"Where it all ends, I can't fathom, my friends.
If I knew, I might toss out my anchor,
So I'll cruise along, always searching for songs,
Not a lawyer, a thief, or a banker,
But the son of a son of a sailor.
Son of a gun, load the last ton.
One step ahead of the jailor,
I'm just a son of a son, son of a son, son of a son of a sailor.
The sea's in my veins, my tradition remains.
I'm just glad I don't live in a trailer." –Jimmy Buffet, Son of a Son of a Sailor, 1978
Trailing Away
"I didn't ask for your help," hissed Rob in what Mark recognized from months of training and playing alongside the determined left-winger as an exhalation of anger blended with agony when Mark wrapped an arm around Rob's shoulder to support him as he hobbled across their Lake Placid trailer, limping to spare Rob's bruised thigh any more weight and pressure than it had already endured during the game against Sweden.
With every stride they took in a disjointed lockstep that Mark associated with a three-legged relay race, the trailer trembled like Jell-O beneath their feet—probably sending bolts of fiery pain up Rob's leg every time he set his foot down on the rattling surface—and Mark's mind jumped like a monkey to Jimmy Buffet's lyric "I'm just glad I don't live in a trailer" in the hit song that had topped all the charts back in '78. Having never entered a trailer before the Olympics, Mark had always assumed that this line was a throw-away insult apparently intended to alienate any fans who inhabited trailer parks, but now he was starting to sympathize with the sentiment. It was eerie and uncomfortable to live in a structure that shook with each gust of wind outside and every footstep inside.
"I know." Mark nodded while they passed Mark's bed and wobbled toward Rob's, which had to be the one closer to the window, not the door, because Rob was forever insisting to anyone on the team who would even pretend to listen to his gripe that he didn't sleep as soundly if he wasn't next to a window for air circulation. "You don't have to ask."
"I don't need your help, thank you very much." Rob's rust-colored eyes narrowed to menacing slits reminiscent of a cat's about to scratch a hand stretching down for an unpermitted pet, and his tone transformed the expression of gratitude into a borderline profanity. "In fact, I can think of several bodily crevices you can use as a filing cabinet for your help."
"Of course you don't." Biting his lip as they arrived at Rob's bed, Mark figured that if he could make this situation about his own weaknesses rather than Rob's frailties, his friend would be more apt to accept his assistance without too epic a struggle. "You're tough as steel, and you don't need anyone's help. I'm the one who needs to help you, since right now you're hurt, and I want to do whatever I can to help you even if it's little and pointless."
"Don't force-feed me that friendship crap." Rob's jaw tightened, and his ashen face flushed back to its usual, flesh-pink hue. "If you gave a shit about me, you wouldn't have stopped me from punching Herb in his fat mouth."
"Mac, listen." Mark reached out to guide Rob onto the bed, but Rob, slipping through his fingers as roughly as sand, collapsed onto the mattress before he could do anything to ease the transition for the battered thigh. "It's because I'm your friend that I couldn't let you deck Herb."
"He called me a quitter, Mark." Rob's fists clenched as if even now he relished nothing more than being trapped in a boxing ring with Herb where he could pummel his coach to a pulp and take him out for the final count. "I've never fucking quit on anybody or anything in my whole damn life. I can't imagine a worse insult, and I didn't get to prove him wrong with some well-placed swings because you wouldn't let me."
"If you threw a punch, he'd strike you back." At least, that had been Mark's overpowering fear in the locker room when he had leapt like Superman into the fray to save both Rob and Herb from each other and their own terrible tempers. "You were injured, and I couldn't sit back in a front row swat while you risked getting hurt more."
For a moment, Rob was silent as he contemplated this, and, then, eyeing Mark shrewdly, he asked in a sharp tone that couldn't disguise his pain at the prospect of a teammate who knew him so well considering him a weakling and coward, "So, you didn't agree with Herb? You don't think I'm some sort of quitter who slinks away from my team with my tail between my legs at the first sign of adversity?"
"Definitely not, you idiot." Mark nudged Rob's shoulder. "If anything, your problem is that you don't have half the sense God gave a goose and stubbornly refuse to quit while you're ahead."
"Why should I quit while I'm ahead?" Rob's lips quirked upward wryly, and Mark hoped this represented the turning point where everything pivoted from madness back to normalcy, or what passed for normalcy on this crazy Olympic team. "I'm a winner, and winners never quit. That's true, and I know it because all my coaches told me so."
"Yeah, how could I forget that?" Mark managed a chuckle through a mouth that still felt as dry as sawdust from the tie against Sweden and the exertion of the confrontation in the locker room between periods. Adopting a more serious manner, he wanted to know, "How are you feeling now, Mr. Winner?"
"Hotter than a wet dream." Rob fanned his palms in front of his sweat-streaked cheeks. "Do you mind opening the window a crack or just renting a bulldozer to smash through it—whichever the hell you prefer?"
Snickering because reason one hundred-fifty-two on the endless list of problems stemming from living in a trailer was that the air got all stuffy until you caved and opened a window even though it was February in upstate New York with the wind howling like a banshee down from Lake Eerie, at which point the temperature because arctic enough to garner concern about limbs falling off from frostbite, Mark crossed the two feet separating Rob's bed from the window and pushed it open. As he stared out at the gray blanket of snow on the ground that matched the mackerel clouds in the sky, Mark pressed, "Is that more comfortable now, huh?"
"I'm numb now." Rob's voice sounded like a shot of Novocain. "Numb is perfect. It doesn't hurt, and it doesn't feel real."
"I want every moment of this to feel real." Mark breathed on the glass pane and drew spirals in the mist from his mouth, wondering if it was more fantasy and feeling than reality and being tha he sought in this Olympic tournament. "When we win, I want it to feel—to be—real."