Editor’s Note: When Wes wrote Bulldog Spirit, he inadvertently used Joe Louis Arena, aka “the Joe,” for a football field in Michigan. Joe Louis Arena was for many years the home arena for the Detroit Red Wings of the NHL. He probably should have used Ford Field, the home of the Detroit Lions of the NFL. We have chosen to leave it as Wes wrote it.

August 24, 2013

Cam Patterson stood on the curb watching the minivan until it was out of sight.

Going to college was going to be a new challenge for him, one he’d been looking forward to, but now that the day was actually here, it seemed more than a little intimidating. This would be something very new in his life, and he hoped he was ready for it.

It would have been nice if his father had been able to be there to help him move in, but Cam’s brother Ty was starting at Michigan State in the exact same time frame. The only way to get both of them moved into college was for his dad to take Ty to East Lansing, while Aunt Shae brought him here to Meriwether College. It had been settled by a coin flip, but Cam had a vague feeling that he’d gotten the short end of the stick again. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Aunt Shae, because he did – he liked her a lot. But still, on a landmark day like today, it would have been nice to have his dad there.

Now he felt very alone, especially with Ty going to a different college. They weren’t twins, but close to it. Now, he was going to be missing the most important people in his life, and he didn’t know quite how he was going to handle it. Things would be different now, probably different for the rest of his life. He didn’t know how he was going to handle that either, but he knew he’d do it somehow. He’d had a lot of practice at that.

With a sigh, he took one final look down the street where the minivan had vanished, wishing that somehow this moment hadn’t happened – but it had. He was at a loss for what to do next, but realized that maybe he’d better go back to his room and try to get his stuff settled, even though Aunt Shae had helped him get it pretty much in order.

It would have been nice to meet his roommate while he was moving in, but he hadn’t. He didn’t even know who his roommate was; there had been some kind of shuffle in room assignments in the last week or two, and he was in a totally different dorm than he had been expecting.

A little glumly he turned away from the street and started up the sidewalk to the dorm. It was a modern-looking building, although it clearly had been sitting there for a while. Though he knew Meriwether College had been around for over a hundred years, there were no old, classic-looking buildings on the campus, and very few trees. While he thought it probably was the best of the colleges he’d applied to, it somehow seemed sterile and Spartan.

Once again, he thought it would have been nice to go to State with Ty, but even when they’d started looking at colleges both he and his brother had realized it wouldn’t be a good idea for him. Cam knew he needed to start college at a more relaxed pace, one with less stress than his brother could handle. And, as far as that went, they’d agreed they probably wouldn’t be able to live their lives together like they’d done so far, so perhaps it was better to make the break and get started at it.

It was only a short walk back to the dorm and up the stairs to the room. Fortunately it was only a second story – there were no higher buildings on campus – so it was low enough that Cam didn’t have any problems with it. He unlocked the door and went into the room, wishing again that he’d at least met his roomie. His side of the room was neat and obviously cared for, with a few odd things scattered around here and there, so the guy, whoever he was, had clearly been there for a while, which told Cam that he must be a football player as they had to report early to get ready for the college season. He wasn’t sure if that was good news or not – sometimes football players were pretty good guys, but sometimes they weren’t. There was no telling which kind this guy would be.

Aunt Shae hadn’t left him with a great deal to do, but there was a little odd bit of fiddling here and there, hardly enough to bother with. He sat down on his bed and opened one of the textbooks he and Aunt Shae had picked up at the bookstore. It looked like a lot of reading, but didn’t appear to be terribly difficult.

That killed a half hour with nothing much else to do afterward. He thought about getting up and taking a walk around campus just to get familiar with it and set buildings and distances between them a little more thoroughly in his mind, but he couldn’t make himself do it. He felt listless – he often had the last couple of years – and he knew he’d have to force himself to do anything.

His attention was drawn by voices in the hall, a guy and a girl, and then by the sound of a key in the door. Maybe this was his roomie, and he’d find out what he was like.

The door opened, and Cam watched as the guy came in. He was about Cam’s height, maybe a little shorter but if so, not much, wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs. He was not a big, hulking bruiser of a lineman, just an average-built guy, although clearly was pretty strong looking. Following him was a girl, nicely shaped with brown hair down to her shoulders, wearing short shorts and a camisole top. “Hi,” the guy said. “Are you Mike Flynn?”

