Hometown Favorite: A Novel (3 page)

Sly might have had an exaggerated view of his skills, but on the
football field, he lived up to them. He was fast enough to evade
most defensive players who got past his front line, and he enjoyed
dancing around the field, dodging tacklers, almost as much as throwing touchdowns. Orphaned at a young age and raised by
a doting grandmother, Sly had created an image of himself that
required a belief that he was superior to most other humans. In
spite of a fawning public, Jesse and Dewayne were the only ones
allowed into his narcissistic bubble, and to his credit, Sly did not
mind his two best friends taking him down a notch or two when
the preoccupation with his ego got out of control.

The three boys were rarely apart, except when the social
norms kept Mississippi's blacks and whites separated, but the
trio pushed even those boundaries. They sat in the pews of
each other's churches or went to a single-color restaurant or
attended a public function with a young lady of the opposite
race. These small challenges to social traditions raised eyebrows
and stimulated behind-the-back conversations, but as long
as the Springdale Tigers kept winning, the boys could do no
wrong and all was right with their world.

When Cherie cleared her throat, Sly redirected his attention
from his fantasy fans to the letters in Cherie's hands. "Is that
D's fan mail, Miss Cherie?"

"I guess you could call it that;' Jesse said.

"What did I tell you about throwing the football in my
house?"

Cherie's mild scold made Sly fidget and produced a rare
sheepish grin on his face. "Sorry. Too excited about State tomorrow.

"Dewayne, you never told us about all these letters;" Jesse
said, waving a stack of letters in front of his face like a fan. "You
sure been secretive"

Dewayne shrugged. "Nothing to tell really."

"Nothing to tell," Sly said, taking a handful of letters out of
Cherie's hand. He began to flip through the stack, discarding
each one into the shoebox after reading the letterhead. "D, you got Penn State, Michigan, Ohio ... too cold for your black
Mississippi blood. The University of Tennessee ... you just
volunteer yourself onto the next one. It looks like the entire
SEC is coming after you. You got your cowboy colleges, and
finally your elite West Coast Rose Bowl contenders. That's an
impressive list ... almost as good as mine"

"What are they offering?" Jesse asked.

Dewayne shrugged his shoulders again, looking more uncomfortable. "Full rides"

"Don't be hanging your head, my brother" Sly slapped Dewayne across his broad shoulders. "This is a proud moment"

"So what should he do?" Cherie asked.

Quiet settled over the boys. Jesse stopped fanning himself
and handed Cherie the letters. She shuffled them into a neat
pile before returning them to the cardboard box.

"What do you want to do, D?" Jessie said, and he picked up
the football in his lap and began to pass it back and forth from
hand to hand. The thump of the ball smacking Jesse's hands
as he played his own game of pitch and catch dominated the
sounds in the room.

"I want to score touchdowns," Dewayne said.

"That's right" Sly went from slap to embrace. "My man here
wants to catch himself a boatload of touchdowns and a fat
NFL contract"

"Mama and I have been doing a lot of praying about this,"
Dewayne said. "We need God's direction."

"What do you think, Sly?" Cherie asked.

"As long as God don't send him to Miami, he can go anywhere that pays to let him play."

"You never told us you decided on Miami," Jesse said.

"Strong program that made me the best offer, eighty-degree
winters, and women as far as the eye can see"

"Careful now in front of your mama;" Cherie said.

"Ain't any of them ever going to replace you, now." Sly leaned
over and gave Cherie a kiss on the cheek.

"Don't be playing with me." Cherie waved him away, unable
to resist a smile. "Be serious now. Where should my boy go to
college? The coaches have been talking. The recruiters have
been calling. But I want to hear from his best friends."

"Miss Cherie, D needs to get as far away from Springdale
as he can;" Jesse said. "I think a West Coast school might be
his best bet'

"No lie, Miss Cherie;' Sly said. "With our boy's hands he can
pull in those passes. The sports pages like to see that kind of
beauty and that is what gets the attention of the NFL:"

Sly intercepted the ball from Jesse, stopping the hypnotic
rhythm of the passing. He stretched out his passing arm dramatically and pretended to throw a "Hail Mary" out the front
window in the westward direction. "Go west, young man."

Dewayne just smiled and then patted Cherie on her shoulder.
"We need to go, Mama."

"Don't want to be late for your last pep rally," Cherie said.

"No, ma'am;" Jesse said, springing from the recliner. "We win
State, I'm buying you a new recliner." He kissed Cherie on the
cheek before bounding out the front door.

Sly repeated Jesse's farewell on Cherie's cheek with an extra
"You know I love you,' and Cherie added her own tender pat
to his face.

"You coming?" Dewayne asked.

"Of course I'll be there;" she said.

Like his friends before him, Dewayne kissed his mother on
the cheek.

"You know the Lord is gonna steer us right, Mama," he
said.

"No doubt, son, no doubt," she said. "Now go on. Don't be
late."

Dewayne squeezed his mother's arm before walking out
the door.

Cherie picked up the few letters that still lay on the floor,
folded them, and replaced them in the shoebox. Before sealing
the box, she laid her hand on the letters and closed her eyes.

"Lord, we need thy wisdom," she whispered. "Let the right
one rise to the top."

