​

I was stunned to get the news that Frank Woodfin had toppled over dead without any warning whatsoever, but the moment I heard about it I could only think of that little four-word command of doom.

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EVERYBODY ON THE LINE.

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It meant suffering was eminent.

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Everybody would get on the line. Coach Bindler would grab a stack of orange cones and go trotting up the field, laying one out every so often. He would set a cone down, then run out ten or fifteen or twenty yards further and set another one down.

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Some days he went almost out to the railroad tracks, fading to an apparition in the heat shimmer, depositing those funnels of misery all the way. The whistle blew, and we sprinted to the first cone, sprinted back to the line, sprinted to the second cone, sprinted back, sprinted to the third cone, et cetera, ad nauseam, excrucio. If at any time he felt anyone wasn't going all out he would add more cones and yell EVERYBODY ON THE LINE again, and we would start over. Some people called them suicide sprints. Homicide sprints was more like it.

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Coach did not like to make cuts. He preferred that people quit. Drop On Request. I want your D.O.R. He loved to make it happen. Nobody died, but I don't know how.

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If you wanted to play soccer at Temple High you needed more than skills. You had to survive EVERYBODY ON THE LINE and an assortment of other unsophisticated cruelties.

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A lot of people didn't make it past the first smoldering August day two weeks before school started. The proceedings began back at the gym with the obligatory but spectacularly superficial sports physical, conducted by a scruffy old gentleman purporting to be a medical doctor who charged five dollars per athlete.

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He completed thirty physicals in about twenty minutes.

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Three step examination, it was. First, he laid a stethoscope on the chest momentarily, perhaps long enough to confirm a single heartbeat. Next the patient was ordered to drop his jock, whereupon the scrotum was poked with what seemed like excessive violence. Finally, he invested a nanosecond or two performing a visual body scan. Absent anything glaring—like a missing limb or end-stage elephantiasis—the man would wave you through and grunt for the next patient. No one ever failed.

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Then it was on to the practice field. Except the field was nowhere in the vicinity, and it really wasn't a field. It was a wretched piece of real estate a mile away, off Watkins Street. More of a landfill to be honest, riddled as it was with discarded beer cans, mutant weeds, broken glass, cigarette butts, ruts, dog excrement—hopefully it was dog—and gopher holes just waiting to liquefy ankle ligaments. The air thick with nostril-burning industrial odors wafting over from nearby plants. The field was owned by an adjacent factory, whose owners allowed the team its use for free when they didn't need it for parking semi-trailers.

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Every day we made the gallop from campus through drug-infested neighborhoods to begin three hours of sit ups, push-ups, leg lifts, and a punishing potpourri of running drills, always culminating with the fearful EVERYBODY ON THE LINE.

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And Coach Bindler didn't spend any time worrying about hydration. There were days when no water was brought to the field at all, and when it was available access was highly restricted. Fluid deprivation was considered part of the process needed to instill toughness and cull the weaklings.

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Thirst and pain were assured, as was the appearance of a certain diminutive visitor. At some point during every practice, every day, a big red Ford pickup truck whisked into the adjacent lot, stirring up a cloud of gravel dust. The driver's door would swing open, and out would step Frank Woodfin, pride of Dade County, Georgia. He would make a subtle little three-fingered adjustment to his ball cap—also red most of the time—amble up to the hood, and watch from a distance.

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Mr. Woodfin was a coach, though not of this team. He came as an observer.

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#

​

CK Supply over on Main Street, that's where he worked. It was a dilapidated building partially visible from the field, mostly obscured by an impenetrable stand of kudzu. I was never entirely sure what Mr. Woodfin did there. Sheetrock sales, or something. Whatever it was, he didn't let it get in the way of making a daily appearance at practice.

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His son Woody became my best friend. We were connected by the misery shared out on Watkins field. Woody was a fine athlete, though not the biggest or fastest or most skilled. What he had, in abundance, was heart. Always the first one to the line, and always the only player who refused to collapse to the ground or double over at the finish. Woody stood straight while the rest of us bent, choking and gasping.

I tried to stand straight, too. Couldn't do it. I'd like to say it was the asthma—a lifelong struggle—worsened by those noxious factory fumes and the kiln heat of summer in the south. Deep down inside, though, I always knew my lungs were big enough but my heart wasn't.

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One day after a summer morning practice Woody suggested we walk down to Armando's for lunch.

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My dad's over there, said Woody.

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How do you know that?

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Because he's there every day.

