The rumor transformed the Sumpter City Cougars games into hitting frenzies; scouts were, the rumor went, everywhere. Bodies went down all over the field while the fans cheered on. The new guys played with a kamikaze passion and with no regrets, or so it seemed. The war cry among rookies and veterans alike, became: “No brain, no pain.”

At practices fights broke out, coaches cursed louder, players ran faster, and veteran players stopped complaining about bad knees. After-game parties grew longer, the women more raunchy, and the drugs stronger. In the morning Robbie's head pounded more, the bones cracked louder, and the Bloody Marys came faster.

The rumor, Robbie thought, had become like the sight of land in the distance to men adrift at sea.

The party at Traybully's and Cantril's rented ranch house was in it's waning moments.

"You change," Cantril said, above the music of Bad Company's "Desolation Alley." He shifted in the brown leather armchair, trying to get comfortable. Robbie sat across from him on the ottoman listening intently. After four games, Robbie still found it hard to be around Cantril, but he liked the man’s toughness and his touch of evil. He remembered reading about him in the football edition of Street & Smith Magazine. Cantril had been on the cover that year, looking straight into the camera as he leaned over the ball. The caption read: four year starter at Oregon State, four year All-PAC-8, and two time All-American.

He was good; he could lead a sweep from his center position. Robbie recalled seeing him do it against USC in `78. He could do everything except grow two inches. He was only six feet tall and for this reason played for the Cougars and not for an NFL club.

Cantril leaned forward, jabbed a finger into Robbie's chest and repeated: “You change.” Then he ran his fingers through his hair. His receding, wispy, blond hair would rise with the slightest breeze, and he continually ran a hand quickly over it. This habit, combined with the way he constantly adjusted his round gold frame glasses, kept his hands in perpetual motion. It created a hypnotic effect on anyone in his presence, especially if the person was stoned.

“This league will change you in a heartbeat,” Cantril said. He took a long drag on a joint, then eased a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth. “I started four years in the PAC-8, and no matter how pissed off I got at someone, I never tried to seriously injure anyone. But,” he held up three fingers, “three years here and I've taken four guys out, once because my girlfriend wouldn't lay me before the game.”

He looked down, as if searching for something in the brown shag rug and shook his head in disbelief. Then, with his eyes still searching the rug, he handed Robbie the joint. Robbie put the bottle of champagne between his feet, making sure to keep one hand firmly around the bottle of tequila. He had rummaged through all the liquor cabinets and knew he had the last bottle. He took three quick hits of the joint and passed it back.

In his right ear, Robbie heard a loud crack like wood in a campfire, and a pop like the thigh bone of a chicken being pulled out of its socket. He took a long swig of tequila to chase the sound away before handing the bottle back.

“It's hard to believe there are only seven returners on this team. What you did that first game, Robbie, went a long way toward uniting this team. We have a chance now for a third championship.” He took one last hit on the butt, then tossed it down his throat like a peanut.

“I didn't do it to unite the team,” Robbie slumped forward, then ran a hand over his clipped brown hair.

“No one ever does. Shit, think I did?” Cantril asked, adjusting his glasses. His eyes searched Robbie’s.

“Let's change the subject.” Robbie turned away to look around the room.

“You need to talk about it.”

“I'm fine, really.”

“Think so? What about the next time?” He smiled, shifted deeper into the easy chair, his blue eyes still probing.

“Next time? I didn't come up here to be a butcher. I-”

“I know, I know, you just didn't feel like working nine to five. You weren't ready for the real world and this seemed like as good an idea as any and so on and so on.”

“Right.”

“Well, that's just fucking fine and dandy. That is just fine fucking dandy, but there are guys here who want to make it to the big dance, and there are guys here who've been there and want to get back. So all this,” he made a sweeping gesture around the room, “might be something for you to do while you're trying to figure out how fucked up your life is. I'm telling you this is business, and there are some serious sons of bitches out here.” With one hand, he grabbed the last joint off the table, placed it between his lips, struck a match against a sculpture of a bronze bronco rider, lit the joint, and took a long drag. Robbie watched as the blue lettering “Happiness is Coming” expanded on his tee-shirt as if he had become a colossal balloon.

