The Redshirt

The Redshirt

THE REDSHIRT

A Novel

Corey Sobel

Copyright © 2020 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre

College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,

The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,

Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,

Morehead State University, Murray State University,

Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,

University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,

and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

www.kentuckypress.com

This is a work of fiction. The characters, places, and events are either drawn from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance of fictional characters to actual living persons is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sobel, Corey, 1985- author.

Title: The redshirt : a novel / Corey Sobel.

Description: Lexington, Kentucky : University Press of Kentucky, [2020] ∣ Series: University Press of Kentucky new poetry & prose series

Identifiers: LCCN 2020017977 ∣ ISBN 9780813180212 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) ∣ ISBN 9780813180229 (pdf) ∣ ISBN 9780813180236 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Football stories.

Classification: LCC PS3619.O37377 S63 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017977

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of University Presses

To Seyward

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Bartleby!”

“I know you,” he said, without looking round,—“and I want nothing to say to you.”

“It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I, keenly pained at his implied suspicion. “And to you, this should not be so vile a place. Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here. And see, it is not so sad a place as one might think. Look, there is the sky, and here is the grass.”

“I know where I am.”

—Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”

PROLOGUE

Athletes die twice. That’s the hoary, comforting, horrifying mantra that circulates among us ex-jocks, and its meaning should be obvious enough: The muscle and speed, the stamina and quickness you spend your best years building up, the discipline and the single-minded drive, all are bound together by the sport, are you, and as soon as the sport leaves your life, that which united you is gone, and so you are gone, too, unraveled like a scarecrow stripped of its stitching. The second you is left to take over, eke out whatever it can before the ultimate death comes. But what nobody has ever told me is what happens to that first self after it breathes its last, where the first you goes. Does your living body become a kind of mausoleum for the corpse and you have no choice but to feel it rot away inside? That would explain the terrible stink I’ve been carrying around the last ten years.

—Friend of Steven? a man asks.

It takes me a moment to realize I’m the one being addressed, and another moment to understand that I’ve been staring. The man is sitting a few stools down the bar. He’s twenty-five maybe, with round-rimmed glasses, close-cropped curly brown hair, and a red Arizona Cardinals jersey whose baggy short sleeves come down to his elbows. He smiles, hands placed expectantly on the bar in anticipation of moving closer; but I have no clue who Steven is, and zero desire to explain to this man that I hadn’t been staring at him so much as at his jersey. I shake my head apologetically and look past him toward the entrance.

I usually avoid blind dates, but a colleague in NYU’s English Department has been nagging me to go out with Horace for months, and this week I finally relented. We agreed to meet here at the Raven, a watering hole indistinguishable from all the others in this stratum of western Brooklyn: a bar top made of recovered timber, a ceiling of antique hammered tin, light fixtures that are clusters of pendant bulbs with custard-colored filaments, the kind of place where the bearded bartender moodily explains the difference between single barrel and blended while the television above him plays vintage music videos on loop—big hair, parachute pants, bold letters that leave a neon residue as they streak onto the screen.

Horace arrives. He’s about my age, petite and handsome, with a trim black mustache that stands starkly against his pale skin. We shake hands as he takes the stool next to mine, and there is something efficient about him that appeals to me immediately. We run through preliminaries—he’s a lawyer, corporate malfeasance, I’m an assistant professor, secularization in nineteenth-century American texts. We have an easy rapport, he’s drily funny and much more confident than I am, and within an hour we’re already reaching back into our pasts. He tells me about the disaster of his parents divorcing when he was eleven, the depression and alcoholism that forced him to raise his little brother on his own. As he talks, I sort through my own traumas, trying to decide which one to trade. I’m not precious about sharing this kind of stuff, except for one thing: I don’t tell anyone I used to play football or about the events that forced me out of the game. In fact, I’ve been so disciplined for so long that I’ve managed to cultivate a whole community here in the city that has no idea what I used to be.

The date continues to go well. Our stools have scooted closer, Horace insists I try his pilsner. I feel happy, buzzed, and am in the middle of explaining the tenure process when a group of men pushes into the bar—khaki shorts, flip-flops, many of them dressed in Cardinals jerseys, one of them inevitably named Steven. They gruffly hug the man who tried talking to me, and after some cajoling they prevail on the bartender to pick up the remote and