Bringing the Heat

by Mark Bowden

  And Randall doesn’t help himself either. He walks around the locker room and practice sessions sometimes for weeks at a time like a man in a fog, saying bizarre things to the press, doodling and daydreaming his way through coaching sessions, then trying to finesse things on the field come Sunday.

  “Being confused has a lot to do with my personality,” he says, and if you don’t believe him, just listen to what pops out of his mouth over the course of a football season. Randall’s soft voice emerges from the labyrinth of his psyche in constant lamentation; he’s never happy with himself, he trusts no one, and in the wide silence between Randall and the rest of the world he hears voices: “There’s an evil spirit and a good spirit; I lean toward the good spirit all the time, because that’s where my heart is, and I know I can be tricked.” Just having a wiftbrain like this calling signals for the offense troubles Seth, who is as spiritual as a hand grenade. Seth is a player who has built a terrific career without overwhelming athletic talent, who makes up for what he lacks in finesse with dogged preparation and an on-field intensity that borders on sociopathic. But every time he and his brothers on defense have stomped some opposing offense flat, he has to stand on the sidelines, helmet in hand, and turn the game (his game!) over to this fruitcake—who’s making triple most of their salaries.

  So when Randall does something like show up an hour late for Camp Jerome, which he did earlier this day, and all the kids and parents are asking “Where’s Randall Cunningham? How come Randall isn’t here? When’s Randall going to be here?” it’s like poking Seth with a cattle prod.

  “What do you expect from him?” Seth growls. “It’s just like him to be late. He’s such an asshole. He’s more interested in being a TV star than a football player.”

  The crowd, startled by the raw hostility, slowly backs off.

  Face it, Randall’s the man they most want to see. From a safe distance, one of the fathers asks a newshound, here to record the sweet chaos of Camp Jerome, “Who’s that?” pointing across at Seth, who in no time has a corner of the playing field all to himself, better to accommodate the glowing green penumbra of his intensity.

  “That’s Seth.”

  “Seth Joyner?”

  “Yep.”

  “Didn’t he go to the Pro Bowl this year?”

  “Yep.”

  “No wonder. Is he always like that?”

  But even envy and a certain disdain for Ran-doll’s fey manner aren’t enough to fully account for the depth of animosity toward him on this team. Seth and the others would tolerate anything in Randall if his gifts delivered victory. But they haven’t, at least not consistently, and not in the big games. Cunningham is the cynic’s quintessential bigmoney sports star: he has made enough brilliant plays and spectacular scrambles to star in NFL highlights reels forever, and his stats are otherworldly, but in seven seasons he hasn’t gotten the Eagles even close to the Super Bowl. This small fact doesn’t seem to bother Randall. Pick up, for instance, the Sports Illustrated “Weapon of the Nineties” issue with Ran-doll’s picture on the cover showboating like the little statue on top of the Heisman Trophy, or read him in another issue calmly classifying himself with the singular superstars of modern sport, calling himself the Michael Jordan of the NFL, the kind of player who can completely, single-handedly take charge of a game. And this isn’t just some starstruck sportswriter bullshit; this is the stuff in quotes! Randall would later claim he was misquoted, but to some of his teammates, the quote rings true. After playing with him for years, they believe this is how Ran-doll really sees himself! It seems to them that Ran-doll fancies himself in the pantheon of black American stardom, the standard-bearers of trend, the black stars of sport and screen, modern media idols; we’re talking nothing less than Black Pop Royalty here: that’s right, his Airness, Prince, Charles Barkley, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Oprah, and Eddie and Spike and Ice-T and Denzel and Hammer and, the impresario of it all,

  If you’re Seth, every time you see Ran-doll across the couch on a TV talk show or see him on the front of a supermarket tabloid lounging at some exotic beach resort, rubbing sunscreen on Whitney Houston’s back, or read about him hanging out with his good friend, that fairy-chimp-loving-white-skin-worshiping weirdo Michael Jackson, or catch him strutting out on his weekly in-season TV show wearing one of his ridiculous, self-designed outfits with striped pants and gold buttons and silver fucking epaulets (in honor of the brave men and women of Desert Storm) …

  it makes you want to …

  want to …

  —well, we’re off here into the red zone of Seth Joyner’s rage.

