Safety Last
by Robert Nersesian
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
For the next two weeks, Colangelo treats him with the compassion of a viper, a pitiless Pygmalion with his Galatea. Changing Armen’s running style is his one act of love.
Armen is a fuel-injected backhoe. It’s your choice: stop him full frontal — unlikely — or grab a limb, hope your teammates join you, and somehow get him down to the turf. Neither option works well. Armen lowers his head just before impact. No teen opponent can prove the counterweight. In fact, Armen easily runs with two or three tacklers clutching his shoulder pads, hips, and legs.
Colangelo has something else in mind. He wants to convert Armen from tractor to thresher.
“You know why you’re in my office?” A converted broom closet.
“No, coach.”
“Your head.”
Silence.
“You know what I’m talking about?”
“Not sure, coach.”
“You always lead with your head. Right now, you’re able to get away with it. You know the other teams are scouting us? Watching you? They know how to deal with guys who lead with the head.”
Colangelo dips into a desk drawer. He brings out a long elastic pad that looks as if it’s been around since the Korean War. “You know what this is?”
“No, coach.”
“Your future.”
The pad fits the length of Armen’s right forearm up to and over the elbow. Over the next several days after practice, Colangelo takes Armen back to the broom closet and shows him how to lead with the forearm rather than the head.
The forearm will be a club and a sword. When Armen bursts out of his three-point stance after taking the ball and approaching his opponents, he’ll use it like a piston to drive under a tackler’s chin: an uppercut without the fist. By striking with the forearm and pushing out with the entire arm across a tackler’s face and neck, he can keep the opponent at a distance. This prevents anyone from effectively lunging at Armen’s shoulder pads or hips. As a sword, if necessary, the point of the elbow can push past the double bars of the unfortunate’s face mask into his nose.
The weights and eating are his rebirth. The elbow is the resurrection.
He now discerns things about his ability. If he thinks about it too long, he goes breathless and dreamy. He has a secret pleasure: it’s not yardage, points, or cheers but something else. It’s his opponents’ eyes. He watches them behind the helmet face bars as they zoom in at him. Who’s calm? Angry, confident, resigned? Which eyes show courage, which wild with craving? Who will lock their gaze onto his? Who will avert, dreading the punch of his forearm? Will they bounce off it, collapse, the impact of the turf, the smell of mowed grass, the stands screaming?
This is the new technicolor of Armen’s life. It’s that, classes, and the shelves of Pops’ store. No girls, parties, or team pals. Armen says little to Pops about his rise to team stardom. What would Pops say? It wouldn’t matter to Pops, who doesn’t understand any sport. Better to continue stocking the shelves and watch Pops serve the customers as best he can in shaky English.
In the evenings, they sit before the black-and-white, watching the sitcoms: All in the Family. One Day at a Time. Welcome Back Kotter. Neither laughs at the jokes. Instead, they present themselves to the screen. They stare. Listen. All those high-jinks. Man and boy, impassive.
* * *
In the game against Van Buren High, Armen finds the match he’s been awaiting. Van Buren has an all-city linebacker named Badou. He matches Armen’s size and strength. Quick as a bobcat. A face like a cast-iron pan, unseasoned. His tackles are works of art that unfold from his hips and thighs; cable-hard long arms enveloping the victim; shoulders and head pounding into an opponent’s chest.
Badou is particularly feared; the word is he plays dirty and is skilled at hiding his techniques from the referees. A quick poke into a quarterback’s eye during a pile-up; stepping on the calves of downed players with his cleats in the heat of a play; getting into a blocker’s face and enunciating words with plosives to create a hailstorm of spit.
The first play that Badou and Armen meet is a short run between the Douglaston right guard and tackle. Badou fends off a block and grabs Armen’s shoulder pads, hoping to windmill him to the ground.
At the same time, Armen reaches his free arm across his body and grasps Badou’s jersey, his grip so piercing that he actually has hold, tight as a leech, of the small ring of fat around Badou’s waist. Do you feel that? I feel it. I’m not letting go.
