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Bulldog Spirit book cover

Bulldog Spirit
and Other Short Works
by Wes Boyd
©2014
Copyright ©2021 Estate of Wes Boyd

Chapter 2

Autumn’s car proved to be an older Ford Escort. It was in pretty good shape, but obviously had been used for a good long while. Autumn got behind the wheel, while Cam got into the back seat. “I don’t know where we’re going,” she said. “This is only the second time I’ve ever been in this town, and the first time was back last winter.”

“Hey, it doesn’t matter where we go,” Howie laughed. “This is civilization. They even have a McDonald’s and a K-Mart.” He swung around to say to Cam, “Where we’re from, the nearest one of either is fifty miles away.”

“I guess Bradford must be semi-civilized,” Cam replied. “We do have a McDonald’s out on the Interstate, but the K-Mart is something like eighteen miles off. But here, if you go right on the street coming up, we’ll hit some restaurants and stores and stuff in a couple miles.”

“You sound like you know this place pretty well.”

“Not really. I’ve only been here a couple times before now, but that was the way I came into town.”

“You know,” Howie said absently, “In four years we’re going to know more about this town than we really want to.”

“Probably,” Cam agreed. “It doesn’t seem like a bad place, but still.”

“It’s not home,” Autumn said. “That’s both good and it’s bad.”

Neither Howie nor Cam had much to say to that.

In a few minutes they found a promising looking restaurant out on the main street – it looked fairly decent, and didn’t look terribly expensive. They went inside, to discover that it wasn’t terribly busy, either.

The hostess found them seats in a booth. “Can I get you anything to drink?” she asked. Both Howie and Autumn ordered Cokes, while Cam told the hostess that he just wanted water, with no ice.

After she left, leaving menus behind her, Howie said, “You could have had a Coke or something, Cam.”

“No, I can’t,” he replied. “I may be over the cancer but I’m not over the all of the effects of the chemo yet. I can’t stand anything that’s real hot or real cold, so eating gets a little tricky. Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like to have better than a cold pop or glass of juice or something, but it’s pretty painful to drink it.”

“That has to suck,” Howie said.

“It’s getting better,” Cam told them. “A year ago I had to have everything right around body temperature. Now I can handle a drink at room temperature. Hopefully in a year I’ll be able to order a glass of ice water. That’s going to seem like a real luxury.”

Howie shook his head. “I never thought of that.”

“Most people don’t unless they’ve had to deal with it,” Cam told him. “I had no choice but to deal with it.”

“You know,” Howie said thoughtfully, “I’m starting to think you must have been in worse shape than I originally thought. I wonder how you even managed to play football.”

“Mostly because I wanted to,” Cam told him. “Not only was it something to work towards, it was something to hold onto.”

October 7, 2011

The stitches from his last surgery weren’t pulling too badly, but this evening Cam felt like death warmed over. The chemo had hit him hard this week, and he’d had to keep a bucket near him as he sat on the bench with the Bulldog players who weren’t actually in the game; twice he’d had to vomit into it.

He shouldn’t have been there at all. Realistically, he should have been home and in bed, and maybe not even listening to the game on the radio. Even he wondered what he was doing there, but he still felt he ought to be present to try and maintain some connection to his real life.

Coach Meadows understood. He was fairly new at Bradford and had done some good things with the football team. He knew very well that Cam would have liked to be healthy, to play football with the rest of the team – and the cancer wasn’t his fault. Cam wasn’t sure if it was out of pity or out of sorrow, or what, but the coach had decided to let Cam suit up for every game if he wanted to, so at least the junior could feel like he was a part of things.

Cam had attended practices all season, at least when he could, although he didn’t actually practice with the team very much. He kept notes for Meadows, and was an extra set of eyes, so in some small way he actually did contribute to the team. It was something, even if it wasn’t what he would have liked to be doing.

They were playing Garrison, and Garrison was having a tough time with the Bulldogs. The ’Dawgs were twenty-nine points ahead toward the end of the final quarter, so it was all over but running the clock out. By now, Cam was more interested in getting home, getting some meds, and trying to sleep. He didn’t even notice Meadows coming up beside him.

“Hey, Patterson,” Coach Meadows said as Bradford made another first down and the clock was stopped. “Do you feel up to running a play or two?”

“Do you mean you’d actually let me?”

