Fighting in the Shade

by Sterling Watson

  “I got it.”

  She turned to him, her eyes blinking bright. “That’s the important thing.”

  Billy nodded, glad she was looking at him now. Glad to see what was in her eyes, the old thing they’d always had between them. The thing that would never change, no matter how pretty she made herself. And he remembered all of the well-meant Christmas presents that had not given her joy. “Take it off,” he said.

  “Billy?”

  He reached over and tugged at the knot under her chin. It gave, and he slipped the yellow scarf from her hair. The bruise on her neck, just below the ear, the size of a thumb, was almost hidden by a clever application of powder. “I would have killed him,” Billy said.

  “I know.” She looked at him now like she never had before, like Karl was not all she feared. “And that’s the worst thing of all. Knowing that.” She shook her head, rested her chin on her chest. Her blond hair fell forward, covering the bruise, and Billy turned to look through the windshield at the trees moving in the wind.

  It was the hardest thing he had ever done, not killing Karl. The night after they had eaten fried shrimp at the Crab Shack, it had taken his mother an hour on the phone, sixty minutes of tears, threats, begging, and bargaining to convince him that it would be worse for her if he killed Karl. Because she would lose her son, her Billy. She could endure the pain Karl gave her, and she could endure the humiliation of asking for Billy’s help, but she could not endure the loss of her son to prison or worse. “So killing him would be killing twice, killing me,” she had told Billy. She finally convinced him that buying Karl was the better thing. And Karl could be bought, she had told him, for two thousand dollars.

  “And he hasn’t hurt you since you said you’d pay him?”

  “No,” she touched the bruise, “it takes… it takes a while for these to go away.”

  Billy took the envelope from the car seat and put it in her lap. She rested her hand on it, raised her head, held her chin high, and pulled a lock of her blond hair carefully down over her ear. “Thank you, Billy. Thank you.”

  “Sure, Mom.” Then he remembered. “It’s not all there. I get… installments.” In a bar. From my father. “I’ll give you more when I get it.” He got out of the car and watched her put the yellow scarf back on. They held hands for a while through the window, then she drove away.

  It was homecoming week, and the hallways of Carr were festooned with red bunting. The river of youth was bloodred. A committee of campus leaders and their minions hung the gym with red crepe paper and erected a crimson bandstand for the big dance. The theme was “Persian Nights,” and costumes were encouraged. Strong and stalwart Spartan men would woo and win exotic Persian girls, after repelling an invasion of foppish Persian men. Excitement colored the pink cheeks of girls who whispered, planned, and waited for last-minute proposals. Tardy boys wiped moist palms on trouser legs, begged earnestly for dates, then slapped backs and bragged. All but a few paired off for the game and the dance that were the high-water mark of the fall.

  Billy was restored to the team but not yet to the crimson life of Carr High. Though he thought of Moira often in the daylight hours, and sometimes lay in his bed at night imagining her there with him, he did not ask her to the dance. He threw his heart and soul into football. He practiced badly, then well, refitting his memory with pass routes and blocking assignments, and his body with scrapes and bruises. As his classmates learned turbans and sashes and tinfoil scimitars for a dance, he relearned the mornings of rising in blood and pus from bedsheets stuck to scabs, the days of nausea, muscle cramps, and stunning collisions; at night, he fell asleep over his books. After practice, he shouldered his way through second teamers, past Lane Travers’s bland face, to the back of the shower room where he stood lathering himself wordlessly beside Charlie Rentz and Tommy Bierstadt who talked of double-dating. He dressed quickly, walked to the parking lot where his old black Ford waited, then drove home to the simplicity of his mission.

  On Friday night, when he trotted onto the field with the starting offense to face the Osceola High Cowboys, a bigger, faster team with a better record, a gang of wild-eyed country boys from far west in the cattle and sugarcane regions, boys whose fathers rode horses or tractors for a living, boys whose jerseys were stained with the spittle of snuff, Billy was ready. He knew that on the first snap Ted Street would call his number, the same slantin pass that had busted Billy’s head back in summer practice. He knew because Street had told him. In the locker room, while Prosser delivered last instructions and before the team knelt to murmur together, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me,” Street leaned to him and whispered, “You’re up first, Billy.”

