All American Boys (25 page)

“I know,” English told me. “I'd already been thinking that.”

We smiled and slapped hands.

I was out of the locker room and heading down the hall to the doors, when Coach called my name. I turned, and he called me back to him. He stood with his legs spread in his Superman stance by the door to the locker room, but twirling his whistle in one hand.

“Collins,” he said when I got back to him. “I don't think you're thinking this through.”

I shrugged.

He gestured to my shirt. “I want to remind you what I'm talking about.”

I nodded.

“Yes, sir,” I said. The tone in his voice was flat and deadening and frankly starting to scare me a little.

“This bullshit,” he said, pointing at my chest again, “has to stop. You know the rules.”

“Sir—” I began, but he cut me off.

“No excuses. I'm calling your mother about this too. You need to straighten your shit out, stay focused, and remember we have everything riding on next week and every practice and every game for the rest of the season. You hear me?”

I was about to speak, but he put his hand up.

“Actions speak louder than words, son.” He bent forward, his eyes wide. “You've got too much riding on this, Collins.”

He turned and walked past the locker room toward his office, and even though I hate when people call me “son”—like they have any frigging right to call me that—I couldn't go after him or tell him, or say anything to him, because I knew for damn sure he meant what he said and he was going to call Ma right then.

I got the hell out of there before anyone else slipped out of the locker room to give me a hard time, and I left the gym by the side door, like usual. I was about to pull out my phone to text Jill when I saw Guzzo leaning against the wall
a few feet away, still in his basketball shorts and T-shirt.

“I've been trying to find you all day—” I started, but he didn't waste any time talking. He charged. He swung as soon as he was close enough, and I blocked it, but the force knocked me back into the brick wall. He swung again and I shielded my head, but he got me in the chest with his other fist, I lost my guard and he slugged me across the cheek. I spun and hit the ground.

I wasn't thinking clearly, the grooves in the concrete were moving in and out of focus, but I knew enough to know that my body wasn't being hit anymore. Mostly I was fine; he'd hit twice, and that must have been enough. Maybe he'd even scared himself, because if he'd wanted to, he could have ruined me right there, but instead he just hovered over me, calling me all kinds of names, telling me how awful I was for turning my back on him, on Paul, following the crowd and jumping on the Rashad bandwagon because it was the easy thing to do.

“First Jill gets all crazy and radical. And now you? What the fuck?”

I rolled over and tried to catch my breath.

“Don't let me see your face in our house again,” Guzzo went on. “Don't even speak to me. We play ball, but we don't speak to each other. You got me?”

I sat up against the brick wall and gave a short nod. I
unzipped my coat and wiped the blood from my mouth with the T-shirt that said I was marching. At the sight of the shirt, Guzzo spat on me and slammed the door behind him as he stormed back into the gym.

I didn't want anyone making more of a big deal about Guzzo and me, so I hauled myself up and hurried away before anyone came out. I went the long way around, hit the Burger King, and leaned against the stall door in the bathroom with wads of toilet paper pressed to my lips until the bleeding stopped. I was all right. I could walk. I could see. I'd stopped bleeding. My cheekbone didn't feel broken. I didn't need to go to the hospital or anything.

Oh, shit.

I stood in the locked stall, staring up at the weak, flickering bathroom light, thinking about how I'd seen Rashad on the concrete a week before and I hadn't even known who he was. And now, not even a week later—what the hell? Rashad and I had been beaten up by brothers from the same family?

But even thinking that was off base, because there was no comparison. The beatings were no comparison. The reasons for the beatings were no comparison. I wasn't going to stand there and pretend I knew what life was like for Rashad. There was no way. We lived in the same goddamn city, went to the same goddamn school, and our lives were so very goddamn different.

Why? You'd think we'd have so much in common, for God's sake. Maybe we even did. And yet, why was there so much shit in between us, so much shit I could barely even see the guy?

It was like Jill had said. Nobody wants to think he's being a racist, but maybe it was a bigger problem, like everyone was just ignoring it, like it was invisible. Maybe it
was
all about racism? I hated that shit, and I hated thinking it had so much power over all our lives—even the people I knew best. Even me.

I wanted to figure out all that bullshit in between us. So now there was something else I wanted to do. I wanted to see the whole dude who lived that life.

I was frigging exhausted when I got home, but it didn't matter, because my fights for the day weren't done. Ma always had Thursday nights off. It was her first night home in seven days, and when I got in, I learned that, yes, Coach had called and warned her that something was going on between Guzzo and me. So there I was, looking like a crazy person, and there was Ma, looking at me like I was a crazy person, and at first she just fluttered around trying to make sure I didn't have a broken nose, or jaw, or loose teeth, or any of that, but when she finally accepted that the worst of it was a bruise on my
cheek and a lip that looked like I'd tried to eat spaghetti with a steak knife, she finally sat down across from me at the little round kitchen table, leaned her head into one hand, and asked me what the hell I was doing.

