The Sport of Kings

by C. E. Morgan

  Relax, Allmon. Relax, loosen your mind, free your body, it’s lunchtime. That’s when they let you out of the classroom, and you run silly and wild on the blacktop basketball courts, because you’re still a child even with your fourteenth birthday only weeks away. Your feet pound the pavement, you flail your longish arms, impressed with their new wingspan, you discover the interesting ways you’re growing into your body, just like you discovered the secrets of your right hand a few years back. Yeah, sure, maybe you got an average face, an average dick, but wonders never cease, and the best ones come from inside you. You feel smart realizing that, then Keeo’s talking shit—that kufi-wearing motherfucker never knows when to quit—and there you go, the two of you kicking across the court in a madcap fifty-yard dash, and you own him, you tear him up like a paper curler, reaching the chain-link fence five feet ahead of him and barely sweating, just taking your air in fitful bursts.

  Suddenly, there’s a white man in your face and you rear back, startled.

  “So you’re Allmon Shaughnessy,” the man said, holding a clipboard against his chest and staring you down. His drawl was surprising—thick, like beef stew over biscuits.

  “Yeah,” said Allmon, trying to recover himself, trying to look cool. He realized now where he’d seen the man before; he’d been at their gym class last week, talking to their teacher and watching them run.

  “So, Allmon,” the man said, “tell me something. Were you going all out just now, or were you holding a little something back?”

  “Naw…,” Allmon said diffidently, trying to rein in the uprush of pride, “I don’t got to go all out ’cause ain’t nobody here can beat me.”

  The man smiled with one side of his mouth. “That’s what I thought. Listen, I’m about to offer you some free life advice: when you’re headed toward the goal line, you go all out every time. Every single time. No matter who you think you’ve got beat.” He looked at him with an evaluating eye. “Because you never know when you’ve got some big white defensive end right on your ass.”

  It was a gamble, and Allmon was surprised for a second, but then he grinned, a little abashed, and the man grinned in return, watching him closely all the while.

  “Where are you going to high school next year, Allmon?”

  Allmon hesitated and wove once before saying, “Um, Walnut Hills if I can get in.”

  The man whistled. “Wow, that’s a good school—great academics. But you certain that’s the right move for you, son?”

  “Yeah … I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m going to be blunt. You’ve got a great body, kid, and I’d say there’s a pretty good chance it was made for other things. Look at these mitts. If I may…” He reached forward and lifted Allmon’s left hand by the wrist. He had his grandfather’s hands already.

  “You’ve got monster paws, Allmon, and you just told me I haven’t seen the extent of your speed. Your teacher tells me she thinks you have the makings of an All-State and that the only reason you didn’t go to competition this year was because you were home sick that week. I have to tell you, as a coach you make me sit up and take notice. I’d like to see you at the Academy for Physical Education next year, be a varsity Lion. Who knows, assuming you can catch a ball, you could have NFL running back written all over you. You never know.”

  Allmon perked up. “Maybe quarterback? My dad loves football. He’s a Packers fan.”

  The man looked at him through the slat of his lids. “It sounds like your dad’s a smart guy. Myself, I never made it to the NFL. I wasn’t fast enough, but I did play all four years for Alabama, and it was the best thing that ever happened for my relationship with my dad. We always had something to talk about, you know? Even when things got tough. Sports create a bond.”

  “Right.” Allmon nodded.

  “So why don’t you talk to your dad about it…”

  “All right,” Allmon said evenly, and then he couldn’t contain his child’s smile. “I think I will.”

  * * *

  On the Friday before the admissions test, it snowed. He stood in the bathroom, peering out the tiny square window at their backyard, which was no backyard at all, just a patch of woebegotten earth littered with glass and fenced by chicken wire. Behind their shotgun house, the old bottle factory towered with its shattered, jagged windowpanes, its interior breached by the raw weather and the swiftly falling snow. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but the snow looked gray and crumbly as tabby—as if even the snow couldn’t be white on this side of town.

