Football Tryouts

Brand new saddle shoes and penny loafers clicked across the linoleum checkerboard floor tiles on the first day of the new school year, while the black and white students sat at segregated tables in equally patterned sections in the high school cafeteria.

Vats of pale vegetables, alongside mashed potatoes and unnaturally colored meats steamed untouched, while the students pushed trays past them to collect the cookies, apples and cartons of milk. Acne-faced boys told fantastic lies to each other while the girls, in long skirts and cat eye glasses chattered loudly.

All of the high school kids, black and white, sneaked glances at the new student, a tall black boy who scuffled in a slow walk toward the back, integrating the table next to the trash cans where the white student outcasts sat .

"Excuse me" bellowed from the double doors of the hallway, blowing through the cafeteria like a fall breeze.

“Welcome back!”  A tall white man in a blazing orange sweater and matching hat held up a hand as he limped into the room on a twisted club foot. Narrow shoulders slumped over a potbelly, while he carried a football tucked under his arm.

“Hey Coach Phillips, how we lookin’ this year? We goin’ to beat Tech?” A voice called out from the front.

Coach Phillips’ spun tight toward the student speaking, two lurching steps and he stood in front of him, eyes dark, forehead low. He waited while the cafeteria went silent, only some shuffling of slacks on the worn benches broke the silence. 

“1952 is our year!” Coach Phillips shouted.

A cheer sprang up from the students.

“With the right players, and a lot of work- Mack is going to kick their butts and take the Oakland title this year!”

Spit and vigor sprayed from the lips of the physical education teacher, and football coach. He turned to the cafeteria. “Who's with me!”

“Go Mack! Mack Attack! McClymond's Warriors!” the students screamed and stomped, hands banging on the tables.

As Coach’s hands went up, the students quieted down. “Sorry to interrupt your lunch, I know for most of youse that's the only class you’re passing today!”

Laughs rang out around him. 

“I want you all to know,” his eyes caught on a table full of girls, “we’re having football tryouts today.” He walked over to their table, and placed his hand on a blonde girl’s shoulder, rubbing, slow and methodical. The girl’s body stiffened, and her jaw clenched. 

“We need some new blood after last year’s seniors graduated. Do you girls want to play? He leaned in closer, his eyes leering down low cut blouses. 

“Youse might be better than some of the pansies on last year’s team!” He said. “So if you want to show some school spirit, come on out…” 

Coach Phillips stepped toward the door, with one last glance back.

“Hey, what do we have here?” He stopped mid stride, his gaze toward the back of the cafeteria. “What’s your name, young man?”

Like flowers toward the sun, every boy’s face turned up at this, desperate to be in the gaze of the Coach, except for the new student sitting at the back table. The black student’s head, almost a foot higher than the white students next to him, curled down toward an open book. Shoulders like rounded boulders pulled his sweater tight across his wide chest.

“Hey you! In the back, the negro.” Coach Phillips said.

The black boy’s body tightened, then in a slow motion he looked up, pushing his glasses tight up against his face.

“Ya you.” Coach Phillips pointed. “Have we met before?”

“No sir.”

“You look familiar. What‘s your name?” Coach Phillips shouted across the cafeteria.

“Jackson sir. Jackson Jones.” a deep baritone rumbled out. 

“Do you play ball Jack?” The rest of the cafeteria sniggered. Who didn’t play ball?

“Yes sir, I can play ball. Just depends on what kind.” Jack said. 

Coach Phillips pulled out the football from under his arm and held it up, mimed throwing it with soft motions.

Jack tilted his head, his expression blank. 

Coach Phillips reached back, twisting, and then let the football fly. Coach never could throw straight, and he didn’t now. The football, a spinning brown bullet, flew across the cafeteria whizzing above the seated students. To the left of Jack at his table a thin white boy named Paul sat transfixed. His hair, seeming to understand the trouble headed its way, stood straight up, while Paul’s eyes, grew wide, huge white walled tires surrounding the blue hubcaps of his eyeballs as the flying projectile coursed toward him

The football most likely would have broken his nose. The boys in the engineering class worked it out later, a classic physics problem; mass times acceleration equals force. A 15 ounce ball traveling at 20 miles per hour equals Paul’s cracked nose and two black eyes.  But the football never reached Paul.

A black arm reached out, as fast as a snap judgment, to catch the ball in elegant long fingers with a pop.

The football in the black hand hovered in front of Paul, almost as if showing the ball that would have, should have, broken his nose and definitely would have made him the laughing stock of the school, a calculation he himself made later that day.

The offending football hung in front of Paul for a long moment before Jack pulled the ball back onto the cafeteria table and looked at it, then up at Coach. 

Jack handed it to the student near him, nodding for him to hand it up to the front of the cafeteria just as he would turn in a class assignment. A pop quiz that he had taken, and passed with flying colors.

Coach Phillips took off his bright orange ball cap, brushed his hand over his crew cut hair, then put his hat back on with a low whistle.

“We gotta get you out on the field, boy! We can use hands like that, and a build like yours. With you on the team we’ll win every game...” Coach’s eyes unfocused, looking out onto his dream of victory.

