Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. Published by Strange Light, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart. His next order of business is to call Nineteen's agent, who calls his client, lone wolf of the locker room, white in his beard at 32.Įxcerpted from Pure Life by Eugene Marten. Copyright © 2022 Eugene Marten. His first order of business is to put up a sign outside his office that says TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK. The next new coach wears The Ring and is also the de facto GM. His contract renegotiated, no guaranteed nothing. The camaraderie, the transcendent brotherhood gone to family dysfunction. (His wife who hates football stays for every snap.) As he goes, so goes The Only Team That Matters they sneak back into the playoffs just once, get shut out in the first round and there it is, the ominous hum of an angry hive, so deep you can feel it, but the seats are empty. Rich kids with season tickets leaving at halftime. Sack-fumbles, the dreaded pick-six, altercations with fans and receivers: Try throwin with the other arm motherfucker. His sidearm throws batted down, his magician's play-fake debunked. The head team physician writes for Vicodin, Indocin, Oxy, and there is a candy jar in the training room full of pills in the team colours.Įvery time he comes back the game has changed: dummy formations, false coverages. Bone taken from one part of his body and put in another. Surgeries, rehabs, missed games, limbo of Injured Reserve. He also writes for anabolic steroids and Nineteen is tempted - he could use some of the speed, the muscle mass that nature has withheld, but the side effects scare him the starting OL is a juicer and is taking a hormone derived from the urine of pregnant women to offset the shrinking of his testicles. The head team physician writes for Vicodin, Indocin, Oxy, and there is a candy jar in the training room full of pills in the team colours. "If God can forgive me, brother, so can you." Helps him up, then does it again. He appears at a postgame press conference in a suit with his neck sandbagged like some litigant on court TV.Ī former teammate, born again in Bronco blue-and-orange by free agency, plants him in AstroTurf and he swallows a tooth. Plays through sickness, vomit and diarrhea, two dislocated shoulders (in one game), wears a SWAT team vest to protect his cracked ribs. Sometimes the needle has to dig for the pain, makes a grown man cry, so he refuses it and plays through. Numbs you enough to let you play, but Tuesday it takes an hour to get out of bed. You know Billy Kilmer played a Super Bowl with one leg shorter than the other." A shot of Toradol in the ass. "Let's shoot it up and get you back out on the grass. He takes to carrying smelling salts in his hand warmer. Sprains, ligaments, torn quad, torn groin, bruised bone, bruised lung, broken fingers, broken jaw. "Let's get you inside and take some pictures. A swarm of black stars, then a circle of blurred faces above him, trainers and doctors, asking him what one plus one is. The head team physician is an orthopaedist, silver-haired, his hands steady but his eyes cold - they see what the owner wants them to. ("Why don't you ask me something easy?") And always two fingers so you always get it right. Number Ninety-Nine in black and blue piledrives him like fake wrestling, but this is not fake and he bites off the tip of his tongue. He hears his ribs crack, eats grass, coughs blood. Celebrate like children at Christmas ( just a three-man rush but for the sixth time this afternoon). T-bone him, wrap him up and topple him, pull him down by his shirt, leg, face mask, shoelaces. The right tackle, a left-handed quarterback's best friend, retires to get a Ph.D. The future weighs a 180 pounds, brings his personal chef to the locker room. They are not young, and Thirty- Four, their best blocking back, is traded for the future. It is held together with a dead man's ligament and it won't listen to his brain. You can read an excerpt from Pure Life below. Marten's work includes the novella Waste and novels In the Blind, Firework and Layman's Report. Eugene Marten is a Winnipeg-born, Cleveland-based writer who has lived in New York City, Oregon, Texas and Costa Rica, where the idea of Pure Life first originated.
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