In the truck, Brock's whistle lay tucked beneath his two layers of thermal camouflage hunting gear, quiet, four hours before he'd coach his son in his final football game for the Medicine Lake Redhawks. Brock heard Colt blow into his cold fist as he sat shotgun in the seat his big brother, Max, used to fill. On Saturdays, Brock would walk the sidelines like a general—sometimes screaming into the players' cages of facemask, especially Colt's, clutching the bars hard in his fist, his voice like a gravel road. But other times, sometimes late at night, when his every step on the gridiron wasn't being watched as if this tiny Montana town football field were a stage, he'd sit in his office and draw up defensive schemes that might one day win him the game of being a father.


Brock created a tradition years earlier with Max in which they'd track deer on the opening weekend of hunting season—one that always fell during the waning weeks of football—as a way to get pumped for a game. To Brock, it was better than even Thanksgiving backyard football or the Rose Bowl. Football was hunting and hunting was life. For Brock, it was also guilt and anxiety and blood and shame.

The silence in the cab, only broken by the steady roar of Brock's diesel engine, matched the predawn stillness outside as the sun spread red all over the tips of the encircling mountains. Brock looked over at Colt. "Need more heat?"

"I'm good," Colt said, rubbing his hands together. Brock wondered if he'd spent too much of his life cultivating manhood, building his sons tree houses where they could scrape little cuts on their hands, turn their soft calves plum with oval bruises, and catch splinters across the pads of their thick fingerprints—anything to toughen them.

Brock told Colt that Max would be coming home from Missoula for Thanksgiving break, that he couldn't wait to pick Max's brain about his new college life and the techniques he'd learned from the UM defensive line coaches. "Maybe he can help you with your applications," Brock said. "Or work on your three-technique a little." Max had been an all-state nose tackle and, when he left, Brock moved Colt one position over on the defensive line to replace him.

Brock waited for Colt to reply but he didn't. He wanted the trip to be a good one—Max was gone and Colt was outgrowing him by the minute—and all Brock could do was think that this was the last time they'd get a shot at a pre-game opening-weekend kill. And Colt wasn't acting into it. "Thought we'd hit the backside of Stetson pines, then move up north."

"Cool," Colt said.

Brock dug into the Ford's accelerator and they roared up Outlook Road, Medicine Lake's main street. That morning, after he and Colt ate warmed green chile and tortillas, Brock had loaded his playbook, a binder two inches thick, into the center console like ammunition. The road traced the ridge of the still lake and the water pressed against the shore in Brock's headlights in a strange, hypnotic way, rippling and slapping in the predawn breezes. He remembered Colt at twelve, sneaking out to night-swim the lake—a tradition of Medicine Lake high school boys. He'd warned Colt not to go, but he did, and when he'd come home, he was shivering and numb and Brock twisted up and fainted in the living room when he saw Colt's blue-tint skin.

"Nervous?" Brock asked.

"Nah," Colt said. "You?"

"Nah," Brock lied.

The lake made a soft U-shape against Black Mountain, the peak that overlooked the town like some massive angel. The truck rumbled past the lake's north end, where the high school was laid out at the base of the mountain and Brock eased the accelerator as they passed the field. Barely visible save for streetlamps, the field sat empty, its blades slick with dew under the rising goal posts, waiting to be torn by his son's foot-fire. Some nights, when Colt and Max had still been too little to squeeze their heads into real football helmets and adopt the Redhawk colors, Brock would sit at his desk, the autumn angel-skin moonlight slanting in the window, dreaming of his sons on that field.

"Remember my night swim?" Colt asked.

"I'd rather not remember."

"If I ever told the team you fainted, they'd never believe me."

Colt had grown into a thick, six-foot-one frame with shoulders like the front of a bulldozer, and Brock liked it that way. A fiery, nasty nose tackle that could open up his defensive options into a three-four or a four-three in which Colt could pin his big ears back like some starving wolf and rush the three technique and rouse weeks worth of chaos among golden leaves and make quarterbacks submit into piles of empty uniform. Tree-trunk ankles. Long hair that flapped against his pads as he covered kickoffs. Brock wanted Colt to crave bloodstains and sweat-musk and lockers scarred with pregame helmet dents.

