The Rome of Fall

by Chad Alan Gibbs

  Jackson carefully slid the magazine back into the paper sack and placed it under his seat, explaining if a cop pulled us over, he could arrest us for child pornography.

  “How do you figure?” I asked.

  “We’re children, with pornography,” Jackson said.

  “I don’t think that’s—yeah, better safe than sorry I guess.”

  We drove to Silas’s house, and Jackson stuffed the Playboy down the back of his pants before we rung the bell. Silas’s mother answered the door, and Jackson and I sweated through small talk until she told us Silas was in his room.

  “Who’s there?” Silas asked when we knocked on his door.

  “A Roman,” Jackson answered, and minutes later, behind a door we’d checked the lock on six times, we opened the magazine again to bask in Tiffany Thompson’s glory.

  “You know,” Silas said, after a minute or ten of silent appreciation, “she was in my study hall freshman year. She was so hot.”

  We waited for the rest of the story, but confirming Tiffany Thompson’s hotness was apparently the point, so we gazed upon her a little longer before turning the page and ogling the rest of the Girls of the SEC who, at one point, were seniors in other freshman study halls and, in theory, someone’s daughter.

  “Dinner at the WigWam?” I asked, after we’d learned Ms. October’s hobbies (shopping and tanning) and laughed at some comics that none of us got. “My mom has a date tonight with some guy named Steve Pitts, so I’m on my own for food.”

  My two friends exchanged a look, and Jackson said, “Can’t tonight. I’ve got Ignite.”

  “Ignite?”

  “Yeah, that’s the name of our youth group at Rome First Baptist,” Jackson said. “You should come with me. Or you can go with Silas to his cult meeting.”

  “Lutherans are not a cult, asshole,” Silas said and swung a crutch at Jackson’s head. “But you should go with Jackson,” he conceded. “His church has more hot chicks.”

  “Sure,” I said, “why not?”

  And that’s how a guy I spent the afternoon looking at naked girls with invited me to church.

  ~ ~ ~

  My dad was Catholic, and Mom grew up Baptist, and when they were still married, they compromised by sleeping in on Sundays. I’d been to church just enough to know I thought it was boring, but Jackson and almost everyone else from Rome, apart from half a dozen Methodists, a couple Presbyterians, Silas the Lutheran, and Darryl the school’s only confessing atheist, regularly attended Rome First Baptist.

  Jackson picked me up at six, and we parked at the church but didn’t go inside because Ignite met across the street in an abandoned warehouse the church purchased and converted into a space where the student ministry could make all the noise they wanted. The warehouse was massive, with graffiti-covered brick walls and exposed ductwork high above. Threadbare couches and recliners covered the floor, along with a ping-pong table, a pool table, an arcade-style Miss Pac-Man, and a disco ball, which was odd because these Baptists strongly discouraged dancing.

  “It doubles as the star of Bethlehem in the nativity play,” Jackson said, when I inquired about the glittery orb.

  There was even a basketball goal inside, and you could lower the rim to eight feet and dunk like Shawn Kemp. After five minutes, I realized why Ignite was so popular. This was, without doubt, the greatest room in Rome.

  I followed Jackson to the back of the room where some guys I recognized from school huddled conspiratorially around the world’s ugliest couch.

  “Yeah,” I heard one guy whisper as we approached, “but didn’t you think her boobs looked funny? I mean, at least compared to the other girl from Mississippi State—”

  Not sure if we were friend or foe, the guy shut up as we approached, but after seeing it was us, he asked Jackson, “Did you get a copy?”

  Jackson nodded in the affirmative, and the guy asked, “What’d you think? About her boobs, I mean.”

  Jackson shrugged, and the guy asked me, “What about you, new guy? Didn’t you think her boobs looked weird?”

  “They look better in person,” I said, eliciting a quick roar of laughter and an even quicker silence as we noticed the girls across the room glaring at us.

