The Hearts’ marketing is slick. It’s hitting all the notes. Earthy tones and talk of culture and community, talk of strength, unity, and hope, getting right the cadence of the captions on the photographs on Instagram. In these moments, one can’t ignore the commerce of it all, the dollars and the deals, the machinery of the till.And there’s the marketing team taking happy photos to splash across the socials.
But the old man’s standing and his hands are raised and his knuckles bulge in arthritic swell, the hands don’t make the heart, not quite, but you get the gist. And the eight-year-old girl with her dad makes heart hands and beams. And there’s the middle schooler with his hand-markered sign. And then, in the damp chill, the crystalled feeling around the heart dissolves, the thoughts of money and marketing ploys melt away, and the guys on the field play on, because underneath the carefully plotted public relations campaigns, there’s the wildness of the game, the raw unpredictability. All the wish and promise, all the spin and ricochet. No one knows what happens next. And then goal number four blasts in high off a rocketing free kick from Nathan Messer and despite the scoreline the Faialense crew plays with everything in them until the final whistle blows.
A new season starts. A game begins and ends, definitive, discrete, there and done, but all the old games live in this game, and this game lives in all the games to come. It does not end. The seasons collect, the ball spins on, and the players, tonight and always, play with a skull, passing it between their feet, defying death in their dance with it. The Hearts move the ball, move the skull, they move it with vigorous tenderness, that’s how they played, happy birthday, here we are, leaping to our feet, fists in the air, hearts thumping in our chests, the hearts we were born with, and in the 80th minute the hometown kid gets subbed in, the 20-year-old Khalid Hersi, the Lewiston native, the first Mainer to be signed to this new team, and the crowd is up and cheering loud.
And through the trees, through the mist, the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul looms illuminated, soft edged, aglow, the mystery and melancholy, the dark thing that settles next to the heart late at night, but for now, here on this winter-spring night when the damp reaches in and caresses the bones, here, here, the promise of a thaw, and the Hearts of Pine offer up the rare best gift. Something new to root for. Something new to love.
Nina MacLaughlin is a writer. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Find her on Instagram at @ninamaclaughlin.