“Go in for Cubby and tell Albertson ‘lion two-six right.’ Try to not get hit or somebody will have my ass.”

All of a sudden Cam felt in a daze – not from the cancer or the chemo for once, but from the prospect of actually being in a game. It was about as close to being on the bench as he could be while actually being on the football field, since being on the left in that play was mostly being a decoy for game action moving the other way – but for once, he’d actually be in the game!

“Yeah, sure,” Cam said, pulling on his helmet. The team was on the field not very far away, only ten or fifteen yards and he at least had enough strength to jog that far.

He was still excited at the possibility of playing, even one down, that he barely heard the announcer saying, “Cameron Patterson, Bradford’s bravest player, in for John Cubby.” But he did hear the roar of cheers that came from the stands.

They knew. The whole school, the whole crowd knew about the cancer – and they were with him pulling for him as he fought a tougher battle than any football game had ever been. For him!

He didn’t have any action on the play, of course, other than to run a few steps toward the line of scrimmage while Jake Derickson took the hand off from Albertson and gained a few yards against a Garrison team that didn’t seem to be trying any more.

As soon as the play was over, Coach Meadows called a time out – enough time for everyone on the team, even the other bench warmers, to give Cam a high-five for actually making it into the game. Even some of the Garrison players joined in – they knew, too.

As the celebration died down, Cubby came back into the game. “Good deal, man,” he told Cam. “But Coach said to not risk it anymore.”

It didn’t matter to Cam as he almost floated off the field. At least he’d gotten to play one down. That was a lot more than he could have hoped for out of the game, the season – and maybe even the rest of his life. Even for just once, it had been worth it.

August 24, 2013

Cam didn’t want to tell Howie, of all people, that the single play he’d made in all of the 2011 season was the biggest and most important play of his life. In his own mind, it far outranked anything he’d done at the Joe against Spearfish Lake. Though Cam had faced months of pain, of sickness, of what seemed like torture – in his own mind he thought of that one play as the first step of his journey back. It wasn’t all over with yet, but it seemed like it was getting fairly close. Cam knew he would bear the scars of that two years of agony for the rest of his life, both the mental and physical ones, but at least he had a rest of his life to live.

“Football must have been a big deal for you,” Autumn said.

“You know, it’s funny,” Cam told her. “It was, and it wasn’t. Football was really never more than just a game to me, and I think I believe that more than most people. But being able to play football, well, it was the one thread of normality I could hold on to. It was really hard when I was a junior. My senior year, right down to going to the Joe, for me was more of a celebration of the fact that I could do it at all.”

“Wow, Cam,” Howie shook his head. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that shit.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me. Be happy that I made it through it. It wasn’t a sure thing for a long time. I suppose it’s given me a different perspective than the next guy.” He looked up at the hostess, who was bringing their drinks. She set them down and left menus with them.

“Did you miss a lot of school?” Autumn asked as she opened the menu.

“A little bit in my senior year, not enough to say so. But my junior year was tough. I don’t know how much school I missed, but it was a lot. It was a real struggle to keep up, and I never would have made it if I hadn’t had a lot of help. Several times my folks and I considered just dropping out for the year, and catching up the year after, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to hang in there and graduate with my classmates. There are times I still think I should have done it. That’s part of the reason I wound up coming here, my grades had fallen off to where I couldn’t bring them back up enough to get into Michigan State like my brother. It was more of just trying to be as normal as I could be.”

“There’s worse places you could go,” Howie said wisely. “Yeah, you might not get as much here as you could at State, but you’ll get something out of it. Hell, my brother Jack and I are the first kids in our family to go to college at all. I mean, Dad works in a factory, and Mom in a grocery store, so it’s a big deal for everyone.”

“Good deal. You said your brother is going to Southern Michigan? That’s not far from where I live. I thought about applying there, but like I said, I feel like I have to start out easy to pull my grades up and that’s a harder school. My grades never were as good as my brother’s anyway, and then the cancer was diagnosed. I probably would have been better off if I’d been in the class behind my brother, but my folks didn’t figure that out until it was too late to do anything.”

“I don’t quite follow you,” Autumn frowned.

