Play Dirty

by Sandra Brown

  He located the address he sought and drove past the house slowly, checking it out. On either side of the front door was a pot of white flowers. Above the backyard fence, Griff could see the top of a swimming pool slide. Two kids were tossing a football back and forth on the front lawn. They were old enough to be cautious of strangers and eyed Griff warily as he slowly rolled past.

  He went to the end of the block and turned the corner. He realized his palms were damp with apprehension. And that made him angry at himself. Why the hell should his palms be sweating? He had as much right as anybody to be on these nicely maintained streets. The people who lived here were no better than he was.

  But he’d felt the same anxiety that day when Coach Joe Miller had pulled into his driveway and said, “Here it is.” Griff had looked at the house with the welcome mat on the threshold and the blooming ivy crawling up a trellis and felt as out of place as a turd in a punch bowl. He didn’t belong here. But he’d die before he let on that he felt inferior.

  Sullenly, feet shuffling, he’d followed Coach up the steps and through the front door. “Ellie?”

  “In here.”

  Griff had seen Coach’s wife at the games. From a distance, she looked okay, he guessed. He’d never really given her a second thought.

  She turned to them as they entered the kitchen. Her hair was in curlers, and she had bright yellow rubber gloves on her hands.

  “This is Griff,” Coach said.

  She smiled at him. “Hi, Griff. I’m Ellie.”

  He kept his like-I-give-a-shit frown in place so they wouldn’t guess that his heart was beating harder than it did before a fourth-and-goal play, and in the hope they wouldn’t hear his stomach growling. He’d glanced through the open door of the pantry. Besides at the supermarket, he’d never seen so much food stored in one place. On the counter was a pie with a golden crust, oozing cherry juice. The aroma was making Griff’s mouth water.

  Coach said, “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.”

  If this news came as a shock to Ellie Miller, she hid it. “Oh, well, good,” she said. “Welcome. Now, can you give me a hand, Griff? That pie leaked sticky stuff all over this oven. I’m trying to get the racks out so I can clean it while it’s still warm, but my gloves will melt if I grab hold. Pot holders are there in the top drawer.”

  Not knowing what else to do, he’d got the pot holders and removed the hot metal racks from the oven. With no more ceremony than that, he moved into the Millers’ house and into their lives.

  He always suspected that Coach and Ellie had discussed the possibility of this before Coach came to get him that morning. Because he was shown into a room set up for an adolescent boy. It had a double bed covered by a red-and-white blanket with the image of the high school team mascot on it—a fiercely scowling Viking. Other sports pennants were tacked to the wall.

  “That’s the closet. Let me know if you need more hangers.” Ellie glanced down at the small duffel bag Griff had brought with him but didn’t comment on how little it would hold, how little he had. “You can keep your folding clothes in this chest. If anything needs washing, the hamper is in the bathroom. Oh, goodness, I haven’t shown you the bathroom.” It was so clean, he was afraid to pee in the toilet.

  They all went to Sears that afternoon so Ellie could “pick up some things,” but what they came home with was new clothes for him. He’d never had food like Ellie cooked, including the pie they ate for dessert that night. He’d never been inside a house that smelled good, that had books on shelves and pictures on the walls.

  But he learned from the oven-cleaning experience that such luxuries didn’t come free. He was expected to do chores. Never having been required to do a damn thing in his life except stay out of the way when a man was in the bedroom with his mother, Griff found that this aspect of family life took some getting used to.

  Ellie’s rebukes were gentle and usually included some reproach to herself. “You forgot to make your bed this morning, Griff. Or did I forget to tell you that sheets aren’t changed till Friday?” “You won’t be able to wear that favorite T-shirt tomorrow, because I didn’t find it under the bed until after I’d done the laundry. Be sure it gets in the hamper next time.”

  Coach was less subtle. “Have you finished your history paper?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t it due tomorrow?”

  He knew it was. One of his assistant coaches was Griff’s history teacher. “I’ll get it done.”

  Coach turned off the TV. “Right. You will. Now.”

  Whenever he was disciplined, Griff muttered rebellious plans to leave. He was sick and tired of their harping. Do this, do that, clean up this, carry out that. Only dorks went to church on Sundays, but had he been given a choice? No. It was just expected. And what did he care if the car was washed and the lawn mowed?

  But he never followed through on any of his threats to leave. Besides, his muttering was largely ignored. Ellie chatted over it, and Coach either turned his back or left the room.

  Coach didn’t go soft on him at practice, either. If anything, he was tougher on him, as though to assure the other players that Griff was nothing special to him just because he was lodged under his roof.

  One afternoon, still mad over being denied access to the TV the night before, Griff sloughed off during drills. He didn’t connect a single pass to the receivers. Running backs had to come take the ball from him because he didn’t scramble to get it to them. He fumbled a snap.

  Coach watched him; despite his scowl, he didn’t blow the whistle on him, give him a pointer, or chew him out.

  But at the end of practice, when everyone else headed for the locker room, Coach ordered him to stay where he was. He placed a blocking dummy thirty yards away and tossed Griff the football. “Hit it.”