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Armando's was the prototypical neighborhood burger joint. Hole in the wall. The entire menu fit on one side of one sheet of paper. Not a big sheet of paper like at those fine dining places, but a little slip, like church bulletin size.

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The red truck was there, sure enough.

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We walked in and were waved over by Mr. Woodfin at his booth where he was presiding over his standard fare of cheeseburger, fries and Sprite. He adjusted his cap with the three fingers and said, How's practice, boys?

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Terrible, I said.

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Terrible, Woody said.

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I'm about ready to quit, I offered. Coach Bindler's trying to kill us, and all that stuff from the factories is getting in my lungs, and I have asthma real bad.

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You ain't gonna quit, said Mr. Woodfin. You ain't ever gonna quit.

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Mr. Woodfin didn't appear to have heard the part about the asthma, or he ignored it. He had become unsettled by the word quit, which he didn't care for.

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There wasn't any animus in the way he responded. Kindly, really, with a hint of a wry smile, and his voice lacked resonance. But somehow it seemed authoritative.

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Ya'll boys want a cheeseburger? he asked.

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Yes Sir, Woody said.

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Yes Sir, I said.

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The lunch was free, but it wasn't. The thing about real coaches is they never miss an opportunity to coach, even in Armando's.

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Now listen here, Mr. Woodfin said. The one thing you got to have on that ball field is character. That means you ain't ever going to quit. God might give somebody else more skill, but hustle is up to you. There's no reason to be outhustled by anyone, ever.

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Little cap adjustment, again. Sip of sprite. Continue.

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The good Lord gives you an opportunity, you take it. Don't squander any opportunity. Not everybody gets to play ball. And you won't, for very long. You got to do your best, and you ain't ever gonna quit. Right?

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Yes Sir, I said.

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Yes Sir, Woody said.

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I listened, because the man had a track record of turning middling ball players into champions. Everybody in Dade County and plenty of people elsewhere knew about Coach Woodfin and his underdog, underdogged, overachiever little league teams. He was genius camouflaged in rustic. His words were sparse but measured and calculated to motivate and capable of coaxing talent out of hopeless cases.

​

#

​

There was this season-ending party, later, and the soccer team went for bowling and pizza. The team manager, Jeremy, was trying to bowl. This kid, who was closely modeled after the Gilligan character of the Island, was manager of the team because he had no hope of playing. He had the coordination of gelatin and had gone through the season serving primarily as the target for every practical joke imaginable, most of them involving underwear—his or others'—being stretched to epic proportions and eventually becoming affixed in some manner to the poor boy's head.

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At the bowling alley he was zero for six frames and drawing more abuse, having deposited each of his efforts directly into the gutter. When one of his oafishly tossed balls somehow stayed in the lane—albeit moving slowly—someone pushed the reset button to bring the bar down and block his effort. Jeremy then was forced to walk down the lane to retrieve his stalled ball, which brought the alley manager out of his booth with a scathing castigation.

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Great fun, it was, and everybody had another good laugh at Jeremy.

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Later I looked over, and there was Mr. Woodfin coaching Jeremy. I didn’t hear what was said but could tell from the motions he was talking to him about positioning, and footwork, and aligning his shoulder this way and his hips that way.

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Waste of time, I thought. But a few minutes later Jeremy was rolling the ball down the middle of the lane. Unbelievable. Nobody would have ever thought to coach the team manager or supposed it would do any good if they did, except for Mr. Woodfin. He had the kid chock full of confidence, at least until his next wedgie.

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#

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We walked out of Armando's back into the sun. Mr. Woodfin gave us a ride back to the gym.

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Ya'll be good, he said.

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Yes Sir.

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Yes Sir.

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I wasn't really going to quit, I said as we got out.

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I know, he said.

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The red truck trailed away.

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One thing, Woody said. Don't ever say nothing about quitting to my dad. Drives him crazy. It don't matter if you're any good or not, because he can make you better. The only thing he don't like is quitting.

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#

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That big red Ford truck, it went all over Tennessee, with Frank Woodfin and his little wife Melba, who was always scooted up next to him close like they were teenagers. Every soccer game, every basketball game, every baseball game. Home and away. Regular season, tournaments, playoffs. If the school bus was going to a game, the big red truck was behind it. Weekday, weekend, immaterial. Distance, irrelevant.

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He probably lost some sheetrock sales, or whatever.