But he didn't. Not always.

Even more, Brock wanted Colt to be a hunter. And he was. But he wasn't like Max. Brock felt a chasm between them, nothing he'd ever felt with Max until the day he left, and now it was as if Colt stood on some far sideline and Brock couldn't break through the hash marks.


The night before the hunting trip, Brock and Colt planted themselves in the living room to watch game film of Tucker County. They angled themselves on the edge of the couch, half-squatted as Brock pointed the remote at the flat screen, a TV he'd bought after his little brother, Scott, bought one two inches smaller.

Tucker County moved in slow motion bursts, then rapid recession as Brock rewound and pressed play again. "They sub their two quarterbacks in and out, so it'll take some getting used to," Brock said. "Their cadence is different."

He shot a look at Colt, who nodded.

The phone rang in the kitchen. "Janet," he said loudly.

"Sir, yes, sir," she said.

Brock shook his head, hit play, and all the stick-legged kids in too-big pads moved around the screen. "See this guy?" Brock got up and pointed with the remote at the left guard. "Max ate him up last year. Penetrated all day. The UM recruiter was there that day."

Janet's voice rang faintly. Brock heard her say hello in the way she only spoke to Max, the way only a mother can speak to her oldest son. Brock guessed that she missed him the way he missed the game—the clicking of his own cleats against the pavement, the musky locker room scent created by his own sweat, the what-could-have-beens. Brock made a conscious effort to not talk to Max on the phone often—once a week at the most—because despite his yearning to hear Max's thick, bass-filled voice, he didn't want to stunt Max's move into independence. Some mornings, he'd have conversations with Max in his head or aloud, saying I miss you, buddy or let's hit those weights in the garage. Maybe you can finally out-benchpress your old man and he'd chuckle a little.

"You're also gonna want to key the fullback," Brock said. "It's a wishbone." He pointed to the triangle of running backs in the backfield, the fullback one yard ahead of the other two. "If my numbers are right, the back follows him two-thirds of the time."

"Got it," Colt said, wrestling a text into his cell phone.

 Brock felt Janet's hands on his shoulders. "How's the big guy?" he asked.

"Not bad," Janet said. "Y'all done playing Bear Bryant for the night?"

Brock could sense that she was smiling.

"Almost done," Brock said.

"Just another bunch of guys running every which way," Janet said. "How hard could it be to prep for that?" She squeezed his shoulders and he wished she'd quit touching him.

"Not hard," Colt said.

"Your article came out today, honey," Janet said to Colt. She'd told Brock about the local sports reporter doing a feature on Colt's recruitment. "They even talked about your art." Brock remembered Colt bringing home a painting of deer he made in an art class and saying that he might want to be an art major in college, to which he responded not if you want to eat like you do now. He meant it to be funny, but Colt hadn't laughed.

Brock followed the two to the kitchen, where Janet held up the small newspaper. Brock took it from her and surveyed the picture of Colt chasing down a quarterback, his arms outstretched.

"I'm so proud of you," Janet said. "Let me get you a plate." Brock watched her fill it with steaming lasagna and green salad. He remembered when she used to cook for him when they first started dating, how she'd make all his favorite dishes, how now he was lucky if she lathered peanut butter on a bagel for him at night. Brock imagined her joking that its thickness would occupy his big mouth for a while.

"So it's down to Chadron State and UW Whitewater?" Brock asked. "You didn't mention those to me."

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking," Colt said.

"You wouldn't walk on at UM? Max might be able to pull some strings."

"Nah."

"We just need to get more tape out there."

"Come eat," Janet said, raising her voice from the table. "Didn't you say UW Whitewater was the only school that recruited you?" she asked Brock.

"There were some others," Brock said, lying, as he took his seat at the head of the table, looking down at the empty space where his plate should be. "Babe." He nodded.

"Bear Bryant had legs. And so do you," she said.

