by Tim Green
"Sure I'm playing," Troy said. "I'd love to go to Georgia, and like you said, those coaches will be watching, so..."
"Okay, good," Seth said, shuffling toward the door. "Now, I'm headed home."
"I thought my mom was going to pick up some ribs from Fat Matt's and we were going to watch the Sunday night game?" Troy said.
Seth let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "I've had enough football for one day. Tell your mom thanks, and I'll call her later."
"Won't she be kind of mad?" Troy asked, glancing over his shoulder at where his mom now stood talking to her boss.
"Not her," Seth said. "That's one of the reasons I love her. She doesn't get bent out of shape about little things like that. She knows how I get about being hurt. I'm not good company right now. Besides, I need to just get home and get to work on these knees."
Seth reached into the front pocket of his jeans and removed a pill bottle that he shook gently at Troy. "I've got some heavy-duty medicine and an appointment with a bucket of ice in my tub. Speaking of ice, you'd better stick your finger in some, too."
"Medicine? Like painkillers?" Troy asked, his forehead crunching up with concern.
"No," Seth said, stuffing the amber plastic bottle into his pocket and beginning to walk away again, "an anti-inflammatory. Same stuff they give to racehorses."
Troy's jaw went slack, but before he could say anything else, Seth had disappeared. He sensed Tate at his side and turned to see that his mom and Nathan were also there.
"How is he?" Troy's mom asked, her eyes following the arc of the metal door as it swung closed. "Was he mad?"
"He said he'd call you later, Mom," Troy said. "Mad? No, he wasn't mad. I'd say more like hurt."
"Mentally?" his mom asked. "Or physically?"
Troy looked at his mom. "I'd have to say both."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AS SETH PREDICTED, TROY'S mom did understand when Troy explained what Seth had said about not being good company and wanting to get started on icing his knees. She still stopped at Fat Matt's, and they ate ribs and grilled chicken back at Troy's house, watching the beginning of Sunday Night Football. Between eating, Troy's left hand kept secretly returning to his pocket to caress the corners of his father's business card while his right hand stayed dipped in a big glass that held icy water for his hurt finger. Normally, he would have wanted Tate and Nathan to stay as long as they could, but he was relieved when Tate licked the BBQ sauce from her fingers and stood to go.
Troy saw them to the door, and Tate and Nathan disappeared into the pines, headed down to the tracks that would take them home. As soon as his friends had left, Troy removed his father's card from his pocket, studied it, then put it back. He marched into the living room. The Styrofoam boxes from Fat Matt's still lay about the coffee table, but his mom had already disappeared into her bedroom. He could hear her talking to Seth on the phone. Troy tried to ignore the soft, gooey sound of her voice through the door as she offered sympathy and comfort to the star linebacker.
Troy turned off the TV in the living room and waited impatiently. Finally, he heard his mom tell Seth that she loved him, and her bedroom door creaked open.
"What?" she asked. "You're not watching the game? You feeling okay?"
"I want to call my dad," Troy said, his hand sneaking back into his pocket to clench the rumpled card.
His mom sighed, then her face did that thing where her chin went up and the corners of her mouth tugged out and down into little crescent-shaped wrinkles. "Yes, we need to talk about that."
"I want to see him," Troy said, "and you said that if he tried to sue for me, you'd let me see him. You said. Gramps was right here."
"Right," she said, drawing out the word. "He's suing me. Funny how that happened all of a sudden at the dome, after you spoke with him."
"He came up to me," Troy said, feeling the ground slip out from under him. His stomach sank, because he knew where this was headed and he knew his mom couldn't be fooled. Even so, he had to try. "Gramps said my dad needed to prove I wasn't just a whim because he saw me on Larry King, and he asked his client to get him passes so he could see me. That proves it wasn't just a whim."
His mom looked at him for a long moment before she put her hands on her hips and said, "But it wasn't his idea, the lawsuit thing, was it?"
