By the time Timothy arrived the rest of the team was already hovering in small groups around their cars like hornets around their nests or lions around their respective dens, hunched over and shivering...

... hands buried deep into their pockets as they looked around as predators who, unsure of the degree of their desire to kill, would, the wind which caused that isolated hunching blowing against them from the cold Hellespont skies, overcast as an early Saturday morning might be not on the British Columbian West Coast, but the stewishly frigid Maritimes (do any of them understand this, the strangeness of this morning, the mythical possibilities of it all, probably not, none of them do, talking about getting drunk or the latest violent movie or their girlfriends or what-have-you, a collection of mindless drones who are blind to the beauty of this ritual, the beauty of their sport).

The sight of Timothy’s car arriving made most to turn their attention his way, a couple focusing their shivering in his direction, the closest thing to an acknowledgment that they would give to someone like me, for once I wish they’d out and say it, that the only things I’m good for are the lineouts or the fact that I’m a guaranteed ride for three of them or maybe that I’m a laugh now and again, proof to them that they are regular, normal people because of this strange one in their midst. The Colonel, ticking names of a list, came over to his car, making a circular motion with his hand as he nodded his head quickly at the driver’s side window. Timothy lowered it.

"You don’t have Blue with you," The Colonel said, both as a question and a statement of fact.

"No, I don’t," Pen said, looking at the others with the eyes of a lonely wolf outside the pack, or, like the renegade lion of parts distant from here, watched amusedly by the others from a distance, tolerated but not allowed to actually come to close to any of the local game.

"Didn’t you phone him," Timothy asked The Colonel.

"I had to leave a message," The Colonel said, looking back at the rest of the crowd. "Don’t bother getting out," he added as Timothy went to turn off the engine, "we’re heading out. Pops! Isaac! We’re going with Harting," he called out to the crowd, as if it were not just a statement of fact instead of a request of Pen—the sort of rugby player who apparently does not merit a request such as the pleasure (or annoyance, from their point of view) of his company—but a statement also of divine right, perchance, that it is contrary to Pen’s nature not to be dominated by the others. Pen! Jump for the ball. Pen! Get under the kick. Pen! Give us a ride. Hm? Oh, are you still here, Pen?

Pops and Isaac came over—like guardians of the secret to monstrous girth, their bodies both waddling with an immense weight, Pops with his disappearing blanched hairline and thick, white-and-grey mustache, and Isaac, the epitome of good-nature, as is always the case with one of every team’s props, good natured, telling jokes, saying, without his even knowing it, look at me, laugh with and at me, this squat hump of a man who will make you thank your lucky stars you were born swifter or taller or smarter instead of like me, laughing along with the rest of you, who plays prop. But, as always, there is more than one way of looking at it, and that would be Pops, who would defend his position at loose-head prop with his life if he had to, not that anyone who had come in over the years ever had more than a fleeting chance of stealing it away (or so he constantly tells us). Where is your tattoo, Pops? Where is the twinkle in your eye, Pops? Why do you deny the world the final, necessary evidences that would complete your archetype?

For that’s what they all are, archetypes of one sort of another. Carl or Joseph never knew what they would be unleashing on the world with all their talk of archetypes, including my reaction, the reaction lying dormant, waiting to pounce, with my book, a book not only about rugby but about humanity, defining, among many other things, the new archetypes, replacing those abstract remnants of psychological thoughts which are now incapable of coming to terms with the evolved human being (even though it has been scarcely more than a century). You know something, Pen, this isn’t a have-bad way of beginning. For all intents and purposes, a book that has nothing more than a series of anecdotes about rugby, with a Faulkneresque aura about them, of heavy yet elusive meaning, and if I can make it haunting and give it a certain degree of greater-than-rugby legitimacy with a reference to Carl or Joseph, then they would have to love it, have to run at me with their open arms of respect and perchance even admiration—and got in the car, the suspension giving somewhat under their weight.

The Colonel turned around and yelled something else that was unintelligible to Timothy, and the rest of the team got in their cars, with the exception of Phil Chanteuil. Through the slamming of doors Phil called back something else that was unintelligible, and the Colonel nodded, and turned back towards Timothy’s car.

The motors started, and the early-morning drizzle which seemed to be saying I know you have another month or so of summer but this is what you have to look forward to after that showed itself in golden expanses of droplets, spreading outwards from the headlights, prompting the drivers to engage the windshield wipers. Timothy looked at his, lying idle across the base of his windshield, and flicked the switch that brought them to semicircular life and cleared the mild rain from his vision. The Colonel closed the door after himself, and Timothy began to follow as the rest of the vehicles, moving under their captain’s orders, got into file to leave the parking lot.

