in the room. The home team had just done something significant in the basketball game on the screen. Everyone cheered except for the men in the suits and ties.
He awoke the next morning in the old-lumber-money comfort of the Benson Hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon, USA.
He