Cracking the Bell Read online

  Energy cannot be created or destroyed?

  Mr. Urness looked at me. “Mr. Sadler,” he said, “to what am I referring?”

  Bright light. People staring. My brain struggled to make a coherent sound over the noise of the bells ringing, but something fell out of my mouth. “Energy can’t be created. It can’t be destroyed. It only changes form. That’s the first law of thermodynamics.”

  “Right. It’s the law,” Urness said.

  “My boy is wicked smart,” Twiggs said.

  “Energy changes form,” I said.

  “Mumble to yourself much?” Tyra asked.

  “Energy cannot be extinguished,” Mr. Urness said.

  Hannah. Her energy cannot be destroyed. Her energy changes form. What did it change into? Where did it go? Did it hang together as Hannah’s specific energy? A ghost Hannah? Did it disperse into the ground, into trees, into clouds, into rain? Did it become part of everything?

  The room began to spin and swoop. I covered my ears. Mr. Urness put up a PowerPoint. I covered my eyes, which exposed my ears. I thought I was going to get sick on my desk.

  I raised my hand. “I’m really sick,” I said.

  “You don’t sound like yourself,” Mr. Urness said.

  Five minutes into first hour, I got a pass and went back home to sleep.

  Not normal. Not my second life. In fact, I think this was the end of my second life.

  The day collapsed into noise and light and nightmares and bed spins.

  “Did you talk to Coach Reynolds before you left?” Mom asked in the evening.

  “I made an appointment to discuss it,” I said. “But had to come home, you know?”

  “I know, sweetheart,” Mom said. She stroked my head, which hurt, but I didn’t tell her to stop.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE ICE BOWL

  Isaiah Sadler was only born because of a specific team and a specific moment in the history of American football.

  Cue the dramatic music.

  Nobody in his family ever played the sport, but he still grew up in the culture of the sport, from babyhood on. He watched the NFL with Grandma Gin, Grandpa John, Dad, Mom, sometimes Melinda (Mom’s sister), and whoever was Melinda’s romantic partner at the time, a woman for many years, which did not seem to bother Grandma Gin or Grandpa John—but then a man, Tom, who she married. Hannah was there on the floor with coloring books and crayons.

  The family room at Grandma Gin’s is a shrine to the Green Bay Packers. There are framed posters of legendary coach Vince Lombardi, quarterback Bart Starr, defensive end Reggie White (“He was such a nice man”), and Grandma’s favorite player of all, the cocksure, grinning quarterback with the rocket arm, Brett Favre. In two glass cases on either side of the big TV, there are signed footballs, commemorative placards, player action figures, and frames filled with sixty years of team trading cards. Dozens of Packer yearbooks line a bookshelf. A golden vase contains two miniature flags, which bloom like flowers: the Packer G flag and old glory herself, the Stars and Stripes. There are green and gold beanbag chairs for the kids (one kid gone, one too big to sit there anymore). There are a brown leather couch and recliner and a worn out green-and-gold recliner that used to be Grandpa John’s but is Grandma’s chair now.

  If you ask Isaiah he will tell you: This is where I come from.

  In truth, he would almost surely not exist if not for the Green Bay Packers.

  Why? On December 31, 1967, the Wisconsin State–La Crosse marching band was set to perform before the NFL Championship Game in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Grandma Gin, then a scant freshman, twirled baton for the band. The game was a huge deal. She couldn’t believe her luck. She couldn’t believe she got to attend. The winner (Packers versus Cowboys) would go on to play in the second Super Bowl ever held.

  Incredible. Poor kid from the western hills gets to see this game? Gin hadn’t been sure about college—she wanted to earn money more than anything, not read books. But then, twirling batons got her to Lambeau Field? What an opportunity!

  Except, it was cold outside. Incredibly cold.

  Green Bay Packer cornerback Willie Wood couldn’t start his car that morning. It was frozen shut. He told the tow truck guy, “No way we play a game today. No way. It’s too cold.”

  Frank Gifford, CBS color commentator, sat in the broadcast booth before the game. He stared down at what had just moments earlier been a steaming mug. “Let me take a bite out of my coffee,” he said. The coffee had frozen solid.

