About twelve years ago I watched Rudy Esterhaus take a jump on his bike and whack his head on a tree branch. Me, Rudy and Tommy Cross had gone out to the woods to jump our bikes through the ditches. Five feet deep and ten around. Perfect size to shoot down one end and straight back up. Maybe catch some air, depending on how fast you went.

Rudy pedaled back about twenty feet and built up some speed before hitting it. He got up a good two feet. We whooped it up. He landed wobbly, still going fast, and swerved into the grass to slow himself down. Pow, tree branch. Rudy hung suspended in midair for a second, his forehead attached to the branch and his hands still reaching out for the handlebars, then falling straight onto his back, like in a cartoon. Tommy must’ve seen the same thing I did, because we were both doubled over laughing. The bike went a few feet on its own before falling over in the grass. Rudy staggered up, lurching and waving like someone was tilting the ground under him, trying to throw him off it. We laughed harder. What stopped us was the look on his face.

It wasn’t Rudy there. Just a blank sheet and the early makings of a purple bruise rising like a new continent on his forehead. He looked at us and said “Who?” in a small, lost voice. To me and Tommy it seemed about the scariest thing we could’ve heard him say. For ten seconds he wandered like that, slack-faced, newborn in his surroundings. He found his bike in the grass, stared a moment. And then Rudy became Rudy again. His eyes settled into their usual sullen narrows.

“What?” he snapped.

 Tommy pressed his hand against the bruise on Rudy's forehead.

“Ow! Fucker!”

That was twelve years ago. I’m sitting in my car in the here and now—thinking about Rudy’s lost face in the woods. The fish are blinking in and out of my eyeballs.

*

The three of us played Pop Warner football the following year. Rudy quit in high school but Tommy and I stuck with it. We both played at Virginia Tech until Tommy transferred out after sophomore year and then he quit too. I managed to get the attention of some scouts, enough for a team to take a flyer on me in the sixth round.

Cassie was there when I got the call from one of the personnel office guys. He welcomed me to the team while Cassie yelled in the background that I should’ve gone in the first round. He asked what was that noise.

“Traffic,” I said as I ducked to the bathroom and locked the door. When I came back she was doing cartwheels across the living room. She usually bursts into cartwheels whenever she gets excited about something. She managed three then hit her heel on the edge of the couch and fell against the wall. I went to see if she was okay, dug through a giggling mess of chestnut hair, looking for bumps. Her hands covered my ears. Her eyes grabbed mine. “This is when everything changes,” she said. That was two years ago.

It’s three weeks ago. Cassie is looking at me with a different face. She says one of my eyes has gone all funny. One pupil is bigger than the other. I shake my head. I have to figure out the here and now.

*

My first year was a wash. I was buried in the depth chart. Mop-up duty and special teams, mostly. We finished the season four and twelve. That spring I got an application to staff a cell phone kiosk at the mall. Cassie found it on the kitchen table and threw it away. She was working at a local college. She knew someone at the fitness center and got me a pass to go in and work out. I told her mini camp wasn’t for a few months. I was on vacation. She said I didn’t get a vacation.

That night Cassie and I were watching a show, some rich guy getting a bed made with four fish tanks in the shape of columns, one at each corner of the bed. Nothing as peaceful as watching the fish swim, the guy said. Cassie had a dreamy look. I told her I’d build a fish tank above the bed so she could lie back and look up and fall asleep to fish floating overhead. Blue fish were the best to fall asleep to, she said.

Cassie never let me get to the mail first. She knew that if I saw her loan statements I’d have to look. She was making her payments. I knew she’d be making payments for the rest of her life. I wondered where she was hiding the envelopes and I started to make a list. A life without hidden envelopes. A living room that can fit four cartwheels. Blue fish to fall asleep to.

