I was flush with some cash smuggled from an encounter with miscreants I had roughed up, and so I was feeling generous.
When I slipped off my barstool a second time, they laughed. One of them said, “I like this guy.” One of them commented that I was more fucked up than all of them put together, and I ordered another round. I had money to burn, so why the hell not?
Through a mouth made awkward with drink, I explained how I had a cooler full of beer and a counter topped with liquor, and it came across, I think. Mostly.
Back to the room. Beers on ice. Liquor drinks. The kids, I noticed, looked a hell of a lot younger than they did in the bar.
Too late now. I was in no shape to tell them to get the fuck out, and they were dipping into the booze already anyway. They’d brought their own Jagermeister, so I considered it the right kind of peace offering. Once I got a few ounces in me, I felt decidedly more…robust. I became a human constellation, emitting a kind of electric light, the wattage singeing the eyelashes off anybody who came into contact with it.
When the room swung sideways on me, I put a few drinks of my own in the toilet. They came out black as the night sky, and I fought off my descent by chugging a beer and throwing back a little Beam.
The night proceeded like someone flipping through an animated picture book. Being drunk and belligerent, I only caught every fourth or fifth frame. I was pissing in the shower. I was out dancing by the beds. I was stomping the floor to shitkicker country songs. I was flinging beer cans three stories down into the parking lot. None of it was cohesive, but none of it mattered. As everything moved along, the frames spread out so that they barely connected.
I hit the grayest of grayouts but kept kicking back drinks. The college kids cheered when we did a waterfall. They played quarters and flipped red cups. They knocked over the TV. Somebody from next door staggered over and ending up punching a dude wearing a trucker hat right in the jaw.
My last flashing, blinking memory involved me sucking Jager out of a twentysomething’s belly button. She tossed me off her, and I slid bonelessly to the floor.
My phone blinked. Best I could tell, it had been blinking for some time. I was only coming to because the Jager was wearing off. Stuff hit me like two tons of pure bull in a mating stall.
I watched it ring. Distantly, as if it were happening on TV or in some separate dimension. I got up, tossed it on the counter in the vanity area, and let it ring, ring, ring. It wasn’t a drug dealer or a busted lead or even Javvy. It was Deuce, and he was counting on me.
I staggered back into the fray for another round of Waterfall. I think I won the next three rounds. I lost a whole hell of a lot, in the end, though.
The night became a series of flashes, like sitting under a strobe light. Mere still images with a haunting half-life of their own, sending my guts into a burning twist. Nothing to be proud of.
I dreamed. Drowning. Head pushed under water, first by a car tire and then by the old man. I saw him in his suspenders, saw him in a white hood. Saw him setting an ancient tree on fire. Saw him standing beltless over my mother.
At some point, I was lifted onto my side because someone said they thought I’d choke if I puked on myself.
They laughed.
I got up and swayed toward the sink outside the bathroom, gulped some water, and puked it almost directly into the toilet. My throat was raw from the snoring and the cigarette smoke.
I crawled back to my spot and drifted again.
My Aunt Birdie helping me to my bed after a drunken fight with some country boys more vile than myself. Her taking my shoes off, diverting my attention with stories of my mother.
Telling me, “You’ve got her heart.”
Pressing a cool towel to my forehead.
“But you’ve got your daddy’s head, so don’t you let them switch places, or else you’ll be in trouble.”
Darkness most of the time after that. Random memories, firing like the final thoughts of a dying man. Too close to the truth.
Snores all around me. The clank of bottles and frustrated moans. A foot stepping on my arm and a piss like razor blades cutting through the night air.
All strangers, too close to the inside of my head. I tried to block it off, thought of how crazy I must have sounded, and dozed again.
I sat up, shivering. Morning light was being fed in through a crack in the door like rope into a darkened well. I had managed to fall asleep in my clothes at the foot of the bed.
My fucking neck.
I straightened up and lurched toward the door. Downstairs, in the parking lot, I saw a car with tinted windows back away and pull onto the main drag, and I tried not to let the fact that the car looked familiar bother me.
If somebody with a vendetta had been close enough to see me, I’d have been deader than hell. Pure luck I didn’t get blown full of holes.
“Y’all’ve got to go,” I said, standing over the nearest couple, trying not to stare. The woman rolled over, unintentionally exposing herself.
“Christ, man, you’re still alive,” she said. “Fuck’s sake, we thought you’d stopped breathing.”
My heart was way high up in my chest, like I was threatening to choke on it. It beat like the aftershocks of a major earthquake, the irregular movements of an organ fighting for survival. Hadn’t rebelled on me yet, but I felt a mutiny on the horizon.
He was a younger guy, hard-bitten but good-looking, with sharp features and dark eyes. His girl was a bit too hungover to judge much. She’d been in some pills the night before, it seemed, and was having a hard time knocking the tin back into place. She was thin and unremarkable. Bad hair. Bad complexion. Wide, speculative eyes.
Some uninvited guests had let themselves in at some point.
“You had already passed out,” the guy, whose name I had learned was John Owen, said. “But in walks these guys, and they seem like they know you.”
