Call Me by My Name (28 page)

I'd heard more impassioned speeches from Tater before but none as effective. He hadn't guaranteed the title but promised it, and that was more like him, and exactly what they wanted—unfailing confidence with a touch of humility. A wild eruption followed, and up came the band with “Hold That Tiger.” The rest of the team had been sitting in folding chairs on the gym floor, but now everybody rushed to their feet and charged him. And so did the crowd, spilling out to where he stood under hanging lamps decorated with orange-and-black streamers. Some of the guys hoisted Tater onto their shoulders and paraded him around, as if we'd already won. This didn't go over well with Coach Cadet, who commandeered the mike and announced that the pep rally was over and for everybody to report back to class.

“Don't hurt him, for God's sake,” he said. “We need him. Please.
Please
. We need him.”

We won by ten points, which put us in the championship game the next week. Afterward, Regina and I danced a slow one on the patio at the Little Chef. The metal overhang was strung with multicolored Christmas lights, and they warmed the top of my head as we moved across the floor. The weather had turned cold, and I removed my letterman jacket and draped it over her shoulders. The coat swallowed her up and reached down past her knees. And when the party ended, she left with it. In our world a girl wore your letterman jacket only when the two of you were a couple.

“Does that make it official?” Tater asked as we stood next to each other in the lot and watched Regina drive away.

I was too overcome to reply.

The next night I drove her to my grandparents' place and parked under the trees by the bayou in back. Regina was the first girl I ever kissed, and I understood at last what the fuss was all about. When we weren't making out, I told her stories about No Face, Bonepicker, and the Loup Garou, all local legends whose terrifying mythologies succeeded in driving Regina closer to me. The night was alive with ghosts, but we'd arrived at a place where neither of us was scared.

We kissed each other with such fierce and hungry abandon that the flesh around my mouth became desensitized. I was so happy that I wished the same happiness for my sister, and I was ashamed for standing in her way.

“When you're young,” Regina told me, pushing my hand away, “there should always be something left to look forward to.”

“When you're young,” I repeated, certain that we would be so forever.

Two days before our game with Byrd, they met for the last time in the park. It was cold and the wind blew from the north, trapping leaves against the fences of the tennis courts and baseball fields and chasing off the bayou's usual odor of sludge and waste. They rummaged for kindling and downed branches and carried them to the open pavilion and made a fire in the massive pit. They dragged a picnic table close to the blaze and sat next to each other on top with their feet resting on the bench seat. Neither was wearing gloves. Tater opened his jacket and she put her arms inside and warmed her hands.

They were sitting together this way when an old car pulled up. Four young men stepped out, and then a fifth emerged from behind the wheel. It was Curly Trussell, who'd enrolled at one of the new all-white academies in town after his expulsion from our school. The blowing wind and crackling fire kept Angie from hearing Curly and his friends until they were “right on top of us,” she told me later.

Dressed alike in school uniforms, they looked more like a debate team than a pack of hoodlums. Curly was holding a wooden club about eighteen inches long with rings carved on the handle. He walked up to within a few feet of where Angie and Tater were sitting and slammed the club against one of the wooden columns holding up the pavilion. The sound was like a shotgun blast, and it so frightened Tater and Angie that they jumped from their table and stumbled out into the grass. The boys followed them, and Curly slapped the column a second time.

“Who told you you could burn a fire in our pit?” the smallest of them said. “That's my pit.” He pointed.

Angie reached for Tater's hand, and this brought Curly closer. He was standing in front of them now, and the four others formed a circle around them. Curly kept tapping the club against the palm of his hand.

“My pit, my park,” the boy said. “What makes you think you're good enough? Because you play football? Oh, wow. He plays football.”

Tater didn't respond, and Curly pointed the club at him. “How about it, my brother? Are you good enough?”

“Good enough for what?”

“For me to beat your brains in,” Curly said. “Let's start there.” He jabbed the air between them. “Good enough for Angie Boulet, then?” he said. “You good enough for some of that, my brother?”

“Yeah,” Tater answered. “I think I am. But I'm prejudiced.”

“He's prejudiced,” Curly said to his friends. “Y'all hear that? The brother's prejudiced. How does that work?” He laughed even as his expression turned cold.

He seemed to be trying to decide which one of them to strike first, Angie or Tater.

It was at this moment that Angie cocked her head back and spat at Curly, catching him in the right eye. He lunged at her with the club raised, and she went at him, leading with her head and butting him in the middle of his face. Blood shot from his nose and mouth as he dropped to the ground and lay screaming at the feet of his friends. Angie picked up the club and offered it to the other ones—“Take it, come on”—but they backed away. She took a step toward the smallest kid, pretending to want him next, and he took off running for the car. The others carried Curly away.

