Black Evening

Mumbo Jumbo

That's what they called it: Mumbo Jumbo. You wouldn't think they could have kept it a secret all those years. But Coach Hayes made them promise, and he wasn't someone you crossed, so there weren't even any rumors. I didn't know the thing existed until my junior year in high school when I tried out for the football team.

I promised myself I'd be honest. Trying out wasn't my idea. It was Joey's. Sure, I liked to throw a football around as much as any other guy. But showing up for practice after classes every day?

"And don't forget the pain, Joey. You know what I'm talking about? Coach Hayes makes the team run two miles double-time before each practice. That's not counting all the jumping jacks and pushups and situps and God knows how many other ups he makes them do. For starters. Before they get down to the rough stuff. Agony, Joey. That's what I'm talking about. You're sure you know what you want to get us in for?"

We were having cherry Cokes and fries down at the Chicken Nest near the school. A lot of good times. Of course, the Nest's torn down now. Seven years ago, the city made it a parking lot. But I remember Joey bracking through a straw at the bottom of his Coke, squinting at me across the table. "Joining the team would be something to do," he said. "If we make it, of course."

"Oh, that's no problem. We'd make it all right."

"I'm not so sure."

"Come on." I ate a fry with ketchup on it. "We're big guys, and we're in shape."

"We're overweight. And Danny, we're not in shape. This morning I had to pull in my gut to button my jeans. Anyway, that's not the point. I told you, playing with the team would be something to do. We can't just hang around here or down in your rec room all the time."

"What's wrong with playing records and – "

"Nothing. But it's not enough."

I stopped eating fries and frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't you get the feeling we're not going anywhere?"

I shook my head, confused. I'd never heard Joey talk that way before.

"Left out," he said. "All the extra stuff they do at school. The student council, the way they're always included in what's going on."

"That stuck up Bill Stedman. Ever since he got elected president last year, he walks around like he owns the goddamned school."

"And the plays the drama club puts on, and the debating team, and – "

"All that's candy ass. What's with you? You want to be an actor now?"

"I don't know what I want to be." Joey rubbed his forehead. "But I want to be something. Those guys on the football team. They look like…"

"What?"

"Like they enjoy being good at what they do. They look damned proud. You can tell they're glad to belong."

"But all that pain."

His eyes had been bright. They seemed to be looking at something far away. Then all at once they came back to normal. He gave me that sly grin of his. "But there's a payoff. Those football players date the sexiest girls in school. All those muscles give the cheerleaders the hots."

I grinned right back. "Why didn't you say so? Now I get it. Why hang around here when there's a chance to date Rebecca Henderson?"

"Or her girlfriend, huh?"

We started laughing so hard that the waitress told us to shut up or leave, and that's how we came to try out for the football team, and how I learned about Mumbo Jumbo.

These days I've got a beer gut, and I puff if I walk up a couple flights of stairs, and my doctor says my cholesterol count's too high. Cholesterol. Back then you should have seen us, though. Granted, what Joey had said was right. We were overweight and soft. But we soon changed all that. The conversation I just described took place the week before school started, and Joey had us lifting weights and running laps even before Coach Hayes announced the dates for try-outs. When we showed up on the football field behind the gym that first Saturday of the school term, asking to join the team, Coach Hayes took his cap off, scratched his head, and wondered if we were kidding.

"No, we mean it," Joey said. "We really want to join."

"But you guys know my rules. You can't be on the team unless your scholastic average is B."

"Then we'll study harder. We'll raise our grades."

"Or waste my time, not to mention the team's. Your record speaks for itself. I've got no patience with guys who don't commit themselves."

"We'll try. We promise," Joey said. "Please. It's important to us."

"But look at the flab on you two. Sure, you're tall enough."

"Six foot," Joey said. "Danny's a quarter inch taller."

"But how are you going to keep up with the other guys? Look at Welsh over there. He's been working out all summer."

I glanced at Welsh, who was running through the holes in a double row of tires laid out on the field. He made it easily. Me, I'd have been groaning on my way to the hospital.

"You'll give up as soon as thing's get tough," Coach Hayes said. "Why pretend different?"

"All we're asking for is a chance," Joey said. Coach Hayes rubbed a big, tanned, calloused hand across his mouth. "A chance? Okay, I'll give you one. The same chance the other boys have. Show me you can keep up with the training. Get in shape, and earn decent grades. We'll see."

"That's all we want. Coach, thanks."

"One hundred percent. Remember, I won't accept less. If you guys get on the team and then stop trying, you'll wish you hadn't asked to join."

"One hundred percent."

"And Danny, what about you? You haven't said anything." I nodded, wondering what the hell I was doing there. "Yeah, right, one hundred percent."

It was more like two hundred percent – of torture. The weightlifting and sprints Joey and I had been doing were a joke compared to what Coach Hayes soon made us do. Even the guys who'd stayed in shape all summer had trouble keeping up with the routines. That two-mile double-time warmup nearly killed me. And the calisthenics – I threw up when I got home and smelled the meat loaf my Mom had cooked.

The next morning, Sunday, my knees felt so stiff I hobbled when I crawled out of bed. I groaned to Joey on the phone, "This isn't going to work. I'm telling you I can't make the try out today. I feel like shit."

"Danny," my mother said from the kitchen. "Watch your language."

"You think you feel worse than me?" Joey asked. "All night I dreamed I was doing situps. My stomach's got rocks in it."

"Then let's not go."

"We're going. We promised. I won't break my word."

"But what's the point? Even a date with Rebecca Henderson isn't worth the agony we'll be going through."

"Rebecca Henderson? Who cares? The team," he said. "I want to make the team."

"But I thought – "

"I said that just to get you interested. Listen, Danny, we've got a chance to belong to something special, to be good at something, better than anybody else. I'm tired of being a fuckup."

On the phone in the background, I heard Joey's mother tell him to watch his language.

"But my back feels – "

"We've been friends a long time, right?"

"Since we started grade school."