Troy's mind went into hyperdrive. "He's a lawyer, Mom. You heard him. He knows all about that stuff."
A grim smile lit his mom's lips. "You didn't answer my question and I'm glad you didn't, because I think it means you respect me enough not to lie. Now, I know, and you know, that Drew didn't think up that lawsuit business. You just kind of mentioned it to him, didn't you?"
"He came to the game because of me," Troy said, panic filling him.
"But that's not the same thing," she said. "That's not what we agreed to."
Troy's sweaty hand dampened the card. The pressure in his head felt like a boiling pot, and his hurt finger throbbed. He tried to contain his rage, but it burst, and he yelled, "That's my father, and I want to see him! I will see him!"
His mom's voice went eerily calm. "No, you won't see him unless I say you'll see him. I'm keeping that number. Now, I'll live up to my original agreement. If he really sues me, then we'll work something out, but no more coaching from you."
"He said he was going to!" Troy said, banging his good hand on the coffee table so that a container of chewed-over rib bones spilled to the floor, making a mess.
"He's said a lot of things in his day," she said bitterly. "You don't have any idea, Troy."
His mom marched into the kitchen, and he heard her rattling something. Troy got up and followed to see her removing the phone from the wall. She marched back out into the living room and pointed at the mess.
"Clean that up and then get to bed," she said. "You've got school in the morning. You can take another pill for your finger if you need it."
"What are you doing with the phone?" he asked.
"It'll be with me, along with my cell phone," she said, starting toward her bedroom before stopping in the hallway and spinning around. "It's not that I don't love you, Troy, but I can't say one hundred percent that I trust you. I know how you get, and I can see that look in your eye. I don't want you searching the internet all night, finding his number, and calling him. I'll keep the phone with me to make it easier for you to do what I'm telling you to do. Now, good night."
"But he's leaving tomorrow night," Troy said, his voice barely a whisper.
His mom disappeared without another word, gently closing her door with a final click.
Troy's muscles tightened until he shook. He picked up a pillow and whacked it against the arm of the couch until dust glimmered in yellow light from the lamp next to his mom's La-Z-Boy. He sneezed and huffed and threw down the pillow before slumping to the floor and holding his head in his hands, crying and growling to himself with rage.
Finally, he took a deep, ragged breath, cleaned up, and went to bed.
He hadn't lain there for more than ten minutes before he sprang from his bed, dressed, and slipped out the window into the night.
If he couldn't call his father, Troy had a different and better idea of how he could see him, and he wouldn't have to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE TREES ABOVE SHIFTED restlessly in a steady wind that smelled like coming rain, and stars blinked between tattered holes in the clouds. Behind the toolshed lay his gramps's fourteen-foot aluminum ladder, and Troy knew he could lift it on his own. He found the middle two rungs and picked up the ladder, bumping his finger and cursing to himself. Struggling, he poked his head through so the ladder rested on his shoulders like a bizarre collar that balanced nicely. He knew the way through the dark pinewoods to the railroad bed almost without looking. The dull glow of the tracks lay like discarded stilts, pointing the way to where his friends lived and making him wish they were with him. He stood for a moment, thinking, then decided it would take too long to get them, even if they could sneak
away.
Besides, this was something he needed to do on his own.
This was a family thing.
He stepped carefully through the weeds onto a once-familiar path now overgrown and filled with ruts and gopher holes. Through the trees, he navigated the big ladder, his eyes recognizing the dull gray lines of the concrete wall like an old enemy's face in a crowd. It surrounded the entire Cotton Wood Country Club. He spotted his old way in--a gaping crack--that had since been patched with concrete and cobblestones. Troy raised the ladder off his shoulders, breathing with deep relief at the lifted weight. He braced the ladder against the wall, scaling it quickly.
Nearly a foot thick, the wall provided an ample perch for him at its top. He stood and stared, listening for any sign of life from within, but the wind cloaked all other sounds. He wiggled his feet, setting them firm, and lowered his center before raising the ladder up and over to the other side. After planting it in the dirt below, he swung out and around and climbed down. Because he'd been inside the country club so many times before--as an intruder, but more recently as Seth's guest--he knew well the way he had to go.
