Bleachers (4 page)

Two of the joggers left the track and walked up a few rows where they sat by themselves and stared at the field. They were in their early fifties, tanned and fit with expensive running shoes. “Guy on the right is Blanchard Teague,” Paul said, anxious to prove he knew everyone. “Our optometrist. On the left is Jon Couch, a lawyer. They played in the late sixties, during The Streak.”

“So they never lost a game,” Jaeger said.

“That’s right. In fact, the ’68 team was never scored on. Twelve games, twelve shutouts. Those two guys were there.”

“Awesome,” Jaeger said, truly in awe.

“That was before we were born,” Paul said.

A scoreless season took a minute to digest. The optometrist and the lawyer were deep in conversation, no doubt replaying their glorious achievements during The Streak.

“The paper did a story on Rake a few years after he was fired,” Paul said softly. “It ran all the usual stats, but also added that in thirty-four years he coached seven hundred and fourteen players. That was the title of the story—‘Eddie Rake and the Seven Hundred Spartans.’ ”

“I saw that,” Jaeger said.

“I wonder how many will be at his funeral?” Paul said.

“Most of them.”

Silo’s version of a beverage run included the gathering of two cases of beer and two other guys to help drink it. Three men emerged from his pickup, with Silo leading the way, a box of Budweiser on his shoulder. One bottle was in his hand.

“Oh boy,” Paul said.

“Who’s the skinny guy?” Neely asked.

“I think it’s Hubcap.”

“Hubcap’s not in jail?”

“He comes and goes.”

“The other one is Amos Kelso,” Jaeger said. “He played with me.”

Amos was hauling the other case of beer, and as the three stomped up the bleachers Silo invited Orley Short and his pal to join them for a drink. They did not hesitate. He yelled at Teague and Couch, and they too followed them up to row thirty, where Neely and Paul and Randy Jaeger were sitting.

Once the introductions were made and the
bottles were opened, Orley asked the group, “What’s the latest on Rake?”

“Just waiting,” Paul said.

“I stopped by this afternoon,” Couch said gravely. “It’s just a matter of time.” Couch had an air of lawyerly importance that Neely immediately disliked. Teague the optometrist then provided a lengthy narrative about the latest advances of Rake’s cancer.

It was almost dark. The joggers were gone from the track. In the shadows a tall gawky man emerged from the clubhouse and slowly made his way to the metal poles supporting the scoreboard.

“That’s not Rabbit, is it?” Neely asked.

“Of course it is,” Paul said. “He’ll never leave.”

“What’s his title now?”

“He doesn’t need one.”

“He taught me history,” Teague said.

“And he taught me math,” Couch said.

Rabbit had taught for eleven years before someone discovered he’d never finished the ninth grade. He was fired in the ensuing scandal, but Rake intervened and got Rabbit reassigned as
an assistant athletic director. Such a title at Messina High School meant he did nothing but take orders from Rake. He drove the team bus, cleaned uniforms, maintained equipment, and, most important, supplied Rake with all the gossip.

The field lights were mounted on four poles, two on each side. Rabbit flipped a switch. The lights on the south end of the visitors’ side came on, ten rows of ten lights each. Long shadows fell across the field.

“Been doing that for a week now,” Paul said. “Rabbit leaves them on all night. His version of a vigil. When Rake dies, the lights go out.”

Rabbit lurched and wobbled back to the clubhouse, gone for the night. “Does he still live there?” Neely asked.

“Yep. He has a cot in the attic, above the weight room. Calls himself a night watchman. He’s crazy as hell.”

“He was a damned good math teacher,” Couch said.

“He’s lucky he can still walk,” Paul said, and everyone laughed. Rabbit had become partially crippled during a game in 1981 when, for
reasons neither he nor anyone else would ever grasp, he had sprinted from the sideline onto the field, into the path of one Lightning Loyd, a fast and rugged running back, who later played at Auburn, but who, on that night, was playing for Greene County, and playing quite brilliantly. With the score tied late in the third quarter, Loyd broke free for what appeared to be a long touchdown run. Both teams were undefeated. The game was tense, and evidently Rabbit snapped under the pressure. To the horror (and delight) of ten thousand Messina faithful, Rabbit flung his bony and brittle body into the arena, and somewhere around the thirty-five-yard line, he collided with Lightning. The collision, while near fatal for Rabbit, who at the time was at least forty years old, had little impact on Loyd. A bug on the windshield.

