On that first day of Highland football, I had strutted around in my full uniform the moment I got home from school. The only thing I took off for dinner was my helmet. The rest of it came off only after practice, when I gleefully got hosed down by Julian to rinse the mud before I was even allowed in the laundry room. It rained in buckets during that first practice, a big Texas rain, and the coaches had us do bull in the ring right in the middle of a big mud pit down where the field drains off.
I knew what bull in the ring was because I’d heard kids talk about it in school. Everyone would circle up around a single kid. The coach would shout out numbers, and if he shouted your number, you ran full speed at the kid in the middle and CRASH.
I remember pulling up to the field after dinner just as the first random sprinkles of rain spotted our windshield, imagining what it would be like to be that bull.
“Oh, I doubt they’ll practice when this hits.” My mom waved her hand at the weather out her side window. Towering black clouds climbed over the tops of each other in their haste to get to the Oklahoma border.
“Only if there’s lightning they won’t.” I had my hand on the door handle already, eager for her to take the truck out of gear so I could jump out.
“I don’t see how you can get anything done in rain like that.” She pointed and finally put the truck into park.
“It’s football, Mom,” I shouted back to her, and slammed the door. She’d started to say something more, but I was already gone, sprinting across the field toward my new teammates, some of whom were tossing around a ball as if there were a bright blue sky. I ran up to a few of the guys who lounged by the blocking sled, their arms draped across the big blue canvas blocking dummies like best friends.
“How about that storm coming, huh?” I hated myself for speaking, but in my excitement I felt if I didn’t say something, I’d bust wide open.
“It’s football, Zinna.” Bryan Markham punched the blocking dummy like it was supposed to be me. It rattled and shook and he folded his arms across his chest. “Not soccer.”
“I know.” I nodded brightly. “I just said that to my mom.”
Bryan scoffed and muttered under his breath as he snapped his chin strap and walked away. “Your mom.”
Coach Simpkin gave his whistle a blast and without so much as a word, the players all took off for the sideline, running in single file around the perimeter of the field and then spilling out through the goalposts into six perfect columns spaced out every five yards on the line. I followed and stumbled into place, just doing what everyone else was doing. While my equipment suddenly felt too tight in some spots (like the forehead pad in my helmet) and too loose in others (like my girdle and all its pads drifting down my butt), excitement still won out over discomfort. I had waited so long to be here, and finally, here I was.
I stretched my hamstrings and shoulders and everything else you could stretch, barking out a ten count with the others, thrilled to be a soldier in the football army. The coaches wandered among us like generals, the wind whipping their hair. They wore shorts to their knees and shells for the coming rain. We compressed our columns to the goal line and did agility drills, running out to the twenty-yard line before re-forming and waiting to return. When the first serious drop of rain hit my helmet, I looked around for the person who’d thrown a rock. Then I heard the next tap, then another, until it was a patter that made it hard to hear Coach Simpkin shouting to us all.
“I thought this was gonna happen.” Coach Simpkin cinched the strap of his floppy coaching hat as the rain pounded its brim, his voice already going raspy from raising it. “We got a lot of plays to put in and stuff, but you all know where Coach Markham and I like to go when it rains?”
“The RING!” my teammates cheered as one, already slapping one another’s shoulder pads and helmets, giddy with anticipation. Coach Markham had his hood up, a stubby green unlit cigar waggling from between his grinning teeth.
“That’s right, bull in the ring!” Coach Simpkin blew his whistle and pointed toward the far edge of the field where the grass dropped off to the drainage grate.
Everyone had cheered—me included, even though I’d never seen it done—and took off in a stampede, the rain pouring down on us in sheets. Just before I disappeared over the lip of the field, I looked back at the parking lot. My mom’s King Ranch sat parked facing the field, headlights on, wipers slapping away the rain. I gave a quick wave and thumbs-up to the dark shape behind the windshield where my mother’s face had been swallowed up by the gloom.
Then I turned, joyfully, like a lamb to the slaughter, and entered the ring.