Phil Chanteuil waved as one of the cars honked a farewell. Standing there in the rain, youthful-looking but somehow looking less like a boy on the verge of manhood—perhaps it is his height or his broad shoulders that do this—than a chevalier, the sort that would, on horseback and with a lance aimed at his adversary’s heart, charge for the honour of the King, or the Grail, for isn’t that what he is? The inner strength of the East Hellespont Lions’ pack, and who knows this better than me, his counterpart in the scrum, his massive arm pinching me into him as we crouch and lean forward, in between the hips of Pops and Kyle and Isaac, me feeling his sturdiness as he waits, patiently, for the referee to signal the engagement, at which point he lengthens his massive body, his back as immobile as a steel beam, as immobile as the lance stretching out from his galloping charge, with no intention of giving, ever—or in the lineouts, for which, whereas Pen was a leaper, someone who was easy to lift, who fit into the number four spot perfectly, Phil was a number-two, a battering-ram jumper, who would take to the air and prompt a collision that would knock the opposing jumper in mid-flight out of the way and still catch the throw perfectly, as if it were not a bullet but a gift of slow white, moving as easily as a cloud, so that when Warden would go around from behind Pen into the ensuing scuffle surrounding Phil to rip, the ball would be there, cradled in close, protectively as the forms of Isaac and Pops would fight off the opposing team, but delicately so that the ball would come out just as easily as it went in, the sight of which would divide the crowd into two like a litmus test, those who have never played rugby and think that the most impressive part of a lineout is the number four getting hoisted into the air to snatch at the ball like a desperately hungry cat would for a bird swooping down just a little too low, and those who have and know that the most impressive and commanding proof of a team’s aptitude for lineouts is the throw to number two which works perfectly, with so many possibilities of disaster—a stray hand knocking the ball any which way, an extra body bumping in there and throwing off the jumper’s timing—all eliminated over the course of practice and more practice, a smooth model of efficiency at the very center of which is this Phil Chanteuil, who plays his part so perfectly that he becomes less a person than a demonstration of the flawless cog in the ideal machine, he watched as each of the team’s cars drove by before getting inside to turn on the radio and wait for Blue. Timothy studied his diminishing car through the rearview mirror.

"How long until he shows up, do you think?" he asked.

The Colonel shrugged.

"Goddamned sonuvabitch can outrun anybody in the goddamned city," Pops said, his grumbling voice having to penetrate the squeak of the windshield wipers, which, because it was only a light drizzle, were dragging along pretty noisily, prompting Pen to turn them off, "and he can’t even show up on time for a team meeting."

Isaac chuckled. "He’ll make it."

The Colonel said nothing, staring down at his list, and here is the proof of it, the new order of men, led not merely by a captain but by their Colonel, who is, to be sure, not the leader of mythical recognizance but a man true to the tradition of the antihero, the man who has seen his better days but who is not yet so far beyond those better days to allow himself to be the fallen man, sitting now, staring at his lists, embittered, knowing that there is something else going on this weekend, a small series of events not so far from Hellespont geographically but for all the intents and purposes in the Colonel’s frame of reference it is a world away. What are you thinking, Colonel? One missed tackle, one missed tackle, I’m still the best-hitting winger in the game but for that one missed tackle in the game against Ontario... The provincial coach saying, I appreciate you saying you’re interested and all, but listen, I think we ought to have a chat about the future of the provincial team. There are a few, really good young players coming out of the system now, and let’s face it, your boot has never been as reliable as McNeil’s, and it’s not going to be as reliable as some of the kids I’ve seen lately. Maybe it’s time you gave it up, don’t you think? Go on back to your club and try to win them the cup, or something. It’s nothing personal, but I think your provincial days are over.

How did you respond, Colonel? You didn’t out loud (from what I gathered, mostly from Pops) but did you inside? Are you still? Do you drudge through it over and over again, wanting to tell the coach who you are, how you were in your day the best player ever to come out of Hellespont, how if it weren’t for you the team would have been lacking, if not in ability, then character, the sort of character that can look at the opponent drilling his way up the field, too shifty for the inside centre and too powerful for the outside centre, to the wing, where you are, staring at him, with the eyes that say, I’m going to get you. I’m not just going to tackle you, I’m going to hit you hard, no matter how hard you come at me I’m going to stop you, dead in your tracks, and no matter how low you go I’m going to get under you, get my shoulder into your gut, and there will be two hits, the first one which will make the ball fly out of your hands like Icarus plucked from the skies, as I wrap my arms around just below your thighs and bring you off your feet and down onto your back, for your second hit, which will in an instant knock all the wind out of you as your mouthpiece flies from your lips, with a grotesque poofing noise, where you will lie down, on your back, trying to figure out both where on the field that winger came from and where all the air in your lungs has gone, you on the ground with pain and anxiety, pain that will last a few days but anxiety that will last a lifetime as long as there is ever the chance that you will have to face me again, I who will reduce you to a useless, heaving lump in the matter of two seconds. Do you still have that glare, Colonel? Have they taken that away from you as well? You’ve put down your list, Colonel, and looked up. What are you looking for? What is it out there which will give you back what you’ve lost? You’re still the Colonel. Blue might be the one giving the pre-game talks now, or scoring all the tries, or getting all the glory, but it is still you whom even he follows, Colonel. Will you let them all follow you, Colonel? Or have you given up on that, too?

Staring out at the streets of downtown Hellespont, the Colonel kept silent, watching the passing buildings as though it was his seat going nowhere, and the shadowy heights which stretched up into the fog that were rushing away behind him.

Or is it me? Do you think none of this? Am I the only one who sees these things? Am I the only one among you who sees any of this? Why is it, that when you look out on the streets of Hellespont you see nothing but a collection of the forms of any city, stone blocks filled with windows emerging over the cover of trees, with a river down the middle which means nothing more to you than the annoyance of having to drive over one of several crowded bridges if there’s somewhere specific on the other side you have to reach? This is Hellespont! Don’t you understand? It shares the name of the river, without which there would be no Jason and the Argonauts, no golden fleece, no mythic ideal, no idea of the quest, no mystique. Why am I alone in the seeing of all this? Sure, the place was first named in tragedy, but don’t any of you know that this is it’s second chance, that there is a force in the mind screaming for redemption, that there are still myths to be had? Why do you think of your beer and your movies and your girlfriends or what-have-you? And why won’t you listen to me when I tell you these things? Why do you give me that look, the contemptuous look a high-school class gives to its boring teacher? I am not trying to be a teacher. I’m trying to show you something!

