—Come on back.
The counter he stood behind was also a door, one of those two-segmented ones, and Pyle swung the bottom half open to welcome us into his cavernous office. Directly in front of me was a scarred wooden workbench scattered with tools and the various plastic and metal doodads that cinch football equipment together.
To my left, industrial-sized washers and driers lumbered methodically and created a kind of ambient music for the space. And to my right, rows and rows of high metal shelves were packed with helmets, chinstraps, shoulder pads, cowboy collars, shock absorbers, practice pants, practice jerseys, game pants, game jerseys, girdles, tail pads, hip pads, thigh pads, and knee pads. After recording my size for each piece, Pyle set about fitting me with my helmet, first giving me a primer on my face mask options, then adjusting my helmet’s tightness with a little hand pump whose needle he inserted into the helmet’s bladder. Finally, to the very last row of shelves, home of the accessories: Gloves or no gloves? Wristbands or armbands? I feigned indifference in front of Chase, but inwardly I was thrilled by the cornucopia. Sillitoe High had only given us stretched-out old jerseys and sour-smelling equipment, zero bells and whistles.
Chase and I crossed the hallway into the locker room, which from a bird’s-eye view was shaped like the head of a fork. The tines were three-walled spaces the players called cubes, and the cubes’ walls were lined with consecutively numbered lockers that corresponded to jersey numbers. Chase led me to the cube where most of the linebackers were located, and there I was introduced to Phaedrus “Fade” Rawlings, our first-string, senior Will linebacker. I might have felt confident about stealing Chase’s second-string spot, but I saw immediately there was no way in hell I was also going to displace Fade. First of all, he was black, which was no less intimidating to me now than during my official visit. Second, he was jacked, even more than Chase, from his thick calves to his bulbous ass to his swelled chest to a cannonball-shaped head so freshly Bic’ed I could smell the shaving cream. Fade’s race and body seemed to feed off and inflate each other, so that his blackness made his muscles look all the mightier and his musculature seemed to deepen his blackness. But more intimidating still was the brand on his right biceps—a big omega symbol blistered a permanent pink. He noticed me staring.
—You gonna get yours on the same place? he asked.
—That? I said.
—Yeah, young’un. All the Wills get one. Night after camp’s last practice we go to this old tobacco barn out in Blenheim County. Get a bonfire going, then lay your sweet self down on a bed of hay and—
He closed his fist and pretended it was the brand, twisting it hard into my left biceps while he made a hissing sound. I rubbed my arm, smiling uncomfortably, and turned to Chase to see where his brand was.
—Ass cheek, he said, patting his butt. Way less painful.
I was unnerved—but also, I have to say, stirred by the idea of the communal pain.
—I’m ready, I said.
Chase and Fade looked at each other. They burst out laughing.
—”I’m ready!“ Fade yelled, clapping and throwing back his head. This motherfucker! Chase flicked my ear.
—The brand’s for Fade’s fraternity, he said. You really think I’d let someone put a hot poker on my ass?
I dressed in a purple sweat-absorbing T-shirt, purple mesh shorts, and purple Nike flats and followed the herd of players up an unenclosed staircase that connected the Hay’s first floor to the second. We filed into the Team Room, King Football’s primary meeting space and a place that resembled a medium-sized lecture hall. Against the front wall was a long whiteboard with a mechanized projector screen hanging above it, and facing the board were 150 cushioned chairs arranged on an incline. The lowest rows were reserved for seniors and team captains, with the farthest right chair saved for Coach Zeller. The highest, rearmost rows were for assistant coaches. The seats between were a free-for-all.
I had just taken my seat when Reshawn walked in with Coach Zeller. The room’s vibe shifted with our messiah’s arrival, and whether players quieted down and stared at him or kept talking to their friends and studiously didn’t look, everyone was tracking him, assessing him, orienting their bodies and talents in relation to his. Reshawn seemed oblivious to the effect he had, and as he listened to what Coach Zeller was saying he wore a pinched expression, the look, I thought, of someone holding his nose for the lowly team whose money he was deigning to take.
Coach Zeller, on the other hand, was the picture of excitement, compulsively patting his new star on the back. I knew Zeller must have been instrumental in Reshawn’s bribe, and yet I found I couldn’t hold that fact against him. And how could I, when this man had been the only D1 coach to offer me a scholarship, the only one who’d seen my youth as an asset rather than a drawback? If it weren’t for Coach Zeller, I’d be at this very moment sighing in some janky junior college meeting room.
Reshawn found a seat while the last of the assistant coaches filed in. The door closed and Coach Zeller clapped his hands—a single hard clap that immediately silenced the room.
—Welcome back, men! And welcome especially to our freshmen. First day always feels like a family reunion, don’t it?
—Yes sir!
—It does, it does. So before we do brass tacks, I got a question for y’all: What makes an army? I want some guesses. Yeah—Devonté.
—Guns, Coach.
—Uh huh. Cornelius?
—Technology.
—Technology. Right. Anybody else?
—The number of soldiers.
Zeller nodded.
—All of that matters. But that’s what an army is made of, not what makes an army. You see? What makes an army, what binds all that
