The Way Down

He sat stoically in the worn-out easy-chair, a warm Bud on the table beside him, a half-empty pack of Marlboros next to a half-smoked one, smoldering in the overflowing ashtray. He felt uncommonly weary. And alone. There was no one to drink with, anymore, no one to talk to, no one to see. More precisely, there was no one who wanted to drink with, talk to, or even be with him. It wasn’t that drinking was important, or even the point, or talking. It was just something to do. Now, it seemed, there was nothing to do and very little to look forward to other than tomorrow, which would be just like today, and which would be just like the day after, and the day after. On and on, he thought, until the . . . the what? He couldn’t fathom it.
That was the right word. Fathom. To measure the depth, track the descent. He couldn’t fathom it.
When he left, he was near the top of things. Then, it all just rushed by. Called up in the middle of the season, he didn’t have time to think about it. One minute he was on the practice field in shorts and a tee-shirt, worrying about the junior tight-end with a tender hamstring and the sudden clumsiness of the starting center, maybe to do with some injury he hadn’t reported. The next minute, it seemed, he was sitting on a plastic chair in the airport, in uniform, wanting a cigarette but unable to smoke, unable, really, to think, texting his wife and daughter, trying to explain how things could have shifted so fast, about how he was as bewildered and confused about it as they were.
And now, he was back. Wife and daughter gone—disillusioned, maybe, distraught, maybe, unable to cope with him the way he was, for sure. Or maybe it was just some other guy. That’s what he thought. Some guy who had the staying power he lacked. He sipped the beer, took one more drag, then lit another. The room around him—not really a room, since a 12-by really didn’t have rooms—was cramped, cluttered with the jumble of what remained of his life spilling out of cardboard boxes, paper bags, and plastic storage bins. Trophies, tee-shirts, honors of all kinds, once carefully packed away, ready for display in a cushy office somewhere, a cushy job to go with it. He should be packing for the NFL, or maybe D-I, at least. Instead he was here, staring at the memory of what might have been.
And he was lonely. That was the hell of it. The euphoria of coming home, the rush of having people—total strangers—walk up to him, thank him for his service. Big welcome back party at the school—cupcakes and punch and a big banner, now stuffed into a box, now done and forgotten. It started out like a high. But it wasn’t. It was a fuck-job. Service, hell, he thought with a shake of his head. It was a fuck-job, just a fuck-job.
Two tours. Two-and-a-half years of his life. Gone. He could see the sleeve of his camos dripping out of a bag. He wouldn’t put that on again. Not for anything. Two tours. He never fired a weapon in anger, never got shot at, never saw anybody killed, never knew anybody who was, not personally. He saw death—that was hard to avoid. He saw destruction—that was impossible to avoid. He saw poverty and hunger and hopelessness and despair, anger and greed. That he saw in spades. The rest was all a blur. A promise of some kind of triumph, some kind of satisfaction, some kind of good. That was a lie. Protecting freedom. That was a lie, too. Fuck-job. Still, he’d done well, gotten to the top, earned an extra stripe, only to be sent back home before he did anything, before he was even really aware that he was there, even after two tours. Sent home, back down the mountain. But not to where he’d been, not to where he interrupted his life to take on the responsibility for something he didn’t ever really understand. It was a commitment. That’s all it was. He had no idea when he made it that they’d expect him to keep it, no matter what the cost, and he sure as hell never thought that once he’d kept it, they’d just shove him over the top and push him down, stumbling and falling on his own. It was a fuck-job. That’s what it was. A fuck-job. And there wasn’t one goddamned thing he could do about it.
Nobody to drink with, even. How could things change so fast? He tried to go get back to something, where he was, where he remembered. The Slippery Slope was the same—same dark, nasty, stinking barroom, same bar lights, same pool tables, same music in the jukebox, but no familiar faces. Even behind the bar, a stranger.
“Where’s Leon?” “Who?” “Guy used to tend bar here.” “Never heard of him.” “Christi?” “Who?” “Gal waited tables.” A wink, crooked, knowing grin. “Worked out of a travel trailer in the back. “ Another wink. “You know?” “Never heard of her. We got no waitress.” A scowl, a turn away. “We don’t got that kind of shit, either.” Over his shoulder. “You want another draft?”
Another beer, another half-hour of similar Q&A. “Who? Oh, yeah. Dead. Car Wreck.” Who? Uh, moved to Houston, I think. Maybe Phoenix. Can’t remember.” “Who? Got busted. DUI. Three-strikes. Downstate now, I reckon.” “Who? Don’t know him.” “Who? Oh, yeah. Knocked up some old gal. She was married. Split town.” Not a familiar face in the joint. “When did you start serving imported beers?” “Who? Don’t know him.”
