151 Days (16 page)

“You know what is even worse than him not knowing what you are privately thinking?” she asked me. Again I said nothing, because I had known Gayle long enough to know she would tell me even if I said nothing. “If he didn’t think he deserved to be on the team, he must
really
think he doesn’t deserve to be captain.” She got up and put my check down. “Now I’m not an expert on male egos, but I do know that once bruised it can take years and years to heal.”

“You think he is going to blow it?” I asked her.

“I think
he
thinks he is going to blow it. And that makes it an almost certainty that he will.” She shrugged. “But then again, I’m not a sports coach, so what do I know?”

I sighed as she walked away. Once again, she was right. If Brad had no confidence, then he was just a mistake waiting to happen. I went to reach for my wallet when I saw the note written across the bill from Gayle.

“As a rule, I don’t date guys who have had a foot cut off because they like too much sugar in their coffee.” Under that, she had put a line through the total saying it was on her.

I threw some bills down on the table and made a hasty retreat before my mind could figure out if she was asking me to ask her out or if I was just being stupid.

I
SPENT
the next morning sitting in my office trying to figure out how to approach this Brad thing.

He needed to feel like he deserved to be there, earned that spot. That meant some team building, but I was worried because what if the team wasn’t in the mood to follow? I didn’t have any doubts that Brad was the best guy for the job, but that didn’t mean the rest of the kids were just going to follow a gay captain. The worst part was that if you had asked me last year if I would have followed one, I probably would have told you “Hell no.”

If they made a fuss, it was just what Raymond was waiting for to get Greymark kicked out of here. It wasn’t discrimination if the other students complained first. I was halfway through “Ring of Fire” when my door burst open, and Kyle was standing there saying something to me.

I popped the earphones out, and he said something else, but I didn’t hear him because of the noise coming from behind him.

A fight.

I got up and rushed out the door, pushing kids out of my way as I walked into the center of the argument. Which was just in time to hear Tony Wright call someone a faggot.

I took a deep breath and then proclaimed in my best Charlton Heston from
The Ten Commandants
, “Tony Wright.” Even though his back was to me, I saw him freeze, which was the intended result for that kind of voice. “Did you just call someone a faggot?” He looked around like he was going to get some help from someone, but he realized he was very much alone, literally and figuratively. “I asked you a question,” I said, shaking some sense into him. Wright was one of those students that football ruined. They took a mean boy and had him work out, bulk up, and then reward him for hitting other people. I remember Brad’s father being the same way at this age, and let me tell you, it did nothing to raise his value in my eyes. When I was barely older than him, I was holding a rifle and being taught how to best kill a man if he got too close to you in combat. We were lean, we were hungry, and we were always taught that the skills we were learning should never be used on anyone who wasn’t a mortal enemy. But there were always guys who wanted to pick fights—over women, over dick size, over whatever they wanted to at the time, because they knew they could beat the hell out of any three guys. I hated it then, and I hated it more now.

“I-I didn’t say nothing” was all he could mutter, sounding like a damn infant too.

I was about to tell him he was in some real trouble when Tony’s voice came from behind me, sounding like it was from a speaker. “What did you say to me, you little faggot?”

I looked over and saw the sheriff’s daughter holding a camera phone. “Oh, I’m sorry, was I not supposed to record that?”

Her finger hit the replay button, and she held the video up to my face and played it again.

“In his defense, ‘I didn’t say nothing’ does in fact mean he said something. So not so much a lie as just bad grammar.” It was Kyle, and he got a good laugh out of that from the crowd.

I wasn’t in the laughing mood.

“Congratulations, Wright, you just became the first student at Foster High to meet Kelly’s Laws. If you’re lucky, your name will go up on a plaque with the rest of the intolerant people that will come after you. I’m sure your dad will be so proud.” I meant it, because his dad was no better than he was. Tony was the redneck son of a redneck asshole, and if anyone needed any proof that hatred was hereditary, all they had to do was look to Tony Jr. for that.

