Hangman's Game (18 page)

Freddie chews away happily though. I wonder if I have just lost my taste for this kind of food. Jessica once told me that the danger of prioritizing function over pleasure in my diet was that I might be reprogramming my taste buds; that the area of my brain wired to enjoy decadent foods could atrophy. She told me this after I had refused to try the deep-fried bacon that she had brought home from some allegedly gourmet food shop. “If the part of your brain that craves fatty foods withers, think about what happens next,” she said. “Right next to it is the part that enjoys sex. Your brain is like your mouth—if one tooth starts rotting, those next to it will follow. Pretty soon, the only things you'll enjoy in this life will be kicking footballs and thinking that you're better than everyone else.”

But no part of me wants to eat this mess from Aunt Lola's. I take my paper plate and fold it around the remains of the sandwich.

“Don't tell me you don't like it,” Freddie says, mouth half full. He swallows and then adds, “This is a great sandwich. Great fucking sandwich.”

By way of registering my dissent, I squeeze my plate extra-tight around the sandwich. Then I stand up, hold the bundle aloft, take a step-step-step, and kick the sandwich across the road.

As my leg rises up I feel a sharp twinge up the back of my thigh. My hamstring. Shit.

“You can be such a bitch,” Freddie says.

I now do not care anymore about the sandwich, or the funeral, or Freddie, or anything else except the pain running up the back of my leg. With minicamp starting in two days, and Woodward Tolley on the hunt. This is horrible.

It is my fault, too. I know better than to make a full kicking motion with no warm-up, especially after sitting for hours on that damn plane and then in the car. I shouldn't have come here to Alabama in the first place. I should have stayed behind in Philadelphia, taking care of myself and sticking to my routines.

This could well be the precise moment when my life begins to fall apart. I could lose my job to Woodward Tolley, I would have to leave Philadelphia and fight for a roster spot somewhere else, assuming I could even get an invitation to camp. All because of this mistake.

I walk around gingerly, trying to keep myself loose.

Freddie, oblivious, continues eating—his chewing is becoming slower and more strenuous as he nears the end of his sandwich. His joy seems to have worn off. After the last bite, he looks at his wrist to check the time, even though he is not wearing a watch. I have seen him do this, oh, about a thousand times. The gag never gets old.

I continue pacing, and the shock in the hamstring seems to be subsiding. This might be okay, I tell myself. I would have to stretch at the first opportunity, but this might not be that bad.

“Do you have directions to the funeral?” I ask Freddie.

“No, not really,” Freddie says. “But it can't be that hard to find. The town probably has three streets in it, right?”

I go to the driver's side of the car to take over command of the expedition, and Freddie tosses me the keys without argument. We drive up the highway about five miles and pass a small sign that reads
WELCOME TO VICKERS, POP. 580
. We also pass a small brick post office, a Quonset-hut agricultural supply shop, and a gas station.

And then nothing. We don't realize that we just passed through downtown Vickers until we are back in the countryside.

I make a sharp and bumpy U-turn on the hardpan, circling partway off the road and then back on again. Freddie puts a hand on his stomach.

“That barbecue not sitting too well?” I ask without sympathy.

“Sitting beautifully, friend,” Freddie says through a grimace.

I pull into the gas station and ask the attendant for directions. He is a young man with the name
ELVIS
stitched in red letters on his pale blue work shirt. Leaning down to the level of the open car window and resting a hand on my door, he gives instruction that includes such phrases as “take the first left after the soybean field” and “take a right at this really big tree.” We can't miss it, Elvis says.

“I'd be at the funeral myself, if we didn't have to stay open,” he says. “I hear the team paid for the whole spread. Hey, you're the Sentinels' punter, aren't you? Nick Gallow?”

“Yes,” I say. To be recognized in public—this is a first. And out of town, even.

“That fucking JC,” Elvis says bitterly. “I hope they hang the bastard.”

“We'll see,” I say. “A man's innocent until proven guilty, right?”

“If that JC ain't guilty, I'll eat my own shit,” he says.