"And we've done everything together, right? We went to the movies together, and we went swimming together, and we – "

"I get the idea. But – "

"So I'm asking you, let's do this together, too. I don't want to lose your friendship, Danny. I don't want to do this by myself."

Inside I felt warm, knowing what he was trying to tell me. Sure, it was sappy, but I guess I loved him like a brother.

"Okay," I said. "If it means that much to you."

"It means that much."

When we showed up that afternoon behind the gym, Coach Hayes blinked. "Wonders never cease."

"We told you we're serious," Joey said.

"And sore?"

"You bet."

"Legs feel like they've been run over by a truck?"

"A steamroller."

Coach Hayes grinned. "Well, at least you're honest. Even the pros admit they hurt. The trick is to do the job no matter how much it hurts."

I silently cursed.

"We won't let you down," Joey said.

"We'll see. Danny, you sure don't say much. Everybody, let's get started. Double-time around the track. After that, I've got a few new exercises for you."

Inwardly I groaned.

After the first mile, I nearly threw up again.

But it's funny. I guess you can get used to anything. Monday morning, I felt awful. I mean really wretched. There wasn't a part of me that didn't ache.

And Tuesday morning was worse. I don't want to remember Wednesday morning. Plus, we didn't hang around the Chicken Nest anymore or go down to my rec room, playing records. We didn't have time. And I felt so tired all I wanted to do was watch the tube.

But I had to hit the books. Every night after supper, Joey phoned to make sure I was studying. What I missed most were those cherry Cokes and fries, but Coach Hayes insisted we stay off them. We could eat spaghetti but no mashed potatoes, beef was okay but the next day had to be chicken or fish. My mother went crazy trying to figure out the menus. For the life of me, I didn't understand the diet. But along about Saturday, after a week of tryouts, I started feeling not too bad. Oh, I still ached, but it was a different kind of ache. Solid and tight, pulling me in. And my mind felt brighter, clearer.

The first quiz I took I got an A.

Two Sundays later, Coach Hayes lined us up after our workout. The bunch of us stood there facing him, breathing hard, sweating.

"Freddie," Coach Hayes told the kid beside me. "Sorry. You just don't have enough weight. The West High team'd mash you into the field. Maybe next year. For what it's worth, you're nimble enough to get on the track team." He shifted his glance. "Pete, you'd make a good tackle. Harry, I like the way you block."

And so on. Down until only Joey and I were left.

Coach Hayes spread his legs, put his hands on his hips and scowled. "As for you two guys, I've never seen a more miserable pair of…"

Joey made a choking sound.

"But I guess you'll do."

Joey breathed out sharply.

I cheered.

"We made it." Joey grinned with excitement. "I can't believe we're on the team!"

We stood on the corner where we always separated going home.

I laughed. "It's the first thing I ever really tried for."

"And got! We're on the team!"

"I owe you. I couldn't have done it without you," I said.

"Same goes here."

"But I'd have quit if you hadn't…"

"Naw. I was close to quitting a couple times myself," Joey said.

I didn't think so. He'd wanted it more than I had.

"I'd better go. My Mom'll have supper ready," I said.

"Yeah, mine will, too. I'll meet you a half hour early tomorrow so we can study for that science quiz."

"You bet." I didn't add what I was thinking.

Joey added it for me. "Now comes the hard part."

He was right. What we'd been doing until then was only exercises and sloppy scrimmage. Now we really got down to business.

"I've diagrammed these plays for you to memorize." Coach Hayes aimed a pointer against a blackboard in the social studies room after Monday's final bell. "I'll soon give you plenty more. You'll have to learn about game psychology, how to fake out the other team. And you'll have to build team spirit. That's as important as anything else. I want you guys to hang around with each other, go to movies together, eat lunch together. I want you all to understand each other until you can guess what Joey or Pete or Danny will do on the field. Anticipate each other. That's the secret."

But Coach Hayes had another secret. I didn't learn about it until our first game, and that was two weeks away. In the meantime, the pressure kept building. Harder longer exercise sessions. Practice games until my shoulder ached so bad I thought I'd dislocate it throwing the ball.

That's right. Throwing the ball. I guess Coach Hayes had been more impressed with us than he let on. After trying different guys in different positions, he'd actually picked me as a quarterback and Joey as a receiver.

"You two think alike. Let's see if you can make it work for you."

Sure, I was proud. But there were still grades to keep up and even more plays to memorize. I had no time to think about Rebecca Henderson. The school, the team, and winning were all Coach Hayes told us mattered.

Six-thirty Friday night, we showed up at the locker room and put on our uniforms. I felt shaky already. The other guys hardly spoke. Their faces were pale. Coach Hayes didn't help any when he started bitching about how good the other team was.

"Covington High's gonna stomp us. You guys aren't ready. You look like a bunch of losers. Eight winning seasons, and now I'm stuck being nursemaid to a bunch of sissies. I can't take the embarrassment of going out there with you. Pussies."

He went on like that, sounding meaner, more insulting as he went along until he had us so mad I wanted to shout at him to shut the fuck up. I knew what he was doing – using psychology to work us up, so we'd take out our anger on the other team – but all of us respected Coach Hayes so much and wanted him to like us so much that hearing him put us down made me feel like we'd been fools. You bastard, I thought.

Joey kept glancing from Coach Hayes to me, his face in pain.

At once the insults stopped. Coach Hayes glared and nodded. "All right." He walked to a wooden cabinet at the far end of the room.

It was always locked. I'd often wondered what was in there. Now he put a key in the lock and turned it, and behind me I heard a kid who'd been on last year's team whisper, "Mumbo Jumbo."

Next to me, Joey straightened. Those who'd been on last year's team started fidgeting, and somebody else whispered, "Mumbo Jumbo."

Coach Hayes opened the cabinet's door. I couldn't see what was in there because he stood in front of it, his back to us.

Then he slowly stepped away.

Several guys breathed in.

