The Prophet (7 page)

The weight of it was visible on them as they took to the field, parents walking down with their sons, parents who would ordinarily have sent their sons out into the cold day alone. This was one of the things that he liked about Chambers. It was small
enough that people considered everything a shared experience. There was a positive to that. There was also a darkness. Those who never knew Rachel, who wouldn’t have recognized her in a grocery store checkout line, would today claim to remember her quick laugh and generous smile and kind spirit.

Except for the truly dark ones. For those exist in Chambers, too, make no mistake. Kent remembered them well. By noon today, someone would have voiced the first rumor—
She was a little slut, you know.
Or maybe it would be even worse, tinged with more of the things they attach to disaster in their private moments—
I heard she was running around with some Mexican boy.

Only some of them would have memories of Rachel, but
all
of them would have a theory.

He stood in the center of the field as they gathered. There were a few nods exchanged, a few whispers, but no one actually said words of substance. They were waiting on him.

Remember Walter Ward,
he thought, and he wished his old coach were here so bad it stung him, a child’s need, desperate and weakening.
Take this one for me, Coach Ward, take this one and handle it the way you did once before, please.

But Walter Ward had been in Rose Hill Cemetery for six years now. By then he was more than an ex-coach, he was family, Kent’s father-in-law, and Kent had stood beside the open earth and delivered the eulogy. That earth would not offer his old coach back today. Kent had accepted the job from Ward, and all that came with it. This was one of those things. He’d never imagined it would be, and yet somehow he felt as if he couldn’t be surprised. Everything circled. Everything with teeth, at least, everything that snapped and bit and drew blood.

When the full team was gathered, he spoke. The crowd was well over a hundred deep. Lots of adults. Parents, mostly, but there were faces in the group he didn’t recognize.

“I expect most of you have heard,” he said, “but just in case you have not, let me explain that there will be no practice, and why not.”

And so he told them the news they had already heard. One of their own had been taken from them. The word choice was key. He would never forget the way the word
lost
had seared him when used with Marie, as if she had been misplaced, a set of car keys, a remote control, a pair of shoes. No, she was not lost.

She was taken.

“We know,” he said, “that this game is of the barest importance. This morning we are all reminded of that in a way I hoped we never would be. Let’s remind ourselves of something else now: we draw strength from one another. Sometimes, we need to take more than we can offer. You boys have to be aware of that now. There will be those—Rachel’s family, her friends, your teammate Colin—who will need more than they have within them. They will need it from you, from me. We have to remember that, and offer it.

“We’ve spent months—years—discussing what this game represents, and what it does not. Today, it represents nothing. Understand that. Be clear on it. And remember… There is no fear or loss so mighty that it can break faith.”

A chorus of agreement, one of the loudest coming from a man in the back of the crowd, and when Kent’s eyes flicked his way the man dipped his head immediately. He was wearing a baseball cap and now his face was down but he was familiar. For a moment Kent stuttered, then looked away and refocused.

“No practice today, no football. Be with your families, be with your friends, be with your thoughts. Make sure those thoughts are directed toward the people who need them.” He paused, then said, “I’ll say a prayer now for those who would like to stay for it.”

They all stayed.

Kent hoped to make it home without comment to the press, but Bob Hackett, the community’s venerable sports editor, three decades on the job and still going, caught him at his car. He’d been there when they won their state title in Kent’s freshman year, he’d been there when they lost the title game with Kent at quarterback his senior year, he’d been there through everything that had happened in between.

Today he was waiting beside Kent’s Ford Explorer, and they leaned together against the car and stared at the ball field that had mattered so much only a few hours ago.

“I’m sorry,” Hackett said.

“Lots of people are deserving of sympathy right now, but I’m not among them.”

“Kent? Someone is going to want to talk with you about it soon enough,” Hackett said. “And I’ll tell you this: it’s easier if you talk to me. If I write it first, the AP will grab it. Then when somebody else calls, you can say you gave your one interview on the topic and want to leave it at that. If you don’t give any, though, everyone will get to bend it their own way.”

