“It was her idea,” I said a little too defensively. “What could I do?”
“Say no,” Silas said. “You could tell her no and live to lose your virginity.”
“Shut up. Besides, she said she’s going to dump Deacon, and then none of this will matter.”
“Yeah, Brinks, keep telling yourself that.”
~ ~ ~
On Saturday, my mom made me do two months of neglected yard work then help her clean out the garage, but late in the afternoon, to my shock, she said, “Steve’s taking me to dinner and a movie tonight, so you’re on your own for food. If you want to eat Taco Bell with your friends, knock yourself out, but normal curfew rules apply.”
I called Jackson, who was all depressed about not getting to play a single snap against Hornby, and he said he and Silas were going to the Riverton Mall and that I could tag along, but I had to drive. We ate Chinese food in the food court, and Jackson spit out his Coke when Silas told him about my previous weekend’s adventure.
“So that’s what her note was about? You told me she just wanted to borrow your world history notes. And you two slept in the park together? Did anything happen?”
“No. Nothing happened. We just fell asleep. I mean, we slept close because it was kind of chilly, but nothing happened.”
“Doesn’t matter. As far as Deacon is concerned, talking to her and sexing her are the same thing. Brinks, he’s going to murder you so hard.”
“He’s not going to find out if people will stop talking about it,” I said, staring at Silas, who raised his hands and said, “Your Friday night girlfriend told me. There’s no telling who else she’s told.”
I sighed and Jackson said, “I guess you weren’t lying about hanging out with her at Winona Falls a couple weeks ago.”
“Why would I lie about that?”
“We’ve only known you a month,” Jackson said. “You may lie about everything.”
I flipped a middle finger in his direction, and he laughed and said, “So what’s your endgame here, Brinks?”
“Besides death by Cassburn,” Silas said.
“Do you like her?” Jackson asked.
“What? No. I mean, she’s cool and all, but we were just hanging out. It didn’t mean anything. We’re friends.”
Of course I liked her. She was pretty much all I thought about. But I couldn’t admit it to Jackson for two reasons: (1) she was out of my league, and I didn’t care to have him remind me of this, and (2) Deacon Cassburn was an existential threat, and I hoped if I never actually admitted to liking Becca, my execution would at least be mercifully swift.
“Yeah, she’s cool,” Jackson said, “but if you don’t like her, you might want to stop risking your life to hang out with her.”
After dinner—my fortune cookie told me I was the master of my fate (in bed)—we walked to Aladdin’s Castle, and I held Silas’s crutches while he spent five bucks playing Cruis’n USA, a car game he was terrible at.
“Remind me never to get in a car with you,” I said.
“Remind me to beat you with my crutches when I run out of quarters,” he replied.
Jackson walked over and said, “Hey, I just talked to MeghanJennifer.”
“There’s a girl at school named MeghanJennifer?” I asked.
“Two girls,” Jackson said, “but they are always together and usually wearing the same thing. Anyway, they’re going to the raceway tonight. Maybe we should go.”
Silas wrecked his convertible in spectacular fashion, cursed loudly, and said, “MeghanJennifer is going?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Yeah, maybe we should go.”
“Go where?” I asked them.
“There’s a party at the old Riverton Raceway tonight,” Jackson said, “but we didn’t think it was our sort of crowd.”
“But MeghanJennifer is cool, or is it are cool?” Silas said, “And if they’re going, maybe it won’t be the jackass convention we’d envisioned.”
“Then let’s go,” I said.
The Rivertown Raceway was a 3/8-mile dirt track that closed sometime in the late eighties. The infield was grown up with pine trees and kudzu, but the dirt oval remained mostly visible, thanks to the rednecks who’d, on occasion, conduct their own drunken races late on Saturday nights. Every town had a spot like this where kids went to party in relative seclusion. Macedonia had a place called Heaven, an abandoned restaurant high on Taurus Mountain you needed four-wheel drive to reach. Kids from Hornby partied in Paradise, the dead-end of a street in a subdivision that was never built. And Carthage students hung out deep in the maze of fire roads running through a local timber farm. Of course I only heard of these places; no one from Rome ever went. Unlike Main Street, which was neutral territory, showing up uninvited to another school’s secret hang out—and you were never invited—was a foolproof way of acquiring a kicked ass.