  He thought, Maybe it’ll snow too hard to get to that test tomorrow.

  He thought, Fuck all those white kids on the East Side anyway, with their floppy haircuts and their Walkmen and their wheels, their fucking bullshit easy lives. Why would he want to go to their rich-kid school? He thought of his mother on the couch. He thought of his father.

  He thought, nothing ever works out anyhow.

  Marie was dead asleep when Allmon slipped into the front room and opened the fridge. In the freezer, there was some United Dairy Farmers ice cream and an old scarlet-label vodka bottle. He grasped up the frosted bottle and walked straight back to his room.

  He sat cross-legged on the air mattress for a long time, the bottle between his legs, his mind full of nothing. He heard the little feet of the snowflakes as they landed on the sill. The tiniest whistle of air seeped out of the mattress in the few minutes he spent sitting there silently. Then he started to drink. He didn’t mix it, just drank it, and when he got drunk enough, it did actually occur to him that he wanted to go get a real education, but he couldn’t remember whether he wanted to be a teacher or was it an astronomer, and his last thought he had before he passed out was: The test is at nine. Don’t be late.

  * * *

  He woke in his own vomit at ten to the sound of Marie crying, “Allmon, Allmon, what have you done?”

  * * *

  And so it was the Academy of Physical Education. By the first day of training he’d forsworn alcohol forever, but threw up more over the course of the next six months than he ever had in his life. Two-a-days began on August 2 at seven in the morning; at weigh-in, he was hefting 175 pounds on his five-ten frame, broad through the shoulders but otherwise sapling slim. They would have to build him from the ground up.

  The offensive coordinator, a big white guy with a face as pocked as a waffle iron, said, “How big’s your dad, scat?”

  Allmon had no idea, but he didn’t blink: “Six-two.”

  The man nodded. “What I was hoping! You’re a baby power back. Let’s see if we can’t get you through the crawling stage real quick.”

  The coach, in his first talk of the season, said, “I’m not here to teach you a game—I’m here to make men out of boys. That means I need you big, fast, and I need you mean, because your ability to hurt your opponent is no less important than your ability to memorize plays or catch a pass. If hurting someone isn’t in your nature, get it in your nature. Right here. Right now.”

  With no ceremony whatsoever—and everyone calling him fucking Almond—they moved him into his new home: the weight room. Mondays were legs: squats, leg curls, and extensions, followed by Wednesday’s chest, back, and shoulder day: bench press, lat pull, and dumbbell military press until his arms were screaming and his teeth fit to shatter from clenching, all followed on Thursday with explosive fast twitch work: power cleans and box jumps until he was crying on the inside and—every damn time—throwing up. On the field, he struggled to maintain his weight after long days under full pads and gear. Speed and agility, they screamed until his own mind turned coach: Speed and agility! All hours of the day. Did he intend to make varsity? Fuck, yeah, he did. College? Pro? Yeah, sure. Well, maybe … he didn’t know. There was Aesop and the work and the money. There was his momma. And there was a starter jacket he wasn’t allowed to wear at school and a five-hundred-dollar watch he had hidden under his mattress. He hadn’t really worked his whole life out, he didn’t really know what he was doing. And he didn’t have
the calories to burn for thinking between endless tire drills followed by ladder drills—hopscotch, one-foot laterals, backward laterals, crossovers and reverse shuffles, ladders in his sleep, ladders descending to hell—and dashes up and back with the stopwatches clicking and the offensive line coaches barking: Ladies, it’s four-eight-forty or nothing! Then at the tail end of practice, when Allmon’s body was broken and his spirit rattled from all the screaming, the coaches led them to the hill a half mile behind the school and made them run suicide hills until the entire team was dropping, starting with the linemen and ending with the sprinty little running backs, all of them on their hands and knees puking onto the desiccated autumn grass. Then it was a shower and off to run the neighborhood.