  Prosser’s final, quiet words to the team were, “It’s homecoming, boys. Let’s win this one for Sim Sizemore.”

  There was an anxious hush in the Spartan stands when Billy joined the offense. Even the cheerleaders called the opening chant, “Beat ’em up, Spartans, beat ’em up!” with a restrained excitement. In the huddle, to the circle of hot breath and caged, avid eyes, Street called the play, then said, “Let’s go, Billy,” and the boys shoved their fists together.

  Billy lined up across from a lanky cornerback who pushed his helmet up, showing an evil, gap-toothed grin, and spat at Billy’s feet. “I’m gonna kick your ass, city boy. All night long.”

  Billy fastened his chin strap. “Fuck you, cracker. Kiss my ass if you can catch it.”

  He ran a perfect route, shrugged off the lanky corner with a fake to the sideline, caught the ball over his shoulder at full stride, and did not stop until he had crossed the back line of the end zone.

  The band struck up “On, You Spartans,” and the cheerleaders started the traditional “Way to go, Spartans! Way to go!” but the crowd broke free of this cadence into a single swelling word, a repeated word of two ascending syllables. “BILL-EEE! BILL-EEE! BILL-EEE!” To Billy’s ears, their cry was eerie in the dank fog that had settled over the field. They chanted a name in celebration but also, it seemed to him, in somber welcome. Where have you been, Billy boy? Where have you been, darling Billy?

  He scarcely knew where he had been, but this night he knew where he was going. He caught eight passes and scored three times. All night, through the collisions and the busted plays and the plays that gained ground or crossed the goal line, through the sweat and noise and pain, he felt the Spartan offense knotting tightly together, becoming one creature of will and purpose. A being with eleven parts but one name. Victory.

  Standing sore and winded on the field when the final whistle blew and the Spartans had won 36–14, he raised his eyes to the dizzying lights and whispered, “This is my home,” through the bars of his face guard, “and these boys are my family.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  When Billy left the locker room, his back ached from the pounding hands of congratulation. In the warm night, he walked as usual across the practice field and down the runway between the old, sagging bleachers.

  “Walking home, Billy? Tonight they ought to hire a big black car and a driver for you. Deliver you to your doorstep.” Blake Rainey stepped out of the darkness behind the bleachers. He wore a black suit and Western boots. His white shirt gleamed in the moon shadow, a black tie bisecting his chest. “Wait a minute, look over there.” He pointed at a big new Lincoln. “I bleeve that’s about as big and as black a car as you can find.” Moving in his quick, gliding way on those long legs, he was suddenly beside the vehicle, holding the door open. “Get in, Billy. I’m your driver tonight.”

  Billy walked over and slid onto the smooth leather seat, into the soft light from the dash.

  Rainey started the engine, held his hand out for Billy to shake. “Hell of a game, Billy. Hell of a game!”

  Billy hesitated only a second before taking the hand.

  “Before I take you home, I’ve got something to show you.”

  As the car began to glide soundlessly, Billy remembered
his first ride in the Lincoln, Coach Rolt at the wheel, turning to show his face, the permanent sneer Billy’s fist had made. He remembered the confusion and fear of that day. And tonight? Where am I going?

  It was a long, high-ceilinged room, the second floor of an old mercantile, tackle shop, and ice-cream parlor on a shabby street at the edge of Carver Heights, the Negro section of Oleander. Blake Rainey stood with his back to Billy in the dim glow of a string of ancient bulbs, his arms spread wide so that his black coat hung like wings. Quietly, almost whispering, Rainey said, “This is where it all started. I was just a shirttail boy when we had this business. My grandfather worked twelve hours a day downstairs in a white apron smeared with fish guts, flour, and lard. You could say he was diversified. He sold bait, scooped ice cream and made malted milk, cut wedges of cheese from a big wheel by the front window, and even did a little pharmacy. He’d shoe a mule out in the back alley if Mr. Jim Corley, the blacksmith, was too drunk for the work. He wasn’t proud, my grandfather.” Rainey turned to Billy, dropped his arms, folding the black wings, and walked to a row of shelves along the wall. “My father worked here twelve-hour days, earning the money he used to plant the first Rainey groves. And I worked here too, summertimes. Billy, look at this.”