I was looking at a statue. It wasn't big, a foot tall if that. Maybe four inches thick. Pale brown, like the color of a cardboard box. It was made from some kind of stone, not shiny and smooth but dull and gritty-looking, like the stone was sand squeezed together. It had tiny holes here and there.

The statue was a man, distorted, creepy. He had a round bald head and huge bulging lips. His stomach was so swollen he looked pregnant. He sat with his legs crossed, his hands in his lap so they hid his dong. His navel was an upright slit. He reminded me of pictures I'd seen of Chinese idols. But he also reminded me of those weird statues on Easter Island (we'd studied some of this in history class) and those ugly ones in ruins in Mexico. You know, the Aztecs, the Mayans and all that.

The guys who'd been on last year's team didn't act surprised, but they sure looked spellbound. The rest of us didn't know what the hell was going on.

"Boys, I'd better explain. For our new members anyhow. This is… I don't know what you'd call him. Our mascot, I suppose. Or maybe better, our team's good luck charm."

"Mumbo Jumbo," a kid from last year murmured.

"For quite a few years now, we've gone through a little ritual before each game." Coach Hayes slid a table into the middle of the room. Its legs scraped on the concrete floor. "Just as we're going out to play, I set the statue on this table. We walk around it twice. We each put our right hand on the statue's head. Then we go out there, kick the other team's butt, and win."

What kind of shit is this? I thought.

Coach Hayes seemed to read my mind. "Oh, sure, I know it's silly. Childish." He grinned in embarrassment. "But I've been having the team do it so often now, and we've had so many winning seasons, I'm almost afraid to stop. Mind you, I don't think for a second that touching old Mumbo Jumbo's head does us any good. But well, when you've got a good thing going, why change the pattern? It's not as if I'm superstitious. But maybe some of you guys are. Maybe stopping the ritual would throw off your timing. Why not leave well enough alone?"

He studied us, letting what he'd said sink in. Boy, I thought, he doesn't miss a trick. Anything to psych us up. For Christ's sake, a lucky statue.

"There's just one other thing. A few outsiders might not understand the odd things we sometimes have to do to gear ourselves up for a game. They might object to what they thought was… who knows what?… voodoo or something. So we've always had this rule. No one talks about Mumbo Jumbo outside this room. We don't give away our little secrets."

I understood now why I hadn't heard about the statue before, even from the guys who'd been on last year's team. In a way, Joey and I hadn't been officially on the team until tonight when we went out to play.

"I mean it," Coach Hayes said. "If any of you guys blab about this, I'll boot you off the team." He glared. "Do I have your word?"

A few guys mumbled, "Sure."

"I didn't hear you. Say it! Promise!"

We did what he said.

"Louder!"

We shouted it.

"All right." Coach Hayes took the statue from the cabinet and set it on the table. Up close, the thing looked even uglier.

We walked around it twice, put our right hand on its head (I felt stupid as hell), then ran out onto the football field and -

This is what happened. I didn't believe it then. Now, through the haze of all these years, I try to convince myself that my memory's playing tricks. But it happened. That's the terrible part, deep down knowing the truth, but too late.

Five minutes into the game, no score, Coach Hayes sent me out as quarterback. In the huddle, I called a passing play, nothing fancy, just something basic to get the feel of being in the game. So we got set. I grabbed the ball, and all of a sudden it wasn't like in practice. This was the real thing, what all the pain and throwing up and weeks of work had been about, and Covington High's players looked like they wanted to kick in my teeth and make me swallow them. Our receivers ran out. Covington 's interceptors stayed with them. My heart thundered. Frantic, I skipped back to get some room and gain some time, straining to see if anybody was in the open. Covington 's blockers charged at me. It couldn't have taken five seconds, but it seemed even shorter, like a flash. A swirl of bodies lunged at me. My hands felt sweaty on the ball. Slick. I had the terrible fear I was going to drop it.

Then I saw Joey. He'd managed to get in the open. He was sprinting toward Covington 's goal line, on the left, glancing back across his shoulder, hands up, wanting the ball. I snapped back my arm and shot the ball forward, perfect, exactly the way Coach Hayes had taught me, one smooth powerful motion.

And pivoted sideways so I wouldn't get crushed by Covington 's blockers, staring at the ball spinning through the air like a bullet, my heart in my throat, shouting to Joey.

And that's when I froze. I don't think I've ever felt that cold. My blood was like ice, my spine packed with snow. Because that end of the field, to the left, near Covington 's goal line, was empty. Joey wasn't there. Nobody was.

But I'd seen him. I'd aimed the ball to him. I swear to God he'd been there. How the -

Joey was over to the right, streaking away from Covington 's men, suddenly in the open. To this day, I still don't know how he gained so much yardage so fast. In a rush, he was charging toward the left, toward the goal line.

And that ball fell in his hands so easily, so neatly…

The fans assumed we'd planned it, a fakeout tactic, a brilliant play. Coach Hayes later said the same, or claimed he believed it. When Joey sprinted across the goal line, holding the ball up in triumph, the kids from our school broke out in a cheer so loud I didn't hear it as much as feel it, like a wall of sound shoving against me, pressing me.

I threw up my hands, yelling to get rid of my excitement. But I knew. It wasn't any fakeout play. It wasn't brilliant. It had almost been a massive screwup. But it had worked. Almost as if…

(I saw Joey there. I know it. On the left, near the goal line. Except he hadn't been there.)

… as if we'd intended it to happen. Or it had been meant to happen.

Or we'd been unbelievably lucky.

I started shaking then. I couldn't stop. I wasn't steady enough to play for the next ten minutes. Sitting on the bench, I kept seeing the play again in my mind, Joey in two spots at once.

Maybe I hoped so hard that I saw what I'd pray I see.

But it felt spooky.

Coach Hayes came over to where I hunched on the bench. "Something the matter?"

I clutched my helmet. "I guess I'm just not used to…" What? "… a real game instead of practice. I've never helped score a touchdown before."

"You'll help score plenty more."