Robbie took a swig of tequila and looked around the room again.

Lee Johnson, a six-foot-four inch, two-hundred-forty pound linebacker and black as coffee grounds, stood by the fireplace chewing on a joint the size of a Cuban cigar while holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. He had arrived five days before from Buffalo, who released him because the general manager found him in the trainers' room with two seventeen-year-old girls.

Now, Lee wore nothing but his red bikini briefs as he talked to the team's secretary, Frail Penny. She stood rigid, her spindly legs jutting out of her black knee-length skirt like broomsticks. Her blue eyes, like quarters, never wavered from Lee's face. She had the look of a trapped animal - Bambi being charmed by a cobra. Robbie scanned the room to see if anyone else noticed or even cared, but everyone in the room had passed out.

Everyone but Bicycle Wiley. Bicycle sat against the wall near the mahogany bookcase snorting whiskey. He preferred tequila, but earlier in the kitchen Robbie had refused to trade with him, so he spat whiskey on Robbie and walked away.

Bicycle had curly blond hair and a bushy mustache. He had what the local girls called “cute boyish looks,” but that was the only thing boyish about him.

He had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and told stories of flying through the jungle in a boozed, drugged state, his "nothingness state of mind" as he liked to call it. He'd played at USC and was drafted by the Eagles. A pinched nerve on the last day of training camp landed him on the waiver list, and the U.S government had picked up his option for four years. Now at thirty-five, he played just to bang heads. He seemed to lack dreams and lived in “Nowheresville” doing nothing all day long. He called it “cooling out.”

He acquired the name Bicycle, because after his tequila snorting binges, he could never remember where he parked his car. Someone would lend him a bicycle and he'd ride around screaming “Camus, Camus” until he passed out.

Robbie never understood the Camus shit, until he was told in a tone of admiration that seemed to signify a blessing that Bicycle had been an English teacher. This somehow, to the seven returners and the coaching staff, made his behavior all right.

These sons of bitches, Robbie thought. There might have to be a next time. He shuddered. Suddenly, he hated the idea of having to finish the season. He didn't even care about the new pro league or the chance to play in a big stadium in front of sixty thousand people. He wanted to quit, blow this place, see it in his rearview mirror. But he knew he couldn't quit. Out of the question, because he had made a promise to himself.

Before he left to come up here, he had stood in front of a construction site watching his uncle, and knew if he stayed, he'd have to earn his living with his strong Mexican back like his uncle and his cousins - hauling planks and pushing a wheelbarrow.

There was another reason, too, which drove Robbie even more than the fear of manual labor. He was here to prove that a Division II player could hang with the ex-big time college players like Cantril. He knew he could play in the NFL or this rumored United States Football League.

Then the realization hit him. He was trapped. His ambition was wrapped in a dream and tied to a nightmare. Two thirds of the season yet to play and the thrill of the hit was gone. He could feel it evaporating. Hitting, the rudimentary principle of the sport, and he'd lost the desire for it. It was the sound that was getting to him: the wet, sucking pop of a joint slipping from its socket, and the crack of a bone. He hadn't told anyone, but the sound was getting to him.

But he couldn't quit. He knew he would never quit. How does one quit with nothing to go back to? Some guys quit and go home, some quit and get married, and others quit and find real jobs. How does one quit and go back to nothing? He pictured Bicycle on his bike and himself on the handlebar, Bicycle pointing to a sign that read in big white letters, “Nowheresville dead ahead.”

“Hey, Robbie, let me have a shot,” Cantril asked.

Robbie gave him the tequila bottle and picked up the bottle of champagne.

He could feel the sensation of a knee, like a stone driving into the top of his shoulder, sending rapid knife-like jolts down toward his tailbone and onto the heels of his feet. He could feel on his thumb the touch of a cotton sock and in the palm of his hand the leather heel of a football cleat.

