They sat in the afternoon sunlight watching the tourists watch the gray water ripple among the mangrove roots and the gulls steal scraps from unbussed tables, and Billy’s mother looked at Karl like she had never looked at Billy’s father. It made Billy’s throat hurt, the way she looked at Karl.
Karl lit another Chesterfield and ordered coffee and a brandy. He offered Billy’s mother a brandy, and she refused it with a laugh and a girlish tilt of her head that said someday she would do it. Karl held up his big hands to the light, turned them, looking at the scars, then made fists and slammed one into the other like a ballplayer forming the pocket in his glove. “Damn!” he whispered to the shadowed mangroves, the water making weird designs among the roots. “I got to get back into training. It’s what I am, who I am. It’s all I am. Don’t you see that, Marian?”
Billy’s mother said, “Well, sure. Sure, honey, I understand.” Then she looked at Billy, maybe thinking that he, too, knew what it was to be defined by an act of the body. And yes, Billy thought, prizefighting and football were alike in some ways, and he knew the sweet science better than most boys his age. He had sat with his father more nights than he could recall in the soft glow of the old Sylvania watching men act the fistic opera of courage, craft, and pain.
Karl turned to Billy. “It’s the money, ya see. Ain’t it always the money? For a lousy couple of grand I could… Ah, but you’re too young to know that, aren’t ya?”
Billy gave back a neutral look. He knew what he knew. There was never enough money in his father’s house.
Karl shook his head as though the boy had disappointed him and leveled sad eyes again at Billy’s mother, who said, “Well, maybe there’s—”
And Karl raised a big, scarred hand. “Not now. Enough. We’ll talk about it later. But, yeah, we gotta talk about it.” He smacked his two fists together again, stood, and stretched, glancing around at the floating patio, twice the size of a boxing ring, empty now of all but this new family.
Billy and his mother waited in the parking lot while Karl settled the bill, and Billy told her he didn’t like Karl calling him kid.
“Why not?” she asked. “That’s what you are.” Then she smiled, and her eyes softened, and she brushed his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “You’re gonna grow up to be a fine, big man. I know that.”
A gust of wind blew the blond hair away from her shoulders, and Billy saw it. He reached up and gently pushed the hair from her neck. The bruise was about the size of a man’s thumb. Billy let the hair fall, smoothed it into place.
“It’s nothing,” his mother said, “an accident.” She looked off at the swaying tops of the Australian pines that bordered the parking lot. When she turned back to Billy, something hid in her eyes. She smiled big and bright. “I want you to like Karl. I really do.”
In a low, cold whisper, Billy said, “I’ll kill him.”
His mother reached out and put a finger across his lips, pressing hard until it hurt, looking over Billy’s shoulder at the Crab Shack, watching for Karl.
“He’s really a good man. He only does it because he gets so frustrated. If there was more money, he could box again, and he’d be happy.”
Billy heard a heavy tread behind his mother, saw the pleasure come into her eyes just before she turned to Karl. Billy said to her back, “He’s hurting you because he doesn’t have enough money to hurt another man in a boxing ring?”
“Hush, Billy. Not another word.”
Billy stepped out from behind his mother and watched Karl approach, moving heavily under the burden of the alcohol. The best heavyweights have a lightness in their stride.
“What are you two gabbing about?” Karl called out.
Billy’s mother moved toward the man, stretching her arms out for an embrace before they got into the car. “I was just telling Billy how much I… care for you.”
TWENTY
Mrs. English’s classroom was always full of newspapers, copies of the Spartan. “Read it,” she urged them one morning, her dark eyes sweeping the rows of desks looking for a challenge. “A free press is one of the guarantors of democracy. Now who said that?” When nobody answered, she shook her head in mild disgust and muttered, “A lot of people did.” This morning’s Spartan carried the story of the team’s third loss.
Billy sat in the back row with nothing in front of him but the empty desk where he longed to rest his head after a long night of shoving oranges.