Even so, he kept to the shadows, avoiding the glow of street lamps and hustling along with his feet swishing through the grass shoulders of the quiet streets. The maze of winding roads and mansions nestled back in the trees or on hilltops behind iron or brick fences led him to an enormous home on the biggest hill in Cotton Wood. With lights shining up from the bushes and grass, the huge white building looked more like a museum or an old government statehouse than one man's home. The stone wall that ran along the street was for decoration, not defense, and Troy scaled it with ease. He snuck through the bushes up along a curved driveway until he came to a courtyard with a hissing fountain in its center. The driveway was crowded with glossy cars whose glittering grillwork reminded Troy of the rap star's own teeth.
Amid the Bentley, Mercedes, and Lexus vehicles--all midnight blue or black--Troy spotted the orange Porsche his father had driven into Seth's driveway. His heart pattered, but he wasn't certain if that was because he knew his father was inside or because of the men in dark suits with walkie-talkies he now saw prowling the perimeter of the house. Troy looked down at his own gray hooded sweatshirt and simple white V-neck T-shirt with faded jeans and sneakers. He sighed and popped out of the shrubbery, heading up the stone walkway for the broad front steps. A man in a suit stepped out from behind one of the tall, fluted columns. He met Troy halfway up, arresting his progress with an iron hand. He spoke softly but urgently into his walkie-talkie about a kid appearing out of nowhere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"YOU LOST, KID?" THE security guard asked, scowling.
"I'm looking for my father," Troy said. "Drew Edinger. He's G Money's lawyer. That's his car."
The guard looked over at the orange Porsche and raised his eyebrows, retelling Troy's story into the radio.
The radio scratched the air, then a raspy voice said, "Bring him back to the pool."
The guard angled his head for Troy to follow him up onto the porch, through the massive front doors, and into a foyer that rose three stories. A curved stairway opened off to the left, and a fifteen-foot painting of G Money in a red three-piece suit with a fur hat towered over them on the curved wall to the right. Troy looked up at a glittering chandelier. The domed ceiling above was painted like a blue sky with puffy clouds and angels.
"Wow," Troy heard himself say as they passed a suit of armor and entered another enormous room, filled with furniture upholstered in the skins of zoo animals: zebras, leopards, lions, and bears. They walked through some glass doors and into the back, where the wings on either side of the house flanked a pool. It was like nothing Troy had ever seen. Instead of an aqua blue bottom with stone or wood decking, this pool's bottom was midnight blue with tiny glimmering stars. It looked as if you'd be jumping into space. The pool's rounded triangular shape made it seem to Troy as if he were standing on the deck of a spaceship from some Star Wars movie.
So fascinated was Troy by the pool that he bumped into the guard, who had stopped at the foot of a stone terrace. A handful of men sat around a circular table playing cards, drinking colorful drinks in tall, clear glasses. Most of them wore sparkling chains, rings, and sunglasses, even though it was dark. The night closed in around them, and the low lights surrounding the terrace and pool did little to battle it back. Strangely, the music that wafted up from hidden speakers was the furthest thing from G Money's rap that Troy could imagine. This music was calm and soothing: wood flutes, synthesizers, and the sounds of trickling water.
Troy's father stood up from the table. He wore only a button-down shirt, suit pants, and his diamond watch. He removed a cigar from his mouth, blowing a plume of blue smoke into the air before enthusiastically introducing Troy around the table. Men with more tattoos, scars, and gold than Troy had ever seen glanced up to briefly say hello. One of them was the enormous bald man with the cold blue eyes Troy had seen in the dome. G Money called them his homeys, and since the men were dressed in colorful silk, leather, and suede, Troy felt silly in his sweatshirt and jeans. He looked down and swatted at the smudge marks on his shirt before running a hand through his hair and shaking his father's hand. His father pulled him close and hugged him tight, patting Troy's back.
