Boomtown (10 page)

Jonny came home one day from school wearing his new Slugs sweatshirt bearing the team colors: muddy brown and slime green with a silver slime trail running down both sleeves. He told me what the hullabaloo was all about.

“The Slugs are
famous
, Dad; did you know that?”

“Famous for what?”

“For
losing
! Busy was telling me about a game last year against the East Wallop Hogs—62 to nothing—the Slugs got squished flat!”

“They lost?”

“Sure
they lost! They
always
lose! They played nine games last year and lost every single one. They didn't even score a field goal.”

“In nine solid games, they didn't even score
one
point? Not even by accident?”

“Nope. That's why they're so famous. The Stickville Slugs haven't won a single game in over forty years!”

So you can imagine my surprise when Ruth registered for high school in Stickville and immediately went out for the cheerleading squad. She was very excited about it. She came home after the first week of school wearing her new uniform, a solid brown skirt with green stockings, a silver stripe down the middle of her back, the letter “S” sewn in green felt on the front of her sweater, and bright silver pom-poms.

She gathered the family in the living room and showed us one of her cheers:

“Give me an S!
S!

Give me an L!
L!

Give me a U-G-S!
U-G-S!

What does that spell?
SLUGS!

What does it spell?
SLUGS!

What does it mean?

Slime time! Yeeeeaaah!
”

At the end of the cheer, Ruth threw her pom-poms into the air, fell on the floor, and wiggled around. She said, “It's supposed to look like a slug with salt on its back. You know—a slug dying a horrible death. That's what the Slugs do every time they play.”

It was gross. It was strange. It was tradition.

The day of the big opening game approached, and excitement around town continued to build. I decided to use the occasion as an illustration for a sermon I was preparing for the Sunday after the game. The sermon was called “Playing for a Winning Team,” and it was about working for the church. God is our coach; he calls the plays from the sidelines; we go out into the field and fight the good fight. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but I found out later that every other preacher in Boomtown preached the same exact sermon every single year. Nonetheless, in preparation for the sermon, Jonny filled me in on the history of the Stickville Slugs.

“The school has lost every single game it's played since 1909. They don't just lose; they get
smashed!
”

“For example?”

“Busy told me about the worst game ever played—it was about fifteen years ago, I think he said. Slugs lost by a score of 138 to 3! They only got the three points by accident when the quarterback passed the ball and it bounced off some-one's helmet and went through the goalpost.”

“That's not really a field goal, is it?”

“Nah. But the referees felt so sorry for the Slugs they gave it to 'em anyway. Then there was this other game where the quarterback came down with the flu, and since they didn't have a backup quarterback, the placekicker had to take his place. He didn't know how to throw the ball, so he spent the whole game
kicking
it around the field. The Slugs lost
that
game 97 to 0.”

“I can't believe it. That's awful!”

“You think that's bad? There was this one game where the Slugs scored three touchdowns for the
opposite team
'cause they kept running the wrong way.”

Fumbles, broken plays, penalties, bad calls, bad passes—you name it, in some inexplicable manner, the Slugs figured out new ways to mess up on the field. But that didn't keep the entire town of Boomtown from showing up the night before the big game for a huge rally on the Stickville High School football field. They danced around the bonfire and shot off firecrackers and rockets. They shouted and laughed and told stories about the games they'd seen over the years. They were absolutely convinced that
this
year was the year the Slugs would finally win a game.

As the new minister in town, I was asked to say a prayer for the Stickville Slugs. This is what I prayed: “Dear Lord, I don't know if you're a Slug fan—I don't know if you're a
foot-ball
fan—but these people most certainly are. Lord, for their sakes I'm praying for a
miracle
. That's what it's going to take for this team to win. So I'm asking that if it lies within the scope of your infinite mercy that you would intervene on behalf of this team and for once—just
once
—let them win! Or maybe score a touchdown. Or lose by less than fifty points. Whatever you can manage, that would be fine. Amen.”

Afterward, everyone said it was a very nice prayer. Nothing could dampen their spirits. Not even the tremendous rainstorm that blew through town during the night, one of the worst in Boomtown history. I'd never
seen
such rain! We'd spent the last fourteen years in Southern California, where it rained maybe ten or twenty times a year and even then, not so much. But in Washington, they had more than one hundred words just to
describe
all the different ways it rained. Jonny showed me his spelling homework one night just to prove it.

“See this? ‘Blowing, blustery, cloudy, damp, dark, drenching, droplets, drizzly, gusty, humid, hurricane, misting, moist, overcast, pattering, pouring, precipitous, raging, rainy, roaring, showery, spitting, spattering, sprinkling, squally, steamy, stormy, tempestuous, tornado, watery, wet, wild, windy.' That isn't even
half
of 'em!”

That night before the game, it came down in
buckets
. It rained cats and dogs. It rained cows and horses. It was Noah's ark weather. The gutters on the street filled up, and once those were full the roads turned into streams. Yards turned into ponds, and fields turned into lakes. We stood on the porch and watched as Gramma Edna's lawn furniture floated by, followed by Matthieu's flock of plastic pink flamingos, a watering trough, a picnic table, and a family of plastic lawn gnomes. Last, we saw Fred Cotton's pickup truck as it sailed past our front door and disappeared down the road.

