The Rome of Fall

by Chad Alan Gibbs

  The screaming and squealing resumed, but this time Deacon commanded silence with a single raised finger.

  “If y’all come out and see us tonight,” Deacon repeated, rolling up the sleeves on his jersey and pointing at his comically large biceps, “I promise you, I’ll let slip these dogs of war!”

  The Ronald J. Pumphrey Gymnasium shook following Deacon’s promised dog slipping, and as he and Marshall walked back to their seats high above, I thought about how pissed I’d be if I died in a pep-rally-induced building collapse. The roof held though, and everyone sang the alma mater with absurd reverence. Then the lights cut once more, and the cheerleaders, re-cloaked and again holding candles, left the room. When the lights switched back on, the team and the band were gone, and school was over for the week. It was perhaps the most ridiculous use of an hour imaginable, but I couldn’t help appreciating the spectacle of it all. That said, a year later at college, in my freshman chemistry class, I did not find the experience very useful.

  ~ ~ ~

  “How do you like the bitch seat, Brinks?”

  A sign on the first row of the student section, installed by the Rome Quarterback Club, of which Silas’s father was a member, stated that seats 1 and 2 were reserved for “Silas Carver & Guest.” I suppose it was the least they could do for a kid with muscular dystrophy.

  I laughed and asked, “The what?”

  “You heard me,” Silas said, pointing toward my seat. “That spot is usually reserved for one of my bitches, but I’m letting you sit there tonight because you’re new and all.”

  “It’s nice,” I said.

  “It’s the best damn seat in the house, Brinks. Show some appreciation, man, or I’ll make you sit with the rest of the plebs.”

  “It’s life changing,” I said, and Silas replied, “Damn straight.”

  We were, for the time being, alone in the student section. Our classmates were all on the field, forming the human tunnel the team would run down once they’d burst through a gigantic victory banner depicting Roman soldiers preparing to crucify Jefferson Davis, first president of the Confederate States of America.

  “That banner is a little ... intense,” I said to Silas.

  “Yeah, I imagine the school will get some angry phone calls next week—here we go.”

  “Here. Comes. Rome!” the PA announcer bellowed through a massive speaker system stacked atop the press box, and the Rome football team poured out of the locker room wearing their famous red—Tyrian red if you want to get specific—jerseys, with gold numbers and SPQR across the chest. Their golden helmets, painted by the cheerleaders the night before, sparkled as they crashed through the crucifixion mural and sprinted to the home sideline where they jumped around like rabid animals while the crowd stood and roared.

  Rome won the coin toss, elected to defer, and as the kicker approached the ball, the crowed thundered, “Victory or death!”, which was, apparently, a thing people yelled a lot around here.

  The kick was awful, low and bouncing, and a Helvetii Rebel scooped it up around the twenty-yard-line and took two steps to his left, where Marshall Ford hit him so hard crucifixion didn’t seem so cruel and unusual anymore. The ball fell to the ground, and a guy named Fletcher Morgan recovered it then received a fifteen-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike behavior after he spiked the ball on the Helvetii player, who appeared to be unconscious. One play later, Deacon Cassburn rolled right and found an open man in the back of the end zone. Just like that, it was 6-0 Rome.

  From there, things only got worse for Helvetii Hills, and between plays, Silas and I got to know each other. He loved Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog, hated Eazy-E, and did not have a strong opinion regarding Ice Cube. He wanted, more than anything, including, I think, a cure for his disease, a 1964 Chevy Impala. “It’ll need hand controls because eventually I’ll lose use of my legs,” Silas told me and I nodded, “but they could install those when they put in the hydraulics.” He also shared with me his plan to drive to California during spring break. “Long Beach, Watts, and I really want to see Compton.”

  “That ... would be fun,” I lied.

  “So what brought your family to Rome anyway?” Silas asked, after he’d spent the better part of the first quarter recounting the rise and fall of N.W.A.

  “My mom is from Rome, and my dad sort of ran off with his secretary, so we moved back here.”

  “What a punk-ass bitch,” Silas said. “Someone needs to pop a cap in your dad.”