Robbie tipped the bottle of champagne, tilting his head back, until he was precariously balanced on the ottoman. After the last drop passed his lips, he let out a primeval yell, trying to drive the sensation and the sound that followed from his mind.

Cantril licked the mouth of the tequila bottle as if it was a woman's tit, and when he finished suckling, he joined in the yell. They stood up and threw the bottles into the fireplace. Cantril yelled at Lee to get a real job, and Robbie yelled: “Get a cock.” When the bottles exploded, Frail Penny flinched and came out of her trance and scurried away, stepping over bodies as she went. Lee followed her with his lazy eyes, took a long toke on his joint and said, “Shiiit.”

Cantril and Robbie laughed, traded high fives and collapsed into their seats.

It was then that it began to happen, the room turning darker shades of yellow as Robbie’s peripheral vision narrowed with each darkening shade. He tried to focus on Cantril, but he was becoming distant, smaller.

“Hey, you all right?” Cantril peered into Robbie’s eyes.

Robbie felt as if he were inside a television, and Cantril was peering in.

He could feel the tight joint of the knee give way to his blunt shoulder. He could feel the explosion of the knee generate outward like a rocket bursting on the 4th of July. He felt the tightly woven knee turning to boneless flesh and the fluids rushing in to protect and repair. Then he heard the final pop in his ear as he drove through his block; then, no sounds reached him, no roar from the crowd, no grunts or groans from the players, no sounds of pads colliding. Silence filled his ears. A moment later came the screams of pain and fear.

He took his place in the huddle exchanging slaps and high fives from his teammates. He saw through their face masks that their eyes were big with the scent of the prowl.

The slapping shut of a screen door brought Robbie out of the memory. Cantril ran his hand over his head and adjusted his glasses.

“Like I said, it’s in the intensity. It becomes a comfort - like a second skin against the cold. It’s in that moment you change. It consumes you. So, when you’re told to blow someone’s knee out, it’s nothing more than that. It’s done.”

Robbie thought of that moment in the huddle and all that led up to it. Cantril had called the play “44 out.” Wild Bill had been in the pros for six years but knee injuries had slowed him down. He got into drugs and raped a girl in Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers were trying to trade him, and they wanted to keep him out of sight and out of trouble, so they sent him to San Jose. But he was over the edge now and played only to bust people. He had become a cheap-shot artist, trying to put the Cougar’s quarterback out of the game. So the play was called. His play.

Cantril hit Wild Bill high, grabbing him under his shoulder pads and Traybully completed the double team: hitting and grabbing Wild Bill by his shoulder pads as well. And he pulled and ran down the line and came in low, accelerating into the impact, his back extended and arched. He threw his forearm up so his arm and shoulder were like the flat side of an anvil being hurled through space. He hit Wild Bill with all the technique he had been taught through the years, and the knee unraveled in an instant, ending Wild Bill's career.

"I think I better be going," Robbie said. Cantril had become a distant spot on the horizon seen through a yellow haze.

“What's wrong, too much to drink?” Cantril patted his hair down.

“Yeah,” Robbie said, “too much to drink, too much shit.”

“Well, just remember what I said,” Cantril yelled over the music, slapping Robbie on the knee.

Robbie pushed open the screen door, missed the first small step, stumbled, and landed with a thud in the wet dew of the front yard. Drunk, emotionally exhausted, he lay resting his head upon his arms, the damp grass cooling his body, remembering what Cantril had said.

“You change.”

He wondered, had he changed? Would he change? Could he change? With these questions echoing in his mind, he felt himself surrendering to the effects of the evening, to the coolness of his brain. He felt light, drifting like a leaf from a pile of burning autumn leaves.

He drifted to a time, where, from above, he saw himself back in kindergarten, lying on the cool wood floor for his afternoon nap. In that moment he felt relief and calm for the first time in years, and he didn't want to drift anymore.