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Authors: Jerry B. Jenkins

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BOOK: Hometown Legend
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One night after he left, I asked Rachel, “You all right with me and Bev?”

“Are you kidding? I love her, Daddy.”

39

O
ur little band of Gideonites showed up at Beach Saturday, November 10, and I swear there are as many Athens City fans as Bearcat
fans for the first round of the play-offs. Biggest kick for me was Kim and Rachel bringing Bev. She looked a little tentative,
but she also looked as happy to be there as I was.

Buster gathers the team around after we’re all warmed up, and he tells em what the other coach said to him after they beat
up on us at our place, opening night. “I told him we were gonna eat their guys with a spoon in the play-offs. And here we
are boys. I wanna eat guts, not crow.”

That psyched the kids up, but when they ran onto the field, I said, “Coach, you remember what he said back?”

“Course I do.”

“He was right, you know.”

“What’re you saying, Sawyer?”

“You’re not gonna do it with a Stone Age offense.”

He smiled. “Don’t tempt me. I might whip these guys with the wishbone.”

“Don’t you dare.”

He didn’t, but he sure got excited. He was running up and down the field, keeping pace with Brian and Elvis and Yash. How
these kids stayed strong, playing both ways all those weeks, I’ll never know. That day we grabbed the early lead and kept
pulling away. It was sweet.

I was proud of Coach after the game. Their coach shook his hand, giving Buster a look that said he knew he deserved a tongue-lashing.
But Coach just said, “Your boys played hard and you coached a good game. Good luck to ya.”

Tired as she was, Bev hosted one of her ladies’ bashes that night. So I had Coach over to our place, and Elvis showed up to
do his laundry. “No date, no parties, no movie with the guys?” Coach said.

Elvis shook his head.

“You don’t hang with anybody, do you?”

“Too much on my mind. Just want to pass history and stay eligible.”

“What do you hear from Jenny?”

“She only wants me to write. No calling anymore. I couldn’t stand hearing her cry anyway. She just kept saying that I promised.
I don’t know how many ways to apologize. There’s nothing I can do now. I swore I’d get up to see her when school’s out, but
she doesn’t believe me, and why should she?”

“So, you’ll surprise her.”

“If I can stand it. She’ll hang on and never let me out of her sight. She said two kids got adopted last month, but both of
them were about five, and she didn’t even get interviewed.”

“You know, Jackson,” I said, “we all care about her.”

“Lot of good that does her.”

“The women that Rachel is with tonight—”

“Pray for her, yeah, I know. They’ve got a picture of her on the wall, the whole bit. It’s made a big difference, hasn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t underestimate God.”

“Too late,” Elvis said.

• • •

The next Saturday we really shocked the state by winning our sectional. It was our eighth straight win and seventh on the
road, but I was worried. I should be more than satisfied to have got this far, but for the first time since we started winning,
it looked to be taking a toll. Our guys looked tired. I know they’re teens, and I know they’re resilient, but we were way
past where we deserved to be, now one of the last eight teams in the state, and I’m finding myself more worried about how
they’re gonna deal with disappointment than with trying to stay on track and win it all.

The quarterfinals were set for Friday night, November 23, another road game. Bev had been back to work for a week by then,
and it seemed most of our time was spent squelching rumors about the company. We were both happy to confirm the rumors about
us. Everybody wanted to know when the big day was, but I hadn’t even asked her yet.

I worried about her strength, wondering if maybe she should be working only half days for a while. She worried about my stress.
I tried to tell her I could handle it.

What could I do but weigh every option? “Right now it looks like we sell lock, stock, and barrel to some broker on the last
day of the year and split the profits with the employees.”

“You’re gonna go down as the most generous man Alabama’s ever seen,” she said.

“That’s my goal, all right.”

She laughed. “I know you just wanna stay in business.”

“I’m so tempted to try the ball glove thing.”

“Does it make sense, Cal?”

“Course not. It would take the rest of our reserves. We’d go belly up anyway, then there’s nothing for anybody.”

She sat wearily, looking into my eyes. “I’ve loved you for ten years, Calvin. But never more than now.”

