The Prophet (4 page)

When the lights came on, he’d be in the stands.

One of Kent’s preferences for a football game was that the kickoff be handled routinely. Big plays to open the game excited the fans, but not him, not even when they went his way. He’d just as soon see the ballgame get its start with a first and ten from the twenty every time out. High school kids were emotional atom bombs, and it was good to settle them down early.

His team didn’t give him that chance tonight. Instead, Colin Mears decided that it was a good opportunity for the first fumbled kickoff of his career. It slipped through his gloved hands and between his legs and skittered backward, rolling all the way down to the five-yard line, and there Spencer Heights recovered. No first and ten from the twenty for Kent tonight; it was first and goal from the five, and his defense was taking the field in front of a suddenly hushed crowd.

Wonderful.

The defense held, stuffing three straight running attempts to the strong side, swarming to the ball carrier, and then the crowd was back into it, because holding Spencer Heights to a field goal from that starting position was no small feat.

Only they didn’t go for the field goal. They lined up again,
going for it on fourth down, and Kent had to admit that while he never would have made that call—he took points whenever he could—he liked the guts of it. What he didn’t like was the way his safeties bit on the subsequent play-action fake, the way they came roaring in expecting another running play as a Spencer Heights receiver glided into the end zone on a seam route and caught the ball untouched.

The crowd was silent again, the Cardinals were down a touchdown, and Colin Mears was going to have his second attempt at catching a kickoff in just a matter of minutes. Kent thought about going to him, then dismissed it. Sometimes you showed your faith through silence.

Colin secured this one, though he didn’t do much with the return, and then they had their first down and Lorell McCoy was under center and things were surely about to improve.

They didn’t, though. His 10–0 squad was rattled, and spent the rest of the half proving it. Lorell and Colin misfired on several plays, the Spencer Heights pass rush was better than anybody—including Kent—had expected, and late in the second quarter the Cardinals’ junior tailback, Justin Payne, fumbled the ball on what should have been a big gain, holding it low and away from his body as he tried to spin away from a tackler. Instead, the ball spun away from him—
high and tight, high and tight!
Kent shouted, sick of watching fundamental mistakes at a point in the season when fundamental mistakes should not be made—and then Spencer Heights went to work making them pay for the turnover again. It was 14–0 at the half, and the home crowd was silent.

Not this year,
Kent thought as he walked to the locker room. They had made mistakes, yes, far too many of them, but they were correctable mistakes. They
would
be corrected, and his team would not lose this football game. As he left the field,
Kent’s focus was on his own demeanor. Steady stride, steady stare. No pleasure in his face, of course, but no anger, either, no disgust, and above all else, no fear. While some coaches liked to feed players a testosterone-fueled fury, Kent wanted to teach them how to drain it away. The approach he wanted wasn’t wild aggression, it was clinical discipline. If you prepared well enough, if you studied and anticipated and understood the opponent, there was no need for fear. When your opponent saw calm, when your opponent saw understanding and preparation, your opponent could not find fear. And so they felt it themselves. In the strength of your will, in your composure, they felt it.

Outside the locker room, the coaches paused for a few minutes, broken up into offensive and defensive sides of the ball. Here they had a brief opportunity for technical adjustments, a chance to look at the charted plays from the first half and consider what wasn’t working, and why it wasn’t. Once inside, Matt Byers took the first speaking role and started it off by punting an empty Gatorade jug across the room. This was standard fare. Byers was a holdover from the days when Kent himself had played on this field, a thirty-three-year assistant, and to say that his style differed from Kent’s was a laughable understatement. Kent was cool precision, Byers was hot emotion. Matt could—and did—intimidate the hell out of the kids with furious and profane reactions to mistakes, theatrical demonstrations, and imposing size. They butted heads, sometimes so much so that the rest of his staff took bets on the likelihood of a firing, but in the end, Kent needed Matt. He’d let someone else throw clipboards and scream himself hoarse—it delivered a message to the boys, certainly, but what it also did was emphasize the occasions when Kent was the one shouting. Those caught more attention because it was not a constant. Players learned to tune out the consistently raving coaches. When Kent’s voice rose, the field went silent fast. That was how he liked it.

