The Rome of Fall

by Chad Alan Gibbs

  Jackson turned to us in wide-eyed excitement, and before we could tell him there wasn’t girl, here or anywhere, who wanted to meet the guy who scored the last touchdown in a 56-0 blowout, he said, “Later, losers,” and jumped from the car.

  We watched Jackson follow Deacon and the others up Main Street on foot, because football stars can do whatever they want, and then I turned to Silas and said, “Great, now it looks like I’m your chauffeur.”

  “Yes, it does, Jeeves,” Silas said, then he turned to the girls in the blue Eagle Talon next to us and said, “He’s my chauffeur. I’m extraordinarily rich.”

  Before I could remind Silas we were in a Buick, not a Bentley, someone called my name, and I turned to see Becca Walsh smiling at me from the back seat of a red Ford Probe.

  “Where were you last night?” Becca asked. “I thought we had an arrangement.”

  “Becca, hey, sorry ... I ... my mom said I could only ... I’ll be there next Friday. I promise.”

  Becca smiled. “That’s what they all say.” Then she pointed toward the backseat and asked, “Are you chauffeuring Silas tonight?”

  “Jackson was with us, but supposedly, some girl in a Chevy Blazer wanted to meet him.”

  Becca raised a skeptical eyebrow, and I shrugged.

  “Well, have fun tonight,” Becca said with a wink, as the car she was in moved on, “but don’t forget, you’re mine.”

  “I won’t forget,” I said then turned to check on Silas, who’d just made the girls in the Talon laugh with a Grey Poupon joke. He was about to talk them into pulling over, so we could talk and ‘stuff’, but a commotion up ahead distracted us, and in unison, we both said, “Oh shit!”

  Many things go through your mind when you see your best friend running down a crowded street wearing only his tighty whities, first and foremost, ‘Thank god that’s not me.’

  Jackson jumped into the passenger seat, sinking low into the floorboard, and Silas deadpanned, “Looks like things went well with the girl in the Blazer.”

  “The sons of bitches,” Jackson yelled, “they got me in Marshall’s truck and stripped me down and threw me back out on Main Street.”

  I stifled a laugh, and Jackson screamed at me that it wasn’t funny, which was patently false, but I can understand his struggle to see the funny side.

  “Just get me out of here, okay?” Jackson begged, and I tried, but in the bumper to bumper traffic of Main Street, going anywhere fast was impossible, so for the next half hour, we creeped down the road, past all the cars Jackson had just sprinted by in his skivvies, and more than a few people stopped and got out for a look at the boy in briefs hiding in the floorboard of a 1992 Buick Roadmaster.

  We spent the rest of that night in Silas’s garage, playing NHLPA ’93 on Sega. Well, Silas and I played Sega. Jackson, wearing a Dr. Dre T-shirt and some sweatpants Silas let him borrow, spent the next two hours inventively combining curse words while pummeling a punching bag hanging in the corner.

  It’s a night I’ll always remember, not because it was the only time I ever cruised Main Street or because I saw my friend sprinting half-naked through a teenage traffic jam, but because minutes before curfew, as 16-bit Mario Lemieux lay bleeding on the ice, Jackson first gave us the idea of bringing down Deacon Cassburn.

  ACT II

  Chapter Six (2017)

  “Brinks, get your candy ass over here.”

  I’m a songwriter, so my imagination pays my bills—or at least it used to. And yet, six months ago, I couldn’t have imagined a future where I’d attend another Rome High School football game. Perhaps a lack of imagination explains why I hadn’t written a new song in decades, because here I was, paying five bucks and walking through the gates of the Colosseum, and there was Deacon Cassburn, telling me where to get my candy ass. Marshall Ford, who I’d last seen twenty-three years ago half-naked on the balcony rail of a Montgomery hotel room, was with him, as was Fletcher Morgan and the rest of the now defunct Rome Quarterback Club. Men who preferred watching games while leaning against the South end zone fence, because they believed themselves a bit too important to sit in the bleachers among the commoners. Well, that, and they could mix bourbon into their Cokes from the privacy of Deacon’s truck, which was always parked behind the goal post. I was there to see Becca, but I couldn’t just ignore the waving hoard, so I walked over, and after receiving back slaps and handshakes, joined them along the chain link fence as they stared out at the only green grass in Rome.

