Blood Ties (13 page)

“Give the kid a break. He's just a bright high school student with an unquenchable curiosity. He didn't mean to do anything illegal.”

“Uh-huh. He available?”

“For what?”

“Computer hacking.”

“I'm sure he is.”

Lydia gave me Linus Kwong's cell phone number and he was my next call. I identified myself, explained my connection to Lydia.

“Oh, hey, yeah, she's like my aunt or something,” he told me. “She's awesome.”

“Where are you?” Thumping music and blaring electronic sounds in the background made him hard to hear.

“Chinatown video arcade. Wait. Is this better?”

He must have walked outside, because the shrieks and beeps morphed into traffic noise and his voice came clearer. I told him what I wanted.

“This afternoon?”

“Right now.”

“Dude, I'm winning here.”

“You find something out there, you win even bigger.”

We negotiated a fee. For just a bright high school student with an unquenchable curiosity, he had a pretty good sense of what his services were worth on the open market.

“How do I get there?”

“Rent a car. Send me the bill.”

“Dude,” he sighed at having to explain the obvious, “I'm fifteen. Hertz says you got to be twenty-five.”

“Oh.” I thought. “Call a car service.”

“A stretch limo?”

“Don't push it.”

“Okay, cool.”

I gave him directions. “Listen, Linus,” I said. “The mother'll let you in, but if you run into the father, blame me. Tell him I sent you and clear out.”

“Dude won't be happy?”

“He'll explode.”

“Cool,” Linus Kwong said again.

I drove over the George Washington Bridge and straight across the Bronx, toward Long Island. I hit the beginning of rush hour, gritted my teeth as the traffic crawled. Most of the cars inching forward around me held no other passengers, just the drivers, men and women headed home, to their families, their houses, the places they lived. How was it, I wondered, where they lived, each of them? I saw in my mind the bright fall sun glowing on the fallen leaves and quiet streets of Warrenstown, the football coach making men out of boys, the party where a girl had died.

The drive took me along six-lane highways between ranks of apartment buildings, past wide, low shopping centers and two-family houses in rows with handkerchief-size lawns bordered by trimmed shrubs, chain-link fences, low brick walls—some way of saying,
mine.
Eventually the houses, though still close, began to be separated by driveways, and trees started to border the road. Where I pulled off the highway at Plaindale, the houses were bigger and the trees were older. I passed three-and four-story residential buildings and aging strip malls, bright new gas stations and blank-walled tire warehouses, on my way to the address Lydia had given me for Hamlin's Institute of American Sports.

The place took up a lot of real estate, though it didn't seem to be real estate many other people wanted. Flat, cropped-grass acres, playing fields and training fields now, probably potato farms once and meadow before that, spread away to my left from a road lined on my right with discount furniture emporiums and places that would fix your transmission, small grocery stores and even smaller bars where you could drink away the news that your transmission couldn't be fixed. The fields might have just kept going all the way over the miles to Long Island Sound, but in the distance they ran up against a scrubby woods, the kind of trees that grow while people aren't paying attention. The entrance to Hamlin's Institute was marked by a large sign, which claimed, as Lydia had said, that
HAMLIN'S BUILDS MEN BY BUILDING CHARACTER THROUGH COMPETITIVE SPORTS
. It listed program dates through the fall and a number to call for the schedule for spring.

I turned left. The road into Hamlin's took me between a parking lot and a baseball diamond wrapped with chain link, its bleachers looking lonely, sagging a little, now that the season was over and a cold winter would come and go before anyone would care about baseball again. Two long low concrete block buildings, barrackslike, and a smaller square one stood at the end of the road, fronted by another, smaller parking lot. A tall building, maybe the gym, loomed behind. A coat of thick yellow paint covered them all, the kind of job you do once and don't have to worry about for twenty years. Up close against one of the buildings, four hoops hung on perforated steel backboards on asphalt courts. One had no net and the painted lines on the asphalt were faded, but basketball is an indoor game; these hoops weren't for serious practice, just for fooling around.

