Kneel

by Candace Buford

“Don’t be sorry,” I said, my voice cracking as I struggled to breathe. I spit on the ground, tasting blood on my lip. “Just do your job.”

  The season opener we’d thought would be a walk in the park was turning out to be brutal. Deerlake was relentless, making us work for every yard, every pass. They were ranked well below the Jackson Jackals, so they had something to prove. That meant they were going to make us work for the W.

  And I was a target. Every time Marion sent the ball my way, two of their biggest defense players were on me. I’d been tackled at least ten times tonight. I couldn’t take another hit like that last one. And the team trainer knew it too.

  “That looked like a bad one.” Ms. Duval knelt in front of me, pulling her curly red hair in a tight bun. She always did that when she geared up for a long evaluation.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” She fished in her back pocket and brought out a skinny flashlight. Pointing it into my eyes, she said, “Look left. Blink. Look right. Are you seeing any spots? Any blurred vision?”

  I was about to respond when Pops’s voice ripped through our conversation.

  “Coach!” His voice gurgled as he strained his voice. “COACH!”

  I turned in my seat to find him gripping the railing above the track. Mama sat beside him on the bleachers, her hand gripping her chest. She caught my gaze and stood, leaning over my dad to mouth, You okay?

  I nodded and did my best to give her a reassuring smile.

  “Get him back on the field!” Pops yelled toward Coach Fontenot, who was pacing the sidelines. His arms were crossed, his gaze glued to the field, but I could tell by the way his jaw tightened that he heard every word.

  One of the game security guards, likely an off-duty cop working the league for extra money, looked up at my dad suspiciously, his hand on his walkie-talkie.

  “Pops, please.” I swiped my arm at him, urging him to get back to the stands. But he didn’t budge.

  “Rus, you’re fine, boy. Tell him.” He bounced on the balls of his feet, turning his attention back to Fontenot. “He’s fine, Coach. Put him back on the field. Let the boy play!”

  “Hey.” Ms. Duval gripped my shoulders and turned me back in the direction of the field. She pointed to my swollen lip. “May I?”

  When I nodded, she pinched the tender flesh and flipped it downward. She released it with a sigh, then pushed off the ground.

  “Well, it doesn’t need stitches.” She removed her latex glove and tossed it into the trash can beneath the water station. “How’s your neck? Roll it for me.”

  Closing my eyes, I dropped my chin to my chest and rolled my neck, fighting through the stiffness. I tried not to wince.

  “Okay, you’re cleared for play. But...” She folded her arms. “If you need to sit the rest of this one out—”

  “I’m okay.” There was no way I could sit on the sidelines while my team was taking a beating.

  I looked up just in time to see the opposition gain twelve yards on us. I sprang to my feet, spurred on by a surge of adrenaline.

  “Come on, y’all!” I shouted, swaying a little from the rapid motion.

  We were supposed to crush this team.

  “Horseshit! You see him grabbing my player!” Coach yelled at the referee, spit flying out of his mouth. The ref gave him a warning look. “Alls I’m asking is for you to call the holding when there’s clearly holding!”

  “Coach, take a breather.” Our assistant coach gripped his shoulder. But Fontenot shoved past him, rumbling down the sideline to where I was sitting.

  “Russell? Where you at? How you feeling?”

  I paused for half a second, then nodded. “Good to go.”

  “Are you sure? ’Cause I don’t need you burning out on the first game of the season. Course, it would be a whole lot easier if your teammates played like they wanted some redemption for losing the playoffs.” He turned to the players standing on the sidelines and raised his voice. “Or have y’all forgotten?”

  “Put me in, Coach. Let me turn this around.” I stepped up to the line. “I’m okay, I promise.”

  With the blare of the whistle, he stopped the next play. Waving to my relief player, he waited for him to jog to the sidelines before clasping my shoulder. “Turn this around, son.”

  I jogged onto the field, my loosened pads rattling atop my shoulders as I joined my teammates.

  “I thought you was out for the rest of the game for sure,” Marion said, unbuckling his helmet.