I like to talk, but I’d learned to just shut up and kiss her when she said something like that. “There
is
something I need to tell you,” she said. We’d had so much fun the last few weeks, I could tell when she was serious.

“I’m listening,” I said.

She held my hand in both of hers, and I could see the pulse in her neck. “I didn’t tell you everything that went wrong at
the hospital.”

My brain almost shut down. If she was gonna tell me she was still sick, or worse, that she was gonna—but she must’ve seen
the fear in my eyes. “I’m okay,” she said. “But there was some permanent damage done too.”

I wouldn’t have even been able to ask her what. I loved her so much by now I couldn’t bear to hear she’d been hurt any more.
“Permanent?” I mouthed, but no sound came out.

“I don’t like talking about this stuff either, Calvin,” she said. “Plain as I can say it, when the doctors perforated my colon,
my abdomen was filled with stuff, you know, that neither of us wants to talk about.”

“Yeah, awright, I get the picture.”

“Well, there was some scarring of the fallopian tubes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know what I’m saying?”

“I think. I mean, I know what those are, but no. What’re you saying?”

“The lab report called it ‘scarring/destruction.’”

“Of your, um—”

“My reproductive organs,” she whispered.

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell her it was all right cause no matter what happened with us I didn’t count on having
another baby in the house. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thanked God I kept my mouth shut. It was all over her face
how hard this was on her. She told me, “I’m not saying starting a family was something I still hoped to do anyway. It’s risky
at my age and you and I would have to work through the whole idea, you having almost raised a daughter already.”

I nodded.

“But I sure would’ve liked to have had the choice.”

“Course,” I said, holding her.

“A few years ago I pretty much resigned myself to never being a mother,” she said. “I figured my time was past. But there’s
something about knowing it’s not even an option anymore. I love kids so much.”

“I know,” I said.

“Anyway, I would’ve felt dishonest not telling you, Cal. I didn’t want to misrepresent damaged goods.”

I pulled her closer. “Don’t ever say that again, Bev. Please. I would never think of you that way.”

• • •

Bev, the other two women, and Rachel had started taking turns writing to Jennifer Lucas. Elvis told Rachel he appreciated
it, but he was still worried folks were gonna figure out where he was by the return addresses.

He oughtn’t to’ve worried though. He was looking for help with the little one and he’d mostly quit contacting her for all
the grief and guilt it raised in him.

• • •

People say a couple in love ought not to try to work together, but that didn’t prove true with Bev and me. We’d been working
side by side for so long, it only seemed natural. Course I was more attentive than I used to be. Other words, according to
Kim, I finally had a clue. Bev was more than my assistant now. She was becoming a partner. I knew she had my best interest
at heart, and so I included her in all the discussions and decisions. She liked to kid me that if I’d done that all along,
we wouldn’t be in the mess we were in now. She was probably closer to the truth than she knew.

One night before Thanksgiving we were sitting on the couch in my living room, and Rachel was in the kitchen, doing her homework
and waiting for Elvis to come and do his laundry and lunch thing. I said, “Bev, you know the history of this knee, don’t ya?”

She said, “If I say yes, will you spare me the story?”

“I think you’re up to speed on it.”

“Whew!” she said, hugging me.

Nothing an old jock’d rather discuss than his career-ending injuries. “I just wanted you to know when the time comes why I
don’t get on my knees.”

“When the time comes for what?”

“C’mon, Bev. This is hard enough for an oblivious kind of guy.”

“Can’t you bring knee pads or a cushion or something?”

“What’re you, serious?” I said.

“I just want to be sure you’ve planned ahead, thought it through.”

“Me?” I said. “Have you?”

“Only for ten years or so.”

“So you’re primed,” I said. “You’re ready.”

“Say I’m ripe and you’ll be sitting here alone.”

“I’d just like a hedge against rejection.”

“Like I’m prepared to reject you,” she said.

“You know I want all your tomorrows.”

She pulled back to get a better look at me. “That wasn’t bad,” she said. “Really, coming from you, bad knees and everything,
that was all right.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, but don’t stop now, cowboy.”

