The Corn Husk Experiment Page 2

  Kenny had lost the battle that night just as he did on nearly every other. Hostess Natasha had picked them up herself in her vehicle, got tipsy after two games of Beirut, and as a parting gift tossed Kenny and Lindsay her keys so they could get themselves home.

  On this rainy evening, Kenny worried that Natasha once again drank too much to drive. Apparently, it didn’t take much. He knew his wife well and could predict how she’d react to the situation. Her moves were as predictable and sobering to him as they were unpredictable and wild to everyone else.

  “Linds, I don’t feel so good,” Natasha managed through hiccups.

  Lindsay recalled an old high-school sweetheart named Rory who had inadvertently ended many of their evenings together from uncontrollable hiccups. Rory was a fine guy, but he wasn’t Kenny. Lindsay wondered if Rory ever succeeded in getting his police officer badge. A smile spread across her stunning face as she thought about Kenny’s new manufacturing work at Harper. Feeling proud of her successful husband, she took a final sip of her apple martini in lonesome celebration before offering to take Natasha’s keys.

  Lindsay would succeed, at least, in getting her friend home.

  “Night babe,” Lindsay whispered to the passenger, who stepped down from her own vehicle and skidded off the side of one of her black faux-leather high heels.

  As the young lady left Lindsay to fend for herself, a deep feeling of regret became Lindsay’s only passenger.

  “What a mess,” she announced to no one as she worked her way back onto I-95 to begin her drive home in the empty, unfamiliar vehicle.

  The young mother rarely had an opportunity to drive, but when she did, she preferred doing it in silence. There were few sounds more peaceful to Lindsay than the steady humming of tires against the pavement and the clicking of an occasional blinker. On this rainy evening, the wipers joined the soft, sleepy chorus.

  Lindsay grimaced at the wipers as her hands found the wiper switch especially complicated on this night.

  The rain pounded faster. The wipers swished too slowly. The vehicle approached Pawtucket’s well-known S-curve too quickly.

  Lindsay fumbled with the switch.

  Despite traveling on the interstate thousands of times as a native Rhode Islander, she failed to react precisely to the curves now. With the car speeding through them, Lindsay yanked the wheel too far left, forcing the loving mother and wife officially out of control. The vehicle sailed across the wet pavement as pictures of little Caroline and Kenny flashed through her fiery head.

  The brutal impact of a concrete barrier drove the front half of the vehicle inward like the nose of her pug dog, leaving Lindsay’s locket as one of the few items remaining intact on the front seat of the car.

  Without a word, Kenny slowly motioned Officer Rory inside toward the family’s modest living room.

  The policeman felt frozen in discomfort as he peered inside at the couple’s lives and remembered only one of his chief’s recommendations. “Get to the point quick. Darn quick.”

  Rory swiftly removed his drenched police cap and coat and held them close to his body. He didn’t look for a place to hang his prized new police garments as he numbly crossed the threshold. They didn’t matter much to him now.

  “Please have a seat, Ken,” the officer said gently.

  Upstairs, hugged by her favorite blanket, Caroline listened to each word about her mother’s death. The night marked the first time she heard her father cry. He didn’t just cry, she noted. His tears came and went in stormy eruptions.

  The reality of what she overheard the cop explain to her father didn’t sink in as quickly for her. She wasn’t as prepared for this night as he had been. She wondered what to do. She heard the nice policeman offer to make her father a cup of tea from their kitchenette. She heard her father decline. She pictured what her mother would do whenever Caroline had a nightmare. With each heavy step of the police officer’s boots toward the door, the girl tiptoed to the bathroom to fill a flowered paper cup with tap water.

  Spilling a few drops along the hallway, she retrieved a pair of shiny black Sunday shoes from her modest closet. They might need to go somewhere or do something or see someone, she thought. She would be ready. Her father wouldn’t have to instruct her. She felt a purpose, although she didn’t fully comprehend that she was now the woman of the house.

