Hometown Legend (13 page)

I found a spot four or five rows back, across the aisle from where Rachel sat in the front row with Elvis Jackson. When no
one sat near me I remembered how unpopular I was with people who had had a friend or relative lose his job at the factory.
Even those who still worked there didn’t want to rub it in by looking chummy with me. I glanced around and no one met my eyes
cept Bev’s friend Kim, who was sitting near the back. I kinda wished I’d noticed her on the way in so I could tell her about
Bev. But the way she looked at me made me figure she already knew.

Pretty soon everybody hushed and Principal Ferris stepped up and read a note: “We regretfully inform you that the members
of the county school board will be unable to attend tonight’s meeting. Please accept our apologies.”

All of a sudden the mood changed. People were mad and griping out loud. Everybody seemed to be looking at the back of Rachel’s
head, including me. I don’t know what kind of a program she’d planned, but I knew it was pretty much for the benefit of the
county board. Her hope had been to get some sorta commitment out of em. Elvis whispered to her; she nodded and went to the
podium. I was nervous for her.

Rachel smiled shyly when people applauded, and she pushed her hair behind her ear. I could only imagine how self-conscious
she felt. I woulda been even worse.

“You know,” she began, “if the county’s not gonna support us, we have to do it ourselves.” Many clapped. “A lot of people
have been leaving this town over the past few years, but the people in this gym love this town …” Now they were cheering.
“… and they love this school! And some of us students don’t want to be bused to some other school. Everybody is always saying
to put your money where your mouth is. If we show we are willing to do our part, the county board will know we’re serious.”

Shazzam hollered, “Oh, boy, here we go with the money pitch! You’re sounding like church now, girl!”

“No, no, no,” Rachel said. “I’m not asking you folks for a dime. We’ve already got the money.” That got everybody’s attention.
“It is called the Jack Schuler Scholarship Fund.” People gasped and groaned. She had lost her audience. “There are thousands
of dollars in it we could use toward saving our school!” But people were waving her off and standing to leave. “Now come on
folks! Some of you have younger kids! Do you really want em going to Rock Hill?”

People were leaving in droves. Even Elvis Jackson stood and stared Rachel down. “We can help hundreds of kids instead of just
one football player!” she tried, but people booed. Jackson rushed past her. She grabbed him and the mike picked up her saying,
“Elvis, I’m sorry.”

He turned on her. “Save your prayers. I don’t need em. And I don’t want a groupie.”

She looked like she’d been kicked in the gut. I wanted to gather her in or punch out Jackson, not to mention everybody who’d
walked out on her. But I just sat there so she’d know I was still with her. When it was finally just her and me, I said, “Need
a ride home?”

We didn’t talk till we got in the door. “I’m not gonna win this, am I, Daddy?”

“No. But I love you for trying.”

“You want me to go to Rock Hill next year?”

“Course not. But they’re gonna have one heck of a football team with our underclassmen.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Sorry.”

“They don’t need our guys anyway,” she said.

Couldn’t argue with that.

T
hursday Coach showed up for practice angry as I’d ever seen him. He wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t look at anybody. I couldn’t
imagine what had happened. It had to be something at the rehab center. I mean, how long can you stay mad over a bad game,
a bad game film, bad practices? Maybe he was finally getting it that high schoolers just weren’t the same as they used to
be.

I didn’t even get a chance to tell him about Bev. He starts in the coaches room telling me to have the players sit in front
of their lockers with their gear on the floor. Once I had got em set, he came in, ears red, barely able to control himself.
He wrote on the chalkboard the score of the first game, put his hat on the table, and began soft. “The other team is not your
enemy. The spirit of division—that’s your enemy.”

He picked up a football program and leafed through it. “Here is a vision of unity. Rock Hill. Undefeated for two years and,
get this, not even outscored for one half in all that time! This team is a well-oiled machine, a Detroit V-8 screaming down
the highway to the state finals. This team has mastered the fundamentals, but you dawgs have not. Now some of you may be joining
them next year, but until then …” and he slammed the Rock Hill program to the floor, “… we are gonna do things
my way
! That means we start over again and go all the way back to the beginning when God created football.”