  We continued to discuss Tiffany Thompson’s anatomy in reverent tones for a minute or two until a long-haired man in his late twenties entered the room and everyone found seats on various couches and chairs. We sat segregated, boys in the back, girls up front, and I wondered if this was a Baptist thing or if the girls were just mad at us.

  The long-haired man, they called him Brother Shawn, grabbed a microphone and made some announcements, most concerning a youth retreat to Gatlinburg between Christmas and New Year’s, then he pulled out an acoustic guitar and played while the girls up front swooned.

  I’d never heard these songs, but everyone else knew them by heart, along with the accompanying hand motions. I stared at Jackson while he made a heart with his hands and waved it over his head, and when he noticed me looking, he shrugged and continued. After the last song, which was slower and involved lots of hand raising, Brother Shawn moved the podium that held his sheet music, picked up his Bible said, “I know you expected part three of our six-week series on the book of Revelation, but God has laid something heavy on my heart today. Something even more pressing than the end times, which I assure you, are close at hand.”

  “Wait, how close?” I whispered to Jackson. “Because if I die a virgin—”

  Jackson shushed me, and Brother Shawn said, “Tonight, I want to talk to you about sexual immorality.”

  He knew. I don’t know if one of the girls told him, or if he was the one with insight into the underground pornography pipeline, but he knew. And though he never mentioned Playboy, or Tiffany Thompson, or her boobs, by the time he wrapped up his forty-five-minute sermon, there was no doubt he knew how every guy in the room had spent their afternoon.

  After the sermon, which involved one slippery-slope argument suggesting the viewing of pornography led directly to mass murder, Brother Shawn grabbed his guitar again and played an old hymn even I recognized. During the second verse, I watched in confusion as, one by one, the guys I’d discussed Tiffany Thompson with earlier made their way to the front of the room where they fell upon their knees to beg either Brother Shawn or God or the girls in the room for forgiveness. Jackson wouldn’t look at me when he came back to the couch, red-eyed from tearful repentance, but he made us hang around after the service. All the guys hung around afterwards, and Brother Shawn knew why.

  “Back here in thirty,” he said, and the room nodded. Half an hour later, we were back behind the Ignite warehouse, and one at a time, the guys tossed their October 1994 issue of Playboy into a steel trash can that Brother Shawn subsequently set on fire. There were no songs, or hand motions, or prayers, and as the fire died down, Brother Shawn said he’d see us all on Sunday, and the crowd dispersed.

  The ritual, while impromptu, felt staged. Liked they’d done it many times before and would do it again. I learned later, from Silas, that they had done it before, with explicit lyric albums, cans of Copenhagen, and a dozen VHS recordings of a recent porno film called Forrest Hump. It seemed Brother Shawn always knew when his sheep had strayed, and they strayed a lot. A month later, I accompanied Jackson to Alverson’s Sundries, where he purchased a copy of Playboy featuring Pamela Anderson, then later that night watched him burn it while I hummed “Circle of Life,” but the joke went over his head.

  Chapter Ten (2017)

  Rome’s high school and middle school were conjoined by a lunchroom, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, if I hurried, I could catch Becca before she walked her students back to class. I always hurried.

  “Hello, Mr. Brinks,” she said with a wink when I saw her on Wednesday.

  “Hello, Ms. Walsh,” I said. “What’s on the menu today?”

  “Something brown they are calling fish,” she said, “soggy tater tots, and a decent fruit cocktail.”

  I
gnoring the unwritten rules of dating, which up until this point in life hadn’t done me any good anyway, I called Becca the day after our date and, throughout our hour-long conversation, told her I enjoyed our dinner at least a dozen times. Hard to get, I was not.

  I made a face and said, “Ugh, I think I’ll try the salad.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s yesterday’s grass clippings,” she said, “but knock yourself out—Tyler, stop running!”

  Having only been a teacher for two weeks, it was still jarring to have the person you were talking to break off mid-sentence to scream at a student, but this time I managed not to flinch.

