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Welcome to the Church of The Reverend Cotton Mather.  This story is
the sole property of the author, and may not be copied or downloaded 
for the intent of profit. Permission is freely given for anyone to 
download or copy for their personal pleasure or use, as long as 
there is no intent to charge money or barter for the privilege of 
acquiring this material.

   (Copyright 2005, revisions c. 2007, R.C. Mather)

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THE COMPETITIVE EDGE:
PLAYING THE GAME III

A Novel

by R.C. Mather



- 31 -

THIS MISERY OF UNCERTAINTY



My conversation with Eric cemented my determination. I knew it was
useless to try to contact Kayla before school let out for the summer,
so I gritted my teeth, backed off from harassing my team, and
concentrated on my own soccer skills. I fell back into a routine that
had helped me every time in the past. I went out solo, just me and
the ball, working and running and sweating.

One afternoon, I stopped by the practice field at school and watched
Mr. Neville working with the varsity girls. I had on a hooded
sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and I sat in the bleachers with
my soccer ball between my feet. There were a few other guys watching,
probably boyfriends of some of the girls, but I stayed a little apart
from them. I didn't want to draw any attention to myself. I just
wanted to breathe in the ambiance of the competitive game again and
watch my old high school coach practice his art.

I should have known I couldn't stay anonymous. I saw Coach Simonsen,
the assistant coach, glance up in my direction. Shortly after, I saw
Ashley Horvath look my way, followed by a few other girls. Obviously,
I was becoming a distraction, so I got up, picked up my soccer ball,
and headed down the bleachers. It was time for me to leave.

I didn't get very far, though. Just as I got to the waist-high chain
link fence that separated the bleachers from the field, Coach Neville
waved to me.

"Sean!" he called, gesturing for my attention. "Come here!"

I waved back and shook my head. I didn't want to interrupt his
session. He would have none of it, though.

"Mr. Porter! If you please!" He began walking toward me, looking
insistent. I nodded reluctantly and vaulted myself over the fence to
the track so I could meet him halfway.

"Sean! It's great to see you," he said enthusiastically as he held
out his hand for me to shake.

"It's good to see you, too, Coach," I said. "How's the girl's team
this year?" I knew the boy's team had had another very successful
year, winning the conference again. They had lost in the semifinals
of the state tournament, though, falling short on their try at a
three-peat. Jorge and Weasel both made the All-State Team selection,
however, giving Jorge in particular a huge boost in his college
scouting reports. He had accepted a scholarship to Texas A & M for
the fall, allowing him to move back to his favorite part of the
country.

"They're doing well," he said as he steered me toward the field. "We
miss having Tessa in the net, though."

"I'm sure you do," I said. "She was a bulldog in there." Tessa was
in Europe until the first of July, and then she was joining us as an
instructor. She was also on a scholarship, at Kansas State, but she
was backup her freshman year to their senior keeper. I was confident
she would win the starting position her sophomore season.

He walked me up to stand with him in front of his team. "We have a
surprise visitor," he said. "Sean, I believe you know most of these
players, right?"

In truth, I knew about half of them. The sophomores and the couple
of freshmen on the team were new to me, just as I was no more than a
school legend to them. I said hello to Ashley, the sister of my
former mentor, Skip Horvath, and several girls looked at her a little
jealously.

One shy girl, standing off to the side, looked familiar. She was
watching me avidly, like the other younger members of the team. I
turned to her.

"I know you," I said. "Don't I?"

She blushed and lowered her eyes. "Yes," she said quietly, a shy
smile just visible as she looked down.

"Of course you do," said Coach Neville. "She's..."

"I'm Tracy," the girl said.

I peered at her. "Tracy? Tracy Evanson?" I couldn't believe the
change in her since the last time I had seen her.

"Yes," she confirmed. She looked up at me, obviously pleased at my
attention.

"Wow," I said. Tracy turned a bright red, and some of the other
girls laughed. "You've certainly changed for the better," I told her.

"Thank you," she said. "A lot of it was your doing, you know."

"Me?" That caught me by surprise. "How did I help you to change?"

She laughed, and I could immediately see she enjoyed laughing. She
seemed like a happy young girl, with hardly a care in the world, a
far cry from the direction she had been following. She and Tara Jacks
had been on a dangerously promiscuous path at one time. Tara was
paying the price for her reckless behavior, but it looked like Tracy
had learned her lesson before it was too late.

"Well, at the time I didn't think of it as doing me a favor," she
admitted. "But when you told my brother Mike about..." She glanced
around nervously, as if she didn't want her teammates to know about
her troubled past. School is such a small community, though, I didn't
think news about Tracy would be much of a surprise to any of the
other girls.

"It was Mikey who was the catalyst, then. Not me."

