The Rise of Rachel Stark (10 page)

"Now, you boys might think that
what you are doing is a noble thing. But I'm telling you it is a
stupid, selfish thing that you would regret for the rest of your
lives. Don't embarrass yourselves, your parents, your classmates,
Chante High and this town and its people by trying to pull off this
utterly ridiculous stunt!

"Now, Coach O'Connor expects, and
I expect, you four to be at football practice today, at football
practice tomorrow, and on the field at 2 p.m. Friday for the
kickoff against the Rockford Wildcats."

He stood up. His face grew red,
and his eyes narrowed. He pounded his desk and shouted.

"Do. I. Make. My. Self.
Clear?"

The players looked at him for a
moment, and rose from their chairs in unison. Then Rodney spoke for
the first time.

"You and coach can expect all you
want. But whether we are on the field Friday is completely up to
you."

They turned and filed out of the
room.

●●●

Without a word, the four went to
the boys' locker room, removed their game and practice uniforms,
cleats and all, from their lockers and took them to the sports
equipment room, where they put them in neat piles on a long wooden
table.

There were three methods of
communication in Chante in 1965: Telephone, telegram, and tell a
student.

"On to the next phase," Sheldon
said to Tabby when he met her in the hallway 15 minutes later.
"Peterson didn't budge. Neither did we. We have turned in our
uniforms. Spread the word."

Jimmy, Bull and Rodney dropped the
same message here and there around the school.

Within minutes, the sports
equipment manager, a student, went to the sports equipment room to
see whether there was any truth to the rumor.

Sure enough. There the uniforms
were. The rumor mill suddenly got hotter, and phones started
ringing all over the school.

Steve Peterson, the principal,
heard from Ed Reynolds, the school board president.

"What the hell is going on,
Steve?"

"There's nothing to it. Coach and
I met with them this morning, and they're full of big talk, but
there's no way they're going to quit the team."

"But somebody said they've already
turned in their uniforms."

"It's a bluff. It's not going to
happen."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

Calls to Mr. Peterson from other
members of the board followed in quick succession. He gave them all
the same assurances.

Coach O'Connor got calls from the
same people, and he stuck to the party line, albeit with
considerably more profanity than Mr. Peterson.

Then the coach heard from Bob
Davies, who, as the coach of the Rockford Wildcats, was 45 miles
away.

"Ted," Coach Davies said, "I just
heard that we're suddenly favored to beat you guys
Friday."

"Well," O'Connor said. He heaved a
big sigh. "I sure hope that's not the case, Bob, but, you know, at
this point I'm not sure of anything."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You know what happened that
kind of scared me? When Steve Peterson lit into them and told them,
ordered them actually, to get ready to play Friday, that he
expected them to do that, they just got right up out of their
chairs, one of them said you can expect anything you want, and they
walked right out of the room. I think they went straight down to
the locker room and turned in their uniforms."

"Wow."

More grist for the mill. And it
bounced back to Chante with the speed of light.

Meanwhile, Tabby was calling some
of her old contacts at the Neehawk News and the radio and
television station in the area. The floodgates now were
open.

Reporters and television cameras
showed up at Chante's football practice that afternoon, and the
first thing they noticed was that Sheldon Beasley, Bull Evenshot,
Jimmy Blaze and Rodney Stark, the sophomore phenom from Tennessee,
were missing.

Sheldon, Bull, Jimmy and Rodney
took Rachel and left school early and drove up to the cemetery to
avoid the media. But Tabby stayed behind to be their
spokeswoman.

"I can confirm," Tabby told
reporter after reporter, on camera and off, "that Sheldon Beasley,
Bull Evenshot, Jimmy Blaze and Rodney Stark have left the Chante
High football team."

Will they return in time for the
game Friday?

"That depends on the school
administration," Tabby said.

She tried, with only moderate
success, to explain why the players had quit.

"Bullying?" said one reporter.
"What's that?"

Others indicated that one student
"teasing" another, or playing a prank, did not seem like a good
reason to do what the four Chante players were doing.

She gave some examples of what was
going on at Chante High, but most of the reporters just shook their
heads.

Moreover, Tabby was battling the
administration for the hearts and minds of the news media. Mr.
Peterson and Coach O'Connor told reporters they were hopeful that
the players would return to the team by Friday.

And the school released this
statement to the media:

"Chante High has a proud history
of outstanding academic and athletic achievement. For a few
football players, however well-meaning they might be, to suggest
that some Chante students are now being 'bullied' by others, is not
only misguided, it is patently untrue.

"The administration and football
coach Ted O'Connor are hopeful that these players will soon return
to the team. They have been urged to do so. If they do, no
punishment awaits them. On the contrary, they will be treated with
the utmost respect by their teammates, just as the vast majority of
Chante students are treated with respect by their peers.

"The student body at Chante High
is a happy family. Despite this temporary 'bump in the road,' it
will continue to be so."

The entire statement appeared not
only in the local media, but in the Omaha and Lincoln newspapers as
well.

Coach O'Connor, complaining that
the "defectors" had already hurt the team, ran the reporters off
the field and banned them from attending the Thursday practice.
Meanwhile, he moved running backs Danny Jackson and Oscar Olney, as
well as second-team replacements for Sheldon and Jimmy, into the
first-team lineup. Wednesday's practice did not go well, "to say
the least," O'Connor told reporters afterward.