  So, yes, Seth has this thing about Ran-doll, and the little goldstudded toy tail is just the latest… well, twist. And once Seth gets the ball rolling, and Jerome is nowhere in sight, the lampoon escalates.

  Jumping up in front of the quarterback, Seth begins whirling in circles, whipping his long thickly muscled arms in sweeping chops, pretending he’s a character in a martial arts movie, gleefully manufacturing sound effects. “Whack! Thwack! An’ when you spin around”— he’s laughing so hard now he can barely get this out—”takin’ people out with yo’ little weave!”

  Reggie White and Andre Waters and Keith Jackson and Wes Hopkins and Mike Pitts and the rest of them can’t help but laugh along—Seth is really throwing himself into it. Randall grins sheepishly, clearly pained. He comes all the way down here, just to be nice, just to show he really is one of the guys, and what’s he get?

  “Whack! Hieeeeee-yah!”

  The men are doubled over now, choking with laughter. Randall begins to protest, quietly. “That’s enough.”

  Which is, of course, the worst thing he could do. Especially because there’s this writer here, this rumpled white guy with Amazon tree frog eyes, with the ever-present tape recorder and notebook, taking it all in— every word!—just dying to clue the world to his humiliation.

  Who needs this? Seth, this joyless grind, this ever-sour, selfappointed team scold, is goosing royalty, right here in front of the fucking tree frog—and the rest of his teammates are yuk-yukking.

  “You guys are mean,” Cunningham protests.

  But he is saved.

  Just as the moment threatens to turn ugly, in bursts JB, who bangs open the screen door and hulks theatrically across the patio, swinging his black leather briefcase (in which he typically carries his wallet, electronic games, football cards, candy, and so on).

  But Jerome stops short.

  Who is that he spies sitting quietly in the corner?

  “It’s you,” he shouts, dropping the briefcase, arms akimbo, wheeling at the wide-eyed frog.

  All eyes turn from Randall and Seth to this new confrontation.

  “At my house! On my turf!”

  The frog stands. He’s been expecting this.

  “Mama! Daddy!” Jerome shouts. “Come out here. This is the one. This is the one I’ve been telling you about. The one puttin’ all those things in the newspaper about me! Now I’ve got you on my own turf.”

  Devastating pause. Wicked grin. “Daddy, get my dog! Where’s my dog!”

  WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT Jerome’s intangibles—and there’s going to be a lot of talk about them in the coming months—this is what they mean. Just like that, the ragging of Ran-doll is forgotten, and the party rolls. Jerome doesn’t even know he’s done it. It’s just Jerome being Jerome. The soul of the group has the keenest eye for a common enemy, and there’s nothing like confronting the Beast Without (and a reporter clearly qualifies) to close ranks. This is what Jerome is all about. He’s Team, body and soul, from the solid-gold screaming-Eagle necklace he wears to the green color of his beloved Corvette. His teammates have all sorts of ways of taking their images, their careers, themselves, too seriously, but Jerome is there to remind them that they are all just young men getting paid extraordinarily well to play a boy’s game. In their twenties, they have, with their heroic size and talent, taken life by storm. They own huge bank accounts and boast fawning admir
ers, thrilled families, and eager females. They have performed a kind of end run around (or bull-rush through) all the truisms of America’s creaking, dusty Protestant ethic, they have proved their parents, pastors, principals, and every single one of their gradeschool teachers wrong: You can succeed in life, brilliantly, without ever doing homework! They have a million concrete reasons to believe, as clearly as if the Lord God himself had smitten them from a horse in midroad and turned on them with one blinding eye, that they belong to a Modern Elect, a brotherhood of giants at play in a pathetic boobiverse of rejects and underachievers, most of whom would gladly stand in line for hours—even pay!—to get their cap autographed.

  It’s easy to get carried away by it all. Sure, there is always the righteous and oh-so-upright Bible-thumping free-form Baptist Reverend Reggie to warn against their excesses. But even Reverend Reggie’s message doesn’t challenge the illusion (if it is an illusion). Reverend Reggie isn’t arguing that they aren’t chosen—hell, who could argue that? His point is that they are chosen for a reason, that their special status as giants comes with obligations, that they are called upon to be Role Models, Warriors for Christ—Reggie would whisper to an opposing offensive lineman “Jesus is coming!” just before bowling him over on his ass. Reggie’s point is that they, as the Elect, are being called to give something back. Most of the guys don’t even know how. But Reverend Reggie is making real progress with the boys. Even—no, especially—with hard-living homeboy Jerome.