He never liked that crowd, anyway. They were just somebody to be around, people who didn’t want much from him, good to talk to about sports, the weather, the season. They didn’t know him, no more than anyone ever had. But they were there. They were goddamn there. Now they were gone. So was he.
He never took a tumble with Christi, a booby sometimes blonde with thick legs and thin lips and too much eye-shadow, and a forest of earrings and sworl of ugly tattoos, but a great smile and a handy manner. He might now, he thought. He would now, he knew. But she was gone, too. There wasn’t even that.
He never liked any of them there. It was just a place to go when Shelly got too hard to take, when she ragged on him about always being at the school, always working with the boys. “Way you talk about those boys,” she said, “think you were queer.”
“You know better.”
“I don’t know shit when it comes to you. Except that you’re never here. You’re at that goddamn school day and night.”
“It’s my job.”
“I’m your wife.”
She wasn’t any more. That was a fucking fact. He wondered if she ever had been. Darla said different, but not really. She was gone, too. Ten years old and convinced that her old man was over the hill, out of her life. May as well have been killed. At least, then, there’d be the insurance. Hell, she might have gotten a book deal out of it, if he’d ever done anything. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t done shit.
They kept his job for him. They had to. The law. But the job he had wasn’t the job he was lined-out for. Two years. He’d spent two years building that program, readying that team, poising them for State. Old Coach Sanchez, eaten hollow with cancer and rotting in a hospital bed, refusing to die, refusing to quit, holding onto the head job with a vice grip, though he knew he’d never stalk a side-line again, too weak to blow a whistle. But Sanchez couldn’t do anything, couldn’t control anything. Ten losing seasons in a row proved that. It fell, instead, to him, the assistant, to take over in the interim, to make something successful out of the failure that Sanchez had made of things.
And he had. He organized, cut dead-wood, weeded-out, found talent and built determination, pushed that forward. He redesigned the offense, created plays nobody ever thought of. Strengthened the defense, made a wall out of them. That’s what he called them, “The Wall.” Nothing got through them, not in the air, not on the ground. The Wall. It took two years. They were solid, up and down. Deep. They could throw and catch, run and block. They were fluid, fast, a fucking machine on the field. Freshman through senior, players developing, preparing themselves to step up when their turn came, trained, schooled, ready. Two years. Programmed drills, scientific workouts, prescribed diets, strict discipline. Character, commitment, concentration. Two years. Sanchez told him it wouldn’t work. Told him that he couldn’t do that with teenagers. Too irresponsible, too lazy, too into themselves. “Bunch of little shits,” he said. “Plugged in, zoned out, totally spaced and want something for nothing. They’re stupid. Half of them couldn’t jack off without a fucking playbook.” He thought differently. He believed in them, made them believe in him. Called them “gentlemen,” “men,” gave them respect, dignity. He rewarded effort, praised talent, promised and delivered what he offered, and they responded, stepped up. They were a team. Top to bottom.
Assistant Coach, sure. Acting Head, sure. But they started winning, and they knew they could get to State. He worked with the others, the Freshman and JV coaches, even the coaches at the two junior highs that fed into the high school. ID the talent, develop it, ID those who would step up, get them ready. It would take time. Two years. And they’d done it. He’d done it. They believed it. He could smell the top, smell state, not just that year but for years to come. A dynasty. Then the NFL would call. Or maybe D-I. The top was in sight.
Then, all of a sudden, there he was. In front of a mirror in the airport restroom, staring at the hollowness behind his eyes, wanting a cigarette, although he’d quit five years before when he first joined the reserves, when he committed himself to something he thought was just a token, a gesture, something to make him more appealing to the board when the time came. Who’d have ever thought that it would all just blow on by before he could at least stop and enjoy it?
Then he was in the fucking soup. Knee deep in khaki and the dust, the searing heat and freezing cold of a place that didn’t want him there—didn’t want any of them there—a place they told him could kill him without warning. But it didn’t. Didn’t come close. He heard of others who were killed, who saw killing, who killed, and who killed themselves. He knew a lot of them came back too fucked up to wipe their own ass. Fucked up physically. Fucked up mentally. Not him, though. He was fine. All he saw was computer monitors and electronics. All he did was wire shit up, follow the manual, watch and take notes, report, show up, sleep, eat, shit, shower, shave, count the days. Two tours. The only danger was from the fucking food. He was fine. Back and fine. That wasn’t the problem. The problem is that it was a fuck-job.
All he thought about was the team, the program he’d built, the championship Allenson stepped into at mid-season and carried through while he was sitting in a flapping tent in the wind-blown asshole of the world, Skyping with Shelley—now his ex-Shelley—trying to explain to her what the fuck happened, why he couldn’t be home, why she needed to be there waiting for him, joining him at the top when he came back. Listening to her tell him why she wouldn’t be, and how there wasn’t going to be any top. Just the long trail down.
There was a top, though. And it came and went, and