I felt a tingle in my gut.

The game was full of miracles like that. Plays that shouldn't have worked but they did. Incredible timing. With five minutes to go in the game and the score 35 to nothing in our favor, Coach Hayes walked along our bench and murmured to the defensive squad, "The next time they're close to our goal line, let them score. Hold back, but don't make it obvious."

Joey and I frowned at each other.

"But – " somebody said.

"No buts. Do what you're told," Coach Hayes said. "It's demoralizing for them if they don't get at least a few points. We want to let them feel they had a chance. Good sportsmanship."

Nobody dared to argue with him. Our defensive squad sure looked troubled, though.

"And be convincing," Coach Hayes said.

And that's why Covington scored when our guys failed to stop an end run.

The school had an after-game dance in the gym. Everybody kept coming up to me and Joey and the rest of the team, congratulating us, slapping us on the back. Rebecca Henderson even agreed to dance with me. But she'd come with some girlfriends and wouldn't let me take her home. "Maybe next time," she said.

Believe it or not, I didn't mind. In fact, I was so preoccupied I didn't remember to ask her out for Saturday night. What I wanted to do was talk to Joey. By ourselves.

A little after midnight, we started home. A vague smell of autumn in the air. Smoke from somebody's fireplace. Far off, a dog barked, the only sound except for the scrape of our shoes as we walked along. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my green-and-gold varsity jacket and finally said what was on my mind. "Our first play? When I threw you the ball and you scored?"

Joey didn't answer right away. I almost repeated what I'd said.

"Yeah, what about it?" His voice was soft.

I told him what I thought I'd seen.

"The coach says we think alike." Joey shrugged. "What he calls anticipation. You guessed that's where I was headed."

"Sure. It's just…" I turned to him. "We won so easily."

"Hey, I've got bruises on my – "

"I don't mean we didn't work. But we were so damned lucky. Everything clicked together."

"That's why Coach Hayes kept drilling us. To play as a team. All the guys did what they'd been taught to do."

"Like clockwork. Yeah. Everybody in the right place at the right time."

"So what's bugging you? You thought you saw me in one place while I was in another? You're not the only one who thought he was seeing things. When we started that play, I saw you snap the ball toward that empty slot in the field, so I faked out the guy covering me and ran like hell to get there ahead of the ball. Know what? As I started running, I suddenly realized you hadn't even thrown the ball yet. You were still looking for an opening. I saw what you were going to do, not what you'd already done."

I felt a chill.

"Anticipation. No big deal. Hell, luck had nothing to do with it. Coach Hayes had us psyched up. The old adrenaline started burning. I ran to where I guessed you'd throw."

I tried to look convinced. "It must be I'm not used to all the excitement."

"Yeah, the excitement."

Even in the dark, his eyes glowed.

"There's a lot of room for improvement," Coach Hayes said at Saturday's game analysis. "We missed a chance for at least two interceptions. Our blocking's got to be quicker, harder."

He surprised me. The score had been so misbalanced, our plays so nearly perfect, I figured we'd done as well as we could.

He made the team practice Sunday afternoon and every day after school. "Just because we won our first game doesn't mean we can afford to slack off. Overconfidence makes losers."

We still had to stay on that crazy diet of his. In my fantasies, I dreamed of mountains of cherry Cokes and fries with ketchup. For sure, we had to keep our grades up. The end of the week, he went around to all our teachers and asked how we'd done on our quizzes. "Let your studies slide," he warned us, "and you don't play."

Friday night, we packed our equipment in the school bus and drove across town to meet West High. We used the girls' locker room in the gym, and after we'd dressed, Coach Hayes insulted us again. He set down a small wooden case (it had a big lock on it) in the middle of the room, opened it, and took out Mumbo Jumbo. The thing looked twice as ugly as before, scowling with those big bulging lips and that upright slit for a navel.

But we knew the routine and walked around it twice and put a hand on the statue's head (I still felt stupid). Then we went out and won forty-two to seven. That seven wouldn't have happened except that again Coach Hayes made us let them score a touchdown. And again that spooky thing happened. Coach Hayes let me play in the second quarter. I got the ball and looked for an opening. There was Joey, far down the field, ready to catch it. And there was Joey, twenty yards in front of where I saw him, trying to get away from a West High player.

My mouth hung open. My hands felt numb. I couldn't breathe. At once something snapped inside me, and the next thing I knew I'd thrown the ball.

Joey raced from where he'd been trying to dodge the West High player. He ran toward the other Joey who was in the open. The two Joeys came together. And of course he caught the ball.

Our fans went nuts, screaming, cheering.

Joey crossed the goal line and jumped up and down. Even halfway down the field, despite the noise, I heard him whoop. Our guys were slapping me on the ass. I tried to look as excited as they were.

The next time I walked to our bench, Coach Hayes said, "Nice pass."

We studied each other for a second. I couldn't tell if he knew how startled I'd been out there, and why.

"Well, Joey's the one who caught it," I said.

"That's right. Team spirit, Danny. Everybody's in this together. All the same, nice pass."

Beside him, close, its lock shut, was the box.

We played eight games that season. Sometimes I had nightmares about them – double images of Joey or other players, the images coming together. I felt as if everything happened twice, as if I could see what was going to happen before it did.

Impossible.

But that's how it seemed. One night I scared my Mom and Dad when I woke up screaming. I didn't tell them what the nightmare was about. I didn't talk to Joey about it, either. After that first time I'd tried to, I sensed that he didn't want to listen.

"We're winners. Jesus, it feels good," he said.

And the scores were always lopsided. We always let the other team score a few points when we were way in front.

Except one time. The sixth game, the one against Central High. Coach Hayes didn't call us names that night before the game. In the locker room, he sat in a corner, watching us put on our uniforms, and the guys started glancing at each other, nervous, sensing something was wrong.

"It's tonight," a kid from last year said, his voice tense.

I didn't understand.

Coach Hayes stood up. "Get out there, and give it your best."