Coach picked up a ball and waved it in front of the boys. “This is fifteen ounces of pure, gen-u-ine American leather, sewn
around a rubber sack, eight laces across the top.” He slammed the ball into Brian’s lap, picked up his shoulder pads, and
smashed them to the floor. “These are shoulder pads!” He grabbed a thigh pad and slammed it down, then a knee pad. “Thigh
pad! Knee pad!” He picked up a helmet and pushed it into Yash’s stomach. “Helmet!”

The players recoiled with every throw and shout. “Each one of those things has its own specific function, and you all are
going to rediscover
your
own specific function on this team!”

He put his hat on, said, “Coach, I’ll see you outside,” knocked over a water bucket, and kicked a football on his way out.
We followed him to the tennis courts. It was an old tradition at Athens City that independent players got their minds right
there.

“First we crawl,” Coach said. “Then we walk. Then we walk together. Then we run the bone.”

The two courts were made of hard-packed dirt, with a fence separating them. Coach placed the ball down and told the offense
and defense to line up. “Jackson,” he said, “you come in at halfback. You want in the game, you’re gonna learn the bone. We’re
gonna learn the old-fashioned way. Crime gets punished in Bama.”

He put me in charge of the offense. “Call Formation Left 39 every time,” he told me. The only way that play works is for the
runner to turn upfield when he gets the ball and follow the quarterback and the blocking guard. Start improvising or get tempted
by what looks like lots of daylight if you skirt past them to the outside and, well, the play breaks down and you’re toast.
On the tennis court, the fence either helps a runner avoid that temptation or becomes the price he pays.

The defense was inspired because Jackson was carrying the ball every time, and they were led by the Shermanater—who Jackson
had tricked into letting him stay in the game. Time after time Naters let his teammates key on the blockers while he shot
through and drove Jackson into the fence.

“No, no, no!” Coach would scream. “You’re running thirty to gain five! Trust your blockers! Turn upfield! Follow them! There’s
nowhere to go out here. Those dawgs are working to make a hole for you. Your job is to follow them and when you get there,
trust the hole’s gonna be open. You ignore them, they become useless. Line up and do it again.”

Again and again and again. “Trust your blockers. One more time!”

After one smash into the fence, Coach grabbed Jackson’s facemask and pointed him first to his left, then upfield. “Not that
way! That way! Gain and maintain!”

Jackson bled, arms shredded. Finally I whispered to Coach, “You always said we squeeze coal to make diamonds, not tear it
to pieces.”

“We got a colt needs breaking,” he said. “Do it again.”

After a bunch more times getting blasted into that fence, Jackson couldn’t get up. Coach said, “One more time.” Jackson didn’t
stir. Other players bent over, sucking wind. Buster stood over Jackson and hollered, “Water break!”

Elvis started to stir, but Coach put a foot on his shoulder pad and held him down. “Not for you, dawg. Until you learn to
trust your teammates, you’re not good enough to drink with em.” He knelt and knocked on Jackson’s helmet. “Whatsa matter,
Jackson, you on empty? Is that all you got? I don’t need a quitter. Turn in your gear.”

Coach stood and stepped back, and Jackson came flying to his feet. “No!” he shouted. “This is not over! I am not off this
team! Do you hear me? One more time!”

Coach, squinting, shot me a glance. Jackson ran back into position. Coach blew his whistle and announced, “Let’s go home.”

R
achel waited for Elvis after practice, determined to confront him. But as he limped past ahead of Abel, he didn’t even look
up. “Elvis!” she called, alarmed at his wounds. “What happened?”

“Tradition,” Abel said.

Rachel would not be put off. She followed Elvis on foot but lost him a couple of miles out of town as he jogged through a
cotton field. She found herself at Orville Washington’s farm, holding her nose at the sweetly acrid acres of manure spread
amid the crop. She had sweat through the back of her blouse and it stuck to her.

There was no sign of Mr. Washington, a generous-sized black man who lived alone and tended the farm with a passel of day workers.
Rachel crept between the barns and outbuildings and was soon forty or fifty yards from the farmhouse near a rickety stable,
clearly past its use.

