Capturing You

Chapter 15: Light at the End of the Tunnel

I remembered the night that Joe tore his knee up last season.

I was living with my dad in the interest of saving money — at least, that's what I called it — but the real reason was that I hadn't found a job yet. A real job. My gig at the time was folding clothes at a department store just outside of Lake Charles, in one of the richer suburbs. Part-time only. With no school and only a few shifts a week, I busied myself with watching some football. It was the only way to make hanging out with my dad at least somewhat bearable.

We'd alternate from watching college football to the NFL. Dad was a Saints fan at heart, but a lover of Joe Burrow, so he followed the kid when he got drafted by the Bengals. It became a little tradition of ours to watch together at least once a week, even if I hadn't liked the sport at the time. We would sit in the living room with the game on the big screen, bowls of popcorn in each of our laps because neither of us wanted to share. The games always felt like they lasted forever, and yet I was left with this sad feeling when they ended.

Joe's injury was heartbreaking. I knew enough about sports to know that if you were out on an injury like that, it wasn't always easy to recover. He told me once that he didn't beat himself up over what happened to him and that he got right back to work. Of course you want to believe that — you want to believe that Joe had the grit to push through instead of punishing himself. And yet, at the same time, he was human; I wondered about all the things he told himself when he was being carried out of the field. Was his dream over that night?

Regardless, Joe won Comeback Player of the Year; it was announced just right before the Super Bowl. I hoped now that winning that award filled him with a sense of pride and a renewed drive to make up for lost time by winning his very first ring.

And I hoped that getting trampled on the field hadn't stripped him of any of those feelings of accomplishment.

It felt like a dagger was pushed through my chest, seeing Joe get piled on, his leg taking heavy damage as it contorted under the weight of players much larger than him. The ever-elusive Joe Burrow screamed when it happened to him, and the crowd collectively held its breath. I dropped Trish and Spencer's hands to cover my mouth, tears immediately welling up in my eyes. No one had ever really seen him like this, and yet they had been playing that very clip of him in agonizing pain over and over again in slow motion.

"He's okay." My dad had snuck past my friends to pat my back. "He's okay, Avery."

There was no way of stopping the tears from shedding down my face. I didn't give a single crap about being embarrassed or about what other people might have thought of me if they saw me like this. But after the initial descent, I willed myself to stop crying.

"Yeah," I said, half-heartedly nodding, wiping my face. I looked at my dad. "He'll be okay."

You had to pick yourself no matter what when it came to playing this game. Winning it was bigger than whatever pain you went through. And maybe that was why I was never cut out for sports, never took a liking to football: I wouldn't have been like Joe, getting back up and trying again, because I would always look back at my mistakes. I would immortalize that pain and keep it with me forever, like a photograph — like a painting.

The Bengals ended up losing the Super Bowl.

That night, as blue and yellow pieces of confetti fell from the dark sky, I watched as the winning team and its fans flooded the field in celebration. Around me, Bengals fans and Rams fans shook hands. "I'm still proud of them," I heard some Bengals fans say. "I just can't believe we made it to the Super Bowl."

We all felt a tremendous loss — even me. I watched as the players I knew and came to love throughout this last portion of the season trickled into the tunnel after paying their congratulations, their movements sluggish. They had been defeated. I couldn't find Joe anywhere in the crowd. Would it have been crazy to try and find him?