The snow fell briskly as Fran Tarkenton lined up behind center. Grabbing the towel that hung from the back of his center’s mud-stained uniform pants, he wiped his frozen hands as he barked out the signals. “Two-forty-five!!” he bellowed to his right. “Two-forty-five!!” he screamed to his left. “Ready!! Set!! Hut!!”
The center snapped the ball with a loud BAP into Tarkenton’s hands. Pads exploded in sound, spit, and blood as colossal men all around him flung themselves into each other, the Fearsome Foursome pushing with all their might to reach him as he dropped back to pass. He held the ball tightly with both hands as he took five, six, seven, eight steps back. Scanning from left to right, from right to left, he spotted Joe Morrison in the left flat. Cocking his arm, he threw a tight spiral that caught Morrison right between the numbers. Morrison grabbed it and scampered for a pick-up of 16 yards before being abruptly pushed out of bounds.
“Tarkenton with another great pass!” the radio shrieked. Charlie could hear the bellicose roar of the Yankee Stadium crowd in the background as he picked himself up off of the freshly fallen snow. “Tarkenton is picking this Rams team apart!”
This was the first winter Charlie and his family lived in the company house on North Hillside Avenue. A cracker box three-bedroom on a quarter-acre lot, it was owned by the Hercules Powder Company plant up the street. Charlie’s dad got transferred there from a small town in upstate New York just before Charlie turned eight. That was early last spring. Now it was 8 months later, in the middle of winter, and Charlie had become a compact 9-year-old with colossal sports aspirations.
“The line held together pretty well that time, Frank,” Chip Cipolla, the Giants’ long-time radio announcer said. “But they don’t call him Fran the Scram for nothing. Eventually he’ll take off like a Chinese rocket.”
Earlier that morning, as his kid brother watched complacently out the round window, drawing little pictures with his finger in the breath-induced fog, Charlie made large piles of snow just to the left of the tin-roof garage. All about hip-deep, Charlie took great care as he piled handful after handful in the same place he’d stood with his siblings two months earlier while their mom took pictures of them in their Halloween costumes. After finishing two or three piles, Charlie’s mom called him in and offered him a cup of hot chocolate, which he slurped just cautiously enough to avoid burning his tongue. Wrapping his fingers tightly around the Smokey Bear mug, he shook the hoarfrost from his soul and warmed his innards.
A day or two after his family moved, Charlie uneasily anticipated his first day in his new school. Somewhat of a timid boy, Charlie worried a lot about it. But his mom assured him that everything would be fine. “Listen, honey,” she said in her naturally reassuring way. “I moved when I was 15, and I know it’s not fun. But I made friends, and so will you. I promise.”
“I know,” Charlie muttered, halfheartedly.
His mom usually knew exactly how to make Charlie feel better. Her formative years were spent in a small town in which everyone knew everyone else. She’d cared for lots of small animals and learned the healer’s art. Then her dad, a state road foreman, took a new job in the big city and they moved far away from that idyllic setting.
“Oh, come on,” she teased. “It will all work out. Trust me.”
But nothing would soothe Charlie today. He put his hands in his pockets and hung his head as he headed out the door and started the one-block walk. Other kids were ahead of him, and some others behind, talking, laughing, one girl even singing.
Charlie walked alone.
“Good morning, class,” said Mr. Katcavage, Charlie’s new teacher. A huge, hulking man of six feet four and two-eighty with hazel eyes, a full shock of brown hair, and a physique made perfect by free weights in his garage, he was the love interest of every grade school girl at Jefferson Elementary. “We’ve got a new student today,” he said. “His name is Charlie, and I want you all to make him feel welcome in our class.”
Charlie sat in the last seat of his row. Every kid in the class turned in their desk and looked at him blankly. Charlie looked at each face, nervous to his core, and smiled.
But none of them smiled back.
Tarkenton knelt in the snow and called the next play in the huddle. “Ok, we’ve got ‘em,” he said. “We’re going to run I-Right 26 Power, ok? I-Right 26 Power on one, ready, BREAK!” All of the other Giants clapped as one and ran toward the line. Tarkenton could hear the snow that had turned to sleet hitting his shoulder pads as he lined up behind center. “Four-Eighty-Seven!” he shouted, “Four-Eighty-Seven! Set! Hut!” Again, the ball instantly slapped into his hands, making them sting just enough to make him notice. It was a pain he’d learned to love. Fading back, he abruptly handed the ball to Tucker Fredrickson who jumped effortlessly over the line and landed on his back in the deepening snow. It was now at least several inches deep.
“Fredrickson gets the first down!” yelled Cipolla. “It will be first and ten Giants on the Rams 26-yard line!”
During recess that first day, Charlie walked out into the blazing sun. “It must be 95 in the shade,” he thought, wiping his brow, and looking around at the kids shouting and screaming as they played kickball or tag.
“Hey, meat!” someone shouted from his right, above the din.
Charlie blinked as the sun sent shining stilettos into his eyes. Squinting, he turned with his hand on his forehead like the brim of a baseball cap. A huge kid with a yellow t-shirt and black shorts was looking straight at him, tossing a football thoughtlessly into the air. He was flanked on three sides by sneering toadies, each with his hands on his hips and blowing bubbles with his gum. Yellow Shirt sported ten thousand freckles on his cheeks and nose, and he was almost twice as big as Charlie.
