“All part of what makes an insurmountable obstacle interesting,” he says. “A perennial road team. Mermen without a pond.”

“You’re forgetting something else. Nobody I swam with in age-group swimming lives here. There can’t be three real swimmers in this entire school.”

He considers that a minute, takes a bite of pizza and a long swallow on his beer. “I’m going off the record here,” he says. “Educators are supposed to stick together and not bad-mouth one another, so we can collectively stay ahead of the educatees. But do you know Coach Murphy?”

Murphy is sixty-eight years old, having received divine dispensation to teach till two days after he dies, and I have judiciously avoided taking PE or health classes from him for four years. He tolerates zero bullshit or less. “Yeah, I know Coach Murphy.”

“Then you know what my life would be like as his assistant.” He leans forward. “I have my ways, Jones. If I go down, you go with me, which is to say if I coach wrestling, you wrestle. You have completed six semesters of English. You need eight. Think how easy it would be for me to misplace your records a week before graduation or remove a leg from one of your A’s. You’d be caught at Cutter High School like a rat in a Twilight Zone cage.”

“They’re really willing to let you have this team? No facility, no swimmers?”

“One swimmer,” he says.

“One used-to-be swimmer,” I say back.

“T. J., I’ve looked at some of your old times. You were phenomenal. And I’ve coached some big-time swimmers, guys headed for the trials. Tell you what, I can whip you into good-enough shape to get us points at State, which would elevate Cutter in the overall all-sport state championship.”

“Spock, are you out of your Vulcan mind?” I ask in my best William Shatner, which isn’t all that bad.

Simet fixes his gaze on the table. “Actually, that’s why they agreed. I told them you were a lock. If I don’t come through, they’ll sue for malpractice.”

“You mean if I don’t come through, they’ll sue for malpractice.”

“Same thing.”

“If it’s the same thing, you swim.”

He nods at the remaining slice of pizza and says, “Go ahead and eat that,” which means he is desperate. He glances at his watch as I snap it up. “You don’t have to answer tonight. I’ll give you twelve hours.”

It could be worse. Simet is a guy who always teaches you something, and it’s not always about English or journalism. He was a hell of a swimmer himself in his younger years, when dinosaurs roamed the planet, and he seldom lets his classes forget what a spiritual experience it is to test yourself against that particular element. And though I burned out on it back then, I remember what amazing solace I felt working out. Up until I started swimming in grade school, half my teachers wanted me medicated and the other half wanted me in reform school. It helped me focus, beveled the edges on my boundless, uncontrolled energy, dulled my rage. All things considered, it is enough to make me consider Simet’s proposal.

And here comes the kicker, the thing my father would say couldn’t be a coincidence. I’m walking out of Simet’s room the next day, thinking if I go along with him, I’ll be breaking a career-long rule banning myself from organized sports while playing as many disorganized sports as time in my life allows. I mean, I love athletics. When I’m gliding to the hoop in a pickup game, or gunning some guy down at home plate from center field in a summer vacant-lot game, or falling into a perfect pace five miles out on a run, I feel downright godlike. But those things I do on my own. Cutter is such a jock school; they pray before games and cajole you to play out of obligation, and fans scream obscenities at one another from the stands, actually creating rivalries between towns, which has always seemed crazy to me. I remember my freshman year when the entire town was actually happy because the stud running back from Jackson Quarry became ineligible because of grades. Our educational community got giddy because some kid they didn’t know tanked his math class. I mean, fifteen seconds after I finish a three-on-three game at Hoopfest, I’m sitting on the curb sharing Gatorade with the guys on the other team, talking about moves they put on me, and vice versa. Why would anyone want his opponent not to be at his best?

I’m on a roll there, but the point is that athletics has become such a big thing here that our administration begins each year figuring ways to pile up points for this all-sport state championship. And the symbol, the Shroud of Turin for Cutter High athletes, is the letter jacket. A block C on a blue-and-gold leather-and-wool jacket at Cutter High School is worth a whole bunch of second chances in the front office, of which I’m still waiting for my first. Those who don’t own one of those jackets can easily become victims of our zero-tolerance policy. Well, in the eyes of The Tao Jones, nothing is true without its opposite, and it has been my minor quest to make sure that the finest athlete at Cutter High School did his very best to never earn that jacket. I should also say I’m not totally righteous in my quest for athletic purity. When I was an age-group swimmer I was driven. It consumed me, and I get uneasy thinking of becoming that focused on it again.

Variation on the theme. I’m moving catlike through the halls toward my locker minutes after Simet has challenged me to become the Mark Spitz of the desert (we don’t have a swimming pool) and run into Mike Barbour-linebacker extraordinaire and student most likely to graduate with multiple felonies-jacking up Chris Coughlin against the lockers by the drinking fountain because Chris is wearing his dead brother’s letter jacket.

Chris Coughlin is big-time special ed. He’s mainstreamed into PE and industrial arts, but spends most of his time in Resource Room improving his reading skills enough to read traffic signs and memorizing the intricacies of basic addition and subtraction. Everyone knows Chris’s story: born addicted to crack cocaine, then got a double dose of shit just after his first birthday when his mother’s boyfriend wrapped his face in Saran Wrap to make him stop crying. At his sentencing the boyfriend said he only wanted to make Chris pass out, not cause permanent brain damage. Oops.

Anyway, Chris’s aunt and uncle took him and did all they could to make it up to him, but they couldn’t regenerate brain cells. Chris’s older half-brother, Brian, was raised by his own biological father and is something of a legend around Cutter from four or five years ago for having gained more yards in football and for hitting more home runs in baseball than any Cutter Wolverine before or since, and for being drafted into the Cincinnati Reds farm system out of high school. He was destined to have a street or a small park named after him someday, but was killed in a freak rock-climbing accident in the spring of his senior year. That about did poor old Chris in. He didn’t have much, but he had a famous big brother. Brian was a real class act: good student, good athlete, great guy. The only times I remember seeing Chris smile were when he rode behind Brian on his dirt bike, or later, after Brian was gone, when he’d brag to anyone who would listen every time he passed Brian’s picture in the trophy case. They didn’t live together, but Brian sure let everyone know Chris was his brother, and if you messed with Chris back in those days-he was an easy mark-you could expect a visit from Brian.

So Barbour has the jacket buttoned at the bottom and pulled down around Chris’s shoulders so he can’t move his arms, and his nose is about an inch from Chris’s. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but tears squirt out of Chris’s terrified eyes and his entire body trembles. I hustle over and insert myself between them, put an arm over Chris’s shoulder, and say, “What’s the matter, buddy? You look like you’ve been staring into a giant asshole,” and move him a few steps down the hall, adjusting the jacket. Chris is hyperventilating, barely able to breathe.