Cracking the Bell

Football has been my medicine. It has given me a singularity of purpose. It is the tower I built, on which I stand and see everything around me.

I’m a defensive player, but that doesn’t mean football is simple seek and destroy, like some people might think. I captain the defense, which takes smarts, especially the way I play the game. I’m not some firing missile. I’m a smart bomb, communicating subtly, like through fungal mycelium, to a network of other smart bombs, my killer teammates.

On the field the world goes into vignette mode on Instagram. I’m in this dark tunnel except for a brightly lit place right in the center where everything makes sense. I shout an alignment, read how the offense sets up, call out adjustments—verbally, with my eyes, with hand gestures—signal plays to watch for, react to action in the backfield, take on blocks.

The world makes sense on the football field.

Even on September 28, apparently. In fact, as soon as we left the locker room, my bone-tired heaviness, my thoughts of my sister, Hannah, and poor Mom and Grandpa John . . . they went away and all there was in front of me was grass, jersey, helmet, the mechanics of Lancaster’s offense lit in a bright Instagram vignette.

Screw Lancaster. I’m not a kind person on the football field. Yes, I play smart. But after I make my reads, I am free to destroy.

In the fourth quarter of a heavyweight bout that featured far more defense than offense, we led Lancaster by six points.

But as time fled, Lancaster had the ball.

They are really good. They are the monsters of the Southwest Wisconsin Conference. They drove the length of the field—their huge linemen, having finally exhausted our front seven, paved the way for Jimi Jentz and Jake Brogley, their fleet-footed running backs. With just over a minute left, they moved all the way down to our twenty-two yard line. But I didn’t lose faith. I knew this business. I knew my place in it.

I’d studied so much film. I had a research paper full of evidence proving they got conservative when they hit this part of the field. Most teams who played them lost confidence, lost their will to fight. Most teams got run over easily. Why would Lancaster do anything risky? Most teams laid down and lost.

Not us.

In the huddle, I was my most pure “second life” self. I nodded, looked into everybody’s eyes, pointed at each one of my teammates. “Not us. Not us. They will not run us over,” I said. “We bend. We don’t break.”

My teammates huffed and snorted. They nodded, returned my gaze.

“Let’s go. Now,” I said.

And I was right about conservative. Of course. Lancaster called running alignments three plays in a row, certain we’d lay down. But each time, I lined us up like a hammer poised to hit. They couldn’t move at all. One yard first play. A yard loss second. No gain third.

My heart pounded. The vignette was blinding.

Dave Dieter, our defensive coordinator, pumped his fist, gave me the thumbs-up. Very few knew, but Dieter let me call most of the game by myself. Essentially, Dieter was cheerleading, and I did his coordinator job.

On fourth down, Lancaster had to go for it, even though they had ten yards to go. There was no other choice. Images from the film I’d watched riffled through my mind. I knew that their playbook would open up in this situation. A pass was coming, and I knew which one.

Then Coach Dieter tried to grab the defensive reins. He signaled in a set, shouted for the corners to stay back off the line of scrimmage.

I shook my head, tried to shake him off.

Dieter signaled the set again.

“Ignore Dieter,” I said in the huddle. “Don’t play off the line. It’s an option route to Clay. He’s the guy, right?”

Everyone nodded.

“Press on the damn edges.”

“You sure, man?” Matty Weber, the free safety, asked.

“Can’t have Clay running to the damn sideline. We don’t want him stopping the clock if he gets a first down. Make him cross in front of me,” I said. “Funnel him right at me.”

The corners nodded. They broke huddle. They lined up tight.

“Back off! Back off!” Coach Dieter screamed.

My heart slowed. I crouched.

“Back off!” Coach Dieter cried. Our corners didn’t budge.

“Red. Red. Red,” Lancaster’s quarterback shouted. “Hut. Hut!”

Dakota Clay, Lancaster’s all-state tight end, got bumped off the line by our outside linebacker, Knutson. It was happening just like I thought it would. Our corner was between the hash and the sideline and Matty Weber was shaded to that side to double Clay. Instead of running out and up the field, Clay rode the bump and dragged across the middle.

I stayed crouched, made myself small, baited Lancaster’s QB into thinking the middle of the field was open. It worked perfectly. Lancaster had spent the entire game running every play away from me, keeping me from being a factor. Not this time. The QB threw the ball. It left his hand on target, right at Clay. I exploded forward, accelerated like rockets were attached to my ass. I didn’t break down for the tackle at all, because I knew exactly where the ball would be. At the last moment, I uncoiled on Dakota Clay. I exploded into him at the same moment the ball reached his hands. It was brutal, crushing, like a pickup truck blowing a country intersection. Clay cried out. The ball bounced away. The crowd leaped to its feet, screaming.

Even though a few seconds remained on the clock, all we had to do to win was take a knee. Game over.

After the hit, apparently Clay lay on the field groaning.

I didn’t hear that part. I’d done something I shouldn’t do. Really bad technique, failed to keep my eyes up, dropped my head down when I made the hit.

Eyes down. Head down. Absolutely terrible technique.

I have a tendency to drop my head when I want a hit to be remembered. Once in my career, sophomore year, the resultant collision caused my eyes to roll back in my head, my sinuses to drain, and my ears to ring like a French cathedral on Sunday morning. No, not just bells. I heard the shriek of a witch for the first time. I’d worked hard to counter my intuitive style of play after sophomore year and had avoided that kind of collision, although I did hear the shriek of a witch one other time, junior year, when a receiver cracked back on me, hit me at full speed while I wasn’t looking. Man, I worked so hard to avoid that kind of contact.

I’ll tell you this, I’d never dropped my eyes on a 240-pound superathlete before. The back of my helmet had ricocheted off Clay’s ribs and shot my face down into the turf. Crash. For a count of three, I think, I was totally out (looked like that on the video—Kirby Sheldon showed me later). Twiggs ran onto the field and raised his arms, signaled the coaches for help, because for that three count I looked dead. But before anyone could check on me, I was awake. I pushed myself off the turf and ran to the sideline like nothing had happened. On film my teammates slapped me on the helmet, jumped up and down, and high-fived each other around me.

I don’t remember it.

This is what I remember: witch whistles screamed in my ears. What sound would steel make if it was torn apart slowly? Witch whistles. Got more intense. The whistles came from ten places at first, then combined and became a single dying girl shrieking without breathing. Constant deadly shriek. The sky above turned orange, yellow, blue, red . . .

What’s happening? What’s happening?

That’s the last thing I remember thinking. Or seeing. Or hearing. The last thing for many hours. I don’t remember the good-game line, or hugging Dad and Grandma Gin in the stands, or riding the bus back to the high school, or telling Twiggs and Riley I had to go home to see Mom, because she hadn’t made it to the game, or driving home, or going to bed, or getting up and vomiting.

All that was gone from my head, my cracked bell leaking it away. The contents of my second life leaking away.