“Hm?”

“Bring it on home.”

“I’m asking,” I said.

“Preach it.”

“Bev, I love you with everything that’s in me, and I mean it. I can’t even imagine living without you anymore.”

“And so?”

“And so I want you to be my wife.”

“When?”

“Two months from Friday. That would be Wednesday, January 23, 2002.”

“That’s not a minute too soon, Calvin, but you know I’ve got to ask.”

“Why that date?”

“Exactly.”

“Not that I plan on forgetting my anniversary, but who could forget 1/23?”

“Let me tell you something, Calvin. First off, the answer is yes. Second, you’re never gonna forget the day you marry me.”

• • •

Well, it didn’t take long for that to get around, and it somehow encouraged people at American Leather. Nobody thought I’d
close the factory just before I got married. Fact was, I wanted the football season and the business stuff behind us before
the wedding.

If getting past the first two rounds of the play-offs made us a big deal, you can’t believe what winning the quarterfinals
did. Now we had a problem of overconfidence, of all things. It’s one thing to get a little swagger in a team, but put a hopeless
little bunch into the semifinals and they think they can beat the Super Bowl champs. We were beat up, hangdog, limping, and
wishing we hadn’t had so much for Thanksgiving dinner the day before. But you’d’ ve thought we’d already won the state title.
Course there was the matter of two undefeated teams first. The Palm City Panthers at their place the next Friday night and,
if we somehow survived that, guess who? The Rock Hill Raiders on Pearl Harbor Day.

“I think that’s the only thing we got going for us,” Coach told me. “We’re gonna have to surprise em at dawn to have a prayer.
They still ain’t been outscored for one half, going on three years now.”

“You’re doing something I’ve never seen you do before,” I said, “and I don’t like it.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I know. And I won’t do it around the kids.”

“What?”

“Looking ahead. We even get as far as December 7, we should thank the Lord for the day we strapped on our pads.”

“Amen,” I said. “These kids have had an unforgettable season already.”

“Way more than we deserve,” Coach said. “Same way I feel about Helena.”

He could change subjects faster’n a kid with stolen cookie crumbs on his lip. “Say what?”

“The way Rachel and them have befriended her, Cal, I’m just so grateful. You know, she’s on pace to get out of there before
you get married.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “My little brother’s wife isn’t too excited about having her in the house, but we’ll find something.”

“Bev and I ain’t gonna need but one house. Take your pick.”

He laughed. “Been a long time since you been married, hasn’t it?”

“Pardon?”

He could hardly talk over his giggles. “You’d better consult your fiancée on that one, Sawyer.”

He had a point.

“Almost gave my house away, did you?” Bev said later.

“I didn’t know which one I was giving away,” I said.

“Do the math, Cal. Move a husband and a stepdaughter into my little house and I gotta move out.”

“Well, that won’t work.”

“Good thinking.”

• • •

The night we bought her ring she told me, “I’d like to take a few days’ vacation week after next.”

“What’s your boss gonna say?”

“You’re a laugh a minute, Calvin. Is it okay?”

“Course. Going somewhere?”

“Kim and I thought we might take Helena somewhere.”

“Rachel’s gonna feel left out,” I said.

“We already told her. She can’t get off school.”

“You’ll be back in time for the championship game?”

“When’s that, again?”

“Stop it.”

“Course we will, Cal. You expect to be in it or you want me to save seats for y’all?”

“Truth is, sweetheart,” I said, “Coach and me been watching films of this Palm City team.”

“I was just kidding.”

“I’m not. They been averaging almost forty points a game.”

“Uh-oh.”

40

I
t was a strange week, leading up to the Palm City game. The press somehow got hold a my number at the plant and we had to
finally tell Ginny to not let any more of their calls through. That made it hard, cause Buster had done the same thing at
school, so nobody could talk to anybody.

More calls than I can remember were getting through to Bev, and I knew she was having to make personal arrangements for her
trip and taking Helena and all. A couple times I had to pick up when she was on the other line, and once Ginny told me it
was the lawyers again.

BOOK: Hometown Legend
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