Jim Shepard - Like You'd Understand, Anyway

Which he'd also think was funny. He said he wanted to test the welfare state. That's what he tells relatives when they ask if he's found anything yet.

My mom's brothers and sisters are the ones who ask. My dad only had one brother, and we don't know where he is, either.

“What about Wal-Mart?” my mom'll say. “They're hiring.”

“I could be a greeter,” my brother'll say. “Welcome to fucking Wal-Mart.”

My mom doesn't think he should work for Wal-Mart. She thinks he should go to college out of state, maybe back up north. She says he has a God-given brain. He would've had scholarships to Kent State and Utah State, but he tanked on his grades his senior year. He comes to the games partway through the first half and sits on the opponent's side. He takes credit for my being All-State. He's probably right. By the time I got to Pop Warner, when kids my own age would hit me, I'd be like: please.

Wainwright's brother, meanwhile, recovered a big fumble against the Ravens on opening day. His family gets the NFL package so they can watch his games. Every time Wainwright gets another award, his dad tells him, “Well, if you turn out to be a tenth of the player your brother is, I'll be happy.”

“I think you're a tenth now,” I told him once we were alone, the first time I heard his dad say that. He didn't say anything back. Later that night he took a couple of his parents' tropical fish out into the driveway and fungoed them into the neighbor's yard with his old wiffle bat.

We lost our conference championship to Childress last year when I got beat deep halfway through the second half and neither team scored again. I was only helping out on a two-deep coverage, but still. They went on to the 5A Finals. This year their stadium cups feature a photo of their wide receiver running down the sidelines with a number 47 chasing him. Number 47 is me.

Port Neches-Groves lost in the Bi-District round anyway, which made me feel a little better.

Big Coach and Childress's coach have a bet going every year and the winner gets this butt-ugly hassock that has our colors, blue and white, on one side, and their colors, orange and brown, on the other. The two booster groups made it together. All fall Big Coach has been yelling at us that he wants to be able to put his feet up again after a hard day of motivating sad sacks in the heat.

And Wainwright and me have decided that we're not losing as juniors. Anybody who's not on board for that — anybody who dogs it in practice, or shies away from going for a ball over the middle, or is a pussy about being hurt — hears from us. One guy we cornered in the showers. He kept crying and calling us faggots but he got the message.

Our offense blows but our defense gets more and more awesome.

Our first nine games we've given up 55 points — a little over 6 a game — and that's because Big Spring, who we opened with, scored 18 on us off turnovers. Besides Wainwright and me we got Nunez and Swearington and Stribling and that's just in our front seven. And we're all maniacs. Our nickel back tackled his great aunt when he was five years old. She walked through the front hall to give him a hug and he took her out. He says she bounced back strong.

But here's the thing: I'm sleeping less and less. I can't sit still. Something's fucking me up from the inside.

“What do you mean?” my mom says when I tell her something weird's going on.

“I don't know,” I tell her.

“Is it something physical?” she says. “You wanna go to a doctor?”

“It's mental,” my brother calls from the TV room.

“You're not helping,” my mom calls back.

“I have no idea where your father is,” she tells me. “I'd tell you if I did.”

I'm just keyed up early, is Wainwright's opinion. Even so, he gives me that look, the one the kid we cornered in the showers probably saw.

In the Floydada game, he did something in a pileup that made me ask if he was nuts when we were coming off the field and he ignored me the rest of the game. I kept to myself after that. I didn't hear from him and he didn't hear from me. I don't need you , I thought. But then it was like whatever control I had went away.

I e-mail the guy who sells boats in Michigan: This is my name. Are you my dad?

I have to e-mail him again before he e-mails back Heck No.

“Don't you wonder if he's living in Beaumont?” I ask my brother.

“You know what I heard?” my brother says back. “I heard that that kid is such a great running back because his father loves him so much.”

Before every practice we're supposed to come up with what Big Coach calls a Fact from History or Science. His father was a superintendent of schools and he's big on people knowing something. Mine on Thursday practice the week before Childress week is that according to surveys, ten percent more young people in America this year have felt like they were going to go nuts than ten years ago.

“Where'd you get this ?” Big Coach wants to know, fingering my scrap of paper.

I show him: Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of Total Health Program.

Port Neches-Groves's Web site's mailbag link is going all spastic all week because the entire starting backfield — Corey and Cody Clark, the quarterback, and Michael Thibodeaux, the fullback— are all hurt and Clark and Thibodeaux out at least a week and smart money says that that's the end of the line with powerhouse Port Arthur coming up.

“What's the matter with you ?” my brother asks when he finds me in his room, squatting on the floor. I'm naked. It's three in the morning.

I couldn't sleep, I tell him.

“What, you think you're gonna be more fucked-up than me, too?” he goes. He says it like if he could kill me, he would.

I just squat there, shocked by his voice.

“You wanta feel sorry for somebody? Feel sorry for me,” he says. When I look at him his eyes are all teared up.

“What's wrong?” my mom wants to know when she comes downstairs to make coffee. We're both in the kitchen. I put on some sweatpants and a shirt when I got too cold. The sun's up and the dog's out.

She sees me shivering and turns up the heat. “Nobody answers anymore?” she wants to know. “Maybe I should shout all the time?” she asks, when nobody says anything.

She leaves the room and comes back with a desk drawer she upends over my plate. Pencil stubs, old photographs, rubber bands, tacks. “Your father's stuff,” she tells me, exasperated. “Knock yourself out.”

Nobody in the photos is him. There's a bill from 1987 for some dry cleaning.

I even go to the school nurse. “I feel like—” I tell her when it's my turn. That's as far as I get. It's not like if I found him anything would be any better.

“Tryin' to get outta practice?” Wainwright asks me later in the hall. He has eyes in the back of his head. He dips a shoulder towards me and I flinch.

I come free on a blitz in practice that afternoon and I'm about to decapitate our starting QB when our fullback puts his helmet into my sternum. “Who blacks out on a chest hit?” Wainwright asks when I come to. I'm somewhere where everything's white. He says I'm black and blue from my throat to my stomach. He pulls back the sheet and hospital gown and shows me with a hand mirror.

“Thank God,” my mom says to herself when she sees me. She had to come from work. My brother's not with her. It's killing her, I can tell.

Can I play with a bruised sternum? The doctor's on the fence about it. He says we can wait and see. Big Coach says it's my call. I rest all weekend and I'm held out of practice Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I can go and watch, anyway. Already it's like I'm not even on the team. For an hour nobody's on the same page and Coach stands there doing a slow burn until finally he tells the defense that since they're not thinking maybe it's because they're not getting enough blood to their heads. He makes them all do handstands until he tells them to stop. Wainwright's is like a statue. He points his toes.