  Her little shoes clip-clopped down the flight of thirteen stairs as she joined her father, who sat slumped in pain in his armchair. The vision of the red-haired, miniature Lindsay with pink pajamas, black Sunday shoes, and an outstretched arm offering the tiny cup of water didn’t soothe him. Caroline’s innocence only made the unbearable night that much more so. As Kenny stretched an arm out to hold her, he swallowed his daughter’s gift in an empty-feeling half gulp and crushed the paper madly with his giant fist.

  The tender moment would mark only the beginning of their rocky road as a pair, and Kenny would never know just how treacherous Caroline’s side of the road would get.

  CHAPTER 2

  DEVIN

  The Gifted One

  On the evening of Kenny and Caroline’s loss of the greatest kind, a little figure neither of them knew sat in a backyard atop a barn-red wooden picnic table as the weight of grand expectations lay heavily on his small but growing chest.

  The sun had begun its descent behind rows of matching, quiet homes in the Chantilly, Virginia, neighborhood. The stillness of the evening had the opposite effect on the boy as he fidgeted on the worn, splintered table. His knees poked out of a cross-legged position showing little bruises typical of a playful eleven-year-old.

  Devin shared little else in common with the other boys his age. His play, already as a pre-teen, was beginning to feel more like work.

  A United Airlines Airbus took flight from Dulles International Airport and zoomed loudly over Devin’s home. The boy peered upward and recalled a day when he was six years old and his parents had taken him on his first flight to Disney with his sister Jane. Times undoubtedly felt more carefree then, when his biggest worry was how long they’d have to wait in the lines.

  “When it comes to crowds and waiting for the rides, always stay left,” his instructive father had ordered.

  During the trip home from their family vacation, air had become trapped in Devin’s inner ear, making his eardrums push outward. His head had felt as though it would explode from the change in pressure. The sensation was not so different from how he was feeling on this autumn evening.

  “Devin, come on in and shower up, ya hear?” called his mother through the window. “You’ll need to start preparing for bed. Big day for y’all tomorrow.”

  Devin noted the jarring, singsong tone of the voice and thought of the grackle birds he often heard in their yard. He wondered why the outdoors sounded so nervously quiet tonight. The boy defiantly kept his gaze on the darkening sky. Just like the worry-free days at Disney, the plane he had been tracking was long gone. He was moments from turning in, but that wasn’t quick enough for his parents.

  Informally, Devin’s father had become his personal football coach the moment the boy had joined the local “ankle biter” football league a few years earlier. Football marked the end of Devin’s endless Virginia summers, when days had been filled at the local public pool with twirling baby-blue slides, undertones of squealing laughter, and snacks of frozen candy bars during the lifeguards’ breaks. There also used to be the muggy games of hide-and-seek throughout the horseshoe of backyards encompassing their cul-de-sac street until the sun began to fade as it did on this much heavier night. On rainy days, there had been Monopoly with school friends. Parents had treated Devin to sugary fruit punch and chocolate cookies with warm, proud smiles at a time when adults hadn’t yet received the pressure or knowledge to buy wholesome, organic foods.

  These days, Devin’s dirt bike spokes collected spider webs in the garage, and play times were a rarity. His fondest childhood memories were simply that: memories that had been replaced by sprints, agilit
y drills, arm work, and studying the much older high-school team’s practices.

  As friends enjoyed summer break, Devin’s work was just beginning. He had grown to accept that fact.

  Devin was the older of two children. He would learn from a therapist much later in life that the order in which he was born would feed into his perfectionism and willingness to please his parents through athletics. Devin would also learn that his tireless drive to succeed was largely due to his father’s and grandfather’s own failures to meet personal expectations on the football field. Like an heirloom diamond necklace, the family pressures had been handed down to Devin. It was up to him to change their football story now.

  Devin’s father made it much farther than most in the sport, yet his falling short in the most crucial of games still haunted him.

