Hometown - YA Fiction - Work in Progress
*Here's what I'm working on. Well, one of the things I'm working on. Last year, my son and I caught a freshman football game while waiting of his soccer match to start. Things in the stands were heated. And so, being a writer, this is what my brain came up with... Hope you like it!
Hometown
1
The crowd went crazy as we stormed the field at Park Stadium.
It was a perfect night for football—clear and crisp with trails of smoke from
the cannons in the north endzone. Not only that, we were favored to win, it was
a down year for B.D. Briggs while we were undefeated and looking to stay that
way. All week Coach had stayed on us. He’d dusted off just about every cliché
he could think of to keep us focused.
Anything can happen in a rivalry game.
Don’t look ahead to next week.
This is the season for Briggs.
B.D. Briggs was our rival, that
much was fact. And this year, like any year, the town was split in half, our differences
cut and clear as the bands taking the field.
While our marching band slogged
through southern rock songs, feet planted, standing still and stoic just like
they did through the national anthem, the Briggs marching band did more dancing
than marching, with rapid-fire snare drums that cut through the cold like
machine guns, blending well with the smell of gunpowder. At least until the
national anthem when they dropped to a knee and our side about lost their collective
minds.
Stonewall High vs. Briggs High. The
battle for the city. Always the last game of regular season, the school’s home
and away schedules staggered accordingly because we shared the stadium.
Our side was ready for battle,
still pouring in, filling the stands, milling around, talking, loud and brash and
pissed off more than ever about that kneeling thing. All the more reason to assuming
victory. But there was something in the stands that night—on both sides—something
more than kneeling or football or any of that as the entire stadium seemed to
pulse with energy. It was different, heavier. Everyone clapped louder, whistled
harder, and put a little more voice in their words. Everyone in the stands was
taking it personally.
We met at midfield for the coin
toss. Seniors, team captains, arms locked, Jeff, Big Moose, and me, as we’d
done all year. I’d been a captain since junior year, something my dad thought was
a big deal. Like Moose’s old man, my dad had played on this very same field. You
know the story. Small town, football traditions, expectations.
I nodded at our opponents, the
steam of our breaths lingering like the tension between us. Moose rolled his massive
neck, like he always did, only the Briggs guys didn’t seem all that intimidated
by our neck rolls, our unflinching faces, or our perfect record. Two of the
guys stood straight, heads cocked and smirking, like they’d told a joke on the
way out and couldn’t get it together. Fine, I was thinking, let them joke.
I wanted them unfocused, undisciplined, unprepared. But mostly I was wondering
how this 4-4 team was so confident.
The third captain wasn’t laughing.
Jaylen Calloway, a guy I knew but didn’t know. Jaylen and I were connected
at the hip as far as the local paper was concerned. Had been since we were both
named all-conference our sophomore years. Had been since we led our respective
teams in tackles. Had been since I committed to Tech and he committed to Virginia.
Rivals.
Jaylen was as fast they came.
Quick, strong, and always well prepared. He made a living in opposing teams’
backfields. And when he wasn’t there he was laying out any receiver dumb enough
to come over the middle. Coach Campbell didn’t have to warn us about JC.
The ref went on about the toss as
we stood facing off, glaring at each other, our families and neighbors and
crazy aunts and uncles and cousins cheering like lunatics behind our backs. It
was like we were locked into some deal whether we wanted it or not.
We won the toss. I remember our side
had the cowbells going, doing that rebel yell thing. Most of our fans wore
hunting jackets and camouflage, bright orange stocking caps dotting the crowd. They’d
arrived in a convoy of pickup trucks, some with hunting dog cages in blood
stained beds from all the deer they’d skinned and let drip off the tailgate, plastered
in mud around the fenders, the TRUMP/PENCE stickers still on their bumpers,
waiting on ’24. Confederate flags defiantly placed on windows or mounted to
truck beds, worn proudly on shirts of those just hoping someone would call them
out on it.
And the Briggs side was
calling them out. Like I said, they weren’t scared of us. Not with their marching
band, the drumline corps, the snares ricocheting off the bricks, tapping its
way into my bloodstream as they advanced towards us—a single, amoeba-like body,
weaving and taunting our side of the bleachers before worming its back to the
corner—it fired up both sides of the stadium, but for different reasons
entirely.
