Chapter Two

Jackson, wrapped in a towel, now free of his waterwings, ran to his grandfather with arms outstretched. Eric lifted him up.

"Football!" Jackson said.

"Damn right," Eric replied.

"Dad," Julie said, "please don't swear in front of my son."

Eric shook his head and started carrying Jackson toward the front door, because the front yard was flatter than the back and better for playing football. He set the boy down and told him to get changed and put on his shoes. Jackson ran into the laundry room where his mother had left their clean clothes in a basket.

"You comin', Gracie?" Eric asked over his shoulder.

Gracie was his surprise sports lover. Her long, luxurious blonde hair was the only thing that belied her tomboy nature, but she kept it in a ponytail when she played. Coach Taylor had been prepared to dress her in pretty ballet costumes and jazz dance shoes like her big sister, and she'd just wanted to wear jerseys and play football.

Gracie had asked to sign up for a co-ed youth flag football league when she was in first grade. "I don't know about the co-ed part," Eric had told Tami, and she'd said, "She's six, Eric." Gracie had played on that league for five years, and she had been team captain for the last two.

"Of course," she answered, and joined him in the high-ceilinged, tiled foyer where they waited for Jackson. "By the way, I need you to sign a permission form so I can try out for the team."

"They don't still bother to make you try out, do they?" Gracie was the best player in her flag football league and had been for some time.

"I mean for the school football team." She'd be entering 6th grade this fall and going to Benjamin Middle School. "Summer try-outs are tomorrow afternoon."

"You can't be on the middle school team," Eric told her. "You're a girl."

"Mom says girls can do whatever boys can do."

"I don't think she was talking about tackle football, sweetpea."

"And they have to let me try out. It's the law."

"I don't know that it's the law," Eric said.

It was a ruling, however. If there wasn't an equivalent girls' team – and there wasn't, not for tackle football– they had to let the girls try out. That was true now all the way up through high school. Eric thought that was among one of the most asinine things he'd ever heard. Thankfully, though, girls usually didn't try out.

He'd had one girl come out for the Pioneers a few years ago. He hadn't put the girl on the team, and her irate mother had called to chew him out. He'd had to tell the woman that the girl just wasn't any good. The mom had called him a "backwards chauvinist," and he'd said, "Listen, ma'am. My seven-year-old daughter plays football better than your seventeen-year-old girl. That's why she didn't make the team."

At least in middle school, the girls were still just as tall if not taller than the boys, and Gracie was both tall and strong. But football was a contact sport.

"It's not that you aren't capable, Gracie," he told her, "it's that…well…it'll be all boys on that team except you. You know it will. That's just the way it is."

"I won't be sharing the locker room with them, Dad! They'll let me get dressed in the girl's locker room or the office or whatever."

"But it's tackle. It's isn't flag anymore. Those boys are gonna be all on top of you."

"Oh, please!"

"The answer is no, Gracie. You can stick with your flag league."

"That league doesn't go past sixth grade. I'll only be able to do it one more year. I might as well get on the middle school team now, because I'll have to in 7th grade."

He shook his head. "We'll try to find you a girls' tackle team in 7th grade – a community league of some kind."

"There aren't any within sixty miles! I checked! "

"We'll find something. We'll find some kind of football for you to play. But you are not trying out for the boys' middle school team. End of discussion."

"Fine!" she shouted. "Enjoy your football with Jackson. I'm sure you'll be happy to have him try out for his middle school team! Because I'm just a girl!"

"Gracie, don't be – "

She circled around him and went through the door to the garage to get her bike. He leaned against the door frame. In the nearby laundry room, Jackson was still struggling to pull on his shirt. "Gracie – "

"I'm going to Andrew's! I'll be back by dinner." The garage door cranked up and Gracie jetted out.

Andrew lived two blocks away and had been Gracie's best friend since second grade. It was an odd friendship, because Andrew had no interest whatsoever in sports. He had played one season of soccer in second grade and then told his mom he wanted to quit. She'd asked him if he wanted to play baseball instead, and he'd said, "Gee, mom, a guy could get hurt doing that." He didn't even watch any sports.

Eric once asked Andrew what position he would like to play in football if he were ever to play, and he'd answered, "Outfield." The boy played the violin. Andrew was first chair in the 4th and 5th grade orchestra. According to Tami, that was sort of like being the QB1 of orchestra. Eric had never even heard of a 4th and 5th grade orchestra in Dillon. They had orchestra in high school, sure, but not 4th grade.

But they were east coast people now.

He glanced back into the laundry room.

"Help!" Jackson said. The boy had managed to get his shirt on (backwards) and his elastic shorts on, but he was struggling with his shoes.

"Bubba," Eric said, "you really should be able to put on your own shoes by now." He walked into the laundry room, got down on his knees, and started shoving the shoes on.

Julie's voice rose from behind them. "Don't call him Bubba, Dad. That's so deep South."

Eric stood from his kneeling position. "Where do you live again? Savannah, did you say?"

She crossed her arms over herself. "It wasn't my first choice. But I guess a woman is expected to follow her husband for his job. Maybe in twenty years I'll get a turn like Mom." She bit her bottom lip suddenly, as if she were trying not to cry.

"Julie…" he reached for her instinctively, but he dropped his hand. He glanced down at Jackson, who was looking expectantly at his mother. Eric wanted to ask Julie what had gone wrong, but this wasn't the time, not in front of the boy. Besides, if he got Jackson out of the house, Tami and Julie would have some privacy for a mother-daughter chat. "You ready, Bubba?"

The boy nodded.