  “Yeah,” I said and tried to change the subject. “Do you wish you could have played?” I asked, pointing at the field, where Rome led Helvetii Hills 27-0 with two minutes left in the half.

  “Beyotch, I did play,” Silas said. “I was the starting quarterback in seventh grade.”

  He saw me glance at his crutches and said, “I wasn’t diagnosed until freshman year.”

  “Oh,” I said and wasn’t sure what to say after that.

  “I was the shit, Brinks,” Silas said. “Deacon knows he’d have never beat me out, and he hates me for it.”

  I wouldn’t have thought of Silas as an athlete, but now I could see it or at least shadows of it. He held up a crutch and said, “I didn’t need these damn things until last summer.” Then he laughed and added, “Even with them, I could probably still beat Jackson out for third string.” He was probably right.

  “I’d like to coach one day,” Silas told me, pulling an index card from his wallet. “I draw up plays when I’m bored at school. This is my best one. It’s called Convulsion.” He pointed at an X on the card and said, “See, the quarterback acts as a decoy, and if he sells it, the defense will never know what hit ’em.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not having any idea what he was talking about.

  At halftime, the Rome High School Marching Legion performed a spirited, if unrecognizable, medley of Rolling Stones hits, and the second half was no more interesting than the first, minus one interaction.

  “Hi gorgeous,” said a girl, interrupting Silas as he contrasted the rhyming techniques of Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg. I looked down to see Becca Walsh wearing overalls over a Nirvana T-shirt and Deacon Cassburn’s number 7 painted on her left cheek. She reached up and squeezed Silas’s hand, and I made a mental note to wear my own Nirvana T-shirt to school on Monday.

  “Your man is playing well tonight,” Silas said.

  “Silas, you’re my man,” Becca said with a wink.

  “Well,” Silas said, “your side dude is playing well tonight.”

  Becca looked at the field like she’d forgotten about the game then turned back to Silas and said, “Oh, is he? I try not to watch since he’ll spend the rest of the night telling me about it anyway.”

  Silas laughed, and Becca looked at me and asked, “Who’s this in my seat?”

  “This is Marcus Brinks,” Silas said by way of introduction. “He just moved here from Tennessee.”

  “Texas,” I said.

  “Or Texas,” Silas said. “He has terrible taste in music and a deadbeat dad. I’m only being nice to him as a favor to Jackson, but next week, he’s on his own.”

  I summoned the courage to look Becca Walsh in her terrifying blue eyes, and she smiled at me and said, “Hello, Marcus. Welcome to Rome.”

  “Hi,” I said and extended my hand to shake hers, but she’d looked away and didn’t see me, so I awkwardly pulled it back hoping Silas hadn’t noticed. But he did, and he laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Becca asked, turning around.

  “Oh nothing,” Silas said. “I think Brinks has as thing for you though.”

  I turned to Silas with wide eyes then looked down at Becca, who was laughing. “Sorry, Marcus, I’m spoken for.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “But,” she whispered, “my boyfriend is always busy on Friday nights, so maybe you can be my boyfriend during games.”

  “Friday Night Boyfriend, that’s a solid offer, Brinks,” Silas said. “You should take it.”

  “I’m not—”

&
nbsp; “It’s a deal,” Silas said. “Brinks is your FNB.”

  “Deal,” Becca said with a wink, then she patted my knee and said, “See you next Friday, Marcus.”

  “What the hell?” I said to Silas after Becca joined her friends in the bleachers above us.

  “Calm down, Brinks. It was just a joke. But she will insist on sitting by you next week, and that’s a good thing, because having you in the bitch seat is cramping my style. Just don’t get your hopes up because, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, that girl is the biggest tease in human history. Also, she has a boyfriend who’d enjoy turning your face into abstract art with his fists if he saw you two together.”

  “Oh, I’m well aware,” I said.

  Mercifully, the game ended with Rome scoring forty-eight points and Helvetii Hills managing only 6. Jackson played a little in the fourth quarter at defensive back, and he even made a tackle, which he’d recount for us half a dozen times on Monday. And as the scoreboard clock hit triple zeros, I was totally unprepared for the dozens of Roman candles shot from the home bleachers into the night sky.

  “What the hell?” I said, ducking as a Roman candle behind us misfired into our section.