“No, Cam Patterson. I was told the room assignments got switched around.”

“Yeah, I heard something about that but I wasn’t real sure what happened. I guess you must be my roomie. I’m Howie Erikson, and this is my girlfriend, Autumn Trevetheck.”

There was something about Howie that was niggling something in Cam’s mind, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. “Pleased to meet you,” he said.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you move in,” Howie said, “but I had to move Autumn in today, too.”

“Hey, first things first. I understand. Are you coming to school here too, Autumn?”

“No, I’m going to Centerton Community College. It’s about twenty miles from here.”

“They don’t have dorms there,” Howie explained. “So we had to set her up in an apartment. That made things a little more complicated, but it’s not all bad. At least she gets to have a car. They don’t allow freshmen living on campus here to have cars.”

Though Cam wasn’t about to say anything, he was certainly relieved. If Autumn had an apartment elsewhere, that meant he wouldn’t have to duck out of the room to let the two of them be together for a little bed action.

“It would have been nice if we could live together,” Autumn added. “But with Howie being a freshman and on the football team, they won’t allow it.”

“Maybe next year, or maybe even after football season is over with,” Howie said. “There’s no point in complicating things right from the get-go though. I take it that since you only got here today, you’re not playing football.”

“No,” Cam replied casually. “I did in high school, but I figure I’ve got enough on my plate for college as it is.”

“I understand. I wouldn’t be playing football if it weren’t for my scholarship. Of course, I wouldn’t be going here, either. I can see I’m going to have a bear of a time with everything. I didn’t come to college to be a dumb jock.”

For just a brief meeting, it seemed to Cam that this Howie was a pretty decent sort of guy. He could have been a lot worse – sometimes football players could be pretty full of themselves. Cam knew that all too well. “What position?” he asked – again, it was clear from his size that Howie couldn’t be a lineman.

“Quarterback. I thought I was here to be the backup quarterback, but the senior who was expected to start didn’t show up, and now it doesn’t look like he’s going to make it at all.”

Cam furrowed his brow. There was something about this guy … and suddenly he knew what it was. “You ought to do just fine,” Cam smiled. “You’ve got the best arm I ever saw on a high school quarterback. If you’d thrown that last pass at the Joe just a hair lower I would have had it.”

“Uh … what …” a flustered Howie said, and then he got it. “Holy shit! You were the Bradford quarterback, weren’t you?”

Autumn broke in. “I thought you had the ball, and then I thought Brad had it. I think my heart stopped beating there for a while.”

“God, that was so damn close,” Howie shook his head. “But hey, I heard what you said to Brad, and I really thank you for it.”

November 23, 2012

Cam was quite surprised that the Bradford Bulldogs had made it to the state finals in their class at all, and that they’d get to play in the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit where the games were held. They were a good team and they knew it, but it had still taken them a couple of lucky breaks to make it this far. In spite of what the local papers said, the common wisdom was that the Bulldogs were going to be the underdogs against the Spearfish Lake Marlins, a team from way west in the Upper Peninsula, about as far away as you could get from Bradford and still be in Michigan.

Given the distance between the two schools, and in spite of some scouting, the Bulldogs didn’t know much about their opponents, other than they had a strong passing game, something not frequently seen in Michigan high school football. Fortunately, the Bulldogs had a couple of teams in their league known for their passing, so their pass defense was more experienced than normal.

Both teams had found it hard to move the ball against each other until the Bulldog offense messed up a play, leaving Cam standing there holding the ball with nothing much he could do with it. In desperation, he tried a long pass, aiming more for the sidelines to stop the clock than anything else, but miracle of miracles, it was a touch low, and John Cubby was downfield as a decoy. John scooped it up from his knees and managed to score, because the Marlins didn’t have him covered at all.

It was a game breaker, and it put the Marlins behind, a position they weren’t used to being in. In the closing seconds of the game, the Marlins managed to score, making it 21-20, still in Bradford’s favor. With only a couple of seconds left on the clock, the Marlins either had to tie the game with an extra point kick, which would send the game into overtime, or try to win it outright by going for two points either passing or running the ball.