“That has to be it,” Jackson said, pointing toward what looked to me like no more than a muddy spot between some trees.
There was no official entrance to the raceway anymore, just a muddy driveway you had to pass three or four times before you noticed. Once we found it, my Mazda struggled back to the track, where we spotted a bonfire and a few dozen cars and trucks parked on a bare spot in the infield.
Two kegs sat on someone’s tailgate next to a stack of Solo cups, and Silas and I helped ourselves, while Jackson declined, saying, “I could get kicked off the team.”
“Dude,” Silas said, “everyone on the team is here, and everyone here is drinking.”
“Then I guess I’ll start on offense and defense next week,” Jackson said.
I followed them into the crowd, and we passed Deacon, Marshall, and Fletcher sitting on the hood of a truck. Marshall, who was a very happy drunk, fell off the truck when we walked by and, stumbling to his feet, embraced the three of us in a giant bear hug. Weezer’s “Undone—The Sweater Song” blasted through someone’s speakers, and Deacon said, “This band’s my favorite, man.” Then pointing to me said, “Don’t you love ’em, new guy?”
For some reason, hearing this dickhead say he liked my favorite band pissed me off more than the dozens of times he’d shoved me in the hallway. I wanted to fight him. Okay, that’s not true, but I wanted to hurt him somehow. I wanted to tell him I took his girlfriend to Atlanta and slept with her in a park just to see the reaction on his stupid face. But of course that would likely be the last thing I ever saw, so instead I mumbled, “Yeah.”
The air hung heavy with cigarette smoke and car exhaust, and as we walked from group to group, Jackson and Silas occasionally stopped to say hello to people I didn’t know. I recognized a few kids from school, but a lot of people there looked old, like they’d graduated from Rome years ago, particularly a man everyone called Skeeter, who appeared to be in his mid-forties. Skeeter probably explained the kegs.
Three beers and an hour later, I was talking to MeghanJennifer, who were wearing matching plaid skirts with vests, when Becca Walsh stumbled into me and shouted, “Marcus!” She was very drunk, or a little drunk and acting very drunk, and she spoke way too loud. “This sucks so much,” she said. “Doesn’t this suck? Who wants to take me home? I want to go somewhere else. I’m so hungry and bored.”
One of Becca’s friends grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. “Don’t you leave me, Friday Night Boyfriend,” she shouted. “I am hungry and bored!”
Silas walked over, and we exchanged a look. He whispered, “You wanna bounce?”
“We’d better. There is no telling what she’s already—whoa! What the hell?”
Some idiot had their Camaro on the dilapidated track now, doing high speed laps, and the crowd roared every time it passed. Jackson walked up and said, “This isn’t going to end well,” and no sooner had he said it, we heard a loud crash through the trees. A group of guys ran to investigate, and Silas said to Jackson, “We’re about to leave.”
“That’s cool. This sucks,” Jackson said.
We
’d started toward my car just as a guy returned from the scene of the accident and shouted, “He’s okay, but his car is upside down. Does anyone have a wench on their truck?”
About twenty yards away, near the kegs, there was a commotion I thought involved a truck wench but soon realized was something else entirely.
“You did what?!”
The shouting was so loud and so angry, all normal conversation screeched to a halt, and as people backed away from the noise, I saw Deacon grabbing Becca hard by the arm and screaming, “You bitch. You lying bitch. I can’t believe you. Is he still here? Where is he? I’m going to kill him.”
“Uh, Brinks, we might want to leave now,” Silas said with understated urgency.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t do anything, though a part of me wanted to charge Deacon and rescue Becca, while the rest of me wanted to run deep into the woods. I felt like a spectator. Like I was standing next to myself, watching the scene unfold, and had no control over what my body did or did not do.
“There he is,” Fletcher Morgan shouted, pointing toward us.
“You little fuck,” Deacon screamed and threw Becca to the ground before charging me with ill intent.