  “And watch from the sidelines?” I slapped his shoulder. “You trippin’.”

  He leaned forward to give me a rundown, but a player from the other team shouted, catching his attention.

  “Yo, say that again!” Marion stepped forward, a challenge. I tugged on the sleeve of his uniform, stopping him from going any further down that road. He turned to me. “Man, Rus. They trash-talking like crazy.”

  I left our huddle and caught Coach Fontenot’s attention on the sidelines. I waved my arms above my head, asking Coach to use another time-out. We needed to regroup. The battered offensive team gathered around me.

  “Don’t let them get in your head. Keep your focus. Darrell, Terrance, y’all gotta hold their linemen back. They’re killing us.”

  “You see the size of them?” Terrance croaked.

  I nodded. Number eighty-eight was a beast. And sixty-seven was almost as big.

  “Do whatever you gotta do to hold the pocket for Marion. And, dude,” I said, turning to Marion. “You gotta stop running the ball. If you can’t make a clean pass, throw it away on the sidelines and regroup. We can’t afford another turnover.”

  I looked at the seconds ticking away on the scoreboard. Coach waved his arms from the sidelines, shouting as he signaled the next play with sign language only we understood.

  “Hammerhead, delta, leftie. Y’all clear on that? Bobby, stay close as I set that edge.”

  Once we broke the huddle, I waited until the rest of my teammates were out of earshot before tugging Marion back. “How’s the hand?”

  “Better.” He rotated it in front of me.

  “Let’s light it up, then.” I rubbed the top of his helmet before getting in formation.

  We lined up opposite Deerlake, a renewed fire simmering in our bellies. I stood to the right of Marion, a floater. A wild card tight end.

  I chewed anxiously on my mouth guard. At the last second, I switched to the left side, just as Marion clapped his hands. The punter snapped the football and the wall of linemen collided. But I was on the move, a black uniform dodging and weaving through the fray. I hit the forty-yard marker, my long legs chomping at the turf as I ran down the edge of the field.

  When I reached the thirty-five-yard mark, I looked over my shoulder, hoping that Marion would stick to the plan. The ball was in the air, slicing through the humid Louisiana night sky. Adjusting, I repositioned, almost colliding with Bobby, but he fell back, giving me just enough room to extend my arms.

  My gloved fingers grazed the edge of the football, making it wobble. It spun off-kilter, nearly toppling out of bounds, and I scrambled. Both my arms outreached, I jumped in the air and drew it into my chest, tucking it under my arm.

  Then I ran full tilt—as if my life depended on it. Because it did. This was my last season of high school ball.

  Twenty yards.

  Ten.

  Touchdown.

  “Yes!” I slammed the ball onto the field with a primal growl.

  The scoreboard flipped in our favor. I ran to the sidelines, my muscle aches easing with the fresh surge of adrenaline. I clasped Marion’s outstretched hand. With a throaty croak I said, “Let’s shut this shit down.”

  “Slay the baller way,” he howled before falling back to the bench.

  I exhaled sharply, relieved to see our score back on top.
Gabby was right—planning a victory party before actually winning the game was premature. Thankfully, it looked like we’d eke out our first win of the season. I bobbed my legs up and down, eager to get to that party.

  Eager to see her.

  5

  “Who needs a ride?” I looked around, spotting a few raised hands.

  Even showered and changed, my teammates still looked a little banged up. We’d gotten that W, but just barely. And Deerlake had nothing on Westmond. We needed to step up our game if we had any hope of beating them next week.

  But I’d save that for tomorrow. Right now, we had a party to catch.

  We headed toward the parking lot behind our stadium. For a split second, I was looking for my Civic before remembering that Pops had loaned me his truck. I peered through the darkness. And that’s when I saw it.

  A mash of toilet paper clung to Pops’s truck; the painted letters Boudreaux Baths and Plumbing on the side were barely visible. I picked at a strip, trying to tug it off, but beneath it was a goopy sealant, mortaring the toilet paper to the truck. It oozed a yellow gel.

