Team Manager 2: SPRINT!
Chapter 33
“DENNIS, I’M SORRY to have taken you so much by surprise,” Coach Byers said as the meeting broke up. “I am going to give you a choice in the matter. If this doesn’t sound like it suits you, just tell me and we’ll go with Plan B.”
“You have a Plan B, sir?”
“No. But we’ll make one up.” They both laughed.
“There are some things that will need to be worked out,” Dennis said. “For example, physical conditioning for the entire football team while I’m working with cross country runners and volleyball players feels like more than I can handle. I’m still a student and have homework, too.”
“I was concerned about that as well. It worked for the track team because we handled it during practice and you only worked with the guys outside. I think I’ll leave football conditioning to the coaches. I’ll be assisting Coach Torvalds with football. We may have the same problem with basketball, though I’d truly like to see our guys put through some of the exercises you put the girls through. That one, we’ll need to talk to Coach Griffith about. I’ll be coaching the wrestling team and will work out what conditioning is needed there. Cross country, though, will be a mixed sport. Having Coach Andy and Coach Graves work on it like they did for track will be positive. I know they’d both like you to work on conditioning for their team.”
They reached the tunnel entrance and kept walking. Dennis noticed that Brenda, Ardith, Andy, and two of the new women coaches, Coach Mills and Coach Fisher, were walking along with them. Coaches Wilson, Griffith, and Torvalds stayed back, hunched over the conference table talking football. Brenda noticed Renée Lambert wandering aimlessly at the door and ran to invite her along with them.
They got out to the track and turned toward the straightaway start area. Coach Andy stopped and pointed.
“We could have used your help out here this week,” he said. “Ardith, Jim, and I spent a long workday on Monday measuring and marking the 5k cross country course.”
“Um… I have a job. I’m sorry I can’t be on this a hundred percent of the time this summer, sir.”
“Oh, we know that,” Ardith said. “Don’t feel like we’re trying to pressure you into anything. But I talked to Mr. Brown this week and he said you are pretty handy with a mower.”
“I just mowed a hayfield for him, but I don’t have a mower. We don’t have enough yard for anything but an old push mower,” Dennis said.
“Well, here’s the deal,” Ardith said. “Mr. Brown told me about the work you are doing this week and it was a wonder that we were able to schedule the meeting for when you could attend. After I explained what we needed, he offered to loan you to us, if you agree, along with the mower, to prep the cross country track. We’ve marked it off, and have the specifications regarding how it needs to be prepared. In addition to mowing, it needs to be carefully inspected for rocks, roots, holes, and anything else that might cause a runner to stumble. We got permission to run the track at the edge of a couple of farms north of here and then to cross over and come back down next to the river before looping around the cemetery. We’re looking at laying fill in where the track might become hazardous in rainy weather. Some areas will be dirt track, some long grass, and some pavement. By long grass, I mean one to one-and-a-half inches. We may need to do some seeding, too. With good weather, Mr. Brown estimated it would be about two weeks of work and he could provide the equipment and you for the work. He did suggest we get a few volunteers out here to help as well.”
“Wow,” Dennis breathed. It looked like an interesting task and he was willing to do the work. He was a little disappointed about losing two weeks of income, though. “I guess if Mr. Brown doesn’t need me, I don’t have anything else to do. I’ve got another eye operation coming up in three weeks and will have to take a week off then, too.”
“Oh, this won’t be time off, Dennis,” Coach Andy jumped in. “It will be part of your job for Mr. Brown. The boosters are subsidizing it.” That definitely put a better spin on it. They turned and started back toward the track.
“I’m a little unsure about how all this is supposed to work,” Coach Fisher said. “I’ve not worked with a student trainer before. I will probably work most of the volleyball conditioning myself. I’ll consider some expansion of that when I see how you work with the cross country team.”
“Yes, ma’am. I have a lot of reading up to do to look at sports conditioning for volleyball. I’d love to observe you at work,” Dennis said. That stopped Coach Fisher, literally in her tracks. The others turned to look at her.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Brenda and I are taking a course at DMACC this summer on athletic training. It’s what I hope to do as a career.”