“The simple way to explain it is to say that I’m eleven months younger than my brother, but our birthdays fall such that we were always in the same class,” Cam explained. “That meant that, developmentally speaking, I was always a year behind my brother, even though most people thought we were twins. He was always one of the oldest ones in whatever class we were in and I was almost always one of the youngest. If I’d been a month or so younger I’ve had been in the next class down, and I wouldn’t have been measured against him in quite the same way.”

“I see what you’re saying,” Howie said. “I’m almost two years younger than Jack and people are always comparing us, even though it’s not a fair comparison. Jack is a brain and has no interest in athletics. He’d rather watch birds than football. He only saw me play in two games last year and one of them was at the Joe. I’m not bad in school, it’s just I never got the same kind of grades he did. We’re really pretty different, but people compare us anyway.”

“Yeah, that’s sort of it. Ty and I, well, we never had a level playing field. He was always bigger, stronger, and more developed than I was. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great brother, and we like each other. We’ve always been close, and we’ve gone through some tough times together. I’m going to miss having him around, but at least now we won’t be compared quite as closely.”

“I understand thoroughly,” Autumn said. “My older sister Summer, the one who’s going to SMU, she plans on getting into nursing, too. We don’t have the age issue, but it does feel sort of like I’m following in her footsteps. That’s part of why I decided I didn’t want to go there. Well, and to be closer to Howie, of course.”

Cam looked at her for a moment. Something didn’t quite add up, and he figured out what it was. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I know SMU is pretty expensive, and you’re cheaping things out by going to Centerton. You said you had some sort of a family trust, so it seems like you could spend more money than you are.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she grinned. “Most people who’ve figured that much out think that I’m doing it to stay close to Howie, and I am. But I’m trying to save my pennies, since I’ve got to stretch them further than Summer needs to, and with any kind of luck she won’t figure out what I’m up to until she can’t afford to do anything about it. That might be this year sometime.”

Cam had been around hospitals, doctors, and the medical profession enough in his battle with cancer to get her drift. “You’re not planning on being just a nurse, are you?” he grinned.

“Got it in one, but don’t tell anyone other than Howie,” she laughed. “Bree and Jared, those friends we hung out with in high school, are the only other ones who know what I’m trying to do. That is, nurse practitioner, or maybe even med school. I won’t know for four years, though, and by then it’ll be too late for Summer to try to get ahead of me. Or at least if she does try, I’ll beat her to it, since she’ll probably be supporting Alan while he’s in grad school.”

“Sibling rivalry can have its nasty side, can’t it?” Howie laughed. “Fortunately Jack and I are heading in such different directions that we don’t play those games with each other.”

“I won’t say that Ty and I are exactly rivals,” Cam replied. “But yeah, I guess in one sense we are. I have figured out that whatever direction I go I want it to be different enough from what he’s doing that it’ll be hard to compare us. I don’t know what direction that will be, but I hope it will be fun figuring it out.”

“Me, too,” Howie agreed. “Hey, I suppose we’d better look at these menus sooner or later.”

Being teenagers, they wound up ordering burgers and fries. They turned out to not be particularly good, and some at the college dining hall might have been better – there apparently was a reason that the restaurant wasn’t crowded. Mostly they sat around telling football stories. They all had a few, even Autumn, who had been a cheerleader, and their tales filled the time without being very serious. That was a huge improvement over a couple of the very heavy topics they’d touched on earlier.

Finally, after the table had been cleared away, Howie looked at his watch. “I think we’d better wrap this up so you can get us back to campus, Autumn,” he said. “We’ve got that freshman orientation meeting in a while, but you’ve got one too, and there’s the drive back to Centerton for you to make yours.”

“Yes, I was thinking I’d better say something,” she agreed. “I’ve got time enough to get back, but not much extra. What time do you think your deal will be out?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Howie replied. “I can’t see it going much past nine, but I could be wrong, too.”

“That’s my guess for ours,” she agreed. “I think it’s still worth doing it like we planned it. I know it means I’ll have to get back here a little late, but we’re not going to have the opportunity very often until football season is over with. We’ve both got cell phones, we can work out the details by text or something if one of us runs late.”

“We might as well make use of it while we have it,” Howie agreed, and turned to Cam. “Hey, if you don’t mind, once we get done with orientation Autumn and I want to break in her new apartment. Unless something happens, I probably won’t be back at all tomorrow, but I’ll come sliding in early on Monday morning.”