Mrs. English picked up their textbook, walked to front of the room, and said, “Lassitude. Torpor. That’s the mood in my classroom this morning, and all because some boys lost a football game.” She held the book out toward them. “Let’s talk about something important.” A few boys groaned. Two rows over from Billy, a cheerleader, Sally Tifton, sniffled and blotted her eyes with a soggy Kleenex. And then someone knocked at the door. Mrs. English turned on black high heels and called too loudly, “Come in.”
A skinny sophomore with rubber bands in her braces, wearing the badge of a hall monitor, entered the room. Billy stirred when the girl whispered a message to Mrs. English. These rare interruptions usually meant sickness or accident. The class sat in anxious silence, the lost game forgotten.
Mrs. English frowned in her ironical way, then stared at the class as though she had been asked to select a student for sacrifice. “Billy Dyer, come up here, will you?”
Billy got up unsteadily and fumbled with his books and papers. Should he take them with him or leave them here? He glanced at Mrs. English who covered her own confusion with a command. “Come, come, Billy.” She gave the class a wry look. “Someone is waiting for you.”
Billy left his books. Obscurely, it seemed to him that this proved he would return. Mr. Laird, the assistant principal, waited in the hall. He was young, tall, and tough in a lean, springy way. He handled everything that required energy for Mr. Sowers, Carr’s aging, paunchy principal, including the paddling of bad boys. Mr. Laird paddled frequently, and boys who knew his work said he did it with energy and relish. Laird pushed himself off the wall, rolled his strong, thin neck inside his shirt collar like a prizefighter waiting for the bell. “All right, Dyer. Come with me.”
The man took off down the empty hallway. Billy kept up, two steps of his for one of Laird’s long strides. Murmured words and numbers rolled from the open doors of classrooms, a weird symphony of nonsense. Billy wiped sweaty palms on the seams of his pants and considered asking where they were going. Thought better of it. Mr. Laird led him to the crescent drive where the parade of good fortune unreeled each morning. A new black Lincoln Continental rested at the curb, its windows dark, the hum of its engine barely audible in the hot morning. Laird opened the back door for Billy like a boy on a date and didn’t look at him. “Get in.” Billy slid into the shocking cold of the air-conditioning, across the long, black leather seat. The door shut with a concussive chunk. The car was moving before his shoulders hit the leather behind him. The head in front of him did not turn. The driver said nothing. The familiar world of William B. Carr High School slid soundlessly away from the smoked windows. When the car stopped at the first traffic light on Summerfield Avenue, the entrance to Monmouth Park, Billy made himself say, “Where are we… ?”
Coach Rolt turned, and Billy saw the long red scar that ran from the corner of his mouth into his left nostril, the tag of flesh Billy’s fist had torn and a surgeon had sewn. “Shut up, Dyer. We’ll be there in a minute.”
And in a minute, they were. The black Lincoln stopped in front of a house with tall windows and long white columns, its lawn sloping down to Lake Georgia. The lake was the heart of Monmouth Park, and the houses that surrounded it were the finest in Oleander. Here, rich boys and girls learned to swim and water ski, acquired their tans, learned the languorous manners of garden parties and barbecues, studying their fortunate parents with apprenticed eyes.
Coach Rolt turned off the engine, got out with a grunt, and opened Billy’s door. Rolt waddled up a brick walkway to the front door of the hous
e. By the time Billy caught up, the coach had rung the bell and stood with his fat back to Billy. A black woman answered, dressed in a green cotton smock and wearing a white lace cap. She looked at Rolt, nodded, dipped a curtsy, and pulled the door wide. Cold air poured out. Billy wiped his flowing palms again and raised his shirtsleeve to his face. He followed Rolt down a hallway lined with framed paintings of racehorses to a closed door. They stopped and Rolt knocked. A rumble of masculine voices ceased. Someone called, “Come in!” the voice an impatient growl. Billy stepped inside behind Rolt and thought, A library. How many houses have a library?
The walls were lined with books in mahogany shelves. A long mahogany table rested on a golden Persian rug. The air was thick with smoke. Four men sat around the table. Coach Prosser, Cameron Sizemore, Coach Leone, and a man Billy had seen twice before. There were two empty chairs at the table. Billy’s father sat by himself in a corner. When Billy glanced at him, he nodded, then looked at the floor. The man Billy had seen sitting on the top row of the bleachers watching summer practice stood now. He was tall and lean and handsome like a plainsman from a Western movie. His ruff of black hair was streaked with white, his tanned cheeks hollow below prominent cheekbones, and his large brown eyes shone with welcome and menace. “Billy,” he said in a friendly, fatherly voice, “good to see you again.” He looks like an athlete.
