by Jessie Cooke
On shaky legs he climbed on the back of the Harley, slipped on his skullcap, kissed the gold cross he had around his neck, and fired up the bike. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he found himself actually happy that his last DUI had been in the Porsche. Not that he didn't regret the DUI, but he would have regretted it a lot more if it had been the bike he wrecked into that tree instead of the sports car. The roar of a crowd and the sights and smells of the stadium used to be what thrilled him more than anything. Now, the only thing he really had left, that truly made him happy, was the bike...and God, he loved it.
On the back of his Harley he had nothing to block his view. Everything around him came pouring in through his blue eyes without limitations. He could smell...and taste, everything, intensely. He could feel even the most subtle change in temperature or the angle of the wind...but the sound, that was the best. The sound of the motor combined with the wind and the white noise of all the sounds around him...it was like music, and it soothed his troubled soul.
Rusty drove the speed limit until he reached the edge of town, and then he opened it up just a bit before he reached the edge of the park that wound around the driveway that led to his house...and that would be the last thing he remembered about that.
2
“I think we should call an ambulance...or your dad! Let's call your dad.”
“Wait a sec...I think he's waking up...” Rusty heard the voices like they were coming from across an empty room...like an echo. “Hey mister, you okay?” His headache from earlier was back, but this time, with a vengeance. It felt like someone was using a hammer to try to open up his skull. His knee was suddenly throbbing too... “Okay, gimme your phone, I guess I better call my dad...”
It took every muscle in Rusty's face, but he used them all to pull open his eyelids. The blurry face of the tall blond kid...the quarterback from the park, was looking down at him. He moved his eyes around slightly, fighting the pain behind them, and he saw three other young faces staring down at him. “What the fuck's going on?” Rusty didn't spend much time around kids, but as soon as that came out of his mouth, he reminded himself to filter things a little.
“You wrecked your bike,” the tall kid said.
“Oh fuck!” The shocked look of a small boy with a lot of brown freckles reminded him that he should watch his mouth, again. He pushed himself upright and had to fight a wave of dizziness and nausea before he could look around again. “Where is it? My bike?”
The tall kid took a step back and pointed at the bike. It was standing upright, kickstand down. The only damage Rusty could see was a small dent about the size of his fist in the gas tank. “You jumped the curb and dumped the bike on the grass, but it kept going and slammed into the bench. I think that's the only dent. Should we call an ambulance?”
“No!” Jesus, he was fucking lucky. He could have hit one of the kids, or the tree he was looking at that sat only about five feet away. How he was still alive was anybody's guess. He reached up and absently fingered the cross that still dangled from around his neck. “I'm okay,” he told the kids. “Thanks though,” he added as he began to struggle up to his feet. The tall kid grabbed him under one arm and with a flip of his head, another kid got on the other side. They pulled Rusty up to his feet and then the blond kid said,
“You gonna pass out?”
“Nah, I'm okay.” He pulled his arms free and teetered over to one side. The tall kid braced him for a second until he found his balance and then let him go again. Rusty wasn't going to pass out, but he did feel like he might throw up. He looked at the blond kid who was looking at him with a pair of concerned, brown eyes and said, “I'm really okay. Thanks.” He began to walk over to his bike but before he got there, the kid said,
“My name's Isaac Gannon...”
That stopped Rusty in his tracks. He spun around and narrowed his eyes to get a clearer image of the kid. Motherfucker! The light hair and dark brown eyes and that long, straight nose...Fuck my life! “You're Judge Gannon's kid?”
“Yeah, you know my dad?” Rusty breathed a sigh of relief, at least the judge hadn't talked out of the courtroom about him...at least not to his son.
“Not really,” he said. “I just know of him. Anyways, nice to meet you Isaac, thanks again and I'd appreciate if all of you guys could keep this little incident between us, okay?”
Rusty was about to turn back toward the bike, but the silence among the four boys and the way they were all looking at Isaac, bothered him. Isaac had that look on his face...the one Judge Gannon got every time he was trying to decide on a sentence for Rusty. Fuck. “We won't say anything,” Isaac said finally, once again sending relief barreling through Rusty's veins. “If...” There it was, that one little word that could fuck up his life even more than it was already fucked.
“If what?” he said, lowering his voice enough that he hoped to intimidate the kid. Unfortunately, the kid was made of tough stock and didn't seem to intimidate easily.
“If you teach us some plays.”
A laugh came snorting out of Rusty's nose, even surprising him. “You want me to teach you professional football plays?”
Isaac shrugged and said, “I don't care if they're professional, or from your high school or college days...I just want to learn how to play better. My dad doesn't have a lot of time to help me out and football season doesn't start for months...”
“Just keep throwing and catching it, that's all you need to know at your age.” Rusty turned away again and Isaac said,
“Man, I really used to look up to you. I guess everything I heard about you in town is true...you're nothing but an old drunk now.”
