Scott Martin

Abuela: a veces le temo a esta soledad, le temo a la sequía. Pero entonces me sumerjo dentro de mi

propia espesura y escucho. Sé que me hablas en el lenguaje de los latidos. Todo lo que debo hacer

es colocar esa perla esmeralda en mi vientre para que comiencen a correr las lágrimas y yo pueda

encontrarte. Olvidé mencionarlo: tu amuleto está a salvo conmigo. Un día me sumergí tan

profundo en el río que pensé que moriría. Lo único que recuerdo es que una mano me regresó a

flote y expulsó el agua de mis pulmones. Cuando desperté, la perla estaba en el centro de mi pal-

ma.

SOCCER RATS by Scott Martin

I stand with my weight balanced on both feet, arms at my sides. A posture of calm confidence. At least that’s what I’m going for.

Behind me rises the empty stand of bleachers bordering the soccer field. Before me is a small army of twelve-year-old boys and their families. I’ve been in front of such groups before, but it’s been a while. Twenty years-awhile. A lifetime ago; more than a lifetime ago for some. These kids weren’t even born the last time I was a professional soccer coach. Heck, they could be the kids of the kids I coached back then.

Two decades ago I was coaching collegiate-level players at a Division I school. This time, I’ve got the bottom of the barrel: A team of seventeen twelve-year-old boys still a couple years away from pimples and twice as many from growing their first whisker. Boys who have already been passed over by not only the top team in the club, but the second team as well. This is the scrap heap, the third tier. No one expects much from them, but this scraggly, mangy group is my Bad News Bears and I like what I see.

Never, in all of my thirty-plus years of coaching youth, high school, and college teams, have I inherited a winning team. Yet I somehow always manage to build them into strong teams and even stronger players – all-conference, all-state, and all-Americans. The challenge is twenty years ago, I was still whole. Today, as the sun bakes the back of my neck, I’m hyper aware of the fact that as scrappy as these boys may be, I’m even scrappier. A man patched together with mechanical parts. Humpty Dumpty barely put back together again.

Thankfully the air is a cool sixty degrees so I don’t seem too out of place or too suspicious wearing my blue coaching jacket. Even with the long sleeves, I can feel everyone’s eyes on my hands. I have to resist the urge to pull them behind my back. It’s not shame that gives me the urge to hide – I got over that ten years ago – but it’s still not easy to let yourself be ogled. Especially not when you’re supposed to be in the position of a leader.

A little girl with blonde pigtails tugs on her mother’s hand to ask a question. Her mom purses her lips and makes a shushing motion. Behind them, a dad is doing the same with his kid. And another mom with hers. I want to tell them not to bother silencing their kids; the ones who aren’t asking are thinking it all the same. Even in this liberal corner of Bellingham, Washington, blind acceptance only goes so far.

As the crowd and I are busy taking each other’s measure, a white, long-haired Jack Russell Terrier trots up to sniff at my leg. He’s undoubtedly been drawn by the smell of my brood of former shelter hounds. I watch as he lifts his nose and leg simultaneously to shower my black Levis with his own welcome message.

“Whoa!” I say, yanking my foot out of the danger zone just in time. I grin and am rewarded with a few smiles from my new crew.

I take advantage of this ice breaker to address the group of self-described B’hamers. I pick the first boy who stands out. He’s an odd one, but an oddity of the good kind. Sandy haired and shorter than

almost every kid here, even the younger siblings. His arms disappear inside a pair of beat-up goalkeeper gloves. This is just a meeting, there’ll be no training session to follow and positions haven’t been assigned yet, but this kid has shown up wearing his gloves, nonetheless.

“Matthew MacGregor?” I ask, recalling his name from tryouts.

His eyes widen as he nods.

“Okay if I call you Mac?”

He glances at his mom for approval before turning back to me. This pint-sized goalkeeper with the balls to wear his position on his sleeve (literally) lifts his chin a little higher and says, “Sure.”

I look pointedly at his gloves then meet his eyes and nod.

Standing beside Mac is a freckle-faced redhead with a side part so deep his bangs sweep across his forehead. The only thing brighter than his hair is his green Seattle Sounders jersey. I remember his cool head and self-confidence from tryouts. By a stroke of luck – or ignorance – the other coaches passed him up.

“Hair like that needs to be grown down to your shoulders,” I tell Jack.

“Cool,” he says before shooting a glance up to his folks for approval. When neither objects, his grin widens.

“Tell me,” I say, “What type of position is in your heart, Jack Clement?”

His pale brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

I look to his father. “Is he a good student?”

“Yes?” Dad says, although it comes out as more of a question. I take it for a statement of fact anyway, knowing I’ve got Jack’s number.