“Hmm. I’ve never allowed boys in for practicing and conditioning. They’ve always proven to be too much of a distraction. I’ll reconsider,” she said.
“If nothing else, I’ll be happy to work with your team manager and make sure she knows where everything is and what the duties involve.”
“Yes. Yes. You do that.” Pat Fisher realized that the existing coaches at the school had a lot of faith in this junior—faith she wouldn’t have put in a junior in college. She would need to do some rethinking.
“Dennis,” Coach Mills said. “Have you considered cheerleading?”
“Um… You might not be familiar with our history of cheerleading here at Bartley,” Dennis said. “Brenda was a cheerleader for three years before joining the girls’ basketball team. She could tell you more about it. I tried to work with the cheerleaders last year, but they really didn’t seem to be in good condition or be interested in getting in good condition.”
“Well, I will certainly be asking for some assistance in that area,” she laughed. “I was thinking about whether you were interested in cheerleading. I plan to open tryouts to all students, male and female. In addition to our work in the allowed sports, which include football, basketball, wrestling, and volleyball, I plan to put together a competitive team. I consider cheerleading to be one of the sports high schools can participate in, even though the ICCA is its own association and is not part of the IGHSAU.”
“That sounds like a real challenge, Coach. I’ll try to help in any way I can, but I don’t know that I’m cut out to be a cheerleader.”
“Well, keep it in mind. I plan to have the audition announcements and forms out in the next week. We have a no-contact rule in place from July 25 to August 1, but I plan to get auditions underway as soon as we’re clear for action.”
“We never had much organization or even practice for our cheer squad,” Brenda said. “I guess that’s what finally got them disbanded last spring. I know several girls that were interested in cheering but didn’t want to be lumped in with the kind of reputation the cheer squad had.”
Wednesday evening, the girlfriends gathered for a short get together at Dennis’s house. They all sat around on the floor while he and Brenda described what was going on with the sports program.
“So, they’re going full out. Announcements for tryouts and auditions will go out next week. Cheerleading actually gets an extra week from August 1-7. Cross country, football, and volleyball all try out starting the eighth. I think the coaches plan to start practice with everyone who shows up and just cull the herd from there. I’m going to work with the cheerleaders and the cross country team on conditioning and try to make sure all the team managers are prepared for the season.”
“Yeah. That’s after you groom the cross country trail,” Brenda laughed.
“Um… I guess my dad got into this somehow,” Lana said. “Dennis is going to use our tractor and mower to mow the trail. He told me I could volunteer to help. Um… He’s decided I’m one of Dennis’s girlfriends whether I admit it or not. And I guess I’m admitting it. But he said I could only volunteer if other girlfriends did, too. For some reason, he doesn’t want Dennis and me out grooming three miles of trails by ourselves.”
“Lana! Your dad is getting awfully permissive, isn’t he?”
“Um… He might have seen us kiss,” she whispered. The whole group broke up into excited chatter for a few minutes after that, turning both Lana and Dennis red in the face.
“So, you’ll still be our manager for basketball, won’t you?” Natalie asked.
“Yeah. That was a condition of taking on all this other stuff they want me to do. Only they want to try conditioning the varsity team and maybe the JV at the same time with us. I’m not sure if I can keep track of forty or forty-five people at once, even with Lana’s help.”
“As long as you’ll tape my ankles,” Amy sighed.
“And massage my legs,” Tori added.
“And look at my… uh… at us,” Leanne added. They laughed.
“I don’t plan to do anything with the wrestling team. We’ll only do track and field for our spring season and the coaches want to recruit half again as many participants. We were really short on field participants for both boys and girls last year. And hurdlers. I don’t know that I’ll need to do anything with the baseball and softball team next summer. They decided to delay soccer and tennis for the time being. Adding five new sports for the year is going to create chaos until they get things figured out.”
“Six if you count cheerleading,” Brenda said. “Don’t forget Coach Mills asked you to work on their conditioning. Lana, you might want to consider going back to the cheerleading squad.”
“Nope. I couldn’t do it. I don’t want to do it. No.”
“No means no, honey. No one is going to try to make you change your mind,” Dennis said. He reached over and took her hand.