And Hamlin's, it seemed to me as I parked, was a serious place. I could hear the shouts, the thuds, the whistles; as I walked around the buildings to the far side, I saw what the institute cut off from the street and the town, surrounded and kept for itself: the football field.

Two squads of kids, most in blue jerseys or in Warrenstown's maroon, but some in the colors of other towns, other schools, were divided into groups on the field and on the track. They were in full uniform: helmeted, padded, in all ways looking prepared to play. Hanging over the fieldhouse doors was a large-lettered sign reminding one and all,
YOU ARE NOTHING—YOUR TEAM IS EVERYTHING
.

Some of the boys, in small formations, practiced the patterns of offensive plays over and over to the shouts and whistles of men in navy jackets with
HAMLIN'S
on the back. Down the far end, one lone kid in blue and one in maroon kicked the ball between goalposts. Each kid in turn waited for the ball, caught it if he could and raced it back to the coach, who set it up for the next kick while the other kid charged down to be ready for the catch. If a kid missed the catch, the whistle blew and he sprinted the width of the field. The kid in blue wasn't much of a receiver. I watched him do a sprint, found myself thinking kickers, in a game, never have to catch anything.

Across the field, quarterbacks-in-training threw passes to each other, high and long. I watched; the kids receiving stretched for the ball but didn't move their feet. If the passer didn't hit them with a bull's-eye where they stood, it was his bad, not theirs, and he did a cross-field sprint, too.

Everywhere, fierce concentration, full-out effort, grunts from the kids, whistles and shouts from the coaches. I walked up to stand on the edge of the track with a small knot of adults in civilian clothes. I looked for Lydia; in this entirely white, largely male group she'd have glaringly stood out, but she was nowhere in sight.

I stopped, stood with the others looking over the field. Near us, at full speed, a line of kids ran a zigzag course between close-set orange cones, cutting left, right, left, right. The man next to me turned to look at me, then turned back to the kids. He said, “Which one's yours?”

“None of them.”

He gave me a sideways glance. “You're not from Warrenstown?”

“No. Where's the other team from?”

“Westbury. That's my boy there.” Seeming to relax when he found I wasn't a parent of the competition, he pointed to a big kid in blue, part of a group throwing block after block against a line of kids in maroon. The long golden light of the late fall afternoon glinted off their helmets as they pounded each other again and again.

“He's big,” I said, realizing that even allowing for the padding, most of these boys were huge. “He looks good.”

“You're good, this place makes you better. You stink, they can make you good. Frank Edwards.” He offered me his hand. “You thinking of sending your kid?”

“You'd recommend it?”

“My kids have been coming here for years. Gives them an edge. I don't think Frankie'd have made varsity otherwise. My younger son, he plays hockey. Best goalie in the county, twelve-and-under.” He swelled with pride.

“Congratulations.”

“What does your kid play?”

“My nephew. Football. Wide receiver.”

I stood with Edwards, watched two lines of Warrenstown kids set up. An assistant coach behind one line shouted, “Down. Set!” and held the football the center snapped him. He dropped back the way a quarterback would, then stood waiting to see if the enemy would get through to him, or if his own men could protect him.

The defensive linemen mixed up their moves, and the offense tried to read and counter. The kids on offense were quick and strong, for the most part, stopping tackles and ends as they tried with spin moves and swim moves and sheer muscle and will to break through. But the defensive line was well-coached and well-led; the first time they ran the stunt the left guard didn't read it and the assistant coach was left face-to-face with a kid who'd have laid him out flat if he hadn't had a whistle around his neck. So the defense mixed it up and ran that play three more times, and the left guard missed it every time.

After the fourth missed stunt a whistle shrieked: not the assistant coach behind the line, but another man in a Hamlin's jacket, a man who'd been watching the drill with a deepening frown. The kids and the assistant coach all stopped, faced the man with the whistle.