"Nice try," she said. "Mike was the instrument of change, you could
say. But it was you who put it all in motion."

I glanced around at the other people standing around, listening with
fascination. "Uh... maybe we can talk about this some other time," I
said.

"Sure," she said with a smile. "But thank you, just the same."

"Okay," said Coach Neville, clapping his hands to get everybody's
attention. "Let's wrap it up for this afternoon. Two laps, and then
to the showers."

Groans, just like I remembered them from my high school playing
days, followed Coach's pronouncement. Nobody liked running laps.
Before he could shoo them off around the track, though, Ashley spoke
up.

"Coach? How about a last scrimmage instead? With Sean playing?"

"No, no," I started, but I was drowned out by a female chorus of
pleading.

"Yeah!" 

"Let's do it!" 

"Please, Coach?"

Coach Neville held up his hands in resignation. "All right, all
right," he said. "Everybody on the field for a fifteen minute game."
He looked sharply at me. "That's okay, isn't it, Mr. Porter?"

I couldn't help but laugh. "Sure," I said.

"Take the right defensive spot," he said. "And you are limited to
using only your left foot to pass."

"No problem," I said. I grabbed a red practice jersey and pulled it
on as I trotted out onto the field. I was as proficient with my left
foot as I was with my right foot, a skill I had worked hard on over
the past couple of years. Coach didn't see the results so much while
I played for him, but our flowing assignments at Florida gave me more
opportunities to use those skills. I was looking forward to
surprising him. I was coming to realize that the best coaches, people
such as Martin Neville and Pickett Cropper, were seldom caught by
surprise, and I knew this was a rare opportunity for me to do just
that.

As I trotted out onto the practice field, Tracy was running beside
me. I glanced at her and burst out in a wide grin, just for the joy
of it. 'God, I love playing this game,' I said to myself.



* * * * * * * * * *



That afternoon's activities kept me in a good mood for days. The
girls and I had a great time playing, and I kept my promise and only
used my left foot. I could tell Coach was chagrined, however, when he
saw me working the ball. I even borrowed a page from Frenchy's book
of tricks and juggled the ball from my head to my knee to my shoulder
to my chest and back to my knee again, all while I was tracking
upfield. Sure, I was showing off for the high school girls, but it
was still fun. I was just glad Frenchy was nowhere to be seen,
because he would have been tempted to deliver his own Sloaning on me.

After the scrimmage, after Coach had ushered the girls back to the
locker room, I sat on the bleachers with Coach Neville and Coach
Simonsen and told them about some of the changes the Gators were
working on during the off-season.

"Pick sent me a couple of cans of film early in the season," said
Coach Neville. "They looked pretty conventional, but fast."

"Oh, yeah, the players are a lot faster in college," I agreed. "The
whole game is played at an entirely different pace. It takes a little
getting used to. In fact, we're getting a new player in the fall, a
kid from California, who will redefine fast. His splits are faster
than Eric's, and Eric is quicker now than he was last year."

"The kid must be practically invisible on the field, if he's moving
that fast," said Coach Simonsen.

"We'll see," I said. "I'm looking forward to blowing his mind with
our new formations."

Coach Neville looked at me seriously. "Remember what I told you last
year, Mr. Porter? About how you make your teammates better, just as
your teammates make you achieve more? Well, I have the feeling you
and this speedster from California just might work off each other in
just the same way."

"Could be," I said. "We'll see how flexible he is in his position
changes. That's really the key for us."

"I'm glad to see you have embraced this new adventure in your life,
Sean. I know you will make the most of your opportunities under Coach
Cropper."

"I'll do what I can, I promise. Pick will make sure of that, too."

Coach chuckled. "I'm sure he will," he replied.



* * * * * * * * * *



The last day of school for the high school kids was the first
Thursday in June. By then I had my instructors hired and trained in
all my locations, and the Sean Porter summer camps were ready to
begin. We didn't start right away, preferring to give the kids a week
off to decompress from schoolwork before putting them back to work on
soccer, so everybody had a little time off before they geared up for
camp.

Friday was a cold and dreary day. Fitful gusts of wind couldn't
dissipate the mottled gray that filled the sky as far as the eye
could see, April weather visited upon us in June. It was an apt day
to call Kayla.

I dialed the number, and the telephone rang four times before Jake
picked it up. I could hear laughter and a lot of commotion in the
background.

"H'llo?"

"Jake? What's going on?"

"Seanster! Get over here, dude! We're outnumbered!"

"What?"

But it was too late. He had already hung up the phone. Just before
the connection broke, I heard him yell something, but I couldn't tell
what it was.

I grabbed my jacket and raced out the door. It sounded more like
amusement than anything else, but I wanted to make sure. I jumped
into my car and raced over to his house.