After they were gone Angie sat with Tater in front of the dying fire. She cried and he did too, reminded once again what they were up against. There was a red mark turning into a bruise on her upper forehead near the hairline. Tater brought his face close to hers and inspected it.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes, it hurts.”

The skin hadn't broken and there wasn't blood. And I would barely notice it later at home when she covered it with makeup and combed over it with her bangs. Tater blew against the injury, then kissed it, his mouth barely touching. “Does it still hurt?”

“A little,” she said.

He kissed her there again. “What about now?”

“No,” she said. “Not now.”

They waited for the cops to come with lights flashing and sirens wailing, but none did. They waited for Curly and his friends to return, but they didn't show either.

They stayed until the fire died down to embers and it was too dark to look for more wood.

We traveled to Shreveport in a pair of Greyhound Scenicruisers chartered by the booster club. Upperclassmen occupied the lead bus; sophomores and freshmen filled the rear one. Everybody wore navy sport coats with gray or khaki slacks and white shirts; neckties also were mandatory. The drive took nearly five hours, and Tater slept most of the way, his head tipped sideways on my shoulder. When he was awake, we played a Cajun card game called bourré.

We both used the toilet in the rear of the cabin, but we did so less out of necessity than curiosity. Neither of us had ever seen a bathroom in a bus before. We stopped in Alexandria for lunch at the Piccadilly Cafeteria, our only break and chance to inhale fresh air. There was a large parking lot in front of the restaurant, and after heavy meals of hamburger steak and seafood gumbo, we threw passes with a football while waiting for the driver to finish up inside. I got in line behind several other players and waited my turn, then with my tie flapping over my shoulder I jogged between queues of parked cars and caught Tater's pass, though not without bobbling it. To make sure everybody remembered, I slammed the ball against the asphalt and celebrated my pretend touchdown with a dance. I seemed to rate laughs and applause from everybody but Coach Cadet, who unceremoniously led me back to the bus by an earlobe.

In Shreveport the buses took us first to the stadium for a walk-through, then to the hotel where we would be staying the night. It was the Shreveporter on Greenwood Road, and Coach Cadet, who'd assigned two players to each room, had made Tater and me the only racially mixed pair. He handed out the room keys while we were still on the bus. “Either of you have a problem with this arrangement?” he asked. He was standing in the aisle, hand held out in front of him, keys lying side by side in his open palm.

“I don't, as long as Rodney agrees not to hog the bed,” Tater said.

“It's not just one bed, Tater. It's two beds. They're doubles.” Coach Cadet looked at me. “Can you handle a whole night with this knucklehead, Rodney?”

“I'm a team player. If it helps us win state, then I'll do it, Coach.”

That evening we had a spaghetti supper on the hotel's dining terrace, and afterward Tater and I watched game film in our room, setting up the projector on a pile of phone books on one of the beds and throwing the light against a bare wall. Byrd's best player was defensive lineman Truman Millicent, the man I would be assigned to block. He was primarily used as a tackle in their base fifty defense, but he also lined up as an end in passing situations when his explosive speed off the snap made him a threat to sack the quarterback. Byrd's last opponent had tried to slow him down with double teams and help from the fullback, but Truman still recorded four sacks in the game. One sequence in particular would play over and over in my head tonight: Truman shucking a block, making quick work of the quarterback, then leaping to his feet and pumping his fists in the air.

“Dude's scary,” I said.

“I bet he's saying the same thing about you.”

“He's No Face and the Bonepicker rolled into one.”

“Look at me, Rodney.” I did as instructed. “You can handle him.”

We cut off the lights at ten o'clock. But about two hours later, he and I were still awake. Visions of Truman had kept me up, but Tater had someone else on his mind. He rolled over on his side and faced me in the dark.

“I'm in love with her, you know?” he said.

I let a minute go by. “Yeah,” I said, “I know.”

Some guys for the other side liked to acknowledge you at the start of a game. You broke the huddle and stepped up to the line of scrimmage, and they greeted you like an old friend. Others glared and muttered and tried to intimidate. If they spoke coherently, it was almost always to reveal some recent moral failure on the part of your mother. Fewer still gave up nothing. Truman Millicent was one of these. He stood only a few feet away from me, but he didn't allow for eye contact. I wondered if he was shy. His hands rested on his hips, his heavily muscled biceps twitching like animals trapped under the skin of his arms.

“Good luck,” I said, hoping to engage him. He didn't respond.

The whole time I stood there sizing him up, he was watching Tater.

It was freezing that night in Independence Stadium—the ground was frozen and so was the rain that swept across the field and sat in brown puddles on the crest. Coach Cadet had decided to defy the weather conditions and open the game with a pass, a call I believed would work until I dropped back in pass protection and felt Truman blow by me like so much wind. Swim moves to the outside had always been easy for me to handle, but the same move to the inside gave me fits. Truman would've picked this up on film. I thought I heard him laugh as he shucked me and dropped Tater for a nine-yard loss.