In the woods, Brock killed the truck's engine. He tossed Colt an orange stalking cap and motioned for him to come close. Brock bowed his head to pray, a tradition that he and Max had begun when Max was a freshman and they'd just started going to Hope Baptist and Max went on camping trips with the youth group and Brock sometimes cried in church because that was one place where crying was glorified, and he, the stately Brock Woodhead, semi-legendary coach of Medicine Lake, could be seen as a man of God.

"Do we have to?" Colt asked. He breathed steam into the pines.

"Yes," Brock said. "Get your tail over here."

Colt took a step and closed his eyes.

"Lord," Brock began. Max used to do the praying aloud, not just on these opening-weekend trips, but also at Christmas dinner, and Brock always wondered where Max's words came from, how they came up and out so easily. He cleared his throat. "Let's make this a silent prayer."

"Okay," Colt said, looking off into the distance.

"Eyes."

Colt bowed his head.

Brock began the prayer, but Colt cut the silence just seconds later. "Amen," he said. "Max would be proud."

"That's un-called for."

"I was kidding."

Brock glared at him. He wondered what his own old man would've done had he pulled something like that. "Let's head out," Brock said as he began walking north into the trees.

But when he looked back, Colt motioned to head west. "This way seems good."

"We go north," Brock said.

"So?"

"It's what we do." He told Colt the planning he'd done the night before, how he sat in his office and schemed routes they could take through the woods, strategically planning around the mating migrations and eating habits of the deer in the area. Thinking it'd help make his point, he said he thought of the deer as running backs and wide receivers, and that they had to be careful or the animals would get elusive like Jerry Rice darting through the secondary.

"Your trip, your way," Colt said.

Brock kept quiet after that. That's what Max would've done, he thought. Brock led the way, attacking the woods and sprawling out amongst the deep pines and brush. He crept and narrowed his eyes in the pastel bloody dawn, following the twisting path he'd laid out. Colt followed behind but at a growing distance.

"Stay close," Brock whispered.

Colt ignored him, his rifle resting on his shoulder toward the sky behind him.

"C'mon," Brock said. "Urgency. Don't forget why we're out here." He knew they'd have to be back for the team breakfast later that morning. They didn't have much time.

Colt didn't answer. Brock had given Colt slack on being a quiet kid, but moments came in which Colt would shut down completely and Brock could see the words boiling inside his son's throat like acid. He'd used it in his favor on the field before—riling Colt into a frenzy by pulling him aside by the facemask, telling him he'd just had his nuts handed to him by a smaller kid, maybe a center that had twig-legs for God's sake. It'd get Colt ignited and then he'd plow down everyone in his path.

The sun kept rising over the mountains, its light broken and bent through the thick aspen branches. After thirty minutes of quiet walking, Brock finally saw them—a cluster of deer in a clearing fifty yards down the hill, grazing in a pasture that somewhat resembled the painting that hung in their living room—the one Colt painted. Brock looked back. He motioned for Colt to catch up. "They're up here," Brock whispered.

Colt strolled up beside him.

"Get down," Brock said, squatting down in the wild grasses. "You'll spook them."
He aimed his rifle, carefully pinpointing the deer's neck, narrowing in to savor the moment.

"Owwwwww-oww-owwwwwwwwww," Colt howled.

Brock jumped, fumbling the rifle as the deer scattered. "Are you kidding me?" he said, looking up at his son.

Colt grinned. "They'll come back."

"They won't." Brock picked himself off the frozen ground and began walking again, re-thinking his route through the woods, this time more quickly. He didn't reply, and didn't look back to see if Colt followed.


A year earlier, before Max graduated, Brock decided to give him his graduation present five months early. He waited on the front porch for Max to get home from basketball practice, sitting in the snowfall, anxious to tell him.

Brock traced the movement of Max's Ranger up the lane until he parked by his truck. Max came up the porch steps, gym bag in hand, basketball under the other arm, and sat down.

"Got a surprise for you, bud," Brock said.

"Oh yeah?" Max replied. "Is it more game film?" He grinned.

"You and me. The Yukon. Goin' for caribou. Christmas break."

"Serious?"

