Keeping Your Head Up

This hurts more than anything I've ever known. I think I've
swallowed my tongue. A coppery taste. Vague shapes around me, voices
far off in the distance.

Playing football at my age is a bad idea, I suppose?Sitting at a desk
all week and then running around like I'm still a teenager for one hour
at the weekend.

The shapes are fading?

There's a point of light far off in the distance. Getting bigger,
closer. Now I can see somebody standing there. The pain is drifting
away from me. Don't know if I'm breathing.

The figure is a hazy green.

"It isn't time yet."

The voice stirs a distant memory.

Then I black out and come to in the past.

----------------

"Come on! Stop pratting around!"

I ignored my brother and carried on juggling the ball for a few more
minutes. Head to right knee, right knee to left foot?flick the ball
backwards and hit it with the full force of my right foot.

"You didn't have to hit it that hard, you idiot." David glared at me
and sauntered off behind the goal for the ball. He puffed and panted
back and walked over to me, punching me in the shoulder. "You're in,
now, squirt - that's five."

I made my way over as slowly as possible. If only my friends were any
good at football.

I was still turning round when the ball whistled past my ear. "Hey!
That's not fair!"

"Tough. That'll teach you for being so good, you little Kevin
Keegan!"

I smirked at his half-hearted compliment as I ran for the ball before
it reached the road. Just as I got to it I heard a voice.

"He's right, you know."

I looked up to see a gangly fifteen year old in an ancient green
goalkeeper's shirt. "W-what?" Something about his deep-set eyes and his
colourless face disturbed me.

"You're a good striker. Probably as good as Keegan at your age." He was
wearing a huge pair of shorts and football boots that had seen better
days. His dinner plate hands were definitely a goalie's. "Let's see
what you've got, eh?" He picked up the ball with one hand and walked
over to our goal, bouncing it as if preparing for a massive Pat
Jennings clearance.

"Who the hell're you?" David said.

"My name's Bob. Mind if I join in?"

David shrugged, but he eyed 'Bob' suspiciously.

The keeper tossed the ball in the air and kicked it. Actually, the word
'kick' doesn't do it justice. He hit it with the force of Darth Vader's
light sabre cutting through Obi-Wan Kanobi. "I could do with the
practice."

Eyes wide open in disbelief as the ball soared back down to his feet,
David said "Cool" and passed to me.

Despite my best efforts, if we'd have been playing 'five and in' Bob
would have stayed 'in' permanently.

By seven it was getting dark.

"Better get back else Mum'll kill us," said David, picking up the ball.
"Thanks for the game, mate." He shook the goalkeeper's hand, frowning
at his own as it disappeared. "We'll have do this again - maybe even
just you and squirt here, save me having to look after him."

"Yeah, maybe." For a moment the goalkeeper frowned and rubbed something
at the back of his skull.

An awkward silence held for a few seconds, then we watched him stride
off, in the opposite direction to the alleyway and our road.

"Strange lad," muttered my brother.

By the time we got home, I was so preoccupied with warding off the
familiar dread of a Sunday evening before school that I'd forgotten all
about the giant teenager.

And then, on a dreary, never-ending afternoon at school, he
reappeared.
It was P.E. To be more precise, a private football match involving all
the popular and the tough kids, passing only to their mates.

I was freezing to death on the right wing, hoping the ball didn't find
it's way to me so I'd end up making a fool of myself. Once again, his
voice appeared first.

"What're you doing?"

He startled me so much that I nearly cricked my neck. He was still
kitted out in that ancient shirt, baggy shorts and massive boots.
I was unnerved, yet I was pleased to see a face other than the sneering
ones belonging to the school's 'in-crowd'.

"You're wasted out here. You should be in the middle of the action." He
gestured towards a melee in the centre circle. Trevor Stevens, six feet
three with bright red hair that no-one dared to take the mickey out of,
controlled the ball with his hand before miskicking it to his cohort,
Lanky Holmes. The teacher, as usual, turned a blind eye. "Look at them,
they've got none of your flair. Can't pass the ball straight."

Stevens thundered off with the ball vaguely at his feet. With only the
terrified goalkeeper to beat he stopped and stood there with his arms
folded.

