it might be nice to have some time left for doing homework, I thought - just for an instant - that Puffer was going to belt him one. He had taken to jingling his keys constantly from hand to hand, reminding me of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, I believe that how you lose is a much better index into character than how you win. Puffer, who had never been 0-2 in his coaching career, reacted with baffled, pointless fury, like a caged tiger being teased by cruel children.
The next Friday afternoon - that would have been September 22nd - the usual rally during the last fifteen minutes of period seven was cancelled. I didn't know any of the players who minded; standing up there and being introduced by twelve prancing cheerleaders for the umptyumpth time was sort of a bore. It was an ominous sign, all the same. That night we were invited back to the gym by Coach Puffer, where we went to the movies for two hours, watching our humiliation by the Tigers and the Bears in the game films. Perhaps this was supposed to fire us up, but it only depressed me.
That night, before our second home game of the year, I had a peculiar dream. It was not exactly a nightmare, not like the one where I woke the house screaming, certainly, but it was . . . uncomfortable. We were playing the Philadelphia City Dragons, and a strong wind was blowing. The sounds of the cheers, the blaring, distorted voice of Chubby McCarthy from the loudspeaker as he announced downs and yards, even the sounds of players hitting other players, all sounded weird and echoey in that constant, flat wind.
The faces in the stands seemed yellow and oddly shadowed, like the faces of Chinese masks. The cheerleaders danced and capered like jerky automatons. The sky was a queer grey, running with clouds. We were being badly beaten. Coach Puffer was yelling in plays, but no one could hear him. The Dragons were running away from us. The ball was always theirs. Lenny Barongg looked as if he was playing with terrible pain; his mouth was drawn down in a trembling bow like a mask of tragedy.
I was hit, knocked down, run over. I lay on the playing field, far behind the line of scrimmage, writhing, trying to get my breath back. I looked up and there, parked in the middle of the track field, behind the visitors' bleachers, was Christine. Once more she was sparkling and brand-new, as if she had rolled out of the showroom only an hour before.
Arnie was sitting on the roof, crosslegged like Buddha, looking at me expressionlessly. He hollered something at me, but the steady howl of the wind almost buried it. It sounded as if he said: Don't worry, Dennis. We'll take care of everything. So don't worry. All is cool.
Take care of what? I wondered as I lay there on the dream playing field (which my dreaming self had, for some reason, converted into Astro-Turf), struggling for breath with my jock digging cruelly into the fork of my thighs just below my testicles. Take care of what?
Of what?
No answer. Only the baleful shine of Christine's yellow headlamps and Arnie sitting serenely crosslegged on her roof in that steady, rushing wind.
The next day we got out there and did battle for good old Libertyville High again, It wasn't as bad as it had been in my dream - that Saturday no one got hurt, and for a brief while in the third quarter it even looked as though we might have a chance - but then the Philadelphia City quarterback got lucky with a couple of long passes - when things start to go wrong, everything goes wrong - and we lost again.
After the game, Coach Puffer just sat there on the bench. He wouldn't look at any of us. There were eleven games left on our schedule, but he was already a beaten man.
PART I: DENNIS - TEENAGE CAR-SONG Chapter 16 ENTER LEIGH, EXIT BUDDY
I'm not braggin, babe, so don't put me down,
But I've got the fastest set of wheels in town,
When someone comes up to me he don't even try
Cause if she had a set of wings, man,
I know she could fly,
She's my little deuce coupe,
You don't know what I got . . .
- The Beach Boys
It was, I am quite sure, the Tuesday after our loss to the Philadelphia City Dragons that things began