The Great Christmas Bowl Read online

  The Trouts failed the next drive and missed the field goal, which only electrified the Lions. They marched down the field again. Thankfully, the fans went berserk, and the Trouts managed to stop them at the one-yard line.

  But they couldn’t stop the field goal.

  The score was nine to six; we needed a touchdown or two field goals to win. I spent the fourth quarter on my feet, losing my voice. Bud, too, had gone all out, dragging a bench to the edge of the field, standing on it, waving his fins, yelling into his bullhorn.

  I stopped breathing when Kevin got the ball and ran for a first down, right into enemy territory. Please, God, let him score. I wasn’t even that greedy for Kevin to be the star—I’d take any player crossing the goal line.

  We pushed to the twenty . . . then the ten . . . then the one.

  The clock ticked down to less than a minute.

  The fans had turned nearly rabid, Bud leading the pack with his fins pounding the sky. “Here we go, Trou-outs; here we go!”

  And then, time stopped. I’ll never forget how those seconds reeled out, the snow drifting past the lights they’d finally decided to turn on to fight the late afternoon gloom, glittering like ticker tape. The fans exploding around me, the snap of the ball to the quarterback, who then tossed it to . . . Kevin.

  A reverse, and Kevin took it around the end. He stepped out of one attempted tackle and stiff-armed another. Dodging a third, he pushed a fourth to the ground and stepped over him.

  Go! In my mind he was already in the end zone when a defender crashed into him from behind. I saw the football fly out of his hands—those giant, Velcro hands—and everything inside me froze.

  Then, as I stood there, dying, Kevin grabbed it back. He hit the ground with a shuddering thunk, one I felt in my bones.

  And the referee’s arms went up.

  Kevin had broken the plane and landed just over the goal line.

  I wanted to weep. Instead, I stood on my seat and cheered wildly as Kevin launched to his feet and was immediately tackled by his entire team. They hoisted him in the air, pulled off their helmets, and pumped their fists.

  “Ke-vin, Ke-vin!”

  He beamed, wearing on his face an expression of satisfaction I’d never seen before. He’d finally slid out of the shadow of his brothers.

  But right behind the cheers, I began to recognize another sound. Something piercing and dark. I tore my gaze away from Kevin and his celebration and searched for Mike.

  I spotted him in the ambulance, barreling down the sidelines on the wet track, headed for a crowd of concerned coaching staff who had broken away from the raucous victory.

  Beside his bench, his cowbell, his blow horn, sign, and pom-poms, Bud Finlaysen, the team Trout, lay sprawled and unconscious.

  Chapter 3

  The Big Lake Medical Clinic isn’t high-tech. With an ER equipped to stabilize and a small wing for overnight patients, it’s more of a triage center. Still, they’re the first stop for any Big Laker who needs help, since the closest large hospital is two hours away in Duluth.

  Often Mike has brought a victim to the Big Lake clinic and then hours later rushed them, siren screaming, north to Duluth. Or when the situation seems dire, the hospital will call in air support, and the life-flight helicopter will bullet from Minneapolis and land on the pad just north of the clinic.

  Tonight I could already hear the blades chopping the air as I peered through the doors of the packed ER waiting room.

  Shoes squeaked on the linoleum behind me, and I turned. Mike came toward me, dressed in his navy blue scrubs and a dark blue jacket, the paramedic patch and a number of other certifications dressing his arm. His stethoscope dangled around his neck, and he held each end like suspenders. “Hey.”

  “How is he?” I had noticed that Marge, Bud’s wife, had arrived some time after the ambulance, and a nurse escorted her to the ER. She hadn’t returned.

  “Not good. He suffered a massive coronary, and if we hadn’t had EMS at the field, we might have lost him. As it is, he’s in critical condition. They’re flying him to the university hospital.”

  He came close and I filled the rest of the gap, laying my head on his chest. “He was cheering his heart out.”

  “Literally.” Mike sighed and held me a moment, his strong arm over my shoulders. “Good game, though.”