Even still I could hear this woman in
the stands—on the Briggs side— screaming over it all, over the drumming and
cheering and whistles and clacks of the helmets in warmups. Her voice like an
air horn, cutting through the noise.
“Do the damn thing.”
She kept saying it, again and
again. Do the damn thing! From the front row, hanging over the railing
where a banner read GO 44! I watched her as we lined up, hoping she’d
stop, not because it bothered me but because our side was having so much fun
with it. Every time she screamed our side would whoop it up. They’d lean back then
point and shake their heads. I didn’t have to guess what they were saying,
before I sprinted over to the sidelines and heard what exactly what they were
saying.
They stood, guts out and proud,
talking about her like she was an animal, how she sounded like a stray dog. Only
a football field separated the two sides, and it felt like the field was
shrinking.
All the build-up about the game,
the night, everything, had started a few days before, when the Parkview Times
published a story about how town council was considering removing (I think they
used the term “relocating”), the confederate monuments outside the stadium. The
story went off like a bomb in our city, with protests and editorials. How can
we sit there and cower to the liberals? What about our heritage? How can we
turn our back on history?
All of that.
Leading up to our clash with
Briggs, the town had been on edge. Protests and marches. And being at the
stadium it became Us against Them. Stonewall vs. Briggs. In the
locker room, no one else seemed too worried about it. Not the coaches or anyone
else. So I told myself it was nothing, a regular rivalry game. But now, on the
field, that wasn’t true. It felt like we were caught in the middle of something
bad, and as much as I tried to block it out, get my head in the game, I couldn’t
do it. Not this time.
I’d gone to Stonewall Middle School,
then Stonewall High. Home of the Rebels. First, we’d been the Little Rebels,
then we were the Raging Rebels. And until a few days ago I’d never given
much thought to the name—where it came from and what it meant. It was just sort
of what we’d grown up being.
But now, seeing the policemen at
the exits, guns on hips, heads on a swivel, suddenly, it was all wrong. I was
just glad Mom was at work and Parker, my little sister, was at a friend’s house. The monument thing
made people on both sides angry. The kneeling made them rabid. Now both sides
seemed to have lost all control of how they would normally act. Suddenly our
game became their game. The outcome some sort of verdict, some kind of
grudge to settle for once and all.
It was like they’d stolen it from
us.
I ran in place, blew some warmth
into my hands. To my right, confederate flags waved against the night. Atop it
all was Jeff’s dad, Gunny. I’d known Gunny for years (although, how well can
you know someone who’s always been too drunk to see straight?). And up there
that night he was in full form, parading the stars and bars, waving it back and
forth, under the night sky like it was his finest moment.
All of this was going on in my
head. Jaylen Calloway, the screaming woman, the monuments. The flags. The
kneeling. The machine gun drums. Gunny. The laughter.
I wasn’t laughing, I was kind of
pissed. I mean, were they trying to get us killed down here?
We won the toss and elected to
kick. People screaming, coaches screaming, usually, I could put it away. Zone
out the crowd, the announcer, the cannons and hype and just play football. All
of us could. At nine wins and no losses, we’d been killing it all season. We’d
worked since summer, conditioning and camps, since last season’s overtime loss
in the state semifinals. And we’d beaten Briggs two straight years, so yeah, we
wouldn’t say it, but we were looking forward to our yearly showdown with
Amherst before hitting the playoffs full stride. This was the year.
So the Briggs game shouldn’t have
been that big. Rivalry, sure, but it shouldn’t have meant that much. Yes,
they had Jaylen Calloway. Yes they were athletic. But they’d lost as many games
as they won. We were on our way to states.
But the sides, the monuments, the
town, the game. The coaches wouldn’t say what it had become—a racial thing. B.D.
Briggs, the black school, against Stonewall High, the white school. Yeah, we
had four black guys on our squad, just like Briggs had a few white dudes, but as
we stood there, facing off, everyone watching us saw it too. They’d made it
that way. They’d wanted it that way.