"I hope it isn’t goddamned going to be like this all weekend," Pops said, also looking out, but at the weather. I’m getting too old for forward’s games.

"Can’t remember the last time we had a forward’s game since Blue showed up," Isaac said, grinning.

"What is it with you?" Pops asked.

"Oh, I just like the kid, that’s all," Isaac said, looking at his feet. "Blue’s a good kid. I don’t want people acting like the world’s going to end just ‘cause he showed up later than usual." Pen thought that remark to be an interesting notion but not one that he wanted to share with the others, for fear of that contemptuous look again, although within the present company there were those who had listened to him with a certain degree of interest before, Isaac because he simply was the kind, listening type, with just enough hold on his keen nature to not be annoying except for a few isolated occasions; Pops because he welcomed any chance to talk, because his was a mind full of trivia, back in the days when he played for other clubs in other cities, including that one in Scotland, sponsored by a company and road trips that were, to this rabble of lifeboats, an ocean-liner voyage; the Colonel because the Colonel always listened, silently, detached and watching you as he would watch any one of his players, analyzing, understanding you, trying to find that which is within that promises a better player or, at the very least, something which will give him an idea on how to handle a certain game situation—switch Pen around with Phil on the next lineout, they’re going too high on Phil, for instance. But no, this was too much even for them, because even Isaac with his errant insight into the idea of karma and signs is not capable (none of them are, really) of making the intellectual leap from base superstition to the idea of true Chaos theory within the confines of the experiment which is every single rugby game. How, for instance, the only two certainties are that there will be two kickoffs, one at the onset and one at the half, and other than that there is no idea of how even those kickoffs will go, because even though a team will practice and practice so as to eliminate all of the unwanted possibilities of straying minds doing their own thing against the benefit of the team, who is to say that the kick, instead of going to Phil or Pen, which is as it should be, who is to say that the kick won’t fly up too high and too short for either, unless one of them (and this is a personal decision to be made by them individually) takes the initiative of trying to catch the ball on the run, as opposed to the more likely route of letting Pops or Isaac handle it, and here is only one instance of a situation in which the minds have to act on their own (unless The Colonel takes it upon himself to coach the team into handling things a certain way, which he doesn’t usually, at least not for the forwards) and it is one of these situations which can drastically change the shape of a game right from the beginning, because what if Phil, who is generally reliable on regular kickoffs, isn’t quite so reliable and charges the ball, whereas Pops, who is always confident in his ability to handle anything, decides that he’s going to get it? There is the chance that in the last minute something will happen so the two coordinate the catching act properly, but there is also the chance that one will bump into the other, destroying a chance at a clean take, and that might mean a knock-on and an opposing team’s scrum, or a loose ball bouncing the chaotic way that only a rugby ball can bounce through the bumbling outstretched arms of the forwards, or even worse, the other team might recover the kickoff, and suddenly, the game takes on a preliminary shape as a result of a situation governed by the unpredictable physical laws of Chaos, and that scrum then leads to another set of unknowns, variables that can change throughout the course of the game, depending on whether or not the team wants to run blindside at this point of the match, or just swing it out, and if it is swung out, to kick it deep or try a series of maneuvers with the backs, inviting a whole new set of unknowns to the forefront, and it is these situations that make each and every game unique, an opportunity for one player to prove his worth or another to fail, so that one can never say what skills are going to be demanded of a player at any given time, each game a new chance, a specific argument to be decided, an answer to a question, an occasion to put to rest a demon or bring to life a new one. People don’t understand. They embrace baseball as the stuff of philosophy, and leave it at that. They love football, but they disregard it as an appreciation of the pure physical, the animalistic, adrenalized nature of it all. They do this without going that one step beyond, to see that rugby, the purest of footballs, is the Iliad to baseball’s Odyssey, a chance to take the mind into the frightening world of apposition, two teams in the same situation all game, two warring forces of energy, on the surface, the same shape, the same goals, unlike the other sport, in which it isn’t a batter out in left field to match the batter at the home plate, but a fielder, so that the two teams take on vastly different forms within the uniformity of one situation, heightening the importance of the individual, but unable to go beyond that to the intriguing conflict of the individual within the collective. They don’t see any of it this way. Moreover, they don’t want to. They want rugby to be about getting a good hit in or running around (or through) the other team or scoring a try or having a beer afterwards with the buddies. They don’t see the potential symbolism of it all. But I do. And someday, maybe, I’ll make everyone else see it too. (Maybe I should start it with something like that, a discussion of the artistic dangers of letting one type of sport govern the sports literature landscape. These guys might not listen, but someone will.)

And it makes you wonder if life works that way too. Just like in the game, there are a few things which are for sure—that you’ll need to sleep, that you’ll need to eat and drink, but other than that, everything else is wide open. And further, other people’s decisions might have an impact on the situations you face, and your decisions will have an impact on other people’s situations, so that even, possibly, something important, something completely unrelated, might happen because of the fact that Blue ended up being late.

