The Throw Off, Pt. II

     I stand up bleeding and angry: “What the heck, Lewis!?”

     “Touch.  You’re down.” Lewis says coolly.

     “Touch?  You freaking drilled me!”

     “Sorry, don’t know my own strength.”

     “Bull crap.”  I turn to my team.  ”Huddle up!”  They gather around me, arms on shoulders.  ”Okay, Rudy, go deep to the right, I’m gonna throw it over your shoulder.  Jillian, just run around like crazy to fake ‘em out.  TJ, stay back and block.  Samantha, run the opposite way of Cody, I’m gonna fake throw it to you.  Ok?’  They all nod.  ”Ok.”

     We break the huddle and line up opposite Lewis team.  Bucky is sitting on the retaining wall, on the edge of the parking lot, nursing his scraped knee.  I take the ball and touch it to the ground at the line of scrimmage.  I take a couple steps back from the line.

     “Shotgun!”     I look left at Samantha.  ”Ready!”  I look left at Jillian.  ”Set!”  I look right at Rudy.  ”Hike!”  My team sprints off the line.  Rudy sprints past Cody on my right, Samantha runs neck and neck with Cassy on my left.  Jillian chats with Lacy at the line of scrimmage.  TJ is standing just in front of me, to my right, grappling with Ted.  Lewis is in the middle of the field, lurking.  I fake the throw to Samantha.  Lewis doesn’t flinch.  I look towards Rudy, and Lewis looks towards Rudy.  I rear back to throw, and Lewis is sprinting towards the basketball pole that marks the edge of the end zone.  His legs are so long.  The ball is in the air, shrinking shrinking shrinking.  Lewis is closer to Rudy than the ball is.  The ball starts to fall, and Lewis takes a giant step and plants his right foot and leaps for the little yellow oblong, as Cody jumps for it, as Rudy falls over Cody.

     Lewis’ sinewy fingers splay in silhouette against the bright blue sky.  The yellow ball takes Lewis’ prints and slides by, through Cody’s arms, to find the falling Rudy, right in the gut.  He catches it on his back on the asphalt.  I run to him, jumping and whooping and punching the air as I go.  I take Rudy by the forearms and pull him up from the ground and embrace him and rub his hair.  ”Atta boy,” I say, “atta boy!”  The rest of the kids gather.  I turn to Lewis and point to the far end zone and smirk,  ”Losers walk.”

      Lewis and his team jog to the far side of the parking lot, closest to the street, opposite the basketball hoop.  I take the little yellow ball from Rudy.  I point the nose of the ball at Lewis and his teammates.  I step back towards the basketball pole, reach out with my right arm, and touch the nose of the ball to the pole.  I raise my left arm.  My team forms a rough line.  ”Ready?!” I call out.

     “Yeah, punk, we’re ready.” growls Lewis back.

     I drop my left arm and my team takes off.  I huck the ball like a javelin thrower, as high and hard as I can.  I don’t watch it.  I sprint towards the opposite side.  Cody catches the ball.  I’m running, and Lewis is running towards me.  I’m running towards Lewis.  Cody cuts towards the right sideline.  I angle to cut him off before he turns the corner.  I feel pebbles and sand grit crunch and slip underfoot, in the tread of my sneakers.  I loosen my angle.  Lewis beats me to the sideline.  He’s in front of Cody.  His feet are squared, his knees bent, his jaw set.  I run straight at him.  He drops into a crouch, folds his arms in front of him.  Three more steps.  I drop my head and shoulders.  Lewis explodes from his crouch.

     His arms are an iron bar, leveled against my chest, lifting me up, and then backwards.  My feet come off the ground, go perpendicular to it.  I come down on my tailbone with a thud and a pulsing sickness through my bones and teeth.  My stomach drops.  Fireworks behind my eyelids, then a bright white light, and then swimming black spots, like flies on a television screen.  I look up through the flies at Lewis’ smiling face, his shiny black skin, his beautiful big white teeth.  He reaches his open right hand down to me.

