“I have three sisters so I was pretty clear about what had happened and I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but she was crying, so embarrassed that everyone had seen,” he said.
“What did she do?”
“Another girl got her a pad and I gave her my sweatshirt to wear. It was really long so it covered the stain and everyone forgot about it that same week, because we found out that the vice principal was having an affair with the art teacher. They were both married to other people.” Then he told me more about his family, his three sisters and his parents. Two sisters had alsomoved away from Arkansas, but they got together for holidays and his dream was to buy a cabin on a lake they all loved so that they could vacation there together.
He did a great job of drawing my thoughts away from the party and its aftermath as we continued our slow drive toward the stadium. “You choose to spend your vacations with them,” I stated, and he nodded. “You all like each other.”
“We fight. We argue,” he corrected himself. “Sometimes, I still have to take my second-to-youngest sister and hold her over the edge of the dock because that girl has a very, very sassy mouth.” He smiled as he spoke, so apparently, he thought that sass was funny and they still got along even after he had threatened her with a dunking. “You have siblings, so you know how it is.”
“We’re not the same way.”
“Was that your sister who came out of the back room when we were leaving?” he asked me. “You look even more like her than you do with your brother.”
“Yes, that was Morgan, but we’re not very similar.” I was more than a little offended by the comparison.
He didn’t argue but he didn’t agree, either. “Has she been sick?” he asked.
She did look like that. “She’s all right,” I told him. Mom had said that Morgan had started online therapy, and maybe it would work. I didn’t usually talk much about our family but now I started to explain our relationships. “Max and Morgan are five years apart and he’s twenty-nine. But she and I are very close in age, which leads to speculation that I was a mistake. Actually,Morgan might have been, too. I think my parents would have been happy with just a son but now they’re probably glad to have the extra hands at the restaurant.”
“They’re usually your hands. I mean that you’re usually there,” he said, and I couldn’t argue with that. Then he pointed at the view through the windshield. “Look at this. Isn’t it amazing?”
We were turning into the long drive that led up to Woodsmen Stadium. “It is,” I answered reverently. The huge football complex rose in the distance and the sight always did give me a thrill. “We used to come for field trips and of course, I’m here for every Fan Day. We always close the restaurant because we wouldn’t get any customers,” I explained.
“Did you ever go to a game?”
“Once. I won the tickets in a persuasive essay-writing contest for our school district. I argued that the Woodsmen were the greatest team ever, in all of recorded history. I guess the judges agreed.”
“I knew you were a big fan. That was why you kept on asking me to introduce you to the players.”
Sure, he could believe that. I didn’t need to acknowledge that I was also scheming about how to hook a Woodsmen for my own uses. “Right,” I said, nodding. “But they’re not here today.”
“Probably not. Most of the guys took a vacation when their season ended. By now, they’ll be back wherever they live, training to get ready for the next season. Just because they’re not playing, it doesn’t mean they’re not working.”
“What are you doing on the days that you don’t have to watch the Junior Woodsmen?” I asked.
As we slowly approached the building, Shane told me more about his job. He was in charge of scouting several teams, not just the Juniors. That explained his absence from our restaurant—that and the fact that he didn’t seem to like our food very much. He traveled all around the Midwest to keep up on specific players and to watch for emerging talent, too. It sounded busy and tiring, kind of like running Walter’s. But he seemed to like it.
He went around to the back of the stadium, which took a long time because of our speed and because it was huge, like a fortress. Before I got out of his truck, I checked the mirror and saw that things were bad. My eyes were red and puffy and my nose looked raw. There wasn’t anything to do about it, though, so I snapped the visor closed and got out to join him.
We ended up at a much smaller door than the one I remembered entering when I’d won the tickets in the essay contest. It was very exciting, though, because there were signs that said this area was for authorized personnel only, no public access. That meant it was for Woodsmen people and even if the players weren’t here at the moment, it was still so cool to be in a place that they usually inhabited. It made me feel closer to them, closer to my goal.
“So, this is my office,” he remarked. He held the no-public-access door open for me and then he showed me around other places where fans were not allowed, like the locker room and even the showers, where the Woodsmen were naked! We walked through the tunnel that they used to go to the field, which lookedso much bigger up close. I found the place in the stands, far, far, far in the distance, where I had sat with my brother when we had come to the game. I had picked him to accompany me because I had worshiped him back then. We all had.
“What do you think?”
I turned to him, practically speechless. “I can’t believe you get to work here,” I managed to tell him.
“Not in this exact place.” He glanced over at the home team sideline, where the players and coaches in Woodsmen orange lined up for their games. “Maybe someday.”
“Where is your actual office?”
He hesitated but then nodded. “I’ll show you.”
We had to take a little walk to get there—it was actually a long walk. More like a hike, which I had told him was something that people enjoyed doing in northern Michigan but which I hadn’t expected to do myself, today. Luckily, I was wearing the ugly gym shoes that I always put on for extended time on my feet at the restaurant. In spite of those, I did notice that maybe I wouldn’t have been great on a hike, like I previously claimed when he’d asked me about outdoor activities.
“How far is it?” I asked and he announced that we had arrived. We were in a hallway that wasn’t particularly well-lit and he was squinting to see as he led the way. His office door looked slightly battered, but it had his name on a plastic plaque resting in a frame. Under that was another plaque, a metal one screwed into the wood that read “Asst. Area Scout.”
“You’re official,” I said approvingly, and he cracked a small smile.