"We all like Blue," Pops said sarcastically, scratching his inner thigh, bare, bulging out from his rugby shorts. You do have to admire them sometimes, though, cold as all hell and they’ll still where those tiny things—you might as well walk around in nothing more than a towel. The last vestiges of the city were ahead, the car having traveled beyond the final constructs of downtown. Houses were now lining the boulevard, but the suburbia which approached this close to the road would be a short-lived section of town, the apartment buildings and grand shopping franchises giving way to small wooden houses and convenience stores and, increasingly, trees.

The Colonel looked down from this view, back to his sheet of paper, and Timothy wondered what it was that was so obviously weighing on his mind.

We all like Blue, Isaac. How can you not like Blue? Blue the man—a young, thin, wiry black man with just enough muscle on his arms to show that there is something there other than the adroit sharpness of bones, a face so dark you could lose yourself trying to find his features if you aren’t standing in good light, eyes that look both a little lazy and seeking, a demeanor that is as close to being aloofness as a friendly person can get, laughing with everyone, not seeming to notice that he’s the only black man on the team, the only black man in the HRFF, and probably in Hellespont as far as I can tell. Spending his days working with his father the carpenter, even though (I’ve heard this from Phil) he’s a dandy of a football player and there are even a couple of schools in the states that want to take a chance and give this wiry wide-receiver some scholarship consideration. Not seeing any girls, lord knows why, because even if one disregards the shallow person’s attraction to the novelty of his being black he is, by all measures, a good-looking kid, a kid who, whenever he does speak up (which, granted, isn’t often) he speaks both with intelligence and style, not the sort of style that is the sort which belongs to those who drastically rehearse those things they want to say, but the effortless style which seems to say, I am a master of my words and the ideas that I communicate, and those words I do not use or those ideas that I don’t communicate aren’t of much interest to me, and I am much more interested in you, the person who I talk with. Blue the rugby player—who in uniform looks even more thin and wiry because of those shorts that hang so baggy above his protruding knees, whose calves—which make him the fastest player in Hellespont, and probably that I’ve ever played with—are hugged so close to his bones that the veins which extend over them are eye-catchingly noticeable not because the calves are so strongly developed, but because there is no fat within which those veins can hide, those legs which come out of his rugby pants being his trademark, not just for the strange, clumsy aesthetic that is the Blue-is-running-past-you show but also the fact that there isn’t a single person he can’t run by, or around, or, if he decides on it, through, because while his limbs look boney they are not without their strength, and you can ask that to anyone who has tried in tackling to get around his straight-arm and through to the diminutive torso, which is of the here-one-moment-gone-the-next variety because if there is one thing Blue can do, it is move, and while his passing isn’t the greatest on the planet, it is no Achilles’ heel, as Isaac will swear over and over again after the pass Blue gave him one day in a sevens tournament, leading to the only try that Isaac ever scored in his life, and even if his passing weren’t perfect his dummying sure is, in that you haven’t seen the players that I’ve seen jumping around foolishly after a ghost pass that Blue sent for their confusion, which leads me to suspect that here is another of the archetypes, not so much a new one as a re-emergence, a revalidation, of an old one, the army scout, the prophet, the point-man, the knife, the visionary who can see through all confusions and lead the others to the promised land, and maybe this is overly romantic, but it is exactly what I saw, one day when we were playing the university, with their navy blue jerseys, when Blue came away from a scrum unexpectedly and sent a dummy pass to Yula who was crashing inside, behind him, so the university’s flankers were frozen in their cross-field pursuit in expectation of the ball coming back their way, and then he set his attention out to the backs, of which there were five, Roy Smedley who had looped around from his fly-half spot behind the crashing Yula and over to where Griffith, Thomas Kent, Richard Smedley, the fullback who had joined the line, and the Colonel, who had also looped around from the weakside winger position to take the final spot on the line, and in, fact, would have been the one to score the try, if not for that second dummy pass which disregarded all of them and the opposing team’s backs who had come up frantically to cover them, so that Blue had, in essence, parted the opposing team directly down the middle, and was cutting through to where the lone fullback stood, advancing slowly to meet the tackle, at which point Blue extended his hand and slowed down and wound up his foot, inciting the opposing team’s fullback to think he had to move quickly to block a kick, and he jumped in the air with outstretched hands which, if Blue had in fact dropped the ball onto his foot, might have been high-enough in the air to cover the chip, but Blue did not drop the ball onto his foot, in fact it never left his hands as he brought it back into his body and accelerated passed the fullback, who fell with a silent crash, like a wave does after having reached its highest peak, and as the opposing team collapsed on itself and tried to stop Blue from getting any further, like the sea rushing up the shores of the beach, Blue accelerated even more, running past even the wingers who had dropped back and were sprinting to catch him but who could only get within ten feet and that was when Blue had already passed over the goal-line, placing the ball down with one hand, claiming their end-zone as his, and it was that score which brought the Lions to the total of ten, before being followed by the Colonel dropping it through the uprights to bring it to twelve, and as it turned out, twelve was the number the university could not get equal that day on the scoreboard, while East Hellespont would go on to score several more times, including a couple of tries in which Blue made certain not to have too much individual bearing on the rest of the game’s output, knowing that he had, to a certain extent, stolen the double-overlap away from his teammates, and after the game, he apologized to everybody after having made the most beautiful run I had ever laid eyes on in a rugby game. How can you not like Blue?