  Reverend Reggie’s message has scored with Jerome. Hell, at least it makes some sense of what has happened in his life. Jerome has even been getting around to emulating Reggie, albeit like a timid bather dipping one toe in the pool. Hence, Camp Jerome. Sure, it’s a pain in the ass, nothing really but a hastily organized half-day semiriot, but it’s damn cheerful and wholesome; it’s a start. Doesn’t it have the word “Annual” right up there in the title? And while Jerome hasn’t exactly stopped cruising the sinful byways of big-time sports celebrity, he is doing his best by the two boys he had fathered back in his teens— though both the mother of little Jerome IV, now nine, and Dunell, now seven, had spent the better part of the ’80s chasing ol’ Freight Train through the courts before proving paternity and winning orders for child support. Why, lately Jerome is even current with the payments. Jerome deserves at least some credit. He isn’t completely there yet, but he is coming around. Like the camp, it’s a start. And he is officially engaged. No doubt about it. Jerome is settling down. His mom, Annie Bell, attributes it all to Reggie’s influence and, of course, to Jesus Christ the Lord. It’s an answer to her prayers. Her prodigal son is turning toward home.

  She can see it.

  Why, just that very next morning Annie Bell is bustin’ with pride as she inches over with an Instamatic toward the middle of a crowded front pew at the Josephine Street Church of the Living God—a ministry founded by Jerome’s grandfather and presided over by his uncle— to capture on film the improbable vision of her youngest son, ninth of the ten children she and Willie called their own (Annie had brought six, and Willie two, to their marriage thirty years ago, then together added Jerome and his little sister, Cynthia), up there before the whole congregation. Annie Bell is cherishing this moment. My God! It is actually happening! There he is in the pulpit—in the pulpit—to introduce Reverend Reggie. They couldn’t make him wear a tie, but Jerome is up there, swaying back and forth nervously, grinning his neon smile, gripping the plain pine podium like a toy, apologizing for being there, out of place as a rhino in a formal rose garden, wincing every time Annie Bell’s flash goes off. Her son, the wild one, the rough one, the loud one, the one who was always in such a god-awful hurry, the one who was so big they wouldn’t let him play football and baseball with the kids his own age—”He’s always been overaverage,” Willie told the enthusiastic Brooksville Little League coaches when they got their first glimpse of the future superstar back in the midseventies—in the pulpit!

  Jerome was Annie and Willie’s troublemaker, always pushing things too far—but nothing serious. Never anything serious. It was hard to stay mad at Jerome, the way he had of making people laugh. He towered over his mom by the time he was ten years old. When he made her mad, which happened plenty, she’d say, “Boy, I’m gonna knock you upside your head!” And Jerome, he’d come back with his big foolish grin and eyes open wide. “Aaaaw, Mama,” he’d say. “Why you want to do that? You can’t hurt me,” and then he’d offer to go get her a chair, “So you can reach.”

  “It was always hard to stay mad at him,” she says.

  Everybody loved Jerome, particularly here in Brooksville. The whole town shared in Jerome’s success. And his career just kept on going, like one of those mammoth home runs he used to clout—high-school all-American, ’82; freshman member of the national championship Miami football team, ’83; two-time college all-American; Eagles’ first-round draft pick, ’87 (ninth player chosen overall); NFL Pro Bowl, ’90 and ’91. Jerome’s football and financial success made something more of him than he or his hometown had ever dreamed. And, as a consequence, he became the first son of Brooksville to fully bridge the deep, age-old racial divide in this town, which was, after all, named for Preston Brooks, the nineteenth-century South Carolina congressman who became a Southern hero when he brutally attacked Massachusetts abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner with his cane. Jerome just transcended hate. His success was big enough for everybody to bask a little in it. White folks could get as excited about Jerome as black folks could—why, when Jerome’s Miami team played in that Fiesta Bowl in ’87, his last collegiate game, the town’s white folks chipped in to fly Willie and Annie Bell out to Phoenix to see it. Willie was so moved, he just sat down and cried. Neither of them had ever been on a plane.