The Bradford team didn’t have as many players as the Marlins, and that meant that Cam had to play both ways, as an end when on defense. They knew the Marlins had a good kicker and there wouldn’t be much they could do to stop him, so the Bulldogs gambled that their opponents would try a pass – and they did. Cam was near the receiver in the end zone, to try for an interception, but the ball was just high enough that he couldn’t reach it. The receiver got a hand on the ball, but couldn’t hold on. With the gun sounding as the play was in action, it meant that by the thinnest of margins the Bulldogs won their first-ever state football championship.

After trying to catch the ball, the Spearfish Lake guy had fallen down. It was no trick for Cam to realize the guy really had to feel like shit for missing the catch, no matter how difficult it might have been. Rather than joining his teammates in their celebration, he jogged the couple of steps over to the Spearfish Lake guy and offered him a hand up. “I’m sorry you missed that,” he said, really meaning it, too.

“Not as sorry as I am,” the Spearfish Lake guy replied, obviously trying to hold back tears.

“Hey, you tried,” Cam told him. “After all, I missed it, too.”

August 24, 2013

“Brad really felt like shit about it,” Howie said, “even with what you said. But I think what you said helped him. Hell, it wasn’t his fault. I should have thrown the ball just a hair lower.”

“It you’d thrown it a bit lower, I probably would have had it or at least knocked it down, and the end result would have been the same,” Cam replied philosophically.

“Yeah, but at least he wouldn’t have felt quite as bad about it,” Howie sighed. “He also didn’t blame himself as much as he could have. It was a tough game, and it could have gone either way right up until the last second.”

“Yeah, we could have been the ones feeling like shit. Maybe we should have been. It’s just how it worked out. It really is just a game, and there are more important things in life.”

“You’re right,” Howie conceded. “But you’d have had a hell of a time convincing us of that on the bus trip back home.”

“That had to have been tough. That must have been a hell of a long ride.”

“It’s a long ride under the best of conditions, but that trip was downright endless,” Howie sighed. “Fortunately when we got home just about the whole town had turned out to greet us. It was way after dark, but they were there waiting for us, and that helped a lot.”

“Howie,” Autumn said. “You need to tell him what you said.”

“Yeah, Autumn, you’re right. Cam, I had to make a speech, sort of off the cuff. Well, by then we’d all heard what you told Brad, and I passed it on. I think you knew what we had to have been feeling. I’ll tell you though, I’ve thought since then, that if I’d been in the same position, I hope I would have said the same thing. I don’t know that I would have back then, but it reminded me that it really is just a game.”

“I think we all learned something from it,” Cam replied. “After all, we faced having to make that long bus ride home, too. It’s just that ours wasn’t quite as long as it was for you guys.”

“Hey,” Autumn said suddenly. “You were the Bradford quarterback, right? Don’t I remember a story that you had cancer?”

“Yeah, I did,” Cam replied quietly. “I’m over it now, I think. At least my most recent tests all came up clean. But it taught me that there are more important things than a game, like life itself.”

“Yeah, I guess you’d learn that,” Howie said, rather subdued. “Now that Autumn mentioned it, I remember it, too. I’m surprised you even played football.”

“There were a lot of people who didn’t want me to,” Cam nodded. “But being able to play football meant to me that I could win over cancer, and I did. It wasn’t easy. Winning the game meant nothing against that.”

Howie shook his head. “I don’t know that I could have done it.”

“Let me tell you, it wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I had to do it. It was that simple. I fought it for over two years, and I had a bunch of surgery and chemo along the way. I was still on chemo at the start of the season last year. Fortunately I had the treatments the first of the week, and I could get back together enough to play on Friday nights.”

“Unbelievable,” Howie shook his head. “I know it still must have taken guts.”

“I’m not quite as well equipped with them as I used to be,” Cam replied with a smile on his face. “Some pieces of them got cut out.”

“And you still got to be the starting quarterback,” Autumn said with no little awe on her face.

“It’s not as big a deal as it might have been,” Cam shrugged. “Howie, I never was as good a quarterback as you were. The way the Bradford offense was set up, all the quarterback did was hand the ball to a runner and stay out of his way. We had some good runners, but at the start of the season last year there was no one in line or ready to be quarterback. I went to the coach and told him that I’d be willing to do it if it meant I wouldn’t have to sit on the bench again all season.”

“He let you do it?”

“He really didn’t have a lot of choice. We’re lucky it worked out. I only tried three passes all season before we got to the Joe.”

“You passed more than that in the game against us,” Howie pointed out.