“Does he need to be reminded to do his chores? Make his bed? Does he help out without being asked?”

This time there’s no hesitancy in Mr. Clement’s voice. “He’s a great kid.”

Turning back to Jack, I ask, “Do you prefer chess or checkers?”

“Chess. Checkers doesn’t do it for me.”

“Center back,” I tell him. “Trust me, that’s your natural spot.”

Moving down the line, I pause on an African American kid, the only one on our team. He’s standing partially behind his mother. When our eyes meet, his quickly skitter away. He ducks farther behind his mom. I let him off and continue to the next kid in line.

I give a curly-haired blonde in a Brazilian National Team jersey a hard look. A well-worn soccer ball rests at his feet. I remember him well from tryouts, too. This kid can link the left to the right and the back to the front of any scrimmage format played. For two days I’d watched him scan the field at all times, rarely looking for where the ball was at his feet.

“Central Midfielder,” I tell him, then add, “Here’s the deal: I’m rarely going to tell you what to do but be ready to answer questions. Got it?”

Liam’s mouth gapes slightly to reveal a nice set of braces. I’ve just given this soccer rat the Golden Ticket: freedom to explore. He nods.

I begin slowly strolling across the front of the group again, ready to set the hook. “In fact, boys, in training I’ll have more questions than instructions for all of you. My mission is not to teach you but to put you in a position to learn.”

Silence from the crowd. I repeat my coaching mantra as I continue pacing across the crowd: “My mission is not to teach you, but to put you in a position to learn. Coaches today tend to build robots instead of developing soccer players. With me, you’ll learn to play mathematically. You will play as individuals within a team rather than a team that plays as individuals, and you’ll learn to turn off your brain and play from your heart.”

This time the silence following my words is weighed by intrigue instead of confusion. I’ve got them now. Like kids waiting to be asked a sure-fire question by their favorite teacher, each of the remaining boys turns eagerly for my assessment of them.

I suppress a grin. “Chill, guys, I need to watch you play first.” It’s rare that three players can walk on the field wearing their positions as Mac, Jack, and Liam have.

“I go by feel,” I tell them.

My throat tightens on the last word. It’s as good of a segue as any, I suppose. Time to approach the elephant, the gorilla, and the stinky dog fart in the room. Time to address my handicap.

Even though the prosthetic hands I wear look real at a casual glance, without wrists and being a person who talks with his hands, it does become a distraction, especially to twelve-year-old boys. I hate being reminded about my handicap, but always understand the curiosity.

I’ve come a long way since the early years when I viewed the prosthetic hands and feet as a disability. Now I consider times like this an opportunity to step forward on behalf of everyone who stands out in the crowd for a perceived negative condition.

Settling myself on the top of the picnic table in front of my team, I take a breath and say the words I’ll never get used to saying, “It’s time for my two-minute summary about my handicap.”

A STRANGER’S BONES by Leah Mueller

Under the overpass, a Ziploc bag beckoned from cracked earth: discarded receptacle, dusty and still in the stagnant air.

When I pushed it with my shoe, powder oozed from the top: the zipped barrier had come loose.

Grainy, light gray substance, ground into fine powder. At first, I thought cocaine, then bulk flour,

but a woman’s name and date had been scrawled into the plastic with a black Magic Marker.

Someone had thrown cremated remains from the overpass and driven away, free from the burden of death.

Thirteen years passed until they saw fit to discard the package. Now it lay in purgatorial mud, twitching and oozing dust.

I picked up the bag, poured its contents into the San Pedro River, watched cremains drift away in the murky, sluggish current.

I’ve scattered the remnants of my brothers, my sister, my mother, my first and second husbands, but I’ve never released a stranger’s ashes.

I held in my cupped hands a substance that was once a person’s body: a woman who ate, slept, made love,

perhaps gave birth to a child who later threw her ashes from a car, right before Mother’s Day.

What impulse prompted such an act? I’ll never know: still, I am glad I set the bones free, to drift downstream in search of a much better incarnation.

DOWNSIZED by Bruce Gunther

The velvet smile, the weak handshake: “Thanks for your service,” a line so rehearsed it has the emotion of wood. Walking out, the others try not to look up from their desks, gossip locked and loaded. Emerge into the frozen sunlight of February, wind with its sharpened teeth. The boss watches as you leave before placing a checkmark next to an entry in his planner. Driving home, the car’s heater taking forever as ribbons of snow dance across the freeway. All the while thinking, why did I accept that handshake? Why not the grand exit, an epitaph, or laughing in his face like a drunken clown at midnight, or a hyena joining its pack for a feast of prey? Instead, I loosen my tie, letting out some air beneath the noose.

AT THE RIVER by Bruce Gunther