When Briggs took the opening
kickoff to the house things went nuclear. It was all they needed to believe
they could beat us. The Briggs side of the stadium ignited. A thousand people
leaped into the air and came down with a crash. After he lit into everyone,
Coach Campbell, his face like a strawberry, did his clapping thing he did when
he was trying to keep us focused. We couldn’t even hear him. We couldn’t hear a
thing.
On offense—on our opening
possession—Jaylen Calloway shot through and crushed Brantley, our quarterback.
Brantley coughed up the ball and Briggs was in business. We’d been huddled up, the
defensive guys, going over things with Coach T when we heard the explosion of noise.
We strapped on our helmets and went to work.
We held Briggs to a field goal. But
still, ten-zip, just like that. They kicked again. Our offense got their shit
together. At least until they crossed midfield and stalled. We punted, pinned
them deep near their endzone. The band was playing some hip hop beat and the
crowd over on the Briggs side was moving like one big body of water. I’ll never
forget that side of the field. The way they danced, cheered, hooted. It was
like their Super Bowl.
Our side was screaming at us when
we took the field again, Moose was pissed, talking trash, and lots of it. He
started name calling the way he did when he was fired up. Moose was the kind of
guy who said the most offensive shit to get a rise out of people. One time he spent
an entire first half ribbing this chunky kid on the offensive line about how
he’d slept with his mom—just kept on and on and on until the kid snapped and
ripped his helmet off and came charging after him. Moose held his hands up, Mr.
Innocent. The kid got ejected. Moose had fun with that.
But against Briggs he was saying
some out of bounds stuff. You can guess. And what made it worse was I could
hear it in the stands, too, could hear the parents tearing into the ref. Worse
than usual.
Again, I tried to tune it out. But
the quarterback for Briggs could move. He was quick, liked to run and was hard
to hit. I’m not going to lie, he came around the end and I found myself ready
to make the tackle, set a lick on him, when he juked me out of my cleats. The
Briggs side went crazy. The way they were playing, I couldn’t tell you how this
team had lost four games.
The Briggs QB scampered out of
bounds for another first down. The celebration on the Briggs side continued,
which got our side cranked up too. We’d always had rowdy fans, Dad’s cupping
their mouths, getting on the refs, yelling at the defense. Like my dad, most of
them played at Stonewall, just like their Dad’s before them. But that night it was
worse. Way worse. Seriously, I could hear Moose’s parents up there, going at
the refs, and that would have been fine, but that wasn’t it. They started
chanting stuff, like, racial stuff. And when I looked up, when I made the
mistake of looking up there, someone had brought a noose.
It went from bad to worse in a
hurry.
On fourth down the Briggs offense stayed
on the field. And that was when the chants started. “Beat the Briggs…Beat the
Briggs.”
Only they weren’t saying “Briggs.”
I shouldn’t have to spell it out. The Briggs quarterback looked up when he
heard it, like, wondering if it was real. And from there it grew louder and
louder and eventually the entire Briggs side went quiet, like they were shocked.
They were looking around like, “Are they for real saying that?”
The refs stopped the game. Some councilmember
or town official in a suit trotted out and took the PA system and asked that
parents from both sides try to show some respect for each other, there were
kids are out here and all that. Basically he was stating the obvious.
When he introduced himself as Mr.
Ferguson, the B.D. Briggs principal, it wasn’t just boos coming down from our side.
Trash, food, cans, bottles, anything they could get their hands on. Between the
announcement and the noise and the debris hitting the field, it was clear this
was no longer a football game.
As the police moved in, helped the
principal off the field, people hurling bottles and down to the track, I looked
across the field, at #11, Jaylen Calloway and found him staring across the
field at me. And I know how this sounds, really, I do, but it was like looking
at a mirror, like a reverse negative. I thought about what it must look like
for him, our side of the bleachers, Gunny up there with the flag, the noose,
all that trash. I think he was seeing our side and I was seeing what was behind
him and we knew at any moment it was all going to blow.
And it did. On the very next play.
Here’s how it went down: Briggs has
this shifty running back. Dude is about as small as my mom but he’s impossible
to lay a clean hit on. Anyway, it was a draw to him, and he started to hit the
outside but then he bounced it back inside. I was blocked but got a hand on
him, he shook but I held on. Jeff came in like a missile and laid him out.