“Our running game wasn’t working against you, so we had to try something,” Cam smiled. “We didn’t even have a pass offense. We worked it out on the fly.”

“One of our coaches thought that,” Howie laughed. “I remember him saying, ‘When someone is improvising, sometimes it’s hard to tell just what it is they’re improvising.’”

“That may have been the only advantage we really had on you,” Cam smiled. He was tired of talking about football, and it was clear that this wasn’t the last discussion he and Howie would have on the subject. Winning the game at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit had been a high point of his high school career, a landmark to remember. But he’d learned that it wasn’t that important in the big scheme of things, either. “So, what are you studying?” he asked to change the topic.

“Just the usual freshman stuff,” Howie shrugged. “I’m a little unsure of where I want to go with it. I thought about education, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be a teacher. How about you?”

“Pretty much the same thing. I don’t want to say I don’t have any goals in life, because I do. But it’s been hard to look very far in the future the last couple of years. That’s something I have to work on. Autumn, what are you studying?”

“Nursing,” she replied. “That’s why I’m going to Centerton, and not here. They don’t have a nursing program here. They don’t have one at Centerton, either, not exactly, but they have an extension setup with another school to get it. I guess that means that in a couple of years I’ll be commuting to Grand Rapids as much as coming here. At least it’s not as expensive as it would have been for me to come here. I’ve got a small trust fund paying for my college, but it’ll only stretch so far.”

“It is pretty expensive,” Cam conceded. “But I’ve got a trust fund covering me, too.”

“You’re lucky,” Howie shook his head. “I’m only on a half ride this year, so my family is really stretching to cover the other half, and I’m already stuck with student loans and what I can get with grants. If I do all right at quarterback and I can keep my grades up, there’s a chance I might get a better deal next year. It’s a little worse because my big brother is down at Southern Michigan. He’s on a full academic ride for tuition, but the folks are having to come up with his other expenses, so things are pretty tight for him, too.”

“He and his girlfriend are sharing a two-bedroom apartment with my sister and her boyfriend,” Autumn added. “We’ve been down there, and it’s real cramped in their apartment.”

“I don’t know how they get along,” Howie said. “They’re real good friends, though, and that is likely what makes it work.”

“I take it your families are pretty close.”

“Not really, it just worked out that way,” she smiled. “Howie and I have known each other since kindergarten. Small school, you know. We didn’t start going together until, oh, not quite three years ago and it was pretty casual for a long time.”

“We had another couple we hung out with a lot,” Howie added. “He’s starting at Purdue, and she’s at the Air Force Academy.”

“Air Force Academy? That’s different.”

“Bree isn’t your typical girl,” she smiled. “She’s so far ahead of the rest of us it isn’t funny. She’s already a pilot, and really wants to fly jet fighters.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if she manages to do it, too,” Howie grinned. “Hey, we’re going to have plenty of time to talk about all this stuff. I pretty much have to stay on campus at least until football season is over with. After that, I may unofficially move in with Autumn, and I may not, since we have to get around with one car. I’ll probably be spending the weekends in Centerton after the season, though.”

“Can’t blame you for that,” Cam smiled, glancing at Autumn. She was a pretty good-looking girl, no huge beauty, but nice and well kept; she seemed pretty low-key and friendly. A man could do worse, he thought.

“It’s going to be a pain in the ass for us without a car,” Howie continued. “But at least we’ll have Autumn close by if we need wheels for something.”

“I don’t want to be running back and forth all the time,” Autumn added, “but I’ll probably be here once or twice a week anyway, so if you need something, be sure and let Howie know.”

“I probably will,” Cam conceded. “There doesn’t seem to be many stores within reasonable walking distance.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be a pain, but we should survive with Autumn’s help,” Howie agreed. “What I was thinking is that maybe we ought to take advantage of her being here and go get dinner or something off campus.”

“I’d just figured on going over to the dining hall.”

“I’m sure we’ll see way more of that than we’ll want to before the year is over with,” Howie laughed. “I’ve been here for two weeks and I’ve already reached that point. The food is OK, but not real OK, if you know what I mean. Besides, I haven’t had much chance to get out and see what’s in this town myself.”

“You make a good case,” Cam replied, feeling glad that he’d found some friendly faces already. For a couple hours nine months ago Howie had been an enemy, but that was then. Maybe this was going to work out all right.

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