  Griff threw the ball with no more effort than he had put into the rest of the practice and missed the dummy. Coach glared at him. “Try again,” he said, tossing him another football. Again he missed.

  Coach handed him a third football. “Hit the damn thing.”

  “I’m having an off day. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that you’re a chickenshit.”

  Griff threw the ball then, straight at Coach. The ball bounced off his barrel chest. Griff turned toward the locker room.

  When Coach grabbed him by the shoulder and whipped him around, his helmet nearly flew off, taking his head with it. Before Griff could recover, Coach planted his wide, leathery hand in the center of his chest and shoved. He landed hard on his ass. Pain shimmied up from his tailbone, straight along his spine, and directly into his brain. It hurt so bad, he caught his breath and tears came to his eyes. They were more mortifying than his position on the ground.

  “I’m not scared of you!” he shouted up at Coach.

  “Do I have your attention now?”

  “Why don’t you pick on somebody else for a change? Phillips missed ten of ten today. I don’t see you making him kick till he gets one between the frigging uprights. How many times did Reynolds fumble during the last game? Three? Four? Why aren’t you on his ass? Why is it always mine?”

  “Because Phillips and Reynolds don’t have any talent!” Coach seemed to use up all his breath in that one roar. His voice was much softer when he said, “And you do.”

  He flicked sweat off his forehead with the back of his thumb. He looked away, then back at Griff, who was still sitting in the dirt because his butt bone hurt too bad to try to stand.

  Coach said, “Not another player on this team, not another one in this school, or in any of our rival schools, has talent to match yours, Griff. And you’re pissing it away, feeling sorry for yourself and carrying a chip on your shoulder because your mother was a whore. You’ve had a lousy life up till now, no denying that. But if you let it ruin the rest of your life, who’s the fool? Who will you be spiting? You, that’s who.

  “You may not be scared of me, but you’re scared shitless of yourself,” he said, jabb
ing the space between them with his finger. “Because in spite of yourself, you’re better than the two who made you. You’re smart and good looking. You’ve got more natural athletic ability than I’ve ever seen in any sport. And because of those gifts, you just might make something of yourself.

  “And that scares you, ’cause then you wouldn’t be able to wallow in your goddamn self-pity. You wouldn’t be able to hate the world and everybody in it for the shitty hand you were dealt. You wouldn’t have an excuse for being the self-centered, self-absorbed, complete and total jerk that you are.”

  Speech over, he stood looking down at Griff a moment longer, then turned away in disgust. “If you’ve got the guts for it, suit up tomorrow and be ready to apply yourself. If not, stay the hell off my team.”

  Griff was at practice the following day and for every day after that, and that season he led the team to the state championship, as he did for the three following years. Neither the incident nor Coach’s lecture was ever referred to again. But Griff didn’t forget it, and he knew Coach didn’t.

  Their relationship improved. They had ups and downs because Griff constantly pushed him and Ellie to see just how far he could go before they got sick of him and kicked him out.

  When he defied his weekend curfew and came in an hour and a half late, they didn’t kick him out, but Coach imposed the worst punishment fathomable—making him wait two months beyond his sixteenth birthday to take his driver’s test and get his license.

  They encouraged him to invite friends over, but he never did. He’d never developed friend-making skills and didn’t really have the desire to. Overtures by classmates were rebuffed. Sooner or later people abandoned you, so why bother? In the long run, you were better off keeping to yourself.

  Sometimes he caught Ellie looking at him sadly and knew she harbored unspoken worries about him. Maybe she sensed, even then, that the worst was yet to come.

  Things rocked along pretty well. Then, early in his junior year, an incident in the locker room got Griff suspended from school for three days. It hadn’t been a fair fight—Griff against five other athletes, three football players and two on the basketball team.

  When they were pulled apart by assistant coaches, two of the boys were taken to the emergency room, one with a broken nose, the other needing stitches in his lower lip. The other three had bloody noses and bruised torsos but didn’t require hospitalization.

  Griff, instigator of the seemingly unprovoked fight, suffered no more than a few scrapes and a black eye.

  “We have no choice, Coach Miller,” the school principal said as he relinquished Griff to him. “Just be glad the parents of the other boys declined to press assault charges. They could have,” he added, glaring at Griff.

  Coach took him home, marched him past a subdued Ellie, and confined him to his room for the duration of his suspension. On the evening of the second day, Coach walked into his room unannounced. Griff was lying on his back on the bed, idly tossing a football into the air.

  Coach pulled up his desk chair and straddled it backward. “I heard something interesting today.”

  Griff continued tossing the football, keeping his eyes on it and the ceiling beyond. His tongue would rot out before he would ask.

  “From Robbie Lancelot.”

  Griff caught the football against his chest and turned his head toward Coach.

  “Robbie asked me to thank you for what you did. And especially for not telling.”

  Griff remained silent.

  “He figured I was in on whatever it is that you’re not telling. I’m asking you to tell me now.”

  Griff pressed the football between his strong fingers, studied the laces, avoided looking at Coach.

  “Griff.”