Rabbit was wearing khakis, a green Messina sweatshirt, a green cap that shot skyward and came to rest ten yards away, and a pair of pointed-toe cowboy boots, the left one of which was jolted free and spun loose while Rabbit was airborne. People sitting thirty rows up swore they heard Rabbit’s bones break.

If Lightning had continued his sprint, the controversy would have been lessened considerably. But the poor kid was so shocked that he glanced over his shoulder to see who and what he had just run over, and in doing so lost his balance. It took fifteen yards for him to complete his fall, and when he came to rest somewhere around the twenty-yard line the field was covered with yellow flags.

While the trainers huddled over Rabbit and debated whether to call for an ambulance or a minister, the officials quickly awarded the touchdown to Greene County, a decision that Rake argued with for a moment then conceded. Rake was as shocked as anyone, and he was also concerned about Rabbit, who hadn’t moved a muscle since hitting the ground.

It took twenty minutes to gather Rabbit up and place him gently on the stretcher and shove him into an ambulance. As it drove away, ten thousand Messina fans stood and applauded with respect. The folks from Greene County, uncertain as to whether they too should applaud or boo, just sat quietly and tried to digest what
they had seen. They had their touchdown, but the poor idiot appeared to be dead.

Rake, always the master motivator, used the delay to incite his troops. “Rabbit’s hittin’ harder than you clowns,” he growled at his defense. “Let’s kick some ass and take the game ball to Rabbit!”

Messina scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and won easily.

Rabbit survived too. His collarbone was broken and three lower veterbrae were cracked. His concussion was not severe, and those who knew him well claimed they noticed no additional brain damage. Needless to say, Rabbit became a local hero. At the annual football banquet thereafter Rake awarded a Rabbit Trophy for the Hit-of-the-Year.

The lights grew brighter as dusk came to an end. Their eyes refocused in the semi-lit darkness of Rake Field. Another, smaller group of old Spartans had materialized at the far end of the bleachers. Their voices were barely audible.

Silo opened another bottle and drained half of it.

“When was the last time you saw Rake?” Blanchard Teague asked Neely.

“A couple of days after my first surgery,” Neely said, and everyone was still. He was telling a story that had never been told before in Messina. “I was in the hospital. One surgery down, three to go.”

“It was a cheap shot,” Couch mumbled, as if Neely needed to be reassured.

“Damned sure was,” said Amos Kelso.

Neely could see them, huddled in the coffee shops on Main Street, long sad faces, low grave voices as they replayed the late hit that instantly ruined the career of their all-American. A nurse told him she had never seen such an outpouring of compassion—cards, flowers, chocolates, balloons, artwork from entire classes of grade-schoolers. All from the small town of Messina, three hours away. Other than his parents and the Tech coaches, Neely refused all visitors. For eight long days he drowned himself in pity, aided mightily by as many painkillers as the doctors would allow.

Rake slipped in one night, long after visiting hours were over. “He tried to cheer me up,”
Neely said, sipping a beer. “Said knees could be rehabbed. I tried to believe him.”

“Did he mention the ’87 championship game?” Silo asked.

“We talked about it.”

There was a long awkward pause as they contemplated that game, and all the mysteries around it. It was Messina’s last title, and that alone was a source rich enough for years of analysis. Down 31–0 at the half, roughed up and manhandled by a vastly superior team from East Pike, the Spartans returned to the field at A&M where thirty-five thousand fans were waiting. Rake was absent; he didn’t appear until late in the fourth quarter.

The truth about what happened had remained buried for fifteen years, and, evidently, neither Neely, nor Silo, nor Paul, nor Hubcap Taylor were about to break the silence.

In the hospital room Rake had finally apologized, but Neely had told no one.

Teague and Couch said good-bye and jogged away in the darkness.

“You never came back, did you?” Jaeger asked.

“Not after I got hurt,” Neely said.

“Why not?”

“Didn’t want to.”

Hubcap had been working quietly on a pint of something much stronger than beer. He’d said little, and when he spoke his tongue was thick. “People say you hated Rake.”

“That’s not true.”

“And he hated you.”