  The marching band rolled up to the historic stadium and unloaded their equipment. They shivered and shook as they did so. A nasty wind ripped through their uniforms, especially the flag girls and baton twirlers, who were asked to wear skirts in all weather. They were already cold when they arrived! The heaters on the bus that brought them couldn’t deal with wind chills of forty degrees below zero.

  Many band members began to grumble.

  “Maybe we should throw in the towel?”

  “This is too much.”

  “No one is going to sit in the stands to watch us in this stupid weather.”

  Gin got nervous. Would the Packers still let them watch the game if they didn’t march?

  As a band, they decided to delay making the decision to cancel. These were all Wisconsin kids. When would they get this opportunity again?

  They made their way through the entrance tunnel and to the field, where they saw a grounds crew in panic mode. The band hung back and watched as men wearing thick golden coats tried to get feeble heaters to blow across the field.

  It turned out that the heaters on the bus weren’t the only ones that couldn’t deal with that kind of cold. The subterranean heating coils—the ones that usually kept the Lambeau Field turf feeling like Kentucky bluegrass in the springtime—had also malfunctioned, shut down. And when the grounds crew removed the giant tarp covering the field, a thin layer of moisture, which had built up under the tarp, flash froze, turning the turf into a carpet of icy razor blades. The band waited and waited. Finally, a crew manager came up and said, “You can get out there and see, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “Let’s just take a look,” said one baritone horn player. So, the band stumbled onto the field to see if there was any possibility. And when they did, something miraculous happened. A giant, wild, drunken crowd cheered like crazy. “It sounded so odd,” Gin said. “Like fifty-thousand seals got together for an outdoor rock-and-roll concert on an iceberg.”

  Yes. Fifty-thousand Green Bay Packers fans were already there—the whole mass of them buried under wool blankets, snowmobile suits, and ice fishing gloves pulled up to their elbows. They braved deadly temperatures and packed the stadium, ready to cheer on their hometown heroes, even if they might die doing so. Their breath turned instantly to steam when they shouted, shrouding the entirety of the stadium in roiling silver clouds.

  “It was those thick mittens that made the funny noise. Seals in heat. That’s what they sounded like,” Gin said.

  That baritone player, a large man named John Bertram, a good-looking fellow, even if he had a square head, stood up in front of the rest of the band and said, “If these fans can muster the courage to cheer out here, can’t us God-dang college kids muster the piss and brandy to perform for them?”

  The band answered yes. Emphatically.

  And so, a couple minutes later they whipped off their heavy coats, and marched onto the frozen field, ready to perform the pregame show, to play a tribute to the circus called “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

  Have you ever seen the “Triple Dog Dare” part of the movie A Christmas Story? On a dare, a kid flash freezes his tongue to a frozen light post and the police and fire department are called to extract him. Imagine that scene, but a lot bigger, a whole marching band placing frozen instruments made either entirely from metal, or containing metal parts, into their mouths. . . .

  That baritone player, John Bertram, was the first to notice his face was frozen to his instrument. Out of shock, he dr
opped the baritone, which was a bad move, because when he dropped it, half his upper lip came off on the mouthpiece. He cried out in pain.

  The trouble spread. Woodwind reeds splintered, cutting the tongues of clarinetists. Saxophonists found their fingers spit-glued to their instruments. Mylar drumheads shattered, firing frozen plastic into the faces of drummers. Flag girls’ flagpoles broke. And the wind whipped broken blades of razor grass across the bare legs and ankles of the baton twirlers. Gin lost at least a half gallon of blood, which froze to her flesh, turning her legs dark red.

  The cataclysm was so quick, no one in the stands understood what was happening. They stopped their seal clapping and looked on confused, because the band, including the drummers, stopped playing right as they’d started. Some marchers fell to the ground. Some stumbled off the field dazed and confused.

  One man got it, though. Pat Summerall, a sideline reporter for CBS Sports. He was close enough to see there were serious weather-related injuries afoot. He signaled the booth, called out instructions into his headset, and soon ambulances arrived on the field to pick up marching band casualties.

