Hangman's Game (23 page)

I imagine this young girl on her way up to a big scary city up North, where she would know only one person in town outside her family: Jerry Tanner.

*   *   *

The Saults leave the funeral when the sunlight fades, and so do I. I drive back to Birmingham, where I book a room in the first motel I can find. Then I cross the highway to a convenience store, where I buy a toothbrush and toothpaste, and also a can of coffee, because I need something cylindrical and firm to help stretch my hamstring.

In my room, sitting on the edge of the bed, I look up the phone number for Newsome's in Mobile. I realize when I get the manager on the line how much I am hoping he will say something that incriminates Herrold. Instead he grumbles, “That freeloader was here every day last week.”

If Herrold had been unaccounted for that would, at least, have given me a possibility to consider, something to think about besides Tanner and Selia and their couplings. If the two of them did have sex, where would they have gone? I hadn't seen any hotels around Vickers. Did they do it in her room while her parents were out? In the back of his rental car?

The thing is, it wasn't all that hard to imagine Selia being attracted to Tanner. He presents himself as strong and authoritative, and more seasoned knees than hers have buckled when a judgmental figure shines a smile on them. I know that I've glowed all through the night after a simple “Good work” from Tanner, and I can't stand the guy.

What I really don't consider, though, is the idea that Selia might have become infatuated enough with ol' Jerry that she decided she was going to leave Alabama for Philadelphia. If she was moving to be near her love—with or without an invitation, under the guise of being near her family—then the married Tanner had a motive to see Samuel done away with.

I remember how Tanner called me into his office the morning after the shooting. I assumed he was concerned about Jai being the killer. But now I wonder if he had a more personal motive for questioning the standing eyewitness to the crime.

*   *   *

I set the coffee can on the hotel room's tan carpet and remove my suit. Then, in my white T-shirt and boxer shorts, I take a towel from the bathroom and wrap it around the coffee can. Using my hands to propel myself, I roll my leg back and forth over the can, using my body weight to massage the hamstring. Then I lie down, the carpet's rough weave itching my back, and I pull my leg back over my head.

I let my leg drop and stare up at the ceiling, and I count the dead bugs in the light fixture overhead. Nine. How many times, I wonder, has the employee assigned to clean this room looked up at those insect carcasses in the fixture, thought about getting a ladder, and then decided, “Ah, what's the point?”

 

CHAPTER 17

M
Y PLANE TICKET
from Birmingham to Philadelphia cost $1299, which somehow did not meet the legal definition of robbery. I have to connect through Charlotte, and the second leg of my flight home is delayed because the airline discovers, moments before I am to board, that they have not assigned a crew to the airplane. So I spend three extra hours in the Charlotte airport on top of my scheduled four-hour layover, and lose whatever shot I had of getting the hamstring massage I need from a team trainer. I go to a gate that isn't being used and I stretch as best I can on the floor. For my one meal at the airport I find a Chinese restaurant and order rice and vegetables, which I can eat only after I stand by a garbage receptacle and drain off as much as their heavy sauce as I can.

My taxi delivers me to the Jefferson just before midnight.

*   *   *

The opening day of minicamp is also the first team gathering since Samuel's murder, and judging from the number of news trucks in the parking lot, our practice is the most important thing happening on the planet. When I disembark from my Audi, the lenses all turn toward me.

Tanner, that master of control, has not yet informed his players of the work schedule for the first day of camp; he will only do so following a team meeting at nine. I am in my stall at 8:40, halfway into my uniform, securing my wallet and phone into my lockbox, when Jai strides in. He is the last player to arrive, and he is carrying a large cardboard box in both arms.

“Santa is real, y'all, Santa is real,” Jai booms. He yanks open the lid of the box and lifts out two fistfuls of T-shirts, black in one hand and white in the other, with lettering on each that reads
THE JC INNOCENCE PROJECT
. He is modeling the black T-shirt with white lettering. “I brought enough for everyone, even you guys whose asses are going to be cut in a few days. I got white-on-black and black-on-white. Choose your crime.”