Things were not going so well for
the school administration either. An angry school board convened an
emergency session, closed to the public, in the principal's
office.

Most of the board members blamed
Mr. Peterson for "letting things get out of control." But a
late-arriving member said she had been listening to a couple of
call-in programs on the radio, and that a wide majority of the
callers supported the administration, and that many of the callers
referred to the four football players as "spoiled
brats."

Based on that news, the board
finally decided the best option for the school would be to
"stonewall it," and hope that the players would change their minds
at the last minute.

And yet, the whole town was on
edge.

This, after all, was
football.

●●●

The four "spoiled brats" plus
Rachel had been monitoring the events on Sheldon's car radio as
they sat among the headstones. They alternately laughed, moaned,
cursed, shouted and shook their fists at the radio, cheered when
they heard Tabby, and booed when they heard Mr. Peterson or Coach
O'Connor.

"I think," Sheldon said when it
seemed that they had heard enough and probably should go home,
"that we should all be sick tomorrow."

There was unanimous – and instant
– agreement.

Rachel, who secretly was relieved
when she did not hear her name mentioned on the radio, and Rodney
got out of the car and started their walk home.

Sheldon turned his Ford around and
drove back to Chante. He dropped Bull and Jimmy off at Jimmy's
grandparents' house. After Bull's parents died in a house fire a
couple of years ago, he had lived with Jimmy.

When Sheldon got home, there was
Tabby, sitting on the front steps of her house, which was next door
to his.

"Hi, good lookin'," he
said.

"Hi, Shel," she said. He sat down
beside her. She gave him a kiss.

"How were things up in the
cemetery?" she asked.

"Oh, very interesting," he said.
"It was so great, hearing you talk on the radio. We all cheered."
She laughed.

"Well, what do you think?" Tabby
said.

"I think," he said, "that we are
going to win this thing."

"So do I," she said. "But I'm glad
to hear you say it."

"And ... and we all decided we
should not go to school tomorrow. And I don't think you should
either," he said.

"I'm even more glad to hear you
say that."

She paused.

"Do you think they are going to
give in tomorrow?" she asked.

"Depends. On how much pressure
they get. But I would guess they'll wait till Friday. They're
waiting for us to blink, and so they're going to wait until the
very last minute. But I can tell you we're not going to blink. Just
in case you were wondering."

"Never for a second."

"So I think what happens is that
they'll wait until Friday morning, and then they'll call an
emergency assembly, make up some lame, cockamamie story that they
have gotten new information and that they're going to investigate
how widespread the bullying problem is blah, blah, blah.

"If they do that much, then the
four of us will suit up and go out and kick the Rockford Wildcats'
asses."

"Yay! Go Lions!" She paused. "I
know how much of a sacrifice this is for you, Sheldon. I know how
much all of you love to play football."

"Yeah, well. Like Rodney said.
It's just a game. And that's how you have to think of it. It really
is just a game."

"I know. But yet … "

"Anyway, even if they do back
down, that's not the end of it. They'll have to carry through. They
can't just say they're going to do something and then not do it. So
we'll have to keep the pressure on. They maybe won't do exactly
what we suggested. They might even have some better ideas, who
knows? But as long as they do something, maybe life will get easier
for Rachel."

"And for a lot of other
kids."

"Yeah. For sure. By the way, I've
been meaning to ask, what did your Dad say to you about your little
talk with Mr. Peterson?"

Tabby laughed.

"Well, he did say that I could
have accomplished the same thing without being disrespectful of Mr.
Peterson. And he was right, I'll admit. I kind of lost my temper
there for a minute. And maybe someday I'll apologize to Mr.
Peterson. Dad said I should.

"But then he also said that now
that I had started something I should be sure to follow through
with it. And I said I would.

"I thought sure he would say I
shouldn't use his name to bully someone, but he didn't say a thing
about that. And I did name-drop to Mr. Peterson, saying my Dad was
the mayor blah, blah, blah, which was probably not a good idea, and
I'm not going to do that again.

"But – and this is the best part –
Dad said he told Mr. Peterson that I was 18 years old and therefore
almost legally an adult. And he said he lost control of me when I
was 12 years old, so he sure as hell couldn't control me now at
18."

Sheldon threw his head back and
roared.

"Really?" Sheldon said.

"Really. Mr. Peterson probably
didn't think it was funny, but I sure did."

Sheldon laughed again, and Tabby
joined him.

●●●

But the day wasn't
over.

Sometime after dark a pickup with
its lights off drove slowly up the street and stopped in front of
Sheldon and Tabby's homes. Then two figures in the bed of the truck
starting throwing raw eggs and lighted firecrackers at the
houses.

"You'd better play ball, Beasley,"
one of them shouted, "or next time we'll set your house on
fire!"

The pickup then roared off down
the street.

Similar incidents took place
elsewhere. Grandpa Simpson's house, where Jimmy and Bull lived, was
egged. Crowds rallied in front of Steve Peterson and Tom O'Connor's
homes, chanting "Let's play ball! Let's play ball!"

Demonstrators also showed up at
the football field, where they TP-ed the goal posts, and in front
of the high school, even though there was no one to demonstrate to
in either place.

Oddly enough, no egg-throwers or
demonstrators showed up at the Stark residence.

Most of the demonstrators appeared
to be adults, and in many cases alcohol seemed to be fueling the
passion for football.