The Scrub

The snickering of goblins. It’s the sound the dead leaves make as my bike tires roll over their dried-up carcasses lying strewn along the gutter.

 I’m pedaling near the curb along a narrow side street, in an older neighborhood close to the river. My bike has no light—just a reflector beneath the seat in back. I have on a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, cross-trainers, and am indistinguishable from a thousand other adolescents. I am a shadow.

It’s nighttime now, and Halloween decorations can be distinguished in windows and doorways as I sweep past sheet ghosts lurking in bushes or strung across front lawns in wisps. Gap-toothed pumpkins stare from porches. Dark figures hide in gloomy hedges, and black cat silhouettes and corn stalks are tacked to front doors.

Halloween’s only a week away, and kids will TP the trees in the park across from our high school. It’s an eighty-year tradition. Football and paper country. Green Bay is one of the bedrocks where the game sprouted its roots. What many folks don’t know, however, is that the city—and the adjacent Fox River Valley—is also the tissue-paper capital of the world. Good joke fodder if you’re a Packers opponent, I suppose.

I cruise along past homes with yard lights, mostly unlit. I distinguish people moving behind closed curtains and the flicker of playing televisions.

High tree branches bristle in the breeze. I hear them because I’m free of traffic. I roll on. More dead leaves crackle; more goblins snicker. I veer from one street onto an even darker one, which courses along the nearby river. A lone streetlight illuminates the intersection far ahead.

Encased in darkness, lost in thought, I can’t shake our football practice from my skull.

Coach Ray called a light workout beneath the stadium lights so we could prepare for tomorrow night’s game. I missed an easy pass I normally hit, and Coach had a conniption fit. I’m a “Scrub, a loser, a two-bit quarterback.” Blah, blah. Heard it all before. By game time tomorrow against the Trojans, he’ll be over it.

 I’m pedaling like a robot now, my mind still on his tirade. My eyes are focused on some invisible point ahead of me, not really seeing. I sweep around a car parked on the shadowy street. As I’m easing past, the driver’s door flings open. The edge catches my back wheel and spins me around. I’m suddenly in the air, landing rough on the asphalt. My bike skids, slides a full circle. When the spinning stops, I’m lying in the middle of the narrow street, shaken, stunned from my face-plant. My ball cap lies ten feet away.

I blink my eyes…see colors. My Raleigh is sideways, front tire spinning. My head has slapped the pavement, I realize, and is beginning to throb on one side above my ear.

 A voice shrieks from behind me. I glance back. The girl is my age, garbed in dark leggings and a hoodie. She stands next to her open car door, lit faintly by the dome light. I recognize her by the glimpse of short white bangs. She’s Asha Silver. From a few of my classes. She also student-jobs in the library.

I watch as she steps in the street and reaches for a hard black case lying on its side, halfway open. Despite the shadows I can see the reflection of a long musical instrument on the asphalt. She lifts it with the care of a heart surgeon.

“My flute,” she cries, and renders me a desperate look. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” She examines the instrument for damage. I wonder, vaguely, how she can tell in the dark. She withdraws her cell phone and holds it up like a flashlight, as if reading my mind.

“It’s pitch black,” I tell her, defensive. “You opened your door…as I’m riding past.”

She stares at me, incredulous. “You’re saying it’s my fault?” She cradles the flute like an injured bird.

“Just an accident.” The pressure in my head is spreading. I notice sparkles at the edge of my vision. I want to ask if she’s okay, but the words won’t form. I droop my head in the crook of my elbow and close my eyes just for a second. The inky night closes in fast, and I wonder if I’m still inside my body.

# # #

 It’s a dream or a vision. Maybe a memory—or a premonition, even. I’m not sure. I’m walking from the football field post-game. Here comes Matt, my favorite teammate, giving me a clap on the shoulder as he trots past. Half our players have their helmets off, heading toward the exit gates. Our locker room is twenty yards beyond them, just inside the high school.

Some far-off region of my cortex reminds me that I’m passed out, lying in the street, dreaming. It’s as if my brain is fighting to right itself. I’m like a coma victim, unconscious yet aware of my surroundings. And now more images—slices of memory—flash across my mind.

Coach Ray is approaching as we leave the field: “You’re holding the ball too long, Janus! Get rid of it faster. We practice that play ten times a day.” And four kids hopping the empty bleachers not far from us, with one straw-haired boy calling from the stands, “Hey, Janus! Can you throw a pass over ten yards?” They laugh together and run off.

Flash ahead to Coach standing in front of our locker room…Sweat, dirt, uniforms stained by mud and grass, sweaty gray undershirts…He’s giving his post-game talk: “You’re playing like scared little boys! You’re all a bunch of losers. A team of scrubs.”

He gives us an exasperated look. “Go home. Rest. Shake this off. Next week we face the Southwest Trojans. We handled them in our August scrimmage.”

Finally Coach calling us together—arms, fists, helmets extended in the circle around him for a group chant: “Red Devils! Red Devils! Hoo rah-rah!”