Players stream toward Jai, lining up for T-shirts. If much of the outside world is assuming that Jai is guilty, in the Sentinels locker room the reverse is true. Jai is our teammate, so players are on his side, and it is as simple as that.

The mass display of uncritical thought makes me uncomfortable, even if I agree that Jai is innocent. And if we are all to wear matching T-shirts, I would prefer a message that commemorates Samuel.

Woodward Tolley, a couple of lockers down from me, joins the rush. He returns with two T-shirts, one in each color.

“Souvenirs,” Woodward explains with an apologetic shrug as he returns to his locker and sees me standing, arms folded, watching the scene with disdain.

As the crowd dissipates Jai notices me. He pulls a black T-shirt from the box and marches toward me.

“Hey, punter, come out tonight,” he says, tapping me on the chest with the shirt, which I do not grab. “Me and some of the guys are celebrating the first night of camp.”

I keep my arms folded, and Jai pulls the shirt back, holding it at his side.

“I usually celebrate the first night of camp by resting up for the second day of camp,” I say.

“Oh, come on now,” Jai says. “You can't act all butt-hurt about me not knowing who you are and then when I invite you out, you're all like, I need my beauty rest. Don't be murky.”

“Fine. I'm in,” I say, giving in to an urgency—dare I say, a neediness—behind Jai's jolly eyes. I really would prefer to get a good night's sleep. But once I declare that I am in, I am committed. I will try to keep my appearance to under an hour.

Jai throws the T-shirt at my chest and I catch it.

“Here's something to wear. It's at seven or eight or something like that,” Jai says. “At Stark's. I know you know where that is.”

I drop the T-shirt on my lockbox and leave it resting there, unfolded, as I finish dressing.

I report to the team's main meeting room, which is a throwback to my college lecture halls, except that it is freezing. Tanner keeps the room chilled to 54 degrees, so meetings move quickly. When players started wearing hoodies to keep warm, he banned those, too. All around the room I see goose bumps on muscled forearms as guys settle into their chairs.

“We have a lot to accomplish in these three days,” Tanner says, standing at a lectern. Just looking at him, so confident in his authority, my stomach acid rises. “But before we get down to business I thought one of the coaches should say a few words about what's been happening the last few days. Here's Coach Huff.”

Huff, who has been leaning against a side wall, limps toward the lectern, but not all the way to it. He is only centering himself in front of his audience, as he does not use a microphone. His crisp barks needed no amplification. Tanner often called on Huff when he needed to get the guys' engines going. Tanner and his top coordinators are tacticians first. They are the CEOs. Huff is the only one of our commanders with a soul of brimstone.

Today, our special teams coach appears somber, but purposeful.

“Four days ago, we lost a teammate,” Huff begins. He clasps his hands together and holds them under his chin. I look over at Tanner, who stands at the side of the room, arms folded, one leg crossed in front of the other, as if he were modeling for a JCPenney catalog. “Samuel Sault was shot and killed. He was twenty-one years old. He was standing outside the stadium that he never got to play in.

“And you know what? It's an awful thing, but it happens. People die too young all the time, even football players. Especially football players, it seems. Sean Taylor. Darrent Williams. Thomas Herrion. Korey Stringer. I could go on and on. On opening day there will be nearly seventeen hundred players on a league roster. I can guarantee you at least a dozen of them will die before they're forty. It could be murder, it could be cardiac arrest, it could be who knows what. But it will happen. Maybe to someone in this room. Maybe two of you, maybe more. There are no quotas, there is no plan. The San Diego Chargers went to the Super Bowl in 1994. Six men from that team never lived to see forty. One died in a car crash, another in a plane crash. One was struck by lightning.”

Huff unclasps his hands and holds his right fist at chest level as he takes a step forward.

“Now, if you've been watching the television these last couple days, you hear these commentators, they talk about how a death like Samuel's puts everything in perspective, reminds you of what's really important. To which I say, Bullshit. That's only true if you don't know what's important to begin with. I have been playing organized football since before I had hair on my nuts. I know exactly how important this game is, and I can tell you, if I was told that I had one more day to live, I'd spend it like I'm going to spend it today, out on that practice field, competing every second, telling you to get your asses off the ground and run hard and hit harder and do what you love to the best of your abilities.”