Joey looked surprised. "But what about – " He turned to the cabinet at the end of the locker room. "Mumbo – "

"Time to go." Coach Hayes sounded gruff. "Do what you're told. They're waiting."

"But – "

"What's the matter with you, Joey? Don't you want to play tonight?"

Joey's face turned an angry red. His jaw stood out. With a final look at the cabinet, he stalked from the locker room.

It could be you've already guessed. We didn't just lose that night. They trounced us. Hell, we never scored a point. Oh, we played hard. After all the training we'd been through, we knew what we were doing. But the other team played harder.

And it was the only game when I wasn't spooked, when I didn't see two images of Joey or what would happen before it actually did.

The after-game dance was a flop.

And Joey was mad as hell. Walking home with me, he kept slamming his fists together. "It's Coach Hayes's fault. He changed the routine. He got us used to him making us pissed at him before the game, calling us names and all that shit. We weren't prepared. We weren't worked up enough to go out there and win."

I tried to calm him down. "Hey, it's just one loss. We're still the winning team in the league."

He spun so fast he scared me. "He didn't even bring out that dumb-ass statue! He wanted us to look like fools out there! He wanted us to lose!"

"I can't believe that."

"Maybe you like being a loser! I don't!"

He surged ahead of me. When I reached the corner where we always talked for a bit before splitting up, he was already heading down his street.

"Joey!" I wasn't sure what I wanted to say to him. It didn't matter. He didn't shout back.

And maybe you've guessed the rest of it too. The next game, everything was back to normal. Or abnormal, depending on how you look at it. Coach Hayes cussed us out before the game. He set Mumbo Jumbo in the middle of the locker room.

"Why didn't you do it the last time?" Joey demanded. "We could've won!"

"You think so?" Coach Hayes squinted. "Maybe you'd have won. Then again maybe not."

"You know we could've! You wanted us to – "

"Joey, it seems to me you've got things turned around. You're supposed to get mad at the other team, not me. I'm on your side, remember."

"Not last time you weren't."

Coach Hayes stood awfully straight then, his eyes blazing. "I'll forget you said that. Listen, I'll explain this only once. Last time I broke the routine to make a point. It doesn't matter what tricks I use in the locker room to prepare you for a game. What counts is how you play. And last time you guys didn't give your best. It's your fault you didn't win, not mine. You got that?"

Joey glared.

"Besides, it's good for you to lose once in a while."

"Bullshit!"

"Don't try my patience. It's good for you to lose because it makes you try harder next time. It makes you hungrier. It makes you appreciate how sweet it is to be a winner. Don't say another word. Believe me, if you want to play tonight, don't say another word."

We walked around Mumbo Jumbo, touched him, and started the game. Of course, I saw things again. And of course we won, finally letting the other team score.

One more week, the final game. And after touching Mumbo Jumbo, we won that too. City High's ninth winning season. Yet another gleaming trophy stood in the glass case in the lobby near the principal's office.

A lot had happened. My parents couldn't get over my B's and A's. They raised my allowance. They let me borrow the family car more often. Rebecca Henderson and I started going steady.

And Joey and I continued drifting apart. He was obsessed with being a star, with having attention directed at him all the time. So when the football season was over, he couldn't get used to being treated the same as everybody else. He tried out for the basketball team – Mr. Emery, the science teacher, coached it – but he didn't make the squad. "So what?" he said, but you could tell how disappointed he was. "They lose more games than they win. Who wants to be a loser?" He hated how everybody crowded around the new student council president. He finally decided to try out for the drama club – it figured, I thought, being on stage, everybody looking at you – and he made it. He didn't get the starring role in the big production they always put on in December, but he did have a half-decent part. He had to fake a German accent and play a maniac doctor called Einstein in a murder comedy called Arsenic and Old Lace. I took Rebecca to it, and I have to say Joey did okay, not great but pretty good. I mean at least he made me laugh at the jokes, and I hoped that now he'd be satisfied, although I heard later how he was always grumbling in rehearsals about not being on stage enough and wanting more lines.

I'll skip to all the trouble – the following year, our last one at City High. Our grades had put Joey and me on the junior honor role. He and I had stayed in shape all summer. Rebecca and I were spending even more time together. Maybe she was the reason I tried out for the football team again, even though I hated the prospect of seeing that ugly statue again, not to mention getting spooked seeing that other stuff on the field. But I knew we wouldn't have gotten together if I hadn't been a football player, and I didn't want things to change between us, so I tried out again and made the team.

Joey did too, and his reasons were obvious – getting attention, being a star.

Coach Hayes did everything the same. I dragged myself home after practice each day. I heard the same old speeches about grades and diet. I listened to him cuss us out before the starting game (but he didn't make me mad anymore), and watched him bring out Mumbo Jumbo. "Our mascot," he explained, swearing us to secrecy, the same routine (but that squat brown ugly thing still made me feel creepy). And on the field, I saw the double images again and felt the chill creep up my spine. If it hadn't been for Rebecca cheering on the sideline, I'd have…

But I didn't, and because of that, sometimes I think I might have caused what happened, partly anyhow.

We won, of course. In fact, it seemed too easy. Maybe that was why the next game Coach Hayes didn't cuss us out and didn't show us Mumbo Jumbo.

As soon as I noticed he was changing the pattern, I said to myself, "It's tonight," only then realizing I'd heard the same thing last year from a kid who'd been on the team the year before that. The kid had graduated now, and I suddenly realized that next year after my own graduation some other kid would repeat what I'd just said. And I wondered how many others had said it before me.

"No!" Joey shouted, furious.

"One more word, and you're benched!" Coach Hayes shouted back.

Joey shut up. But leaving the locker room, I heard him mutter, "God damn him. I'll show him. We don't need that frigging statue. We'll win anyhow."

But we didn't. And I didn't see the double images. And Joey went nearly out of his mind with rage. He didn't go to the aftergame dance, and he didn't say a word in Saturday's game analysis or Sunday's practice. All he did was keep glaring at Coach Hayes.