"Hey, Drew," said a short, fat man with a crooked Celtics hat and a face as round as a basketball, "that's your big-time ticket, right? The kid?"
Drew scowled at the man and looked to G Money, but it was the man with the bald pink head, rimless rectangular glasses, and a jaguar's head tattooed up the side of his neck who spoke.
"Bubbles, you're always talking," the big man said, his voice rumbling like a volcano ready to blow and flashes of gold teeth appearing from the midst of his furry black beard. "I need to put a rat trap on your chin and then maybe you'd keep that tongue inside your head."
The entire table went quiet, and Troy knew that each one of the men was afraid of the big man, even G Money. Drew quietly excused himself to G Money and nodded at the big man. Then he led Troy down some side steps to a swinging bench seat. Heat lamps on the terrace warmed them against the cool fall night.
"Ticket?" Troy asked.
Drew waved his hand dismissively and said, "Bubbles washes the cars. He's a moron."
"Who's that big scary-looking guy?" Troy asked.
"Just a friend of G Money's from Chicago," Drew said. "He helped G Money get started in the business. His name is Luther Tolsky. He knows a lot of people."
Troy nodded, then quietly said, "Weird music."
"G Money is into Zen," Drew said.
"Like, the religion?"
"He says it helps his rap to be pure," Drew said, scowling at his cigar and butting it out against the lip of a large clay pot containing a lemon tree. "Have a seat. Where's your mom?"
Troy folded his hands in his lap and studied them before he said, "Home."
"At Seth Halloway's?" Drew asked.
"No. We live just outside the wall," Troy said, pointing in the general direction of their house.
"Wall?"
"There's a wall around the club," Troy said. "We live in the pinewoods just outside. It's nice. I got a tire to throw footballs through."
"And she's there?" his father asked.
Troy nodded.
"But, how'd you get here?" his father asked.
Troy waved his hand toward where he'd scaled the wall and said, "Just walked. I knew where G Money's house was."
Drew looked at his watch, then at Troy, and asked, "And she's okay with this? Walked, as in climbed-the-wall walked? Or you walked all the way around? Wait, don't answer that. I don't want to know."
Troy's mouth fell open.
"Troy," his father said, leaning toward him with all of the friendliness draining from his face, "don't even tell me that your mom doesn't know you're here."
"Why?" Troy said, laughing nervously. "It's no big deal."
His father shook his head and said, "Oh, ye
s it is."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"BUT," TROY SAID, HIS voice barely rising above the muted chatter of the nearby cardplayers, "you said you wanted to see me."
"And I do," his father said, nodding his head, "but not like this, not sneaking around. No, wait. Don't drop your head like that. You didn't do anything wrong. It's just that I don't want her to ruin it. If we give her an excuse to act out--any excuse--she'll use it. There are reasons I didn't stay with her, Troy, and none of it had anything to do with you. Like I said, I didn't even know about you."
Troy studied his father's face: the brown eyes flecked with shards as black as tar. They whirled like hypnotic tops. Troy thought of the annoying things his mom could do, the way she managed him like a circus tiger: cutting him off; making him sit, roll over, and jump through hoops of fire. She claimed it was all for his own good, but he knew how any little deviation from the rules, any misstep, led to consequences that were always severe.
"I know what you mean," Troy said.
His father put a hand on Troy's shoulder and squeezed. "So, here's what we do. We get you back before she knows you're gone, and then we do this thing right."
"But you're leaving tomorrow," Troy said.
His father's grin reappeared, and he tilted his head. "I was supposed to, but if you think I'm leaving without getting this straightened out, you've got another think coming. Troy, do you realize how excited I am to have a son? Forget about how great a football player you are and this football genius thing. I've always wanted someone to go hunting and fishing and to ball games with--all that stuff."
Troy felt his heart swell.
"Come on," his dad said, rising from their seat, "let me drive you home. I can let you off on the street, where she won't even see us together."