Matt was in the midst of an explanation of how the team’s performance apparently demonstrated that the players were not only pussy sons of bitches but also lacking in so much as a shred of respect for their fans, parents, state, and country when Kent rose from his chair. This was the signal, and this was where they’d had their greatest clashes. When Kent stood, Byers was to shut up and sit down. Immediately. He stopped in mid-tirade, which always distressed him, and said, “Listen to the head coach, now. Damn it,
listen.
”

Kent stood and faced his team, let them all sit in silence, hoping they’d absorb two things from him: calmness and disappointment.

“Who thinks I’m upset with the numbers on that scoreboard?” he said eventually. His voice was low enough that those in the back leaned forward to hear.

Nobody raised a hand. They knew better; it was not a game of points to him, it was a game of execution. The points were a product of proper execution, and proper execution was a product of proper focus. He turned to Damon Ritter and said, “What am I upset with, Damon?”

“We’re giving them their points.”

“Correct. I want you boys to be generous, but not with the football.” He swiveled to look at Colin Mears. “Colin, are you afraid of losing tonight?”

“No, sir.”

“You ought to be,” Kent said. “Tell me why that’s true, Colin. Tell me why.”

His star receiver said, “Because we aren’t getting beat, we’re losing the game.”

This difference was critical; this difference was the focus of their season.

“Do me a favor, Colin. Read that poster on the wall behind me. Read it out loud.”

The poster said,
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACCEPTING A LOSS AND EARNING ONE.
The boys were sick of hearing that little slogan. Kent watched while they heard it one more time.

“You’ve earned ten wins this year,” he said. “Haven’t earned a loss yet. If we have to accept one, we will. But, boys? Let’s not earn it. Let’s not do that.”

He was looking at Colin, who nodded emphatically. There was something off with him, though. Something wrong with his focus. Of all the players to have playoff jitters, Colin was the most surprising. Kent decided they’d feed him the ball early in the second half, see if they could settle him down through repetition and ritual.

“We’re going to run a lot of thirty-one flood at them,” he began, and from then on their focus was on the technical details. He hoped.

If you focused on your individual responsibilities, good things happened as a team. Early in the third quarter, the Chambers safeties no longer biting on that play-action fake, Spencer Heights threw an interception. Then the offense finally got going, with Lorell and Colin connecting up the seam for a quick touchdown. They also scored at the start of the fourth, and when they got the ball back, it was a tie game with six minutes left. Lorell marched them down the field patiently, taking what was offered, letting the defense chase frantically after Colin on the vertical routes and then throwing into the windows underneath. They had first and goal from the three, and Kent looked at the field and thought,
What the heck, we practiced it,
and called for the bootleg. Lorell jogged in without a hand on him.

That was how it finished: 21–14. Kids and parents alike came streaming down out of the stands and onto the field and the band boomed away and Kent spoke to the opposing players, telling
them all the reasons they might find victory in defeat. Through it all, he could already feel the squeeze in his chest. He knew the teams that awaited would be better, each week they would be better, and four teams and four weeks stood between Chambers and a trophy.

He was going to get it this year. He was going to get it.

W
HAT KENT TOLD THE BOYS
in the locker room—
Enjoy this one, all right? Don’t look ahead yet. Tonight, relish the opportunity you’ve had to play ball this season with your best friends. But keep your heads down. We aren’t done—
was something he believed. They were entitled to a night of celebration. The intensity of focus he demanded on the field needed to be released when they stepped off it. This was a game, and these were kids, and they needed to enjoy it.

For him, though, there would be no celebration. There had been an alarming number of mental errors made, fundamental mistakes, and those sickened Kent. He could tolerate many things, but not those that should have been handled by preparation and practice.

