Fight Song A Novel

Tough-love life coach


Bob initially hated how the bagpipes squawked, but soon the sounds transform into the most beautiful music ever, and Coffen is mesmerized, burrowing deep into the fight song’s melody. He’s heard people talk about experiencing things so perfect, so sating, that they feel they can die happy right then. Finally, he understands the meaning of such righteous hyperbole. It’s a moment nude of any other details, life freezing momentarily—much like the plock’s hands—and it’s only Bob, inside the fight song, finding solace in the idea he can stand up for himself. Sounds simple, easy, obvious to a certain kind of person: Of course you should stand up for yourself; you’re supposed to do that. But for somebody emotionally programmed with a three-thousand-pound inferiority complex, like Coffen, this act of resistance is a major coup.

Being imbedded inside “Hail Purdue” doesn’t last long, though. Before Schumann launches into the fight song’s final chorus—Bam! Knock! Splat!—down Coffen crashes onto the lawn, out cold, hand falling from his heart.

Next thing Bob sees is Schumann’s missus hovering over him, saying, “We can rule out death because I think he’s breathing. Are you breathing? I think I see him breathing probably.”

“I’m not,” Coffen says.

“Not breathing?”

“Not dead.”

“Obviously,” she says, “we’re in the midst of conversing.”

Next thing Coffen remembers after that is being in the SUV with Schumann, driving down the main road in the subdivision.

“Stay with me, muchacho. Schumann shall save the day.”

“I don’t need you to save my day.”

“I want to save your day.”

“Do you know I’ve fantasized for years about hurting you?” Bob asks.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Schumann says, taking his hands off the wheel and clapping a few times—slow, awestruck applause. “I love it! Who would have thought you had violence in you. I feel a new kinship to you, Coffen. Dare I say I like you after you threw that flagpole and admitted you want to kick my ass! You’re a possessed warrior tonight. ‘In the zone,’ as Coach used to say. Honestly, I see you in a whole new light. One that makes me deeply respect you. I have a business proposition, my friend.”

“We aren’t friends,” says Coffen.

“I think we might be now.”

“You’re always making fun of me at our block parties.”

“It’s nothing personal. Comic relief helps everyone relax at those things.”

“I don’t find it particularly relaxing when everybody thinks I’m a p-ssy.”

“Don’t be so thin-skinned.”

“You told the guys I couldn’t play touch football because of my yeast infection,” says Coffen.

Schumann tries to repress a giggle, but it slips out. “That’s your standard locker room razz.”

“This isn’t a locker room. This is real life.”

“Real life is a gigantic locker room, Coffen,” he says, laughing harder.

They’ve turned out of their subdivision, driving down the road with the oleander. Coffen sees his wrecked bike, his rucksack, and says, “Pull over.”

“Why?”

“I need my plock.”

“That’s not a word.”

“I need my plock to remind me not to give up another decade.”

“Maybe your tongue is swelling from injury and I can’t decipher your slurred speech.”

“I’ll show you.”

Schumann pulls the SUV into the bike lane and Coffen hops out, retrieves his newly received anniversary present, jumps back in the vehicle.

“Oh, you meant ‘clock,’” Schumann says.

“No, plock.”

“Man, you really hit your head hard.”

“You hit my head hard. You tried to ram me with your car, prick.”

“Look, I shouldn’t have run you toward that oleander.”

“You think?”

“It’s my damn competitive streak. I want to win the whole world.”

“You could have seriously injured me.”

“Coach used to say I take things too far.”

“He’s right.”

“He used to punish me after practice, and you should, too. It’s the only way I learn. Do you want to ram me with my car so we’re even?”

“What?”

“Then we’d be fair and square, except technically I never rammed you with my car. Technically, I only almost rammed you. But I can overlook this inconsistency. I can take one ramming for our team. Don’t go faster than my speed from earlier—seven miles per hour.”

“You’re saying I can hit you with this SUV right now?”

“Only if you want to. There’s no obligation. If you don’t feel up to it, I’m totally fine with that.”

“No,” Bob says. “I’d like very much to hit you with a car.”

“And then we’re even.”

“Why would you do this?”