The only location large enough to accommodate the town of
Springdale for the pep rally was the Webb family farm. The level
of play, the team's competence, and the town spirit had not had
a simultaneous appearance before in Springdale, and talk was
that it would be another generation before the convergence of
the three would happen again.

Neighboring counties could spot the three blazing bonfires. The multitude roared as the head coach introduced each
starting player, accompanied by a blast from the marching
band's brass section as the player dashed into position facing the crowd. Cherie had maneuvered onto a small rise a
short distance from the center of the celebrations. This bond
of humanity had one goal in mind: to unite their individual
desires and energies into a force powerful enough to win the
support and blessing of the gods of football, and to raise the
town of Springdale out of the universal plainness of smalltown America.

Jake Hopper, the receivers' and quarterbacks' coach for the
Tigers, did not like standing with the other coaches and staff
and the team for these football rituals. He preferred anonymity.
He preferred the controlled discipline of the practice field or the blood rush of the game. He accepted these chaotic traditions as a necessary evil.

He ambled through the crowd until he spied Cherie. Here
was a friend, a calm in the maelstrom. He moved toward her,
but a group of teenagers bolted in front of him, blocking his
path and nearly trampling him as they rushed to get a better
view of their heroes. He waited for the herd to pass and then
made steady progress toward his goal.

Jake stepped up beside Cherie. "And what do you think of
our pagan rites?"

"It's loud enough to bring down Jericho's walls," Cherie said.
"I should have brought my OSHA earplugs from the factory."

"That assembly line working you hard?"

Cherie cupped her hands over her ears. "Hard enough, but
I don't think it ever gets as loud as these kids"

"Humanity changes little, I'm afraid, except through calamity, and then reluctantly," he said, approving his pithy statement
with a smirk.

Jake Hopper gave of himself body and soul to taking the
God-given talent of each player and molding it. In his heart
of hearts, he considered himself a sculptor of living, flesh-andblood models, shaping and perfecting the fluidity of speed and
motion of the human body. And a well-executed, unrepeatable
moment on the field brought a bigger smile to his face than a
touchdown or even a win.

Jake prized the singular bond between player and coach,
a bond of souls when competitive physical play brings out a
special bliss between men. Jake and Dewayne had that bond,
an idealized bond of a father and son, free of responsibility beyond the rules, discipline, and training necessary for the game.
Dewayne had no father. Jake had no children. Yet the two men
provided for each other what was missing in their lives.

"Excuse me for being forward, but if all our sons had mothers such as you, the world would be whole," Jake said, a bold
statement, especially from someone unaccustomed to making
them. Perhaps the sips of vodka before arriving at the pep
rally inspired the boldness. He felt a pang of regret, a flushed
embarrassment at the compliment. He was thankful for the
darkness. It helped conceal his chagrin.

At that moment, the music from the marching band raised
its decibel level, and the cheerleaders, shimmering pom-poms
stuck to the top of each raised arm, began their escort of the
senior boys to the front of the team.

"Hush now. They're about to introduce my boy," Cherie
said.

Jake turned his eyes away from Cherie and wondered how life
might have been different had he met Cherie in their younger
days. She might have spoken the same words just now but
substituted them with "our boy." The thought produced in him
a pang of regret.

Half a dozen buses hauled the Springdale Tigers, the cheerleaders, the marching band, and most of the student body to
the state championship game. Like a large military convoy, the
citizens of Springdale followed the buses for the two-hour drive
to the stadium in Jackson, Mississippi. Sly, Dewayne, and Jesse
sat in the very back of the team bus. There was no boisterous
behavior or extraneous noise. The players had slipped into their
game zone. The season's preceding games had already made
the history books. This last effort would define the team and
the character of each individual player.

"I ain't accustomed to losing, you know that?" Sly's voice was
louder than necessary. "I get my way on the field."

"Your way on the field is the only way," Jesse said.

"I am the way," Sly said, and he and Jesse pounded fists in
front of Dewayne.

"Be careful now;' Dewayne said. "Save it for the field'

They had faced nothing like this before, a threshold into a
new phase of life. It required a form of courage they could not
understand, a courage that would provide the resolve to move
beyond tonight into manhood regardless of the outcome, and
the bus sped them toward that end.

Jake Hopper ambled down the center aisle to the rear of the bus and sat down on an armrest. He had refrained from drinking before this game, although he had yielded to a swallow of
mouthwash before leaving home. He scanned the faces of the
three boys sprawled out on the extended seat in the back.

"You guys have fun tonight," he said, and the boys nodded.
"Dewayne, you and Sly play like always ... pitch and catch
... nothing's different, nothing's special ... Dewayne, just let
the ball come to you. Sly knows how to place it. This is your
moment, and I'm..."

The eyes of Jake's audience diverted above his head. He
turned around to see the head coach standing behind him,
and he yielded to his superior.

"Jesse, you and Dewayne got to remember what this team
always does in a bind. They pull out their quick pitch. You got to
be ready for that. The running back will line up behind the tight
end instead of the gap between the guard and tackle. That's the
sign for the play. Heads-up for you, Dewayne ... you've got the
read. When you see that lineup, shout, `Judas!' three times, and
then widen out a little more and rush up the field to force the
running back inside. Jesse, you come in and clean his clock. Put a
chokehold on this team ... force them to use the Judas play, then
finish them off with some smashmouth tackling. No overtimes.
Just a clean game and we're out of there with a championship."