So let them,
Kent wanted to snap.
It’s got nothing to do with anything, it’s so long ago, so far away.

But that wasn’t true. It wasn’t far away, never would be.

“You know me well enough to understand I’m not hunting for the scoop,” Hackett said. “If you don’t want to say a word about her then I’ll—”

“No,” Kent said. “Let’s get it done. Let’s talk about my sister.”

Hackett looked away, and Kent appreciated the man’s genuine discomfort. He didn’t always agree with the sportswriter’s columns, but he always appreciated the way he went about his job. He didn’t treat it as writing about coaches and athletes and games. He treated it as writing about people.

“Go inside?” Hackett said.

Kent shook his head. “Why don’t we sit on the bleachers.”

It was maybe thirty-five degrees, the morning sun not yet doing much to warm the gray day, and Hackett didn’t have a hat covering his bald head, but he nodded and led the way.

C
HELSEA CALLED AROUND
noon.

“I just heard,” she said, no preamble, no questions about why Adam hadn’t returned to her in the night, why he was not at the office now, Saturday mornings traditionally being busy.

“From who?”

“Police. Came to get the file on her. There wasn’t much to it. They had a little trouble believing that.”

“They’re hopeful. I don’t blame them. I wish there was more in it, too. I wish…” He couldn’t continue, and he hoped she thought he was drunk. Somehow, that seemed better. Safer, less vulnerable.
Adam? He’s not broken, he’s just drunk. Worthy of your scorn, sure, but don’t waste pity or sympathy on him, please.

“Where are you?” she said. Her voice very soft.

“Home.”

“Your home.”

“Only one I’ve got.”

“Yeah?”

He was silent. He’d spent maybe thirty nights in a row at her place. Maybe forty.

“We’re holding paper on three after this morning,” she said. “That’s probably all we will see today. The Friday night drunks are out. I’m closing up. Somebody needs us, they can call.”

“Sure, whatever.”

“Let me see you, Adam. Please?”

“All right.”

They hadn’t talked much in the years after high school. Ten of them passed without contact at all. She’d been in Cleveland for a time, and then she’d been back, and she’d been married. Travis Leonard. Ex-Army, dishonorable discharge. The first bust he took in Chambers was for selling stolen goods. She came to Adam for the bond, checkbook in hand, and he’d been angry with her, furious, because she was so much better than that guy, that life.

“This is where you ended up?” he said. “Really?”

She closed the checkbook, tilted her head, and looked around the dingy office.

“This is where
you
ended up, Adam? Really?”

They finished the paperwork in silence. Travis Leonard hit the streets, then promptly missed his court date. Adam came around. Travis was gone, Chelsea was home.

“You’re better off waiting inside,” she said, and that was the first time. Well, second time. First time in a decade. She kissed Adam full on the mouth as she slid off him in the predawn, then kissed her husband on the cheek as Adam slid him into the back of the Jeep two hours later when he finally came home.

There were no phone calls for a few days. He didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to see any more of what she’d become, or for her to see what he’d become. Nobody needed that.

Then one night he was on her porch. She opened the door again. And so it went.

Her house was his favorite hated place. Hated because the title was in her husband’s name but she paid the mortgage and the taxes while his dumb ass sat in county lockup; hated because it was filled with the dickhead’s snakes—he bred pythons, had sixty or seventy of them in the house at any given time, and Adam had always loathed snakes; hated because he wanted so badly to be there, always. Hated because she deserved so much better, and Adam was part of that collapse from the start.

And favorite because she was there. That part was simple, clean. The only thing that was.

It was not her fault that she carried memories. That didn’t wipe them clean, though, didn’t stop him from feeling sick with himself every time he pulled into the driveway, didn’t stop him from sometimes squeezing his eyes shut when she touched him.