“That's Hamlin,” said Frank Edwards, beside me.

“The man himself?”

He nodded. “Hell of a motivator. The kids love him.”

Hamlin walked slowly down the line of kids, looking them over. He turned, walked back, stopped in front of the left guard.

“Tindall!”

“Coach,” the kid answered.

“Tindall, what position do you play?”

“Left guard, Coach.”

“You throw the ball?”

“No, Coach.”

“You carry the ball?”

“No, Coach.”

“What the hell do you do, Tindall?”

“Protect the quarterback, Coach.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Thanks for telling me, because from what I just saw, I wouldn't know that! Take a lap, Tindall. No, two. Brown—” to the assistant coach—“get someone in here who knows how to play this position. Okay, back to work!”

He blew the whistle again. Tindall took off on the track around the field, another kid filled in his spot, the assistant coach shouted, “Down. Set!” and practice resumed.

“What do you think?” asked a quiet voice beside me. I turned; there was Lydia.

The late sun picked out the blue-black highlights in her hair and the silver snaps on her leather jacket. I looked at her and suddenly felt a strange sensation, as though I'd spent a long time in a foreign place, gotten used to it, had forgotten what it was like to be home.

Lydia stood on tiptoe, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and looked back over the field. “Does this look like fun to you?”

I looked with her at the boys, sweating and panting, charging, cutting, running in the golden autumn light. All that energy, speed and strength, all that reckless power. All that belief that effort mattered, that focus and concentration and trying mattered, that talent could be developed into skill and that skill brought good results.

“It's a practice,” I said to Lydia. “Practices aren't supposed to be easy.”

“I didn't say
easy
,” she said. “I said
fun.
”

One of the coaches down in the end zone was waving his arms and yelling at three kids, who stood silent, eyes ahead. To our left a group adjusted their helmets, prepared for the blocking sleds. Tindall finished his laps, rejoined his line, read the stunt the first time they ran it, but missed it the next time. The assistant coach ordered him on the ground for push-ups while the rest of the kids watched. On the next play he was hit hard. He started to stand, fell back, made it to his knees, then suddenly collapsed. He lay for a moment on the grass of the field, managed to rise halfway to his knees before he threw up.

“Ah, shit!” said Hamlin. His words rolled forward on a wave of contempt, but he smiled tightly, a man satisfied with today's accomplishments. He checked his watch, blew his whistle, three loud blasts. All over the field boys and coaches stopped, turned, jogged in. When they'd gathered, Hamlin stepped forward. He threw a disgusted glance at Tindall, who was dragging himself up from the grass to stand, shakily, with the others. “You men,” Hamlin called, looking over the line. “Warrenstown and Westbury. Westbury, you won county, Warrenstown, you took your division. You other men, you're from winning schools, too. Because only winners come to Hamlin's Seniors' Camp. Am I right?” He paused.
“Am I right?”

“Yes, Coach!” the boys yelled, their chests heaving, their voices raw.

“Then what the fuck happened?”
He gave them a beat. “Too much partying? Beer and boobs? You fuck yourselves silly, drink yourselves stupid, because you thought the season was over?” Some of the boys snorted, jabbed each other. “All right!” Hamlin shouted. “The season is
not
over! Anyone wants to blow this game off, step out right now, you can go home!” No one moved. Hamlin swept his gaze down the line of boys, back again. “Warrenstown's juniors and sophomores, and some of their JV—their
JV
, for Chris-sakes!—are coming here Saturday. They expect to lose. Even the way you men are playing right now, you might beat them. But winning's not the point, is it?
Is it?
”

“No, Coach!” the boys chorused, giving him the answer he obviously wanted, but looking confused.

“And what
is
?”

The boys were silent, their faces stricken. Giving your all and failing, any coach will respect that. But the player who doesn't get it, doesn't know what his job is, is the player the coaches despise.