Huff's volume rises, as does a darkness in his eyes.

“There is only one way to play this game: like you have a hellhound on your trail. And make no mistake: there
is
a hellhound on your trail. He is after you. The hellhound may be me. It may be Coach Tanner, or some other coach who doesn't like the way you do things. It may be the man sitting next to you, who plays your position better than you do. It may be age, it may be injury, it may be your own weakness of purpose. It may be a madman who shoots a rifle and drives off into the night. The hellhound can shift into many forms, and you may not always recognize him. But it's after you.

“And you need to play like it. Because sooner or later, the hellhound will get you. And when it does, you are going to want to know that you did your best when you had the chance.” Huff raises his hand and makes a fist. “I want to see you doing your best with every minute you have been granted on that field. While it lasts. Because it doesn't, ever, for anyone. It never, ever lasts.”

Huff's speech is received with absolute quiet; most players aren't even looking at him. They stare at their desks, off to the side, anywhere but forward. Some undoubtedly are listening and startled by the morbidity of Huff's theme; most are likely confused because they came into this room expecting to be told to keep their pads low and drive through their legs, not to gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

After Huff hobbles off to the side, Tanner steps to the podium again. He has listened inexpressively to Huff's speech, and now he moves onto Sentinels business items. The first is to inform us that he has closed our locker room to the press; usually reporters are allowed to come in following the afternoon practice, but at this camp no one will be cornered at their lockers. Tanner also asks us not to speak to reporters if they contact us elsewhere. Only Tanner and our quarterback, Bo John White, will speak to the assembled media—the two of them have had as much media training as your average senator—and then camera crews will be allowed to grab video from the first ten minutes of practice, after which they must leave. “We have enough challenges ahead of us. We can't do anything that makes our work more difficult.”

Like having an affair with Selia Sault?

Tanner then releases our schedule for the day. In the morning session, offense and defense will work separately, and in the afternoon, we will work on a punting phase. I am pleased with this, because on any given day it is not guaranteed that we will be scheduled to punt at all.

Practice begins with the players assembled on Field 1. Our strength coach, Kurt Sauer, a young man with a shaved head and the most pronounced trapezius muscles I have even seen, leads all eighty players through fifteen minutes of warm-up, as he has dozens of times before. Even as disgusted as I am with Tanner, it feels good to be out on the grass with the guys, in our brown-and-gray colors, assuming the formations we have in years past, in better times. I am in my usual spot toward the back right, and I hear the grunts and moans and juvenile jokes. Too Big is situated directly in front of Jai, and when Too Big leans forward into a calf stretch, his pants slide down revealingly. “Easy, bro, last time I saw that many pounds of crack I was watching
Cops,
” Jai says, and guys laugh much more than is warranted. Everyone is happy to be home.

The horn sounds and players disperse into their groups. The thirty-eight offensive players work on Field 1. The thirty-eight defensive players are on Field 2. And on Field 3, you have the pure specialists, all four of us—me, Woodward, Pablo, and his camp competition, a thirty-year-old kicker named Rodger Hulce, who has bounced around the league, never lasting with one team for more than a season. Hulce is a little guy, only five foot seven. Pablo isn't much taller. Woodward and I look more like regular position players, but still: if this was grade school, you would assume that Field 3 is where they put the kids who hadn't been picked for the game.

I begin my cycle of warm-up punts. My pace is relaxed and methodical as I take my time between kicks, which leaves me plenty of opportunity to study young Woodward.

It doesn't take me long to see that Woodward is a formidable competitor. Long and with a youthful bounce in his step, his stroke is confident and consistent, smooth and clean. I also notice, when he works on his targeted kicks, that he is a skilled practitioner of the drop punt, where you hold the ball pointed downward instead of flat, and when it lands it bounces straight up. This technique gives coverage guys a better chance to down the ball where it's landed.