She’d been seventeen when they met, a transfer from Cleveland’s West Technical High School. Her father had taken a bust and she’d left the Clark Avenue house they’d rented to move in with an aunt in Chambers. Chelsea and her mother and three sisters. Word about her had spread through the halls and the boy’s bathrooms in under an hour on the first day of school, hormonal kids tearing neck muscles to get a second glance. Winner of a genetic lottery on both sides, with an Italian mother and a Puerto Rican father, Chelsea had a different look from most of the girls in Chambers. Had a different look from most of the girls anywhere. And she had
command,
too, bored by childish attentions but able to lock you down and melt you with one long, amused exchange of eye contact.

She was the only distraction from football that year. Girls always were some level of distraction, but in such a small school most of the top-flight talent was paired off with somebody by senior year—all those photographs to worry about, homecoming
and prom and graduation, being a single senior was a real bitch for the yearbook—but this was different, this was the
new
girl, and she neither carried baggage nor knew who else did, so everyone could imagine they had a shot.

Adam won.

Took a few weeks, too. Longer than he’d have liked. Longer than he was used to. The only surefire Division 1 prospect on the team, standing six-four and 215 pounds of ripcord muscle, dark hair and dark blue eyes and an easy smile, Adam was not used to the chase. He’d had to chase her, though, and at first that was part of the fun, it was a competition and Adam loved to compete. Then he got to know her, and saw all there was beyond honey skin and radiant hair and a body that promised all of the things he’d imagined since puberty. And be damned if he didn’t actually love this girl, awfully fast. Fast in the way it can go only when you’re eighteen years old.

That was the fall of 1989.

He’d been after her since mid-August, but it was September before he got the first date, a week later the first kiss—he was no stranger to girls then, but his legs trembled when he kissed her, the way they did after running the bleachers, muscle gone liquid, and he reached up and cupped the back of her head with his right palm to steady himself. She remembered that; later she told him that she thought it was a sign of his gentleman’s expertise, but he’d never told her the real reason for it, which was that he didn’t want her to feel him shaking when they kissed.

What followed was hardly so elegant. Heated make-out sessions and groping, backseats and picnic tables. They talked about having sex. He was no virgin, she’d had a bad attempt at it two years earlier and that was that.

No pressure,
he joked, but when a girl kept you awake at night, when she made concentration an impossible thing, you’d better believe there was pressure. He was not Adam Austin the Ohio
State recruit with Chelsea Salinas; he was a kid whose legs shook when he kissed.

Then came October 2, 1989. The Cardinals practiced late, and the daylight faded and the lights came on and everything smelled of leaves and wood smoke and autumn, everything smelled of
football,
the bullshit summer drills a faded memory, the real season under way, Adam’s last, and before Chelsea appeared, it was a perfect night. They were playing clean and fast and hitting hard and Coach Ward was pleased.

Then she was there. Ward called for a water break, looked at Adam, and said, “Get your girl away from my field before you start tripping over your hormones, Austin.”

Adam jogged over and said
what’s up,
excited because she never came to watch him practice, and he was feeling
fast
that day, the savage kind of fast, a wolf in snow, a shark in dark waters.

She laid her hand over his on the fence and said, “I need to see you,” and that was the first time in his adrenaline-fueled excitement that he saw the tears glittering against her eyes.

“What?”

“I’m going back to Cleveland.”

“What?”

“You have practice. Finish it. I’ll explain. I’ll wait at your car?”

All he could do was nod.

She walked away and he put his helmet on and jogged back to the field, the same autumn breeze that had seemed so perfect ten minutes ago now feeling chill and hostile.

They’d gotten through the practice, though he didn’t recall much of it, just that it had gone on too long and he was cursing Coach Ward under his breath for every extra rep. Then finally it was done, they broke for the showers, and he was rushing, toweling off his chest with one hand and pulling his pants on with the other when Kent showed up. Only a freshman but already the
backup quarterback, everyone seeing the promise there, half the town ready to ditch their starter for the kid, even though their starter had lost only one game. If it were up to Adam, any of the standard big brother attitude, the wait-your-turn, don’t-steal-my-thunder posturing would be damned, too, and Kent
would
be under center. He was that good. Put Kent out there leading the offense and let Adam slaughter on defense, and state was guaranteed. But Coach Ward did not bench seniors for freshmen. Ever.