There is a trope, popular in country and folk music, of large, violent men who, after making unwanted advances toward a married woman, are humbled by much smaller men. Think “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” or “The Coward of the County.” The trope doesn’t exactly apply here though, because I, the much smaller man, had made advances, however passive, toward the woman of the large, violent man, and now I was going to get my ass beat. This would not be a popular country song.
Deacon ran hard in our direction. I think I saw steam pouring from his ears, and Silas and Jackson both stepped aside, something I cannot and will not blame them for. The quarterback leapt in an attempt to remove my head from the rest of my body, but I ducked just in time, and his thighs hit my shoulder, flipping him over my head. The crowd cheered, assuming I’d taken the first point in our contest, but I knew I’d only delayed the inevitable. Deacon came back, this time aiming lower, and form-tackled me to the ground, where he proceeded to pummel me with an indeterminable amount of punches to the stomach and face.
To their credit, both Silas and Jackson tried to intervene on my behalf, but Fletcher and Marshall held them back. And I suppose Deacon would have continued punching me until he was late for school on Monday, but Becca, screaming and half-mad, kneed him hard in the side of the head. Deacon reared back and, for a moment, looked like he was about to punch his girlfriend, but instead he kicked me in the side before jumping into his Jeep and leaving at high speed.
“Brinks, are you okay, man?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, looking up at Silas and Jackson through swollen eyes. “Where is Becca? Did he hurt her?”
“She’s fine,” Silas said. “She just left with her friends.”
They helped me to my feet and I asked, “Did I win?”
“You didn’t die,” Jackson said.
“And I think he improved your face a little,” Silas added.
I tried to laugh, but it hurt so I stopped and said, “We’ll call it a draw then. Plus, I was right.”
“About what?” Silas asked as they helped me into the back seat of my Mazda.
“She’s totally breaking up with him.”
Chapter Fourteen (2017)
In days of yore, the Rome Quarterback Club met in the smoky backroom of Pantheon Pizza. I never attended one of these meetings, but it is not difficult to envision three dozen men shooting the shit for a couple hours over greasy pizza and unfiltered Pall Malls. The back room at Pantheon Pizza had three long, Last Supper-style tables, and I always pictured Coach P sitting in the center of one, with his disciples on each side, asking him to explain a parable about the spring fundraiser. Rumor was the Quarterback Club spent most of each meeting discussing the social lives of every member of the team, and if a player drank too much or spent too much time in the backseat of a car with a cheerleader at Oppian Park, Chief Evans, head of the Rome Police Department and Quarterback Club treasurer, would have one of his men pull over the offending party and scare them straight. Grades were never discussed. Grades were easily changed.
Now that they were gone, it was obvious the Rome Quarterback Club never wielded any actual power or made any important decisions. This, I suppose, caused the members some level of embarrassment, since for years they’d taken most of the credit for everything the football team accomplished. However, I suspect what angered them most was the loss of an excuse to leave their families and get a little drunk every Thursday night.
Even though the Rome Quarterback Club no longer officially existed, a few of them still met in secret at members’ homes. This seemed like overkill to me. I can’t fathom anyone in town noticing or caring if they still went to Pantheon Pizza. But I think the members got off on all this cloak-and-dagger shit. The meeting I went to, late that September, was at Deacon Cassburn’s house, high on Aventine Hill overlooking Rome.
I arrived late, but was still the first one there, and parked in the driveway behind Deacon’s black Cadillac Escalade. His home was a brick and stone monstrosity that looked like the love child of a McMansion and Buckingham Palace. It even had corner towers, from where I suppose Deacon could defend his family from an invading horde. I knocked on a massive door that took six or seven trees to make, and as I wondered why Deacon didn’t splurge and have a moat installed, he opened the door.
“Brinks, come in,” Deacon said, slapping me on the back. “I’m glad you could make it out tonight. Here, have a beer.” Deacon shoved a cold Budweiser into my hand, and I took a sip and said, “You have a beautiful home.”