  And despite his fame, Jerome had never stopped coming home, hanging around, keeping up with his old high-school buddies. On the day the Eagles made him their first-round draft pick, Jerome didn’t stay in Miami to party with his college teammates; he came roaring back up 1-75 to Brooksville, where he loaded Tim Jinkens and his old baseball buddy Tim Simms in his car, then drove back down the road to Tampa to Hooters on Hillsborough Avenue, where he promptly, loudly, ordered a hundred chicken wings and a magnum of Dom Perignon.

  “Is he somebody?” one of the waitresses asked Tim Jinkens.

  Jerome finished the night, of course, gripping the porcelain at his parents’ tiny house in north Brooksville.

  “It was all the grease on that chicken!” he groaned.

  Jerome would always arrive about two weeks after the season ended with money to spend and time to kill. His friends didn’t see the six months of seven-day weeks, the injuries, the training-room sessions, the monotony of two-a-day practices and endless classroom sessions, the beating Jerome sometimes took from the Philadelphia press (“fat,” “lazy,” “undisciplined”). They saw only the cheerful, carefree, eternally adolescent Jerome. His buddies had gone on to getting married, raising families, running their businesses or farms, or punching the clock somewhere, but come spring there was the same Big G, racing around town in his souped-up cars or Ninja cycle, dropping by the auto shop to chat in the middle of the workday, stepping into Tim’s Red Mule for a cold one on a hot early summer afternoon. Tim was used to Jerome’s stopping in at any time, without warning, for any reason. He’d first hear, growing louder and louder from way up Broad Street, the mighty whump-whump-whump-whump of the woofers in the enormous speakers Jerome had mounted on the backseat of his Bronco, or the high-pitched whine of his Ninja screaming down on them like a Zero on a strafing run. One day, soon after Jerome got the bike, he burst in swearing richly.

  “Burnt ma fuckin’ leg!”

  He’d leaned the bare shank of his calf against the hot exhaust pipe and fried a mean pink stripe.

  “Help me, Tim? What do you put on burns?”

  Tim came out from behind the counter, hunted up some firstaid salve, smeared it on, and Jerome was back out the door, accelerating out of the parkin
g lot with his big body bent low to the handlebars. Tim just turned and went back to work, shaking his head, wondering (as he and the others often did) what it must be like to be Jerome Brown.

  The whole town was Jerome’s playpen. On Sunday evenings, just as shadows started stretching over the dusty shacks and dirt lawns of the Sub, Brooksville’s depressed “colored” neighborhood, and the teenagers started assembling in clumps on the street corners, Jerome would pull up in one of his cars and pile as many kids into it as he could fit and take them all to the movies. He’d be the first one to start throwing popcorn, of course. Then he’d take them to Pizza Hut. And the thing was, Jerome wasn’t doing this so much as a community goodwill gesture—no way! He was just having fun! It was what he did Sunday night, what he’d been doing since he was old enough to hang out on the same corners.

  Not that Jerome was above making goodwill gestures. No, sir. When Marty Shick’s daughter came down with cancer and the family’s medical insurance gave out, it was Jerome who lent his name to a fund-raising softball game. And who in that town wouldn’t fork over five bucks for a good cause and turn out to see Jerome play softball—mouth running a mile a minute, hugging his old friends, chugging around the base paths with the sweatpants over his stretch nylon shorts down around his knees, hat screwed on backward, then he’d clout one so far into the distance he’d remind you of the years he took Brooksville to the state championship, of high-school Friday nights, of youth. In Brooksville, Jerome knew how to be a star. He knew what was expected of him, and he delivered. He wrote a check when a little girl got hurt in a car accident out on Route 50 and wrote another when the highschool football team needed new uniforms and another when a couple of schoolboy track stars couldn’t afford to go compete in a meet in Ireland. During the football season, if the camera caught him on the sidelines, sometimes he’d mouth “Hi, Mom!” like everybody else does, only sometimes he’d mouth “Hi, Brooksville!” God, they loved that back at home, hunkered around the big-screen TV at the local bar or in one another’s living rooms, pulling in the Eagles game via satellite. Jerome stood for something. When the Ku Klux Klan decided to rally on the courthouse steps, Jerome and his old baseball-team buddies (all of them white) showed up with the Bronco, pulled onto a side street alongside the courthouse, and cranked up Jerome’s awful rap music so loud it rattled the dental work of the racists under their white hoods.