I parked in the driveway and ran up the back stairs. The door was
unlocked, and I stepped into a madhouse.

Jaimie, Kayla, Tara, and Tracy were ganging up on Jake and my
brother Stephen with pillows. At least one pillow had broken open,
and there were feathers flying everywhere. Stephen was on the floor,
his arms over his head, while Tracy and Tara were on their knees
beside him, whacking him. Jake had Jaimie around the waist while he
tried in vain to reach for her arm as she was hitting him over the
head with her pillow. Kayla was swatting him across the back with the
pillow that was spewing feathers into the air, everybody laughing and
yelling with maniacal glee. Little Kyle was standing in his playpen,
gurgling and hopping up and down as he watched the mayhem, a pacifier
forgotten in his little fist.

I didn't know where I should help first. I watched the action for
just a moment before deciding Jake probably didn't need much help,
despite appearances, but my poor brother was down and being pummeled.
With a banshee yell, I leapt over the couch and grabbed my own
pillow. I swatted Tracy, catching her by surprise, and then turned my
attention to Tara. By then, Tracy had turned on me and started in on
hitting my shoulder and back. Kayla abandoned beating on her brother
in favor of beating on me a little, stepping over Stephen and Tara,
who had taken a temporary breather. Kayla didn't have many feathers
left in her deflated pillow, so it was more like she was throwing a
pillowcase at me. It would have barely distracted me from Tracy's
enthusiastic whomping, except for the fact that it was Luscious
wielding the pillowcase.

I was just considering if I should turn around and concentrate on
stopping Kayla instead of Tracy when Jake took the decision away from
me. Holding a squirming Jaimie under one arm, he stepped over and
easily picked up Kayla with his other hand, hanging onto her belt for
leverage as he lifted her. He dropped them both onto the couch,
turned, and let himself flop between them.

"Enough!" he cried out.

I had turned my back on Tracy when Jake had picked up Kayla, and she
gave me one last whack on the back with her pillow, hard enough to
make me stumble across Tara's legs. I tumbled to the floor, twisting
so I would land on my upper arm and shoulder.

"Oh my God, Sean, I'm so sorry," Tracy cried. She jumped over
Stephen and Tara and crouched over me, a worried look on her face.

I rolled over and reached up. I thought I might pull her down as a
joke, but just as I was about to grab her by her upper arms, I saw
Kayla step over everybody on the floor. I quickly dropped my arms.

"Are you all right, Sean?" Kayla asked, kneeling by me.

I smiled. 'Keep it light,' I told myself. 'Don't panic.' "I'm fine," I
said, giving each worried face equal billing. "Really. I'm not hurt."

Kayla reached out and gently pressed her palm against my chest. When
she did that, I thought my heart would stop. It was the most
incredible feeling. I wanted to hold her hand to my chest, leave it
there for years and years, but I knew I couldn't. Not reaching out to
her was one of the hardest things I would ever do.

Just then, Kyle began wailing. He must have gotten impatient about
being ignored during the pillow fight, because he sat down abruptly
and let loose. Tara moved to get up, but before she could do more
than get to her knees, Tracy leapt up and scrambled over everybody.

"I'll get him," she said as she went over to the playpen.

Kayla, too, got up onto her knees, getting ready to push herself up
off the floor. I sat up and finally yielded to temptation by reaching
out for her hand.

"Kay? Don't go yet," I whispered.

She looked at me softly, and then slowly extricated her hand from
mine. "Not yet, Sean," she said softly. "I can't yet."

I let her go with reluctance, knowing perfectly well I had to give
her the time she required. I didn't have to like it, however. I
sighed and beat myself up a little more for being the fool I knew I
was, and then I stood up to brush feathers off my arms. They were
sticking to my sweaty skin and starting to itch.

Jaimie left Jake's side to go into the kitchen and get a garbage
bag, and all of us began to pluck feathers from the carpeting and the
upholstery while Tracy walked around and around with Kyle in her
arms, keeping him amused.

It took us nearly an hour to clean and straighten up the room. We
were fortunate there was only one destroyed pillow. Jaimie and Kayla
restuffed it, and Kayla brought out her mother's sewing kit and began
to repair the seam. Tara and Tracy went into the kitchen to get a
snack ready for Kyle, and Stephen, Jake, and I did our best to stay
out of the way. We figured it was the best way we could help.

Jaimie came out of the kitchen with chips and sodas for us, and we
all settled down in front of the television for awhile. Tara,
Stephen, Kyle, and Tracy were on the couch, and the rest of us
sprawled on the floor. Kayla and I sat near each other, and even
though we were not close enough to be touching, just the proximity
and the relaxed atmosphere gave me hope I would someday be free from
this misery of uncertainty.

'Some day soon,' I prayed.





(Continued in Chapter 32)


  
CE31