Rusty stopped and gripped onto the handle bars of the bike. What the kid said pissed him off...but not because it wasn't true. Without turning back around he said, “I'm not old, but yeah, probably everything else you heard is true.” He swung his leg over the bike and that was when he realized that everything hurt. It made sense if he was thrown from the bike, even onto the grass, which was really just a bunch of weeds on top of the rock-hard dirt. He sat down on the leather seat with a grunt and started to fire up the bike. He noticed a homeless guy sitting underneath a tree on the other side of the park and another group of kids about the same age as these little monsters not far from him. They all seemed to be staring at him. When Isaac started talking again, Rusty knew that being looked at was the least of his worries.
“I'm no snitch...usually, but I don't care much for lying to my dad either. He'll probably ask me about my day and this might come up...”
“You little shit! That's blackmail.”
“You can call it whatever you want, mister. Come on boys, let's get back to it.”
Rusty sat on his bike and watched them head back to their playing field. He was both annoyed and impressed with Isaac's ballsy move. He imagined the conversation the kid was going to have with his father, “Guess what Dad, I saw Rusty Daniels today.” “Oh yeah, where'd you see him?” “He was drunk and crashed his bike in the park...” Rusty cussed out loud before he called out to Isaac,
“Hey kid!” Isaac turned around...slowly.
“Yeah?”
“I'll be out here at nine in the morning. If you're one second late, you forfeit the deal...got it?”
Isaac smiled. Little shit. “Sure mister...”
“The name is Mr. Daniels. Stop calling me Mister.”
“Okay Mr. Daniels. I'll see you in the morning.”
“Oh, and bring a cup of coffee...preferably espresso, black.” Isaac looked like he was suppressing a grin, but he nodded before turning away again.
“Not a word to anyone either!” Rusty called after him as he walked away. He wasn't going to get any sleep that night worrying about it, he knew that already. But he would at least know soon if the little shit talked. Judge Gannon had a hard-on for him and one whispered word from the kid would be all it would take for the judge to send the Southside precinct over to investigate. He got on his bike and watched Isaac get in positi
on to take a hike...the kid looked so confident and the others definitely looked at him as the leader. It reminded Rusty of another kid, almost two decades ago, playing in that same park with dreams of glory in his head. Dreams that he held in his hand, for just a little while.
One thing it took Rusty twenty-eight years of life to realize was how harsh waking up could be. He'd had such a good life, a happy one. His father was a respected clergyman at work and a loving and devoted father at home. His mother was like a fifties housewife. There was always food, the house was always clean, warm and welcoming and Rusty and his siblings always knew they were well-loved. He was selected by the college he wanted to go to, the star quarterback of that team for four years before playing his first NFL game at the age of twenty-two. For the next four years his life was like a dream and he woke up early every day just so he could live it. But now, waking up meant leaving his dreams behind and he was left with a feeling of detachment that he carried with him throughout the day because that feeling was easier to deal with than the void of emotions he might have otherwise.
When he got home, he limped around the house, grumbling about his fucked-up luck, the dent in his gas tank and cussing himself again for not at least buying a bottle or two to bring home with him. He thought about taking more pain killers but talked himself out of that. Finally, after cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and forcing himself to eat a peanut butter sandwich on highly questionable bread, he'd showered his aching muscles in almost scalding hot water and he'd gone to bed. He was sure he wasn't going to sleep but when his alarm went off at eight-thirty in the morning he was pleasantly surprised to realize that for the first time in what felt like months, he had slept through the night. He gave himself a few seconds to be proud that he made it all night without anything on board...but slowly the pain in his joints and the trembling in his limbs began to sneak back in and take over, and he wasn't so convinced that sober was the way to go. And what the hell was he thinking when he agreed to “teach” these kids? He hadn't picked up a football in months...almost a year. He didn't know a damned thing about kids, and most importantly of all, he didn't have any alcohol in the house to stop the tremors he had, and was going to have. How the fuck was he even supposed to hold onto a football?
Those kids would not only think he was a loser, but Isaac would undoubtedly tell his old man anyway, once he realized that he was getting lessons from a truly washed up “old” has been. Rusty closed his eyes and he was about to say fuck it and just stay in bed until Boston PD knocked on his door and wanted to see the bike and look at the accident site...sure, they couldn't prove he'd been drinking, by now his BAL would be normal...but it would be one more scandal in a town that already had more than enough material to work with. Either way he was fucked...so, he may as well stay in bed.
If not for the ringing of his phone, he may have drifted back into his dreams. He thought about doing it anyways, but his mother usually called once a week, and when she did, she had walked for miles to higher ground in order to get her phone to work. He didn't want all of her work to be for naught. He finally opened his eyes and looked over at the phone. When he saw who it was, he groaned. It wasn't his mother, it was the good son, his older brother, Matt.
He tried to clear the sleep from his throat before reaching for the phone. “Hey Matt! What's up?” He hoped it didn't sound like he was trying too hard to be pleasant. He held his breath while waiting for Matt's reply, also hoping that the call wasn't about something Matt had heard through the grapevine that even stretched as far as his sister in California sometimes.
“Hey Rusty, how are you doing?”