  Seven band members were taken to local hospitals, others were taken deep into the warm bowels of the stadium for treatment.

  Gin, although she lost a lot of blood, chose to skip medical treatment. She was inspired once again by the baritone player, John Bertram. He had shoved medical staff away from him. He had shouted that they’d have to cut off his whole head to keep him from staying and cheering for his beloved Green Bay Packers. Gin didn’t really know him yet—John Bertram was a junior—but when she saw him fight like a junkyard dog to stay, even though he had just lost his upper lip, she thought to herself, “I will marry that crazy bastard.”

  And that’s what she did. One year later they both dropped out of college and John Bertram became Grandpa John and Gin Weissman became Grandma Gin Bertram.

  The Packers wouldn’t let down their fans, either. They won that game, the famous “Ice Bowl,” in the final minute. Bart Starr’s winning quarterback sneak (including the roiling silver clouds emanating from the fans in the stands) would be replayed a billion times on television (and now on YouTube). The Packers fought through bone-cracking cold, stayed together, beat the mighty Cowboys, and found themselves headed out to the Super Bowl, in the much warmer confines of the Orange Bowl Stadium, in Miami, Florida. They went filled with Wisconsin courage, carrying with them the values of optimism, grit, and excellence. Those are American values, Grandpa John would say. The Green Bay Packers won that Super Bowl.

  John Bertram’s values. He dropped out of college because he couldn’t abide by his collegiate deferment from Vietnam. “All those Black boys and poor boys get sent off while I sit here in a classroom? That isn’t right. That can’t be right.” He went over there. He did a tour and a half. Got shot in his thigh and came home with a bunch of medals for valor. The bullet didn’t stop him from going to where the danger was again, from becoming a cop, then a detective, then working for the Wisconsin Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and even helping out on an investigation after he retired, which got him shot dead on a country road.

  He was a good dude. Grandma Gin was a good person. While Grandpa fought crime, she opened the Dairy Queen. She worked hard and believed in the rightness of what she did. She said she was always happy. “Never had a dark day until John died.” They loved their kids, and accepted and loved their lesbian daughter, Melinda, and accepted her decision to marry a man later. They accepted and loved the Jewish man Dan who married their daughter Tammy (even though he was a New York Giants fan!). Isaiah saw the way other people in his small town sometimes treated people who were different from themselves. He knew his own grandparents were different, better, bigger hearted than all those others. He loved them for it.

  But know this: If not for the Ice Bowl, Isaiah’s grandmother wouldn’t have known John Bertram’s giant heart, and she would never have married him and then Isaiah’s mother would never have been born and so Isaiah would never have been born.

  To this legendary game he owes his existence.

  So did Hannah.

  But Hannah was gone and Grandpa John was gone and then Melinda got divorced and Grandma Gin began to say nasty things, disheartening things, to Melinda about the way Melinda lived her life, which made Melinda stay away and so it felt like Melinda was gone and Dan and Tammy didn’t recover from Hannah dying, so their marriage was gone, but for some reason, those who lived showed up for Isaiah’s football games (even Melinda several times). They sat in the stands together and cheered. They were nice to each other up there.

  Isaiah kept them together. Dan (Dad), Tammy (Mom), Melinda (Aunt), Gin (Grandma). Because he played football?

  At least he kept them talking.

  Yes. He believed that.

  “You know, bro, you’re sort of a narcissist, right?” Joey said.

  “Why? Are you kidding?” I asked.

  “Do you really think you matter so much? Or your grandpa mattered so much? Do you really think you’re part of Green Bay Packer lore?”

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you really think you matter so damn much to your mom? Like, if you went away she’d die or something?”

  “I think she would die if I died,” I said.

  “Let go of yourself so you can be yourself,” Joey said.

  “Where do you come up with this stuff?” I asked.

  “I read that on a poster up at Spencer’s in the mall in Dubuque,” he said.