  “Eggs,” I said, rounding the back to see the extent of the damage. And then I saw the writing on the back window.

  Garbage.

  The word was scrawled across the window in large, deliberate letters. Whoever wrote it wanted the whole town to see. Snail trails of white liquid slid from beneath the letters, the biggest one coming from the G. They oozed to the tailgate, making puddles against the lining.

  I turned to Marion, words failing me, and by the way his lips silently smacked, he was speechless too. I turned the painted mess over in my head as if I could arrange it into something better, but I couldn’t.

  This was nasty, a personal attack that could only come from one team—and it wasn’t Deerlake. They had too much sportsmanship.

  “Westmond.” I looked to Marion, my chest tightening with barely contained anger.

  He nodded slowly. “It’s gotta be Brad.”

  “Pops is going to kill me.” I circled the truck. How would I explain this to my dad? I couldn’t take it home like this.

  “How are we going to get to the party?” Darrell paced near the hood, his phone screen glowing against his face.

  “Man, shut up,” Marion barked at him. “We obviously have a situation here.”

  “What? People are already showing up. You know I got a girl coming.”

  “There go a police officer right there. Maybe they can help.” Terrance cupped his hands around his lips and shouted, “Yo, we need some help over here.”

  “What are you doing?” Marion ripped Terrance’s hand away from his mouth. “Don’t call them fools over here.”

  But it was too late. We watched in silence as two officers sauntered over from their huddle near the south entrance of Deerlake’s stadium, one with her hands in her pockets, the other adjusting his pants before crossing to our row. He held up a hand to stop an oncoming car so that he could take his sweet time.

  My heart rate quickened. I didn’t have anything I wasn’t supposed to have, hadn’t done anything I wasn’t supposed to do, yet I was still on edge, feeling guilty.

  “What do we have here?” The cop grabbed his belt loops as he looked at us over his glasses.

  “Evening, Officer.” I stepped in front of the group before someone said something foolish. His shiny silver name tag read Reynaud.

  He was one of the cops who’d put a bullet in Dante Maynard.

  Officer Reynaud strolled to my side of the truck, inspecting the scene. He looked up with a wry grin, releasing his breath in a whistle. “Looks like you have quite a mess on your hands.”

  “Yes, sir.” My hand trembled as I gestured to the goopy mess, moving deliberately slowly so that he knew I wasn’t getting any ideas, though I couldn’t help but notice that his hands hovered near his belt, close to his holster. I wasn’t going to let him catch anything less than calm.

  “We take this kinda thing seriously.” He put his hands on his hips and tilted his head. Something about his tone made me doubt that. He gripped his belt loops again, pulling his pants over his belly. “You wanna go on record with this? I can call it in.”

  “You think I should file a report?” I asked.

  “You could.” He shrugged. “Might be a lot of paperwork for nothing. This is such a hard thing to catch.”

  I glanced at the group of security guards gathered near the entrance gate and couldn’t help but wonder if one of them had seen or heard anything. My car wasn’t tucked away—it was in plain view. And if the guards had somehow missed my truck getting trashed, surely there was a security camera that overlooked the lot, maybe on one of the lampposts or on the side of the building. I peered across the lot, trying to spot one, but I couldn’t find any.

  “Thank you, Officer, but I think we’ll just clean the car and call it a day.” Marion stepped forward.

  “Probably for the best, son.” He lifted his chin then cocked his head, his eyes curious as they scanned Marion. “I was a quarterback in my day, at Jackson.”

  “Yes, sir. You held the record for the most touchdown passes until this year.” Marion smiled, reaching to shake his hand.

  “Until you.” Officer Reynaud noticeably did not reach his hand to grasp Marion’s. “’Course, that was a different time, back when the school was—well, it was different.”

  Marion’s attempted handshake withered in midair, and he withdrew it with a quick cough. Reynaud’s meaning wasn’t lost on us. He was nostalgic for the days when Jackson was mostly a white school, before redistricting tried to correct the imbalance between the schools across the bayou and failed.