  The grass wasn’t real. It was monofilament polyethylene fibers, installed two years ago for half a million dollars.

  Deacon gave me the place of honor at his right hand, and throwing an arm around me, said, “Brinks, you’ve been in town for days. Why haven’t you been to see your friend who loves you? We are still friends, ain’t we, Brinks?”

  I could smell the bourbon on his breath and assumed the alcohol was inquiring about my lack of visits, not Deacon. The closest thing we’d ever shared to even a friendly gesture was a reciprocal shake of our heads at a party twenty-three years ago. We even had what you could loosely describe as a fight, until Becca broke it up.

  “Sorry, man,” I said, “I’ve just had so much going on with Mom that I—”

  “We was sorry to hear about your mama, Brinks,” Deacon said, squeezing me with the arm he still had around my shoulders. “We all thought a great deal of her. She was a fine lady.”

  “Well, she’s still alive,” I said, “just on hospice.”

  “Right,” Deacon said, not the least bit embarrassed, and when he took his arm off my shoulder, I saw the holster under his sport coat. He must have noticed the look on my face because Deacon said, “Did Trajan not tell you? Rome is an open-carry campus, Brinks. If you ain’t packin’, you’re the only teacher who ain’t.”

  While I tried and failed to think of a reply to that, most of the students filed past us onto the field, forming a spirit tunnel for the team to run through, and I asked no one in particular, “Were we ever that young?”

  “Hell, Brinks, you still look young,” Deacon said and slapped Marshall Ford’s belly. “But we’ve all gotten old and fat, ain’t we, Marshall?”

  “I was always fat,” Marshall said, “but I’ve sure as shit gotten old.”

  Farther down the fence, Fletcher Morgan said, “I ain’t fat,” and spat on the ground.

  “Because he takes enough Percocet to kill a horse,” Deacon whispered to me, and I believed him.

  The students on the field and the crowd in the bleachers roared, and I turned to see the double doors to the locker room opened wide and backlit for dramatic effect.

  “What’s this?” I asked Deacon, who, like the rest of the Rome Quarterback Club, hadn’t turned around to watch whatever was about to happen.

  Before Deacon could answer, the silhouetted form of Jackson Crowder stepped into the doorway, and the crowd showered him with noise. Someone unseen flipped on a smoke machine, and just as he faded from view, Jackson Crowder burst through the fog, followed by his team, through the victory banner and onto the field where they jumped and shouted and head-butted each other as football teams are wont to do.

  I shook my head and said, “So the team doesn’t mind that their coach breaks through the victory banner for them? I always thought that was half the reason anyone ever played football to begin with.”

  “He started doing that last year,” Deacon said, glaring across the field where Jackson stood with arms crossed over his purple windbreaker, “and nobody said shit. Jackson could stab these people’s mamas and they wouldn’t hold it against him.”

  “Well, I did read in the paper that Jackson’s had Rome in the playoffs for three straight seasons.”

  “Playoffs,” Deacon shouted. “Brinks, the playoffs are our God-given right. Gettin’ in the playoffs ain’t no damn accomplishment; it’s the starting point for Rome. If these fools are satisfied with the playoffs, then their settling asses are what’s wrong with the world. Ain’t nobody striving fo
r excellence anymore. Playoffs. Shit.” He motioned toward the statute of Ronald J. Pumphrey behind us and said, “The state championship. Coach P won the state damn championship.” At this, Marshall and Fletcher raised their state championship rings toward the graven image of their old coach, and Deacon said to me, “That’s a man worth worshiping, Brinks, not the great Jackson Crowder and his 0-3 playoff record.”

  I considered pointing out that Coach Pumphrey would not have won the state damn championship without Jackson Crowder, but that felt hazardous to my health among this crew, so instead I just said, “Weird,” more about being at a Rome game again than anything else, but Deacon heard it a different way, and he looked at me and said, “You see it, don’t you, Brinks?”

  “See what?”

