Slot Machine Read Online Free Page A

the other way. My head hit the turf before my hands could brace me. I heard the thud of the quarterback being driven into the ground behind me.
    I couldn’t get right up. Which was not a problem. Coach came to me.
    “Stop crying,” he screamed. “Jesus, I hate that.” He lunged at me as he spoke, like he was going to hit me himself.
    It didn’t bother me much. I had enough on my plate just trying to get up. As I pushed to try and get some space between my throbbing head and the earth, it felt as if I was lifting the planet off of me, rather than vice versa. I paused for a few seconds on all fours, touched my face lightly with my fingertips, and felt the blood drip from my nose. A couple of guys got me by the armpits and brought me to the nurse’s station.
    Sick bay. Full of slackers like me. Skinny kids and fat kids. Sick bay—or “Injured list” or “IL,” as they prefer to call it—is a very hot ticket, especially in the first few days of retreat.
    In fact it’s so popular that they issue us vouchers for IL time. You get four vouchers, each good for an hour with the nurse, or a half day if he declares you a wreck. Seems that in years past out-of-shape guys were always taking dives and hiding out in sick bay for most of camp. Hence the voucher system. If you ran out of vouchers, you were not allowed to go to the nurse if you could get there under your own power. And if you couldn’t, it was a judgment call made by the coach.
    I was lying on my cot, a cool ice bag across my sinuses, musing on a way to retroactively flunk my way back into junior high, when the guy in the next cot broke the dream.
    “What you in for?”
    I opened my eyes, turned slightly to look. “Wow,” I said as I took him all in. He was lying on his stomach, stretching out way over both ends of his little cot, even farther than I overlapped the sides of mine. Can’t have the tubs and beanpoles getting too comfortable down at the clinic, now, can we?
    To the untrained eye, this could have been a player. But one glance and I knew better. I recognized the look.
    “Basketball slot, huh?” I said wisely.
    He nodded, then winced with the pain of nodding. “Football slot?” he asked in return.
    “Ya,” I said. “What happened?”
    “Undercut. Went up for a rebound and somebody took my legs out from under me, landed right on my back. You?”
    “Head slaps. Nosebleeds. Public humiliation.” I kept nodding as I talked, he kept nodding as he listened. Like we’d all been here before, more or less.
    The nurse’s assistant, Butch, came over and stood between our cots. Regaining speech control was the official first sign of readiness to return to the general population. Butch himself barely qualified. “You can get up?” he said to my new geeky friend.
    “I not can get up,” he grunted slowly.
    When I laughed, Butch set himself on me. “You. Bleeding stop?”
    I removed the ice pack, brought two fingers to my nostrils.
    “Hey. Do that again,” Butch insisted.
    “What? This?” I asked, and touched my nose again.
    Butch pulled me up by the wrist. “Hell, if you can do that, you’re ready to go back. Stop wastin’ my time.”
    Before I was forced out, I leaned down toward my comrade. “Elvin Bishop,” I said, and shook his hand.
    “Paul Burman,” he said in return. He smiled through real pain. “Cool. I haven’t actually made any friends here yet.”
    I didn’t want to lead him on. “Oh, well, see I already have two friends, so I’m all set for now. But... well, we’ll see.” Then I dropped into a whisper for what I was really after: “This for real?” I asked, pointing at his back.
    He nodded.
    “Good for you, Paul. Listen, you know where a guy can get his hands on a couple of extra vouchers?”
    “Nah. But you dig any up, let me know.”
    I said I would, then felt myself being tugged by the back of my T-shirt. Back there . My heart sank.
    “I’ll see you, Elvin,” Paul said, yelling straight down into the floor.