  * * *

  “Get in.”

  It was Drone behind the wheel of Aesop’s Jetta, gesturing with a fat thumb toward the backseat. Allmon had just been walking back from school in Winton Terrace, minding his own, so he was surprised to be accosted in the street by his crew in the middle of the day, or to hear the normally quiet Drone giving orders; he was just a hatchet man for Aesop, big as a bouncer, natural authority like marrow in his bones. He barely ever had to use his booming bass.

  “Get in.”

  Slant late-afternoon sun, whipping spring wind, it felt so good out, so why was he hesitating? He just had a crooked feeling. Don’t get in, Allmon. Don’t do it.

  “Get in, boo.” Aesop was leaning over in the shotgun seat, his eyes offering no alternative. Quieting his body, Allmon slid in beside Andre and Dox in the back, but perched on the edge of the seat with his hand on the frame of the car out the open window like he was ready to spring. The air in the car was full of needles.

  “What’s going down?”

  “Over-the-Rhine’s about to burn!”

  Allmon said nothing, just waited, feeling the hard, fast bloom of dread in his gut.

  Aesop twisted around in the front seat, the customary reserve of his face distorted, grim. His chin jutted beneath whitened lips. “They shot Simpson. They shot my boy in the motherfucking back.”

  Allmon reared back. “Who?”

  “Who you think! The motherfucking police!”

  “He was running?”

  Aesop sneered. “Bitch, he ain’t ran. Shut your fucking mouth.”

  He didn’t bother to ask where they were going, because he knew. He knew when Aesop passed back a 9 mm Glock, all black and smooth with its dull sheen. He shoved it inexpertly down into the waistband of his jeans. Aesop once said, You ain’t grown till I say you grown, so was he grown? Boom, yes—just like that. He was old and bold. Something electric, like a whole house power surge, replaced his dread.

  They flew through Knowlton’s Corner, through Cumminsville near the house he now called home, the place where his mother lay on the old sofa, then into the wasteland of the old west end, long routed by the interstate, with its meatpacking plants and its brownstones, its nothing. You could follow that line of nothing all the way to the river, but they veered east with squealing tires onto Liberty and crossed into Over-the-Rhine. Smoke from a fire was rising somewhere to the east when they crossed Central Parkway, that street built on the old drained canal—the Rhine—over which the Germans had crossed into the heart of the city, the Reverend’s now ailing Queen.

  “Get out, get out, I’m a find y’all,” said Drone, and they tumbled out, loped like loose-limbed vigilantes down Vine, joining the people pouring out of their apartments and houses the way smoke was pouring up into the bruised sky.

  He flowed, they flowed, everything flowed toward the fire. The streets were full of fight. He was jostled and bumped as he ran and there was the high chatter of shattering glass in the distance. The Glock was cold and hard in his pants like some kind of industrial dick. With sharp vision granted by fear or excitement, he saw as if for the first time the old streets made new, the towering walls of these Italianate buildings with their massive moldings pitted by time, wavy glass windows amber in the falling light. The city was crashing down and a rowdy night was rising. He was back in the world of the Reverend, the old city. He sensed vaguely through his excitement that the Reverend wouldn’t be in this river of madness, wouldn’t be following the people as they ran now toward the smashing and looting over on Sycamore. His grandfather had tried to save this old neighborhood. He’d said, “As busy as Manhattan back in the day! This city was freedom, and don’t you forget it!”

  Now Over-the-Rhine was indeed preparing to burn. Men and women milled in the streets, laughing and hollering along Sycamore, hurling hubcaps and old stones from the edifices of these old gray giants into glass windows, smoke rising in three directions now. There were sirens looping out of the precinct house, and they’d be here any second, noses trained to the scent of unrest. The sound of them jogged something; Allmon snapped suddenly out of a fever dream. They’d all be rounded up, or there’d be blood, or both. The thrill was gone and the dread was back.

