The Case Against William (11 page)

"Hi,
William."

He
didn't know her.

"She
knows you."

They
watched her—she peeked back to make sure they did—all the way down the sideline
to the other cheerleaders. Including his sister. When his dad allowed William
to leave the Academy and attend public school, Becky had demanded equal
treatment. She played volleyball, and this public school's teams were great.
She wanted a scholarship.

"Name's
Chrissie. She's the team punch. You make the team, you make her."

"Anyone
on the team?"

"Starters.
She ain't gonna screw a sub, William."

As
if he should know that.

"Girls
line up for the starters."

William
knew he was ready to start on one of the top-ranked high school football teams
in Texas, but was he ready for the cheerleaders? Bobby laughed and pointed.

"Look
at rich-boy Ronnie."

Another
player had walked up to the cheerleaders and was obviously trying to flirt. He
was an offensive lineman like Bobby, and he was big, but not in a ripped,
muscular way; he was big in the "he occupied a lot of space" way.

"Thinks
he can buy his way onto a D-One team," Bobby said. "Ain't enough
money in his daddy's bank for that."

"What's
he doing here?"

"Same
thing as you. Another River Oaks rich boy slumming with the trailer trash,
hoping to play big-time high school ball, develop his skills, get a D-One scholarship.
It ain't never gonna happen for Ronnie."

Down
on the track, Ronnie's flirting had fallen flat with the cheerleaders. They
had frowns on their faces and now ignored him. He was clearly not pleased.
Becky turned away from him, but he grabbed her arm. The beast inside William
roared to life. He jumped up, ran down the stands, and vaulted the railing.
He landed on his feet and sprinted to his sister. She looked scared. The
beast grabbed Ronnie by the throat, yanked him away from Becky, and then drove
his fist into Ronnie's—

"Whoa!"

A
massive arm wrapped around William's chest and pulled him back.

"Shit,
William!" Bobby said. "You're a fucking animal!"

William
broke loose of Bobby's grasp and stepped toward Ronnie; he outweighed William
by sixty pounds but he stepped back. William put a finger in Ronnie's face.

"Don't
ever touch my sister again."

Ronnie's
eyes showed the fear of an antelope facing the lion. He turned and walked
away. William turned to his sister.

"You
okay?"

"Yeah.
Thanks, William."

Bobby
Davis grinned. "Man, it's gonna be a fun year with a beast like you
playing quarterback for us."

Bobby
spread his arms out to the stadium where they would play their first game in
three weeks.

"And
you're gonna love it. We go undefeated for seven or eight games, you're not
gonna believe this fucking place."

The
stadium looked as if the Barnum & Bailey Circus had come to town.

The
high-profile trial of a star athlete was a three-ring circus. But a football
game featuring star athletes on two top-ranked high school teams on a Friday
night in Texas was the biggest circus of them all. It was late October, and
the heat and humidity of Houston had finally broken. The air was cool and
filled with excitement and the sound of the bands competing from opposing
bleachers across fifty-three and one-third yards of manicured green grass that
rivaled the fairways at the country club. Twenty-five thousand parents and
students and lovers of football filled the stands; thousands more without
tickets stood outside the perimeter fence at the south end zone to watch the
game on the video screen in the north end zone. Frank Tucker had a ticket.
Two. Normally, he would have been put on a waiting list and waited at least
five years to purchase season tickets. But parents of the players got moved to
the front of the line. A perk of your son playing football on the number one
ranked team in the state of Texas.

This
public high school enrolled four thousand students in grades nine through
twelve. Two thousand were boys. A football team played eleven boys on offense
and eleven on defense. All the coaches needed were twenty-two athletes out of
a pool of two thousand. They found them. Big white boys from working-class
families, fast black boys from the 'hood, and a rich quarterback from River
Oaks. The public school that served River Oaks also served the Fourth Ward.
The inner city. Blacks and Latinos. Two-thirds of the students were
minorities; one-third was white. One hundred percent were poor. The rich kids
were in private schools. But not William Tucker. Because his father did not
want his son to hate him. Football was his dream. For the other players, it
was their way out of the Fourth Ward.