Helmet to helmet. The Briggs
coaches were on the field, screaming for a personal foul. It didn’t like how
Jeff stood over the kid like a pro wrestler. Anyway, it was fourth and eight
and so they lined up to punt.
Chris, our wide receiver, fielded
the punt, turned once, then got held up in a log jam. A Briggs player came in
and snatched his face mask and nearly ripped his helmet off. It wasn’t an
accident, either, but the refs missed it.
Moose didn’t. He shoved a kid onto
his ass. A few guys started with the shoving but nothing that hadn’t happened
before.
That’s when our side lost their
minds.
More trash came raining down on the field. Plastic soda bottles, a few liquor bottles, some half empty
drinks. A hot dog. The noose.
The refs whistled. The guy in the
suit came out again. Threats were made. They should have called it right there,
but everyone wanted this game. They wanted it more than we did.
We tried to line up, to play a high
school football game, only by then it was too late. The next play was a gang
fight. The ball was snapped and quickly forgotten. The guys in the trenches,
offensive and defensive lines, started slugging each other. The running back skipped
around the end and I went to make a tackle and got blindsided. The refs
whistled, the benches cleared, a brawl ensued.
I was too stunned to do much. From
my spot on the ground, it was all cleats and legs and bodies stampeding onto
the field. When I got to my feet, Moose had two guys by the facemask, and coaches
were hustling out, some trying to break things up, others looking to get a lick
in. Our coaches. Fans. Everyone rushed the field.
Two Briggs guys hoisted a bench
over their heads. The P.A. urged the good citizens of our town to please return
to their seats. I turned for the track, looking for Olivia, my girlfriend, and
the rest of the cheer squad when Coach Pillman shoved me out of the way and kicked
a guy in the back. Jeff was on the ground grappling with one of the Briggs safeties.
Others danced around, some with their helmets off, fists up like boxers.
But the fans. The moms and Dads,
the uncles and cousins, they were the ones looking to hurt someone, wild eyed
and ready for war.
And there was #11, arms at his
sides, like me, taking it all in.
We locked eyes, again, both of us wondering
if we were supposed to fight each other. He was taller than me, but I wasn’t
afraid of him. I was afraid of what was happening.
Around us, our teammates were
slinging helmets at heads. Throwing punches and grappling on the ground.
Parents were rushing the field, hanging on to their pants by their belts and
swinging fists with their other hands. The band had made it into the fray. The
refs blew their whistles until they broke.
And Jaylen and I had no idea how to
stop any of it.
I was on the edges of the fighting,
caught between pulling guys off or getting the hell out of there when the
police rushed the field. Our tiny force clad in black, with shields and helmets
of their own. The batons came out and people started moving as the tear gas
hung over the fifty-yard line. Then came a shriek that brought everyone to a
halt.
Near the sidelines lay a crumpled
body, feet twitching, leaking blood onto the field. I tried but couldn’t look
away, how the blood shined under the lights, like it was painted on the grass.
I started towards the man as he wiggled around, side to side, his mouth an O
but his scream muted. Drool and spit leaked from the corners of his cracked
lips. I knelt to check on him when the police closed in and shoved me off as an
ambulance arrived and medics huddled around him.
I stood motionless, still staring
at him when the ambulance drove onto the field.
It took a half hour to clear things
completely. At some point a coach grabbed me, pulled me away. I turned away
from the ambulance driving on the track, still seeing his eyes, hearing the guy
grunt and moan. The scoreboard still showed we were down 10-0, the second quarter
stopped with 8:42 left to play. We still had all of our timeouts.
Coach Campbell rushed us to the
locker rooms, his face flushed, his goatee turned with his frown. I’d never
seen his eyes so wide, as he shoved us in, his voice breaking. “Now, get out of
here, in the locker room, let’s moooove!”
It was chaos. Kids crying and parents
out there, in the mix, the melee, confusion like a windstorm taking the field.
Someone had been stabbed. Moose was punching lockers and ripping things out of
the walls. I kept waiting for gun shots and Jeff was saying how the guy who got
stabbed was in a gang and they were probably on the way over to retaliate.
Coach Campbell must have thought the same thing, because he was talking about
the buses, calling and yelling about having them ready and we didn’t know how
we were going to make it out of there alive.