  I looked up at him, at his smile, remembering Kevin’s scrabble toward the end zone. “Amazing game.”

  “I might be here a while.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Mike kissed me on the forehead and returned to the ER, lifting his hand to Coach Grant and a handful of players who’d just arrived. I wondered where the rest of Big Lake had run off to. Yes, we’d secured our position in the run for the state championship, but our entire cheerleading squad had nearly died getting us there.

  I collapsed in a vinyl chair.

  The last time I paced the Big Lake ER hallways, Kevin had been seven. Always the boy fascinated with machinery and moving parts, he’d been riding his bike on our gravel road when his gaze caught on the spokes of his front wheel, how they whirred and reflected the sunlight. He kept watching that wheel until he steered himself right off the cliff edging the road and clattered into the ditch. Only his helmet saved his life, I am sure, because he tumbled headfirst into the rocks below. Somehow he managed to limp home, where I found him—tear streaked, bloody, and holding his arm. I didn’t wait to call Mike, just piled Kevin in the car and drove straight for the Big Lake clinic, where they x-rayed him and pronounced the shoulder dislocated, his collarbone broken.

  “What were you doing?” I asked him as they put his arm in a sling and administered pain meds.

  “Thinking” was his cryptic reply.

  Since then, I’d learned to be worried when Kevin thinks. Not that he wasn’t a smart boy—he ranked at the top of his math class. But he had the ability to conjure up harebrained schemes and cajole members of his family into participation. Like the time he decided to spray-paint our dog red, white, and blue for the Big Lake Independence Day parade. Poor Gracie got free and ran through the house, finding refuge in the living room behind the white sofa. Or the time he decided on shooting practice and attached the target to our basement wall, right next to the sliding-glass door. When the plate glass pinged, then cracked, and shouting ensued, the jig was up.

  He had accomplices. They all suffered.

  Now, as he huddled in a cluster of concern with the other members of his team, their hair wet from their showers and dripping onto their sweatshirts, he glanced up at me. Once . . . twice. The third time I began to worry.

  I knew he was thinking.

  I blew into my coffee, got up, and paced away from his little group of cohorts. The helicopter had landed, and through the window I spotted the medical staff emerging from the bay. Mike took the lead, pulling the gurney transporting Bud covered in blankets. Next to Bud ran a tech holding a mess of IVs. Someone else carried portable monitoring equipment.

  Marge appeared last, half jogging, half running, behind them. Despite knowing Bud for nearly thirty years, I rarely saw his wife. Occasionally I’d spot Marge at the Ben Franklin, sometimes at the grocery store. She always looked tired. Rumor said she had a disease, something that kept her bedridden, yet there she was, running beside her ill husband. Her dirty parka and ancient Moon Boots revealed that she hadn’t taken any time to consider her appearance, but I could imagine myself out there in my ratty blue bathrobe and threadbare slippers. She reached out and touched Bud’s shoulder right before Mike climbed into the chopper and loaded him in.

  I figured she’d have to stay behind, as most people with critical patients do. So when Mike emerged and helped her inside behind her husband, warmth flooded through me. As EMS director, Mike had probably twisted a few arms to get Marge on that flight.

  They closed the chopper doors, and Mike and his staff stepped away from the pad as the air ambulance lifted into the night sky.

  I hadn’t noticed, but the c
rowd of boys had moved in to flank me and now watched as their team mascot disappeared.

  “What did Dad say?” Kevin asked me in a low voice. He’d cut his hair shortly after the season started, and it had just grown long enough for it to be messy after a shower.

  “He suffered a major heart attack.”

  I heard noises of dismay behind me.

  “Will Bud be back for next week’s game?”

  I wasn’t sure which heartless teen imbecile had asked that question, but being the only mother in sight, I turned and gave them all a look worthy of such a selfish remark. They cringed.

  “We’re just worried, Mom. Bud is our good luck charm. If we can’t fin him on the way out to the field . . .”

  Fin him? Then I remembered the hand-to-fin high fives the players always shared with Bud on their way out to the field and the worry in Kevin’s blue eyes clicked into place.