He told Max it was for graduation, and that he deserved a special trip after signing with UM. "What'd ya say, kid? Want to raise hell up north?" Brock smiled wide.

"What do you think?" Max said.

A month later they were camping in the Canadian Rockies with only the minimal amount of gear—Brock said it was the only way, that real hunters not only hunt, but they do it with the least amount of tools, like the old timers, the way Vince Lombardi only had seventeen plays in his offensive playbook.

They'd been out all day, scouring the landscape for caribou tracks and following the paths that Brock had spent hours stacked on days researching in magazines and books, and they'd finally seen their prey, a huge male with pale brown fur that looked like Medicine Lake mud after a long rainstorm. He let Max shoot and stood behind him, feeling the rush of adrenaline coming up through his body as Max squeezed the cold metal trigger.

It didn't matter that he missed.

They built a big fire that night and fried big slabs of salty bacon and heated up beans. They ate and held their hands to the fire and he thought of the day at his father's house in Rock Creek when Max went sprinting out the backdoor of Brock's childhood home, the smell of hot dogs wafting, the screen door slamming in a whoosh behind him. From the bay window, Brock saw Max kneel over his grandfather, who was lying in the grass. Brock ran outside as Max oscillated between breathing into his grandpa's mouth and pumping palms against his chest. Brock felt paralyzed by the weight of it all, like there was a mass of frozen water in his chest, ready to burst out, and when his father coughed and rolled over, Brock fainted, and the final thing he could recall was Max kneeling over him, saying, "It's okay, Dad. It's okay, Dad" and his voice trailed off into silence.

"Missoula's a heck of a town," Brock said, his face lit up from the campfire. "You'll love it over there."

"I don't know," Max said.

"You'll make it."

Max nodded.

Brock studied his son's goatee, how the two points came up on either side of his chin, stopping just before his mouth, just like his own. He began thinking that he wanted to keep Max in Medicine Lake, get him a job coaching the defense, maybe the linemen. He dispelled the thought as quickly as it came, knowing his son couldn't pass the chance to run out the tunnel of UM's field, feel the crashing of facemasks, metal against metal, as many times as possible before age got the best of him.

"I'll come back all the time," Max said.

"Your mom will ring your neck if not." Brock felt his eyes come up wet, even though he swore he wouldn't let it happen. No one had seen him cry since his mother's funeral viewing two years earlier, when he started and couldn't stop and Janet was across the room with her arm around Colt but Max was next to him in the pew. 

Brock looked up at Max for the briefest second, and when he noticed the dryness of Max's eyes, it made him wish he could build a wall around himself like a bunker—anything that might shield his son's view of his failed attempts to balance the heavy hemispheres of himself.


"Wait up," Colt called. Brock had been rapidly walking for nearly a mile since he'd last looked back. He stopped, contemplating routes.

"I didn't know you'd get that riled up, geez."

"Is this just a joke to you?" Brock asked. "Do you want to do this or not?"

"Sure," Colt said. "Maybe it's not too late to call Max."

"Stop it."

"It's true."

Brock walked in silence, calculating that they had about ten minutes before they needed to turn back if they wanted to make it back in time for the team breakfast. "Get your butt in gear," he said.

They navigated the woods, stepping softly on twigs and leaves as they moved up a hillside. At its apex, Brock found a clearing on the other side. He figured that there might be deer moving through the area because of his kill two years earlier with Max. He knelt. Looked at his watch. If it were going to happen, it'd have to happen here. Colt dropped his rifle at the top of the hill and lay down on the ground, facing the other direction. "Glad you could make it," Brock said.

Colt let out a long breath and laced his fingers behind his head like a pillow.

Brock turned to face him. Colt's closed eyes seemed forcefully clamped, almost like he was praying, and he looked like he was resisting a smile.

And there were no deer below.

Brock knew that he didn't have much time left as the man who could control Colt—the guy sending him to bed with no dinner and no Monday Night Football, the guy scaring away the snakes in the bathtub train, the guy walking his baby boy in the cold night air to ward off colic. The thought made him angry, so he fired his rifle into the sky as one last statement. The gunshot boomed and racked his eardrums into a dull ring.

