Free Fathers & Sons & Sports by Mike Lupica

a spot just behind me. The chute came up off the ground. When I finally came to, half a minute later, it was to the cheers of my teammates.
    Firman lifted me off the ground, and I registered the look of surprise and admiration on his face. Each player took a turn slapping my helmet. This was their way of congratulating me, but each slap sent an electric shock from the top of my skull into my left shoulder. The last player to slap my helmet was Big Hamm himself. I dropped to the sod again.
    The scrimmage was out of the question. Somebody hoisted me up and walked me to the locker room carrying a good share of my weight. I was deposited on a padded table and our team trainer, Colonel Dudley Tatman, put an ice pack on my tender, stinging neck. When practice ended and the rest of the squadjoined me, I was sitting on a metal folding chair in front of my locker, naked but for a jockstrap and the Ace bandages that kept the ice pack in place. I noticed the recruiters watching me from across the room.
    My teammates later told me that the collision with Big Hamm sounded like a shotgun blast. I snapped his head back and he staggered a step in reverse before recovering and making his kill.
    “You’re a brave man,” one said. “I want you to remember what I’m telling you today. Are you listening?” “Yes, I’m listening.” “You’re going to play for LSU.” “Get out of here.”
    “Hey, just remember what I’m telling you.”
    I was the last player to leave. I’d missed a ride home with my neighbor Timmy Miller, a starting receiver on the team. Guidry offered to drop me off, but when we walked outside I saw my father’s pickup waiting under a streetlight in the parking lot. He himself was leaning against the old heap as a cloud of insects flew in the hot, yellow air above him. Cold water from the ice pack drained down my back and settled in the seat of my pants as I limped to the passenger side and let myself in.
    “Thank you, Mickey,” my father called out.
    “Good to see you again, Coach.”
    Each gave the other a wave and Guidry secured the lockerroom door. I was looking back at coach in the side-view mirror, waiting for my father to start for home, when he cupped his mouth with his hands. “Hey, Coach Bradley” he shouted.
    My father wheeled around and brought a hand to his ear.
    “John Ed’s going to be one hell of a football player.”
    We started down Judson Walsh Drive, passing under the heavy branches of pine and oak trees that lined the road and formed a tunnel, each of us holding an arm out his open window. The air smelled of evergreen mixed with honeysuckle and gardenia from the old Humble Village neighborhood that had been abandoned decades before and now stood black and overgrown, a ghost town on the side of the road. I wanted to go to my room, get in bed, and hide under the covers until I was so old that the day had been erased from the memories of everyone who witnessed it. My father hooked a right onto the Old Sunset Road. He started working through the gears, and by the time he reached third I couldn’t keep a lid on it anymore. “I hate it,” I said, stuff leaking in a torrent from my nose. “I hate it, I tell you. I hate it, I hate it …”
    There was a smile on his face. He reached over and felt the ice pack to make sure it was still cold. “You hate it? You hate football?”
    “Yes, I hate football.”
    He was quiet for a time, and I looked at him in the light of the dashboard. “You want to quit?” he asked. “Yes, sir.”
    He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “Well, if that’s what you want you can call Coach Guidry and Coach Firman inthe morning and let them know. When we get home, you can tell your mother. You can tell your brothers and sisters too.”
    “I didn’t say I was going to quit. I said I
wanted
to quit.”
    “Then I’m mistaken?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You won’t need to call your coaches?”
    “No.”
    “No what?” “No, sir.”
    He parked in front of