  Billy moved over and stood beside Rainey.

  Driving here in the Lincoln, they had not spoken. They had ghosted through Carver Heights, many of the houses empty now, and had stopped in front of this white hulk of off-kilter clapboard glowing in the moonlight. Then Rainey had taken a big ring of keys from the glove box and used, he told Billy, the oldest one to crank open the weathered cedar door. An ancient bell had rung their passage into the store downstairs that smelled of heart-pine floors soaked with linseed oil and rotting bolts of linen and cotton. Now Rainey reached out to a shelf and removed a small cardboard box from a row of them. He handed it to Billy.

  “Look at that, Billy. Know what that is? It’s a magneto for a Model-T Ford. In the original box. Shipped here straight from Detroit, Michigan, in 1923 and never sold. And never before lifted from that shelf. After my father moved the business downtown, he couldn’t bear to let go of this place. It was the family museum. Time marches on, Billy, but some things never change. Now let me show you why I brought you here.”

  Rainey moved on into the dim room past rows of old crates and boxes swathed in white dust covers, and stopped at a long alcove masked by a black curtain. Carefully, he pulled the rotting curtain aside and stepped into the alcove, slapping dust from his hands, motioning Billy to follow. On the back wall of the alcove, framed photographs hung from nails. They were football teams. Boys now men, or dead men, stood and knelt in rows, in quaint baggy quilted uniforms. The earliest were unhelmeted, later the helmets were leather, then they were hard plastic but without face guards. In the half-darkness, Rainey walked down the row of photos, his hand outstretched as though reading the images by braille. He pointed at a face. “Look, Billy. That’s Coach Prosser. His ’43 team won the conference championship. Two years later he was wounded on Iwo Jima.”

  The young Prosser stood, impossibly lean in an ill-fitting uniform and old high-topped cleats, but strangely fierce among the vague, unformed young faces. Rainey said, “And that’s your principal. That’s young Boyd Sowers. No clabber on him in those days.”

  Mr. Sowers looked shy and defiant, short, stocky, the muscles of his forearms bunched under a long-sleeved jersey with a conspicuous hole at one shoulder pad. His leather helmet under his arm, he wore comical horn-rimmed eyeglasses, the same ones he wore now.

  “And there I am,” Rainey said. “Right behind Coach Prosser. If ever there was a boy who loved the game, it was me. But I had little talent for it. Less even, if you will believe it, than Boyd there. Gawky and gangly and tangle-footed, but I played. We all did. We had to, to flesh out the squad, field two elevens on the practice field. And I had my moments on Friday nights.” His voice became a murmur, disappearing into the past. “Great moments, a few of them.”

  Rainey stepped back from the photographs, stood still remembering for a moment, his eyes almost closed. Then he moved to a window smeared with the filth of time, and Billy followed. Rainey pulled a white handkerchief from his coat pocket, rubbed grime from the glass, and motioned Billy close. “Look out there. What do you see?”

  In the weak glow of street lamps, Billy saw old houses sinking into their foundations under the weight of miserable humanity. He looked his confusion at Rainey.

  “We all got along in those days, Billy. This store my grandfather built stands on a white street, but right over there the Negroes lived. They bought goods downstairs. Hell, some of them worked here. They came in the front door just like the white folks, and their money was as good as anybody’s.” Rainey paused, peering out through the hole in the grime.

  Billy peered out too. “Did they drink from your granddaddy’s water fountain?”

  Rainey shook his head. “My point is we all got along, because we knew who we were. And football, Billy, football was part of what held us together. Made us proud of Oleander.” He stepped away from the dirty glass. “What do you think of my little museum?” He waited, watching Billy.

  “Did you go out into the woods? Did you have your… Mystery Night?” Did you walk with the elephants?

  Rainey closed his eyes, shook his head again, disappointed in Billy’s narrow vision. “Yes. We did it because men told us to, and it didn’t seem to hurt us any. Come with me, Billy.”

