Tumbleweeds (17 page)

But would it be enough?

Every night the week of the game, Cathy went to bed with fear clutching her heart. What if Trey and John, too, of course, were hurt? All bets would be off then. Why couldn’t the boys have been tennis players or golfers? As the play-off season had progressed, her dislike grew for the sport of football and her disgust with a town that put such strain and pressure on its players. But as much as she hated to admit it, she owed the sport for her and Trey having become even closer. Ever since the days leading to the district game, he seemed unable to be away from her and could not get to her house fast enough after practice. “I need you,” he’d say. “You make all the bad things go away.”

What bad things? The school and town had thrown themselves at his feet, adoring him even more because he did not stick out his chest and strut and posture like some of the other players but accepted the adulation with John’s quiet reserve and distance, which had deepened since the week of the district game. “A coach’s dream—true team leaders,” Coach Turner described him and John. They were offered free meals at Bennie’s Burgers and Monica’s Café, movie tickets, new jackets from a sporting-goods store, none of which they accepted.

“Please, God,” Cathy prayed. “I do not ask for Kersey to win the game, only that you spare Trey and John injuries so that we can all go to the University of Miami together.”

Sportswriters descended upon the small prairie town, hanging out in Bennie’s Burgers and Monica’s Café across the courthouse square to
report on the excitement gripping the community the eve of the biggest football game in its high school’s history. One reporter described the atmosphere as so electrically charged that “a lighted match could blast the whole place off the map of Texas.” They searched out and limelighted anyone connected to the Bobcat team who could provide a human-interest story. One of them was its head coach, featured in an article that appeared in major Texas newspapers and began Trey’s lifelong aversion to members of the news media.

“You’d have to live in Kersey to understand the influence of the man,” the reporter wrote, stating that the town took its marching orders from Coach Ron Turner. He had strict rules that his coaches, players, water boy, and student assistant—anybody associated with the Kersey Bobcats—were to follow. There was to be no talking to the news media or fraternizing with the townspeople, including members of the booster club, two days before a game. After practice, every member of the team was to be off the streets and at home, where they were expected to concentrate on the task at hand in peace and quiet. They were to minimize TV viewing and telephone conversations and avoid distractions. He left it to the mothers to see that their sons ate right, got to bed at a decent hour, and avoided stress.

The “two-day blackout period,” the reporter went on, was adhered to by everyone in town and had to be experienced to be believed. On late Wednesday and Thursday afternoons when dusk was gathering, you could hear a leaf drop on the streets. As if not to disturb the Bobcats at their rest, merchants and customers spoke in hushed voices, chatter was quiet in places like Bennie’s Burgers, horn toots to summon waitresses for car service at the drive-in were short, and no teenager with loud mufflers dared drag Main.

Ron Turner was definitely not a man to be bucked. He ruled with the iron hand of deserved respect after six successful seasons as head coach of Kersey High School (though none had included winning the state championship). He took no guff from fathers, armchair
quarterbacks, or booster club members who held the keys to the city and the ears of the school board. He lived by the rules he set for his players and eschewed alcohol, tobacco, and profanity. “Mouth filth,” he informed his players, “is the language of the ignorant and insecure. Smoking and drinking are the crutches of the weak.”

The article stated that he was made to order for a cocky, highly intelligent, fatherless quarterback like Trey Don Hall.

His face afire with humiliation and embarrassment, Trey read—in addition to being described as “recalcitrant”—of his parents’ early abandonment and how Coach Ron Turner had filled the void of his missing father. Aware of Trey’s sensitivity to his orphan status, Coach Turner apologized for the slant the reporter gave his interview, saying he’d praised Trey as the son he would like to have had. Trey had believed him and was thrilled Coach Turner thought of him that way, but he cringed that now the whole world knew his parents hadn’t wanted him. That night, he held Cathy tighter than ever before.

Except for residents of the nursing home and a couple of sheriff’s deputies who’d called the wrong side of the coin to determine who would have to stay behind, the town of ten thousand was practically deserted the day of the game. A caravan of assorted vehicles with gray and white window flags flapping and painted with exhortations to D
ECLAW
H
OUSTON
W
HITE
had set off at dawn to carry the Bobcats’ supporters to Dallas. On this Saturday in the middle of December, only one man walked the quiet, holiday-decorated streets, his dog limping beside him. He held a transistor radio to his ear and a coiled whip by his side. Far away and long ago had the star of this show stood shivering in his backyard, he recalled, listening to a pregame broadcast. Was the measure he took of the boy that night true for the man to come? Time would eventually tell. For today, the kid had what it took to make the town proud. Tomorrow was another day.

T
EAM CAPTAINS
T
REY AND
J
OHN AND
G
IL
B
AKER
lined up to meet the referees and the captains of the Tigers for the coin toss in the center of the field. Their appearance and bearing during these tense, dramatic moments had already become the stuff of legend. Other teams fooled around at their end of the field in a hodgepodge of footgear as long as their shoes met turf regulations. Since no particular standard dictated uniform socks of high school players, they could wear long, short, or none at all. Length and cut of hair were also the players’ choice. Not so with members of Coach Turner’s team. At his instruction, every aspect of the Bobcats’ game regalia was uniform. Players must wear their jersey sleeves rolled down, knee-high socks tucked under the elastic band of their pants, shoes of the same make and style, hair cut short and neatly trimmed.

Thus presenting a united front, the three captains stood abreast in respectful silence, their expressions schooled to appear calm and impassive as they waited for the officials to walk out onto the field, the signal for the team leaders to join them for the coin toss. It was quite a moment when Trey and John, topping six-three, with a shorter, stockier, but no less impressive Gil Baker between them, set off in step at an unhurried pace, gazes steady, left arms cradling their helmets, right arms held straight at their sides.

