Homecoming

Ah, homecoming. That time of year when the leaves start to turn, the hay is gathered in, a bonfire is as important for warmth as it is for something to do, and people come back to their schools. Wait.

So, I know that's the idea, and Midvale certainly has a ton of people who want to come back, but who really wants to go back to high school? I don't think I've been to a high school or college homecoming in a quarter century. But I digress.

It's homecoming, and the kids in the Midvale band are excited. There's been the expected flurry of homecoming "proposals," a practice about which I have opinions, none of them particularly favorable, but that's not germane to this story.

There's also been band practice under the lights. I don't mean real lights. No, I mean diesel-powered light towers like you see at overnight pothole repairs in the spring when the roads through the high passes open.

There's a county stadium, and if we had our homecoming game there, we'd get a cut of the gate from the other valley high schools. But for reasons beyond the ken of this Bandaides treasurer, the Sports Boosters rent lights and we have our games at home. We pitch in for the fuel. Maybe it's because we're too small to support a football program, so our homecoming game is soccer.

This year, however, we have a conflict.

The homecoming game is the same night that the President's Own United States Marine Band will be playing at the college in Stoneford. This is an event that Billy Porter, our band director, is incredibly excited about, and with good reason. These are some of the finest musicians in the country, and the opportunity for his students to see them perform is not something he's going to pass up. Attending is also a requirement for those students trying to get into the music honor society.

The concert starts an hour after we're supposed to play at homecoming. Stoneford is thirty minutes away.

We should be fine. As long as nothing goes wrong.

"What do you mean the game hasn't started?" Billy asked.

I looked at him. "The other team isn't here yet. They hit traffic outside Shiloh. There was an accident, and the road was closed to let the Shiloh Volunteer Fire Department respond. They should be here in a few minutes."

Billy started pacing. "Okay. It's all good. The girls' team is good. We might get a slaughter rule." He looked at Whitney Mercer, our Bandaides president. "Let's feed the kids going to the concert now."

We have a standing tab with the local pizza place. We hold our organizational meetings there, and they can turn out really good pizza on the cheap. Is there a concert? A dance? A camp? A parade? There will be food. Enough food that it's literally its own line item in the budget. So we fed the kids… and we waited… and waited.

Our girls' team was good, but apparently not quite good enough to get the slaughter rule Billy was hoping for. What's worse, every time they scored, there was a stoppage while the players reset. Six goals is a lot of stoppage time.

The students going to the concert had to leave in twenty-five minutes. There were twenty minutes left on the game clock, and the band's song was three minutes long. We could still technically do this.

Billy had the band lined up. They were ready to go. We'd opened the gates to the field and cleared the way because, when they finished, they would be coming off that field hard to get to the bus for the concert.

Everything was ready.

Then it happened.

A player went down.

Billy was the first one to the sideline. "No!" he cried. "Is she okay?"

The training staff was already on its way, clustering around the girl to make sure she was all right and could leave the field.

"Wait," Billy asked. "Why did they stop the clock?"

He was right. With two minutes to go and the girls up 7–1, the clock was sitting there, stopped.

This prompted a discussion about why the clock had stopped, whether it was supposed to stop, and why, for that matter, it wasn't counting up. Billy was not particularly interested in the philosophical differences between counting up and counting down. He was interested in the clock doing something. Preferably something that would get us to the end of the game.

He started frantically making phone calls to ensure the band's tickets wouldn't be given away if they arrived late.

When he hung up, I laughed. "Who knows? They might come back."

He just glared at me. "They won't. The game's done. I don't really care about the game. Let's make sure she's good, and we have got to go."

At that moment, the training staff helped the girl from the field to the applause of the fans, and the game continued.

But, like a scene from the song American Pie, with less than a minute left, the Midvale Marching Band took the field and refused to yield.

They played their song.

I've never seen a band leave a field as quickly as they did that night. Instruments, uniforms, and teenagers all moving at a speed generally reserved for fire drills and the last day of school.

I understand they made it to the concert. I don't really know, because we were still there cleaning up.

Oh, and I think the boys' team won their game afterward.