“Aw. That’s so sweet. We’re glad you’re a girlfriend, Lana,” Diane said.
“Well, don’t expect me to run around naked in the locker room in front of Dennis and everybody,” she giggled. “Not yet.”
“It might be that I’m not even allowed in the locker room this year,” Dennis said. “You know we aren’t going to be the only ones on the team. Think of the poor freshmen, too.”
“Hey, we were poor freshmen last season,” Judith complained. “We did okay.”
“Yeah, but we all moved together last year,” Brenda said. “This year, most of you are like a lifetime ahead of the incoming freshmen. Just play it by ear and it will be fun. I promise.”
“We need to get out of here so Dennis can get some sleep,” Lana said. “And me, too. We’re supposed to be in the field ready to start baling by eight o’clock.”
“So late?”
“Dad figures there will be a heavy dew tonight. We need to wait until the sun has hit and had a little time to dry it off.”
The girls all took off after each having given Dennis a kiss of varying intensity. Lana was still a little shy when it came to touching their lips together. So was Debbie. Tori nearly got an invitation to spend the night.
Dennis was surprised when he got out to the hay field and saw others showing up. It wasn’t just the family. Six guys piled out of a pickup truck and came over to get instructions. Randy had checked the hay and told Dennis to mount up and start down the windrow for the first row of hay. He had to move slowly because the baler could only handle so much hay at a time. He dropped a bale every eight or ten feet. When he was about 200 yards down the field, Elsa started up with the second tractor pulling a flat trailer behind it. The men, including Randy and Nils, started picking up the bales and tossing them onto the wagon. Three on the wagon began building a wall of hay as they stacked it in an intricate crisscross pattern, locking the bales together so they didn’t fall as the wagon rocked back and forth.
Dennis made the turn at the far end of the field and passed the full wagon as it turned away from the row. Four guys stayed on the ground and two joined the two on top of the hay as Elsa drove the wagon away. Lana drove up in a flatbed farm truck. She looked very small driving the huge truck. Two guys up and two guys down continued up the row of bales, collecting and stacking them. Dennis was doing some mental math as he watched the feeder and checked before and aft to be sure he was picking up all the windrow. The field was about a quarter mile wide. That was 1320 feet with a bale every ten feet would be 132 bales. When everyone got rolling, they should be able to get 120 bales per wagonload. The wagon was then driven to the stacking yard at the edge of the field, where it would be unloaded and stacked, then get back to the field to pick up again. By the time the field was all baled, they’d have somewhere near 150 wagonloads for the 18,000+ bales expected from the first cutting.
Dennis just kept driving the baler up and down the windrows, dropping a bale about every ten seconds. The crews on the wagon and truck would be working at the same rate, lifting the fifty-pound bales, stacking them, unloading, and stacking again. When the field was baled, there would be twenty-five covered stacks of hay with about 750 bales per stack. Over the next two months, flatbed trucks with a forklift would pull into the stacking yard, load up, and take it to the various feedlots and farms for winter fodder.
The walkie-talkie chirped and Dennis picked it up, pulling to a stop rather than attempting to drive while he pushed the button on the device.
“Bring it in, Dennis. We’re taking a half-hour break for water and a sandwich,” Randy said.
“Yes, sir,” he answered. He was less than a third the length of the field away from the end where they were gathering. He shut down the tractor when he reached the group and subconsciously checked his phone. It was eleven o’clock already! They’d been working for three hours. Everyone was dripping sweat. Dennis had been pulling at his shirt for the past half hour but didn’t want to stop to take it off. Now he unfastened his bibs and peeled the wet, sticky shirt off. He noticed most of the men following suit, including Randy. Dennis greedily sucked down a bottle of water, not having realized how thirsty he was.
“Lana!” Randy called. She looked up at him as a bottle of sunblock sailed through the air to her. Elsa was rubbing sunblock onto Randy’s back and Dennis saw that all the men were coating each other. “We’re rotating one spot. Mom gets the baler. You get the big wagon. I get the truck. Dennis works the ground. Make sure you’re both lathered up.”