And me? How did I help cause all the trouble? I got curious is all. I started thinking about patterns. And patterns.

So what do you do when you're curious? What I did, I went to the school newspaper. Your school probably had one just like ours. The student reporters were the same bunch who put together the yearbook and belonged to the creative writing club. A gossip column, a hit parade column, a humor column. Plenty of announcements. A report from the student council.

And a sports column.

All of this stuff was typed on stencils and run off on a mimeograph machine. Three pages, on both sides, orange sheets stapled together. The City High Examiner. Original, huh? It came out every Monday morning. Mostly I think the school administration set aside money for it because of the weekly "Report from the Principal." School spirit and all that.

Anyhow I decided to do some checking, so I went to the newspaper office, which was also the yearbook office. A cluttered room on the third floor between the typing classroom and the janitor's closet. The place smelled sickish-sweet, like that white liquid goop you put on stencils to hide your typing mistakes. The editor was a kid named Albert Webb, and I guess he'd seen too many newspaper movies. He was always talking about the student council beat and the drama club beat and going to press. All of us called him "Scoop," and he took it as a compliment instead of a putdown.

He was sitting at a desk, shoving his glasses back on his nose, glancing back and forth from a handwritten sheet of paper to the stencil he was typing. He had a pen behind his ear and a zit on his chin. He turned as I walked in.

"How's tricks, Scoop?"

"I just got the word on the nominations for homecoming queen."

"Nobody's supposed to know that till next week's assembly."

"No kidding." He grinned. "Maybe you'll be interested. Rebecca Henderson's one of them."

"My, my." I grinned right back. "Somebody's got good taste. So listen, have you got any old editions of the paper?"

"All the ones I edited. Plus a bunch from a couple editors before me."

"How far back do they go?"

He was proud. "Fifteen years."

"Hey, swell. So where do you keep them?"

"In the morgue."

"Huh?"

"That's what newspapers call where they store old issues. Over there." He pointed past some boxes to a rickety bookshelf in one corner.

"You mind?"

He spread his arms. "Hey, be my guest. What do you want to look at them for?"

I'd figured he'd ask. "A couple of us on the football team have been thinking about a reunion game with former players. An exhibition thing. You know. The old guys against the new."

"Yeah?" Scoop's eyes brightened. He reached for his pencil.

"Now wait a minute. We're still just talking, Scoop. If you put this in the paper and it doesn't happen, you'll look dumb. You might even screw up our chances of convincing those guys."

"Right." He nodded. "I'll make you a deal. You look at the former issues, but if the plans for the game look definite, let me know so I can break the story."

"Anything you say."

So I went to the corner and started sorting through the papers. They smelled like a mouldy cellar. I almost sneezed.

Fifteen years of them. How many weeks in a school year? Forty? A lot of issues. But looking through them wasn't as hard as you'd think. See, the only issues I wanted were the ones in the football season. And I only wanted the issues since Coach Hayes had come to the school eleven years ago. It took me less than half an hour. And this is what I learned.

The first two seasons when Hayes had coached were awful. Worse than that. Disastrous. The team never won a game. A total zip.

But after that? Winning season after winning season.

With these facts in common. The games we won had lopsided scores in our favor, but the opposing team always managed to get on the board. And every season, we lost one game, the first or the seventh or the third, no consistent pattern there. And the teams that beat us varied. But the score was always zero for us.

Because he didn't bring out Mumbo Jumbo?

I know that's crazy. Next thing you'll figure I believe in horoscopes and fortune telling and all that crap. But I swear it made me wonder, and remember, you weren't on the field to see those creepy double images. In my place, you'd have started to wonder too.

By then, Scoop was leaning over my shoulder, squinting at the paper in front of me.

"Something the matter, Scoop?"

"Just nosey."

"Yeah."

"I see you're reading about the game the team lost three years ago."

"I wasn't playing then."

"I know. But I was a cub reporter for the paper then. I was there that night. I remember thinking how weird that game was."

"Oh?"

"All those perfect games, and then a real dog."

"Well, nobody plays good every game. Hey, thanks, Scoop. Anything I can do for you, just – "

"Let me know about the reunion game."

"Believe me, you'll be the first."

And that's what started things. With some bad moves from a new kid on the team whose name was Price. See, he wouldn't keep his grades up. Maybe he was just stupid. He soon started acting that way.

Coach Hayes followed through on his threat. No grades, no play. So Price got kicked off the team.

But Price had a father with a beer gut who'd been a jock when he was in high school, and when Price started whining, the father went whacko over what he said was an insult to his kid. "I don't care about his grades. You think I want him to grow up with ulcers, trying to be a brain. Football's been good for me. It gave me character, and I know it's good for my boy's."

No major problem. Just your basic asshole father sticking up for his kid. But Coach Hayes wouldn't budge, and that's when Price broke the rule.

You might remember reading about it back then, and I'm not talking about the high school paper. The local Courier. Then the major paper in the state. Then… FATHER OF HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PLAYER ACCUSES TEAM OF DEVIL WORSHIP.

Well, you can imagine, there wasn't any stopping it after that. The city council wanted to know what the hell was going on. The school board demanded an explanation. The principal got angry phone calls.

My father put down the Courier and frowned at me. "Is this story about the statue true? Mumbo Jumbo?"

"It's not like Price says. It's just a mascot."

"But you touch it before you go out to play?"

"Hey, it's nothing. It's only sort of for good luck."

My father frowned harder.

The other guys on the team got the same bit from their parents. Joey told me his father was so upset he wanted Joey to quit.

"Are you going to?" I asked.

"Are you kidding? Christ, no. The team means too much to me."

Or winning does, I thought.

By then, the week was over. Friday night had come around. Another game. One of the first-aid guys came down to the locker room, excited. "The bleachers are packed! A record crowd!" Sure, all the publicity. Everybody wanted to see the team with the voodoo statue.