Year two. Havermeyer, our top linebacker, left for free agency in the spring. That left Narrens, Connolly, Bowen and me, in that order. Connolly was packaged and sent to Philadelphia in a draft day trade. Third game of the season Narrens rolled an ankle and got pulled for the last quarter. Bowen got plugged into the right side but was getting swallowed up by the tackle. Coach Hilliard found me and told me to get my helmet on. He grabbed me by the facemask and pulled me down to his eye level.

“You see number eight?” he said. That was the quarterback. I said yeah.

“Bury him,” he said.

First play in. I tried to go wide around the tackle. He took an easy step in front of me and swatted me hard in the chest. I went straight back and on my ass. The play was over pretty quick. I got up and started towards the sideline. Coach pointed back at the field. Over the crowd I heard him yell “get the fuck back in there.”

I ran back in and got the play. Same assignment: see quarterback, bury quarterback. I lined up and waited for the snap. The tackle saw me coming wide again and stepped out with the same move. This time I cut inside and slipped away from him. Nothing but empty space between me and number eight. I had his blind side. It was beautiful.

He was winding up to throw when I slammed into his back. The ball came loose. One of our guys jumped on it. I went back to the sideline to a flurry of smacks on the helmet. I was looking for a place to sit down but one of the coaches pulled me to a whiteboard and explained what we would be doing next time we were on the field. He drew x’s and o’s while I tried to peek at the monitors for slow motion replays of the hit, the fumble. Someone called my name, told me to pay attention to the here and now.

I spent the next few weeks as a situational player, mostly third-down pass rush. By the end of the season I was dropping back, covering guys, setting the edge. All the things you want out of a starter. At home Cassie was still hiding envelopes. Still no blue fish in the bedroom.

Five months ago I started the last year of my rookie contract. My agent called to tell me they were talking about an extension. Still hammering out the numbers. He mentioned four years, ten million, maybe five years, fifteen million with three up front. He closed the call with, “Just keep busting heads, kid.”

This was what happened before. This is not the here and now.

*

The here and now begins three months ago. It’s preseason. It’s a nothing game, a meaningless game. I’m in for a few plays to knock the rust off. The ball is snapped and the quarterback immediately turns left and throws to the receiver in front of me. The ball glances off his hands and falls to the ground, an incomplete pass. A whistle blows and the play is over. I pull up slow to the receiver, getting ready to say something to him about being lucky he didn't make the catch, about having him in my cross hairs.

There's a clap against my helmet and a white flash, like lightning in my face, and I’m on the ground. Clouds in my eyes. When they clear, two guys in red polo shirts are looking down at me. Behind them the sky has gone all orange. They’re asking me questions and I’m answering but can’t make out what I'm saying. They get me to my feet. Some of my teammates are kneeling on the ground a few yards away, hand in hand with guys from the other team, praying. They stand when they see that I’m up and start clapping, but the sound is like muffled waves, like I’ve got my ear against a conch shell.

On the bench now with one of the red polo shirts kneeling in front of me. Gary, from the medical staff. He asks me how I’m feeling. I can barely hear him from the static in my ears. Fine, I tell him. Gary floats a pen in front of my face and tells me to track it with my eyes. He tells me to count backwards from a hundred in multiples of seven. He starts asking questions.

“What stadium are we in? What quarter is it? What’s the score? Who did we play last week?”

He leaves me there to talk to the other red polo shirt. I can’t tell if he likes my answers. I’m worried about the sky that’s still orange. Coach comes by and talks to me but the whole time he’s watching Gary and the medical staff. He makes a joke and then laughs at the joke and walks away. I’m pressing my eyes with the heels of my hands like I’m trying to flatten them. Soon the static clears and the sky goes back to blue. I grab my helmet and head to the locker room. What was it that coach said that was so funny?

It’s two days after the game. Cassie and I are driving home from dinner. She keeps saying how worried she was when she saw the hit, how she couldn’t believe they just kept replaying it on the monitors. I watch the taillights ahead of us and say nothing. The taillights are red eyes shooting lasers, burning holes into my face. Cassie is still talking and all I can think is red eyes, red eyes, red eyes. My head suddenly weighs a hundred pounds and I need to sleep. I pull over and tell her I need her to drive. She asks if I’m all right but I’m too tired to talk. All I want is to lie down and close my eyes. She’s still talking. Just drive, I tell her. Stop talking and just drive.

