All of the impossible things of the Foxhole stories, all of the liberties I've taken, all of the convenient, self-indulgent bloodbaths--and Wymack is still one thing I find the most unbelievable. In the best of ways, but still. He is probably the only positive father figure I will ever write.
I can't tell anymore how strong his presence is in the book; I've rewritten the trilogy so many times I can't always tell how much has been left on the cutting room floor. I read and reread but I read between the lines to the dozen-odd backstories, the hundred-odd scenes I've pulled and set aside. All I can do is hope he shines through as the one piece the Fox line cannot exist without.
One Fox in particular would be nothing and no one without him. I've always loved Dan & Wymack's relationship, but every draft pushes it further and further into the background. A couple years back I tried to write Dan's story for NaNoWriMo. I never got far, just barely far enough to win NaNo, and I regret that. I wanted not only to have a "girl power" sports story but to have more time to explore their relationship. It's too personal to be father/daughter, too devoted to be coach/captain. D.W. & D.W.
Also: Dan is also the only Fox who knows Wymack's story. Wymack and Neil touch on Wymack's family in Raven King, but only in passing. Dan is the only Fox Wymack's ever felt compelled to explain himself to in full.
Here's how they first met. It's a little rough, because I've never properly edited it, but. Also, it was written so long ago the timeline is off a little bit, but the general idea is still the same.
(Dan ended the last game of her high school career with a fight, which is what Wymack is referring to)
Dan got home at five
Sunday morning, and she knew as she stepped through the trailer door
that something wasn't right. For starters, the trailer was clean, and
Cathy had never been a tidy person. The kitchen counters were cleared
and wiped down, the table chairs were neatly in place, and the living
room had been straightened. On the heels of surprise was anger, and
Dan wondered who Cathy had been so eager to clean for. It was almost
enough for her to turn the entire mobile home on its head again,
except Cathy's bedroom door was open, which meant she was alone.
Someone knocked at her
door, and Dan rethought her murderous impulses. She undid the locks
and yanked the door open. There was a streetlamp at the corner, so it
was easy enough to see Cathy's newest suitor. He was older than Dan
expected—twice her age at least. He hadn't shaved in a day or two,
and he had two cigarettes going, one perched between his lips and the
other safely tucked between his fingers. He was dressed in ragged
jeans and a sweater that had seen better days, and he stood with a
folder propped under one arm.
"I think you're
lost," Dan said.
"You have a nice
right hook," he responded.
"If you want another
look at it, I'm happy to oblige."
"Maybe in a minute.
You going to invite me in or what? I'm freezing my balls off out
here."
"No major loss
there," Dan said coolly. He seemed startled for a moment, and
then he grinned. It was a slow expression creeping across his mouth,
and Dan had the distinct impression he was pleased. She tried to shut
the door in his face, but he caught it with his hand. She raised her
other fist in a warning. "Fuck off."
"Two minutes,"
he said.
"She's asleep. I'm
not waking her up."
"I'm not here for
her," he said. "She said you'd be back about this time, so
I've been waiting."
"You're a real
creeper, aren't you?" Dan demanded. "I don't know what the
fuck she offered you, but—"
"Hi, can I finish?"
he interrupted. "How about I talk, then you talk, since what I
have to say is infinitely more interesting?"
"How about you go
home and leave me alone, because I'm not interested?"
"I'm asking for two
minutes."
She stared at him,
fighting the urge to just hit him in the face, and said, "Ten
seconds."
"Good enough."
He held out his hand but didn't wait for her to take it. "Coach
David Wymack, Palmetto State University, South Carolina. I need
someone to captain my Foxes next year. You feeling up to the job?"
The silence that followed
that was absolute. Dan couldn't breathe; maybe it was because her
heart was lodged in her throat. The stranger gazed back at her,
content to wait it out. Dan swallowed hard, but there was still a
hoarse edge in her voice when she said, "Is this your idea of a
sick joke?"
"Jokes aren't my
style." He gave up waiting for a handshake and offered her his
folder instead.
Dan went through it with
unsteady fingers, staring at the official letterheads and lengthy
contract details. There were brochures for Palmetto State as well,
and a course catalogue at the back. The man—coach—gave her a
couple seconds to rifle through it before he started rattling away
about some of the finer details. It was a full-ride scholarship for
five years at Palmetto State. She'd never even heard of them, but
apparently the Foxes were Class I.
"Dan is short for
Danielle," Dan said hollowly. "My coach said universities
almost never recruit girls."
"Fact," Wymack
admitted.
"But you…?"
"Fuck 'em," he
said. "Gender doesn't mean anything to me. Kayleigh Day taught
me how to play and I'm sure she'd have a thing or two to say about
biased policies. I don't care what my school board wants—I care
what my team needs. That means you."
Her mouth moved, but
nothing came out. He gave her a minute to find her voice again, then
asked, "You have a coffee maker in there? No? Then we're going.
