Chris Bachelder - The Throwback Special

Trent lowered the ball to his eyes. “Gary,” he said.

The men applauded and whistled. Several men nudged Charles in the arms and ribs, presumably because chance had now given way to psychology, Charles’s métier.

Derek regarded the intricate patterns of the carpet.

“Hmmm,” Gary said, rubbing his chin and gritting his teeth and staring up at the ceiling in a grotesque pantomime of indecision. The men laughed and told Gary to fuck off.

“L.T.!” Gary shouted, beating his chest with his fists.

OUT OF HABIT, Robert checked his watch, but failed to perceive the time. He looked up, squinting into the shabby light of Carl’s projector. How is one to live? When Robert helped his wife prepare a nice meal, he invariably thought of all the dishes they would have to wash later. When he loaded the car for his family’s summer vacation to the beach, he thought of how unpleasant it would be to unpack the car a week later. Even if the family vacation was “fun”—and often it did contain pleasurable moments for Robert — it would soon be over. While it was happening it was ending . As soon as the vacation began, it was eroding. How do you enjoy something that has, by virtue of beginning, commenced its ending? How, for instance, do you put up a Christmas tree? (All those fragile ornaments, wrapped in tissue.) There was in fact no beginning, or middle. It was all end. How silly, then, to load the car, to drive eleven hours for something that was just going to be gone. Wouldn’t it be easier to remain at home? That’s where they would end up a week later, with their sunburns and sandy towels and a thousand digital pictures of that time — which year was that? — that they went to the beach. Everything that had happened to Robert in his life was over, and the things that had not yet happened were on their way to being over. Some would be over sooner, others later. He often looked forward to watching a game on television, but when the game started, it was ending, and so he could not enjoy the game. Robert glanced at Charles, who was scratching his armpit. He wondered whether Charles was respected by peers. When Robert heard a song he liked, he was aware that the song was dissolving in time, second by second. I like this third verse, he would think. Here comes the third verse. Here it comes. Then the third verse just evaporated. What did it even mean to like a song? There was no song. The song wasn’t there. It was just like that cocktail in the screened-in porch after a day of hot sun at the beach, the happy pink children eating watermelon, the handsome and serious wife reading a frivolous magazine, her feet propped up, her toenail polish flaking, a breeze coming through. It wasn’t there, either. Anything good that would happen to Robert would be converted instantaneously to something good that had happened. And something good that had happened was, because it was already over, something somber.

Tommy, who seemed to have withdrawn behind his mustache, was on the clock for the second pick of the lottery. The men waited, while Tommy rubbed his temple and squinted at the unfocused list of players projected on the wallpaper. There were, it should be said, different “schools of thought” regarding a post-Taylor selection. This was what the men said. They conceived of “schools of thought,” so that their decisions would be attributed not to their own deeply rooted and wholly individual fears and psychoses, but to an established external system. These schools of thought only very slightly resembled the real categories. Some men, for instance, just did not want to be on the offensive team. To be a Redskin, even a blameless wide receiver, was, for these men, to don the tainted uniform, to participate willingly in a campaign of spectacular demise. They would rather be the most insignificant player on a pillaging defense (e.g., Terry Kinard) than a Redskins player who was essential to the calamity. Other men, those who had taken drama in high school, or those who danced willingly at weddings and office parties, found a kind of tragic nobility in ruinous failure, and they were inclined to spend high lottery picks on Redskins players in the pocket, close to ground zero, even or especially those players who do their jobs poorly. Members of another group, who willingly allowed themselves to be mistaken for members of the previous group, were drawn to Redskins players out of a keen, if unrecognized, identification with disappointment and culpability and bumbling malfunction. Some other men were simply averse to periphery. These men did not care what uniform they wore. They wanted a central role, and they tended to select the most prominent and involved player remaining on the board, Redskin or Giant. There was of course a shadow group, whose members craved the familiar comfort of anonymity and insignificance — and feared responsibility and centrality — and yet tended to overcompensate for this shameful desire by choosing the most significant player available, and thus appeared to crave centrality and import. A couple of men, those with large contributions to their 401(k) plans, almost every year made an unexciting pick in preparation for next year’s selection. A final group, which consisted only of Steven, was composed of the dilettantes and aesthetes, men who chose players based on very specific and idiosyncratic qualities of uniform (tape, towel, wristband, face mask, cleats) or stance or movement. For these men, the play was not the thing; the play was not essentially communal, nor was it tragic or allegorical or even violent. The significance of the play was that it provided an opportunity to approach perfection by matching one’s own appearance and movement to a historical model. The small white towel tucked into Perry Williams’s pants, his crouch as he lines up across from Art Monk wide left, the strange jiggling dance he performs while waiting for the ball to be snapped. .

The bland optimism, high ceiling, and corporate sterility of the conference room would probably have mitigated the effects of Tommy’s facial hair, but here in the hot and crowded hotel room, his mustache acted as a pernicious depressant. A few men’s thoughts returned unpleasantly to the complicated and contentious eleventh-hour custodial negotiations that had allowed them to come this weekend. Without looking directly at Tommy, the men waited for him to make the second pick.

“Take your time, Tommy,” Trent said not unkindly, looking at the curtains. Trent’s comment had the effect not of putting Tommy at ease, but of making him more anxious. The toilet flushed, and the inordinately brief span between the flush and Gary’s emergence from the bathroom suggested that he had not washed his hands.

Tommy, overcompensating for a shameful desire to be insignificant, chose Redskins running back John Riggins, whom Jeff had once called “the vice president of the disaster.”

“Riggo!” Gil shouted.

“The veep!” Nate shouted.

“The Diesel!” Chad shouted.

“Well, yes and no,” Steven said. “The Diesel at age thirty-six, in his final year in the league. His yardage was way down.”

Riggins, along with center Rick Donnalley and Theismann, was a toucher. The Throwback Special was a flea flicker: Theismann handed to Riggins, who then pitched back to Theismann, who was then supposed to throw a forward pass but instead was broken into pieces by Taylor. Tommy, who this evening had already spilled two beers and a piece of pizza, had not considered that he would be handling the ball.

Trent picked Gil’s ping-pong ball from the pillowcase, and Gil, who had not been on the Redskins line in the past four years, was compelled by rule to select a lineman. Scowling, Gil chose right tackle Mark May, whom he considered not a good selection but the least terrible selection, given his options. Bald Michael, who had been Mark May three times, and Andy, who had been Mark May last year, made eye contact across the room. Gil was disappointed now, but he wouldn’t be for long. Once you had played May, you understood.