When Billy’s face gave back only confusion, the tall man said, “Course, the last time I saw you was on the football field. That catch and run you made in the summer practice game. I knew then you had something.”
Billy did not speak. What could he say? Yes, I had something. But now it’s gone. He glanced at Coach Prosser who looked small in a blue blazer and red tie. All of the men wore suits or blazers and ties, except Rolt, who stood beside Billy in a short-sleeved white shirt and a narrow, flowered tie that even Billy knew was funny.
The tall man said, “Sit Down, Billy. Coach Rolt.”
Billy waited for Rolt to choose his place, then took the last empty chair, opposite the tall man who began, “Billy, I’m Blake Rainey. I’m a businessman and chairman of the school board.” He swept his hands at the table. “All these men are my friends, and we’re all friends of the Spartans.” He looked around the table at the men, but not at Billy’s father. Then he sat, propped his elbows on the table, and leaned toward Billy. “I’m going to ask Coach Prosser to tell you something.”
Prosser looked at Billy and cleared his throat. Again, Billy thought, Small. Prosser on the field in shorts, a sweat-stained T-shirt, and football cleats was huge. That Prosser of angry red face and rusty hair, chest like a keg and massive legs with their two zippered knees, was a wounded hero, a man scarred in battle, a walking story of having fought and returned. That Prosser of summer days was priest and general. He owned the field and the hearts of boys, did with them as he liked. This Prosser seemed not wounded but ruined. He said, “Billy, we need you.” It was someone else’s voice.
The men nodded solemnly. Looked at one another. One or two lifted cigars or cigarettes and took thoughtful pulls of smoke.
Prosser said, “I cut you from the team for what you and I both know were good reasons; now, for better ones, I’m asking you to come back.”
Asking? Billy stared hard at Prosser, then at the other men, then at his father, who had finally lifted his eyes. He looked at Billy now like a man chained to a rock, his head shaking almost imperceptibly. Chained and waiting for sunset when beasts would come. He turned away.
“All of the men here,” Prosser glanced at Coach Rolt, “well, most of them, are former players. They’re all boosters, men who love the Spartans, and they all know this is the best team we’ve had in Oleander in a long time. As you are aware, we’ve lost a boy at a key position.”
Prosser glanced at Cam Sizemore, who stared straight ahead, face elevated, jaw muscles bunched under sallow skin. Prosser tapped his own big hands on the table. “The team can’t win without you. We want you back.”
Billy looked at each of the men, finishing with Coach Rolt. It was time for him to speak. He leaned toward Rolt, looked at the badly repaired mouth weirdly puckered into a sneer. “Coach Rolt, do you want me back?”
Rolt turned to Blake Rainey, who nodded like a father encouraging scrapping boys to shake hands. Rolt looked at Prosser, who looked back at him in cold command. He said, “Yes, Billy, I want you back.”
Billy turned to Cam Sizemore. “Mr. Sizemore, do you want me to play again?”
Cam Sizemore shifted his gaze from the smoke that hovered above their heads and looked at Billy. Blazing, Billy thought. How he must hate me.
“Yes, Billy, I do. It’s best for the team. And what’s best for the team is good for all of us, for Oleander.” His eyes held Billy’s for a long time, until a silent pact was made between them. An agreement of expediency. An agreement to bide time. Cameron Sizemore’s eyes said this was not over, not by a long way. Plenty of time for truth to be told.
Billy glanced at Blake Rainey, who was smiling now. Who seemed to think a deal had been struck. But Billy looked at his father. “Dad, do you want me to play?”
His father roused himself from the torpor that held him. Whatever it was that condemned him to sit so far from this table. “I want what’s best for you, son. What do you want to do?”