But it’s not just that pass he gave me, Isaac said. There’s something else, about him, you know? Look at him. He’s such a good player, such a great guy, and he doesn’t have to hang around us so much, but he does it anyway. He’s never missed a game or a practice, or a party either, unless he’s absolutely had to. He won’t give you any trouble, he never asks for any help, neither. And it must be a little tough, you know, being the only black guy on the team and everything.

"What’s this all of a sudden," the Colonel asked, looking around. "Is he going to be the mother of your child or something?"

"No," Isaac said, looking playfully annoyed. "I just don’t like it when Pops here calls him a goddamned son of a bitch, is all."

Pops looked up, surprised, and with that glint in his eye which, if the world was lucky, would be there all the time, and we would be able to say, there, that is Pops, that is the who man fulfills the archetype we need, just by that glint in his eye. "You got something to say to me, kid?" he asked.

"I don’t have anything to say to anybody," Isaac said, now looking a little uneasy. He turned his gaze out at the houses, whose lots were becoming gradually less suburban, more overgrown by the west coast greenery; the wet shrubs, the odd Douglas Fir, the most beautiful gardens in the country.

"If you’ve got something to say to me, then say it," Pops said, sticking his belly out and putting his elbow over the back of the seat, resting his fingers inches away from Isaac’s shoulder. "Look at me when I’m talking to you, kid."

"Never mind," Isaac said, forcing his attention to stay outside. "Forget it."

In a matter of a heartbeat Pops had rolled his fingers up into a fist and had punched Isaac hard, in between the shoulder and the triceps. "Look at me!" he said, his eyes glimmering now even harder than before.

Upon impact, Isaac flinched in his spot and turned to face Pops, at first unsure of what to do, and then gradually taking a look on his face that said that even if he knew what to do, he wouldn’t have the guts to do it anyway. Timothy watched it all through the rearview mirror.

The Colonel ripped around. "Cut that shit out. Save it for the goddamned pitch."

That’s it," Pen said to himself smartly, "that’s what we need from you, Colonel. Whatever they do, if they take away your glory, if they take away your pride, don’t ever let them take away your authority. In all the places I’ve been to, in all the clubs I’ve played for, I know that the most important thing is a captain who won’t let his authority be taken away from him. And there are other things, Colonel, that you’ve done that have been worthy of respect and authority, like when you let Blue be co-captain for the important games last year, because lord knows, not that I want to be overly romantic about it, but in all the clubs I’ve played for the black person doesn’t often get that chance, and I don’t know what it was, but for some reason they always seemed to end up as the team’s weapon, instead of as the man who says when to fire it. I know you’ve seen this too, or else you wouldn’t have let Blue start making the pre-game speeches. In the other clubs, they were there, but their coaches didn’t always understand that they might have had a talent that went above and beyond what they did for themselves but what they could do for their team. There’d been a few wingers that I remember, a prop on another team, an inside centre or two among them, even, one in Montreal, a scrum-half, just like Blue...

A scrum-half, just like Blue... with all of us standing around in the centre of their half of the pitch, our hands in the middle, a single black hand on top of them all, the other hand with a finger, pointed out, which he would direct at everyone’s heart, saying, Come on, boys, let’s fucking take it to them, boys, I want to see only good shit out there (his trademark), only the good shit, you got me? I want to see the tight five going in fucking hard! Those damn rednecks might be all meaty from throwing bales of hay around, but this isn’t a farm here, boys (actually it was a farm, the Waldron field was built on a lot adjacent to a huge corral for cattle and a farmhouse, as well as two hills which met like humps that cornering in the north and west corners of the pitch, falling slowly away into the trees, which rose up into the sky angrily, but with Blue talking you couldn’t see any of that), it’s a fucking rugby match (an obvious fact, but one that made you think nonetheless whenever he said it), and we’re going to show those assholes how to play rugby. Tight five in hard, and the back row all over the fucking field today, from the kickoff to the final whistle, you got me? (I’ve seen many a prep talk before, including the sentences that don’t make any sense, the bumbling of words, the eyes that seem a little distracted, like the person speaking is out of their element doing this. Blue didn’t have any of it—not a single vesitge of the soft-spoken person he usually is.) And no dropped passes anywhere, you got it? And go in hard, in everything! Those assholes don’t know how to do anything, so they’ll just be doing everything hard to make up for it. If you take that away from them, if you go in harder, the game is a joke. You get me? A joke. Christopher! (He was very good at this, picking out a face that seemed not completely into it and goading that person into preparedness.) Didn’t that bitch steal your lineouts last time? Didn’t he? Are you going to let that happen? Are you?! Kyle! You gonna put someone down? You gonna to do it? Huh? Answer me! (Yeah.) Louder, you fuck! (Yeah!). That’s it you bastards, only the good shit from here on out. All right, Lions on three—one, two, three (Lions!), okay, now I know this referee and he’s going to call everything, so keep your cleats off the other team and shit like that. We’re kicking off from the other side.