“If you like this, you should see our lake house,” Deacon said, and I wondered where he got his money, but I didn’t wonder long because he immediately told me. “Ain’t it crazy to think a guy like me could have a house like this? I was just out of college when I opened my first Cassburn’s Check Cashing. I’ve got ten of ’em now, and I even bought that seedy no-tell motel in East Riverton, but you want to know where I made my real money?”
No, I thought. “Sure,” I said.
“I’ve got this group of meth-heads who work for me. Well, they don’t actually work for me, but I sort of pay their rent. What I do is, I buy a house in a nice neighborhood in Riverton or Hornby or Gaul, those gated communities work best, then I move my crew in. After a week or so, they start doing what meth-heads do—robbing neighbors, shitting in the yard, running naked through the streets—then I swoop in and make all the neighbors offers on their homes. They’re always more than eager to sell, so I snatch up their houses at a bargain, then I move my meth-heads across town and resell all the homes I just bought at market price. Rinse and repeat, Brinks.”
It’s hard to imagine a chain of high-interest payday loan stores as the ethical apex of someone’s business portfolio, but here we were. I didn’t know what to say to this that wasn’t insulting, so I didn’t say anything and walked through the den, pretending to admire Deacon’s gaudy furniture.
“What do you think of that view?” Deacon asked as I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors leading out to his backyard.
“It’s beau—holy shit, Deacon, there’s a wolf on your back porch!”
I jumped back from the glass, and Deacon roared with laughter. “What are you scared of, Brinks? That’s just Diana.”
“Diana—wait, you have a pet wolf?”
“Got her as a puppy six years ago.”
“What? Why? Why the hell would you adopt a wolf?”
Deacon sighed and said, “Okay, you know how Georgia keeps that ugly wrinkled dog on their sideline?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And Auburn flies that big-ass hawk around the stadium right before kickoff every Saturday?”
“I think it’s an eagle but yeah.”
“Well, I thought it would be awesome if Rome had a live mascot too.”
“So
you bought a wolf?”
“Yep. I heard about this old man at the Sparta flea market who had a litter of wolf puppies for sale, and I went and bought one. Bought her a cage too. A nice one you could pull behind a truck like LSU hauls their tiger around in. I wasn’t planning on letting her run around the field before the game or anything. I’m not an idiot. But when I talked to Principal Trajan about it, he pussed out. Kept going on and on about lawyers and liability and how much trouble the school would get in if Diana got loose and ate a cheerleader. You want to pet her?”
“What? God no.”
“Ain’t nothing to be scared of,” Deacon said. “Sit, Diana.” The wolf sat on command while I looked at it and Deacon in disbelief. “Best damn dog I’ve ever had,” he said, and Diana rolled over at the motion of his hand. “That old man in Carthage told me, if I were to spray another wolf’s piss on someone, Diana would tear them to pieces, but I don’t believe it. She’s a sweetie. Might lick you to death, that’s all.”
Fletcher Morgan walked through the door without knocking, and Diana stood and bared her teeth. “Evening men, Diana,” Fletcher said, helping himself to a beer in the fridge before walking over to us.
“We heard you had dinner with the great Jackson Crowder last night,” Deacon said to me as we moved from the window back into the living room.
“Who told you that?”
“I did,” Fletcher said, swigging his beer. “I live down the street from him. Saw you goin’ in.”
“Jackson have anything to say about us?” Deacon asked.
“Yeah, actually. He said he had to shut down the Quarterback Club because of some racist email Fletcher forwarded everyone.”
Fletcher laughed and Deacon said, “That’s some bullshit right there. That email Fletch sent wasn’t even that racist.”
“Nope,” Fletcher said, “besides, I’ve got black friends.”
One by one, the rest of the Underground Quarterback Club arrived. There were only about eight of them now, including Marshall Ford and a couple of men whose names I recognized from my first stint in Rome. All of them spoke to me, asked about my mother, and said they were happy to see me and hoped I could help the Quarterback Club in their struggle against the great Jackson Crowder. We drank beers and watched South Florida and Temple play football on Deacon’s seventy-five-inch Samsung, while Diana looked on, wishing she could eat us all.
The Rome of Fall Page 11