Cheerleaders
in uniforms jumped and somersaulted and performed stunts on the sideline.
Students roamed the open area around the home concession stand. Their parents
sat in the stands.

It
was not an Academy crowd.

The
girls wore body-hugging clothes that seemed more befitting of street hookers
than high school students. The white boys wore sweatshirts bearing college
logos—UT and A&M, not Harvard and MIT—and the black boys wore hoodies and
their pants below their butts revealing colorful undershorts. The parents did
not wear the latest from Neiman Marcus but instead the latest from Nike and
Adidas, as if they all had endorsement contracts. Sweat suits and sneakers and
football jerseys. Caps on backwards and tattoos on their arms and ankles and
lower backs. Pickups and SUVs made in America filled the parking lot. Video
cameras made in Asia filled the stands; the parents captured their sons' glory
days on tape for college coaches or posterity.

Frank
stood along the sideline fence. Alone and without a video camera. He didn't
know any of the other parents and Liz refused to come; this multicultural and
working-class environment was too far below her social standing. She had
encouraged William to transfer to this public school so he'd become a star, but
she didn't want to personally witness his path to stardom, similar to wanting
to be a politician but not be willing to dive into the filthy muck called
fundraising. Frank had grown up in just such a working-class environment, but
he did not feel at ease. The times and attire had changed. The people had
changed. Many of the dads still worked in the petrochemical plants that lined
the Houston Ship Channel and the moms at jobs that served the industry, but
they did not seem like the moms and dads he had remembered as a boy. Those
moms and dads seemed like TV parents, like Ward and June Cleaver. These moms
and dads seemed like the Osbournes.

"Fuck
you, asshole!" one of the dads yelled to the referees.

"Not
exactly a River Oaks polo crowd, is it?"

Sam
Jenkins, the college scout, stood next to Frank. He smoked a cigar and
remained loyal to Old Spice. Polo was in fact played in River Oaks.

"Nope."

Sam
laughed. "This is a football crowd, Frank. You don't get a lot of JDs
and MBAs and PhD's at a high school football game, except at the Academy, and
what those boys do doesn't qualify as football. This is your working class.
NFL is built on the working class and Latinos. Shit, you been to a Texans
game?"

The
Texans were Houston's pro football team.

"No."

William
followed the Cowboys, so he had not pressured Frank to take him to the Texans'
games.

"Like
going to a bullfight in Juarez, everyone speaking Spanish. And in the
high-dollar seats. They don't have health insurance, but they'll pay brokers a
thousand bucks to watch a pro football game. For the lower class, football's
an escape from their fucked-up lives."

"You're
a psychologist now?"

Sam
shrugged. "Part of being a scout, figuring people out, what makes them
tick. You see a boy, he's got all the physical tools, but you've got to figure
his mind out, does he have ice in his veins, does he burn with the competitive
desire, does he want to win more than live, does he have the confidence to be
the man."

William's
new team was big, strong, and fast. Big, strong white boys and fast black
boys. They ran a pro offense. William had thrown thirty-two passes in the
first half and completed twenty-seven for two hundred seventy-five yards and
four touchdowns. He had also run for another seventy-five yards and a
touchdown. Eight games into his sophomore season, William Tucker was the top
college prospect in the nation. He was sixteen years old.

"You
did the right thing, Frank."

"Did
I?"

They
had gone all in on William Tucker's career. A big public school with a
pro-style offense and an indoor practice arena. A personal trainer and a
nutritionist. An ex-Olympian speed coach. Quarterback school. Seven-on-seven
passing tournaments. Tens of thousands of dollars. Frank Tucker had nurtured
his son's gift, no expense spared. It had seemed so … American. To spend
whatever it took—whether Ivy League tuition or speed training by a gold medal
winner—to buy your children success. A better life. Their dreams. But,
despite his misgivings, Frank had to confess that it had worked. William's
improvement over the last two years was nothing less than remarkable. His
skills soared. His size, his strength, and his speed increased dramatically.
His footwork and throwing motion were now textbook. His vision of the
field—twenty-one other players who seemed to be running around chaotically—was
both omniscient and laser focused. His recognition of the pass coverage and
thus which of his receivers would be open on the play was instant and unerring.