  “What’s going on here in Rome, with Jackson,” Deacon said. “Hell, I played ball at ’Bama, Marsh played at Auburn, you’re a damn rock star. Mandy Duke’s little sister is on Fox News. A lot of people from Rome have done a lot of cool shit, Brinks, but this town goes and throws up a statue of that dickface.” He pointed across the field to the statue of Jackson in the North end zone, the end zone where Rome Quarterback Club members used to stand and watch games. I didn’t have to inquire as to why they switched ends. “They throw up a statue for that dickface,” Deacon repeated, “and why? ’Cause he crossed the road without looking both ways and got run over by immortality. Shit. You guys remember when we went to Atlanta on that field trip in seventh grade and Jackson pissed his pants?” I laughed and Deacon said, “It’s true, this god pissed his pants. Jackson was nothing, Brinks. Hell, even senior year he was third string. Now he dyes his damn hair and works out a little and people worship at his feet.” Deacon motioned toward the rest of the Quarterback Club and said, “Our daddies, they’d have burnt this school to the ground before they let Coach P get away with half the shit Jackson Crowder’s tried to pull off.”

  I didn’t reply, because I preferred not to delve into the politics of Rome football, but Deacon wasn’t finished. “Hell,” he said, “changing grades is one thing. I know I didn’t deserve some of the grades I got in school.”

  “I earned every D I ever got,” Fletcher said and spat on the ground.

  That was debatable but not something I cared to debate.

  Deacon laughed at Fletcher and said to me, “But bumping a test score up a letter grade now and then to keep a player eligible is one thing, Brinks. You know how it is around here. Some of these boys, football and memories of football is all they’re ever gonna have. To take that away because they failed chemistry is a sin. Ain’t like they’re ever gonna use chemistry anyhow.”

  “Mark Porter used chemistry,” Marshall said, laughing to himself.

  “Yeah,” Deacon said, “and now he’s on a ten-year paid vacation in Atmore.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked.

  “Sheriff busted him running a meth lab in his mama’s basement. Hell, it’s probably safer not to teach these kids chemistry. But like I was saying, Brinks, changing a test score or two is just part of the game. It don’t hurt nobody, and nobody is gonna turn you in, because everybody else is doing it. But what’s going on now is systematic. Jackson’s got every teacher at Rome involved, and I can tell you, the other schools in the county won’t stand for it. They’ll turn us in, and when the state finds out how big the operation is, they’ll shut down this football program, and then what’ll we have?”

  Conspiracy theories at the local level aren’t nearly as popular as the vast global ones, in part because they are much easier to debunk. “Deacon,” I said, “I teach at Rome, and no one has asked me to change grades.”

  Deacon stared at me. “Not yet.”

  Rome, who’d taken the kickoff and marched down the field in six plays, was now on the ten-yard-line in front of us, and I hoped proximity to the action would shut Deacon up for a bit, but he kept on about Jackson. “Hell, grade fixing ain’t the half of it, Brinks. Some of the horse steroids he’s got the team taking ain’t even legal in Mexico.”

  Rome’s quarterback lofted a perfect fade into the back corner of the end zone where his receiver made a diving catch. The home crowd went wild, but none of the men standing along the fence even clapped, so to avoid awkwardness, I stopped clapping too.

  “Wait, that kid is in my class,” I said, after the quarterback took off his helmet and jogged to the sideline. “Rome is starting a freshman quarterback?”

  Deacon chuckled. “Who, Kyler? Naw, his parents held him back a year for sports, then he failed kindergarten. He should be a junior.”

  “Wait, he failed—good lord,” I said then flinched as the sky filled with celebratory fireworks after the extra point split the uprights. “When did Rome get pyrotechnics?” I asked.

  “Those were the brainchild of the great Jackson Crowder,” Deacon said. “He thought it was safer than fans shooting their own Roman candles.”

  Of course it was safer, but I held my tongue.

  “We’re gonna have to shake his ass, Brinks, or worse days are coming.”

  I didn’t reply, and after Rome kicked off, Deacon said, “You know, Brinks, we’d love to have you at a Quarterback Club meeting one Thursday night.”