  “You should go,” I said, motioning toward the students waiting for her by the door, underneath the too-detailed-to-look-at-while-eating mural of a Roman gladiator holding the head of a decapitated foe. “But I’m looking forward to Saturday.”

  “You’ve told me that six times already,” Becca said, snapping her fingers at two boys shoving each other near the wall. Then she smiled and said, “But I’m looking forward to it too. Oh, and I meant to ask, do you want to go hear Jackson speak tonight at Rome First Baptist?”

  No. Most certainly not. Under no circumstances. Absolutely not. By no means. Not at all. Never. Not Really. Negative. Nope. Not on your life. Nah. No way, José. Nay.

  “Sure,” I lied. “What time should I pick you up?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Norma Porter, mother of Methy Mark, cornered me as Becca and I entered the church that night. When I was in college, my mother rejoined Rome First Baptist. She’d faithfully attended for the last twenty years, and now Norma, who from what I gathered was her Sunday school teacher, wanted to know how Mom felt and if she could do anything, to comfort her I assume, not cure her cancer.

  “Marcus, you let that dear mother of yours know this entire church is praying for her healing.”

  “I will, Mrs. Porter.”

  “You’ve got to have faith, Marcus. If your faith is strong enough, God will make your mama whole again.”

  “I’m trying, Mrs. Porter.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about Mark,” she said. “Sometimes God lets us hit bottom, but he always has a plan for us.”

  “I know, Mrs. Porter.”

  “You know,” she added, “God never closes a door without opening a window.”

  “Wait, does God have OCD?” I asked, and Norma’s face melted into confusion. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was a dumb joke. I’ll be sure to tell Mom you asked about her,” and when Norma offered a tearful embrace, I realized no one really knows what to say in situations like this, but some people are there to hug your neck, and maybe that’s what counts.

  I only remembered Norma Porter because she caught me first, but after having similar conversations with two dozen others, I stopped keeping track and conceded that my mother would have to trust me when I said everyone at church asked about her.

  This was only the third time I’d been inside the sanctuary at Rome First Baptist—the previous two times were for my grandparents’ funerals—and things hadn’t changed much. The carpet was still a deep red, and sitting on a pew near the back, I whispered to Becca, “Doesn’t this carpet make you feel like you’re at church in hell?”

  “Everyone always says that. When we replaced the old carpet a few years ago, the church voted on blue. But the red carpet was so much cheaper, we saved enough money to buy the projector.”

  A large video screen now covered the pipes to the old organ, which was either no longer in use or sounded quite muffled when it was, and on it a projector mounted high above us displayed an advertisement for Elevate, the youth ministry formerly known as Ignite, which still met on Wednesday nights across the street in the converted warehouse. From what I could tell, Elevate was not meeting this night, because every student from Rome was in the sanctuary, along with most of the town’s adults. At seven, the lights dimmed, and a band consisting of three guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, a keyboardist, and six singers all brandishing microphones kicked off the service with a song that, by my count, lasted twelve minutes. When the song mercifully ended, a bald man wearing a Madonna-style microphone took the stage and said, “Good evening, I’m Pastor Shawn, and I’d like to welcome you all to Rome First Baptist.”

  “Wait,” I whispered to Becca, “is that the same guy who was the youth minister when we were in school?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He came back to serve as lead pastor six years ago.”

  “Shame about his hair,” I said, and Becca punched my arm.

  “This is a special night in the life of our church,” Pastor Shawn said. “Rome’s favorite son, Coach Jackson Crowder, is here to share what God is doing in his life.”

  The crowd applauded at the mere mention of Jackson’s name, and once they’d stopped, Pastor Shawn said, “Now, I don’t have to tell you all what Coach Crowder has done for our town, so I won’t. But let me just say I hope Coach has no intentions of leaving football for the ministry, because judging by the size of tonight’s crowd, I’d soon be out of a job.” The crowd laughed, and some shouted amen, and Pastor Shawn said, “So, without further ado, Coach Crowder, come bring us a fresh word from the Lord.”