  He would have stood there paralyzed on Race if someone hadn’t pushed him into the old Schroeder electronics store, where the televisions were mute with alarm and the radios could only perk their ears as they were snatched from their carpeted plinths and carried out into the wilds. He realized that somehow, somewhere, he’d lost his crew. He ran back to the front of the store with a thought to look for Aesop in the sea of looters, but he didn’t; he just looked north. There was the Reverend’s old house that he’d left to the church, now derelict. The sirens were mourning louder and louder. Holy shit, it was a flat-out mob, and he was in the middle of it. How the fuck could he get out of this—not just the looting but his whole stupid life? In an instant, a wild dream swooped up in him; all he had to do was get back to the hood, grab his mother and whatever cash he had, and get them both to Chicago on a bus. Abandon this fucked-up life! He wasn’t a fucking dealer, he was just a fifteen-year-old kid. What kind of game had he been playing? Enough wrong turns and you run in a circle. He needed to find Mike Shaughnessy and Mike Shaughnessy would welcome him. His white father would want him—that was a given. Allmon took off running.

  He was veering and leaping around the opposing team the way he did on the field. All around bricks were being thrown through plate-glass windows, so they shattered inward and great guillotine plates came slicing down, then the people streamed through in a great cascade, and the sound of their shoes on the glass made him want to scream. With a spastic crackling, the streetlights opened their accusing eyes and the faces all around were horribly exposed in the garish light. He realized that he too was recognizable.

  Now Allmon sprinted up Race, already halfway up the street before he suddenly realized he was a black boy running with a gun, so he flung himself into an alleyway, crouched behind a metal trash can, and jerked the Glock out of his jeans, slid it beneath a trash can. Fear was hammering him from all sides. Aesop would kill him, but maybe he’d come back for it, whatever, he couldn’t think about that now; he just needed to get out of this situation. His breathing came in drafts as he waited. And waited.

  The river swung lazily back and forth a half mile south.

  A wry moon sprung up with its mouth of sham alarm.

  Invisible geese rowed the black sky.

  A terrified hour passed. The city was only louder, the violence even rosier in the sky, so there was no point in staying; it was only going to get worse. He crept out of the protective dark just as tenebrous voices passed, five figures, and he fell in behind them, thinking he’d follow them north to Central Parkway, then walk up into the parts of the city that weren’t crashing down. But a wild whooping commenced, followed by more shattering glass, and he realized with a start that he was standing in front of his grandfather’s church. The front windows, long replaced by thick Plexiglas, remained opaque and untouched, but someone had smashed the old glass at the back where Jesus perched on a pearl-white cloud with his arms spread wide like the genius of water. Allmon heard intruders prowling around the interior of the church, hollering and cursing in the s
anctuary where the Germans had bent their heads and prayed for God’s light, a light now flickering in the dark. It licked the darkness, flirting, spreading itself, warming the night air.

  The church of his youth was burning. He stood in a trance before his grandfather’s face and the tawny eyes— Be not afraid! It’s the principle of the thing! The fire was filled with raucous laughter, voices conspiring with all the glee of children because they were children, as was he. Then the rear of the church was engulfed in orange flame, and black silhouettes went streaking by him and even the river couldn’t have put this fire out, it was so strong. And hot as the sun. He bellowed out pure, instinctive rage. The feeling of himself was suddenly enormous, and with impotent, unbearable force, he swung his arms in the dark, strangled articulations emerging from his throat, his eyes burning from the acrid smoke. You’re burning the wrong fucking building! You’re burning down my life! He couldn’t hear the sirens over his own screaming, nor their approach as he stalked around with otherworldly energy before the burning relic, before the billowing smoke and collapsing rafters. It was only when a policeman wrenched his arms behind him and threw him chest-first onto the glass-strewn pavement that he threw out a single word like a shield. It was his grandfather’s name, but it offered no protection at all, not anymore.