  “Tradition,” Silas said. “The school outlawed them six years ago, but people still sneak them in. Oh, and speaking of tradition, everyone goes to Pantheon Pizza after the game.” He nodded toward Becca and repeated, “Everyone.”

  “You told me not to get my hopes up.”

  “Yeah, but I can tell it’s already too late. You want to ride with Jackson and me?”

  Of course I did, but I’d promised Mom I’d come home right after the game, and I wouldn’t start lying to her for another two weeks. So I told Silas to have fun, and, despite his warning, went home, strummed my guitar, and dreamed about a girl I had no business dreaming about.

  Chapter Four (2017)

  “You rock star,” Silas Carver said, rolling into my room. “You motherfu—”

  My eyes widened, and Silas covered his toothy grin with a hand after he noticed two students sitting in the back of my classroom, but they paid him no attention, so he finished in a much lower voice, “Brinks, you mother effin’ rock star. You’ve been here five days and haven’t bothered to come see me?”

  I laughed. “You know, I heard you taught here, but I thought it was just an urban legend, like the clown that lives under the school.”

  “There is a clown living under the school,” Silas said, as we shook hands. “I’ve seen him, Brinks, and he’s terrifying.”

  “He couldn’t be more terrifying than that Fu Manchu,” I said.

  Silas rubbed his face and said, “You’re just jealous you can’t grow one.”

  He was in a wheelchair now. A giant, robotic-looking ride with big off-road tires, and an Atari joystick he used to move around. He’d pimped it out with an iPad, some speakers, and there was an oxygen tank on the back, but I don’t think it was hooked up.

  “You look good,” I lied, “facial hair notwithstanding.”

  “No I don’t,” Silas said. “I look like I’m wearing a sexy Stephen Hawking Halloween costume.”

  A student stopped in my doorway and said, “Hey Coach, what time do we need to be at the field house?”

  Silas spun around and said, “Four, Mac. You need to be there at four. The same time you’ve needed to be at the field house for every game you’ve ever played.”

  “Oh right, thanks, Coach,” the kid said and walked away.

  “I’m surrounded by morons,” Silas said.

  As he spun back around, I asked, “Coach?”

  “Yeah, I’m the offensive coordinator.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Oh, you think just because I’m in this chair I can’t call FB West Right Slot 372 Y Stick? That’s ableism, you bipedal asshole.”

  “Sorry, man. I just ...”

  “Shut up, Brinks,” Silas said, laughing. “I’m joking. No one would look at us and guess I’m an offensive genius and you’re a famous rock star.”

  I smiled and said, “I was famous for half an hour, twenty years ago.” Then I asked him, “How’d you end up coaching?”

  “My football coach in college took me under his wing and—”

  “Wait, you played football in college?”

  Silas gave me his best are-you-a-dumbass look and said, “No, Brinks, the coach at the little college I went to heard about me. His brother had muscular dystrophy, the really bad kind. He brought me on as a manager for four years then a graduate assistant for two. By the time I left, they were running some of my plays. I’ve been back at Rome for ten years now, running the offense.”

  “No shit,” I said then covered my mouth and looked to the back of the room where the students still paid us no attention. In a lower voice, I said, “That’s awesome, man. Mom never tells me much news from Rome.” This was a lie. I’d called Mom every Sunday night for the last thirteen years, and she talked almost exclusively about Rome; I just tuned it out.

  “We led the state in scoring last year,” Silas said, “and we’ll be even more explosive this year, assuming Jackson stays out of the way and lets me do my thing. Are you coming to the game tonight?”

  “God no,” I said.

  Silas laughed. “Brinks, we expect a little more school spirit from the faculty around here.”

  I sighed and asked, “Do they still expect all teachers to attend pep rallies too, or is that just a suggestion?”

  “Oh no, you’ve got to go to the pep rally. Principal Trajan doesn’t care, but Jackson wants everyone there, and Principal Trajan does whatever Jackson tells him.”

  I rolled my eyes and said, “Well, I guess I’ll be there.”

  Silas glanced at his watch and said, “All right, better get back to my room before the halls flood with kids who have no respect for the disabled. See you at the pep rally, Brinks. Bring your spirit.”