"He's
a hell of a quarterback," Sam said.

Perhaps
his son was born to play football just as Mozart was born to write symphonies
and Bobby Fischer to play chess. Perhaps we are who we were meant to be.
Pushing a boy to be a football player when he wasn't born for it, that's
wrong. But allowing a boy to be what he was born to be—how can that be wrong?
Some people were born to be doctors and scientists and perhaps even lawyers?
Why not athletes? Why not football players?

"I've
kept tabs on William," Sam said. "Saw him at the quarterback
schools."

From
his expression, Frank could tell that Sam was about to offer more career advice
for his son. He gestured to the field where the teams were returning for the
second half. The boys pounded their chests and held their arms out to the fans
like victorious gladiators. Sam shook his head.

"People
on TV talk about kids having no self-esteem. Complete bullshit. Kids today
got self-esteems the size of fucking Wyoming. Self-esteem oozes from every
pore on their bodies. They been told they're special since the day they popped
out of mama and a hundred times a day since. They believe it. They haven't
done a goddamn thing in their lives, but they know they're special. So when
they fail at sports or school or life, it's not because they didn't work hard
enough or they're just not smart enough or good enough. No, they're special,
so it's got to be someone else's fault. They didn't fail. Someone made them
fail. Now we've got an entire generation of fucked-up narcissists 'cause their
mamas told them they're special."

"What's
your point, Sam?"

"My
point is, it's not bullshit with William. He really is special."

Sam
smoked his cigar.

"Game
program says William's six-three and one-ninety. That true?"

"It
is."

"Shoe
size?"

"Sixteen."

Sam
grunted in obvious admiration of William's shoe size.

"And
no tattoos."

"He's
afraid of needles."

Sam
chuckled. "Everyone's got something that'll make them sweat. I hate
snakes."

Another
puff on his cigar, which he then pointed at the field. At William.

"Time
he's a senior, he'll be six-five, two-twenty. He's number one on my list.
Hell, he's number one on every scout's list. He'll have his choice of
schools."

"We've
already gotten dozens of recruiting letters."

"You'll
get more."

Frank
sighed. "I wanted him to go to the Ivy League, but that's not what he
wants. His dream is to play D-One. So, what, do we go to the schools to meet
the coaches?"

"Nope.
They'll come to William. Like wise men to baby Jesus."

Sam
breathed out cigar smoke.

"William's
life is about to change, Frank. Big time."

Becky
Tucker stood down the sideline from her dad and a man smoking a cigar. She was
eighteen and a senior cheerleader. The last few months, as the team had won
more games and William had become the star quarterback, she had begun hearing
rumors at school about her brother and the head cheerleader. Rhonda. She was
a senior, too. She was not a virgin.

Not
even close.

The
thought of her little brother having sex with Rhonda made her want to throw
up. He might be as big as a man, but he was still just a boy. And sophomore
boys didn't need sex with senior girls. At the Academy, she had never heard of
anyone having sex. Of course, some kids had to be doing it, but those who were
didn't talk about it. At this school, that was all they talked about. Who was
screwing whom. (Although no one said "whom" at a public school.)
And they took cell phone pictures of their body parts and sexted each other.

Gross.

Becky
had never bonded with the other girls. They were different. They were not
girls. They were women. Sexually active women. Rhonda and the other
cheerleaders were huddled together down the sideline, waving to the players on
the sideline and then giggling. Gossiping. No doubt about who was screwing
whom. Rhonda waved at the players. At a player.

"William!"

Becky
saw her brother turn to Rhonda … and Rhonda blow him a kiss. That did it.
Becky's anger rose inside her until she felt as if she might explode. She
marched down the sideline and to the girls, put her hands on her hips, and
glared at Rhonda, the bitch.