  During his own time on the field, he had earned the nickname of the Hustler for his speed and incomparable desire to win. The Hustler had played the wide receiver position well enough to be recruited by the collegiate Houston Cougars, a team that won nine out of twelve games during his senior year. The record was enough to earn them a date with Notre Dame at the Cotton Bowl.

  On the particularly frigid New Year’s morning of 1979, the Hustler had believed the bowl game was his final opportunity to bring glory to his family name.

  The field was so bitter cold that morning that the chill shot straight up through the soles of his cleats. His skin felt as though it could’ve been beneath old ski socks and boots after a below-zero day on windy slopes. His feet felt like ice blocks. The Hustler had been determined not only to win this game though, but also make the play of the year—one that would go down in the bowl statistics books. He demanded of himself a performance worthy of erasing the nagging failure from which his own father, Devin’s grandfather, still suffered.

  But in perhaps the most undesirable weather conditions, matter can eventually win over the mind. The joints from his ankles to the tips of his toes felt frozen in place. His knees felt more like the Tin Man’s than his own. The nagging chill made his acclaimed fast running much more rigid than usual. To compensate, he had stayed in constant motion, exercising and tuck-jumping on the sideline of each of the Cougars’ defensive plays.

  It would be the very thing that wore him down.

  The Hustler held his own through the beginning of the fourth quarter, when his Cougars led the Fighting Irish 34-12. While he hadn’t scored any touchdowns, he had succeeded at least in securing a handful of first downs in the first three quarters. His play was good, but not nearly the level of greatness he needed. He desperately jogged up and down the sidelines as his talented quarterback kept warm in a parka. True to his name, the Hustler’s desire appeared greater than anyone else’s on the frozen field.

  Everything had changed in the fourth.

  The Hustler broke away from his defensive man and managed to get open down the field. He raised a toned arm, turned, and locked eyes with his quarterback. As he pivoted to fly toward the end zone, his quarterback threw deep in a pitch-and-catch play the pair had practiced in their sleep. But unlike other practices or games, the Hustler’s speed decelerated. The ball landed in the right place—his quarterback did his job—but the Hustler failed to reach his spot in time. The failed play ended the Cougars’ offensive drive. The quarterback dropped his head in disappointment. The Hustler’s own helmet froze upright in a statue of shock.

  The weather at the prestigious bowl game had kept attendance down to 32,500 people, and a majority of the fans at the Dallas field rooted for the Hustler’s Houston Cougars. Despite the Hustler’s missed opportunity, there was still an air of confidence among fans who felt content with Houston’s double-digit lead and the dwindling time on the game clock. There were no boos rolling down the stands toward the Hustler.

  Instead, he would become his own worst heckler.

  No one in the stands, on the sidelines, or watching from rabbit-eared TV sets at home could have predicted that morning, even into the fourth quarter, that the game would take an extreme turn that would make it one of the most talked-about events in college bowl history.

  In addition to less-than-ideal football conditions, the opposing team’s quarterback had been battling the flu. The Fighting Irish leader’s temperature had dipped to only 96 degrees, and like the Hustler, he explored ways to overcome the weather, including eating some hot chicken soup on the sidelines. The unconventional move had helped him find new energy, and in the final minutes, he quickly led his team toward a shocking 35-34 win over Houston. In the end, the Hustler’s failed catch could’ve been the difference.

  The game had immediately became one for the ages and earned the name of “The Chicken Soup Comeback.” The Fighting Irish quarterback, Joe Montana, had gone on to become a legend. The Hustler’s relevance had seemed to disappear with the heat of leftover soup.

  On the eve of his eleven-year-old son’s season opener, the Hustler was growing anxious on the other side of the screened slider door.

  “Devin! Not a minute to spare now. You heard your mother. You need a good rest to beat the Generals. Let’s start the season off with a win, boy! Let’s go. Now!”

  If his mother’s voice resembled that of a grackle bird, then the deep tone of his father’s sounded just like a Virginia black bear. The boy hadn’t played the first game of the season, yet the Hustler’s vocals were already scratchy from growling recommendations over the sidelines of practice.

