Pop (25 page)

Suddenly, her arms were around him, cutting off the torrent of apology and self-doubt. Chelsea, who had just come from burying her father, was offering comfort and support to the outsider who had invaded all their lives.

“You were great for Daddy,” she whispered. “And he loved you.”

It was no consolation. Words—even those words—would never undo what had happened.

“I—I should get going,” he said finally.

She nodded. “Thanks for coming.” Then she paused. “See you at school.”

“Definitely.” Marcus was surprised to find himself looking forward to that moment.

He decided to walk home, even though it was a few miles in iffy weather. He needed to clear his head. Charlie's death had seemed so huge, it was easy to forget that the sun was going to rise tomorrow. Marcus would go to school, resume his life, find something to do now that football season was over. Maybe he'd even join Mom on one of her shooting trips into the Gunks. She deserved a little family time that didn't incur lawyer's fees.

He was about to let himself out the door when he heard the sound of a TV coming from a small study off the front hall. It wasn't very loud, but there was no mistaking the roar of a sports crowd and the excited chatter of a color commentator.

Who watches a football game at a funeral reception?

Curious, he poked his head in the doorway. The blinds were drawn, and the light from the monitor danced across the face of the room's lone occupant.

Troy.

Quickly, he tried to retreat, but Troy had already seen him and was waving him inside.

All right
, Marcus thought with resignation.
Only because he's Charlie's son. If it'll ease his grief today of all days to punch me out, then it's a small price to pay
.

He entered cautiously. “You know how sorry I am about your dad.”

Troy gestured to the TV. “Take a look at this.”

Marcus walked over and examined the screen. It was a football game all right, although the picture quality was poor, the uniforms were unfamiliar, the helmets smaller and shaped wrong somehow.

Then he realized that this was the NFL, but from nearly three decades ago—the Bengals against the 49ers.

“… There's the handoff to Craig … whoa! Hammered by Popovich for a loss! No wonder they call him the King of Pop! What a wallop!…”

Mesmerized by the action on the screen, Marcus sat down beside Troy, and the two took in the rest of the Bengals' defensive series.

Number 55 was all over the field, his energy boundless, his desire for contact evident. His performance wouldn't have appeared on any highlight reel by today's standards—he made no sack, forced no fumble, created no interception. But he could be seen on every tackle, an arm wrapped around the ballcarrier's ankle, a hand slapping at the pigskin, even a fistful of jersey, slowing up the runner so a teammate could make the stop. He was the kind of blue-collar player who never got the glory yet without whom no team could be successful.

“He was amazing,” Marcus said reverently.

“Amazing,” Troy agreed soberly. “I've been watching these old films ever since he got sick. And all I can think of is which hit was the one that did it to him? Was it the helmet-to-helmet in Cleveland? The punt-return cover in the Meadowlands? One of his six concussions? And how many concussions were there that he didn't admit to? Where he climbed right back into the meat grinder because ‘you've got to be tough to play in this league'?”

I love the pop
.... Charlie's own words echoed in Marcus's head as he watched number 55 get up from another collision. The poor guy on the screen had no idea that the very same pop that had become his trademark was also silently planting the seeds of his destruction.

Aloud, Marcus said, “I never thanked you for keeping me out of the Poughkeepsie West game.”

“I never thanked you for taking my dad to EBU.”

Marcus had entered the study anticipating a punch in the face or worse. Instead, he left with his first-ever handshake from Charlie's son.

The weather improved during the walk home. By the time he reached Three Alarm Park, the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds, and the rain seemed to be gone for good.

The park was deserted, just as it had been only three months ago when new arrival Marcus Jordan's solo football practice had been crashed by a mysterious middle-aged man. It felt like a lifetime, and in a way it was—the rest of Charlie's life.

Across Poplar Street, the big metal cockroach loomed above the entrance to K.O. Pest Control. Marcus fought off an irrational compulsion to buy a bag of sugar and pour it in through the mail slot.

A tribute to absent friends.

An Interview with Gordon Korman

This is a departure from the subject matter of your previous books—what gave you the idea to write about football?

The original idea for
Pop
didn't start out with football—it was the notion that someone with dementia could become unstuck in a few generations. That came from my grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease in the nineties. In her confusion, she thought I was her brother, even though I was sixty-two years her junior. It fascinated me that she had placed me in more or less the correct position as a family member, but had messed up the generation. So when the news stories first began to appear about NFL veterans developing dementia/Alzheimer's/Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as a result of concussions sustained over a long career, that became my “what if.” What if a retired linebacker, in the throes of early-onset Alzheimer's, began to mistake a teenage football player for his own high school buddy—and, by extension, came to believe at times that he himself was a teenager?

Humorous elements—funny plots, interesting characters, your writing itself—feature prominently in your books. Why is humor so important to you?