  Rainey walked thirty paces to the far end of the room and stood in front of a wide, scarred pine cabinet. An ancient brass padlock secured its doors. He pulled the key ring from his pocket, selected a key, and turned the lock. There was a fall of dust. Inside the cabinet hung rows of white robes. They released the rank must of hiding, the ancient pitch and damp of nights by campfires in the woods. Rainey motioned Billy close. As the boy peered in, Rainey whispered, “A city of fire stands behind us…”

  Billy reached in and touched the ancient white silk. White hoods hung among the robes. Satan’s choir, he thought. God Almighty!

  “It wasn’t always football, Billy, but it was always something. The people of Oleander always needed something to hold them together, help them stand against what would destroy them. My great-grandfather’s generation didn’t know football, but they knew the woods, and they went there once a year and they said the same things you boys said, the very same things. And nothing can convince me there’s anything bad about it.”

  “But why,” Billy asked, “do you shame us to make us strong? Why do you try to teach a boy courage by making him kneel to another boy’s shit?”

  “It’s not courage we teach you, Billy. You’ve got that already. It’s solidarity. If all are forced to kneel, then all rise together and resist those who have not. It’s the way of a fallen world, Billy. We all have to suffer, to kneel. When we do it together, when we see that all have done the same thing, then we are bound together in the fall. And then the others, the lesser ones, kneel before us.”

  Billy shook his head, rubbed his eyes, stepped back from the ranks of musty robes. “When I… hit Coach Rolt, that was courage. That was right. But you took football away.”

  “Maybe it was courage, son, maybe, but not the right kind. We took what you loved because we could do it, to show the other boys what we won’t tolerate in this town. We sacrificed you to that greater good, Billy. It happens all the time. In war. In politics. Men fall on their swords when they have to. Do you know the ancient Spartans? Have you read about them? They took boys from their mothers at a tender age, and men, warriors like Coach Prosser, raised those boys to be fighters, to endure all and never to yield. Those boys were treated like dogs, worse than dogs. They were forced to fight one another barefooted on altars of frozen stone for scraps of food, given only a thin red tunic to wear when the cold wind blew between their very bones. And when those boys became men, they defeated every enemy. They were the greatest fighters the world has ever known. The men who wore th
ese robes would be proud to know we named our team the Spartans.”

  Rainey stared at Billy with avid eyes. Eyes so inspired they seemed to want to fight. Right now. He took a step forward, flexed his long hands at his sides. His nostrils flared.

  Billy said, “You made my father kneel, you and Mr. Sizemore.”

  “Every man finds his place in the scheme of things. Your father did serious, necessary work—after he found his place. I know you don’t like it that your father… doesn’t have a seat at the table. I understand that, we all do. It’s his seat at the table I’m offering you, in time. And listen, Billy. Every boy, every good boy, has many fathers. You don’t know it yet, but I’m one of yours. You’ve got a future with me. Two thousand dollars is… nothing.”

  Billy turned from the cabinet of white robes, a coffin full of ghosts, and looked into Rainey’s dark eyes. Was this it? Really it? The world of men. Not the world of Sir and Sir, or the world of Karl, or the world of Prosser, making boys into men on blazing summer days when bones were crushed and sinews torn in the game that practiced war. Was this it? Men rode at night in white disguise, and the threat of their riding gave gravity and power to the work they did in black suits in the daylight world. Did all boys, good boys, learn this? Did they all, eventually, take up the white robe of the night and the black suit of the day? Was this what it meant to become a man?

  Billy shouldered past Rainey, walked the length of the dim, dusty loft, down the aisles of shrouded boxes and bales. He stopped at the stairway. “I’m tired. It was a tough game. I think I better…”

  Rainey walked down the long shadowed aisle toward him. “It was a tough game. And you were the toughest part of it. You were brilliant, Billy. You shone in your violence and your speed. It was impressive.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rainey.” Billy started down the groaning old stairs, and on the landing he felt Blake Rainey’s hand on his shoulder. Firm, gripping the flesh, owning him as son and… hired hand. Two thousand dollars is nothing. Yes, nothing compared to the rest of your bounty, but everything too. Everything because fathers do not buy their sons.