  “Rah. Rah,” I deadpanned as Silas left the room.

  ~ ~ ~

  As required by law, the football team, which consisted of every male student and one female, the backup kicker and star of the girls’ soccer team, wore their jerseys to school on Friday. Even Karl, the small, thoughtful boy in my second-period class whom I could tell read his assignments, not just the CliffsNotes, wore a jersey. After class, I stopped him and asked, “Karl, what position do you play?”

  “Third team free safety,” he said, and I laughed, not that Karl was third string, though he looked the part, but that a school as small as Rome had a football team large enough to go three-deep.

  First period was disjointed. Attention spans were shorter, more notes were passed, and the students not playing on their phones stared blankly out the window toward the Colosseum. It felt like the last day of school, but it was only the fifth, and after ten minutes of teaching to blank faces, I said, “Look folks, I know there is a football game tonight, but Rome will play at least ten this year, maybe as many as fifteen, and I don’t intend to lose 10 percent of the school year to a stupid game.”

  The students looked hurt, like I’d just unfriended them on Snapchat or something. I sighed and said, “Come on, guys. I went to Rome. I know how important you think this is. But I moved away from Rome too, and hear me on this, it’s not that important. Unless you get knocked up, or knock someone up, nothing that happens outside of class during these four years matters much. Not in the long run. I know you don’t believe me. Maybe you can’t believe me no matter how hard you try. Maybe someone broke your heart last week, and it’s all you think about, and it’s all you think you’ll ever think about from now until the end of time, but I promise you, you won’t. You’ll go to college, you’ll get jobs, you’ll move on, and one day, you’ll realize I was right.”

  I’m not sure if I believed any of this, but I was on a roll now and felt like a teacher in a movie, so I held up my textbook and said, “This stuff, this is the stuff that matters. Algebra matters. Chemistry matters. Drop the winning touchdown pass tonight,
and ten years from now, no one will care, and if they do still care, they’re losers, so why do you care what they think anyway? But drop the ball in here and you’re screwed. Look at you guys. I mean, I hate to break this to you, but none of you are NFL material. You know Marshall Ford, right? We were in school together, and he is still the only player from Rome to earn a DI scholarship. He was the biggest, most talented player ever to come through here, and he warmed the bench at Auburn for two years before transferring. But there are dozens of doctors and lawyers and nurses and engineers and teachers who went to Rome. When they were here, they focused on what needed focusing on, and that’s why they’re not sitting in Pantheon Pizza right now, talking about a pass they dropped two decades ago. Okay? Okay. Now, Julius Caesar, page twenty-seven, who wants to read for us?”

  The cocky kid in the back of the room raised his hand, and I asked, “Kyler, you’d like to read?”

  “Naw, Teach,” he said. “I was just wondering if you played football when you was at Rome.”

  “It’s Mr. Brinks,” I said, turning my back to the classroom before taking a seat behind my desk. “And no, I was only here for my senior year, and I did not play football.”

  The kid smirked, and I wanted to throw my book at him but instead asked, “Is there anything else, Kyler?”

  “Naw, Mr. Brinks,” he said with a laugh, “that’s all we needed to know about you.”

  I considered telling them about my heart condition—that I had one, not that it was fake—but instead silently petitioned God to consider letting Kyler single-handedly lose the game that evening. Then I spent the rest of the day teaching Shakespeare to a disinterested hoard.

  ~ ~ ~

  Though my attendance was mandatory, I had no duties at the pep rally, so I found a spot on the wall opposite the stage and near the door, so I could leave as soon as it ended. Waiting there, I checked my phone. I had an email from Wade, the rhythm guitarist from my old band, asking how I’d been, which was code for, “Why don’t you write some new songs so we can get the band back together and make a little money?” I deleted the email and slipped my phone into my pocket just as the snap of a snare drum brought the student body to a collective hush. As the band marched into the gymnasium, I felt the paw of a small bear on my shoulder and looked up to see the oversized blond head of Deacon Cassburn. He wore dark jeans and a tan blazer, the official uniform of middle-aged men who want to look wealthy yet casual, and I flinched because I fully expected him to shove me into the wall.