Ghost of a Great Athlete Past
The next weekend, we played an away game at the Richland Center. It was another beautiful slaughter, which, yes, made me happy. I woke up early on Saturday morning and packed my overnight bag. This wasn’t the best time to go on a visit because Northwestern had a bye that week, so I couldn’t see them play. Didn’t matter because I wasn’t really going to Northwestern to visit the school. Aleah would meet me at the hotel.
Right before I got in Jerri’s car (no, she didn’t actually visit a single school with me, which Coach Johnson told me was abnormal), my grandpa Stan called my cell, which was out of the ordinary. He said, “Northwestern today, right, Felton?”
“Yes. Weird, huh?”
“It’s a fine school. I’m not sure…I’m not sure it’s the best place for you, of course. I don’t know.”
“Well, I really want to see Aleah.”
“She’ll be there?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Good. I almost flew up to be with you there myself. But next week, you know?”
He and Andrew were coming up to Bluffton for the homecoming game.
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Make sure you have them tell you about their academic programs. Northwestern is a very good school.”
He should know. He sent my dead dad there.
“I will,” I said.
“Good. Good,” he said.
I appreciated someone in my family actually caring about my college career. Jerri drove me to Janesville, put me on a bus, and said, “Have fun.”
The bus trip was pretty short, just a couple of hours. Two college kids sitting next to me drank straight out of little vodka bottles, then started making out.
“Get a room!”
I didn’t actually say that. I wished I was with someone making out.
***
Northwestern Visit
Okay, there’s a kind of older football coach who isn’t like the big-head, slick-haired coaches. This older coach talks fast and mumbles and says weird stuff like, “Get me a bottle of that Gatorade, you boob. Who am I? Your old forgotten granny? Show a little class.” Totally incomprehensible but kind of funny. I tend to like these coaches better than the younger ones. My track coach, Coach Knautz, is sort of like this.
So was Northwestern’s coach.
When I got to campus, the weird old dude flat out told me, mumbling fast, “You aren’t going to come here, Mr. Fancy Pants Big League Reinstein. I appreciate you making a visit to our humble little backwater school though.” When he said that, I thought, Oh yeah? Then I will come here!
I think he was using reverse psychology on me. When I was a kid, Jerri would get me to eat fish by serving it to Andrew and telling me I wasn’t allowed to have any, which made me beg her for fish, even though I hate fish. Then I’d eat it, gagging and choking.
Nice try, Northwestern coach. I will not eat your fish. Recruiter people are tricky.
It’s not because I didn’t like him though. I did.
And I liked visiting Northwestern.
Within ten minutes of me being dropped off at the hotel, Aleah was in my room. She did stay overnight. Good times in the hotel.
The host football dude, Antwan Jackson (another Wisconsin product but a Northwestern player), invited us to a party. He walked Aleah and me there, talking about how cool the football players are at Northwestern, what good students most of them are. “It’s a different kind of thing here. A different kind of culture.” That’s what he said.
Aleah nodded and smiled. (Normal football culture confuses her.)
While he talked, I stared at Antwan’s ear because it looked like it had been torn half off by a tiger or something.
Not so different…
We were at the party for like ten minutes when two large dudes who smelled like the body spray car wash started shoving each other, crushing into people, beer spilling, everybody screaming, and Aleah said, “Get me out.”
We walked back down this street across from the campus. Aleah said, “I thought Northwestern was a smart school.”
“Are football players everywhere just assholes?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Aleah said. “You’re not really a football player though.”
I stopped. “No,” I said. “I really am. I play football.”
“Yes. But you’re not the same as those boys, right?”
I didn’t answer.
We walked to the hotel in silence. We ordered room service twice. We messed around in bed in between. There were some awesome french fries at this place.
At 7 a.m., she was gone because she had to play with some ensemble at a park downtown. “Bye, Felton. Bye. I love you. Okay? Bye,” she said. She put her hand on the side of my head and stared at me hard. “Remember I love you, okay? Remember this?”
I nodded. My heart sank. She got on a bus and was gone, and I was alone.
I didn’t hate touring the campus. Not exactly.
Northwestern is nice. (College campuses are often nice, I guess.) Unfortunately, it hit me about halfway through the tour, while passing a set of dorms, that I’d seen a picture of that very place in a photo album at Grandpa’s house, that Dad lived in those dorms, that Dad had friends who lived in those dorms, that Dad stayed up all night in those dorms talking or studying or eating pizzas or something.
I don’t know my dad at all. What did he do? I pictured him with his ghostly Jewfro head (like mine when my hair’s not super short) walking on those sidewalks, laughing, carrying a backpack, thinking about poetry. (He was a “jock” and a poetry student…that’s all I really know—he eventually got his PhD in modern poetry from Indiana University.)
He’s dead…He’s dead…He’s gone forever…
Thoughts like that can still crush me like boulders.
At one point, we visited an athletic facility with this glass case at the front that contained a giant picture of my dad—giant black hair bursting from his head—crushing a tennis ball. He was a national champion in tennis. The big-knuckled running backs coach barked, “You’re a legacy, Felton. Wouldn’t it be excellent to grow the Reinstein legend right here where it started?”
I’m not going to Northwestern, I thought. The Reinstein legend includes dangling from your neck in a garage.
My poor dad. My poor grandpa. Poor Jerri. My poor little brother.
Sad Felton too. That Sunday was the last time I saw Aleah for nine months.