  Why would you want to dwell on a past like that?

  “Anyway, like I said, vandalism will not be tolerated.” He kept his hands on his hips. “Speaking of vandalism. Y’all know anything about these flyers?”

  He fished in his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, grumbling as he unfolded it and shoved it in my direction. It was one of the Dante Maynard flyers—just like the ones I’d seen with Gabby and Marion. Except this time the bold letters scrawled on the bottom of the page read: No Justice, No Peace.

  “Well? You know who’s doing this, son?”

  “No, sir.” I shook my head vigorously. I handed the sheet back to him, a hot potato I didn’t want to be left holding.

  “Been finding them plastered all over tarnation.” He pointed behind me, in the direction of Westmond, then he rounded the car, his belly jiggling. “What about y’all?” He held the flyer at eye level, making sure each one of us got a good look. Suddenly we’d gone from being wronged to being the subject of a police inquiry. “Well?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Vandalism will not be tolerated, ya hear? Not on my watch. You be sure and let your friends know.” He clasped his hands together. “It’s time we put this whole issue behind us.”

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded in agreement, although the irony was not lost on me. Vandalism had literally just happened on his watch. If he cared as much about my dad’s car as he did about these damn posters, he wouldn’t have told us it was for the best not to pursue it.

  Still, I remembered my mama’s instructions to always use yes, sirs and please and thank yous, especially with people like Reynaud.

  “Thank you, sir.” My hands flexed behind my back.

  “All right, then. We better get back to it, but listen here, boy. You let me know if you see anything.” He pointed two fingers at me and brushed the air between us, then backed away toward the other cop. “Y’all get on home. Don’t cause no trouble, ya hear?”

  * * *

  The sound of fiddles and accordions from Bobby’s zydeco music wafted through the open windows of Terrance’s house, an old shotgun-style home just off the edge of the town square. By all respects, it was the nicest house of the group, with
stained glass windows and a wraparound porch. His mother, Dr. Edmonds, was out of town at a conference. And she’d left the keys to the liquor cabinet behind.

  The song abruptly ended, and the sound of arguing floated down to the driveway, where I stood with a wet sponge in my hand. I could hear Darrell yelling, “Bobby’s lost his DJ privileges with his backwoods country shit.”

  Trap music took over, thrumming the windows with deep bass. I plunged the sponge back into the bucket, getting it nice and wet before turning my attention back to washing the truck. It sucked that I had to spend half the party washing my dad’s car, but at least the paint on the back window was water-based and coming off easily.

  “They need to turn the music down.” I stood up in the tailgate, towering above Marion, who knelt by the front tires. “We don’t want Reynaud thinking we’re causing trouble.”

  “Man, don’t worry about that fool.” Marion waved dismissively. “He don’t have anything on us. He can’t touch us.”

  A silver car rolled up behind us, and a bunch of girls got out, including Aysha and her best friend, Donna. They giggled as they passed us, looking back to check out me and Marion as they walked to the front door. Aysha made damn sure I saw her, swaying her hips as she walked up the steps.

  After they rang the doorbell, Terrance popped his head out. He smiled when he surveyed the group, stopping momentarily to tell them this was a strict no-picture party before letting them inside.

  “Man, how he gonna tell a bunch of Instagram babes they can’t take any pictures?” Marion laughed from the other side of the car.

  He had a point. Telling those girls not to snap pics at a football party was like giving them a glass of water on a hot day and asking them not to drink it. But those were the rules. If we wanted to let loose and dip into contraband, there couldn’t be any evidence.

  Marion dropped his rag in the soapy water. “I think that’s as good as it’s going to get.”

  “I just need to get this out,” I said, taking another pass on the driver’s side door. “Was this dent here before?”

  “Dude, your dad is not going to notice no damn dent.” He walked over to my side, while I brushed my fingers over the door. It was squeaky clean, and the dent was so small, you had to touch it to know it was there. I didn’t know if it was new or not, but I guessed Pops wouldn’t notice it.