He registers the shock in Badou’s face. Badou has never had a runner do this. All the while, they’re attached, running in tandem down the field as the play continues.
You’re good. We’re going to have a good time.
Badou yelps. Armen gives a crinkly smile. Badou lets go of Armen’s pads and claps his palms hard against the ear holes of Armen’s helmet, then returns to the pads.
Ooooo. Nice pop!
Armen enters Badou’s fury, seeking a channel to understand him, cajole, encourage. Reaching into his kinetics. Sensing his home life, his arrogance, a pain not gloss but matte. Keep up the great work. We’re made for each other.
Armen twists and pulls the fascia of Badou’s abdomen. Badou squeals. Armen twists harder and turns Badou like a dial, dropping him to the turf in a heap. Badou’s teammates have finally caught up to the tango and bring Armen down.
Armen can hear Badou complaining to the ref, but that’s just a formality. Armen knows the real subtext. Badou wants more. For vengeance? No. Rather, the sheer wanton thrill of one powerhouse against another, the happy apprehension over who will survive this bucks’ rut.
* * *
In the massive Douglaston stadium, Armen is the main attraction. People point. Call out to him. He wills himself not to hear. On the sidelines, gazing at his audience. Who are they? Classmates, okay. Lot of adults. Parents? Really? Skipping work? Why would they do that?
It’s a brutal game against Bayside. In the second half, he breaks through the line, begins a long scamper. He sees a little defensive back. Far off. Racing to make a last-ditch tackle. Armen does him a favor. Slows down, turns his body toward him. Let’s meet, say, at the twenty-yard line. The little back sees his intention, horrified. At impact, Armen hooks under his armpit and dredges him across the grass. Snidely Whiplash abducting the innocent damsel. He conveys ball and back into the end zone. Touchdown.
He goes to the sideline, his teammates hooting, laughing. He feels relaxed. He gazes at the crowd. His eyesight is off the charts. He can magnify images so that they spill across his frame of vision like a magic lantern show. Looking at people looking at him.
A woman in hair curlers screaming “Go!!” the folds of her face expanding and contracting like accordion bellows.
A grade-school boy, dragged by his parents to watch his brother play, as grim as a pinched barrister at the bar.
A tout taking bets on the game, running his lips at Mach 2, accommodating his clients.
Then, he spies something hunched down. The super vision fails him. He gleans a brown clump of heavy weave jacket and pants. A dirty fedora. He can’t see a face. The clothing resembles the daily uniform adorning Pops. Armen isn’t sure. He stares. The figure, hundreds of yards away, stares back, as still as a queen bee in a hive of howling courtiers.
I’m watching you, the woolly clump says. That’s all. Score a touchdown or fall on your face, I don’t care. Just watching him.
Colangelo yells at him again. “On the field, you! What’re you staring at?” Armen blinks, once, twice. The wool clump disappears.
He scores a touchdown on the next play.
* * *
Over the next four years, Armen breaks every school and league record. All-city first string. The league’s most valuable player each year. Local news articles, TV squibs.
His growth continues. Six foot two, two hundred twenty pounds. Running, lifting, eating; the holy trinity.
During games, the brown clump continues to pop up in the bleachers, then disappear. A foxtrot of gazes.
Scholarship offers pour in. Only one matters. Syracuse.
Larry Csonka.
* * *
Syracuse University, Paterson Practice Field, 1979
He gains another inch and ten more pounds. But now he’s a freshman on a big-time college team. It’s stuffed with plenty of kids who were stars in their dinky universes. The senior players are lords of the manor, no hand-servants allowed in the great hall.
Coach M. thinks the same way. Freshmen are neither seen nor heard.
The Oklahoma Drills. One runner. Two blockers. Two tacklers. Armen is so good at this now that it becomes a game of skittles. During one drill, he runs over his blockers, then forearm-shivers a tackler so hard that the victim’s helmet flies off. With the same arm he holds the other tackler at bay, not by pushing him off but instead holding onto his collar. He pulls him along for the carnival ride.