And that would be it. But, at first, it wasn’t. At first (Isaac told me this), it had been Blue the rookie playing on the wing when Jack Hewman was scrum-half, and it was the Colonel giving the speeches. But at the beginning of last year, Blue’s second season on the team the Lions sent two squads to play in the Hellespont Sevens Tournament up at the university, and the second team had been Warden at hooker, Isaac and Christopher at prop, Norm at fly-half, Kyle at centre, Thomas at wing, and Blue at scrum-half, which meant basically Blue and six other guys. The Colonel had written it up this way for a reason, though, because he wanted to wanted to put Blue in charge to see what happened. The Lions firsts ended up losing in their pool to the West Side Barbarians firsts in the opening round, and had to settle for winning the consolation championship. Blue’s team, though, had a somewhat easier route to the final, and even though they also lost to the Barbarians firsts in the final, the Colonel saw what he had wanted to see, which was Blue making a fool out of everyone else on the field, all the way up through to the championship game’s final moments. That year Blue and Jack split time at scrum-half, and even then it was obvious that Jack’s solid hold at that position for the previous five years was over. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing. What was the most interesting thing was that the Colonel himself had decided to share the team’s reins with Blue, bringing him up to talk to the referee with the opposing team’s captain just before kickoff, letting him do the pregame and postgame talks, even asking his opinion on how to divide this year’s sevens teams. What is it, Colonel, that you didn’t want to tell us directly? That your time was nearing its end? You’re still too young to be thinking that way. Look at Blue during his prep talks, Colonel. There are two people whom he has never pointed out in a prep talk, Colonel, and that’s you and Pops. There isn’t ever going to be a formal changing of the guard, Colonel. He knows where the respect belongs. Christ, how can you not like Blue?

"I’ll tell you one thing," Pops said angrily, even after the Colonel had turned back around, leaving an invisible barrier in between everyone with his cold snap, "there’s no reason to go getting all worshipful of some kid just because he’s nice to you. I call it like I see it, and if some guy is going to hold up the rest of the team then I don’t give a shit if he’s Martin Luther King, he’s a goddamned sonuvabitch."

Looking in the mirror, Timothy could see that Isaac had been offended by the implications of the reference. "You don’t have to make this about race, Pops. He’s a person."

"Oh, why can’t we all just get along?" Pops asked, high-pitched and mockingly, at which point the Colonel looked up.

"Give it a rest, Pops," he said, no longer angry, but tired. "Save it for the pitch."

"All I’m saying is you wouldn’t be so goddamned quick to defend him if he weren’t black," Pops said, lifting a finger in the air. "That goes for all of you. You’re treating the kid special for stupid reasons. If the kid were a chink you wouldn’t be doing this."

"That’s enough," the Colonel said, turning around.

Why do you resist, Pops? Why do you fight your nature? It isn’t like you to be this way. Admit it, you look at Blue and see the same things we do, someone who comes from the outskirts of Hellespont and leads us to a new place, a higher place. We’re not using him, we’re integrating him, and eventually we’ll have to submit to him. We’re not treating him like a novelty (well, Isaac and some of the others might), because I have to tell you, I know lots of black people, and you know something? This one is special. He’s risen above the confines of all our races to somewhere new, where humanity lies, and he knows the way through. And all we have to do is follow him, like Moses. That’s who he is, Moses in rugby shorts. Don’t pretend you don’t see it too. One day, Pops, one day you’re going to see the walls of your flawed understanding come crashing down like Jericho, and you will see. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the saviour, Pops, you don’t have to think it’s like that. But while he might not be the saviour, anybody can see that through people like him lie the salvation. Your resistance to him has nothing to do with him, you have to understand, it has to do with you, within your own solitary faults. Oh, I wish I could tell you this, Pops. I wish I could tell you all. Do you know what it’s like, walking around with this understanding of it all, wanting to tell everyone it all, but not being able, and so having to force myself into my limited role, where I can only teach a little at a time, to limited audiences. Oh, all of you, it’s out of love that I want to tell you these things. Why are you so hostile to me? Why do you shut me out? (Whatever you do, don’t start the book that way. People always shy away from one man’s idea of the truth, even if it’s the right one. Not that I’m saying I’m like Jesus, but He would have agreed with me, I think.)

Isaac leaned forward and tapped the Colonel on the shoulder. "You think I’m saying it for that reason, Colonel? You think so? Tell me the truth."

"The truth is I don’t give a shit," the Colonel said after a brief glare. "I don’t give a shit about any of that. You want to go off lovingly about Blue? Fine. You want to talk bad about him behind his back, Pops? Fine. I don’t give a shit. Just keep it to your god-damned selves."

Isaac looked slightly forlorn to Timothy, who tried to give him a comforting shrug-of-the-shoulders-and-raise-of-the-eyebrows, a gesture Pen had learned from the kids these days, who were better at communicating things than you might imagine, if only you stopped to look for it. The prop turned his attention back outdoors, at the bridge they had just crossed over in order to get to the northern edge of the city, the near-rural area, which was only a small series of forested hills away from the farmland. The Hill, in the center of the city behind them and yet another real-life symbol people fail to acknowledge seriously, was starting to disappear behind the trees which lined this part of the road. Timothy looked out the window at the slowly passing view, feeling the tension within the car like it was a smothering blanket. Turning to the Colonel, he asked, any changes in the lineup?

"I don’t know," the Colonel said, shifting his paper towards Pen to see. Another mark of the great leader, Pen thought, showing enough security in himself as well as a compassionate confidence for his subjects to share the battle plans with some of them.

