Suitcase City (40 page)

Billy saw Turville’s Department Store, the office of the newspaper, the
Oleander Grower
, the police station, Oleander Memorial Hospital, a store that sold artificial limbs, and the First Baptist Church. As usual the sky was low and yellow, and the air smelled of oranges. The tallest building in town was the fourteen-story Bland Hotel. It was Oleander’s castle tower. The other buildings, redbrick, mostly, but some white granite and limestone, sloped away from it right and left in chevrons of law, commerce, recreation, and religion. Between the steeple of the Baptist church and the office wing of the hospital, Billy could see, far off on the horizon, the eternal column of yellow smoke that rose from the Honey Bear Juice plant.

He looked over at his father, who pointed at a nearby street sign. They were standing on Bland Street. His father said, “You play ball with Gary Bland, don’t you? His people own the hotel. And Dr. Ray Rentz, his office is over there by the hospital. And that’s the corner of Rainey Street and Dane Boulevard. Blake Rainey owns Honey Bear Juice and a lot more. Helen Dane owns the
Grower
. Her granddaughter, Clover, goes to Carr High. She’s a debutante. Do you know her?”

Billy shrugged.

Still gazing at the town, his father rested his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “The point is, the streets and the buildings, the businesses, they all have the same names. The Danes and the Raineys and the Blands came here before the Civil War and claimed the land and built the town and named the streets after themselves.”

His father pulled his eyes from the hazy horizon and turned to him. “Look at me, Billy, and listen. You don’t know what football is. Oh, you know what happens on the field. Of course you do. But you don’t know what football means to this town, the old families here.” He lowered his voice. “The, uh… the powers that be and always will be, for lack of a better term. A lot goes on in Oleander, will always go on, because men live where they live, own what they own, people and things. I’m talking about Monmouth Park, and the country club, the women’s club, the Rotary. It starts when they’re born into luck and money, and people like us, we don’t know what it is. We don’t know, and we aren’t included, so it actually… it might be better if you did quit football. Take what happened to your head as a letter from the Fates and get out now with grace. I won’t say you have to quit. I don’t have that kind of authority, not anymore, but I’m saying maybe you should. Because you don’t know all that football is, and all that it will require of you and take from you in a place like this.”

Billy’s father widened his eyes and watched. Billy looked into those dark eyes, searching for their secret. Much was locked away, but some of this, Billy knew, was about his father and the men whose work he did, and not about Billy at all.

Billy shook his head firmly. “I won’t quit.”

Then his father lifted his hand from Billy’s shoulder. And smiled kindly. “Well, sir, we’d better get you home to rest that head.”

End of Excerpt

___________________

Fighting in the Shade
is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our print books are available
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“High school football mixes with
Faust
in this blitz of a novel from Watson . . . the novel avoids slipping into morality tale excess as it spins out a big Dennis Lehane-like story of society, opportunity, and consequences, revealing Watson as an accomplished storyteller.”—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Honor, loyalty, even life and death form the core of this wrenching story.”—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Watson’s visceral descriptions of the physicality of sport are more than matched by his knowing depiction of small-town corruption in this fast-paced coming-of-age story.”—
Booklist

"A sleeper that sneaks up on you. Pitch it to old school readers who appreciate intelligent and hard-hitting novels that are more than sports books.”—
Library Journal

In 1964, seventeen-year-old Billy Dyer is a newcomer to Oleander, a Gulf Coast Florida town whose old guard define football as the ancient Spartans did their Agoge. It is a mode of brutal tutelage that forges the hearts and minds of the town’s elite youth for a future of power. Billy’s parents are recently divorced and he lives in a bad neighborhood with his secretive, alcoholic father. Billy discovers in the course of the story that his attorney father has been forced by blackmail to serve Blake Rainey, the town’s most powerful and wealthy citizen, in a clandestine land-acquisition scheme that will raze the town’s black section.

Through the brutal and fiery days of summer practice, Billy fights for a starting spot on the team, the Spartans. He makes the team, but in a horrific hazing scene far from the town, he rebels and in the process badly injures his rival for the flanker position, Sim Sizemore, the son of Blake Rainey’s partner. The events that follow force Billy into exile from football, then later back into the game when powerful men realize that the Spartans cannot win without him. Blake Rainey offers Billy a Faustian bargain, and the boy must accept or reject the deal, while also accepting the consequences of this decision.

STERLING WATSON,
is the author of six novels, including
Sweet Dream Baby
and
Fighting in the Shade.
His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the
Prairie Schooner,
the
Georgia Review,
the
Los Angeles Times Book Review,
the
Michigan Quarterly Review,
and the
Southern Review.
He was director of the Creative Writing Program at Eckerd College for twenty years and is the college’s Peter Meinke Professor Emeritus of Literature and Creative Writing.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

Published by Akashic Books

©2015 by Sterling Watson

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-319-0
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-332-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014938700

First printing

Akashic Books

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