All four of them were non-smilers.
“You wanna throw the football, meat?” Yellow Shirt yelled.
Charlie played one year of Pop Warner football in the Mitey-Mites division back in New York, and he was actually pretty good. Despite being the smallest kid in his class and the bowed shape of his legs, he was fast - really fast – and he could cut on a dime. Some of his teammates started calling him The Galloping Ghost. Charlie liked it. Consequently, football became everything he thought about. But on this day, there was no interest, so he shook his head, turned without a word, and went back into the building. Yellow Shirt threw the football to the ground and swore.
The small, black transistor radio sat on the rabbit hutch Charlie’s dad made behind the garage that Autumn. They’d kept two rabbits in the hutch for a while until Charlie’s mom went out one day and only found clumps of fur. They never found out what got those rabbits, and Charlie didn’t really want to know. Today the hutch was filled with snow, and Charlie pushed some of it off so he had somewhere to put the radio.
“Tarkenton comes to the line again facing third and six from the Rams’ twenty-two,” Cipolla bellowed, like this game meant something. The Giants, perennial losers, were in last place again this year, but to his credit, Cipolla always tried to make it sound like the Super Bowl. “Fredrickson’s the lone setback. He’s got Morrison in the right slot and Homer Jones out to the left. There’s the snap! Tarkenton drops back! Merlin Olsen has him! NO! Tarkenton escapes and runs toward the left sideline. Fred Dryer is there, and Tarkenton is…WAIT! He got free!! Tarkenton circles and runs back the other way! He’s got Jones at the 10 and fires! Jones makes the catch and falls to the nine! First down, Giants!!”
Later that first day, Charlie stood toward the back of the line of boys who were doing timed wind sprints during gym class. The boys in front of him were joking around, slapping each other on the back, and laughing. Charlie closed his eyes halfway and lowered his head, letting out a long, deep sigh.
He longed for that type of friendship again. He had plenty of friends in New York, friends he’d known most of his life. But they were there, and Charlie was here.
He tried to remember his mom’s words from that morning, but as he took a step forward, Charlie felt someone lightly push him on his right shoulder. Raising his head and turning, he saw Yellow Shirt behind him, laughing. “Hey, meat!” he crowed. “Why wouldn’t you throw the football with me? You too good for me?”
Charlie turned back toward the front of the line and hung his head.
“I don’t think he wants to play, man,” one of the sycophants chortled.
“What’sa matter, sissy boy?” Yellow Shirt chuckled.
Charlie felt the ire rise first in his shoulders. It was always thus. It started there and crept - slowly sometimes - into his neck, up his cheeks and through the top of his head. His lips tightened and his fists clenched almost involuntarily. But the sensation didn’t last long today. It never did, but it always felt like an achingly hot wasabi sprinting through his blood. Charlie sighed and stared at the floor.
Until.
A small tap in the middle of his back let Charlie know that Yellow Shirt had just spit on him.
“Thirty seconds left in the 4th quarter, the Giants down by 5 and a first down at the nine!” Cipolla sounded a little guttural today, Charlie thought, but still in fine voice. “Tarkenton fades back! Everyone is covered! Tarkenton scrambles, fakes to Jones in the corner and lunges for the goal line! TOUCHDOWN, GIANTS! TOUCHDOWN GIANTS!! With seven seconds left, the Giants lead by one!”
Opening his eyes widely, Charlie turned to face his challenger. “What’er YOU gonna do?” Yellow Shirt taunted, as he pushed Charlie to the floor. “Stay down there, meat! I’m warning you! DO NOT GET UP!!”
If Charlie’s dad had taught him anything it’s that champions never stay down, but instead they always rise to the occasion.
So, deliberately, and slowly, Charlie rose until he stood nose-to-chin with Yellow Shirt. “Don’t do that,” he said, “and don’t call me meat.”
Yellow Shirt snorted, displaying buttery teeth that matched his shirt. “And you gonna stop me, meeeeaaaaatttt?”
Almost instinctively, the ire rose again. This time, however, effortlessly, and dangerously closer to the denouement. Before he knew it, Charlie’s fist crashed into Yellow Shirt’s cheek, causing spit and blood to sail carelessly across the gym floor like a crimson summer sprinkle. Yellow Shirt hit the floor like a sack of old, rotten potatoes, and didn’t wake up until the gym teacher arrived and put a smashed packet of smelling salts under his nose.
“Honey!” Charlie’s mom shouted out the back door. “It’s almost time for the game to start!”
Since the day Charlie first played football, his mom kept statistics and newspaper clippings of the Giants. She was a Giants fan from long ago. But more importantly, to her at least, she knew Charlie was, too.
“Ok, mom!” he said as he raised his hand and waved. “Thanks!”
Charlie threw the ball in the air and caught it before leaping one last time and landing in his piles of snow.
His offensive line.
His touchdown.
“It’s an unbelievable come-from-behind victory for the Giants!” he boomed, as the cheer of the crowd roared from the back of his throat. “It’s a story for the ages!”
Charlie picked himself up and dusted the snow from his trousers. Walking to the rabbit hutch, he grabbed the broken radio and headed inside after another tough-fought battle.
“How’d your game turn out this week, honey?” his mom asked as she took the kettle off the stove and poured his hot chocolate, adding three marshmallows as a special treat.
“The Giants win again, mom!” Charlie boasted.
“The Giants win again!”