Timothy scratched his chin as his eyes went back and forth from the road to the sheet. "Have you ever thought of, on defence, switching Christopher up from eight to blindside flank? He’s a little bigger, and we could probably use the extra meat going up against Waldron."

The Colonel didn’t say anything for a moment. "Nah, better to keep it simple," he said, but not dismissively. "If we screw with the game plan too much now, we might regret it."

"I see," Timothy nodded. "A sound decision, if you ask me. Better not to increase the number of unknowns, if it can be helped. You’re the boss, Colonel. I wouldn’t dream of it being otherwise. I don’t think anybody in their right mind would..."

But soon, Colonel, it might be different. Maybe what you see is what really is happening. It might already be different—maybe what I knew would have to come eventually has already come, unbeknownst to all of us here. We’re a young team, Colonel, and while I can’t say I’m thinking that there’s a revolution going on in our club (I’m only willing to take my abstraction so far), I’ve got to say that some of them are really beginning to respond to Blue, perhaps even more than you think. The fact that Blue never crosses the line of telling you what to do keeps the others thinking of you in a sort of reverence, but it’s a reverence governed by Blue, I’m starting to think. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe you sense it, also. Is that what troubles you, Colonel? It must be hard for you, going from one level of authority to another. Please, don’t give in to it. Please God don’t.

"I’ve also been thinking of making Blue captain," the Colonel said. "At least, for the tournament, to see what happens. "I’d stay coach and all, but I think it might be good for him."

Oh, Colonel, I understand. You’ve always been good to him, giving him the chances. I only wish there were someone like that for me, maybe someone in the university, a mentor-figure of my own, but I suppose that archetype is starting to wear a little thin in this day and age. Oh, Blue, do you know how lucky you have it, the best of both worlds? The best of all worlds?

"Captain?" Pops spoke up. "What are you thinking? You can’t let a nineteen year-old be captain of a club team. It’s not right!"

"I’m only looking out for the team’s future," the Colonel said, with a certain tone of finality. He looked back down at his sheet, as if restraining himself from and denying others the possibility of argument. Of course, from Pops, an argument about this sort of thing would always be forthcoming.

"He’s a kid! Pops said, and you can’t give a kid this kind of responsibility. It’s too much. Never mind the fact that when I was a kid you had to wait your turn and earn the respect you needed to deserve being a captain. He can’t handle it. I’ll listen to his talks and shit, but you can’t let him be the only one making the decisions. How can you respect your captain’s decisions if you don’t respect your captain?"

The Colonel stayed silent. It’s the right decision, don’t be swayed too much by Pops. You know how he is (Evans told me all this), it’s part of the dual nature of his archetype, to act as the constant aged figure amidst a changing, younger society, the historian, to remember and remind others of the past. So listen to him, because it is important to listen to him, because sometimes the best way to figure out if something is worth fighting for is to fight against it, as hard as you can. He had a point when he argued against your becoming the team’s captain six years ago, because you were younger than all but three of the players, even though you were twenty-three and had been with the team for five years. He had a point when he argued against your being both player and coach when you took over the spot two years ago, because it was going to be something of a juggling act, something you’re still coming to terms with. He even wanted to argue against your decision of having Evans Ferguson replace him as pack-leader last year (Isaac told me this), and for the sake of maintaining his dignity he didn’t, but he would have had a point if he did, because Evans is something of a mysterious talent, and not much of a speaker on the field, whereas everyone has always known exactly how Pops will play and exactly how much he will talk. But, he has always adapted, Colonel, which is the other side of his nature, his importance, which is that the good old days are always dead and gone and irretrievable, and without the risks inherent in progression we will never know progress, and we will never know the good new days. You must do what you know is right, and what will help, and having you as captain helped the team along once and having Blue as captain will help the team along even further. He’s succeeded wonderfully at everything else. It is time to see if he can succeed at this.

And the others, Colonel, like I was saying it earlier, before you read my mind and spoke those words which frightened me because you proved that the hypotheticals can in fact become realities and not just pretend-thoughts in my head, the others on the team, they will respond to it as well. Pops won’t, and Evans might find it strange, but Isaac will because Isaac is devoted to him wholly, for whatever reasons his mind summons, and Kyle will, because Kyle thinks that things like captains in rugby are besides the point, and Roy and Richard will, because (Richard told me this) even when they played together on the senior team at East Hellespont High and they were two years ahead of him they knew even then that Blue was the most influential player on the team despite being the youngest, and Yula will, because Yula, despite all his bravado and showmanship, is really a smart man, and even he listens to Blue now like he used to listen to you, and Warden will, and Phil, who left the university team to play for East Hellespont, and Thomas, and Christopher, and Griffith and even myself, because we all look upon Blue with awe.[/i}

"I don’t like it," Pops said, shaking his head and tightening his mouth, exagerratedly, as though he were trying to make himself look overly stubborn. He kept shaking his head as he looked out the window, at the rolling hills which their road had already meandered a kilometre within. Isaac looked at him for a moment, somewhat reservedly, before speaking.

"I think it’s a great idea. I do."

"You would, kid," Pops said.

"No," Isaac said, "I do. I think he can do a lot for the team. And I think it says a lot, too, that we’re ready for something new. I think we’re ready for it, Colonel, I do. He deserves it. It’ll make him a better player, too. He’ll understand more. He’ll grow."

"He does his job well enough right now," Pops said, turning back into the car but not looking anyone in the eye. "Did we or did we not win the championship last year? What more do you want?"

