—Notre Dame, I said.
Mr. McGerrin reached his arm across Chase so he could squeeze my right biceps.
—Hardly recognized you at practice today, Miles. You’ve gotten big.
—Thank you, sir.
—Nervous? —A little, sir.
—That’s natural for your first start. I used to puke before every game.
I wasn’t sure what to say. Chase looked to be in exquisite pain, watching us talk across him about the starting spot I’d stolen. Mr. McGerrin noticed, too, and put his arm around Chase, though he kept talking to me.
—Many of my old teammates coached their sons’ teams to make sure their kids got in the game. But that’s a disservice to the child, gives him misconceptions about how the world works. If Chase was ever going to play, it was going to be on his own merits. Same thing applies at King. I know a lot of fathers who’d be doing the wink-and-nod to Coach Zeller about the depth chart but my God, if someone had done that to me while I was playing?
He shook his head at the thought. He released Chase and stood, knees cracking loudly as he rose, to get us another round. Before walking off, he looked down at his son.
—I told you you were in trouble after that spring game last year. But you didn’t listen, did you, Chasey?
The king was a lion cub who strutted on his hind legs, a gold crown flattening out his soft, pointy ears. The queen at his side was a baby hippopotamus, also upright, also crowned, with long eyelashes to make it clear she was female and a big smile that showed off two stubby, unthreatening tusks. Their dukes and duchesses followed in a jaunty train—a baby elephant, a baby giraffe, a baby flamingo—and looked around delightedly at the fantastical jungle they paraded through, pink palm fronds and orange bougainvillea blossoms, red banana trunks and yellow bamboo stands, high teal grass that swirled around their feet and fuchsia vines dripping from chunky branches.
Past the nurses’ desk, the cub king and his court continued to appear on the walls of the pediatrics floor, except now the animals had changed into the same purple hospital gowns the patients here wore. In each area the walls featured the story line of a different animal’s quest, so that in Radiology you could see the flamingo learning to fly, in Neurology watch the hippo practicing reading, and in Audiology and Speech look at the elephant lifting a floppy ear to listen to the musical notes that floated from another elephant’s trumpeting trunk. The tableaux seemed to have their intended effect on my teammates, the players laughing and joking as we broke into groups and followed our assigned nurses to our assigned rooms.
Reshawn was in my group, which meant we were accompanied not only by a young Filipino nurse named Rhonda but also by Coach Zeller and a photographer from the Athletic Department. We entered the first room, where an eight-year-old South Asian boy with a white bandage wrapped around his scalp was sitting up in bed, his mother and grandmother standing next to him in bright saris. The boy was talkative and lively, and despite the fact that he had been flown in from New Delhi and didn’t know the first thing about American football, he was overjoyed to receive the official team baseball cap and autographed poster Coach Zeller presented. But while the rest of us smiled at the boy’s rapid-fire questions about our sport, Reshawn stood miserably in back, leaning against the door and giving skeptical glances to the photographer maneuvering around to take pictures. I knew Reshawn despised hospitals from all the time he’d spent in them with his mother, but I thought he could be trying a little harder to at least pretend he was happy to be here.
In the next room, the patient’s father watched Reshawn in the held-breath way people do when they find themselves in the presence of a celebrity. The father was almost as young as me, white and redheaded, and wore a purple King College security uniform. His wife was black, young as well, and had a King College Cafeteria Services ID card clipped to one of her belt loops. Lying in bed was their light-skinned three-year-old son, whose nose and cheeks were splashed with freckles and whose arms were dappled with deep purple and green bruises. The boy was shy, the wife seemed tired, but the father talked enough for all three of them in a thick North Carolina accent.
—I’m tryin’ to transfer over to the Hay facility, he was saying to Coach Zeller. Maybe you’re the man to talk to?
—Well sure, Zeller said. Lemme see what I can do.
—Appreciate that, the father said, and then smiled generally at our group. Y’all dropped in during our little family sweet spot. Ellie works days. I got the night shift over at the King power plant, the one way out past East. We only got this hour between shifts where we overlap. But if I land somethin’ on West Campus, that’ll give us, what, honey, half an hour more?
—At least.
—Are y’all from Blenheim? Coach Zeller interjected, his accent even heavier than usual.
—Born and bred, the father replied. Played tailback over at Robert E. Lee.
—That right?
—Yes sir. Two-year starter. And it woulda been three if me and Ellie hadn’t had our little surprise. King was recruitin’ me. Wanted me, bad. Maybe I woulda made you wait a couple years before you got on the field!
He said this last part to Reshawn, who was again in the corner.
—Maybe, Reshawn said.
—I was fast, the father continued. Teammates told me it should be illegal for a white boy to run like I did. Nicknamed me Whitey Mouse. My 4.39 was machine tested. None of that handtimed stuff. You can’t get inducted into Lee’s Hall of Fame till you been outta school five years, but I’ll be gettin’ the call. Read you was a 4.41.
Again, to Reshawn.
—I can’t remember.
—Can’t remember. I tell you what, if coach here puts