“I can’t see where I could have anything to say but, ‘have fun.’ I would, if I was in your shoes, but I’m not.”

“No girlfriend, huh?” Autumn said. “At least not one here?”

“That’s not easy to answer, other than to say, none here. There’s a girl who’s been an awful good friend, but a girlfriend, it’s hard to say. There are no simple answers.”

“Why is it that things around you seem more complicated than they are for most people?”

“I don’t think they are, it just seems that way, sometimes. The two of you aren’t exactly your typical college couple, either.”

“I suppose you’re right on that,” Howie agreed. “Things aren’t always what they seem on the surface.”

“Very true,” Cam smiled, as he grabbed the checks for all three of them. “Hey, since you provided the wheels, I’ll provide the meals.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Howie said. “We may not have much money to play around with, but we’re not broke.”

“A buck is a buck,” Cam said. “I don’t mind. You can buy us pizza some time when we can’t face the dining hall.”

It only took a few minutes for Autumn to get the two guys back to campus, and then she was on the road for Centerton. “I really hate to have to do it that way,” Howie said as they walked up the stairs to their room. “But I didn’t really have much choice but to come here, since it was the only place where I got a scholarship. Since they don’t offer nursing, we had to work out something and this was the option that worked the best. At least it’s better than me being here and her being at Northern or Michigan Tech or some other school in the Upper Peninsula.”

“Yeah, even with football, you ought to be able to see her most weekends. Howie, you seem to have a pretty nice girl there.”

“I think so. We’ve had some rough spots along the way. Nothing really between us, but she has some family issues and there has been a time or two when they weren’t fun to deal with. But we’ve stuck it out this long and I think we’re going to make it all the way. I almost wish I’d just said the hell with this orientation stuff. It sounds like it’s going to be a whole lot of nothing.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest, but you never know. They might drop some pearl of wisdom that will be absolutely crucial, and then where would we be if we missed it?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Hey, look. I hope you’re not going to mind my ducking out on you tonight, but we’ve never had the chance to spend the night together, and I hate to pass up the opportunity. Once the season gets going for real, I don’t expect to have a lot of free time, so I’ll have to make use of it when I can.”

“Like I said, have fun, and I’d do it if I were in your shoes.”

“I just don’t want to let you think I’m leaving you alone for your first night on campus.”

“No big deal. We’re going to have plenty of time to get to know each other. Tell you what, though. I know you’ve been here a couple weeks for football practice so you probably know some of the guys on the team, but you’re the only person around the place I’ve had the chance to talk to other than to just say hello or something. What would you say if we were to head over to the orientation early, just for the chance to meet a few people?”

“It’s definitely not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”

They were close to an hour early for the start of the orientation, but there were several students hanging around, most of them seemingly eager to get started with college, but a few who seemed somewhat lost and at loose ends. Howie introduced a few of the guys on the football team to Cam. Several of them seemed like pretty serious jocks, but Cam was used to hanging around with people like that, though he preferred not to if he was given a choice. There were a few people there, both boys and girls, who Cam thought he might like to know better if he got a chance.

The orientation turned out to be about as dull as they both had expected. There were little things that hadn’t been covered in handouts and on the college website, some minor details were cleared up, things that hadn’t totally made sense before. It wasn’t quite a waste of time, but close. One of the things he had picked up on was that there was supposed to be some sort of “get acquainted” party in the Student Union that evening.

Things were winding down when Howie got a text message from Autumn; things had ended at Centerton, and she was on her way back to pick him up. Howie wrote her back that they were about done here, and that he’d meet her in front of the dorm.

The session was done shortly afterward; Cam and Howie walked slowly back across the campus to the dorm. “That really was a load of bull,” Howie said. “That’s one thing different at SMU, or at least so Jack tells me. Orientation down there took a full day, and they dumped a huge load of stuff on the kids. He tells me that some of it was really important, stuff they need just about every day. It wasn’t all class stuff, it was how to live on campus, what to do if you have problems, and that kind of thing. Unless he was pulling my leg, they sure didn’t do it very well here.”

“There’ll probably be stuff we’ll learn the hard way,” Cam conceded.

“Yeah, well, it’ll all probably work out. I guess every freshman has to go through some of this stuff. Look, don’t get yourself in too much trouble tomorrow. Just take it easy. I’ll see you early Monday morning, and then we’ll get down to business.”



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