  If given enough time, I could easily list over one million meetings I’d rather attend than the Rome Quarterback Club, but on the spot, all I could muster was, “Yeah, that sounds fun.” A few minutes later, I excused myself to the bathroom and never went back.

  ~ ~ ~

  I walked the length of the home bleachers, looking for Becca while trying not to look like I was looking for her, all the while hoping she, or anyone not affiliated with the Rome Quarterback Club, would recognize me and ask me to sit with them. No one did though, so I found a seat and watched the rest of the first half by myself.

  Silas was in the press box, calling plays into his headset, which were then relayed to the quarterback through an absurd combination of hand signals and random images on giant placards. After big plays, and there were plenty of them for Rome, I’d turn around to catch Silas’s reaction, but he was always calm and already sending in the next play. He really was good at this, which reminded me that I was not very good at what I did, at least not anymore, and then I didn’t want to be there anymore. I stood up to leave, and that’s when I saw Becca walk by on her way to the concession stand. I decided I needed a Coke.

  I caught her just as she joined the back of the line and cleared my throat twice, but she didn’t notice, so I tapped her shoulder and she turned and smiled and said, “Marcus, you made it!” She hugged me again and, when she pulled away, said, “I still can’t believe you’re back in Rome. Oh my gosh, look at my hand shaking. Marcus, I don’t typically run into famous rock stars in the concession stand line.”

  “I’m not a famous rock star. I’m a forty-year-old single teacher.” I cringe after saying this because Becca was a forty-year-old single teacher as well, but to my relief, she laughed and said, “Who isn’t? But hey, the Quarterback Club did vote me Rome’s most eligible bachelorette at last year’s Valentine’s Banquet.”

  We moved up in line and Becca said, “Now tell me, Mr. Brinks, how was your first week of school?”

  “I survived.”

  “That’s my goal most weeks. Seriously though, your students must love having a rock star for a teacher.”

  I smiled and said, “There are literally two kids in school who care. One guy who never takes off his trench coat and this crazy girl who takes selfies with me every day. The rest of them would have no idea who I even was if their parents hadn’t told them. All of that happened before they were even born. So, you teach at the middle school?”

  “Sixth grade,” she said. “Thirty sweaty, smelly, puberty-going-through monsters. They’re so awkward, it’s kind of awesome.”

  “God, it’s hard even to remember those days,” I said.

  “I know. When’d we get so old, Marcus?”

  “We’re not old. Deacon just told me I look young.”

 
“He must want something from you,” Becca said then ordered three Diet Cokes and three hotdogs and waited on me to order my Coke. I followed her to the condiment station and she said, “The team looks pretty good this year,” which was an understatement, considering the 42-0 halftime score.

  “Not according to the concerned citizens of Rome standing along the fence.”

  Becca sighed. “And what imaginary threat to our republic concerns them on such a beautiful night?”

  “Mostly him,” I said, pointing up at Jackson’s statue, and Becca shook her head.

  “Before Jackson came back, we won one game in three seasons. I don’t know what those idiots want.”

  “Access, best I can tell. He closed practice, and he doesn’t come to their Thursday night meetings, and, well, he’s still the most famous person in Rome, isn’t he? Deacon played for Alabama, but no one cares about him. It must drive him crazy.”

  “He walked-on at Bama for one season,” Becca said, “and he never even saw the field. Why should anyone care about him?”

  We walked over to the fence to watch the half-time shows. Riverton’s band was now on the field. They were small and sounded like a room full of injured birds, but one of their majorettes lit her baton on fire and the crowd roared. “That looks dangerous,” I said.

  “It’s not,” Becca assured me. “You just can’t wear pantyhose or hairspray.”

  “How do you even know that?”

  “My sister was head majorette, so I tried out freshman year.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  She gave me a playful shove and said, “What, you don’t think I could pull off sequins?”

  I held up my hands in surrender, and it occurred to me I didn’t know much about Becca pre-senior year. Or post-senior year for that matter. I tried to remedy the latter.

  “So, do you have some muscle-headed boyfriend who’ll break my nose when he sees us talking?”