Hometown Favorite: A Novel (17 page)

"You got bus fare?" Dewayne asked as they walked outside
the SportsPlex.

"Spent it all getting here;' Bruce said.

Dewayne stretched out his hand toward Bruce before they
crossed the busy intersection to get to the bus stop. For Dewayne, it was an automatic response to care and protect a child
in his custody, but Bruce flinched before the giant paw.

"You hurt my hand the last time you took it," he said, with
no hint of resentment for the pain and mortification Dewayne
had caused him months ago.

"You're right, sorry about that;" Dewayne said and returned
his hand to his coat pocket.

They crossed the street to the bus stop and watched the traffic
in silence until the arrival of the city bus. Dewayne paid their
fare, and they took their seats in the middle of the bus.

Passengers stared at the unusual sight of this well-dressed,
well-built high-rise of a man and this diminutive boy in frayed
clothes who had gotten on the bus together, and sat together,
but acted as though they did not know each other. Several stops
passed before Dewayne could think of anything to say.

"What am I going to do with you?"

Bruce shrugged. He was as disoriented by the impulse that
had brought them together as Dewayne was.

Dewayne was used to turning heads in public, but not under these circumstances, and all he knew to do was smile and wave
to travelers who kept blinking in disbelief, dying to know the
story behind this unusual couple.

"Is it rough out there?" Dewayne asked, which could have
meant any number of scenarios, but Bruce took the question
to mean his specific situation.

"Yeah"

The discussion Dewayne and Rosella had regarding further
involvement in the lives of Bonita's children had been put on
hold, but now it had shown up on his doorstep, hungry, reeking of body odor, and bewildered as a refugee.

"I think we need to get you cleaned up,' Dewayne said.

Bruce's forehead creased, as if weighing sides of an argument
in his mind. Finally, he looked up at Dewayne and nodded.

Rosella returned from school with a load of groceries she
bought on her way home. She kissed Dewayne on the cheek,
thanking him for doing the laundry, but he had to explain as
he pulled the clothes out of the dryer that he was not doing
their laundry. These were her nephew's clothes.

While Rosella stared at him, dumbfounded by this news, he
explained how Bruce had come to the SportsPlex and he had
not said much about what was going on at home, but it must
be bad or he would not have tracked him down.

"He's in the bedroom watching TV, waiting for his clothes'

"He's in my bedroom?" Rosella asked.

"He seems scared, and I don't know the next move," Dewayne
said as he snapped out the wrinkles from Bruce's shirt and laid
it on the dryer.

Immediately Rosella began to put dinner together. Dewayne
put Bruce's clothes just inside the bedroom door and went to help Rosella put the groceries away. When he started to open a
bag from the pharmacy, Rosella snatched it out of his hand and
told him the contents were a woman's business. She marched
toward the bathroom, returning a few moments later to put
dinner on the table.

Through two helpings of spaghetti, Rosella drilled Bruce
about the conditions at home, but he was not forthcoming with
abundant detail. He admitted to the chronic scant amounts
of food and little money. He admitted Tyler was a constant
presence who used his street smarts for drug transactions.
He admitted his mother still took drugs, but lied about the
rate of recurrence. And he admitted Tyler and Sabrina were
a couple.

Bruce searched the faces of his aunt and uncle for signs
that these admissions had increased their anxiety. He was
fearful of what they might do, afraid if they heard too many
terrible things, they might not want to have anything to do
with him.

By the time Rosella had filled his bowl a second time with
a mound of ice cream, Bruce tried to reassure them that he
could handle the situation, he could find the help his mother
needed, and he could deal with Tyler. He was not asking for
any help, did not need help; he just wanted to know if the two
of them were for real. He never knew they existed. His mother
had never spoken of Rosella, Dewayne, or his grandparents
until she had pointed out their pictures in the society page of
the Los Angeles Times covering their wedding day. From then
on whenever he could steal a newspaper, he looked for articles
about Dewayne. It was the first time all day he had strung two
sentences together, and he talked nonstop, an unbroken monologue, trying to sound like a man capable of self-reliance.