  “We need another mascot.”

  The words were spoken beside me, but they reverberated in Kevin’s expression of gloom.

  It took me five full seconds to make the connection between Kevin’s previous furtive glances, the words of his teammate, and the dire straits of the Big Lake Trouts.

  “No,” I said, without clarification.

  “Mom, please—”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Kevin, no. I’ve spent this entire season packing your lunches, driving to your games, supplying your team with cookies. . . . I’m 100 percent behind you.”

  “Then—”

  I held up my hand. “But I draw the line at posing as a fish. It’s just a guy in a costume, Kevin. You can do this without a mascot. It’ll all work out.” I looked around the group, groping for reinforcements. The team stared back at me as if I’d just told them they had to return a lost puppy to the shelter.

  “No,” I repeated. I took Kevin’s hand. I saw him blush and knew he was debating pulling it away to save face or letting me have my mom moment, in hopes of enticing me to cave. “Bud’s not your good luck charm, because you don’t need one. You’re perfectly capable of going to state without slapping his fin.”

  The silence following my words, the deep sighs, and the way Kevin ducked his head told me that they didn’t believe that for a millisecond.

  “Please, Mom?”

  The kid had reduced himself to begging. Right there in front of his friends. And then he put it in overdrive as he pitched his voice low and found my soft spots. “You always say it’ll work out, but how do you know? Maybe it’s not going to work out at all.”

  I did say that all the time, but I also meant it. Still, the pleading in his eyes gave me pause.

  I saw him suddenly, standing in the play yard, hands outstretched, calling for me. “Mommy, I need you!”

  I could feel my resolve give, just a smidge. What could it hurt? It was just a costume—ugly, yes, but something I could sort of hide inside, right?

  For one game, maybe I could be a fish.

  Then I remembered the googly eyes, the tail. The cowbell and pom-poms. Oh, please. I’d rather be the church’s hospitality chairperson than humiliate myself in front of the town. I could too easily imagine how the costume would hug my already-ample curves. It would be akin to running naked down Main Street screaming at the top of my lungs, at the height of the holiday season, no less.

  “No,” I said again, letting that mental image fuel me. “Absolutely not.”

  Kevin withdrew his hand and turned away. His teammates, clearly embarrassed for both of us, shuffled off. How I longed to offer them a plate of chocolate chip cookies, hear them say, “You’re the best, Mrs. Wallace.” But I couldn’t fix this with cookies.

  Perhaps it wasn’t all going to work out after all.

  “Ready to go, honey?” Mike appeared, carrying his radio. He smiled at me, but it dimmed as he glanced at the quiet players. “Marge said she’d call from the hospital,” he offered in condolence. I didn’t know how to tell him that they were grieving their fish and that I’d dealt the fatal blow.

  “Yes, I’m ready,” I said, trying not to run from the hospital in a full-out sprint.

  The house was lonely and quiet when we arrived home. Mike set his radio on the charger, turned on the police scanner, and went up to change. I didn’t mention Kevin’s request, not sure who Mike would side with, especially not needing any more guilt.

  Fresh as yesterday in my mind was the year I dressed up as Kriss Kringle for Brianna’s third-grade Christmas party. And taught Neil’s entire fifth-grade class how to play capture the flag during his slumber party. Right behind it, the time I stayed up all night reconstructing Brett’s landform sculpture of Peru after the dog ate the bread-dough landscape. I’d even spent a weekend at a Girl Scouts camp with Amy, listening to the giggling of fifteen twelve-year-old girls.

  But none of those things included humiliation in front of the entire town.

  I hung up my jacket and put my foam finger on the shelf above the coat hooks. The chill of the game had whistled down my spine and invaded my bones. Despite the stopover at the clinic, I still shivered. I filled a teakettle and turned on the stove for hot cocoa.

  I passed by my kitchen desk as I grabbed a mug and spied the light for the answering machine blinking. I pressed the Play button.