“Psycho Schumann’s not doing anything. You’re doing something.” Schumann opens his door. He walks in front of the SUV, stops about fifteen feet down the road.

Coffen crawls over the console and into the driver’s seat, plock riding shotgun.

He looks at Schumann standing out there in the headlights.

Looks and thinks about how rare it is when a fantasy comes true: Bob’s secret yearnings to inflict pain on his subdivision foe are about to be realized.

He revs the engine.

“I am not afraid of anything,” Schumann says. “I’d take a grizzly bear’s temperature rectally. I’d tickle Sasquatch’s ass with a feather.”

“You ready?” Bob asks.

“Are you ready?”

“I can’t wait,” says Coffen.

He means it—or really, Bob wants to mean it. A certain part of Coffen is excited by the impending violence, but unfortunately, that faction of his psyche is outweighed by a more empathic caucus, a body of voices all whispering the same thing in his head: You can’t do this. No matter what, this is a road too low for you. Don’t go down to this disgusting level.

“Hut, hut, hike!” Schumann says, eyes closed, arms flexed.

But the SUV doesn’t move, continuing to idle.

“I can’t do it,” Bob says.

“What?” Schumann says, his eyes still closed.

“I can’t ram you, even though I really want to ram you.”

“Why can’t you?”

“I’m not insane.”

Schumann lopes back to the driver’s door; Coffen climbs back over into the passenger seat, holds the plock in his lap. Schumann starts driving and says, “I think I can coach you, Coffen.”

“How’s that?”

“Imagine you’re on a football team and you get a new special teammate. Imagine that every player on the opposing team is not on steroids, and they are sort of weaklings, staggering around and not really doing very good out on the field. And this new special teammate of yours is on steroids and sculpted like a Roman statue and having him on your team is going to guarantee a stampede into the play-offs. Does this sound like the kind of teammate you might want on your side?”

Bob doesn’t respond. He should’ve hit him with the car.

Schumann continues, “What I’m saying is that I’m like your new teammate.”

“What are you getting at?”

“You see this all the time in sports,” Schumann says. “Heated competitors in one season get swapped onto the same team the next, and once teammates, they transcend any grudges of yore.”

“Yore?”

“It means things that happened in the past.”

“I know what it means,” Coffen says.

“So what I’m saying is, I can help you. I know lots of things that maybe might help somebody like you.”

“Like what?”

“I can coach you to always act like the guy who threw that flagpole at my house. Not the pansy you usually are. You’ll always be a fearless warrior.”

Schumann looks at Coffen, awaiting acknowledgment, but Bob doesn’t say shit, the clang in his brain getting worse. Words are far from his lips, locked behind some sort of window painted shut. Coffen will soon find out that a concussion is the culprit, but maybe it’s other things, too: Maybe it’s this new way Schumann speaks to him—with, what, respect? Deference? Equality? Bob’s not quite sure, only knows that he digs it.

“How’s your head?” Schumann asks. “Your eyes aren’t focusing, I don’t think.”

Bob sees the inherent merits in Schumann’s suggestion: Having him as a kind of tough-love life coach will not only take some pressure off, it might also earn a few bonus points at the neighborhood barbecues, jealous fathers wondering when these two kissed and made up, now trotting around like long-lost chums. Plus, Jane has always raved about Bev Schumann, and maybe now the couples can go out for paella.

Bob extends his hand out toward Schumann for a shake and says, “You want to be my life coach?”

“I don’t think that’s exactly what I said.”

“Can you teach me to be manlier? Like Gotthorm?”

“Who’s Gotthorm?”

“Never mind,” says Bob. “I don’t want to talk about him. I don’t want to be pushed around anymore.”

“I can definitely help with that,” Schumann says. “Training starts now. Let’s stop for some pizza on the way home from the ER. Demand that I pay for it.”

“Buy the pizza, please.”

“A kindergartener can be scarier than that.”

Bob pauses for a couple seconds, then screams, “You’re going to buy me a pizza. And there will be several expensive toppings.”

A smiling, hand-shaking Schumann says, “That’s the spirit.”

“And cancel any plans you might have for Friday. You’re chauffeuring Jane and me to a magic show.”