You can feel the pulse in this flat Texas town tonight. Kids are decked out in Wildcat hats, Wildcat shirts, Wildcat windbreakers. College-educated fathers with flasks, perfumed mothers, coolers rattling in the way-back. Ted Bundy is dead. Two years ago, Baby Jessica fell in a well not so far from here. The Berlin Wall will come down next week, but tonight, there is no rest of the world. Just here, the road to glory.
My dad chuckles. Mudflaps beat against tires when the farm folk hit I coming in from the country. Family farmers whose kids have bad teeth and bad grades and bad manners and get bussed in until ninth grade. There was an article about it in the paper. Dickie posed by the tractor in front of the high school. The South Side is mostly Black. Working men and proud mamas and aunties and grannies with star players; backseats full of kids. Skeeter Jenkins is our star running back.
His daddy Slater drags a pit grill behind an F Best in Texas. Mexicans blasting music from lowriders. Not many Mexicans play football here.
When you live in fear of being picked up by border patrol, team sports fall by the wayside. One day, someday, people in this town may say these were stereotypes, racist terms. We were racist. We are racist. Sunny yesterday, a shoulder ride of a day.
Then bam, the weather purged itself fast. Temperature falling. Skin and bones. Insides empty. My next-door neighbor Ashley Thorson purged all week too. My sister says she puts her finger down her throat to make herself throw up before drill team weigh-in.