"Unfit, too - look at him, he can hardly breathe." Looking up at Bob, I
realised that a tiny smile had been etched into his colourless
features.
With a bellow designed to scare the goalie further, Stevens belted the
ball with his size twelve so clumsily that it almost went for a
throw-in.

Bob laughed. At least I think that's what it was. It was a dry, sad
sound, like a bird scraping its beak along a branch. He was almost
smiling again, but not in his eyes. "Can't shoot to save his life,
either."

He leaned forward and said quietly, "If that was you, you'd have buried
it." His nearly-smile had vanished - and I noticed the dent. It began
at the top of his head and furrowed down to the edge of his
close-cropped hair. Staring at it and listening to his voice - a
whisper like the winter breeze rustling dead leaves as you look forward
to Christmas and no school for ages - I kept thinking, over and over,
that I wanted my hair cut like his, a proper hair cut, not like the
stupid, girlie hair cut Mum insisted on giving me?I refused to think
about the dent and what could possibly have caused it. "Do yourself a
favour, don't waste your life away. You've got real talent and you
should use it. I had a chance and I?lost it." His voice was no longer a
whisper. "Get over there, show 'em what you can do." He slapped my
shoulder and, although I think he nearly broke it, I was so terrified
what this strange, huge teenager might do if I ignored him, that I
sprinted over to where the ball had bobbled to a halt.

I flicked it up and started running towards the opposite goal to the
one Stevens had feebly missed.

"What do you think you're doing, squirt?" he yelled at me as he
galloped over. His use of the word 'squirt' held more menace than my
brother's ever could, but I kept running. I got to the edge of the area
and passed to one of the cool boys on my team - he was so startled that
he did a one-two with me. I chipped the ball into the far corner of the
goal. The 'whoosh' of the net catching it was the most sublime thing
I'd known in two years of secondary school.

I soaked up the stunned silence.

I looked for Bob, but he was already gone.

That day proved to be a catalyst. I scored four more goals, and no-one
could get near me. It was fear that had driven me at first, at some
unspoken threat in Bob's words to me. But then it was replaced by
confidence as high as it ever was kicking the ball around with my
brother on the back field.

----------------

Memories speed up now, of trophies piling up on bedroom shelves, of
scoring goal after goal for better and better teams. Of the girl I
always liked but had never dared speak to until football had given me a
voice. She said she'd always liked me but was afraid to say. Would you
believe it? And here we are, happily married and heading towards forty.
Me unconscious on a sports hall floor?There's that light again?

"Come on, squirt, one more shot."

A shape materialises around the voice. There stands Bob the Goalie, in
his green shirt and with that dent more prominent than ever.
Something touches my foot. I look down to see a football. The brown
panels look hand-stitched. Here goes. I can feel my legs and feet
now?
Head to right knee, right knee to left foot, flick the ball backwards
and hit it with the full force of my right foot?

Bob leaps, and the ball sails past his dinner plate hands.

"Nice one." He composes himself and walks over. I'm five feet ten now
but he still towers over me, so he leans forward. "You never got to be
as famous as Kevin Keegan, but at least you gave it a go. At least you
had a chance and tried to take it."

I'm a shy twelve year old again. I try to talk but it's more of a
squeak.

"It isn't time yet," he mutters.

He turns around and walks off for the last time.

Somehow I manage to shout his name.

He stops and turns round.

"How did you get that dent?"

He almost smiles. "That's a long story. No time now. Here's a clue - my
name's Bob Bowers. I used to play for?"

I don't catch the rest because his voice fades into blackness with the
rest of him.

The blackness dissolves into colour. The colour dissolves into
shapes.
My throat is beginning to hurt again as the shapes become faces,
looking down at me.

"What's that? He said something."

An elderly man's face comes closer. "What was that, son?"

I try again: "Bob Bowers."

The man pushes his glasses up his nose and chuckles. "Well, what a
coincidence. I remember that name. He was famous donkey's years ago -
youngest first division goalkeeper ever. He was hurt playing football,
just like you, but you're much luckier. Didn't just get a ball kicked
in his throat?."

I can feel arms pulling me up.

"Oh no. Damned crossbar collapsed on his head. Killed him cold."

I black out again.