Season of Mud

It Was the Season of Mud


It was the season of mud.
Seventeen now and had been playing on this place since I was six.
Growing up somewhere between the West Virginia Mountains and the Ohio River had never been easy.
Life in my hometown revolved around that field, those dreams and a simple cry for victory.
We were always outsized, outclassed and overmatched but our field, our home, was the great equalizer.
It looked like a cow pasture with painted white lines broken in the foggy night only by bare patches of mud.

Eleven teenage boys with their whole lives ahead of them standing like statues.
That moment, in that time, on that muddy field, frozen like pictures in a yearbook.
As steam rose up from the river and faded like smoke from a chimney, we played.
Coaches screaming, Fathers yelling, and Mothers praying, we played. 
The field of mud not yielding an easy yard, foot or inch, we played.
Misty rain falling nonstop upon my soul, we played.

My cleats were three years old, worn and rough, but magic in mud.
Each step I took my cleats became a part of that field forever.
First down, second down, third down, down by six.
Rain falling harder like it has the entire season, year, and lifetime.
But this was the season of mud, never like before or since.
My only hope was on that field, to go to school and play this game.

It was the season of mud, my cleats were magic then.
We were magic then, so young and strong, so bright and clear.
Down by six, on this field of mud, one more time for Pop.
One more time, one last look across the line between the Center and Guard.
See the faces, smell that West Virginia mud, rich, dark... mud.
God, it was beautiful, the silence splitting the night in half.

We walked across that field of mud in a different uniform soon after.
Different dreams in my head with a little "hitch in the giddy up" as Pop would say.
Yes, staying home for now; nope, no I didn't get the ride, surgery instead.
Oh hell they’re no good anyway, haven’t been since the crash.
Damn this rain, damn this muddy field, God I love it.
Nowhere I have ever been, or will go, can match this hundred yards of earth.
It was the season of mud.