Christine - Stephen King [68]
And perhaps it is also only retrospection - or imagination - that makes me think his humour was forced, unreal, only a façade. False memory or true one, the subject of his back passed off, although that limp came and went all through the fall.
I was pretty busy in myself. The cheerleader and I had broken it off, but I could usually find someone to step out with on Saturday nights if I wasn't too tired from the constant football practice.
Coach Puffer wasn't a wretch like Will Darnell, but he was no rose; like half the smalltown high school coaches in America, he had patterned his coaching techniques on those of the late Vince Lombardi, whose chief scripture was that winning wasn't everything, it was the only thing. You'd be surprised how many people who should know better believe that half-baked horseshit.
A summer of working for Carson Brothers had left me in rugged shape and I think I could have cruised through the season - if it had been a winning season. But by the time Arnie and I had the ugly confrontation near the smoking area behind the shop with Buddy Repperton - and I think that was during the third week of classes - it was pretty clear we weren't going to have a Winning season. That made Coach Puffer extremely hard to live with, because in his ten years at LHS, he had never had a losing season. That was the year Coach Puffer had to learn a bitter humility. It was a hard lesson for him and it wasn't so easy for us, either.
Our first game, away against the Luneburg Tigers, was September 9th. Now, Luneburg is just that - a burg. It's a little piss-ant rural high school at the extreme west end of our district, and over my years at Libertyville, the usual battle cry after Luneburg's bumbling defence had allowed yet another touchdown was TELL-US-HOW-IT-FEELSTO-HAVE-COWSHIT-ON-YOUR-HEELS! Followed by a big, sarcastic cheer: RAAAAYYYYYY, LUUUUNEBURG!
It had been over twenty years since Luneburg beat a Libertyville team, but that year they rose up and smote us righteously. I was playing left end, and by halftime I was morally sure that I was going to have cleat-mark scars all over my back for the rest of my life. By then the score was 17-3. It ended up 30-10. The Luneburg fans were delirious; they tore down the goalposts as if it had been the Regional Championship game and carried their players off the field on their shoulders.
Our fans, who had come up in buses specially laid on, sat huddled on the visitors' bleachers in the blaring early September heat, looking blank. In the dressing room, Coach Puffer, looking stunned and pallid, suggested we get down on our knees and pray for guidance in the weeks to come. I knew then that the hurting had not ended but was just beginning.
We got down on our knees, aching, bruised and battered, wanting nothing but to get into the shower and start washing that loser smell off ourselves, and listened as Coach Puffer explained the situation to God in a ten-minute peroration that ended with a promise that we would do our part if He would do His.
The next week, we practised three hours a day (instead of the customary ninety minutes to two hours) under the broiling sun. I tumbled into bed nights and dreamed of his bellowing voice: "Hit that sucker! Hit! HIT!"
I ran windsprints until I began to feel that my legs were going to undergo spontaneous decomposition (at the same instant my lungs burst into flames, probably). Lenny Barongg, one of our tailbacks, had a mild sunstroke and was mercifully - for him, at least - excused for the rest of the week.
So I saw Arnie, and he came over and took dinner with my folks and Ellie and me on Thursday or Friday nights, he checked out a ballgame or two with us on Sunday afternoons, but beyond that I lost sight of him almost completely. I was too busy hauling my aches and pains to class, to practice, then home to my room to do my assignments.
Going back to my football woes - I think the worst thing was the way people looked at me, and Lenny, and the rest of the team, in