We stayed in the locker room, barricaded
in, refusing to come out even when the Briggs principal came over to apologize,
wiping his forehead and saying how he’d never seen anything like that, even in
his Civil Rights days and all.
Olivia sent me a text. She was fine.
They’d managed to escape in the van. Another hour. Two. Then came a text from
Parker. Apparently it was already on the news. I wiped my head. She’d been so
upset with me because I didn’t want her to come tonight. Now I guess, she
understood.
Sometime later we got the all clear
to leave. By then most of us had our stuff together but Moose was pacing
around, fists clenched, still looking to fight. I kept looking around, waiting
for something to happen. The stadium lights glowed, fog settling over the
field.
Then the news lady came rushing at
us, asking Coach questions. Moose promptly blamed her for all that was going
on, the news hyping up everything. He pushed her away, so did Chris. Swinging
the mic from person to person, searching for a soundbite, it wound up in my
face.
“What are you feeling right now?
What are your thoughts about the game, the fight?
“What am I feeling? I’m
ashamed.” Coached looked back and glared at me. But after everything, I was too
shaken to care. “I’m ashamed of our town, our team, the fans. We just wanted to
play football.”
Coach cut in. “Ben, come on, let’s
move.”
The reporter hurried with a follow
up question. “Are you scared, being caught up between the two sides?”
“There shouldn’t be sides. I mean,
yeah, two teams, but not…” I motioned towards the field, where I’d seen the
blood, the medics, a war. I fought to free myself of Coach’s clutches. “Not
that. Where does it end? How? When? What else has to happen?”
I said some more things. Things I
don’t quite remember, before Coach dragged me off. I was kind of dizzy with all
of it, caught up by the violence, the blood on the grass. Some of the guys, the
younger guys who listened to me all year watched, wide eyed and gaping as Coach
moved me away from the microphone. Moose, still flushed and ready to hit someone,
only shook his head, like he was ashamed of what I’d said.
All I remember is getting to the
parking lot, where nothing looked right at that hour. The quiet, only the hum
of the buses, the sky, my mom rushing out to me. She nearly tackled me.
Parker shot out of a van when we
pulled up to the house. She ran up and hugged me while Mom spoke to her
friend’s mom. “Ben, what in the hell?”
I shot her a look. “Um, language.”
I looked around, still scanning for danger even as all was quiet on the street.
“And what are you doing here?”
My sister was thirteen but
pretended to be Mom. She was always on my case about grades and football and so
we had our differences. But now, as she clutched onto me, I could tell she was
no longer mad about me not wanting her to be at the game.
“It was all over the radio. Did
someone really get stabbed on the field?”
I nodded. “Let’s go inside.”
Dad called before I got to the door.
He didn’t hold back. He thought the black refs were in the bag for Briggs, the
principal should have taken responsibility for what happened, not taking the
field and blaming people. And yeah, I’m seventeen, I’ve heard him say things
before, but not like that. Everything was the n-word this or that. He was
throwing it around like gas on a fire. It was almost like he wanted me to say
it back.
I wasn’t saying much at all.
Because he didn’t want to hear it—that both sides were to blame. If Dad wanted
to talk responsibility, well, our side had thrown the first punch, and what
about that chant they had going, that Beat the Briggs stuff? And how
about that confederate flag, and the noose? I mean, they had to know that was
going to start shit. But I let it go. There was no talking to my dad when he
was worked up like that.
He said we weren’t rescheduling. He
wasn’t sure if that meant we’d won or lost. I knew Coach Campbell was all
worked up about our record, but I only saw the blood. It was still on my cleats.
I didn’t care if we won or lost. It no longer mattered to me.
I didn’t sleep. I was too worked
up, from a quarter and a half of football and everything that happened on the
field. Mom stayed nearby, biting her fingernails and refusing to let me tell
her it was okay, to go to bed.
She’d been listening to the game at
work and had thought I was going to die. She’d rushed out, she said, left work
and drove straight to the stadium.
It was too much to think about. That
someone—a parent, a fan, an uncle, maybe someone who’d been to our games all
season—had done that.
All week the town had been getting
amped up about this game. We’d studied film, talked about being ready to hit
someone. Briggs was our rival and everyone made it feel like the world was at
stake.
And now someone had been stabbed on
our football field.
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