This conversation requires more caffeine."
He turned and went back
down the stairs. Dan lingered for a moment longer, torn between
disbelief and fear, and then ran to catch up.
~
Five a.m. was one of
those rare lull hours at Jelly's Diner—after the late-night
drinkers and night shift finally turned in but before most of the
regular work crowd was out and about. Aside from the waitstaff Coach
Wymack and Dan had the place to themselves aside. Wymack set them up
in a corner booth and spread his paperwork out. Dan waved at her
coffee to try cooling it off, but Wymack drained half of his like it
wasn't scalding his tongue.
"Okay," he
said. "I'll tell you what I need from you, then what's in it for
you if you succeed. You can decide from there if it's a fair enough
trade. Sound good?" She nodded, and he emptied the rest of his
mug. A wave of his hand brought a waitress around for a refill, and
he waited until she'd left before speaking again. "Have you
heard of my school?"
"No," Dan
admitted.
"Good," he
said, to her surprise. He tapped his fingers on his mug, gaze distant
as he thought. If he'd prepared a speech for her, he found it wanting
now, and Dan wondered why he was having so much trouble finding a
place to start. She wanted to tell him that it didn't matter what he
said—he was offering her a way out of here. She'd put up with
anything in exchange for that.
"Gandhi said, 'Be
the change you want to see in the world'," Wymack said. "I
don't think a man can change the world, but I know he can change his
little corner of it. My corner is Palmetto State. The Foxhole Court
is more than a stadium. It is a second chance. It is a halfway house
for athletes who have nowhere else to go. I recruit orphans and
victims and addicts and impoverished dreamers, and I give them five
years to put their lives back together. Five years to learn
self-worth and self-confidence and how to respect those around them.
I give them the means, but I cannot show them the way. That is what I
need from you.
"I can't give you a
team except in name. The Foxes are a new team; this past fall was
their first season. As you might expect, we have… kinks to work
out." He considered that and huffed a bit. "I'm offering
you a collection of talented individuals who have no concept of
teamwork or trust, and no real desire to learn either one. I am
asking you to help me make a difference. I need you to inspire them.
I need you to lead them. I need you to make them believe. It is not
going to be easy," he cautioned her. "You'll be fighting
your team and your team's reputation, and the latter will take years
to turn around."
Dan idly wondered if she
was asleep, because this was too strange to be real. "You
already have a reputation?"
"Consensus is that
we should withdraw our team from the NCAA. We scored straight losses
last season, including two forfeits when half the Foxes decided they
didn't want to show up for the games." He dug cigarettes out of
his pocket, belatedly remembered he was in a no-smoking
establishment, and tossed the pack onto the table. "I don't care
what the reporters say, or what the athletic board says, or what any
of our rivals say, but that's me. You, as the team's captain, are
going to shoulder some of that burden. You're going to be harassed
for being female, for being a Fox, for a thousand reasons you can't
even imagine yet. I need to know that you're going to be okay, too."
It was the second time
he'd called her captain. Dan swallowed hard. "What about this
year's captain?"
"Quit," Coach
said breezily. "We started with eleven players last year. Two
left in December. Four have made it clear they're leaving in May. I
warned you: kinks." He emptied his coffee again, and Dan had the
niggling sensation he wished it was something harder. "I'm
recruiting six more for this year: three girls, three boys. I've
edited the contract, too, to make it harder for my players to walk
out on me."
"Why me?" she
wanted to know. "You shouldn't even know I exist."
"That's where we're
both lucky," Wymack said. "I was at your game Thursday
monitoring the West Jackson goalkeeper. I saw how you played, and I
liked what I saw. I spent Friday and Saturday asking around about
you, getting people's opinions and borrowing tapes. Your teammates
had nothing but praise for you."
Dan wasn't expecting
that, and she had to look away. She hid her face in her coffee cup.
The rush she felt wasn't quite pain, wasn't really pride. "Do
you mean what you're saying?" she asked. "About your team,
I mean. Your little foster system wannabe thing."
"Every word,"
Wymack said.
"Why?" she
pressed. "What's in it for you?"
He considered it, and she
liked him a little bit more for that. She let him mull his reasons
over. "Redemption, perhaps," he said. "The ability to
sleep at night."
She lifted her chin, met
his stare boldly, and said again, "Why?"
He didn't answer her
immediately. He studied the bottom of his empty coffee cup, searching
it for answers, and finally beckoned for the waitress to refill it.
He held it while she poured, cradling it in one big hand, and nodded
absently when she left.
"I'm going to tell
you a story," he said, carefully setting his mug to one side,
"if you can tolerate me talking about myself for a while. It's a
bit cliché, but it's the only one I've got."
Dan nodded, but she
wasn't sure if it was encouragement or acknowledgment that he was
sharing something very personal.