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And now and then we'd be standing out by the truck after the game or maybe sitting in McDonalds and Mr. Woodfin would adjust his ballcap and say, in his subtle and understated way, you might had done this or done that, or pressed forward at this point or crossed this ball earlier or pushed up the right wing because their left back has no speed, and when we play them at our place next month remember to keep that forward on his weaker foot and he won't be able to do a thing.

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He would see stuff you would never see on your own, and suddenly a light bulb would click on in your head and you would realize the man had an understanding about things that could sharpen your game, give you an edge.

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But none of it did any good unless you could survive EVERYBODY ON THE LINE, back at Watkins Field. It was a dump by anyone's definition to be sure, but it was also an incubator of dreams.

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#

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All these years later I heard EVERYBODY ON THE LINE again in my head, as the jet forged its way across America in the night, with me inside on my way to the funeral of Frank Woodfin. After four sleepless hours the lights of Atlanta fluttered on the horizon, then gathered and brightened, and in a few moments more we glided down from the blackness. I shouldered a bag, trekked through a desolate terminal, and boarded a shuttle bus for the long ride home. We merged onto Interstate 75 and Olympic Stadium came into view, its torch blazing high above the grandstands. A few nights earlier I had watched from my living room as a trembling Muhammad Ali had applied the flame to open the 1996 ceremonies.

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Frank Woodfin had seen that very flame just the other day. But now his heart had quit on him, the only part of him that ever did.

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At New Salem Baptist up on Lookout Mountain, the front door was wedged tight with a bigger crowd of people than the architect ever contemplated. In this same church Frank Woodfin had been enjoying last Sunday morning's preaching. Had just belted out a hearty Amen when he went down. Fifty-seven years old, and probably dead before he hit the floor, the doctor said.

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Someone motioned for me to sit with the family, so I shuffled in with them through a side door to the three or four rows reserved up front. The pews filled quietly behind me with what looked like every person the man had ever coached. Standing room only, and then the standing room was filled.

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Seemed like a lot of people for a sheetrock salesman, or whatever.

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We got the funeral over with and everyone went over to the fellowship hall for the meal which involved a stupendous quantity of food, and an endless parade of former ball players who wanted to say how Frank Woodfin had made them better, talked about opportunity, taught them they could do anything, as long as they didn't quit.

​

#

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It didn't seem right that he would be gone and I wondered, what would Frank Woodfin have done with the final stanza of his life, had he known it was such? What would he have done, say, with the last three days God gave him?

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I could guess.

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I could guess he would take one of those days to relish with his three children. Taking in a baseball game like they had done so many times before, being sure to tell them—not together, but one by one—how much he loved them. And maybe he'd spend a morning with his best buddies on the golf course, savoring one last outing with them. With any luck he'd hit the ball on the screws and split the fairway and make the little three-fingered adjustment to his ball cap and do it again on the next tee, and the one after that too. Perhaps it would be his finest round of the year.

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And I could guess he surely would take a day just to be with his wife, who even after all these years never did get comfortable sitting way over on the passenger's side.

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I could guess, but I didn't have to.

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Because the things Frank Woodfin would have done are precisely the things he did do.

Even though by anyone's guess—his included, surely—he had more decades of life to enjoy.

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#

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I am on the return redeye, flying back home to Arizona.

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Everyone in the cabin but me is sleeping. I close my eyes and I see him. He's in the casket, but that's not really him, and the image of the deceased Frank Woodfin from today isn't nearly as powerful as the alive Frank Woodfin from long ago. There he is as I look out the back of the school bus, following in the red truck with Melba, driving all over Tennessee.

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And there he is, sitting across from me in Armando's, and—

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I am hunched over, hands on my knees, wheezing for breath, every muscle burning. My mouth is a paste factory, and someone has reached down and ripped the lungs out of my chest. The air is ovenesque and it tastes like chemicals and dog crap. Coach Bindler, that maniac, is out there laying more cones. Can we get some water? somebody asks. Bindler says no, maybe later, if I see the kind of effort I want to see. A voice inside me says you can't do this. You have asthma. It's not worth it. You can't.

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From the corner of my eye, I see a crimson image arcing into the gravel lot, a rooster tail of dust kicking up behind. It's the big red truck, grinding to a stop, the cloud overtaking it for a moment and then floating away, dissipating. I look up and see the form of a slender man climb out. He stands by the hood, he puts on his ball cap, makes his three-fingered adjustment, he watches from a distance.

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EVERYBODY ON THE LINE, the coach yells for the millionth time.

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I stand up straight.

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And I say to myself, no way am I quitting today.