by John Goode
As hard as I was on the team, I was three times harder on Brad. I needed to know if he was in it for the long haul, which meant trying my level best to tear him down and see if he would quit.
I screamed at him that he couldn’t hit hard enough, run fast enough, and every time he dropped a fly ball, he got an all-expense-paid tour of the backfield while holding a bat over his head. After the third hour of practice, I would have been shocked if he could raise his hands to even catch a ball, so he got to see the back fence more times than he saw home plate those days.
He didn’t flinch.
I was married to Becca for five years before I began to wonder why we didn’t have any kids yet. I assure you it wasn’t from lack of trying, so we went and saw a professional. It was the hardest thing I ever had to hear. To have some stranger inform us that we were never going to have a child of our own was the closest thing to torture I had ever seen. She was devastated. There was nothing that Becca wanted more than to be a mother. We talked about adopting, but she never took a shine to the idea, and after a while I stopped pushing it. But in my mind, if we were to have a son, I would have wanted him to be just like Brad.
I admit I might not have chosen to make him a homosexual, but watching him take his tenth trip around the field without even an ugly look, I knew that inside, he had everything in his soul that made up a real man. It was that quiet resolve that made the difference. He wasn’t one of these other kids whining that it wasn’t fair, and I was just being mean to them. A pack of self-important idiots, that is what the Internet has raised for us. In my days it was comic books—read too many and they’d rot your brain, educators warned. After that it was TV. Watch too much TV and you’d end up a drooling idiot. Now it was the Internet, and let me tell you, for the first time, I believed the experts.
But not Brad.
Even after all that, I told him to pick up the mitts his teammates had dropped in the dugout before he came in. Anyone else would have at least looked at me and asked with their eyes, why them? Hell, I would have asked that. But instead he just nodded mutely and began scooping them up as he walked. And then took the two bats that had been lying there and put them away as well. I just watched as he looked around the dugout to see if anything else was out of place. Not because he thought that was what I asked him to do, but because that dugout was his house, and he wasn’t leaving until it was clean.
I rushed back into the locker room to make sure he didn’t see me.
It was Thursday, and the list was going to go up the next day. You could feel the nervous energy out in the locker room even though they were physically exhausted. If they ever find a way to harness teenage boys for energy, we will never go without light and heat. More than a few passed by my office, trying to seem sly as they looked to see what I was doing. I ignored them since I was the clueless adult, and they were the know-it-all teenagers. I found myself wondering how much my teachers let us get away with when I was young.
The one good thing that had come out of this whole mess was that no one cared if Brad showered with them or not. After the Kelly Laws went into effect, I sat them down and asked if anyone had a problem with him showering with the team. I have to admit they were braver than I was, because not one said they had a problem at all. If I was getting naked and rubbing myself down ten feet from a gay guy, I know I would think twice. But maybe that’s my generation. All I know is that they didn’t care, and with that the problem was solved.
I told him to come to my office when he was done showering. You’d think I had just told the boy to eat his last meal before facing a firing squad. Maybe he was just nervous because he knew what was coming. I had no idea what went through kids’ minds anymore. I waited in my office for him to finish, stacking up the list of guys I had chosen for the team.
He knocked twice and walked in.
“Sit down, Greymark,” I said, sliding a chair over to him. This was something I had always done with captains, going over the lineup before the list was posted. There are two reasons I think it’s a good idea. One, it gives me a chance to see how much they have been paying attention to the other players, and two, it shows me if they were going to fight to keep the people they think are the best qualified on the team. “Not a lot of guys are going to even get on the field, which is a shame, but there are only so many minutes in a game. So I have to make some hard choices, and no matter what I do there are going to be some upset boys tomorrow.”
He looked like he was going to throw up, which puzzled me because shouldn’t this be the point where he was ready to jump through the roof?
“But you’ve played since you were a freshman, so you at least deserve to know what’s what.” I put the folders down on my desk. “Here it is. I am going to cut Flores, even though he is a faster runner than Walker. Walker has good heart, and I think this could be his year, but I need to know you agree with me on this, and I need to know now. I’m not going to start the season by arguing with the team captain right out of the gate.”
I knew that Brad and Josh had tussled a few times in the past, and I watched him to see if he would use this moment to get me to change my mind.
“Flores is a better hitter,” he said without even pausing. “But I’d keep Josh too.”
I was impressed. He didn’t even blink at that suggestion. “Good, I thought the same thing. You have any attachment to Freeman or Paulson? Because they aren’t making it either.”
He shook his head, but he still had that dazed, glassy-eyed look on his face as he said, “Freeman is good, but he has no rhythm on the field, and Paulson might be ready next year but not yet.”
That was almost exactly what I had written in my notes on them. “You’ve been paying attention. Outstanding—that will make this easier.” I tossed the last two files onto my desk and handed him the roster. “Anything on here you have a problem with, then?”
He took the paper like it was a creature from another planet. It was just a list of names, but you could swear it was a contract for his soul the way he went over it again and again. Finally, after a good three minutes, he pointed to the sheet and asked, “What’s that?”
I leaned over. He was pointing at his own name. Maybe he meant the word by it. “Captain.”
He made a face and honestly asked me, “What’s that mean?”
This was a kid who had been playing baseball for years; he had to know what that meant. I elaborated by saying, “Team captain.”
He shook his head at me like he was disagreeing. “Come again?”
I didn’t know what game he was playing, but I didn’t have the patience for it. “Team captain. You know what a team captain is?” He nodded. “Then what’s the question?”
“Why is it by my name?”
