The Massacree

I’m home from the office by 1630 Friday and there’s the long low sound of ripped air, the irregular trapezoid delta-vee shadow passing over my driveway, and I look up in time to see that serrated black triangle cross the sky above my house. The town’s already a zoo: traffic backed up in every direction; gray and blue Air Force colors out on the streets mixed in with the Army black and gold. Game time is 2000 hours.

Somewhere around 1910, my attorney fishtails across my driveway on two wheels in a baby-blue 74 Gran Torino and skids to a stop in my front yard, pulls a six-pack of Bud tallboys and a handful of nitrous oxide cartridges from the front seat, and lurches up to my front door. Tink and Zeugma are eager to see her again, but after last time, the guns and the flask don’t come in the house, so I talk her into leaving them in the trunk, and she greets the girls and then we walk through Highland Falls (population 3,600) to campus (student body 4,400) and the stadium (capacity 40,000, and it’s about two thirds full).

We pass an Avenger static display on the way in, which seems clever given the match-up, and then my attorney points up to the Air Force and Army jump teams parachuting into the stadium with the wind off the Hudson whipping across the field.

Inside, it’s loud, with the Corps of Cadets all on their feet in a single solid olive-drab bloc, and it’s cold, and my attorney’s extremely disgruntled that she didn’t bring her flask. The game doesn’t do much to improve her disposition: Air Force is up early, and then Army throws interception after interception so it’s 14-0, 21-0, and then Army fumbles on a punt return and gives up a safety, and even when Air Force fumbles they fumble it into the end zone and recover for a touchdown. By the time we left at half-time, I could confidently say it was the absolute worst half of football I have ever witnessed.

Which I guess itself is something worth seeing, although I sure hope not to see it again here.