Call Me by My Name (24 page)

“I had an interesting thing happen this morning,” Alma said. “There was a phone call for me at the nurses' station. They come in and say it's important, so they roll me down the hall to get it. Anyway, it's a sportswriter at the paper, and he tells me Coach Jeune has a message for me. I said, ‘He can't call me his own self?'”

“What did he say, Mama?”

“Just that he liked what he saw. And that he would come out and visit me as soon as he could, when he can get away from Baton Rouge and his own boys.” She laughed now. “I told that man to tell Beau Jeune he was welcome anytime.”

“I'm going to be the first black quarterback to ever play for LSU,” Tater said.

“I know you will, baby.”

“And when I'm in the pros and making some serious money, I'm going to buy you your own house, and we'll have our own nurses and wheelchair ramps and a cook who comes in the evening to make us supper.”

“Oh, yes.”

“It'll have two stories,” he said.

“Two? How do you expect me to get up them stairs, boy?”

“The elevator.”

“That's right. All right.”

“And in the kitchen we'll have counters low enough so you can get your own water at the sink.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And a white picket fence, and what else?” he said.

“A flower garden.”

He sipped his tea. It was clear they'd indulged this fantasy many times before, and even though they seemed to be enjoying themselves, the exchange made me sad. There was no way any of it was going to happen unless a pill came out that let him change the color of his skin.

“Don't forget my cat,” Alma said.

“What kind you want, Mama? A Siamese?”

“An apple-headed Siamese.”

“I'll buy you two. How's that sound?”

“I like that.”

“You want a dog?”

“I'm not a dog person. Don't ask me why.”

“Not even a golden retriever?”

“Well, all right, then.”

I noticed as we ate that Alma had difficulty handling her fork and bringing it up to her mouth, and it occurred to me that she likely also suffered from nerve and muscle damage. But she worked through it and used the arm, anyway, sometimes employing her left hand to support it. I also noticed that neither Tater nor Miss Nettie helped her. They seemed to know better than to try.

“Tater came first, his sister, Rosalie, second,” Alma announced suddenly as she was working on her pie. “I looked up and could see in the nurse's eyes that something wasn't right. She probably would've grown up to be like you, Angie—a cheerleader at the high school, rooting for her brother and Big Rod here.”

“She would be my friend,” Angie said.

“I know she would, baby,” Alma Henry said. She sat looking at Angie. “Do you know I don't own—and have never owned—a picture of their daddy?”

“He was no good,” Miss Nettie said.

“That's true,” Alma said, although something about her expression told me she didn't believe it.

“When he was little,” Miss Nettie said, “Tater would cry and ask me what his daddy looked like, and I'd tell him to go look in the mirror, to get right up to the glass and look close, to
stare
, he would see him there.”

“Was his dad an athlete?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” Alma said. “To be honest with you, he was more a tomcat than anything.” She lowered her plastic fork and laughed with her good hand covering her mouth. “Rodney, would you like the rest of my pie?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

But she slid it over, and I looked to see how much was left. You hated to waste anything as good as that.

“I met him walking home from school,” she said. “I was fifteen—that's all, just a baby. He pulls up in his car and asks if I need a ride. How many times have I interrogated myself why I didn't tell him no? But that would mean there would be no you, wouldn't it, Tater?”

He didn't answer.

“Robert Battier was his name, same as the name he gave that first boy. He was ten years older than me. He worked as a deliveryman. I didn't even know he had a wife and child until I was ninth months pregnant. Not eight months, mind you.
Nine
months. And big out to here.” She showed us with her hands. “It was one of them things where if he couldn't have me, nobody else could. He came to my mama's house—she was still alive then—and he had all these grocery bags lined up on the backseat, waiting to be delivered. He had some ground meat in there for Lois Duplechain. I can still see her name written out on a slip on a bag—
Lois Duplechain
. He had other perishable items. Your milk, ice cream, oleo. You think I'm crazy for remembering that, don't you?”

“No, ma'am,” Angie said.

“Sounds so stupid now. Me worrying about the cold things in his car, when I had a baby in the house. I screamed at him to leave. I told him I was going to call the police. He opened the back door and threw the bags out in the yard. I think he knew he would be losing more than just me, when he did that. He would also lose his job. I have a lot to be mad about, but I'm just glad he didn't go after my baby. Some men do that, you know?”

“Yes, they do,” Miss Nettie said. “It's on the news every day of the week.”

“You get the newspaper, Angie?” Alma asked.

“My father does.”

“You like it when Tater's in there?”

Angie nodded. She looked down at her plate. “It's wonderful.”

When we returned to the building, a crowd was waiting for us in the hallway. Most were elderly, but there were some young people too. Like Alma, the young ones had injuries that required medical attention and kept them institutionalized. I couldn't figure out why they'd gathered in the hall, staring and smiling at us, but then I noticed the newspapers. They were also holding ink pens.

“Could you sign this for me?” an old man said, holding out the section of the paper with the picture of Tater and me.

I was a Bigfoot. I'd never signed an autograph before. But I enjoyed these first ones. Tater and I must've signed fifty that morning, and all the while Angie stood behind Alma Henry, holding the handles of her wheelchair.

We went on a run like the school had never seen before. To start the regular season, we beat Crowley in the rain at home. Then came easy road wins over Franklin and Morgan City. Next up was Lafayette Northside, where it was 57–0 at half, and 71–12 at the end. Tater ran three quarterback sneaks for touchdowns the next week against A team from Baton Rouge. Before the last of them, Coach Cadet called time-out and had me join him and Tater on the sideline.