One sportswriter would write of this contest: “The Bobcats’ captains approached their challengers with the dignity of knights dispatched to confront a company of knaves.”

Such descriptions set well with Coach Turner. “You wouldn’t shake hands wearing gloves,” he explained to his captains, “and you don’t greet your opponents in your helmets. You show ’em the courtesy of your face. But when the toss is over, you put your helmets on in their presence to let ’em know you mean business.”

Among a sellout crowd, Cathy watched these proceedings wedged between her grandmother and Mabel Church, her eyes glued on Trey. A sober Bert Caldwell stood on the other side of Emma, binoculars
focused on the field. Cathy and Mabel held hands, both in the throes of the common fear that had weighed like rocks in their stomachs all football season. The band director had granted Cathy special dispensation to sit in the stands after she’d gone to him with the unorthodox request that she be excused from participation in this final game. Had he not done so, for the first time in her life she was prepared to abandon her part of the whole, inconsequential though it was. In other words, she would resign from the band. She reasoned that the contribution of her flute to the fight song and her marching position during the band’s halftime performance would not be missed. Meanwhile, she’d be sitting with Mabel and her grandmother where she could keep an eye on Trey and never miss a moment of the game or a movement of him on the field.

This is what it’s going to be like when he’s playing football at Miami and after we’re married and he’s in the NFL
, she thought, the tightness in her chest hardly allowing her to breathe. She would live in a daze of anxiety for his safety—a limbo of suspended peace until the season was over. She hated that he played football, but, dear God, he loved the sport and had played at the heart of it since he was old enough to hold a pigskin. People changed when they lost what they had always loved, so what was she to do but support him and nurse his wounds and soothe his bruises until the next week while she prayed that he would survive another game?

A cheer went up around her. The Kersey Bobcats had won the toss.

Helmets back on, Trey and John, looking like a double exposure, trotted with Gil to the sidelines. For a brief instant, Trey glanced toward the band section where she was supposed to be sitting. Her heart held.
He doesn’t know where to look for me
, she thought, gripped by the foolish notion her disappearance might affect his concentration.
Don’t be stupid. Nothing can prevent him from keeping his mind on his business out there.

In the brightly lit locker room before the game, the Kersey
Bobcats had gathered around their coach, some kneeling, each supporting himself with a hand on his helmet. The coach’s voice was calm when he delivered his final pep talk to the finest group of boys he’d told reporters he’d ever coached. “They’re bigger than you, we’ve already given them that,” he said, “but you’re smarter, quicker, better coached, and better disciplined. You’ve got integrity and courage, and the biggest hearts in the business. You know what to expect. Be ready for it. To win, they’ll resort to what they are, all they know, but you let them draw the penalties, not you. And boys”—his voice wavered, trembled in his throat, “if you resort to what
you
are, all
you
know, you’ll be bringing home the trophy tonight. John, how ’bout leading us in a little prayer?”

Coach Turner’s prophecy was realized in the final minutes of the game when the Bobcats trailed 21 to 24. Bloodied, exhausted, the offensive line held the Tigers away from Trey to allow him time to fire one of his bullet passes into the magical grip of John Caldwell, who, on his last legs, zigzagged his way around the defense’s desperate grapples to run the final five yards for a touchdown.

In less than the minute left to play, the ball sailed over the crossbar of the goalpost for the extra point, and the sound of the final whistle was never heard in the ecstatic roar that exploded from the Kersey side of Texas Stadium. Cathy and Mabel sat stunned, their hands entwined, tears of relief rolling down their faces as the townspeople around them thumped their backs in joyous celebration. “It’s over, Miss Mabel, it’s over,” Cathy kept repeating.

She had no way of knowing how prophetic those words would prove to be.

A
t the beginning of February 1986, Cathy was notified by mail at her home that she had been selected as a finalist for a National Merit Scholarship, guaranteeing her a spot on the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine’s premed track. In a school ceremony, she was presented with a Certificate of Merit in recognition of her outstanding performance in the competition as well as awarded a full scholarship bestowed through a charitable foundation administered by the First Baptist Church of Kersey, Texas. Both were contingent upon her entering an accredited university in the fall after graduation for four years of uninterrupted study. She wrote Laura Rhinelander, with whom she’d stayed in touch and to whom the news came as no surprise, that she would not be joining her at USC in September.

And on the first Wednesday of February known as Signing Day, amid fanfare from reporters, TV crews, fans, and classmates, Trey and John signed letters of intent to play football for the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida. It was official: Trey had a shot at playing quarterback and John Caldwell wide receiver for the Miami Hurricanes. Sammy Mueller—as he had telephoned to congratulate Trey and John after the state play-off game—called to welcome them to the team.

“What is this?” Bert Caldwell asked John a few days after the signing. Frowning, he held up the college admissions book of Loyola University for explanation. “What’s it doing in our house?”

John retrieved it from his hand. “I don’t know who had it sent to me. It showed up in the mailbox one day.”

“You’ve been reading it. There are some pages dog-eared.”

“I was interested. Father Richard is a graduate of Loyola.”

Bert Caldwell’s frown deepened. He had not touched a sip of liquor since the district game. His job still called him away for periods at a time, but he came home without his blowsy blondes or temper or the smell of alcohol on his breath. He’d had the house cleaned from stem to stern and, following Mabel’s decorating advice, bought new spreads for John’s twin beds and draperies and slipcovers for the living room and replaced the carpet.

“You guys can start coming over here and spending a few evenings with your old pop,” he told John, his tone jocular but his gaze like that of a dog hoping to be let in from the cold.