  Jackson was on the front row, next to a blonde I presumed to be his wife, and a couple kids I presumed they procreated, and as he stood, the crowd stood with him, showering him with enough praise to drown a mere mortal. I stood too; it would have been awkward not to, but when Jackson finally raised his hands to signal to his believers that he felt adequately exalted, I quickly sat.

  “I’ve received many great honors in my life,” Jackson began, “but the opportunity to stand here, before my home church, and tell you my story, well, this might be the greatest honor of all.” The crowd cheered again, but Jackson silenced them quicker this time. “I grew up in this church,” he said. “My mom and dad, they brought me here every time the doors opened. Later, as a teenager, I was across the street every Wednesday night for Elevate. We called it Ignite back then, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and Pastor Shawn had hair.” The crowd howled with laughter. They were putty in Jackson’s hands.

  “I met Jesus in this church,” Jackson said, turning serious, “one Wednesday night in ninth grade. He changed my life. He put me on a path. A path that led away from alcohol and drugs and pornography.”

  This didn’t exactly jive with my memories of Jackson, which postdated his ninth-grade run-in with the Son of God, but that was twenty-something years ago, and I forget my email password once a month, so maybe I was the one with the faulty memory.

  “It was tough then for a teenager,” Jackson said, “but students today, they have it far worse. There are so many more temptations facing our kids today. They walk into school and they’re confronted with drugs. They turn on their computers and they’re confronted with pornography. That’s why football ... that’s why football is more important now than ever.”

  The crowd roared their approval, and I set a new world record for hardest eye roll.

  “I understand my responsibility,” Jackson said when the applause died out. “It is a crown that weighs heavy on my head but one I wear with honor. I am humbled you’ve entrusted your children to me, and when I can’t sleep at night, it’s not because I’m worried about next week’s game. What keeps me up is the fear I’m not doing all I can to mold these young men and women into citizens that Rome will be proud of. What helps me sleep is accepting I cannot do it, not alone. That’s why we preach Jesus to these kids. Only Jesus can reach them, like he reached me all those years ago. You won’t read about this in the papers, because they’d never print a good story like this, but on the last day of summer practice, we filled up the Quarterback Club’s old dunking booth, and we baptized every member of the Rome football team.”

  The crowd was on their feet again, and as Jackson let them go on for some time, I realized football coaches had stolen religious opportunism from the politicians’ playbook.

  “I think of our team as an extensi
on of this church,” Jackson said, “another ministry. Perhaps the most important ministry, because we’re shaping the lives of young people, and they are the future of Rome. Look, wins are important. I know that. I know what another state championship would mean to this town. But I hope you understand whatever happens on the field on any given Friday is secondary to my primary goal of winning young people for the Lord.”

  Another round of applause, and if you listened carefully, you could hear parents around the sanctuary telling their children they would play football next year whether they wanted to or not.

  Jackson walked out from behind the pulpit and sat on the top step of the altar. “Some of you may not know this,” he said, in a softer voice, “but Amy had a miscarriage last year, just before the playoffs began. It was tough, and then we lost to Mytilene, and our sorrow doubled. But we made it through. Because of our faith, we made it through. And when these young people leave Rome, I want them to have a faith that will get them through the tough times as well. So, in closing, I want to ask, if you’re comfortable doing this, that you come to this altar and pray for our team. Pray that we will practice hard and that we will play hard, and play fair, and compete to the best of our ability to bring glory to God. And I ask that you pray for me that these young people will see Jesus in me and that lives will change. If you will, come.”

  Everyone with functioning legs was at the altar in a matter of seconds. Even Becca went, only leaving only the five oldest people in Rome and me in our pews, while perhaps four hundred people prayed down front. The old people obviously did not approve of my not praying for their team, so I went to the bathroom to avoid their stink eye and returned after the band played its closing song, another interminable ditty that made Stairway to Heaven seem brief by comparison. Jackson remained up front after his talk—a line had formed to kiss his ass. I found Becca off to the side talking to an older woman she introduced as Fletcher Morgan’s mother.