“See their miserable excuse for a coach over there?” he said. “He's the biggest turd that ever walked a sideline, maybe even the planet. And I would like nothing more than to drop a load of shame on him tonight. Rodney, I want you to hold your man and draw the flag.”

“You want me to hold him, Coach?”

“Yes, Rodney,
hold
him. Hold him like this.” And he grabbed my jersey and yanked me toward him. “We're on our own 26. We get a penalty and that puts the ball on the 1. Tater, after the ref steps it off I want you to run the quarterback sneak. And make it pretty, will you?”

Tater made it pretty, all right. It was so pretty the coach for the other team threw his cap at the ground even before Tater crossed the goal line. Next he shot the bird at Coach Cadet from across the field and drew a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct. Then in arguing with the officials he was ejected from the game. All this made it perhaps the prettiest play Coach Cadet had ever seen.

Tater's run was also the longest for a quarterback in school history, and because a run from scrimmage can't be longer than ninety-nine yards, it tied state and national marks and put him in the record books for all time. It also put him back in the news—“from Haynesville up high to Boothville-Venice down low,” as Coach Valentine put it, naming places at different ends of the state. When local TV stations showed highlights and scoreboards that Friday night, Tater's run was the top story on every program.

We had an open date the next weekend, and over the days leading up to it, he and I welcomed recruiters into our homes. Most of the big schools that wanted him, like Michigan, Illinois, and Rutgers, were from up North, while the major colleges that were pursuing me hardest were in the South and Southwest—Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Ole Miss, and Alabama. Our phones at home rang day and night. Sometimes when we left the locker room after practice, the recruiters were lined up outside, waiting for a minute of our time. That was what they all asked for—just a minute. But when we gave it to them, they tried to convince us to give them the next four years of our lives. Not that Tater and I ever complained. There was no way Miss Nettie could pay for his college education, and Mama and Pops had both Angie and me to worry about. Coach Cadet stored our mail from recruiters in matching metal washtubs in his office, one with Tater's name marked on the side, the other with mine. The letters counted in the hundreds, and they all seemed to say the same thing: We can't win without you.

He and I both wanted to stay in the state and play for LSU, but we knew it was best to keep our options open. While we didn't have a pact to sign with the same program, I couldn't imagine the two of us splitting up and going to different places. He made me better, and I liked to think I did the same for him. “Where would I be without my offensive line?” might've been his favorite line. But everybody knew he was really saying, “Where would I be without Rodney Boulet?”

One night that week, Beau Jeune came back to town, stopping first at Tater's for a meeting with him and Miss Nettie, then driving over to Helen Street for a fried catfish dinner with my family and me. Coach Jeune had left practice early to make the hour-long drive, and he arrived wearing a baby-blue sport coat thrown over a mesh shirt trimmed in LSU's purple and gold, and you could see the indentation around the top of his head left by a baseball cap. He seemed to understand how important it was to win over Mama, and he honed in on her as soon as he walked in the house, complimenting her on things I'd never noticed before, such as the handmade doilies on the arms of the sofa and the color of our telephone, which was avocado. We ate at the kitchen table, then moved over to the living room, which Mama and Angie had cleaned up and organized earlier that afternoon. Mama served chicory coffee from a silver tray, then she and Angie retired to their rooms and left the coach alone with Pops and me.

It was quite a thing to hear someone I respected so much tell me that I ranked as the top prospect on his list, a pitch I was sure he'd tried out on other blue-chip talent, but one I still very much appreciated.

“What about Tater?” I asked, interrupting Coach Jeune's spiel about my golden future as a Tiger. “Where does he rank?”

“That one's special, ain't he?” Coach Jeune said. “That kind of raw talent you don't see every day. The sky's the limit for that young man.”

Pops sank deeper in his seat. “You don't really see a boy like him playing quarterback in Baton Rouge, do you?” he asked.

“You mean a black?”

“Right.”

“I don't completely rule it out, Mr. Boulet. Not yet I don't.”

“Sign him and see what happens,” Pops said.

All of a sudden Coach Jeune seemed to remember that he'd really come to see me. He turned in his chair. “Can this stay in the room with us, Rodney?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I like Tater, I like him a lot. But I keep asking myself if he might not be out of position. He has the arm strength and the intelligence and all the other intangibles to play quarterback, but he's absolutely at his best when he's carrying the ball.” He put his cup on the coffee table and leaned forward in his chair. “Can't you just see him taking the pitch out of the I-formation and turning the corner, Rodney?”

“I'm just a night watchman at a plant,” Pops interrupted, “but I can tell you the world ain't ready for one at LSU.”

“The world,” Coach Jeune said, as if he'd just now heard of the place. “Isn't that where if you don't win ten games a year, the Board of Supervisors convenes an emergency session and hires somebody else?”

Mama wrapped some catfish in aluminum foil for him to take in case he got hungry on the road. He left a media guide for the 1971 season on the coffee table and gave Mama and Angie hugs on his way outside. Pops only had about ten minutes to get ready for work, so that finally gave Coach Jeune and me some time alone.

We walked to his Cadillac parked along the curb and stood in the lamplight. “We'd love an early commitment from you, Rodney,” he said. “I know it would influence a lot of quality young men who haven't made their minds up yet, and my recruiting coordinator tells me it would be a knockout punch to Alabama. Every year they sneak in this state and steal some of our best boys, and your commitment would go a long way to putting an end to that.”