Someone had thrown Soapy into the snow.
It was nothing to stop for and we didn’t. Jason hiked it and I ran along the snow bank and circled around the hoop and came back towards him. That was called a Curl route and they ran it in the NFL. All the other boys had gone deep (that’s a Fly), but I had curled and come back. It was a mid-route and that meant it would complete at a higher percentage though it got less yards. But Jason didn’t throw to me. He wound up and threw it deep and it sailed left of his man and Bobby Gurka got it for an interception. That’s usually what happened when he threw deep but he usually threw deep.
Running a mid-route also meant you didn’t have to run back as far when Jason threw an interception and you went to defense. Tony and some of the others on my team were still arguing about Pass Interference but I got back quick to play Free Safety and they couldn’t sneak a bomb. I wasn’t fast enough to play Corner so I didn’t get many interceptions but I tipped a lot of balls.
Bobby had given the ball to Kollins and gone deep. Kollins saw that Bobby had burned Jason and looked over by the doors to see if Andrea was watching. She wasn’t, so he didn’t want to throw a touchdown yet. He saw James Haas standing all alone in the middle of the field wide open and knew James wouldn’t get a touchdown if he threw it to him so he did. The ball went towards James and James stood there, ready to catch it tight against his new Bulls coat. (It wasn’t a Starter coat, though, for it was only James Haas. Only Raess had a Starter coat). James opened his arms to receive the ball but it did not reach him. Steve had zoomed in front of him and picked it off. Steve was faster than anybody.
Steve looked to Jason to give him the ball to be Quarterback but Jason was running down the sideline going deep so he took it himself. Steve was my friend and he would throw to me so I ran a Crossing route fast to get open. I was wide open. The closest person to me was Noah Blum, and he was ten yards away and slow. He could beat me up for saying so, but he was a little fat, and there was no way he’d get over fast enough if Steve threw to me.
I raised my arm to Steve and he turned to me and threw. The ball went sailing far. I saw it go over, red against the gray sky, spiraling. Jason caught it on the snow bank for a touchdown.
Jason spiked it then he got down quick because you couldn’t go in the snow and if Mr. Ferguson saw he would come over and yell. The spiked ball bounced and rolled over to me. I picked it up. It was Tony’s Nebraska ball and with my finger I felt the ridge where the ‘N’ was drawn and outlined in white. I lined up to throw it off but Jeff Aufderhide wanted it. I gave it to him.
Mr. Ferguson straightened up from where he was leaning against the wall and boomed Line up, Gentlemen. Mr. Ferguson was so fat; he was the fattest man I’d ever seen. He was fat enough to play in the NFL except he was so slow. When he walked across the gym to yell at a boy during Square Dance last month it got dead quiet and you could hear the floorboards creak under him. It seemed to take infinity for him to get there and the boy was terrified by that time because there wasn’t any sound of anything at all except the floorboards creaking so loud they seemed to echo and we were all sure he would go through the floor. We all felt like laughing but we couldn’t. Some of the things Mr. Ferguson did were funny because he was fat but you couldn’t laugh, I knew that already.
Mr. Ferguson walked across the playground booming Line up, Gentlemen…Girls. That meant the game was over – unless it was tied, then it was Sudden Death. But it was not tied: they had won 35-21.
We all lined up. Now we would go inside to BSR, stomping the slush from our shoes and boots. (Only a few boys wore boots, like Soapy and some others. It was very uncool; it was a mommy thing; Mother said it was smart to wear boots and maybe it was but it was kid stuff anyhow.) We would come inside the warm halls, making the hallways wet, going to our lockers, putting in the combinations, taking off our coats, taking up our books and folders and pens, shutting the lockers, and now going down by the Sixth Graders, to BSR. BSR was Basic Skills Review, which meant it was only for the slow kids to catch up, but we all had to do it. It was alright, though. If you had half a brain the teacher let you alone so it was a nice break after lunch to let your shoes dry. It was my only class that year with Big B, who lived across town and took karate and whose father had never been to college. My parents had both been to college for a long time (they both had PhD’s), but Big B’s parents weren’t like that and that meant he knew lots of things I didn’t know. So now we would stomp the slush from our shoes and make the hallways wet and go to BSR and be warm and let our shoes dry and I would talk to Big B Bauer.
But someone had thrown Soapy into the snow.
Mister Ferguson looked around the playground. Were there stragglers? Were there boys coming around the corner, or from out of the dugout? There weren’t. There was only Soapy, picking himself up from the snow.
Soriano, he boomed (for that was Soapy’s name). You know you can’t go into the snow.
But I got thrown in, said Soapy, fixing his hat which had been pulled over his face.
It was a game to throw Soapy into the snow. He would go over to the snow bank and wait and then some of the boys would surround him and he would look up at them and say Throw me in and they would go to where the bank was small and heave him up and over it and onto the new snow beyond and on his way down he would yell Whee!
Sometimes too he would be looking the other way and someone would run up and shove him from behind (for he was one of the smallest) and over he would go. He did not yell Whee! then. That was how it had begun, and the Whee! came after, but even then sometimes he got it in the back. We tried to pretend that we did not mind as our mothers had taught us but they knew better and did not believe us.
Mister Ferguson heaved a big sigh. He scratched his stomach, and he scratched behind his ear.
He turned to us where we were lined up. Gentlemen, he boomed, gentlemen.
But he likes it, someone said (was it Raess?). Soapy likes getting thrown into the snow.
Is that so? Once more the fat man boomed. Is that true, Soriano? Do you like getting thrown into the snow?
Soapy looked up at Mister Ferguson and pulled up his gloves. Again he adjusted his hat. There was snow in the tops of his boots. Everyone watched him, all the girls and all the gentlemen. Here they giggled among themselves and there they stared down at him leanly, their little jaws tight and hard. He looked up at Mister Ferguson again. His small snow-wet face shone, and in it his small wet serious eyes.
Yes, Soapy said, pulling up his snow pants, I like it.
