Neal Pollack

I looked in the mirror again. He wasn'’t going to humor me, even with my just-us-boys vulgarity. And I couldn'’t blame him. The shit he had to take went beyond abuse about the Packers. He’d get it for not having a credit card. Or for not having a cell phone. Or for having sneakers that cost only two figures. All these appurtenances apparently were standard issue for sixth graders at his school. He’d go to Natalie on this stuff and she’d come to me. I wouldn'’t have it. Natalie would point out we weren'’t in Milwaukee anymore. I'’d walk into another room. She’d follow me. This apparently was a fight worth having.

I budged once. I told Natalie he could have cell phone when he was in seventh grade. That was a mistake. “Why wait if you already agree in principle?” And she wondered why I left the room when we argued.

The fields gave way to trees. I looked at the clock and gauged how far along the DVD must be.

“Fourth down?”

He looked at the TV. He’d begged us to get the TV with DVD-player option when we bought our paramilitary suburban vehicle. And after that he’d begged me to transfer my Packers videotape library to DVD so he could watch games on road trips. An hour outside Lambeau I put this one on as a surprise. I thought it’d be just the thing to get him out of his funk.

“Yeah.”

November 5, 1989. Packers vs. Bears at Lambeau. The Packers were down by six at the Bears’ 14 with forty-one seconds left. The Packers lined up in a four-receiver set and Majkowski went under the center. I was watching the game in a bar with friends from work. No one was breathing.

“Man, that was a good game.”

“I don’t know. It wasn'’t as good as the one Grandpa took us to.”

That would have been December 18, 1994. The last game at Milwaukee County Stadium. No, not many games were better than that one. Not that the Packers played well; they should have put the Falcons away early. Despite all this “greatest fans in the world” hype about Packer backers, boos came lustily from the stands. And I could feel the chilly fear around me when the Packers lined up at their 33 with 1:58 left and them down 17-14. But people went nuts when Favre hit a stumbling Chmura for a twenty-five-yard pass; the crescendo of footstomping and screams hit a peak as the Packers called for a time out at the Falcons 9 with twenty-one seconds left. And when Favre dove into the end zone with fourteen seconds left, it was as if the Holy Spirit had come down. The people around me started shrieking in tongues and weeping and kissing each other. They would never be able to watch the Packers play in cramped, rickety County again, but it was all right. They were close to the promised land.

No doubt Andy remembered the County finale for Grandpa. Grandpa explained the plays to him. Grandpa explained the penalties to him. Grandpa explained that he’d probably never see a better quarterback than the guy wearing No. 4, so watch him close. When Andy needed to go to the bathroom, he asked Grandpa. He knew Grandpa would cut a wider path through the howling crowd than his scrawny dad. Grandpa still had the body of the linebacker who’d played for Washington High School during the ’50s and of the Harnischfeger worker who had shaped giant mining shovels with his hubcap-sized hands. Andy was too young to notice how Grandpa’s walk was a shuffle instead of a stride. He couldn'’t see the way Grandpa squeezed his eyes shut every few steps. And he probably didn'’t realize Grandpa’s hand on his shoulder wasn'’t guiding him; it was resting on him.

I'’d hoped seeing the Packers beat the Bears would make Andy happy. I'’d hoped spending all this time together would make him talk to me. I'’d hoped, and I realized this as I saw the sign for the toll booth, to hammer life into the shape of an uplifting movie. Instead, Brett Favre screws up and Mike Sherman talks about making a good comeback.

I wanted him to see the Packers win because I couldn'’t think of anything to say that would make him happy. That would make him realize he wasn'’t a wimp. Because my own dad had been able to do that. The morning after my second concussion—blindsided by a freckled safety with the ball bobbling in my palms—I woke up to see dad at the end of my bed. He’d just pulled a shift and was still wearing his coveralls. I could smell his armpits and the Pabst he’d knocked back after work. “Hi,” I said.

“You’re not big enough,” he said. “But you are tough, and you know, you can be tough in other ways. The way you study—so hard?—that’s being tough. Not everyone can do that. Reading long books, that’s tough too. That’s stuff I can’t do that you can do. And if you do that, you’re going to be able to do some things I can’t.”