Rookie of the Year 2: The Golden Leg

by Chris Scott

Same deal as the first one pretty much [takes place literally the day after so nothing has changed] except this time Henry Rowengartner falls and breaks his right leg. All his friends know the drill now. “Kick something! Kick something!” they chant, until Henry reluctantly agrees. He winds up, foot connecting with a tin can, sails it clear out of the park. The can lands on the head of a recruiter for the Chicago Bears.

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Next day, exterior, Soldier Field. Henry on sidelines drowning in shoulder pads and an XXXXL jersey, all the players are incredibly mean to him [except one nice player TBD]. Then fourth quarter, tied up, 15 seconds on the clock, Bears need a field goal from their own ten yard line. Henry walks out to the crowd going nuts [because they remember him from when he briefly pitched for the Cubs] HEN-RY! HEN-RY! All eyes on him, he kicks the ball, but it’s a straight shot barely clearing the uprights and then drilled into the crowd impaling five separate Bears fans, guts exploding everywhere as the football exits their bodies. The crowd turns on Henry, so now he’s scared, angry, running around the field kicking everything and everybody [think the end of King Kong], players and refs and coaches flying up into the sky from his powerful kicking leg destroying everything in its path.

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Chicago in chaos. Henry has kicked his way out of Soldier Field which is now a pile of rubble. He kicks down the Sears Tower, the Hancock Building, kicks apart Wrigley Field, eventually finding the Loop which allows him to sprint in a dizzying circle favoring his one extra-strong leg, spinning the debris into a cyclone up into the atmosphere until he collapses from exhaustion and the one nice player from earlier [TBD] surrounded by National Guard asks “Why are you doing this? What do you want?” and Henry says “I want to be able to break my limbs and have them heal like a normal kid and have my friends sign my cast and not have to play professional sports with massive men who smell awful and hate me,” and the Secretary of Defense [add him in earlier] begins openly weeping in front of his soldiers, his generals, everybody, saying “I wish it were that simple, kid. I wish it were as easy as all that.”

Chris Scott's work has appeared in The New Yorker, New Flash Fiction Review, Gone Lawn, Maudlin House, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Frog, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor for ClickHole, and an elementary school teacher in Washington, DC. You can read his writing at https://www.chrisscottwrites.com.