David Morrell - Black Evening

Sure, we heard rumors, but we could never prove that the other team had taken it. We even heard that stealing the statue had been the rival coach's idea, a practical joke on his good old friend Coach Hayes.

Scoop put all this in the school newspaper Monday morning. Don't ask me how he found out. He must have been a better reporter than any of us gave him credit for. He even had a drawing of the statue, so accurate that whoever had stolen it must have shown it to him. Or maybe Scoop was the one who stole it.

Whoever. I feel partly responsible for the story he wrote. I must have made him curious when I went to see him and asked to look at the former issues of the paper. Maybe he checked and found out I'd handed him a line about a reunion game.

For whatever reason, he seems to have gone through the same issues I did – because he came up with the same pattern I'd noticed. Two losing seasons, then all of a sudden an unbroken string of winners. Because of Mumbo Jumbo? He didn't come right out and link the statue with the team's success, but you could tell he was trying to raise the issue. In every winning season, we'd lost only one game, and our score was always zero. In our winning games, however, we'd always had a lopsided spread in our favor, but the other team had always somehow managed to gain a few points. Coincidence, Scoop asked, or was there a better explanation? For evidence, he quoted from an interview he'd had with Price. He didn't bother mentioning that he had no witness for what had happened in the locker room in the years when Price wasn't on the team. His whole story was like that, making guesses seem like facts. Then he talked about Friday's game and how in the years since Coach Hayes had been showing the statue this was the first time we'd lost two games in one season. Perhaps because somebody stole the statue Friday night? Scoop repeated the rumor that the rival team had been responsible for the theft. We'd probably never know the truth, he said. He'd already described the few tiny holes in the statue, "the size of a pin, one of them over the statue's heart." Now several paragraphs later, he ended the story by mourning the rival coach who'd died from a heart attack on his way home from the game.

I wanted to get my hands on Scoop and strangle the little shit. All everybody in the lunch room talked about was how creepy it would be if the statue had really caused that coach's death, if someone had stuck a pin in Mumbo Jumbo's chest.

I don't know if Coach Hayes wanted to strangle Scoop, but for sure he wanted Scoop expelled. Every kid at school soon heard about the argument Coach Hayes had in the principal's office, his shouts booming down the hall, "Irresponsible! Libelous!" Scoop was smart enough to stay home sick all week.

By next Friday's game, though, Scoop was the least of our problems. The churches in town got worked up over Mumbo Jumbo. I read in the local paper how the school had received at least a dozen letters from local ministers, priests, and rabbis. One of the letters was quoted: "… superstition… unwholesome atmosphere… Satanism… counterproductive to education." My parents were so upset that they didn't want me to play in the game that night. I told them I couldn't let the other guys down, and as far as education was concerned, what about the B's and A's I'd been bringing home? If anything, the team had been good for me.

But this superstition crap was beginning to get to me, maybe because I still felt bothered by the weird things I'd been seeing on the field, things that seemed to happen before they happened. Could the statue really…? Or was Joey right, and I was only caught up in the speed and excitement of the game?

Enough already, I thought. Mumbo Jumbo. That describes it all right. It's a lot of bullshit. I had no way to know, of course, that this would be the last time Coach Hayes was allowed to bring out the statue. I did know this – I was sick of touching that creepy thing, and if I needed it to make me a good football player, I didn't belong in the game.

So after we dressed in the locker room and Coach Hayes insulted us and brought out the statue, I didn't touch it as the other guys did when we went out to play.

My right arm still aches when the temperature drops below freezing. The cast stayed on for almost three months. I hadn't been on the field more than thirty seconds, my first play of the game. I got the ball and pulled my arm back to throw, but I couldn't find an opening. And I never saw the four guys who hit me, all together at once, really plowing into me, knocking my wind out, taking me down, my arm cocked behind my shoulder, all that weight on it. I fainted. But not before I heard the cracks.

Saturday morning, Joey came to visit me in the hospital. He'd scored three touchdowns, he said. Through a swirl of pain, I tried to seem excited for him.

"Did we win?" I asked.

"Does the Pope live in Italy?" His grin dissolved. "About your arm…"

He said he was really sorry. I told him thanks.

He fidgeted. "How long are they going to keep you here?"

"Till tomorrow afternoon."

"Well, look, I'll visit you at home."

I nodded, feeling sleepy from the painkiller a nurse had given me. Rebecca came in, and Joey left.

He and I drifted farther apart after that. He had the team, and I had my broken arm. After the football season, he got a big role in a murder mystery the drama club put on, Ten Little Indians . Everybody said he was wonderful in it. I have to admit he was.

And me? I guess I let things slide. I couldn't take notes or do class assignments with my writing arm in a cast. Rebecca helped as much as she could, but she had to do her own work, too. I started getting C's again. I also got back in the habit of going down to the Chicken Nest, with Rebecca this time instead of Joey. Those cherry Cokes and fries with ketchup can really put weight on you, especially if you're not exercising.

The city newspaper reported on the meeting between the school board and Coach Hayes. They asked him to explain. He found the statue at a rummage sale, he said. Its owner claimed it was a fertility symbol that the Mayans or the Polynesians or whoever (the name of the tribe kept changing) had used in secret rituals. Coach Hayes said he hadn't believed that – not when its price was fifteen dollars. But he'd been looking for a gimmick, he said, something to work up team spirit, especially after two horrible seasons. A kind of mascot. If the team believed the statue brought them good luck, if the statue gave them confidence, so what? No harm was done. Besides, he said, he sometimes didn't bring the statue out – to teach the players to depend on themselves. The team had lost on those occasions, true, but as a consequence they'd tried harder next time. There was nothing mysterious about it. A dramatic gimmick, that's all. The point was, it had worked. The team had been winning championships ever since. School spirit had never been better.

"What about the statue's name?" a school board member asked.

"That came later. In the third winning season. One of the players made a joke. I forget what it was. Something about good luck and all that mumbo jumbo. The phrase sort of stuck."

The school board heard him out. They held up the stacks of letters from angry parents and clergy. Their decision was final.

To show that they were willing to compromise, they let him put the statue in the glass case with the trophies the team had won in the school's front lobby.

The rest of the season was brutal. We lost every game. Sitting with Rebecca on the sidelines, trying to show enthusiasm for the team, I felt terrible for Joey. You could see how depressed he was, not being a winner.

West High won the championship. Monday, the big news was that over the weekend somebody had smashed the glass in the trophy case and stolen Mumbo Jumbo. Nobody knew who had it, although all of us suspected Coach Hayes. He resigned that spring. I'm told he teaches now in upstate New York. I think about him often.