Sunday's paper reported that it was probably washed into the river, but later on it was blamed on the person (or per-sons) who had stolen my lawn mower. It turned out to be the same person who took advantage of the storm by removing one hundred feet of Lazy Gunderson's fence and grabbing the blades off of Tom O'Grady's thresher. None of this was known at the time because we were too busy to notice. We were bailing out our basements and trying to keep our cars from floating away. Ed Gamelli came around in a rowboat, faithfully delivering the mail and giving reports as he rowed from door to door. Just as night was falling, I saw a chicken coop sail by with its owner standing on the roof waving to everyone as he went. And still it continued to rain.

By morning, Boomtown looked like a dripping wet sponge left overnight in a sink full of dirty water. Everyone came out of hiding to start cleaning up the mess, picking up the garbage, rounding up cows and sheep and horses that had gotten loose, propping up fences and signs that had fallen over. They worked and worked without stopping all the way up until 3:00 p.m. At that very second, everyone dropped what they were doing, jumped in their tractors and trucks and horse carts, and headed for Stickville. It was
game
time
! A local flood, forest fire, earthquake, or Armageddon wouldn't stop the fans from supporting their team.

We hopped in the car and drove out to the field. The highway was washed away in several places and road crews had built makeshift detours, but like everyone else they had abandoned their shovels in order to make the game on time. In spite of the bad road conditions, we found enough dry back roads and made it to the stadium early enough for Ruth to join her cheerleading squad for warm-up. We made our way through the gates to the bleachers and got our first glimpse of the football field.

It was a
swamp
. There were large, standing pools of water on the grass, and one of the end zones was completely under water. A flock of ducks swam around the field, and there were frogs croaking among the fallen leaves and branches. The Stickville Slugs and the Ainogold Giants were already on the field making matters worse, churning the grass into a muddy, mucky, slimy mess.

“Look, Dad,” Sarah said pointing. “The mud is
moving
.”

Jonny added, “There's a
head
! With antennas! Eew, gross!” I stared at a blob of mud and watched as it crawled across the ground. Mixed in with the mud were hundreds and thousands of
slugs
. They were in the grass. They were on the benches. They were all over the bleachers. Everywhere you looked, there were slugs—big ones, small ones, long ones—leaving a trace work of silver slime trails everywhere they went. The heavy rains had driven them out of their hiding places. It looked like every last slug in Okanogan County had showed up for the game. What a sticky, icky mess!

In spite of the conditions, the stands were soon filled to capacity with supporters for both teams. The Giants were decked out in bright red and green and gold; it looked like Christmas on the other side of the field. Our side looked like yesterday's lunch. We were dressed in the school col-ors: muddy brown and slimy green. Even the school mascot wore the colors, a teenage kid dressed in a slug costume. He looked like a rotten hotdog with antennas and legs.

Of course, we had the weather to go along with it. The sky was overcast and dark; it was miserable and cold and windy and the slugs kept crawling over our shoes. The playing field got muddier and sloppier and nastier. The fans couldn't have been happier. One man sitting next to us shouted with excitement, “This is
perfect
Slug-playing weather! We got a fighting chance—
Go Slugs!
”

We watched as the referees gathered both teams and their captains in the middle of the field. They flipped a coin and promptly lost it in the mud. After three more tries, it finally came up heads. The Slugs would be first to receive the kickoff.

The advantage hardly seemed to matter. The Giants were easily twice as big and strong as the poor Slugs. They had better equipment, better players, more practice, smarter coaches, faster runners, better blockers, fancier plays. It promised to be yet another humiliating defeat.

It didn't take long to see what the Slugs were up against. When the Giants lined up for the kickoff, they kicked the ball and it bounced and skidded through the water. The Slugs slipped and slid and crawled through the mud until they finally reached the ball. Four of them fell on it and got all tangled together. When they finally sorted out their arms and legs, they couldn't decide who should carry the ball, which really didn't matter because by then the Giants descended on them like a gold and white cloud. The Slugs got squished under their massive bodies.

It went from bad to worse. The Slugs ran three plays and lost fifteen yards. Then the kicker slipped on the mud and kicked the ball into the bleachers. It was worse than I ever imagined, but the man sitting next to me said, “This is
fantastic
! This has to be the best they've ever played!” The Slug fans were going wild.

It was time for the Giants to carry the ball. As they lined up for the first play, a hush fell over the crowd. You could hear the cheerleaders chanting, “Slugs. Slugs
. Slugs!
”

We saw it happen from the bleachers, like a slow-motion ballet. The center hiked the ball. The Giant quarterback took the ball in his hands. He stepped back to throw. The slippery mud-covered ball squirted through his fingers and flopped on the ground. A Slug player tripped over his shoes and fell on it.

“Did you see that, Dad? Fumble recovery! The Slugs got the ball! That's probably the first fumble recovery in Slug football history!”