  Devin untangled his sleepy legs atop the picnic table and began removing his grassy cleats. Tying and untying the laces of his shoes had become so regular that he could probably tend to them with one hand while throwing a spiral with the other, he thought. His teammates recently nicknamed Devin’s cleats his “magic shoes” because the eleven-year-old player scrambled better in the pocket than most high-school quarterbacks. Devin could sprint faster than his team’s receivers. He naturally planted his pivot foot, the left one on the opposite side of his throwing arm, and pointed it perfectly toward his target.

  Devin’s natural gift didn’t end with his feet. He also had, among other things, a strong arm, a precise throw, and a strategic approach to the game. Becoming a star quarterback appeared to be the boy’s undeniable fate.

  Devin stepped into a steamy shower and washed away the dirt from practice. He wished the water could burn away his chilly stress as he shampooed his blond hair. From the tips of his magic shoes to the curls on top of his head, he was the Hustler’s golden child.

  The heat from the shower, combined with an omnipresent pressure to win, made the boy’s typically tan legs appear like pink pig’s skin. He dried himself with a royal purple-and-white striped towel and stepped into some matching polyester shorts. Inside and out, the young athlete was a Chantilly football player.

  Devin clicked off his bedroom light and began his nightly bedtime ritual. He tossed about beneath a thin sheet and a blanket of Virginia humidity as his mind raced through each of his plays.

  Nearby in the hallway, the Hustler eavesdropped over his son’s restlessness and recalled his own sleepless pre-game nights. He poked his head through the boy’s doorway, where in the dark of his bedroom, Devin pictured the black bear again: always listening, always rough, always in charge.

  “Still awake, huh?”

  Devin wasn’t sure if it was the rare hush in his father’s voice or if he was just overtired, but he felt relieved by the unexpectedly kind tone. It was a fatherly tone. The image of the bear disappeared as a mental vision of his aged, soft-spoken grandfather popped up in its place.

  “Dad, can you tell me the story of Grandpa’s loss?”

  Devin’s beloved grandmother had passed away a year earlier, but he wasn’t talking about her. He was referring to his grandfather’s own failed game that haunted him for years.

  The Hustler swallowed hard in the dark room before beginning the family story of 1942, a year when the world was in the throes of its second world war. Devin’s grandfather had played the defensive line in
Boston, a city that instantly became—and would continue to be for generations—the family favorite. The team had been undefeated, and to all fans, they appeared to be heading effortlessly to the Orange Bowl. The final obstacle between the team and the bowl spot was a match against fellow Massachusetts team and rival Holy Cross.

  It had appeared to be a small hurdle. Boston’s players boasted a 14-1 record. The Crusaders had a losing one, winning only four of their nine games that season. For followers of the game, Boston had its bowl game spot locked before the Holy Cross match ever began. The team’s victory party was already planned. The location was already set. Friends and family were in the mood to celebrate. Girls, including the date of Devin’s grandfather, were picking out their celebratory outfits from closets of plain, knee-length dresses to go along with a shade of “Victory Red” lipstick that was popular during the war.

  In the end, Holy Cross delivered an unexpected and decisive 55-12 win against Boston. Either the team’s defense failed or the Holy Cross offense prevailed. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Many times it’s both. Most times it’s the fault of the entire losing team, yet Devin’s grandfather had placed the failure solely on his own broad shoulders.

  “It was for the best,” the Hustler concluded.

  Devin shot up to a seated position on his bed.

  “For the best? When is a loss ever for the best? Dad, it was for a spot in the Orange Bowl!”

  The Hustler cleared his throat and thought for a second about the old man who taught him how to ride a bike, put on shoulder pads, and shave his first trace of a beard. He wiped away a single unexpected tear.

  “I think you’re old enough to know, boy, that something horrible happened after that game.”

  Devin leaned forward so he wouldn’t miss a word. His bruised and scraped legs shifted atop the smooth comforter.