I’m ten years old and my life is all about music.
With one exception.
Football.
I love sports, but I live for football.
I have found my game, my passion, my reason. I love to sing and spend hours listening to music, but I become obsessed about football. I dream about playing in the NFL. I see myself as a star quarterback, zipping passes to my wide receivers and running on my own for first downs and touchdowns, slithering through a maze of tacklers and then speeding past the rest of the defense into the end zone.
My friends and I meet for pickup games at our small local park and in the fall we join Pop Warner. We play ten games a season and I do play quarterback. I excel and our team makes the playoffs. At night, I lie in bed, replaying the most recent game in my head, watching a personal highlights film. Next to me, I cradle my football, fearful that if I leave it anywhere else in the house, Ricky will snatch it and sell it. I fall asleep with the cool cowhide tucked against my cheek.
Our team roars through the playoffs, making it to the championship game. We lose a squeaker, but I’ve played my heart out and we’ve had a great season. The team forms our final huddle, our arms around each other. We break, and as we begin to pick up our gear, our coach reminds us that we’ll all be together one last time, at the season’s culmination, the father-son banquet.
The words sting.
All of us will be together, one last time.
Everyone except me.
I won’t be able to attend the father-son banquet.
I don’t have a father to take me.
I slowly gather my helmet, jacket, and my cherished football. I glance across the field and see the other kids leaving the park, many with their dads. The last to leave, the lone straggler, I say goodbye to our coach. I offer him my hand to shake because I know I won’t see him for a while, at least until the start of the next season. As for the trophy I’m supposed to receive at the father-son banquet, I guess I’ll pick that up some other time. My coach and I shake hands, awkwardly. As I leave the park, I can feel him watching me. I wonder if he knows I won’t be attending the father-son banquet.
Of course he knows. We play our games in a small neighborhood park. The kids know each other. The parents know each other. The coaches know each other. Everybody knows everyone and everybody knows everything that’s going on. Sometimes I feel as if I live in a fishbowl. And sometimes, like when I think about the father-son banquet and that I won’t be able to go and everyone in the world knows why, I wish I could disappear.
The night of the banquet, I mope around the house, throw on some sweats, and settle on the couch to watch TV. Before I’m comfortable, I hear a knock at the front door. I open the door and find Mr. Campbell, Squirt’s dad, who’s also a coach in our league, standing there. He’s wearing a sport coat and slacks. He rubs his palm over his slick, bald head and pats his wondrous, thick mustache.
“You ready?” he says.
“Huh?”
“Come on. We got to get a move on.”
I start to stammer. “What are you—where are we going?”
“The father-son banquet. Get dressed. You got five minutes.”
I don’t remember much more of that evening. I remember getting dressed and going to the banquet and sitting at a round table with Mr. Campbell, my surrogate dad, and seeing him smile and applaud along with the rest of the fathers and sons as our coach presents me my trophy.
Later, when Mr. Campbell drops me off and I thank him for taking me to the banquet, I go into my house, close the door to my room, and I make a decision. My dad has chosen to remove himself from my life. I don’t have any say in that. But I do have a say in how to respond to that in the future. I decide I will no longer wait for him, ever. I decide to let him go. He can live his own life, and I will live mine.
* * *
I don’t have a dad. I feel weirdly singled out, wondering if people are looking at me, feeling sorry for me. Thankfully, crazily, wonderfully, I inherit five other dads. My friends’ dads. All of them, each in his own way, becomes a surrogate father to me.
Mr. Campbell becomes a major father figure. Rugged-looking and tough on the outside, he reminds me of a former football player. He always gives me his full attention and then hears me out, allowing me to express myself. When he offers advice, he speaks with care and kindness. He also takes no crap and calls us out—Squirt and me and all of us—if we get in trouble in school or at home, and especially if we talk trash in front of him.
“D, are you talking trash to me?” he says. “I will wrestle you right now. Let’s go.”
That shuts me up. Shuts us all up. Believe me, the last thing you want to do is wrestle Mr. Campbell.
* * *
I get into a fight at school and the principal suspends me for a day. I retreat to my room and lose myself in my music. My sister Bonnie bangs on my door and barges into my room. She punches her fists onto her hips and speaks with a snotty you-are-in-so-much-trouble expression on her face. “Mr. Campbell’s here.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because he wants to see you. He doesn’t look happy.”
I find Mr. Campbell waiting for me on the porch. He gestures for me to sit across from him. Bonnie’s right. He doesn’t look happy.
“I heard what happened at school,” he says.
“How do you know—?”
I stop myself. Of course Mr. Campbell would know. He’s a coach and he knows everyone. Everyone knows everyone and everything.
“You talk trash, you get into a fight, and you get suspended. Not acceptable.”
He speaks low and drags those two words out for about ten ominous seconds each.
I hang my head.
I have disappointed Squirt’s Dad. It somehow feels worse than if I had disappointed my own dad.
“You are not too old for me to beat your ass,” Mr. Campbell says. “Because if I don’t, when your mom gets home from work, you know that she will.”