She jumped when she heard Elvis. “You’re trespassing. Now go away.”

Rachel stepped inside the stable and peered up at the loft. Elvis was silhouetted against the dim light. “Unless Mr. Washington
knows you’re here,” she said as she climbed planks nailed to the wall, “you’re trespassing too.”

Elvis busied himself with a bucket of water and a rag, dabbing his scraped forearms. His clothes hung on makeshift lines attached
to the rafters. “What are
you
doing following me?”

“I was afraid you were hurt.”

He rolled his eyes. “Ah. And let me guess—you wanted to pray for me.”

“As a matter of fact, no,” Rachel said, stepping close and staring into angry blue eyes. “I am not trying to steal your scholarship,
and whether or not you like it, it is my job to pray for you, so you might as well get used to it.”

He glowered. “Why don’t you just admit you betrayed me?”

“Why don’t
you
just admit you’re acting like a three-year-old?”

“All right,” he said, plopping onto a cot in the corner. “I accept your apology.”

Rachel sat next to him. “Wow, this little groupie is just overwhelmed.” He was clearly not amused. “I’m on your team, Elvis.
Long before I laid eyes on you I thought we could use that money for the school. I didn’t want to hurt you.” She studied him.
“What happened to you today?”

Elvis shrugged. “Good old Athens City tradition.”

She took the rag from him, working on one of his deeper scratches. “You know, last time Coach Schuler was here, our school
was the envy of the state. You could learn something from him.” Elvis met her gaze, then looked away. “Listen,” she said,
“I’m not gonna say anything to my dad or anyone else about you living up here.”

“Thanks.”

“So why
are
you up here?”

No response.

“
Why
are you up here, Elvis?”

He seemed to realize Rachel wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “This is my last shot,” he said. “No money for college.
This phony address could be my ticket.”

“That’s how you registered for school?”

He nodded. “Farmer scratches his head and writes Return to Sender on stuff from the school that comes in my name. I snag it
before the mailman comes back for it.”

Rachel handed the rag back and moved toward the ladder, wondering if her dad knew any of this. “Know what?” she said. “I believe
there’s more to you than you think.”

He looked curious. “I’ve never met anyone who believes in things the way you do,” he said. “What is it with you?”

Rachel hesitated. Elvis had made it clear he wasn’t interested in prayer, let alone God. Maybe if she didn’t push now, a better
time and place would come. “I’m a Crusader,” she said.

C
oach and I stayed late to rechalk the lines on the field. The custodial staff had been cut deep, so we couldn’t expect them
to do it. It felt good doing manual labor again. Something about desk work had always bothered me.

I was surprised when I got home to find a note from Rachel. “Daddy, I’m sure you know Bev is in the hospital and not well.
I’m visiting her. Her friend Kim will bring me home.”

Not well? Someone must have got old information. But when Rachel wasn’t home an hour later, I called the hospital. “We’re
unable to provide information to other than immediate family members,” they told me.

“I’m her employer.”

“You might like to come down, Mr. Sawyer.”

“What’s happened? I thought—”

“Really, sir, I’m prohibited by policy—”

I almost had to sit down. “She’s taken a turn—?”

“Please feel free to come down, Mr. Saw—”

“Tell me she’s still alive.”

#8220;I can tell you that, yes. But you won’t be able to see her. She’s in ICU.”

I sped to the hospital feeling something I hadn’t felt for a long time. I ran from the car, hurried past the desk, and took
the elevator to the Intensive Care Unit. Rachel and Kim stood in the hall, their eyes red. Rachel hugged me but Kim seemed
the same as she’d been Wednesday night. I explained that Bev had seemed fine and had told me to leave. “What in the world
happened?”

“If you cared about her,” Kim said, “you’d have stayed and you would know.”

That hurt, but I didn’t want to defend myself by telling her I had feelings I couldn’t explain. Rachel gave Kim a sharp look
but knew better than to correct an elder. “The tests found, um—”

“Diverticulitis,” Kim said. “Serious enough, but treatable if caught early, and this was.”

“So she’s fine then?”

“Yeah,” Kim said. “That’s why we’re here.”

I didn’t figure I deserved her being sarcastic.