At first, I thought Coach Hayes would leave it in the cabinet. Because of the controversy. But as soon as he started insulting us, I knew he didn't intend to break the routine. Looking back to that night, I wonder if he guessed that he wouldn't have many more chances to bring it out. He meant to take advantage of every one of them.

So he went to the cabinet. I held my breath as he unlocked it. The publicity made me self-conscious. Certainly all the talk about devil worship made me nervous about the double images I'd seen.

I watched as he opened the door.

His throat made a funny sound, and when he stepped to the side, I understood why.

"Where is it?" Joey blurted.

Several players gasped.

"Where's Mumbo Jumbo?" Joey's cleats scraped on the concrete floor as he stalked to the empty cabinet. "What happened to -?"

Coach Hayes looked stunned. All at once his neck bulged. "Harcourt." His lips curled. He made the principal's name sound like a curse. "The school board must have told him – "

"But the cabinet was locked," someone said.

"The janitor could have opened it for him." Coach Hayes stomped across the room toward the door.

And suddenly stopped as if he'd realized something. "We've got a game to play. I can't chase after him while – " Turning, he stared at us. "Get out there and show them. I'll find the statue. You can bet on that."

So we went out, and maybe because we'd been spooked, the other team killed us. We couldn't do anything right. Fumbles, interceptions, major penalties. It must have been the worst game any team from City High ever played. The fans started hissing, booing. A man shouted, "Devil worship, my ass! These guys don't need a voodoo statue! They need a miracle!" The more we screwed up, the more we lost confidence and screwed up worse. I saw Rebecca wiping tears from her eyes and felt so humiliated I couldn't wait for the game to end so I could hide in the locker room.

Coach Hayes kept scurrying around, talking to the principal and anybody else he suspected, gesturing angrily. They shook their heads no. By the end of the game, he still hadn't found the statue.

We sat in the locker room, bitter, silent, when somebody knocked on the door.

I was closest.

"Open it," Coach Hayes said.

So I did.

And stared at Mumbo Jumbo on the floor. There wasn't anyone in the hall.

Sure, we heard rumors, but we could never prove that the other team had taken it. We even heard that stealing the statue had been the rival coach's idea, a practical joke on his good old friend Coach Hayes.

Scoop put all this in the school newspaper Monday morning. Don't ask me how he found out. He must have been a better reporter than any of us gave him credit for. He even had a drawing of the statue, so accurate that whoever had stolen it must have shown it to him. Or maybe Scoop was the one who stole it.

Whoever. I feel partly responsible for the story he wrote. I must have made him curious when I went to see him and asked to look at the former issues of the paper. Maybe he checked and found out I'd handed him a line about a reunion game.

For whatever reason, he seems to have gone through the same issues I did – because he came up with the same pattern I'd noticed. Two losing seasons, then all of a sudden an unbroken string of winners. Because of Mumbo Jumbo? He didn't come right out and link the statue with the team's success, but you could tell he was trying to raise the issue. In every winning season, we'd lost only one game, and our score was always zero. In our winning games, however, we'd always had a lopsided spread in our favor, but the other team had always somehow managed to gain a few points. Coincidence, Scoop asked, or was there a better explanation? For evidence, he quoted from an interview he'd had with Price. He didn't bother mentioning that he had no witness for what had happened in the locker room in the years when Price wasn't on the team. His whole story was like that, making guesses seem like facts. Then he talked about Friday's game and how in the years since Coach Hayes had been showing the statue this was the first time we'd lost two games in one season. Perhaps because somebody stole the statue Friday night? Scoop repeated the rumor that the rival team had been responsible for the theft. We'd probably never know the truth, he said. He'd already described the few tiny holes in the statue, "the size of a pin, one of them over the statue's heart." Now several paragraphs later, he ended the story by mourning the rival coach who'd died from a heart attack on his way home from the game.

I wanted to get my hands on Scoop and strangle the little shit. All everybody in the lunch room talked about was how creepy it would be if the statue had really caused that coach's death, if someone had stuck a pin in Mumbo Jumbo's chest.

I don't know if Coach Hayes wanted to strangle Scoop, but for sure he wanted Scoop expelled. Every kid at school soon heard about the argument Coach Hayes had in the principal's office, his shouts booming down the hall, "Irresponsible! Libelous!" Scoop was smart enough to stay home sick all week.

By next Friday's game, though, Scoop was the least of our problems. The churches in town got worked up over Mumbo Jumbo. I read in the local paper how the school had received at least a dozen letters from local ministers, priests, and rabbis. One of the letters was quoted: "… superstition… unwholesome atmosphere… Satanism… counterproductive to education." My parents were so upset that they didn't want me to play in the game that night. I told them I couldn't let the other guys down, and as far as education was concerned, what about the B's and A's I'd been bringing home? If anything, the team had been good for me.

But this superstition crap was beginning to get to me, maybe because I still felt bothered by the weird things I'd been seeing on the field, things that seemed to happen before they happened. Could the statue really…? Or was Joey right, and I was only caught up in the speed and excitement of the game?

Enough already, I thought. Mumbo Jumbo. That describes it all right. It's a lot of bullshit. I had no way to know, of course, that this would be the last time Coach Hayes was allowed to bring out the statue. I did know this – I was sick of touching that creepy thing, and if I needed it to make me a good football player, I didn't belong in the game.

So after we dressed in the locker room and Coach Hayes insulted us and brought out the statue, I didn't touch it as the other guys did when we went out to play.

My right arm still aches when the temperature drops below freezing. The cast stayed on for almost three months. I hadn't been on the field more than thirty seconds, my first play of the game. I got the ball and pulled my arm back to throw, but I couldn't find an opening. And I never saw the four guys who hit me, all together at once, really plowing into me, knocking my wind out, taking me down, my arm cocked behind my shoulder, all that weight on it. I fainted. But not before I heard the cracks.

Saturday morning, Joey came to visit me in the hospital. He'd scored three touchdowns, he said. Through a swirl of pain, I tried to seem excited for him.