"My mother was
fifteen when she had me. She never finished high school—she dropped
out her freshman year when she got pregnant. My father was seven
years older than she was and was pressured by parents on both side to
marry her. When they met, he was a lousy drunk. By the time I was
eight, he'd moved on to other things and brought my mother with him:
LSD and ecstasy and huffers and whatnot. When I was twelve, he
started on PCPs. And that… Well, let's just say he went from being
angry and useless to being violent and insane.
"I was fourteen when
he took my mother's eyes out with a corkscrew," Wymack said. Dan
recoiled, mouth open on a horrified protest she didn't have the air
for. "I beat the ever-living shit out of him and threw him out
of the house. Not quite sure how," he mused. "He was a big
fucker." He considered the backs of his hands as if looking for
his father's blood on his knuckles, then shrugged it off as
unimportant.
"I stayed at the
hospital with my mother that night. The following morning, when we
were talking about what had happened and what we were supposed to do
next, she looked at me and said, 'Don't worry. You'll never amount to
anything, either.' They were the last words she ever said to me. I moved out that same day and never looked back. I didn't see her again
until her funeral."
"I'm sorry,"
Dan said through numb lips.
He shrugged. "I
moved up to Baltimore. Lived on the street part of the time and at
the local shelters the rest. I picked up a couple odd jobs and went
back to school when my bosses pushed me to. Got into sports and
finally found my niche. My junior and senior years I helped coach the
local little leagues. I went to college knowing I wanted to be a
coach, but it wasn't until Exy hit the States that I figured out what
to specialize in.
"I've been coaching
Exy for about nineteen years now," he said. "I started with
neighborhood teams in New York City. Amazing people, but it didn't
make enough money to pay rent. Worked my way into the high school
systems and now I'm here, with a Class I university team. And since I
have the chance to start a team from scratch, I'm going to build it
however I see fit.
"Long story short,
moral of the monologue, whatever: I am living proof that success is
not determined by socioeconomic status," he said, stabbing the
table with his finger. "I am proof that big dreams don't belong
to those with the easiest means of achieving them. All it takes is
heart—knowing what you want and having the fortitude to go for it
day after day, no matter the odds.
"So you tell me,"
he challenged her, "what do you want more than anything?"
Dan floundered, but only
for a moment. She'd been living with this ache for so long, she knew
the words by heart. "I want someone to give me a chance. I want
someone to believe in me."
"Danielle Wilds,"
Wymack said, speaking slowly to give his words emphasis, "I will
never give up on you."
Looking into his eyes,
Dan knew that was the truth. She had no reason to believe him, but
she knew with every fiber of her being that he was the real thing.
Her vision blurred. She blinked to clear it, and a hot tear streaked
down her cheek. She scrubbed it away with an impatient hand and
swallowed against the tightness in her throat.
"I don't care what
anyone says about the Foxes," she said thickly. "I want to
believe in the impossible. I want to be something. I want my chance
to change a piece of the world. Let me have your team and I'll make
of it whatever you want."
"Yeah," he
said, studying her with a distant look on his face. "I think you
just might."
9 comments:
When is the next book coming ou? Any news?
*cries a lot*
Also, seconded, WHEN?
I loved this! It's definitely been enriching my experience as a reader to find out all this bonus material, so thank you!! I really like Dan, and it's also nice to read a female protagonist from you again (not that I don't ADORE your male protagonists, but it somehow feels refreshing). That NaNo project sounds amazing.
Also: poor Wymack. What a creepy sad story. I feel like I could read novellas for all the supporting cast, and it's part of the reason I love your writing so much. I'm invested in every little piece.
Goddess Athena and Evalangui : I'm sorry, I don't have a "when" yet. Raven King is out with three betas and then it'll have to go through me again. We want to give you the best possible finished product, so thanks for your patience while we tweak it. ♥
Also, quasi-related, Raven King is currently 23,000 words longer than Foxhole was, despite my multiple attempts to scale it back. It's kind of a beast.
lime-yay : I'd like to finish Dan's story. I think it'd be fun focusing on the girls, and I'd have more time to explain Seth, too. At the very least I'd like to finish my set of side- and back-stories. One day.. ♥
Any update?
Unknown : Raven King is still in the hands of the betas, so no new news yet. Need to update the blog with something or other in the meantime, though..
I'm so excited for this book! i hope you'll update your progress soon, so I can stop rereading your blog :)
878MG : Hopefully I'll have news soon! Thank you for your patience. ♥
I LOVE this backstory! I can’t remember where I read the first drafts of Foxhole Court, and while I bought all the books when they first came out, I am beginning to wonder if my memory is bad, or if there were updates, or if some characters (Dan) just resonated more on this latest read through. Dan is a boss and it makes total sense that she would press David for more answers. I think she may be the only one who has asked for answers and kept asking why until he told her! I doubt after 11 years since this was posted, you would be notified of another response to this story, but was there another outcome with Abby once along the way? She is so steady in The Sunshine Court, and wondered if we were ever going to get more of her why.
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