11

“CAN YOU SEE IT?” Dad asked.

“Of course I can see it,” I said. “It’s right in front of me.”

“Yeah, but can you really see it? Because your mother”—he jerked his head in the direction of the van, where Mom was sitting— “she says she doesn’t see it.”

“Dad, do you want to tell me what it is I’m supposed to be seeing? It’s cold out here.”

Which was an understatement. It was freezing. Literally. The car radio on the way here said negative four degrees. The day before we’d gotten our first snow of the season, but now it was too cold for flakes. A crust of snow covered the baseball diamond to my left and the football field in front of me. It looked crunchy.

It was Sunday morning, the day before the basketball season started for real, and the last thing I wanted to be doing was standing in the parking lot by the football field playing guessing games. Where I wanted to be was in my warm house, moping around because I couldn’t participate in basketball tryouts. That’s exactly what I had been doing all week and weekend until Dad said we were going on a family trip.

To the high school football parking lot.

“You don’t see it, do you?” he said again. “Try squinting.”

I sighed steam but narrowed my eyes into slits just to humor him.

Here’s what I saw: My dad, at the top of a ladder, looking down at a red, metal, crooked pole sticking out of the asphalt. The pole stood in the entrance to the stadium, between two fences—one that started at the edge of the bleachers, and another that started at the end of the equipment building.

“I see a red, metal pole sticking out of the ground,” I said.

I left out the crooked part because there was no reason to rub it in. My dad put the pole there, after all.

He did it last week, three weeks after the JV football season ended, two weeks after the varsity team got blown out in their first and only game of the sectional playoffs.

Dad was apparently the only one who didn’t expect this blowout. He spent the next few days moping. This wasn’t unusual. Dad’s moping, I mean. Especially after yet another disappointing football season. He said he spent too much time preparing to win to be prepared to lose.

“That’s it?” he said. “That’s all you see?”

When I shrugged my shoulders, he said, “It’s not just a pole, Mike.”

“What is it then?”

“It’s a turnstile.” Dad said the word carefully, as though he didn’t want to mispronounce it, as though the word was brand new to him and he hadn’t been saying it non-stop for two weeks.

As though it wasn’t the word that had brought his moping to an end.

“I thought that was the turnstile,” I said.

It was my turn to jerk my head. On the other side of the ladder, another red metal object leaned against the fence. It was about the same height as the pole. The main difference between the two was that the thing leaning against the fence had spokes sticking out of it. It looked sort of like a metal tree.

“It’s all the turnstile,” my dad said.

“Oh. Okay,” I said. “In that case, I see a turnstile. Am I dismissed?”

Dad shook his head. “That’s all you see? A turnstile?”

“Dad. Do I really have to be here for this?”

He shook his head again. “My own son can’t even see it.”

I started moving for the red thing with spokes. “You’re going to need this, right?”

I got rid of the crutches a week ago, which at first was really exciting. The doctor had said the night I got injured that I could ditch the crutches as soon as I could get around without them, but Mom made me call him and make sure. It took half a day for him to call back, and honestly, I didn’t mind having to wait. I was positive I’d gotten the instructions right the first time we met— “You can set the crutches aside when you feel comfortable putting some weight on that knee” were his exact words—and I spent half of the day thinking that maybe I was special somehow, that my body had super healing powers. When the phone call finally came, the doctor confirmed his instructions: “Yes, by all means,” he said, “take off the training wheels for a while and see how it goes.” Then I asked him what this meant—was my knee healing faster than expected? —and he shattered any and all superpower thoughts. “If you were a long distance runner, maybe,” he said, “but otherwise, it sounds like you’re right on track. I don’t want you making any quick stops and starts anytime soon.”

Which was the reason for my moping. I’d already imagined making a dramatic entrance onto the basketball court: tossing the crutches aside and sprinting up to my coach and teammates before coming to a last-second, screeching, hockey-like stop that peeled the wax right off the wood floor.

Instead, I spent the first few days of tryouts hobbling around, shooting close-range shots on one end of the court while everyone else scrimmaged on the other. Tomorrow would be more of the same.

And today here I was, standing in the cold, looking at two poles that according to Dad weren’t poles.

I bent over and pulled on one of the metal tree-shaped thing’s branches. The metal tree-shaped thing was hollow and surprisingly light. I stood it up to its full height, maybe ten and a half feet.

“Here,” I said. “Now can we go?”

But Dad wasn’t paying attention. He was looking across the parking lot, squinting like he asked me to do, as though it allowed him to see something more clearly. The car engine sputtered, whined in the cold, revved again. Puffs of smoke came out of the exhaust pipe. Mom sat shotgun. She gazed forward, toward the baseball field. It must have been nice and warm in there, because she wasn’t wearing her stocking cap.

