Slot Machine Read Online Free PDF Page A

bed. Outta bed, one bird called.
    Ouch, the other replied.
    Outta bed. Ouch. Outta bed. Ouch. Outta bed. Ouch.
    I got out of bed. Ouch. I was aware, way too aware, of being, of being here, of being alive, whatever that amounted to. I couldn’t just float through this the way I usually could when I wanted to be where I wasn’t. I couldn’t pretend, imagine it away, the way I needed to. With every step, every flex, the muscle or joint or bone would scream, reminding me, “ Zing ! You’re still here. Zing ! It’s pretty bad. Zing ! There’s plenty more where this came from. Today.” I closed my eyes and sniffed up the wood of the old floor and the pine just outside. There was an actual outdoorsy camp feel to the place, retreat or not, that was reachable and pleasant when everybody was asleep. I was almost there. I almost reached it, that better place.
    Then my hamstring tightened, then twisted, like something chewing on the muscle, pulling me down into a squat, pulling me back down to earth.
    So I was still here. I couldn’t get out, not for a minute, couldn’t even pretend my way out. More than anything else, this worried me. Because if a guy can’t do a little pretending when he needs to, can’t take a little trip on the inside—that’s when the guy is really truly trapped. Really truly trapped.
    “Well then, what are you good at?” Coach snapped. He’d just given us our morning pep talk on how much sex and mayhem we would enjoy if we would ever make his glorious varsity football team. Then we broke up into groups for drills according to position—offensive backfield, defensive backfield, receivers, linebackers, and linemen. I told him I was misplaced with the linemen, and that’s when he asked me the pointed question of the day. I hesitated a couple of nanoseconds so he asked me again, only louder and funnier for his audience.
    “So, Bishop, what the hell are you good at?”
    What I wanted to say was, “I’m a kid, asshole. Give me a milk shake and a game of Monopoly and I’ll show you what I’m good at.” But I couldn’t say that. So I said the opposite.
    “I can play quarterback,” I said, shocking myself with brilliance and stupidity. Playing the line was just too slow a death. I wanted the express.
    Anyone who has ever been inside of a ringing church bell probably can appreciate the sound of ninety hopeful thirteen-year-old football ruffians yeowww ing at the same moment. Anyone else couldn’t imagine it.
    “Quarterback?” Coach asked in mock seriousness when he could talk again.
    “Quarterback,” I assured him. “I have an arm like a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. But more important, I have the mind of a quarterback.” I tapped myself on the dented temple of my helmet.
    “Oh, gimme a break,” the real quarterback said, snatching the ball away from the coach. The three other backup quarterbacks did what backup quarterbacks are supposed to do: They backed him up.
    “Gimme a break.”
    “Ya, gimme a break.”
    “Gimme a break, wouldja, fat boy.”
    “No, no, no,” laughed the coach. “Bring that pigskin back here. Kid’s got some balls he wasn’t showin’ before. I like that.”
    Mouths dropped open everywhere when Coach flipped me the ball and called out, “Live drills, live drills. First teams line up over here on field A.”
    It had gotten serious. Nobody laughed now. I found myself nervously reading players’ faces to try and see my immediate future. Grim. The tough players looked tougher. The medium players looked out of it, dumbfounded. Only the marginals, the fourth and fifth and forget-about-it stringers, looked sympathetic. On their faces I saw sympathy winces, practicing for sharing my pain.
    “Know any plays?” Coach asked.
    “Of course,” I said. “I was a lineman yesterday.” And surely I did know them. There were only two pass plays, and I had had an intimate look at them over and over as each play unfolded above my prostrate body. So I got to study the