January 25, 2009

Gaza City Rollers

     “This is what I wanted.  This is where I want to be.  I am not afraid.

This is what I wanted.  This is where I want to be.  I am not afraid.”

     I repeat it, again and again as I march.  The metal treads of the tank next to me clatter and clang so I can hardly hear my mantra.  My pack feels lighter than it did in training, my rifle heavier.  I wish it weren’t winter.  Why couldn’t we have done this last spring?  ”Then I wouldn’t be here,” I think.  The wind howls down the street, channeled by columns of empty buildings.

     I don’t know how far we have to walk, or where we’ll be when we stop.  I know I have to stay next to the tank.  I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.  The tank is American, built like a, well…   When shooting starts, I will be safest by the tank.

     I think there is a pebble in my right boot.  I shook my boots out and ran my hand all along the inside lining before we left.  They’re tied so tightly, almost halfway up my calves, how could it have fallen in since?  I must have missed it this morning.  I was so sleepy, and it was still so dark, I’m lucky I remembered my rifle.  My rifle.  I look down at it, away from the rooftops of the empty buildings, for just a moment.  It is beautiful, the precision of its machining, the ruggedness of the dusty aluminum receiver, the smooth modernity of its plastic stock, the straight, perfectly-round steel barrel…  I wish my washing-machine at home was this well-made.

     The washing machine leaks.  I haven’t done laundry since I got married, but Rachel says it leaks and that she hates that machine, so I have to fix it, so I hate that machine.  I don’t know how it leaks, where it comes from.  I’ve replaced every gasket, reclamped and checked every hose, it makes no sense.  After every load of laundry, there’s a puddle underneath the machine.  Rachel forgets and steps in the puddle, and then she yells at me to fix the washing machine.

     I exhale and see her in the wisp of steam escaping.  Then I hear the sound of the earth opening and the tank is gone and I am prone in a pile of dust and rock and it is raining pieces of the empty buildings and I am deaf.  I feel the earth shake again behind me and I turn and see the tank, rocking forward with the recoil of its soot blacked cannon.  Another building comes raining down.  Now people, running.  I see screaming, but I don’t hear anything.  Men with guns are taking positions in the rubble opposite, among the girls and kids running away.  Positions.  Shit.  Little bursts of orange fire  from the barrels of the men’s guns.

     I scramble to my feet, concrete and sand and blood shifting under me as I do, and run ducking to the tank, to shelter.  My commanding officer is waiting behind the tank already.  He’s yelling at me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.  I point at my right ear and shrug.  He understands and tells me in slashing hand-signals to take the alley on our right and flank the next street.  I nod.

     Leaning my back against the back of the tank, I slide to my left, keeping my head low.  I reach the tank’s right tread, squat and turn around.  I peak one eye around the tread.  They’re gone.  Where’d they all go?  Shit.  My CO looks at me and I shrug.  ”Nothing.” I say.  I can feel myself talking, feel the vibrations in the bones of my skull, but I don’t hear it.  He repeats his slashing hand gestures and shoves me from behind the tank.

     I run crouching to the alley.  Once there, I move slowly, but purposefully, the sight of my rifle at my right eye, that plastic stock buried in my right shoulder.  I sweep the perfectly-round barrel from side to side as my eyes trace the same pattern.  I aim at the sky as I look up to check the rooftops.  I lower the barrel, my eye still on the sight.  I near the end of the alley and press my back up against the far wall.  I creep left along the wall like this.  At the corner I stop.  I lean my head ever so slightly past the safety of the wall.  My left eye strains at its peripheral extreme.  Another empty street.

     I swing the barrel of my gun around the corner.  My head follows, attached at the rifle’s sight.  My chest and shoulders and right hip come around the corner, exposed.  I look up into a face, centered in the sight.  A boy’s: wet with tears, muddy in this dust, but not crying now.  In the reticule, I see the tiny muscles of his face tighten, his delicate jaw clench.  I see his lips move and I hear his voice and he says, “I am not afraid.”