Nice to see a man standing behind his convictions. I thank Elvis for the directions and go.

We turn off the main road and after a quarter mile we are driving over loose gravel. The landscape offers only intermittent farmland and occasional clusters of modest houses. “What do people here do at night?” Freddie wonders out loud.

These are the roads that Samuel must have pushed his mother's Chevy Malibu along when he was a teenager. I imagine Samuel doing that on a scorching day like this one, where the sun castigates anyone who ventures out of the shade. If Samuel played defensive end with that same stubborn determination, he would have been worth his $64 million.

After five minutes of driving, I feel lost. My leg is not in great pain but my hamstring is tweaked enough that I am aware of it, and that awareness is adding to my cumulative anxiety.

Then I see lines of cars and trucks bumper-to-bumper along the roadside. All of a sudden the parking is as tight as it is on Broad Street in South Philly. As I drive along, I scan the bumper stickers, but see only flags, fish, and sports team logos—many, many sports team logos, mostly from colleges and high schools.

We continue on the road and see the church itself, which looks like an old barn that has been painted white and had a cross hammered to its side. The service, we can see, is being held outside. At least five hundred people are here, many more than the church can hold. And I can see that the service is already in progress. We drive a couple hundred yards past and finally find a parking space on the roadside.

Television cameras capture Freddie and me walking up late to the ceremony. With the chairs all occupied, a businesslike teenager in a black suit and a skinny red tie directs us to stand in the back. He hands Freddie and me white paper fans with which to cool ourselves. Tanner, sitting with the others a few rows from the back, turns and notes our late arrival with an angry flash from those blue eyes. Great. Whatever Woodward Tolley is doing right now, he is gaining on me.

We join the back row and I put the heel of my injured leg forward and lean slightly back, trying to stretch my hamstring as much as I can without being ostentatious.

The service is being led by a heavyset older man in sunglasses and a flamboyant purple-and-orange robe. He has no podium or dais; he is on the grass, speaking into a handhold microphone he has removed from its stand, stalking back and forth, speaking in call-and-response style to the audience.

“God gave Samuel a gift!” the preacher says.

“Yes!” comes the congregation's response.

“God made Samuel fast and strong!”

“Yes!”

“People called Samuel the next big thing.”

“Yes!”

The congregation grows progressively more boisterous with each response, though I can see Tanner sitting stonily, frowning, eyes shifting, while others clap and shout around him. I am not aware of Tanner's religious beliefs, but whatever they are, it is apparently not this.

“Some say he is the next evolution of man.”

“Yes!” Freddie yells idiotically, hand cupped to mouth, as he joins the call and response—ironically, of course. I nudge him with my elbow and glare.

“But we all know Samuel's real strength!”

“Yes!”

“It is his love of Jesus!”

“Yes!”

“Samuel is with Jesus right now!”

“Yes!”

“Jesus doesn't care if he's fast or strong!”

“Yes!”

“There's only one measure that matters in heaven!”

“Yes!”

“It's how much love you have in your heart!”

“Yes!”

And so on and so forth. I don't especially care for the lyrics of his speech, but I enjoy the music of it, and latch on to the one idea in there I can appreciate, which is the hope that somewhere and some way, goodness is eventually rewarded.

After the righteous reverend finishes, he calls up the next speaker: DaFrank Burns, who is sitting in the front row. The two men hug as they pass.

DaFrank, wearing a black suit, places the microphone back in its stand. Since I saw him at the hospital he has touched up his already short haircut with fresh tapering on the side. He looks nervous as he fiddles with the mic stand to raise it up to his height.

“Welcome, my brothers and sisters,” DaFrank begins in a Southern accent more pronounced than I had heard from him in our previous encounters. “I'm happy to see so many people here to honor such a wonderful man. It shows how much love there is in this town and in this world for my brother Samuel. I see Samuel's mother and father and his sister, Selia. I see aunts and uncles and cousins. I see many friends here from Western Alabama. That's Puma pride right there. I even see some people here from the Sentinels. And then there are the television cameras, and I am glad they are here because they represent people all around the world who have only come to know Samuel in death.”