The digital age was a beautiful thing for a football coach. Less than an hour after the game concluded, he and his assistants already had the chance to watch a high-definition replay. Coffee had been made and cans of soda opened. No alcohol was allowed on school grounds, but after this session, most of his assistants
would go out to drink together. Kent rarely joined, for two reasons: one, he didn’t drink, and two, far more important, he understood that his staff often needed the opportunity to vent without him around. Or, more aptly, the need to vent about him. His was not a relaxed coaches’ room, nothing about it was low-key, not even after victory, and he understood that this wore on them. He did not intend to address that by relaxing the tone, but he did know that it needed to be addressed. So they’d invite him out to join the festivities and he would decline, and it was better for everyone that way.

Before he released them, though, they’d assess the night’s performance and agree to responsibilities for the next day’s video breakdown. Tonight he knew that they wanted to get out early. Byers was hosting a celebration, and because of that, Kent would hold them a little longer. There were four games left, and they could refresh themselves on that notion before they refreshed themselves with a Budweiser.

While they all looked at their watches and then at the door, he hooked up the laptop to the projector and suggested they have a quick look at some key plays.

The first key play was that fumbled kickoff, and even though they knew it was coming, everyone shook their heads. Colin Mears didn’t make mistakes like that. He just didn’t.

“Won’t happen again,” promised Steve Haskins, who coached the receivers and special teams units. “First playoff game, lot of crowd energy, he was trying to show off a little, that’s all. Break a big one for his parents, for his girl.”

Kent nodded, but something felt off about the explanation.

“Something was up with him tonight,” Kent said.

“He came back fine,” Haskins said. “Big second half. Big.”

“Yeah,” Kent said, but still he was bothered. Maybe that’s why it didn’t come as a total surprise when he got the call from the police.

It was almost midnight and they were still watching the game video. The ringing phone got an immediate reaction, because one of the swiftly understood rules of Kent’s locker rooms was that cell phones did not exist. He didn’t hold his staff long, but when he had them there, he demanded focus. Each year there would be some new assistant who’d decide it was acceptable to send a text message or check an e-mail during a meeting. That would happen once. It would not happen twice.

This call came on the locker room landline, which almost never rang. All of the coaches were given the number at the start of the season with specific instructions to share it with family. You never knew when someone was going to need you for something bigger than football. Kent answered the phone, heard a man identifying himself as a lieutenant, and closed his eyes. It was not the first call from the police to this locker room, nor would it be the last. Boys got in trouble, even good boys.

So it wasn’t the caller’s identity that rattled Kent but the player’s name. Colin Mears.
Something was wrong with him,
he thought.
Something was wrong and I could see it but I didn’t ask, why didn’t I ask?

“What’s he gotten into?” Kent said, and his voice drew attention from the other coaches. The next thing he said—whispered, really—was
“Oh, Lord,”
and then Byers grabbed the remote and shut off the video.

“Of course,” Kent said into the phone while his assistants stared at him, trying to read the situation from the one-sided conversation. “Of course I can provide witnesses. Fifty of them.”

That got a visible reaction, everyone turning to look at one another.

“I’ll come down,” he said. “You tell his parents I’m going to come down. Please.”

He hung up, the room silent, everyone waiting.

“Rachel Bond is dead,” he said. They all knew who she was. It was a small school and a smaller football program. When you had an all-state receiver on the roster, your coaches knew his girlfriend. “They’ve got Colin down at the jail.”

“No way,” Haskins said. “Absolutely no way on earth could that boy have—”

“Of course not.”

“But they think?”

“I don’t know,” Kent said. “Probably not. He’d be one of the first to look at, that’s all. I guess they need me to confirm where he was this afternoon and tonight. They want to see me.”

Byers said, “First to look at. You’re not talking a car wreck. Someone killed that girl?”

Kent nodded.

There was a hushed pause. Kent picked his keys up off the desk, stood, and said, “Get on home, gentlemen. Go see your families.”