  He dropped the football. Sighed. “Lancelot weighs what? A hundred twenty-five, maybe? He’s a nerd, a geek. A pest, you know? People cheat off him during chemistry tests, but otherwise…” He looked over at Coach, who nodded understanding.

  “I had finished my workout with weights and went into the locker room. I heard this commotion back by the showers. Those five guys had Robbie backed into a corner. They had his underwear. He was standing there without anything on, and they were making him…you know. Work it. Saying stuff like ‘Are you really, Lance a lot?’ ‘Let’s see this big lance of yours.’ ‘Too bad your lance isn’t as big as your brain.’ Stuff like that.”

  He glanced at Coach, then away. “He was crying. Snot was running out his nose. His dick was…he was yanking on it something fierce, but it wasn’t…doing anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “These guys were giving him hell. So I plowed through them and pulled him away from the wall, walked him to his locker, told him to get his clothes on, wipe his nose for God’s sake, and get the hell out of there.”

  “And then went back and beat the crap out of his tormentors.”

  “Tried anyhow,” Griff mumbled.

  Coach watched him for a long moment, then stood up, replaced the chair beneath the desk, and went to the door. “Ellie says dinner’s in half an hour. You’d better wash up.”

  “Coach?” He turned back. “Don’t tell anybody, okay? I’ve only got one more day of suspension, and…and I promised Lancelot.”

  “I won’t tell anybody, Griff.”

  “Thanks.”

  To this day Griff remembered the expression on Coach’s face as he left his room that evening. He was never able to define it, but he knew that something important had happened, that some sort of understanding had passed between them. As far as he knew, Coach had never betrayed his confidence about the incident.

  By now he’d made the neighborhood block and for the second time approached the house with the white flowers on either side of the front door and the backyard pool with the slide. He’d wasted enough time. It was do or die.

  The two kids with the football were still throwing passes to each other when Griff parked at the curb and got out.

  CHAPTER

  8

  THE BOYS STOPPED THEIR PLAY, WATCHING AS HE WALKED TOWARD them. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” They said it in unison, cautiously.

  “Is this Bolly Rich’s house?”

  “He’s inside,” replied the taller of the two. “He’s my dad.”

  “What’s your name?” Griff asked.

  “Jason.”

  “You play ball?”

  Jason nodded.

  “What position?”

  “Quarterback.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Second string,” Jason confessed self-consciously.

  “Want to play first string?”

  Jason looked at his friend, then back at Griff. “Sure.”

  “Give me the ball.”

  Again Jason first consulted his friend with a look, then passed the football to Griff, keeping himself at arm’s length. “I’m throwing ducks.”

  Griff grinned at his use of the term for a slow and wobbly pass. “That happens to everybody once in a while, but you can avoid it.” He took the ball in his right hand, pressed his fingertips against the laces. “See this?” He held the ball for Jason and his friend to observe.

  “You’ve gotta keep the pads of your fingers tight, like you’re trying to squeeze the air out of it. So when you let it go…” He motioned for Jason’s friend to run out for a pass. The kid went willingly. Griff drew back his arm. “You’ve got control, better aim, and speed.”

  He threw the ball. It sailed straight and sure. The kid caught it and beamed. Griff gave him a thumbs-up, then turned to Jason. “A bullet instead of a duck.”

  Jason raised his hand to shade his eyes against the sun. “You’re Griff Burkett.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I had a poster of you in my room, but my dad made me take it down.”

  Griff snuffled a laugh. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Griff?”

  He turned. A slight man, wearing cargo shorts, a holey T-shirt, and old sneakers, had opened the
front door and was standing on the threshold between the flowerpots. He was balder, but his eyeglasses were the same ones Griff remembered from the last time Bolly had interviewed him.

  “Hello, Bolly.” He looked down at the boy. “Keep practicing, Jason.” The youngster nodded respectfully. Then Griff joined Bolly at the door and extended his hand. To the man’s credit he shook hands with him—after only a second or two of hesitation. But the eyes behind the wire frames weren’t exactly glowing with happiness to see the most hated man in Dallas at his front door.

  “I think Jason has the potential of being good one of these days.”

  Bolly nodded absently, still trying to recover from his shock. “What are you doing here, Griff?”

  “Can I have a minute or two of your time?”

  “What for?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the two boys, who were watching this exchange with undivided attention. Coming back around, Griff said, “I promise not to abscond with the family silver.”

  The sportswriter hesitated for several seconds more, then went into the house and motioned for Griff to follow him. Off the entryway, Bolly led him down a short hallway and into a compact, paneled room. Shelving was jam-packed—even overflowing—with sports memorabilia. Framed photographs of Bolly with star athletes took up most of the wall space. There was an untidy desk in the corner dominated by a telephone and a computer. The monitor was on. The screen saver showed fireworks blossoming in multicolored silence.

  “Sit down if you can find a spot,” Bolly said as he squeezed himself behind the desk.

  Griff removed a stack of newspapers from the only other chair in the room and sat down. “I called the sports desk at the News. The guy who answered said you were working from home today.”

  “I do most days now. Go into the office only a couple days a week, if that much. If you’ve got e-mail, you can conduct just about any business from home.”