“Did you recognize them? Any distinguishing marks?”
“There was three of ‘em. One black guy, a tatted up white dude big as John Cena, if John Cena bulked up a little bit, and a woman. She was black, too.”
“What else?”
“I was pretty wasted, man. I don’t know if I should tell you this.”
“Drop it. Let me know.”
He sort of rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, well, the John Cena guy, he had a Hispanic accent. Was pale as me but talked like he was from south of the border. Covered in tattoos. I mean, bottom of the chin all way down his arms. Lots of tribal ink, blackout ink. Wrapped around his arms, curling across the biceps to the tips of his fingers.”
“Doesn’t seem so off the mark. Military, maybe?”
“No, like, Marine Corps. tats or anything. Just the black ink and the accent.”
“What’s so weird?”
“The black guy, he — you ain’t got a brother, do you?”
I shook my head. John Owen looked a little surprised.
“Baby, back me up on this.”
She groaned from behind, covering her eyes with the crook of one arm. “Yeah, you’re right. Just tell him.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“The black dude looked just like you. No question. When he came in, I thought, ‘This guy has to know Rolson.”
My stomach spun like a blender filled with razor blades. I gripped the sides of the bed with both hands, but that didn’t slow it down.
“And this twin of mine, what did he do when he came in?”
“He walked right over to you and sat down on the edge of the bed. He sat there for a long time. We was all fucked-up as football bats, so we didn’t pay it much mind. I offered drinks to ‘em, thinking they were people you’d invited, but they declined.”
“And then they just, what, disappeared?”
“Sort of. I don’t know, man. I don’t remember that much. I was pretty out of it. I think they talked for a little while, this dude and the people with him, but then they kind of got up and walked out. Poof, you know?”
Part IV
Family. Business.
1
I closed up the hotel room and slunk back to Deuce’s place the following day. I no longer felt comfortable out on my own. I thought for too long about who the trio of assholes had been.
And just who the fuck looked like me?
My first instinct was to think, Your father.
I’d had some pretty weird shit happen, and the old man had been slipping into and out of dreams over the last few weeks.
Goddamned stranger. The Stranger.
My train of thought was interrupted by the sight of my best friend lounging by himself on the front porch.
Meanwhile, Willie darted out to the edge of the fence and menaced a German Shepherd twice his size before urinating all over the chain links.
“Nice to see you, too,” I told the irascible mutt.
Deuce, meanwhile, was kicking back, a bottle between his knees.
“Early morning for a beer,” I said, taking a seat next to him.
“You’re one to talk,” he said, holding out a second bottle.
I took it, twisted off the cap, and drank half of it down in a single go. My stomach tried to reject it, but I closed my throat and held it hostage until I could handle more.
We imbibed in silence for some time, the awkwardness stretching out between us.
Eventually, he said, “Another one?”
I shrugged. I had nowhere to go.
Deuce peered out over this, our dominion. This shady little corner of north Florida.
“Jacksonville just feels like a different place when the Bulldogs win in the Swamp. It’s like it extends the fall just for a few more weeks, until winter hits you like a chop to the throat.”
“A football groundhog.”
“I suppose,” Deuce said. He smiled, but there was something distant in his eyes.
He’d unloaded a trunk’s worth of bad juju with respect to himself. Not something he did that often. I was usually on the couch when it came to unloading things. I always assumed he had his shit together. Turns out, he might have been scraping along at the deepest part of the trough a little bit himself.
Finally, I just had to ask: “How bad is it?”
Fake smile. “Shit, man,” he said. Swig from the beer. Glance at the dying grass. A breeze picked up and knocked over the dead soldiers.
“How bad, Deuce?”
“Year’s salary. I don’t know. Maybe more.”
I got up, watched a pit bull mix walk its owner to the corner.
“Christ, man. Who’re you into?”
“Couple people. It’s spread around pretty good.”
I turned around. “That’s all right, okay. That’s workable. Start small, pay off a few and—”
Deuce shook his head. “It got picked up. Bundled. Like a toxic mortgage. I got one big debt to pay off.”
“Bad dudes?”
“The worst.”
Another beer gone in a few gulps. “Who?”
He shrugged. “Don’t matter,” he said. “When you owe as much as I do, they’re all the same. Tattooed two-time losers a hair trigger’s width from a life in the pen.”
“And the business — did you hang onto bail bonds?”
He made a hand gesture, fluttering his fingers. “All went up in smoke,” he said. “Sold out before I traveled down to Savannah to get your ass out of the garbage disposal.”
“Anybody in town know?”
Shook his head. “Sold it to a guy who said he’d run it right, but who knows.”
“People got to know you’re not in the Junction. Presence like yours is impossible to miss.”
“And yet, I’m hoping it can hold out as long as possible, lest what happened to you happens to me.”
Again, a waggle of the hand. I took his meaning and sloshed beer out of my own bottle in his direction. “Asshole,” I said, smiling.
My fingers hurt, but I paid them no mind.
“My agent,” Deuce said, “he’s one of the folks got his hooks into me. Didn’t see it coming.”