I keep my focus on the porch floor.
“Darius, look at me.”
I raise my head, meet his narrowed eyes.
“This is your last warning. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Mr. Campbell, crystal clear.”
After that, I change my behavior at school. I hold my tongue and watch my step. As I say, you do not want to wrestle with Mr. Campbell.
When I turn fourteen, I start spending more and more time with my friend Rick Johannes and soon we become inseparable. I ride my bike to his house, a few blocks away, and we either play sports or just hang out. I introduce him to my current musical obsession—Stevie Wonder, especially his new album, Songs in the Key of Life, two CDs and almost two hours of stunning songs. We can barely get past the leadoff song, “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” listening to it alone for an hour, and then “Sir Duke” and “I Wish” bring us to our feet, dancing and strutting across his room like we’re featured dancers on Soul Train. Yes, me and White Boy Rick.
I find myself spending more time at Rick’s house than at home. I practically live there. I go there after school, on weekends, I stay for dinner. I become a de facto member of the Johannes family. I feel so welcome at Rick’s house that I don’t want to leave. Rick’s dad, a captain in the navy, makes sure to include me in everything he and Rick do. And sometimes, Captain Johannes—or Captain Dick—takes me aside and talks to me about my life and my future.
“Darius, what do you think you might want to do after high school? Have you thought about a career? Do you have a plan? Have you thought about college?”
“Not really.”
“It’s not that far off. Four years. That’s nothing. Time has a way of sneaking up on you. We can talk about it. Anytime you want. Just remember, you can do anything. Never say no to yourself.”
“Thanks.”
My plan? My future? A career? Sports, I think. If I don’t make it to the NFL, I see myself as a sports journalist, a broadcaster.
Yes. My future is in sports.
* * *
One day, Captain Dick comes into Rick’s room, where we’re hanging out.
“Hey, Rick, get dressed, we’re going to go play golf.”
Mr. Johannes starts to leave, then stops and says, “Darius, you want to go?”
I have never played golf, don’t know how to play, but I say, “Absolutely.”
“Good. Rick will set you up.”
I borrow some of Rick’s clothes, which he says you have to wear when you play golf. It turns out that playing golf requires a certain dress code, including special shoes, with cleats. Rick has his own set of clubs so I borrow his mom’s clubs. Practically new. She’s happy to lend them to me.
We play at a nearby air force golf course. We politely wait our turn to tee off and we talk low, in whispers. Golf seems so civilized, almost formal, with strict rules that you have to follow before, during, and after you hit each shot. It almost feels like you’re in the military. No wonder Captain Johannes loves the game so much. I watch him and Rick hit their tee shots and then I step onto the flat mound of grass to hit my first golf shot ever. As they’ve instructed, I step up to the ball, keep my head down, swing, follow through, and—surprise—I connect. Thwack. The flat wooden surface of the driver whips through in an arc and my ball blasts off like a missile. Rick and his dad shout and clap. I stand riveted on the tee, watching my ball fly on a line into the blue sky.
“Wow,” I say.
I don’t say that about the shot. I say that about what I feel. I feel something deep and powerful and almost overwhelming. A sense of amazement and joy courses through me, followed by something else. Another strong, even stranger feeling.
Love.
That’s it.
I’m fourteen and I have fallen in love—
With a game. With the setting. The rules. All of it.
It happens instantly, in less than a second. I stand on the tee, my eyes fastened on the ball, soaring into the sky. I watch the ball land on the manicured green fairway and then roll, and keep on rolling until it comes to a stop somewhere on the horizon.
Yes. Love.
Love at first flight, I think.
I hit other spectacular shots that day. I even make a par or two. Of course, I also hit dozens of other shots that suck. I duff shots and shank drives, and whack several short putts too hard, staring unbelievably at the ball skittering past the pin. My emotions range from unbearably frustrated to ridiculously overjoyed. All of it, thrilling.
On the third hole, as Rick lines up his putt, I pull the flag out of the cup and drop it on the green, causing the flag to slap on the ground, hard.
Captain Johannes comes over to me and places his hand on my shoulder.
“Son, that’s not how we do it. You take out the flag, and you place it down, gently, out of the way. You can’t do that jarring move. You don’t want to mess with people’s lines.”
I nod, thank him, making sure from then on that I take care of the flag carefully. I tend the flag that way to this day. But Rick’s dad taught me more than how to tend the flag. He taught me to respect the game.
I start playing regularly with Rick and Captain Johannes. The second or third time we play, Rick’s dad hands me Mrs. Johannes’s clubs. He watches me sling the bag over my shoulder as we head toward the car.
“How do you feel about those clubs?” Captain Johannes asks.
“Oh, I love them.”
“They’re yours.”
For a moment, I can’t speak.
“Mrs. Johannes doesn’t really play. She told me to give them to you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely.”
I thank him and later I thank Mrs. Johannes. Those clubs. My first set. A perfect fit. I play with those clubs for the next ten years.