I don’t think Dad was looking at either Mom or the van, though—or for that matter, at anything else in the parking lot.

“Dad?”

Still no response.

“Dad. Earth to father.”

He glanced down at me and grabbed the turnstile with a gloved hand. “Imagine it, Mike,” he said—he was doing the squinting thing again— “hundreds, thousands of people coming to the entrance to watch a game. At first they’ll be in a line, single file, but once enough people show up it will be too crowded for lines. All those people on this side of the entrance, coming through the turnstile one at a time.”

“So you’re trying to make it harder for people to enter the stadium?”

“In a way, yes.”

Now it was my turn to squint again. “I see many angry people, going home to get their pitchforks. Or to just get warm.”

“No, they won’t leave,” Dad said. “Trust me on that. They might grumble—they definitely might do that—but they won’t leave. They’ll come back the next week and grumble some more.”

“So you’re trying to piss people off?”

Dad didn’t answer. If it hadn’t been clear yet, it was now undeniable: Dad was winding himself up for game-speech mode, which anyone he’s ever coached will tell you is his specialty. I looked longingly at the warm car.

“No, Mike,” Dad finally said, “I don’t want to piss people off, even if that’s the result sometimes. I want to make Rapid River football games an event. Something people make plans to attend. Something they show up early for. I want people in this town—not just parents of players, but regular townspeople—to have the Rapid River football schedule up on their fridges. I want the old guys who eat breakfast at Arnie’s every Saturday to discuss last night’s game over their eggs. I even want them to gripe about the imbeciles who are coaching the team.”

Dad shook his head and breathed out of his nose. He glanced toward the gray sky, as if he could see the old guys griping up there right now.

“I want what any coach should want for their team: for Rapid River football to be a way of life in this town, an assumed part of all of our daily existence.” Dad did another head shake, took another nose-breath. “That’s what I want.”

 It was only then that I realized I was squinting for real, trying to visualize what he was talking about. I opened my eyes fully and pointed to the crooked, red, metal pole sticking out of the asphalt. “And this thing is going to do all that?” I said.

Dad balanced the red thing with spokes on his hip, with one glove around it for support. He put the other glove on the pole. “It’ll be a start, anyway. We’ll probably have to actually win a few games, too.” He slapped the pole like it was a buddy’s shoulder. “But I’m telling you, Mike. People like events. They like making a big deal about things if you only give them a chance. And all events include a long line to get in.”

I helped Dad lift the thing with spokes high enough to line the bottom up with the top of the pole. When Dad let go, the hollow tree thing slid down the pole like a sheath over a sword.

Dad grabbed a spoke and gave it a shove. The turnstile spun around a few times and stopped. “What do you think?” he said. “Can you see it?”

“Yeah,” I told him. “I think I can.”

And I meant it, too.

After Dad climbed down from the ladder, we walked back to the car, each carrying an end of the ladder. “How come Mom can’t see it?” I asked. “Did you tell her what you just told me?”  

“I don’t think she wants to see it. She says it’s not my job to worry about these things. It’s the head coach’s. I told her I agree.”

This was another sore subject between the two of them. A couple years back, Dad had the opportunity to take the head coaching job—his name was in The Dais, our town’s local paper, as the top candidate. He’d already turned the girls’ basketball program into a winner, and had a Phy Ed teaching job at the school, so it made sense. I think it was pretty much a done deal. But he ended up changing his mind and staying on as an assistant. Mom and Dad did a lot of arguing for those few weeks, and even though they made sure to do it on whatever floor of the house I wasn’t occupying, I heard enough to know Dad wanted to take the job but Mom convinced him not to.

This was the first time Dad had mentioned the job out loud since then.

“Plus,” Dad said, “I think she’s afraid you’ll want to play football again.”

I looked at my mother, sitting shotgun in the van and staring straight ahead out the front windshield. She was either zoned out or pretending not to notice us out of protest. Either way, she didn’t unlock the trunk. Dad had to take off his glove and fish in his pocket for the keys. She’s right, I thought. I do want to play football again.

I could already see myself running onto the field with my teammates as a packed house screamed and cheered and treated our game like the biggest event of the week, just like Dad told me they would.

When I got home and up to my room, my phone told me I had two new messages.

Both from Eric. Both sent over an hour ago.

last day of church b4 the winter

mikey???

I replied with two messages of my own.

sorry, dad gave me a sermon of his own haha

p.s. think im playin football again next fall

Eric responded within seconds: cool. im trying out for the baseball team this spring!!

I typed, really?!

But I thought, uh-oh.