Coach M. and the staff are impressed. They slot Armen as a third-string runner, a “power back” who will mainly block and run the ball once in a while. But the freshman has other ideas. Armen turns plays designed for three yards and a cloud of dust into long broken-field dashes. Coach M. has no choice; he can’t ignore a potential scoring machine. He retrofits Syracuse’s offensive strategy back to the days of Csonka. By the middle of the first season, Armen is the starting running back.
No word from Pops.
By season’s end, he’s the talk of Syracuse football. He sets yardage records and comes close to breaking Csonka’s single-season rushing record.
* * *
In football, as in all things, Darwin chuckles.
If “size matters,” Syracuse’s rivals are already putting it to the test. In Armen’s sophomore season, the defensive guys, the upfront bruisers of the trenches, are getting much, much bigger. Two-ninety, three hundred, now approaching Sumo Island.
Armen notices. Are they catching up to his regimen? A gallon of milk a day? Laced with protein powder? Something more?
Then there’s the forearm and elbow.
They come with a vulnerability: by not covering the ball with two arms as he hits the line, leading with the forearm scythe, Armen can fumble the football, the ultimate sin. Tacklers know this. Now, instead of targeting his body, they go for the ball cradled under his left arm. Why bother being crushed with a shillelagh of an ulna? Rather, dig away, strip the ball, reverse the tide of Syracuse possession.
Evolution rears its head during the Northwestern game. Their big tackles and ends shrug off his shivers, then hang on until the rest of pack arrives to wrestle him down. Armen still gains decent yards but scores no touchdowns. Northwestern wins.
Evolution is not lost on Coach M. In the football arms race, Coach knows his new weapon, Armen, could fizzle. If so, what’s the replacement option? Who might he tuck away for a rainy day?
Looking at the rosters of peer teams, Coach notices something about the dimensions of the newest running backs. They’re five-eight, five-nine, coming in at anywhere from two hundred to two hundred ten pounds.
Coach M. watches film of these new types, these scatbacks. They have two things in common: incredible lateral movement and tackle-proof gravity. Being so close to the ground, the munchkins can evade the grips of the front-line Godzillas.
Coach M. is thinking of someone who fits the bill. A freshman. Coach begins slotting him into practice plays. Armen isn’t oblivious. He needs to know more and doesn’t want to know more. What’s the kid’s name? He won’t ask. To Armen, he’s simply Tommy Scatback.
As Armen and Tommy Scatback rotate in and out of practice plays during the week, Tommy is as much an enigma to Armen as Armen is to the rest of the team. They’re both quiet, lone wolves in their way, but Tommy Scatback is the popular pup. He can get away with things, gently kidding his teammates and humming his own ditties. He’s handsome in a hard-nosed way, but it’s hard to tell where he’s from and what he is. His skin colored like weak tea, his hair straight; coarse, hazel eyes that sometimes twinkle, other times blank out. He’s built like a brick shithouse, lumps and lats galore. Different from Armen’s ropey muscles. Tommy Scatback has a girlfriend, actually lots of them rotating in a galaxy light-years from Armen.
Tommy Scatback begins to reside in Armen’s head. Mornings Armen awakens wondering how Tommy Scatback is preparing for the day. Is he heading to classes? Working out in the weight room? Each scholarship player has their daily schedule mapped out by team assistants. If Armen could get a copy of Tommy Scatback’s...
Breakfast, what does he have for breakfast? The team has its own tables in the cafeteria, off-limits to the civilians. Tommy Scatback regularly breaks that rule by inviting guys and gals from his social circle to eat with them. No one on the team seems to mind, even the seniors. In response, Armen avoids the training table altogether, preferring to eat at civilian tables.
Sometimes they cross paths in the cafeteria. A shy smile from Tommy Scatback. No words. Lingering gaze.
* * *
Copyright © 2024 by Robert Nersesian