“I'm good, really good,” he lied. “How are you and Annette? How are the kids?” His brother and his wife got married when they were twenty-one. Matt had just turned thirty-three and they were celebrating their eleventh anniversary and the birth of their third child soon. At least Rusty didn't have to feel too bad about not giving his mother any grandchildren. Matt and their sister Chloe had that covered. Between the two of them, they had six.
“We're all fine.” Matt's tone was clipped as he said, “Look Rusty...you know I don't like to get up into your business...” Fuck, he had heard something. Rusty was the baby of the family and although he was twenty-eight, six-foot-four and almost two-hundred pounds of solid muscle, his brother was still sometimes overprotective of him, and slightly controlling. So Rusty braced himself for what was to come, while chanting in his head, in his mother’s voice, a reminder that Matt just cared about him and wanted him to do well.
“What is it, Matt?” Rusty looked at the clock, it was eight-forty. He wanted to get out to the park early, just in case the little shit Isaac was late. He wanted all the leverage he could get.
“I got a call from Lindy Miller last night.” Lindy Miller was Rusty's closest neighbor and a girl they had all grown up with. She lived in her original family home that sat directly behind Rusty's family home, about a quarter of a mile, across an empty field. He hadn't seen her face to face in months. He couldn't imagine what she could know about him well enough to share with his brother.
“Okay...?”
“I'm just going to say this...Mom's worried. Are you drinking again?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? What did that busybody tell you? And you talked to Mom before you even talked to me? What the hell Matt?” Righteous indignation...it was what addicts did well when they were cornered, and Rusty could hear his alcohol counselors voice telling him so, as he did it.
“Look Rusty, Lindy says it's all over town that you're drinking again. Where's your Porsche?”
“Fuck that, I don't have to answer to you!” Of course Lindy knew about the Porsche. The tree he'd wrapped it around was just down the road from her property.
“It's okay, your defensiveness is my answer. This is just how you got before, remember?”
“Fuck you, Matt. I'm a grown-ass man. I don't need my big brother checking up on me!” There was a little part of him that wanted to confess to his brother and reach out for help...but that stubborn, “I can do this myself” part of him was winning out.
“You sure about that, Rusty? I wouldn't keep pushing people away if I were you, eventually they get tired of coming back.”
“Then don't fucking come back!” Rusty started to end the call and then he added, “And don't talk to Mom about me.”
“She called me right after Lindy did. You're living in their house, Rusty...they have a right to know what's going on...” Rusty ended the call in the middle of his brother's sentence. Fuck him! Fuck all of them! Damned nosy assholes have nothing better to do than stick their noses into my business. He sat there gulping air and trying to calm down. The truth was, he didn't want any of them to stop coming back...he loved his family and he needed them, but he was just so fucking ashamed. He looked at the clock again. It was eight-fifty. Throwing the covers back, he got up out of bed and his next curse was for the pain in his body and it echoed off the walls of his bedroom as he headed for the shower.
3
“Hey look! It's him!” Rusty had taken half a pain pill after his shower and ate a piece of toast. He'd drank almost a gallon of water too, but so far it wasn't helping with the headache or the shakes. But, somewhere in between waking up, the call from Matt and the shower, he'd resolved to stay sober, no matter how hard it was. At least he knew from experience that it would get easier...eventually. He'd had a temporary setback, that was all. He could stop drinking any time he wanted to...and today was going to be the day. He crossed the yard at the side of the house toward the park while ten pairs of eyes staring out of young boys watched him. Isaac must have told all his friends he'd be here, there was a much bigger audience today than usual. They stood in two groups, four or five in each, and when he approached Isaac, they all watched and listened to the exchange. Isaac held out a travel cup and Rusty took it. While he was burning his tongue trying to down the coffee in one gulp Isaac said,
“You're late.” Rusty looked at him over t
he cup. At least the cocky little shit had the foresight to smile when he said that. Rusty started to flip him off, but remembered he was dealing with an eleven-year-old and just made a face at him instead. When in Rome...After he finished the coffee and could feel it warming up his veins he held up his hands and Isaac threw him the football.
“Go long,” Rusty said to a stocky kid that was standing next to Isaac. The kid ran back, hesitating every few yards until he was at least thirty yards out and that was when Rusty threw the football. He watched the ball spin through the air with more than a handful of emotions running through him. He was surprised he could still throw it, in awe of how far it was going and how good his aim still was, and practically exhilarated at the feeling it all gave him. The kids watched as the ball arced and began to spin toward the ground. The stocky kid almost caught it but juked in the wrong direction at the last minute, not accounting for the wind. Rusty grinned at Isaac and said, “First lesson, make sure your teammate knows how to gauge the wind.”
“He's not my teammate,” Isaac said, putting his hand on the shoulder of another boy standing close to him. It was the first time Rusty noticed that the group standing closest to Isaac were dressed in what looked like newer, maybe even designer shoes and t-shirts. The group of kids the other boy had been standing close to, were the dirty-faced, ripped jeans, holes in the tennis shoes crew. They'd been the ones on the other side of the park the day before when he'd wrecked his bike. “This is Phillip. He's my running back.”