  “Marianne, it’s Pastor Backlund. I just wanted to let you know the elders met and confirmed you as the hospitality chair. You can set up your first meeting, but you’ll need to meet soon to get the Christmas Tea under way. Thank you for serving! Call me if you have any questions.” His cheery voice betrayed no hint of the conversation I’d had with his wife so long ago before the game.

  And of course, I’d forgotten to call.

  I sank down at the kitchen table, closed my eyes, folded my arms, and rested my head on them. I distinctly remembered saying no, but I could imagine the dismay Pastor Backlund and Gretchen Gilstrap would express if I backed out. It was one thing to decline, yet another to leave the church in the lurch. I kept my commitments. Even when I hadn’t really made them.

  I wanted to throw the mug across the room, but it was one that I’d gotten from Neil when he went on a missions trip to Kentucky.

  Besides, I had possibly found the one thing worse than being the hospitality chairperson. Images of Bud waving his fins on the bench, shiny and glistening under the field lights, slipped through my mind. Perhaps serving my church would be my penance for turning down my son and his needy compatriots. For being a traitor at the height of their need.

  I could hear Mike upstairs, humming as he changed out of his uniform. Darkness pressed against the windows. The wind had started to howl, and I hoped a full-out blizzard might be in the making. Maybe we’d get snowed in and they’d call off the rest of the football season.

  Then again, we lived in Minnesota. I’m not sure we’ve ever had a snow day in the history of the county. And this was the run for state.

  The water began to heat on the stove, rattling the teakettle.

  I wondered if Bud had made it through the flight, if Marge had anyone with her. The thought of being alone in a hospital if something happened to Mike made me press a hand to my empty stomach.

  Certainly I wouldn’t be alone. Certainly my children would come to my aid, stand beside me in my darkest hour. Just like I had with them.

  Well, at least four of them would.

  Headlights in the drive skimmed the naked poplar trees, flashed in our front windows. Kevin had finally inherited the children’s car, a little red Honda that probably had about six million miles on it. What it saved on gas mileage it made up for in incidental repairs, but it had taught my children the basics of keeping a vehicle tuned.

  I braced myself for Kevin’s entrance, pretty sure we’d pick up where we left off. As the youngest, he had learned how to slink away, regroup, and wage a counterattack. However, he came in, dropped his gear, and instead of predictably stomping off to his room as a preamble to his tirade, he detoured toward me, dropping a hand on my shoulder.

  “
Maybe we don’t need a mascot or a lucky charm,” he said softly. “Thanks for going to all my games.” He leaned over and sweetly kissed my cheek. “Happy birthday, Mom.”

  Oh, boy. “Thanks, Kev. Good game tonight. Amazing catch.”

  “Yeah. It’s been fun.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll be downstairs.”

  Down in his lair.

  Down, never to be seen again.

  I wasn’t ready for the team to give up or for this season to end. Not yet. I needed more victories.

  I needed more of the Kevin I’d seen bursting from his shell.

  Besides, like I said, I fancied the thought of being his lucky charm. Of course they needed a mascot!

  “Kevin,” I said softly, my gaze flicking to him. He stopped, turned. In his eyes I saw the boy who had given me a homemade planter in fourth grade for Christmas, working every day after school for a month in the garage. The boy who had once brought home long-stemmed daisies, muddy from where they’d been yanked from the ground. The boy who’d asked me to tuck him into bed until eighth grade.

  The young man who’d scored the winning touchdown and taken the Big Lake Trouts to a division championship.

  “One game.” I held up a finger, just to make sure we were communicating in many different forms. “One game. And then you’ll have to find someone else to be the Trout.”

  A smile broke over his face, one that warmed me clear through to my chilly bones. The kettle on the stove began to whistle. I ignored it.

  “You’re the greatest, Mom,” he said and held out his hand in a fist. I met it with my own, something I’d learned from watching his pals.

  I was a pal.

  “I’m calling Coach. He took the suit home from the hospital.”

  Swell. I got up and turned off the heat on the stove, forgoing the hot cocoa. No need—I was already starting to sweat.

  Chapter 4

  “What do you have against hospitality?”