Philipp Winkler - Hooligan

I wade through the hip-high grass, which keeps wrapping around my legs as I go. I’m lucky. There’s no light coming out of the kitchen. And because there’s a clear sky with a moon that’s nearly full, I don’t need a flashlight to see. In the twilight, the coop seems like a bulky, black torture chamber where people get locked away or suffocated or something. The monotonous cooing of the pigeons only reinforces this impression. Can’t get over the fact I’m doing this. Just hope none of the neighbors looking over the fence sees me sneaking around the garden. They’d call the cops because they’d think I was breaking in.

All at once, the grass in front of me rustles and something scurries away. It causes a very slight furrow to form that closes soon after. Then, at the end of the garden, a cat jumps onto the fence and looks back. The pair of eyes glow at me. Then it hops down over on the other side and disappears. “Fleabag,” I whisper, and though I don’t believe in that kind of bullshit, I can’t help but see it as a bad omen. I want to walk over to the patio because I assume the bucket with pigeon feed is there, when something squelches under my foot. I raise it. A black, formless blotch is visible.

“Oh, no way.” I whisper a curse because I think I’ve stepped in a pile of shit. The stench creeps into my nose, but it’s not the stench of feces. It smells of rot. I risk a glance into the kitchen. Everything’s still dark. Then I whip out my phone and light up the pile.

“What the hell?” I bend lower so I can better make out what I’ve stepped in. Then my phone nearly flies out of my hand when I see it’s a dead mole I’ve squeezed the innards out of irreversibly.

“Holy shit,” I say and have to gag because I get a full dose when I inhale. I take two quick leaps out of the high grass and over to the flattened area in front of the coop. I spit a couple times and scrape the sole of my shoe on the patio flagstones. Bits of the mole still cling to it.

I quietly curse my sister and father, and most of all myself for agreeing to this, but there wasn’t any point. I’m here now anyway. And I don’t want the birds to have to crouch in their own filth and catch something from some bacteria or something. It’s not the pigeons’ fault, any of that.

And still, with the feed bucket I found on the patio in hand, I take a couple deep breaths and grab my crotch to reassure myself I still have the necessary balls before opening the door to the coop.

The pigeons look at me with their beady, seemingly dead eyes. All of them focused on me. As a kid, I never noticed how one of those tiny, black eyes can make you pretty nervous. Then all this calm cooing from every side. As if they were scheming something. I try not to think about it anymore and let my gaze sweep over the rows. All sitting in their roosts. None of them croaked yet. I shine the light from my phone on them, and then I notice my mistake: how the hell can I clean out the roosts when the pigeons are sitting in them? There aren’t any newspapers on the ground I can just change in. I’m a fucking idiot!

“Fuck it. You can take a couple more days the way you are,” I say and decide the coop isn’t too full of feces. I bend over to reach the water and food trays, and that’s when I make the next mistake. My gaze hits the opposite wall. At that spot. That very goddamn spot. For a moment, I can’t move anymore. Like I’m frozen. I will myself on with some sort of inner strength, reaching for the tray. Spilling water and some of the feed. Whatever. Just get it done! I quickly fill the long tray with feed. Set the bucket back down. Go over to the side of the house. Dump out the old water and put in new. Put it in the coop. Close the door. It sticks. The old rusty hinges catch somewhere. I push against it with all my might. The brittle wood creaks and finally gives way. I slam the door. Simply leave the bucket standing in the coop. Just get outta here. Get the images out of my head. I cross the grass and weeds with long strides. The tops of plants are hanging from my jeans, and I hear my beating heart in my throat. Only when I’m sitting in my car does my heartbeat slow.

That weekend, while we were at Timpen watching the Bundesliga live scores, like every year we had a discussion about whose turn it was to get the wreath or bouquet. And just like every year, we’d all forgotten who’d taken care of it the year before. I thought it was me, but I couldn’t prove it. So this week I called up our regular florist to order a wreath in green, white, and black. Even though 96 was always called the Reds, because that’s what they took the field in, those were the team’s official colors. I picked Kai up at the station and together we drove to Luthe. To the cemetery on the edge of town, near the fields between Luthe and Wunstorf.

Jojo and Ulf are already waiting at the gate. We greet each other, and I get the wreath in 96 team colors from the trunk.

Why’d you dress so fancy?” Ulf asks Kai, who looks down at himself. He’s wearing a tight-fitting black shirt. Sleeves rolled up. Black pants and black Lacoste shoes.

“You’re not gonna get started on that. Heiko was saying the same thing in the car.”

“He’s not getting buried again, right?” Ulf joked.

“You should be able to dress up for once to honor a deceased friend, you fucktard. Am I right, Jojo?”

We turn to Jojo. He’s standing at the edge of the field, one hand forming a canopy for his eyes, looking over the fields at the sky.

“Something’s brewing over there,” Kai says and peers in the same direction. We’ve been having heat thunderstorms nonstop since the beginning of the month, but unfortunately they only bring brief periods of cooling. It’s still so unbearably hot you could change your sweaty clothes three times a day.

“The shoes are still hanging there,” Jojo says, without shifting his gaze.

We follow his gaze. Only when you protect your eyes against the sun and look very closely can you see the shoes hanging from the power lines in the glaring light.

“That’s unbelievable,” Kai says. We’re standing in a row at the edge of the field and shielding our eyes, “that they’re still hanging there.”

“Almost ten years,” I say.

“And they haven’t fallen down,” Ulf says.

“Or no one took them down.”

“Almost ten years,” Jojo murmurs to himself. Maybe just to realize for himself what an eternity has gone by.

I kneel down and place the new wreath in front of Joel’s grave. In the meantime, the sun has retreated somewhere behind the clouds. There’s a creaking sound in the distance. I rejoin the semicircle made by my friends and clasp my hands over my crotch like the others, head bowed. No one says anything.

Even after nearly ten years, I feel strange standing here like this. I’m guessing the feeling won’t ever go away. How bizarre is it to stand in front of a polished slab of stone representing a person six feet underground? I feel the sweat collect between my fingers, and I stare at the tombstone. Joel Seidel. Seventeen years lay between his birth and death. Seventeen pitiful years. Out here in the cemetery, I’m always aware of how long Joel’s been dead. Precisely here. When we come together to memorialize him. Whenever I come here, he dies again. Because out there in my normal life I think he’ll call any minute, come over with Jojo, or we can go see him at practice. Admire his dribbling skills again. Bernd Schneider. Ansgar Brinkmann. The white Brazilian… my ass! Joel Seidel, that was the white Brazilian! The dribbling machine from Luthe. Here in the cemetery, his face disappears before my eyes.

No one says anything. Maybe others mourn differently. Someone says something to the deceased. Gives a speech. Reels off an anecdote. We do that too. But not here. We can’t think of anything as soon as we walk through that gate. No one dares say anything. And so we’re standing here, hands clutched in front of our balls as if we were forming the wall on a free kick. He could do free kicks like no other. Direct free kicks. Bent into the corner. Roberto Carlos from Lower Saxony. I could say all of that. But I don’t. I don’t know why. I just stand there, stare at the ground, and feel strange.