LA MORENITA, Chapter 14

Norm didn’t go to any more soccer meetings, and he never attended any soccer matches. Maria drove Chad to all the practices and games and stayed to watch. She always returned with glowing reports about Chad’s progress and what a wonderful person Coach Babatunde was. But Norm didn’t care that Chad could run fast, kick hard with either foot, and had an innate sense of where he should be on the field in most situations. It didn’t matter to him that the coach kept moving Chad around from forward to midfielder to defender. He was just happy to have the house to himself on Sundays while everyone else was at mass or down at the soccer fields near Hanford High School.
When Chad’s team, The Sidekicks, qualified to play in the league semi-finals, Maria hounded Norm, reminding him he hadn’t seen Chad play all season. She promised that, if he went, she would fix a picnic lunch and put the lawn chairs and the chaise lounge in the back of the van. She said they could set up these up along the sidelines and eat while they watched Chad play soccer. “Can we bring beer?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Maria said. “I haven’t seen any signs saying you can’t.”
Faced with such a convincing argument, he agreed to go.
When they arrived, the two other semi-finals teams, the Riverdogs and the Wolves, were playing. Maria brought out Norm’s chaise lounge and set it up in a vacant space along the sideline, but Norm remained standing, trying to figure out how the game was played. He couldn’t make sense out of it. To him, the random scrambling of players had no logic behind it.
They all just seemed to be running after the ball until one of them got close enough to kick it. Then everyone would chase the ball some more until someone else kicked it again. The only thing he could think to compare it to was a cattle drive.
Eventually he sat down on the chaise lounge. Maria handed him a ham sandwich and a can of beer wrapped in a foam rubber cover that made it look like a can of soda pop. Araceli had already taken her own chair from the van and parked it next to her father. Maria moved her own chair to the other side of Norm. “Isn’t this exciting?” she said. When she looked into Norm’s eyes, she could see he wasn’t thrilled. She said, “Chad’s team is a lot better than these teams.”
Norm stared at the loose herd of players that alternately elongated then collapsed into a widely spread formation as everyone chased after the ball. He turned to Araceli. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think it’s boring,” she said. She opened up the book she had brought with her, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. She wondered if her parents would let her read it if they knew how many curse words were in it. She glanced over at her father, who had just finished his second beer and adjusted his chaise lounge so it was almost parallel to the ground. He looked as if he were trying to sleep. Seven minutes later the game was over, and the Riverdogs had beaten the Wolves by a 1-0 score.
“Those Riverdogs have a pretty good defense,” Maria said enthusiastically.
Norm opened his eyes and nodded.
Next, the Sidekicks came onto the field. After stretching and going through light calisthenics, they huddled in the end zone. Then, after shouting something Norm couldn’t understand, they ran onto the field and began kicking drills. A soft commotion rose from Sidekicks fans along the east sideline. Maria shook Norm and pointed. “Look, Norm,” she said.
“There’s Chad.”
Norm waved. “Give ’em hell, son!” He rolled over and closed his eyes.
As the other team—the Strikers—came onto the field and began their warm-up drills, a polite cheer rose from the other side. Norm made an attempt to see what was going on. When he couldn’t tell any difference between what was happening now and what happened before, he lay back and rested his eyes. Eventually, he fell asleep. A few minutes later, Maria reached over and shook him until he woke, anger flashed in his eyes. Then he relaxed.
“Look,” Maria ordered. “Look at Chad.”
Norm sat up and tried to watch, but Chad just looked like every other player chasing after the ball. Enthusiastically, Maria turned to Norm and smiled. Norm forced himself to appear interested and smiled back. Then he turned and looked at Araceli, who was waving her fist over head in a wide loop. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I just wondered what it would be like to swing a cat,” she said.
“Remind me never to buy you a cat,” he said. He settled back on his chaise lounge.
Near the end of the half, Maria reached over and poked Norm. “Isn’t this exciting?” She said again. She pointed to a scoreboard indicating that there were two minutes were left and thescore was tied, 0-0.
He gestured toward the scoreboard. “Is that a good score?” he asked.
“Yes,” she told him. She said most scores were like 6-1, 4-0, or sometimes, when both teams didn’t have a good goalie, 10-9 or 11-10.
He stared at the field, trying to generate interest in a game that had no strategy he could discern. Then, with less than a minute to go, the Sidekicks’ goalie scooped up an attempted kick by a member of the Strikers and flung it downfield. Chad, who was lurking on the right side, ran
to the ball and kicked it deep. Running to overtake it in front of the Striker’s goal was another Sidekick, a Haitian boy named Jean Claude, who kicked the ball into the far corner of the opponents’ net as Sidekicks fans went wild.
After the goal, time ran out on the other team trying to move the ball downfield, and the whistle blew.
“Is it over?” Norm asked.
“No,” Maria said. “That’s just the first half.”
Norm groaned, lay back and rested his eyes.
A little over twenty minutes later, Maria woke him. “Now the match is over,” she said. “We lost 4-3.” She glowered at him, indicating her displeasure at his falling asleep.
“Did Chad score any goals?” he asked.
“He didn’t play the second half,” she said.
“What?!”
After the game, Coach Babatunde was ecstatic in his praise of Chad’s play. He told Norm and Maria that no one else on the team could kick the ball as far or as fast.
Norm advanced on the coach. “If you think my son was that good, why the hell didn’t you play him in the second half?”
“Because somebody else needed a turn,” the coach said.
“But it’s the semi-finals,” Norm said. “Didn’t you think that winning would be more important?”
“No,” Babatunde said. “Not at all.”
On the ride home, Norm was still fuming. “That’s the end of this soccer crap,” he said to Chad. “From now on, you’re only playing American sports.”