LA MORENITA, Chapter 15

The next year, Chad tried out for a youth football team, but not before Norm met the coach, a chunky, red-faced man in his early thirties named Russell Flanagan. Flanigan had been an offensive lineman for the Central Washington Wildcats in the early 1960s. “I’ve got one question for you,” Norm said when he met Flanigan. “How important do you think winning is at this age?”
“Age has nothing to do with it,” Flanigan said. “Like Vince Lombardi said. Winning is everything. If kids learn to be satisfied with just getting by, they’ll be losers all their lives.”
“Good,” Norm said. “I want my son to play for you.”
“Give me his name,” Flanigan said. “I’ll see he gets on my roster.”
Flanigan wasn’t sorry he drafted Chad. Chad became a receiver on offense and a cornerback on defense for the Flanigan’s Seahawks, which managed to win only one more game than it lost the entire season. This, despite the fact that Russ Flanigan did everything he could think of to make his team win. He always played his best eleven players, even though others on his bench were almost as good and not as exhausted. He expanded his playbook, making his team run as many as thirty different plays out of some version of a Tee, I-back, or shotgun formation, while most teams ran only six or eight basic plays out of a single formation. Whenever the team lost, Flanigan yelled at them and made them do extra calisthenics and laps as
punishment. He even swore at the boys and berated them in front of their parents. Yet, no matter what he did, the Seahawks stayed as mediocre as they were demoralized.
Chad didn’t mind the mediocrity, and the tirades of his coach didn’t sound much different from his own father’s tantrums. Mostly, he just liked hanging out with the other, mostly white players. In fact, he felt much more comfortable on the football team than he ever did on Babatunde Coffey’s soccer squad. He became close friends with another wide receiver, a rangy, tow-headed kid named Jimmy Casey, and the Seahawks’ tailback, a stocky, freckle-faced kid with hair the color of the sand in the volleyball pits at Howard Amon Park. His name was Jimmy Moseley. After the football season, the three of them hung around together, playing ‘Horse’ and joining in pick-up basketball games on the courts at the grade school near the Schmidt’s house.
One Sunday at the school yard, Chad spotted Araceli swinging on the swings. He smiled and waved at her. She smiled and waved back.
“Who’s that?” asked Casey.
“My sister,” Chad said.
“Really?” Casey said. “I didn’t know you were a wetback.”
Jimmy Moseley thought this was so funny he doubled over and held his sides. This made Casey laugh. Pretty soon they were both laughing so hard they collapsed onto the concrete surface of the basketball court and rolled around for the better part of a minute.
Chad blushed and looked away for a while. Then he turned back. “She’s adopted,” he said.
A week later, Chad saw Araceli walking by herself on the other side of the street coming back from a Saturday matinee at the Uptown Theater. He was with another friend from the football team named Billy Mitchell. When Mitchell saw Araceli, he yelled across, “Go back to Mexico, you dumb spick!” Embarrassed, Chad broke away and ran down a side street, but he
knew Araceli had already seen him.