I tossed him in a chair and sat down across from him behind my desk. He looked like he had just eaten a bug from the look on his face.

This needed to stop, now. If I just turned this idiot over he would get suspended, his father would blame Brad and the rest of the liberal assholes that have taken over this school, and Tony here would get off without any feeling of personal blame. And that wasn’t going to fly with me. What this needed was some good, old-fashioned American guilt.

“So tell me, Tony,” I said calmly. “You really don’t like Greymark, do you?”

I saw the conflicting feelings on his face. He knew if he said he had no problem that it would be a bold-faced lie, and that would make two he had said to me within five minutes. But if he admitted it, then wouldn’t that be worse? I let him stew for a few seconds before continuing.

“Don’t answer that. I can tell. You have to know yelling at him in the hallway is a waste of time, right? I mean, come on, in the end all you do is get in trouble, right?”

He nodded slowly.

“So then how about this. How about I keep him after practice one day, and the rest of the team is gone. Then you can come in there and
talk
with him,” I said, making air quotes. “Sound like a plan?”

He nodded slowly again.

“I mean, no witness, no evidence, just you and him and an empty gym. You can do that, right?”

Now a small smile and a nod.

“That’s what I thought. Now I have bats there. You can bring a tarp, right?”

He stopped nodding and smiling all at once. “A what?” he asked.

“A tarp,” I said again. “For his body.” Another pause. “We are talking about killing him, right?”

Tony’s face went white as he moved further back in his chair. “I don’t want to kill him,” he said loudly, almost in a panic.

“Don’t you?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. “I assumed because it was this same kind of harassing shit that got Kelly to kill himself, and I just thought you were going to try to steer Brad in that direction too.” I got up slowly. “I mean, what did we learn by Kelly putting a pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger? That you can only mock and attack fags for so long before they kill themselves? I was just trying to cut to the chase, give you a chance to do it yourself. You know, feel the blood splatter as you beat him to death.”

His eyes were wide, and I think he might have been shaking, but I’m not sure.

“Because what other reason would you have for screaming and calling him a faggot in front of everyone if you weren’t trying to drive him to kill himself? We just got done burying one of them. You couldn’t have forgotten this quickly, so I assumed this was your plan.” I walked over to him, and he pushed back in his chair even more. “I mean, you do have a plan, right, Tony? You aren’t just out there spreading hate because you’re bored or because you’re jealous. You can’t be openly mocking a guy for the same reasons a friend of yours killed himself without thinking the same thing could happen again. So, Tony….” I put my hands on the arms of his chair. “What is your plan?”

He was looking up at me, terrified. Not at me, but at my words. I could see his brain connecting the dots, and the image it was painting was not a good one. “I mean, between you and me, Tony, don’t you want him to kill himself?”

“No, sir!” he said pleading. “I don’t.”

I let my voice go and bellowed at him. “
Then why would you keep calling him a faggot
?” He flinched and then began to break down in front of me. “Why would you come all the way down here just to mock him on the day he was named captain? I can’t figure out a reason, Tony, other than you want him to kill himself just like Kelly. That you saw Kelly’s death as a good thing and want more of it. Because there is no other reason here, son.”

I paused as he openly sobbed.

“I know you love your dad, and you should. But your old man has some opinions on things that are wrong, Tony, dead wrong. And I don’t say that from opinion or from guessing. I say that as someone who passes Kelly’s grave every week when I go see my wife’s. Those words and those actions kill—they kill. And if you aren’t trying to get someone to die, then you need to stop saying them.”

I knelt down in front of him. “Do you understand what I am saying, son?”

His face was a wreck as he blubbered something and nodded.

“It’s okay not to agree with the lifestyle, Tony. But it’s their life. You have to let them live it.”