The next morning Cassie tells me that Whitney Carmichael got cut.

“Who?”

She says he’s the lineman from the other team who got me with the late hit.

“Who?”

She speaks slowly. Something about a lineman who got cut.

“Who?”

She says I’m not being funny. I don’t say anything. I don’t know any Whitney Carmichael. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

*

Later that day in the film room I see the fish for the first time. We’re watching tape of the game and all of a sudden my temples are caving in and there’s something like an ice pick jabbing my ear. It happens so quick I nearly shatter my teeth when my jaw clamps down. I close my eyes and that helps for a little bit but then the fish are there, sparking across left to right and bouncing at the edges of the dark.

They’re tiny, these fish. Little daggers of light. They dash and flow and scatter when disturbed. They’re not like the blue fish that Cassie wants to fall asleep to. They’re mad and lost. They squirm and carom off each other and the sound they make is a whistle, a whine that stabs the softest parts of my ears, and there’s a pulse in my head like a drum and they jump with every clatter and bang.

I sit in the back and close my eyes. I’m still listening to Coach. If I hear my name I'll answer. If I hear them switch on the lights I’ll open my eyes again.

*

It’s three weeks later. Our home opener. I’m on the field and it smells like grass. Which is weird since the field is turf and has its own plastic smell when you’re up close to it. There’s a tight end in front of me and I’m watching, waiting for him to come off the line. But there's something behind him. A bike on the turf. I turn and yell for someone to move the bike before we can start the play but now everyone is running past me and I’m standing there and the bike is gone.

Gary finds me on the sideline, asks me what happened out there. I tell him about the bike. Gary wants me to follow him back to the locker room. I’m thinking about blue fish and hidden envelopes, and all the quarterbacks I haven't buried yet. I’m going back in. Gary is looking behind me. I turn to see Coach shaking his head. Gary grips my arm and starts pulling me away. I want to grab that skinny little neck and feel it break like chicken bones under his thin skin. I yank my arm away but then the world drops from under me. My feet won’t plant right and I crash into the water cooler, spilling cups and Gatorade. Everything spinning like looking over a ledge. I’m on all fours, trying not to throw up. When it finally settles I let Gary take me by the elbow and lead me to the locker room.

It’s two days ago. Cassie and me watching TV and I don’t know what the show is but turn it off, I tell her. Every time I look at the screen my head tightens. Even with my eyes closed I can still see a white square flashing white and white again. And I don’t want the fish, not now. She turns it off and doesn’t say anything, but she’s watching me. I tell her about the bike, how I saw it on the field but it disappeared. She starts crying. Why is she crying? I want to throw the TV out the window. I want to see it fall quietly to its death.

It’s three in the morning. My head is being squeezed in a vice. My head is being crushed under an elephant’s foot. All I want is sleep but my head is collapsing and goddamnit my ears are ringing too. A kettle whistling, raining needles in my ears. I’m screaming to hear my own voice above it. Cassie is backed against the headboard. Her mouth is open but I can’t hear her scream. I smother myself in the pillow and I’m crying now and just waiting for my head to break apart. To crack open. Anything, anything.

*

There is no here and now. Only pieces.

I’m in the living room waiting for Cassie to get out of the shower. I blink and the bathroom is empty.

I’m on the field. Everyone’s run past me and I’m alone. There’s a bike in the middle of the grass. A voice asks, “Who?” but I don't know the answer.

I’m sitting in my car. I’m thinking about Rudy Esterhaus. Coach Hilliard would've said that Rudy got his bell rung.

It’s night. No sound. The fish curve and dance, all alive and electric.

 

Yazan Barakat lives and writes in New York. He is currently working on his first novel.