  CHAPTER 13

  OCTOBER 2: TUESDAY

  On Tuesday morning, I felt better. Legitimately. My head on a pillow for almost twenty hours straight (with trips to the bathroom and two cups of tea in between) actually helped.

  When I turned on my bedside lamp at 6:45, the light didn’t bother me much. That was a first since Friday. The sound of Mom’s electric toothbrush in the bathroom as I walked down the hall didn’t chase me back to bed, either. I stood at the counter, drank a cup of coffee, ate three hard-boiled eggs, and looked at my phone to see what assignments were due (and I could read my screen). And then realized I’d totally fallen behind because I hadn’t done a minute of homework since last Thursday.

  Mom walked in, wearing her business dress. “You have your meeting with Coach Reynolds today? It’s going to be tough. But it’s the right thing, you know?”

  I sighed. “Mom,” I said, leaning on the refrigerator, “how about I stay home?”

  “You still dizzy?” She pressed her cold hand against my forehead. “Not better than yesterday? Should we go back to the doctor? What if you’re bleeding internally or something?”

  “No. I feel good, actually. Really good. Normal.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  To show my improvement, I said, “Look, okay?” I did three jumping jacks. “I’m not dizzy. See? No dizziness.”

  “Okay? So? School?”

  “I got behind on homework. Need a catch-up day.”

  “You’re not just avoiding having a hard discussion, are you? Do you want me to call Coach Reynolds? I’m serious, Isaiah. We can go in together.”

  “Jesus. I just need to get my damn homework done,” I spat. “I’m not a third grader.”

  I never shouted at Mom. She took a step back. “Do what you think is right, kid,” she said. “But you owe it to your teammates to let them know. They’re going to have to adjust to this as much as you are.”

  “I have to catch up on homework,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. She softened. “You’re going to be okay, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Call me if you need anything.”

  Mom would never have let Hannah have a catch-up day, but she was a different human being now. Dad often complained that she coddled me. Mom often told Dad to stay in his lane. If he hadn’t left us, maybe he could have a say sometimes. In this situation? Had she even talked to Dad about it? What would he say about me quitting football?
/>   I didn’t want to know. He’s not an idiot. He’d probably agree.

  I stayed home, drank water, did schoolwork, felt physically better. Did not think about Mom or football. Around noon, I made myself tomato soup and a grilled cheese while singing along to the ’90s Pandora station Mom kept up on her desktop computer in the living room. Half those old bands are impossible to understand when they sing, but I sang anyway.

  Life crept back into the universe. Heated the plastic and made it malleable. Chased dust, sand, cobwebs away. It felt good to be inside myself. Singing (I’m a shit singer). Feeling the emotion of the music. Because those old ’90s songs are filled with real feeling, even if the words make no damn sense. My soul was inside my body. I could feel it.

  Then, while I was washing the lunch dishes, I looked out the back window toward Grandma’s house. Things weren’t right out there. Not at all. Things were out of place. A pointy girl stood on Grandma’s deck. Pointy girl. Grace. My Grace (yes, my Grace, even though I hadn’t talked to her in almost two years). She smoked a cigarette like she did in half my memories of her. She looked in my direction. Could she see me in the window staring out at her like some frozen gazelle facing a lioness?

  I dropped out of sight. I slid to lying on the floor. What was Grace doing at Grandma’s house?

  Grace. My Grace. Why? Hanging out with Grandma? Doing Dairy Queen business with Grandma? Grace was the store manager. But wouldn’t Grace and Grandma do their business at Dairy Queen, not at the house in my backyard? What business, anyway? Blizzards? Nobody makes Blizzards in their own house. No way. Or . . . maybe Grace was robbing Grandma, selling Grandma’s jewelry for drug money? Murdering Grandma for drug money . . .

  Oh, come on. . . .

  Maybe she was dropping something off—paperwork, tax forms, time cards (which are all done on the computer and could be sent by email)—and then decided to stand in the backyard to smoke her cigarette . . . or . . .

  What if she missed me? Just wanted to see my house? Wanted to remember being with me. Remember when we were together, secretly. She couldn’t know I’d be home in the middle of the day. What if she missed me?