They spent the rest of the evening shopping for clothes, an
expenditure not in the Jobe budget, but one demanded by
conscience. Dewayne took charge. Bruce had never made a
selection of clothes in his life. From time to time Bonita would
arrive home and toss him some underwear, socks, and a bag
of used clothes with well-worn looseness gathered from large
bins at Goodwill. The clothes Dewayne handed him came
wrapped in plastic, folded, with no wear and tear. It was not
an extravagant shopping spree, the clothes fit in two bags, but
as they left the department store, Dewayne noticed that Bruce
was walking upright for the first time that day.

All three sat in the car in front of the apartment complex, no
one willing to concede the night had ended; no one willing to
admit to being stumped about what the next step needed to be.
Dewayne reached into his wallet and pulled out some cash.

Bruce looked at the tens and twenties coming in his direction but did not reach for them.

Dewayne snapped the money a couple of times, encouraging
Bruce to remove the bills from his hand, but Bruce looked away,
then grabbed his clothes bag and opened the car door.

"I don't want your money," he said and slammed the door
behind him.

Rosella rolled down her window and was about to speak
as Bruce stormed off toward his apartment, but when Dewayne touched her arm, the words in her throat iced over.
They watched him walk through the gate into the complex,
never looking back.

"Should we go in?" she asked.

"No;" he said, stroking the back of her hair. "We'll see him
again. I don't know when or how, but-"

"We should call the police. We should do something," Rosella
said, her body trembling with rage and guilt.

"This is beyond us;" Dewayne whispered. "This is ... this
is beyond me."

Rosella took an unusually long time in the bathroom after
they got home. Dewayne dozed off a few times, trying to stay
awake so they could talk before they went to sleep. When she
finally came into the bedroom, she was smiling and holding
something behind her back. He could not imagine what she
might be smiling about but was happy to see her mood and
countenance had improved since dropping off Bruce.

"What's going on?"

She climbed into bed beside him and showed him the fourinch white wand she had been concealing from him. In the
middle of the wand, he saw the color blue.

"What's this?"

"You remember that night in New York ... the night of the
Heisman? Sly wasn't the only one to get a trophy."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're going to be a daddy. I passed the pregnancy test."

It had been a day when life had thrust itself upon him; a day
that had been routine for billions of people and had seemed to
start in similar fashion for him when he kissed Rosella goodbye that morning and caught the bus to the SportsPlex.

All bets were off.

His reaction to Rosella's announcement was joyous; he
needed to express joy; his wife needed to hear his joy, see it in
his face and eyes, and feel it in his exhilarated embrace.

But the performance belied a disquieting visceral groan.
What would he do with a child? His one moment to act like a father to a despondent boy had slipped through his fingers.
He had done little for the child-some food, a few clothes,
almost nothing in comparison to the need. Fatherhood existed for millennia with all levels of success and failure. This
could work, this mysterious role called a father, but it required
him to fall humbly into God's merciful grasp, even though he
questioned the evenhanded judgment of a heavenly Father
who would give and take away, who would allow life to cast
the one who had been sent to him that day back into a world
of hurt and uncertainty.

The sprawling lobby of the Marriott adjacent to the RCA Dome
in Indianapolis was teeming with college football players,
sports agents, coaches and staff from the professional teams,
and sportswriters and television reporters from all over the
country.

For the league, the annual combines provided a one-stop
shopping event for the coaches and general managers to measure the abilities of the incoming rookie class who would soon
be eligible for the upcoming draft. For the three hundred college
players talented enough to get invited to this event, it was like
going to a very specialized job fair where they could show off
their physical and mental skills in various designed tests and
workouts in front of all the representatives of the teams, and
if they performed well, they could move up their potential
standing in the draft.

For someone of Dewayne's physical size and notoriety, it was
impossible for him to check into the hotel, collect his combine
itinerary, and go to his room unnoticed. He would have preferred to avoid the attention. He was happy to see some of the
star players from teams he had played against during his college
career. He shook hands with coaches and general managers but
did not want to get too cozy early in the process. He was going to be assessing them as much as they were him, and there were
some teams he wanted no part of their program. He kept his
comments polite but terse to the media as he made his way
to the elevators. One aggressive sports agent kept the elevator
door from closing with one hand, made a quick sales pitch,
and with the other hand, stuck his card inside Dewayne's front
coat pocket.