"Did we win?" I asked.

"Does the Pope live in Italy?" His grin dissolved. "About your arm…"

He said he was really sorry. I told him thanks.

He fidgeted. "How long are they going to keep you here?"

"Till tomorrow afternoon."

"Well, look, I'll visit you at home."

I nodded, feeling sleepy from the painkiller a nurse had given me. Rebecca came in, and Joey left.

He and I drifted farther apart after that. He had the team, and I had my broken arm. After the football season, he got a big role in a murder mystery the drama club put on, Ten Little Indians. Everybody said he was wonderful in it. I have to admit he was.

And me? I guess I let things slide. I couldn't take notes or do class assignments with my writing arm in a cast. Rebecca helped as much as she could, but she had to do her own work, too. I started getting C's again. I also got back in the habit of going down to the Chicken Nest, with Rebecca this time instead of Joey. Those cherry Cokes and fries with ketchup can really put weight on you, especially if you're not exercising.

The city newspaper reported on the meeting between the school board and Coach Hayes. They asked him to explain. He found the statue at a rummage sale, he said. Its owner claimed it was a fertility symbol that the Mayans or the Polynesians or whoever (the name of the tribe kept changing) had used in secret rituals. Coach Hayes said he hadn't believed that – not when its price was fifteen dollars. But he'd been looking for a gimmick, he said, something to work up team spirit, especially after two horrible seasons. A kind of mascot. If the team believed the statue brought them good luck, if the statue gave them confidence, so what? No harm was done. Besides, he said, he sometimes didn't bring the statue out – to teach the players to depend on themselves. The team had lost on those occasions, true, but as a consequence they'd tried harder next time. There was nothing mysterious about it. A dramatic gimmick, that's all. The point was, it had worked. The team had been winning championships ever since. School spirit had never been better.

"What about the statue's name?" a school board member asked.

"That came later. In the third winning season. One of the players made a joke. I forget what it was. Something about good luck and all that mumbo jumbo. The phrase sort of stuck."

The school board heard him out. They held up the stacks of letters from angry parents and clergy. Their decision was final.

To show that they were willing to compromise, they let him put the statue in the glass case with the trophies the team had won in the school's front lobby.

The rest of the season was brutal. We lost every game. Sitting with Rebecca on the sidelines, trying to show enthusiasm for the team, I felt terrible for Joey. You could see how depressed he was, not being a winner.

West High won the championship. Monday, the big news was that over the weekend somebody had smashed the glass in the trophy case and stolen Mumbo Jumbo. Nobody knew who had it, although all of us suspected Coach Hayes. He resigned that spring. I'm told he teaches now in upstate New York. I think about him often.

Joey's grades were good enough that Yale accepted him on a scholarship. With my C's, I won't even tell you what college accepted me. I didn't go anyhow. Rebecca got pregnant that summer. In those days, abortions weren't easy to arrange. I'm not sure I'd have wanted her to have one anyhow. The child, a daughter, breaks my heart with love every time I look at her. Rebecca and I got married that Halloween. Both sets of parents were good about it. We couldn't have made a go without their help.

We have three children now, two girls and a boy. It's tough to pay the rent and feed and dress and give them everything we want to. Both Rebecca and I have jobs. She's a secretary at our high school. I work at the chemical plant in town.

And Joey? You know him as Joseph "Footwork" Summers. He played receiver for Yale and was picked up by the NFL. You saw him play twice in the Superbowl. For sure, you saw him in plenty of beer commercials. The one where he beats up five motorcycle guys, then walks to the bar and demands a beer is famous.

"What kind?" the bartender asks. "What those guys were drinking?"

And Joey says, "That stuff's for losers. When I say I want a beer, I mean the best."

And you know what brand he means. The commercial got him into the movies. I saw DEAD HEAT last week and loved it. The action was great. His acting gets better and better.

But a part of me…

I'll try to explain. Three years ago, Joey came back to town to see his folks. Imagine how surprised I was when he called me up. I mean he hadn't exactly been keeping in touch. He asked me over to his parents' house for a beer, he really drinks the brand he advertises, and while I was there, he took me up to his old bedroom. A lot of good memories. He gestured toward his battered dresser. I was so busy looking at him (hell, he's a movie star, after all) that I didn't know what he meant at first.

Then I really looked.

And there it was. In his open suitcase. Mumbo Jumbo. As ugly and shitty and creepy as ever. I felt spooked the way I'd used to.

And abruptly realized. "No. You don't mean… You're the one who stole it?"

He just grinned.

"But I thought it was Coach Hayes. I thought…"

He shook his head. "No, me."

My stomach felt hollow. I don't remember what we talked about after that. To tell you the truth, the conversation was kind of awkward. I finished my beer and went home. And Joey returned to Hollywood.

But this is what I think. The other night, my son and I were watching a movie on television. David Copperfield. I never watch that kind of stuff, but my son had a book report due, and he hadn't read the book, so he was cheating, sort of, watching the movie. And I was helping him.

At the end, after David Copperfield becomes a success and all his friends have turned out losers, there's a part in this movie where you hear what he's thinking. "It isn't enough to have the luck," he says. "Or the talent. You've got to have the character."

Maybe so. But I keep thinking about Mumbo Jumbo and how, when I didn't touch the statue, I got my arm broken in the game. That was a turning point. If I'd stayed on the team and kept my grades up, could I have gone to Yale like Joey? Could I have been a winner too?

I keep thinking about Coach Hayes and his winning streak. Was that streak caused by the statue? I can't believe it.

But…

I remember Joey – the movie star – pointing at the statue he stole from the glass case in the school's front lobby. In his senior year. And everything kept getting better for him after that.

Then I think about myself. I love my kids and my wife.

But I felt so tired tonight when I got home from work… The bills… My son needs braces on his teeth, and…

Maybe Joey understood. Maybe David Copperfield was wrong.

Maybe it doesn't take talent. Or character.

Maybe all it takes is Mumbo Jumbo.