“Rake had a problem with the stars,” Paul said. “We all knew that. If you won too many awards, set too many records, Rake got jealous. Plain and simple. He worked us like dogs and wanted every one of us to be great, but when guys like Neely got all the attention then Rake got envious.”

“I don’t believe that,” Orley Short grunted.

“It’s true. Plus he wanted to deliver the prizes to whatever college he happened to like at the moment. He wanted Neely at State.”

“He wanted me in the Army,” Silo said.

“Lucky you didn’t go to prison,” Paul said.

“It ain’t over yet,” Silo said with a laugh.

Another car rolled to a stop by the gate and its headlights went off. No door opened.

“Prison’s underrated,” Hubcap said, and everyone laughed.

“Rake had his favorites,” Neely said. “I wasn’t one of them.”

“Then why are you here?” asked Orley Short.

“I’m not sure. Same reason you’re here, I guess.”

During Neely’s freshman year at Tech, he had returned for Messina’s homecoming game. In a halftime ceremony, they retired number 19. The standing ovation went on and on and eventually delayed the second half kickoff, which cost the Spartans five yards and prompted Coach Rake, leading 28–0, to start yelling.

That was the only game Neely had watched since he left. One year later he was in the hospital.

“When did they put up Rake’s bronze statue?” he asked.

“Couple of years after they fired him,” Jaeger said. “The boosters raised ten thousand bucks and had it done. They wanted to present it to him before a game, but he refused.”

“So he never came back?”

“Well, sort of.” Jaeger pointed to a hill in the
distance behind the clubhouse. “He’d drive up on Karr’s Hill before every game and park on one of those gravel roads. He and Miss Lila would sit there, looking down, listening to Buck Coffey on the radio, too far away to see much, but making sure the town knew he was still watching. At the end of every halftime the band would face the hill and play the fight song, and all ten thousand would wave at Rake.”

“It was pretty cool,” said Amos Kelso.

“Rake knew everything that was going on,” Paul said. “Rabbit called him twice a day with the gossip.”

“Was he a recluse?” Neely asked.

“He kept to himself,” Amos said. “For the first three or four years anyway. There were rumors he was moving, but then rumors don’t mean much here. He went to Mass every morning, but that’s a small crowd in Messina.”

“He got out more in the last few years,” Paul said. “Started playing golf.”

“Was he bitter?”

The question was pondered by the rest of them. “Yeah, he was bitter,” said Jaeger.

“I don’t think so,” Paul said. “He blamed himself.”

“Rumor has it that they’ll bury him next to Scotty,” Amos said.

“I heard that too,” Silo said, very deep in thought.

A car door slammed and a figure stepped onto the track. A stocky man in a uniform of some variety swaggered around the field and approached the bleachers.

“Here’s trouble,” Amos mumbled.

“It’s Mal Brown,” Silo said softly.

“Our illustrious Sheriff,” Paul said to Neely.

“Number 31?”

“That’s him.”

Neely’s number 19 was the last jersey retired. Number 31 was the first. Mal Brown had played in the mid-sixties, during The Streak. Eighty pounds and thirty-five years ago he had been a bruising tailback who had once carried the ball fifty-four times in a game, still a Messina record. A quick marriage ended the college career before it began, and a quick divorce sent him to Vietnam in time for the Tet Offensive in ’68. Neely had heard stories of the great Mal Brown
throughout most of his childhood. Before a game Neely’s freshman year, Coach Rake stopped by for a quick pep talk. He recounted in great detail how Mal Brown had once rushed for two hundred yards in the second half of the conference championship, and he did so with a broken ankle!

Rake loved stories of players who refused to leave the field with broken bones and bleeding flesh and all sorts of gruesome injuries.

Years later, Neely would hear that Mal’s broken ankle had, more than likely, been a severe sprain, but as the years passed the legend grew, at least in Rake’s memory.

The Sheriff walked along the front of the bleachers and spoke to the others passing the time, then he climbed thirty rows and arrived, almost gasping, at Neely’s group. He spoke to Paul, then Amos, Silo, Orley, Hubcap, Randy—he knew them all by their first names or nicknames. “Heard you were in town,” he said to Neely as they shook hands. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has” was all Neely could say. To his recollection, he had never met Mal Brown. He wasn’t the Sheriff when Neely lived in Messina. Neely knew the legend, but not the man.