He leaned forward and threw his arms around me. I froze, surprised, and I heard him cry. “I just… I just keeping thinking if they just kept their mouths shut, Kelly would still be here.” He clung to me and just cried. “I miss him so much, Coach…. Why do I feel this way?”

I pulled back, and though I wanted to say something that would make him feel good, I needed to tell him the truth.

“You feel this way because you feel guilty, Tony. Because you know you were partly responsible for his death.” He didn’t say a word, but I could see the guilt in his eyes. “You can’t keep hating Brad for this. You need to forgive yourself. You know that, right?”

He nodded as he wiped his nose. “Am I suspended?”

I shook my head. “No, but you need to realize you can’t keep doing this. It isn’t their fault.”

“I know, Coach,” he said miserably. “I just miss Kelly so much….”

Neither one of us knew what to say, so after a while I just let him go to class.

It got me no closer to figuring out the Brad problem.

I
N
THE
old days, it would have been easy.

If I had doubts about a team rallying behind their captain, I would simply go on a warpath and start training them mercilessly. There would be general bitching, but no one would say anything, at least not to me. That technique solved two problems. The first was that it gave them a common enemy: me. Nothing unites people together more than a bad guy to bitch about. The second, and more important, would be that sooner or later one of them would go ask the captain to talk with me about easing off some. Though they weren’t conscious of it, the team would acknowledge that the captain was their leader and ask him to speak for everyone in telling me I had gone too far.

It’s a shame that wouldn’t work now.

I had gotten the report of what happened in the hallway with Tony, and from what I heard, it was encouraging but not in any way proof Brad was home free. It took people a bit too long to fight back against Tony’s bashing. It was only pride in the team that motivated the other kids to fight back. I needed to know their acceptance of my decision wasn’t just a reflex from being grateful they had made the team. They needed to really bond around Brad, or when things got bad—and every season, they did—they would turn on him, and in turn, themselves.

I just had no earthly idea how to do that.

I had settled in for a quiet Saturday night when my phone rang. I must have been one of the few people left in the country who still had a phone connected to a wire, but I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, it was a step forward that the phone had buttons instead of a dial.

“Hello?”

“Coach Gunn?” a male voice asked on the other end. It didn’t sound like a student from the tone of voice, but it held the same reverence I was used to hearing in kids.

“You got him,” I answered, trying to place the voice.

“This is Tyler—Tyler Parker?” I wasn’t sure if the boy thought there was a list of Tylers who would call my house on a Saturday night, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“What do you need, Tyler?”

He cleared his throat, and I smiled as I heard the nervousness in his voice. I was never his coach, but he had spent more than enough time in sports to know that most of us liked to be spoken to with a certain regard. “I was wondering, if you weren’t busy, if you could come down to the store.”

If he was this hesitant when talking to other men, it was no mystery why he was still single.

“Is there a problem?” I asked him, knowing he wouldn’t have called without there being one.

He paused, which told me he was trying to find the right words to use. “I just think you should come down here if you can.”

I was tempted to ask what would happen if I didn’t, but I refrained. “Give me twenty minutes,” I said and hung up the phone.

I hadn’t been downtown this late on a weekend since… well, let’s just say for a while. There was more traffic on First Street than I would have guessed, the majority of it around Nancy’s. It was crowded with what looked like a full range of couples enjoying a meal. The sight of so many people in love made me feel cold for a moment as I remembered what having someone to just sit across from was like.

“Jack?” a voice called from the alley next to the diner.

I squinted and was barely able to make out Gayle, sitting outside finishing a cigarette. I trotted across the street toward her. “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said, my voice sounding harsher than I intended.

She shook her head as she took one last drag. “I don’t. At least, I
didn’t
. It’s a stress thing, I suppose. I don’t even inhale anymore. I think it is just the ritual that calms me down.” She tossed the butt down and ground it into the street with her heel.

“Stress?” I asked, surprised I was actually concerned.

She sighed and leaned against the side of her diner. “Dorothy Aimes came by. She’s filing for a divorce.”