“Most people don’t.”
“You think you’ve built — and this sounds crazy — but built a relationship with certain people, and then they turn around and try to get you over a barrel. It’s, like, it’s fucked up, man. They have a tendency to call you ‘brother,’ know what I’m saying.”
“Unfortunately,” I replied.
“They these, you know, these white boys with slicked-back hair and thousand dollar pinstripe suits, reeking of Ivy League schools, and they step up in your house and try to slang some ghetto shit at you. Should be embarrassing, offensive. All of that. But, eventually, it wears you down. You start to admire them persistent sumbitches, and then they fucking have you. They fucking have you, man.”
“I thought that kind of dealing was illegal in the NFL, especially after Jim Tressel and Butch Davis.”
“It is supposed to be illegal. Is illegal. Shit, man, it’s complicated. The NFL isn’t the best at regulating itself. And the NCAA — Jesus Christ, the amount of garbage they overlook is astounding. University of Georgia might be slightly better than most, but it’s still got its issues. Selling memorabilia, rings, suspect car deals. Boosters make life easy for athletes, until they get caught. Then the check-writers have no problems stepping up and naming names. I wasn’t recruited as heavily as some dudes, but I came around when there was money to be had under the table. People like Kanavis Johnson, who was a few years older’n me over at Colorado, passed around word regarding the dupes.”
“Dupes?”
“You know. Agents that were free with their money. They weren’t knocking down my door, but I had contact with a few. People starting out. Wanting to make names for themselves. It’s something weird, man. The fresh agents are the ones who toss around money with the quickness. They think throwing you a couple grand here or a couple grand there will get you to sign with them, so they’ll show up, listen to whatever the sob story is, and then toss you a handful of cash, even if they have to dip into their bar mitzvah savings. The old agents, you know, they know how to string you along. Hundred dollars here. Hundred dollars there. ‘How’s the school treating you? How’s your mama getting along?’ That sort of thing.”
“And you, what, took some money from a shady agent?”
“You see who I am. You knew where we grew up. I was a kid came from nothing, never had nothing. NCAA won’t let you get a job during the season, and the summer’s are too full of workouts for you to be able to get a job. So yeah. I took a few thousand bucks.”
“Deuce.”
“It’s not about integrity, Rol. Money gets passed around like that on campus. It becomes kind of a way of life. You don’t start by taking money. That’s not how it plays out, and you know it. Starts real small. You have a good game, and some old white dude shows up afterwards, says ‘Drop by my restaurant. Have a steak on the house.’ Being a kid whose scholarships cover everything but everything, you start to convince yourself it’s all right to take a little bit here, little bit there. You get fucking busted up, man. You brood over the future. All the time wondering how fast the clock is ticking. You could be Maurice Clarett or Marcus Dupree, and so much is riding on you making it that you start to convince yourself everything is worth it. Who knows if you’re going to go 3rd round, or if you’re going to blow out a knee or get a concussion so bad you don’t want to step back on the field.”
“And what does that have to do with now, with the gambling?”
“Patience, Rol.” He swigged from the beer. “So, anyways, there was this booster hung around the school. Big into real estate development, financial shit — who the fuck knows? Anyway, he was rich, and he was a big supporter of UGA. Real sly dude, but real careless with his mouth and his money. Quick to throw a piece of
ass your way or offer you something in exchange for making the school look good. And I’m not talking the Terry College of Business here, either. He was devoted to the football program, and so he took a few players under his wing.”
“So this was not an agent violation kind of situation?”
“No, man, this was a years-long party. Dude spent hundred and hundreds of thousands of dollars on shit for the players. Took players on his yacht and blowed ‘em out. Got ‘em laid. Got ‘em high as fuck. Even when we lost the Peach Bowl in ‘95, there he was, right after the game, ready to take us out on Lake Lanier and party with strippers he found at the Cheetah.”
“Christ, Deuce. Sounds like a Scorsese flick.”
“He’d pay a girl, say, ‘Go and make so-and-so feel real good,’ and sure enough, that’s what would happen. One time — and this shit remains unverified but feels true — girl came up and said she was pregnant with one of the players’ babies, after he’d paid for it and all, and so this guy shelled out nearly a grand for the abortion, with the supplemental there to keep her quiet.”
“And you—”
He sighed. “I went on the boat a few times. I took favors from him. He liked me. Thought he was a southern boy, even though he had lived inside the perimeter his entire life. So I got a little bit of something like a father figure out of the whole deal.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I could see where this was going.
“Anyway, he was always around, and that’s how I got my first taste of the betting world. The alcohol and the women I could take or I could leave, but guessing right on college hoops or whatever made me feel invincible.”
“It never got to SMU levels of depravity, but there was some underhanded deals going on with the program. That era — the late ’80s and early ’90s — were probably the most blatantly immoral times in college football.”
“How did that end up getting you in the position you’re in?”
“I had this…compulsion. When it comes to everything else — you know me. You know I drink, but I ain’t got to drink.”
“And God bless you for that. Wish I could say the same.”
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