Humor has always held an almost gravitational attraction for me. Supposedly, when I was two years old, my favorite cartoons were the ones that made me laugh. I think that comes from growing up in a funny family. As long as I can remember, I had huge admiration for the guy who could get a big laugh around the dinner table. And as a kid, I always wanted to be that guy. So it was pure instinct—rather than an “artistic” choice—to write humor. When I was getting started, the very definition of a story, for me, was a fictional framework to give myself opportunities to be funny. I'm more experienced today, and I weave many elements into my novels, but humor will continue to be one of them.

Who, or what, was your inspiration for the character of Charlie?

Not my grandmother! She was four foot eleven and very unlinebacker-like. I guess Charlie was a combination of a lot of archetypes from the NFL and the wider world of sports: the super-aggressive linebacker, the locker-room prankster, the workhorse player who never grabs headlines but has a huge impact, the local hero and retired athlete. And don't forget that some of Charlie's most endearing qualities are the things that make him kidlike.
Pop
is, above all, a buddy story—even though the two buddies are sixteen and fifty-four, respectively. That's the essential role Charlie's illness serves in the story. It's almost a time machine, allowing him to be—in a way—sixteen again.

Why did you feel passionate about writing on the topic of sports-related injury and head trauma in particular?

One of the reasons I'm passionate on the topic is that I still haven't quite made my peace with it. As I was researching
Pop
, there were moments that I thought,
No one should
ever
play this game
. And at the same time, the counter-thought would materialize:
I hope they don't ever stop playing this game
. Over the years, I've written a number of books in which football was a factor. No other American sport is as deeply rooted in the culture of a school or a community. There are many kids who are awesome at baseball or basketball or hockey, yet that's not quite the same as being a football hero. Obviously, there's an athletic component to playing youth football, but there's also a kind of feudal nobility to it. The football team is made of up of dukes and princes who embody a school's identity and pride and represent it to the outside world. That special status doesn't go to the kid who won the state spelling bee.

After Marcus moves, he must adapt to life in a new town where he doesn't know anyone. Did you move when you were younger and have a similarly difficult experience?

I've moved a few times, but that wasn't really the model for Marcus. More important were the times in my life when I seemed to be on the outside looking in. It's a very acute emotion, and when I write about it, I'm amazed how it can still sting decades after the fact. I'm forty-six now, and it's crazy how many situations continue to arise in my day-to-day experience that are distinctly high school-like. I have to add, though, that in order for the story of
Pop
to make sense, Marcus had to be a newcomer. Any kid who grew up in Kennesaw would know about Charlie Popovich, the retired linebacker.

As someone who started writing very young—you were fourteen when your first book was published—what advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Here's what I say to kids who ask for advice: First off, I can't tell you the Secret. It probably doesn't exist. What I can do is let you know what worked—and still works—for me. The best way to become a writer is to write. A lot. And read a lot, too. Those two activities help you develop fluency with language. Your writing will go down more smoothly, and I guarantee it will read more smoothly as well. (It also makes writing easier, and what could be wrong with that?) Pick a topic you like. Your teachers might assign stuff that bores you, but this is
your
project. Write about something that interests you. If you can't entertain yourself, you won't have a prayer of entertaining total strangers. Don't be too lazy to plan out your story. If you think that, you've got it backwards. You should plan out your story
because
you're lazy. You'll save a lot of effort and aggravation in the end. You don't have to stifle creativity; changes are, of course, permitted. But you
must
know where you're headed. Don't let anyone discourage you: Friends may think writing is uncool; parents may have always wanted a dentist in the family; carpal tunnel syndrome may not be as glamorous as a torn ACL. Whatever. Tune out the peanut gallery. A final word: It's true that anyone intelligent can write intelligently. The trick is to write something that someone else will want to read. I'm not sure, but I think the ability to do that is what people call “talent.” I believe that writers who are determined to tell a story against all odds are the ones who have what it takes. Read. Write. Revise. Edit. Write more. Never give up! And when you're out there in print, the first fan letter welcoming you to the club will be from me.

The football scenes are incredibly real in this book. How did you write those so well?

I grew up in Canada—hockey country—so I never played football at a high level. But I am a huge fan of sports writing, and a lot of my knowledge base came from that. I guess what really fascinated me for
Pop
was the culture of collision in the NFL. Even in a tough game like hockey, contact is technically incidental. (It just happens to be an extremely common incident.) But in football, hitting and getting hit is your
job
. And many players believe that, at a certain point, it actually starts to feel good. Not that football players actually enjoy pain, but they begin to associate it with the work ethic and success. And because of that positive connection, they begin to crave that contact.

What is your biggest concern about how teens play, practice, and live football in today's environment?

I'm not a neurologist. So obviously the medical side of this is best left to the experts. What I think is dangerous is the pressure on kids to play injured and to play through the pain. From the research I've seen, the greatest health risk comes when a player sustains a new concussion while not yet fully recovered from the last one. The cumulative effect is almost exponential—i.e. that second concussion is the equivalent of fifty new concussions if you're not fully healed from the original. So perhaps the best course for players and coaches is always to err on the side of caution when it comes to head trauma. In the heat of battle, a teenager—or an NFL professional—would be inclined to say, “I'm fine, coach! Put me back in!” But that's actually the riskiest thing to do.