Free Losers Take All by David Klass

it up together. My brothers were on one side of me, and my father was on the other, and our arms and hands pulled and churned together. The jersey rose above the gym floor, above the rows of wooden bleachers, until it reached the iron girders that interlaced just below the gym’s ceiling and the banners from our nine State Championship seasons that hung there. One shirt already had a place of honor near those banners and the giant American flag. This was the jersey from Gene Hamilton, who had been the first Fremont football coach back at the turn of the twentieth century and had led the team for four decades. Dad’s shirt found its spot right next to his, and the clapping built to a crescendo.
    The lights were still off, and two strong hands fell over my shoulders in the darkness. I heard my father’s voice tell me softly: “Sorry, Jack, but I needed you with us.”
    Instead of being angry at him, I heard myself answer, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
    Then the gym lights came back on, and Dad’s ceremony was over. The cheerleaders launched into another routine, and I didn’t want to walk through it so I moved off to the side and stood in semidarkness at the edge of the gym floor, watching.
    â€œNice moment,” a familiar voice said, sharp with sarcasm. Muhldinger had walked up next to me.
    â€œSure was,” I agreed, watching a baton circle skyward and then spin back down until it was snatched out of the air by a blond girl in a short skirt.
    â€œThat shirt’s better off up there than on your back,” he said.
    â€œCould be,” I agreed, turning to face him. “How’s your hand?”
    His black eyes sharpened. “All healed up,” he answered softly. “By the way, we’re pulling the plug on that C soccer team.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œNo coach,” he told me. “A team needs a faculty coach, and none of the teachers seem interested in cesspool soccer. To tell you the truth I can’t blame them. But there are lots of other choices for you. Come talk to me in my office and we’ll go over some options. Good stuff today, Jack. I’m sure it meant a lot to your dad and mom to have you out there.”
    He gave me an extra-hard thump on the back with the same hand that had punched through the door, and then he was walking out to the center of the floor where the cheerleaders had finished their routine and was saying into his mic: “How about that, Fremont? Let’s give it up for our lovely cheer girls!”

 
    10
    â€œThis is a bad idea,” I warned Becca, as we locked our bikes up outside a sprawling, ugly brick five-story apartment building in the city of Hackensack. It was called Woodview Towers, but it was not towering, it had no view of woods, and the man we had just biked ten miles to see seemed to me to have less potential as a soccer coach than our seventy-seven-year-old school nurse.
    â€œI ran it by him and he didn’t say no,” Becca told me as we headed for the front entrance.
    â€œThat doesn’t sound like an enthusiastic yes,” I pointed out. “And he’s not exactly a sports coach kind of a guy.”
    â€œSometimes you remind me of the people who bashed your teeth,” she said. “Try not to pass judgments.”
    â€œLive and let live is my motto,” I assured her. “But in school I once saw him reading a book and making notes while he walked down some stairs. He tripped on his own feet, tumbled down a whole flight, and nearly killed himself.”
    â€œThat could happen to anyone,” Becca said.
    â€œNot to anyone else I’ve ever seen. He got up with a bloody nose and his busted glasses hanging off his face, but he was still holding on to the book.”
    â€œI think that’s sweet.”
    â€œHe’d nose-dived right in front of my gym class and everyone was laughing—except the few of us who were worried