“Yes, Dad.” She poured sunblock into her hands. “Oh, boy,” she whispered and began applying the lotion to Dennis’s back and shoulders. She did his arms and moved around to apply it to his face and then his chest and abs. “When you do this to me, does it affect you the same way this does me?” she asked.
“I’m not completely sure how it affects you,” he answered. She wasn’t in a bikini out in the field, but was wearing an elastic tube top. Actually, Elsa was wearing the same kind of thing. He started smearing the lotion over her bare shoulders. “But you know how it affects me.”
“Yeah. I guess so. Better turn this way before you do my front,” she said, turning away from the others. She lifted her head so he could apply the lotion to her neck and continue down across her upper chest, just to the edge of her top. Then he moved below and caressed her abs. “You know, having you do it affects me, too,” she sighed. “Better stop before we get unwanted attention.” She turned and he rubbed a little more on her face. She took the bottle from him, glanced toward her parents and gave him a quick peck on the lips, then headed to the tractor and wagon.
Randy mounted the truck and Elsa led off with the baler. It didn’t take long for Dennis to pick up an even rhythm of walking up the row, grabbing a fifty-pound bale by the strings and with his hook, and tossing it gently up onto the trailer. He and his partner played leapfrog up the row, stooping, lifting, tossing, moving on. It didn’t take long before the wagon was full. He swung up onto the tractor next to Lana and rode on the fender to the stacking yard as if he’d been farming all his life.
It was past eight in the evening and the sun was low when the whole crew jumped on the truck bed or their pickup truck and drove to the Browns’ farmhouse. Dennis was surprised to find his mother and Peg there, helping Mrs. Thornberry and Lana’s little sister Sofia put food out on the picnic table in the yard. Everyone ate ravenously, and drank more water. The day workers rolled sleeping bags out in the barn and Dennis went home with his mom and sister. He sank into a hot bath, sore and physically exhausted.
Friday morning, he was up and dressed and back in the field before eight o’clock to start the whole routine again. And it was all repeated on Saturday. They’d put in thirty-eight hours in three days, and had stacked some 450 tons of hay. The day workers took off Saturday night with their pay envelopes in hand. Dot and Mrs. Thornberry went into the house with the Browns and sat at the kitchen table where they eventually pulled out a pack of cards and played hearts. Peg was watching television with Nils and Sofia. Lana took Dennis’s hand and led him outside ‘to look at the moon.’ The moon was full and shone down on the farm casting shadows and playing along the corn in the distant fields.
They held hands and found their way to the porch swing and sat to listen to the cicadas and whisper together. Lana shivered and Dennis automatically put his arm around her bare shoulders. She relaxed against him, comforted in the warmth of his embrace.
“You’ve touched my shoulders and back almost as much now as you’ve touched your other girlfriends,” she whispered. “Is it okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” he breathed. “Lana, someplace along the line, you let me fall in love with you.”
“Really? Like with Natalie?”
“Yes. Like with Natalie and Brenda and Judith and Amy and and and. You really are my girlfriend now.”
“I’ve kind of gotten used to your caresses with the sunblock. I might need to find excuses to have sunblock applied when we start practice,” she giggled. He stroked her shoulder. “I didn’t think that would happen. I really thought I was going to turn out to be a lesbian and hate boys and men all my life. But I couldn’t lump you in with the rest of them. And… Well, last weekend when I slept at your house, Natalie wrapped me in a cocoon of love and held me all through the night. I realized maybe I really was a lesbian, but you’re just one of the girls.”
“There are so many ignorant guys who would be insulted by that. I think it’s the nicest thing a girl could say to me. If she was a lesbian.” They both giggled and somewhere along the line their lips came together and instead of rushing apart, they relaxed into a soft and loving kiss that seemed to go on forever.
“Time to go,” Dot said from the doorway. The teens jumped up off the swing and came to the door.
“See you Monday, Dennis. We’ll be working in the garden unless it’s raining too hard. As soon as we’re confident it’s going to be dry, we’ll load the mower onto the flatbed and take it over to the school.”
“See you Monday, Randy. ’Bye Fru Elsa.”
Just before Lana slipped inside, Peg caught her in a hug.
“’Night, sister,” she said.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