Colt jolted off the ground. "Holy crap," he said.

Suddenly they're both at practice, weeks prior, in the clinging humidity of two-a-days. Colt had jumped off sides on a third-and-four, giving the scout team offense a first down and blowing the first-string's streak of no penalties. Brock's whistle snapped the silence and the mass of defensive linemen groaned at the oncoming punishment. They glared at Colt. He perched his taped-up hands on his hips.

"Damn it," Brock said from behind them. "Buffalo Hunter."

The entire defense, eleven first-stringers and the lowly straggler second-teamers, squatted down into pushup positions. Colt's triceps bulged from his ripped practice jersey as he lowered his chest downward, inches above the ripped grass.

"Half-way down," Brock started. "Buffalo Hunter assumes this position so he can hear better. Hear the movement of the troops better. Hear the movement of the buffalo better. We have you in this position so that you can hear better. What do you read, Colt?"

"Ball movement," Colt said, straining to hold his upper body off the earth.

"Not the quarterback's count?"

"No sir."

"Get up and run the damn thing," Brock had said.


Somewhere in the woods, deer sprinted up the hillside in zig-zags.

"Can't believe you did that," Colt said. "Not cool."

Brock said nothing.

"How do you know I wasn't praying?"

"Don't."

"I was serious."

"Stop."

"We gotta get back." Brock wanted the gunshot to ring out in Colt's ears for a while before fading. "So get your tail to the truck."

"He'll be here soon, you can just bring him out here."

"I wanted this for you," Brock said.

"I can't be like him."

"No one said you had to be."

"You don't have to say it."

"Stop," Brock said.

The silence marked his victory, though it tasted like defeat.

           
On the drive back to town, neither said anything. Brock traced the narrow highway back into Medicine Lake, up and down and around curves and drove fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit because in his mind, he was in the backyard ten years earlier, having just completed the tree house in their tallest pine, the saw dust clinging to his forearms, after his sons had been tackling each other in the crunching leaves, Max with the Nerf ball tucked in the sharp angle of his arm, Colt chasing, then them climbing up the ladder and over-looking Brock making passes with the lawnmower over the thriving grass, grass-scent lingering, the engine roaring, then minutes later turning to see Max doing pull-ups off the side of the two-by-six planks of the structure, imitating what Brock himself had done five minutes earlier, twenty feet off the ground, Colt cheering him on, Brock's own chest bulging with pride for a second before Max's fingers begin slipping, until he was falling, Janet watching from the kitchen window and Brock standing frozen and Colt climbing down and Janet slamming the screen door and the motor still drowning out everything, even the snapping of the collarbone, and even with the falling and crying and running Brock preferred to have that moment—back when Max and Colt slept sleeping-bag wrapped and Janet still slept cuddled against him, when everything was good—than the silence in the truck.

After his pre-game ritual of playing the part of the fearless, stoic leader towering over the mass of ball players, Colt kneeling in the middle, Brock paced the sidelines. He watched the defensive line run through their warm-up drills down by the goalpost—Colt in particular—back-dropped by the deep violets and browns of Black Mountain. He was ripping through blockers' arms to shed blocks, firing off the ball, executing form tackles. He thought of the two of them carrying Max to the car after he had fallen from the tree house, the way he was so proud of how strong his eight-year-old boy was being, lofting his big brother across the yard. Brock imagined himself right up next to Colt, close enough to see the little streaks of other teams' helmet colors on his big facemask or the 99 stretched tight across his chest. The smell of musky sweat rising off his thick neck. Minutes later, over the PA system, Brock listened as the announcer began introducing the players, and when Colt's name rang through the tinny speakers and out over the bleachers where the crowd noise swelled toward the rippling edge of Medicine Lake, Brock wanted to keep him on that field forever, even if in some ways, he was already gone.

 



Mike Voris is a writer in Fairbanks, Alaska. Originally from Del Norte, Colorado, he is a die hard Denver Broncos fan and finds inspiration in the unique brotherhood, excitement, and physicality that only sports can provide. As a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program, he is currently writing his first novel.