Like You'd Understand, Anyway

But it was. I called all three Coreys the operator gave me. Of course there were two unlisted, too. It was probably one of those.

Because we're a regional high school, we pull in talent from all over. Big Coach calls us by our hometowns if he doesn't remember our names. I'm Paducah. The weakside guy alongside Wainwright is Cee Vee. Wainwright's Wainwright.

We got a Web site with home page graphics of about eight of us swarming a guy from Childress, our big rival. The Web site's called HumDuckLand, and above that it says Show 'Em You Got the HumDuck.

On the sidebar there's News, Team Info, Spirit Groups, History, Merchandise, and Tickets. Click on Spirit Groups and you pull up categories for Cheerleaders, the Pepettes, the LHS Band, and the Majorettes. Under History you find HumDuck Origins, Team Records, Past Coaches, Traditions, and Ex-Players.

“Why don't you just drive over to Beaumont if you want to meet this kid?” Wainwright asked me on the way home from practice. Yellow jackets did figure eights over his head. They liked his shampoo.

“I wanna meet him on the field,” I told him. Though I thought about actually driving there. That I would if I had to. But Wainwright wants a piece of him too. Partly because he thinks it's cold, what my dad did, if he did it. And partly because he's tired of hearing that the kid's unstoppable. “Unstop pable,” he said, the first time he heard it, like he'd just smelled barbecue.

They're 8–0 thanks mostly to that kid. So maybe they got it in themselves to step up to where we're going to be. It'd be a bigger deal for them than for us. Every year we're something: State Finalists, Regional Finalists, Regional Semi-Finalists, Bi-District Finalists. Our 1996 team won the Texas State Championship. Our JVs are divided into Team White and Team Blue, thirty-man rosters that each play different schedules, so what we call our baby boys can get some work. White plays at five, Blue at seven, Varsity at nine. Our stadium holds 18,400 but is being upgraded. JVs are mostly sophomores, though every so often there's a Wainwright or a me that moves up early. Everybody keeps an eye on everybody else.

Media Day is the second Friday in August. The coaches stand around in their white T-shirts and blue shorts giving us grief like they're sweet guys because all the beat reporters are there.

Our home unies are dark blue — jerseys, pants, helmets. The coaches think it psyches out opponents that we practice in those in the heat. “How do they know we don't just practice in white?” Wainwright asked them once. They let it go. That same day he just stood looking at them at the end of a 104-degree ballbreaker of a scrimmage and said, “They don't have any idea how serious this is.” When he saw me looking at him he said, “And neither do you.”

At Homecoming all the Kings and Queens are photographed with the team. They're in team-color tuxes and gowns. “You think this kid Corey is Homecoming King?” I asked Wainwright after that same scrimmage.

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” he asked me back.

“So who are you?” I asked him. But he was heading for the showers. A lot of our conversations ended like that.

I was scared shitless when I first came out, and not of the coaches. Like all freshmen I was shipped over to JV, Team White, and I was so nervous the first day I had the shits for thirty minutes and was late for my first real practice. I was in the stall bent over and miserable and thinking, No way you can compete at this level. I had my chin on my knees. In tiny letters at the bottom of the door, someone had scratched Shit shit shit.

I called my brother from the pay phone near the furnace room. He'd started three of his four years for LHS. I remember I said something like, I might be in a little over my head here. I was having trouble not blubbering. He told me not to worry that much yet, that everything would come to me. “Hey, leave if you wanta leave,” he finally said when I wouldn't let it go. “What you gonna do back here?” Meaning my mom's house, where we lived. I didn't have an answer for him. I still had all my dad's tools in my bedroom. I didn't know how to use most of them and they didn't need to be in my bedroom. “What's up with the socket wrench?” Wain-wright asked me the one time he hung out there.

First practice Big Coach saw me, he said he thought my neck was too small for this level. Then a year or so later he said, “Son, you got some big feet there.” He seemed to like me more because of it. You heard a lot of stupid shit over the course of a summer practice schedule.