Billy looked at all of them. Their eager or resolved or righteous or resigned faces. Their old, old faces. He tried to think about this from the vantage point of time. He strained to know how he would feel about it many years from now, when he would resemble these men. Old. He couldn’t find much in his thoughts. Except that all old men were failures. He said, without regret and without cunning, “I can’t do it.” He stood, stepped back from the table. He did not want to be rude, to be remembered as a boy lacking the graces good parents taught, so he added, “Thank you.”
Blake Rainey was on his feet before Billy saw him move. He thrust forward, spreading big, tanned hands on the polished mahogany. “Why? Why would you turn us down? Boy, are you thinking straight, or are you letting something—anger, pride, stupidity—get between you and the thing you want most in this world? Because you do want it, Billy. There’s not a man in this room doesn’t know that. We’ve all seen you play, how you play, the spirit and the…” Rainey pushed back and raised his arms as though to pull words from the smoky air that he could not find on his own tongue. “The violence you bring to the game. We know you want that, Billy. We need that from you, and you need to give it to us. Isn’t that your need, Billy? Isn’t it?”
What I need is none of— No. No, be calm, be polite. Let him, the rich man, the man in charge, bring the disturbance to this room. Billy said, “I need to get back to school. I’m a student now. I used to play football, but now I’m a student. And I work for you, Mr. Rainey. The graveyard shift out at the juice plant. So I have to use my time wisely, and now I better…” He took another step back, turned toward the door.
“You’re not leaving until this is settled.” Moving fast on his long legs, Rainey crossed the distance between them, seized Billy by his right forearm, and pulled him back to the table. The men stirred when Rainey’s hand took Billy’s arm, a boy’s will and a man’s clashing in a small room. They glanced at one another, eyes fearing this could get out of hand. Billy did not resist Rainey’s hand.
“Sit down, Billy. We’re not finished.”
“I’m finished, sir. With all due respect. I have to—”
“What do you want? You must want something. Everyone does. What is it for you? There is very little a boy like you could want that is not in our power to provide.” Rainey looked at Billy’s father. A boy like you. Your father’s son. Rainey said, “Billy, son, we can make this… worth your while.”
Quietly, Billy replied, “You took football away, and now you want to give it back.” It wasn’t a question.
Rainey nodded, seemed confused. Taking and giving were the world he knew, and why wouldn’t Billy know it? Accept it?
“But it w
as mine. I earned it. I made the team. It wasn’t yours to take away. Maybe I deserved… a punishment.” He looked at Rolt’s torn lip, at Prosser’s big hands folded on the table. “But not that.” He took a deep breath and sighed it out and said without tone, “Keep it. I don’t want it back.”
“Yes, you do,” Rainey countered, “and your father just said he wants what’s best for you. Isn’t football what’s best?”
Rainey’s words, his arguments, this relentless logic of want, need, and worth. It all piled on.
“And what about your mother? What does she want? Have you asked her how she feels about this?”
Billy thought, You wouldn’t recognize my mother on the street. And then that word. Mother. It fell like a rock from the sky into his thoughts. He closed his eyes and wiped a sudden sheen of sweat from his forehead. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he stood with his mother in a crushed oyster shell parking lot, waiting for Karl. He saw the dark blue bruise on her neck, the lie that hid in her eyes.
“For my mother,” he whispered and opened his eyes, “I’ll do it. I’ll play for her but not for you.”
Men threw their shoulders back, muttered, rolled their eyes to the ceiling protesting the fickle mysteries of youth. Billy thought, Fuck you and what you think you know about me and mine.
“Good.” Blake Rainey smiled, baffled. “For your mother.” He stepped back from Billy, regarding him now as a thing well done. Well owned. He rested his hand on Rolt’s fleshy shoulder. “Coach Rolt, will you take our new Spartan back to school?”
The other men stood. Only Billy’s father remained seated. Billy said, “But I’ll need something.”
Blake Rainey’s brown eyes turned black. He squinted at Billy like a man straining to hear a sound from far away. “You’ll need… ?”
“Money,” Billy said. “If I’m gonna play, I’ll have to quit my job. I need money to replace what I’m making now. I need…” A lousy two grand. “Two thousand dollars. I can’t get by without it. You said you could make this worth my while.”
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