At this last note people's heads turn to the cameras. One cameraman is kneeling in the center aisle for a straight-on shot of DaFrank, while another is to the side, his camera trained on the front-row mourners.

“I have been thinking and thinking,” DaFrank says, “how do I tell people all about my brother. And I decided that the best way to do this is to use Samuel's own words. Words that come from his heart. I'm going to read an e-mail that Samuel sent me. He wrote this ten days ago, not long before he signed the contract that made him a Sentinel.”

DaFrank reaches into his jacket pocket and removes from it a folded sheet of paper.

“Before reading this, I want you all to know that Samuel is a private man, and he didn't like to say much in public. I think the only thing in this world he was afraid of was a microphone.” He looks up. “So if you are watching, Samuel, I am sorry, but I have to do this.”

DaFrank unfolds the piece of paper and reads:

I need help, DaFrank. I don't know what to do. I'm so confused. All anyone talks about is how much money I'm going to make, how big a star I'm going to be, how I can have anything I want. I listen and I nod my head and all the time I'm thinking, why?

The more people talk, the more I think I should stay right here in Vickers. Is that insane? I like playing football. But why does it have to be such a big deal? Why do I have to leave home? I feel like if I sign that contact I'm also agreeing to all these things that I don't want and don't need. Even the money. It's too much for me.

But if I say I want to just stay home, everyone would be mad at me. The team would be mad at me. Fans would be mad. Cecil would be mad. Everyone in Vickers, they'd all make jokes about how stupid I am to turn down all that money. They'd say I'm a mama's boy. Or that I'm whipped. But I want to spend my life right here. I think I'd be happier if I wasn't a Sentinel. Tell me, is that crazy?

DaFrank lowers the paper and slips a thumb and forefinger underneath his glasses to daub the tears.

“Samuel, here's my answer. You wouldn't be crazy, brother. You wouldn't be crazy at all. You knew what you loved and what mattered to you, and there is nothing crazy about that. I wish everyone on Earth was that crazy.”

DaFrank lowers his head and holds his fist to his lips. He appears to be on the brink of full-on weeping. He rushes out his last words: “I just wish that's what I had told you then.”

In the front row, I see a woman with blond hair, her shoulders shaking. I can't tell for sure from behind, but I am guessing this is Kaylee Wise. Strangely, she has a couple of seats to herself; no one is by her side.

After hearing Samuel's letter, I wonder afresh about Samuel's contract with the Sentinels, and how Cecil agreed to it so early, rather than waiting until closer to training camp like most rookies do. If Cecil knew Samuel had been wavering in his desire to play, he would have wanted Samuel to sign when he was in a mood to do so, whether it was the best offer or not. Cecil couldn't risk Samuel changing his mind later in the summer. If Samuel had quit on the Sentinels, Cecil's reputation would have never recovered.

*   *   *

After the service, I walk forward, toward Kaylee Wise. I expected that she might be a difficult person to get an audience with—pregnant, sort-of widowed, possibly about to be rich, and in her hometown. But no. As mourners stream from the service area toward a buffet set up on folding tables behind the church, she moves slowly and alone. Wearing a sleeveless dark-blue maternity dress, she is struggling with her pronounced baby bump on this sweltering day.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Ms. Wise?”

“Afraid so,” she says with a soft Dixie accent. Up close, she looks even younger than she did in her photo. Her cheeks are puffed and her eyes are bloodshot, and she grips a white handkerchief with her long, unpainted fingers.

“Hello,” I say. “I'm Nick Gallow, the punter with the Sentinels. I was with Samuel…”

“I know,” she says, cutting me off but then smiling. “I know.” She is covered with a film of sweat. She squints toward the food line, already at least a hundred deep.

“Look at all those people,” she says tiredly, crossing her arms.

“I'm sure everyone would let you go right to the front…”

“Forget it, I don't like owing anyone anything,” she says. “I'm just going to sit for a minute.”