Willy was at the table too, doing homework, and I looked to him. “See that?” I said. “Not ‘What did Guzzo do?' What did
I
do?”

Ma frowned. Pointed to my bloody T-shirt. “Don't be coy with me, Quinn Marshall Collins.”

“Ma!” Willy yelped. “Come on! Guzzo beat him up. Why are you getting on him?”

I stuck out my fist and Willy bumped it. “Thanks, man,” I said.

Ma raised a half smile at Willy. “You can't play two against one on me. I'm immune. I'm your mother.”

“But Ma!” Willy said.

She reached over and gently held his wrist. “Please,” she said. “Let me speak with your brother.” She turned back to me. “What are you doing with that shirt?”

“Letting people know I'm going to the march.”

“You aren't going to the march, Quinn.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you are not. I'll miss work tomorrow night. We'll all stay home and we'll have a family night at home for once.”

“Ma,” I said. “I'm going to the march.”

“Listen,” she said. “After Coach Carney called, I called Rita. Guzzo told her why the two of you got into a fight.” She sat back, folding her arms across her chest, accusatory. “I know this is all complicated, but think about what you're doing to the Galluzzos.” She pointed to the shirt again. “What is all this? You're not marching!” She paused, rubbed her forehead, and when she was calm again, she continued. “Honey, I know you think you are doing the right thing, but you aren't.”

“I think I am.”

“No, what you are doing is thinking very selfishly.” She got up and poured herself a glass of water and stayed standing against the counter. “You think you are taking the moral high road, but what does this all mean for the rest of your family, Quinn? What does it mean for me and your brother?”

“I'm kind of hoping you'll have my back.”

“No, Quinn. Look,” she continued. “Just step out of the way. Even if it's ugly at school, this isn't your fight. Why are you jumping into the middle of it?”

“I'm already there, Ma. I was there Friday night. Ma, I
saw
it. I'm right in the middle of it, which is why I can't do nothing.”

She took a sip of water and stared at me.

“Have you seen the video, Ma?”

Willy turned to me. “I have.”

“What?” Ma cried. “Why would either of you watch it? Watch the fool they're making Paulie out to be? Do you see
what you've done, Quinn? You're just dragging us all into it with you.”

“Ma,” I said, pushing back my chair and standing. “You're already in the middle of it too. I think we all are.”

She gripped the countertop. “I don't know how to talk to you right now.” She paused, and then added, “What would your
father
say if he were here?”

She never invoked Dad. Even though the whole town whipped out their Saint Springfield cards whenever it was most convenient, Ma never did. Dad had been her high school sweetheart, her husband, and the father of her two boys, and so for her, that's what came first. He wasn't a symbol. He was just gone. Gone for seven years now, and Ma was frigging exhausted.

“I don't know,” I said, working hard to keep my voice level. “But I know he stood up for what he believed in.”

I walked across the kitchen and wrapped my arms around her. She put her glass down and hugged me back, her thin fingers holding on to me tight.

When Paul Galluzzo told me he was signing up to become a cop, he and I were practicing three-pointers in the Galluzzo driveway. I was in ninth grade, and basketball tryouts were one week away. Guzzo was still inside, changing, and before
he came out, Paul tossed the basketball up and down in one hand and dropped his other hand on my shoulder. “Your dad,” he told me. “Just thinking about him inspires me. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. And I realize, your father was a hero. I want to be somebody like that. I want to be somebody who makes a difference too.” He might have been the two hundredth person to tell me my father was a hero, but this was the strangest time, because it was the first time I'd heard someone say it and it didn't piss me off.

“Man, you already are somebody who makes a difference,” I told him.

He laughed. “Nah, but I mean make a difference in the world. Like a real difference. Like your dad.”

I
did not want to be a hero. I did not want to make any of what had happened in the last week about me. There was a guy who'd just spent six days in the hospital because the guy who'd been
my
personal hero for four years had put him there.
Paul beat Rashad.
That was the truth. And if Ma was going to talk about Dad, so was I. She didn't remember Dad the hero, she remembered Dad the man—and so did I. I knew him too. He was a hero, not in the way people always talked about him—not the soldier, not the war hero—but because of the person he was.

Paul'd gotten it all wrong. Becoming a cop would not make him a hero—but what kind of cop he became could have.

I'd
been thinking about that all day, but I didn't have the words for it until Ma brought up Dad. Everybody wanted me to be loyal. Ma wanted me to be loyal. Guzzo wanted me to be loyal. Paul wanted me to be loyal.
Your dad was loyal to the end,
they'd all tell me.
Loyal to his country
,
loyal to his family,
they meant. But it wasn't about loyalty. It was about him standing up for what he believed in. And I wanted to be my dad's son. Someone who believed a better world was possible—someone who stood up for it.