Coach Phillips collected the ball, passed hand to hand back to him, and then scuffled toward Jack, gesturing with the ball, a downing rod finding his perfect athletic specimen.

“I know you boy.” Coach Phillips nodded. “I’ve coached hundreds of boys just like you. “You’ve been working with your hands since you were knee high to a bull. You came up from the South with your parents here to Oakland to work on the Port, supporting the war, right?”

“And those shoulders, that build, you’re daddy played ball too huh?”

Jack looked up sharp, his eye finally catching Coach Phillips’.

“Or did you even know you’re daddy? Probably not. Never you mind. Come play for me son. I’ll be your daddy. I’ll make you a hero.” Coach dragged his club foot against the linoleum tiles the last few steps toward Jack’s table.

“You don’t know? I can’t…” Jack said, his eyes on Coach Phillips, before he shook his head. “No. I don’t want to play football.”

“Don’t want to play!” Coach Phillips burst out laughing throwing both hands up.

 “Everybody loves football.” He pointed to Paul, eyes still wide. “Do you want to play?” 

Paul blinked, sat up straight, a grin cracking his narrow face in two. 

“Heck yah!”

“See. Even skinny white boys want to play!” Coach’s thick stubby finger shook in the air. “You should play for me. Play for your school!  These girls here will love you. You’ll be beating ‘em off with a stick!” Coach Phillips waved toward the table of girls.

 “A big boy like you, think of the glory! Have some fun ‘fore you have to get a job in the factory.”

Coach leaned in. “There’s a war going on over in Ko-rea. They’re drafting boys like you. This is your chance.”

 He thrust his finger in the air, rallying his team.  

“Come on son, do it for yourself, do it for your school!” He shouted.

The rest of the students couldn’t help themselves, they had been trained by their parents, their teachers, and this Coach to sacrifice for their team. They knew what to do.

A giant yell echoed off the hard walls. “Ya! Go Warriors!”

Oh McClymonds, oh McClymonds, you’re the one school for me…” the students sang in unison.

“Why’s a negro only good for sport, or to work?” Jack said, so quiet only Paul and the Coach heard. “We have minds too.”

“What did you say?” Coach said

“You don’t know me at all. I can go to college.” Jack spoke louder now, and the students quieted down to listen. “ I will go to college.”

“I will apply to get a scholarship for academics, to become an engineer.” Jack said.

Coach Phillip's mouth gaped open, his eyes squinting to try to see this future, unimaginable to him. “But you aint nothing but a negro?”

“Yes sir, I'm that too. You see me as just a body, just someone to run, jump, catch a ball. I can do anything, sir and I‘m going to be an engineer-”

“ An en-gi-neer?” Coach Phillips interrupted, rapping a heavy class ring on the cafeteria table.  “Come on down off that high horse young man. Come on down here to where the grass is green, the sky is blue and black boys clean the floors, take out the trash and play foot-ball. You ain’t going to be no en-gi-neer!”

All the students turned to look back at Jack. The white kids nodded, their lips pursed in agreement with Coach. They began sitting up a little higher because they knew they were not black, they were not destined to clean floors and take out the trash. Even Paul, on the bottom rung of the school hierarchy, straightened his shoulders and smiled a little.  

I'm better than that. Paul’s smirk said. Society has chosen winners and losers and I’m one of the winners, no matter how you add up the math.

The black kids sat still, hoping not to be noticed, understanding the truth of what the Coach said, though no white teacher had ever laid it out in quite those words, in quite that way. 

“This is your chance, boy.” The Coach said. ”God gave you a talent, the size and hands to be good, no great at the sport of football.” Coach leaned over to set his thick hand on the cafeteria table. “Look at me. I was born with a club foot, it dictated my life. I couldn’t play no sport, get no real job. The army wouldn't even have me in the war. My foot chose me, like your talents chose you. You got a chance, and you're going to throw it away for some, dream?” Coach Phillips leaned in even closer. “It aint never going to happen boy. The world is the way it is. It ain't fair to you with your black skin and it ain't fair to me with my damn foot. But we got to live with it.”

“No.” Jack said. “If the world don’t change, then I guess I’m going to have to change it.”

Now the black kids began to stir, a pride lifting up their heads and filling their chests.

“Amen,” rang out, and “you tell him Jack!”

“There's more to me then you see. I'm going to college, and I won't be playing football.”

The Coach stood up, pulled his hat off, and put it back on, pulling it down hard over his head.

“The choices you make today, are goin' to decide your life, you'll see. I seen the likes of you before. Goin' end up on the street.”

 He pulled out a few crumpled fliers from a back pocket and threw them at Paul.

“Pass these out. Football tryouts this week. He looked around the cafeteria one more time. "Cross country too,” he spit out, “if you’re too scared to play ball.”  

When the bell rang, the students filed out, many of the black students nodding at Jack as he stayed seated in the back. He carefully picked up the flier for football tryouts, smoothing out the creases on the table and reading each word. 

Finally Jack stood, saving the flier in his bag. He set his chin, and began to walk, limping out of the cafeteria, his club foot trailing behind him.