"Pops," the Colonel said, turning around, "Jack Hewman’s gone, and with him goes lots of experience. Terry’s gone, and Norm’s gone, and Vladimir’s gone. There are guys starting on our team who don’t know anything but how to sit on the sidelines. Remember when we thought the Smedleys were too young to be starting? Now they’re two of the most experienced players on the team. Thomas shouldn’t be starting at wing, but he is. Kyle shouldn’t be anywhere on the field, and he’s our starting hooker. In any other city in Canada, Griff would be a lower-division player all his life because of the way he’s built, except this isn’t any other city. Our team’s as young as any team I’ve ever seen. They’ll listen to Blue. They already look at him the way they used to look at players like you and me."

Pops listened, but didn’t look like he would ever budge from his stance. He turned back outside, where the clouds were growing thicker and darker. "It’s going to rain like a motherfucker up there, he said, and Webster’s going to be saying whether or not we want a lineout or scrum."

Isaac inhaled angrily, but the Colonel gestured quickly, silencing him. "He was going to be your captain anyway soon, Pops. We won the championship last year, which is great, but that doesn’t mean we can forget about the future. I’m running out of time on this team, and when I leave I want the club to be in healthy shape. And that means making Blue the captain now, so by the time I’m gone he’ll have had a couple of years experience at it, and I won’t be necessary."

{i}The perfect meaningful anecdote, this is what this is. Maybe I should start with this, the out-with-the-old beginning, and then move into a whole bunch of lesser anecdotes, showing team life, the guys on tour, the parties that happen. Maybe, if the world can see that rugby has dynamics similar to everyday life, they will understand rugby’s importance. Perhaps a novel would be better, but that is not for me. What is needed is the new mythology, and that isn’t going to come out of a novel, but out of little, tiny tales that speak to those same areas of the mind that myths do. I’d have to arrange them properly, just like those books of myths I used to read as a child, and I can begin with this one. The modern-day creation myths, with Pops as Uranus and the Colonel as Cronus and Blue as Zeus, retold in a way less psychologically metaphoric than having castration and mountains and such, because people these days seem either to be too bored with to care about—or too stupid to understand—metaphors, and I’ve got to speak to them first and foremost, if I am ever going to show them the right way of looking at things. The new mythology, and that is what these anecdotes will be. So how do I define the players as such? (Maybe that’s a good way of beginning, organizing the players into specific hierarchies, showing each for their place in the grand scheme of things, within the confines of the rugby team. Of course, I’d have to make some minor adjustments. When this book finally comes out the guys are going to be looking at themselves and wondering who the hell they are, and I’ll have to explain that I made a few changes, that it wasn’t anything personal, that it was for the good of the book, and therefore, the good of the sport. I hope they understand.)

But to be classical or biblical, or to borrow from both? Perhaps there is an ambiguity I can use, as the Christians used Greek and Latin symbols from a pagan culture to add to the understanding of their own religion, maybe I can use the Christian and the Greek and the Latin to get at what I want to get at, but what is it that I want to get at? This is so terribly philosophical, even my students never get this far. How can I expect the players to? They don’t care about these sorts of things, all they care about is drinking and violent movies and girlfriends and what-have-you. Oh, if only they’d let me be one of them, if only they would bring me in, make me one of them (they never really did initiate me, but, of course, they might be waiting until the end of the year before doing it, even though I was technically around for the last initiation). Hm... maybe that’s it, maybe they’re just waiting. Or maybe they’re waiting for the tournament this weekend, to give all the tour-rookies their hazing, and maybe I’ll be among them then, all those boys who are like children in my eyes alongside me, and maybe...

Of course, the important question is whether or not I really want to be initiated into the group, what with that metaphysical theory that says that whatever subject is studied drastically changes from the behaviour it shows whenever it is not studied. A chicken-and-egg paradox if I ever heard one, but there is a certain truth to it. I really should be thinking about the importance of that, to never allow myself to become a part of that which I am observing, if I ever want to make this book work. My anecdote will be the foreword of that book, a quick little passage summarizing what I went through with the team, my ups and my downs, how I feel about my comrades, maybe even a scandalous hint pointing towards those with whom I was closest, like the Colonel and Pops, but nothing more, so that when the reader sees this, they will know that I am not just a proper authority but also a professional one, smart enough to get just close enough without getting too close to the group, my test subjects, my little lab rats, as it were. They might object to this, of course, but then again, certain sacrifices have to be made if things are going to work properly, am I right?

Farmland stretched out to the west, with some small pastures to the east serving as the barrier in between the highway and the coast. The fog was getting especially thick ahead as it rolled from the water, so much so that the other cars on the team looked like they were disappearing into it, their tail-lights growing fainter the further north they drove. Soon, even the water was difficult to see, as overwhelmed by the fog as it was, and as nobody in the car said much of anything else the rest of the way, the team driving ahead of Timothy’s grew impossible to see, and the coast and the far reaches of the farmland that managed to touch the highway were also growing more difficult to make out, and, with the silence in the car, Pen felt like he was the only person really alive, the only one who really knew and understood those symbols which surround us all in our everyday reality and which make sense, if only we choose to look at them properly.

The rest of the way up nothing more was said, as Timothy kept his eyes forward he poured through more different possibilities for his book, looking sideways at the others only occasionally, when it was needed.