This was his way of making a joke. Not the best way to do it, but I just said, “Smart-ass. Tell no one, and try to seem surprised tomorrow morning.” I handed him the folder with our drills. “And begin to get real familiar with that. It’s your job to get everyone else to understand it.”
He looked down at the folder with the same expression he gave the list of names. After a second his mouth fell open in what I assumed was exhaustion.
“Any questions?” I asked, wanting to wrap this up so I could get home.
He held the folder up to me, as if I hadn’t seen it. “This is mine?”
I liked it better when he didn’t say anything. I pointed at his name. “That’s you, right?” He nodded. “So then it’s yours.”
“But this is for team captain,” he said, like I was the one who didn’t know what a team captain was.
Then is started to dawn on me—what if he didn’t want the job? Had I read this kid wrong? “Are you saying you don’t want to be team captain?”
“I’m team captain?” he asked me, and at any other time it would have been a pretty convincing rendition of “Who’s On First.”
I felt a tension headache coming on and tried to will it away. “Why did you think I asked you in here?”
&
nbsp; “To kick me off the team.”
His words were like a slap. I looked up at him and asked, “Why would you think that?”
“Um, because I’m gay?”
I swore then to myself I was going to punch Jeff Raymond in the face some day.
I moved closer to him and cleared my throat as I tried to find a way to explain everything that had happened. “What you need to understand, Brad….” I stopped. “I mean, the truth is….” Nope, stopped again. Goddammit, how do I tell a kid that there was nothing wrong with who he slept with and that it really had less than nothing to do his ability to play baseball.
Then out of nowhere, he leans over to me and says reassuringly. “It’s okay, Coach. It’s cool.”
I looked up at this kid, this teenage boy who honestly had done nothing more wrong than say “I love that guy” trying to tell me, the old man who had a problem with it, that it was going to be okay.
Damned if he didn’t make me ashamed to be a man.
“No. No, it isn’t cool,” I said, trying to clear the emotion out of my voice. I was not going to break down in front of this kid, not now. “You’re team captain.” I stood up. “Study that book, and get ready to drill it into the others.” I turned back to my desk so I could wipe one my eyes. “Now get out of here.”
Seconds later I was alone.
“Good God, what are we doing to these kids?” I asked myself as I fell into my chair, exhausted.
“HE JUST assumed I was going to kick him off the team.”
Gayle nodded as she sat across from me in the diner. I tell myself I come in here because I love the pie, but to be honest, it was the way she listened that drew me there night after night. She had the same understanding eyes Becca had. Even if she didn’t know what I was going on about, she would still nod and smile and give me reassurance that everything would be all right.
“Well, what did you expect?” she said, refilling my coffee. “I mean, didn’t you all try to kick him off the team once already?” I looked up at her with a glance that would have made a dozen students flee in terror, but she just laughed. “And don’t give me that evil eye. You let Raymond wind you up in that meeting, and you ended up speaking against the kid. What do you think he would think?”
“He could have trusted me,” I grumbled as I reached for the sugar.
She slapped my hand. “There is pink, yellow, and blue in there. You don’t need any more sugar tonight.” I looked up at her in shock, and she didn’t budge. “You want to try teaching with a stump instead of a foot, be my guest. My blood sugar is accounted for.”
I grabbed three packets of the blue instead, and she smiled.
“And how can the boy trust you? Have you actually said anything to him to indicate you were on his side?” She knew by my silence that I hadn’t. “So you’re surprised the teenage boy went by the actions of you trying to kick him off the team instead of, what? Reading your mind? You’re lucky he hadn’t quit already and just gone to Granada to spite all of you.”
The thought of having to face a pissed-off Brad Greymark on another team was the thing my nightmares were made of.
“You know what is even worse than him not knowing what you are privately thinking?” she asked me. Again I said nothing, because I had known Gayle long enough to know she would tell me even if I said nothing. “If he didn’t think he deserved to be on the team, he must really think he doesn’t deserve to be captain.” She got up and put my check down. “Now I’m not an expert on male egos, but I do know that once bruised it can take years and years to heal.”
“You think he is going to blow it?” I asked her.
“I think he thinks he is going to blow it. And that makes it an almost certainty that he will.” She shrugged. “But then again, I’m not a sports coach, so what do I know?”
I sighed as she walked away. Once again, she was right. If Brad had no confidence, then he was just a mistake waiting to happen. I went to reach for my wallet when I saw the note written across the bill from Gayle.
“As a rule, I don’t date guys who have had a foot cut off because they like too much sugar in their coffee.” Under that, she had put a line through the total saying it was on her.
I threw some bills down on the table and made a hasty retreat before my mind could figure out if she was asking me to ask her out or if I was just being stupid.
I SPENT the next morning sitting in my office trying to figure out how to approach this Brad thing.
He needed to feel like he deserved to be there, earned that spot. That meant some team building, but I was worried because what if the team wasn’t in the mood to follow? I didn’t have any doubts that Brad was the best guy for the job, but that didn’t mean the rest of the kids were just going to follow a gay captain. The worst part was that if you had asked me last year if I would have followed one, I probably would have told you “Hell no.”
If they made a fuss, it was just what Raymond was waiting for to get Greymark kicked out of here. It wasn’t discrimination if the other students complained first. I was halfway through “Ring of Fire” when my door burst open, and Kyle was standing there saying something to me.
I popped the earphones out, and he said something else, but I didn’t hear him because of the noise coming from behind him.
A fight.
I got up and rushed out the door, pushing kids out of my way as I walked into the center of the argument. Which was just in time to hear Tony Wright call someone a faggot.
I took a deep breath and then proclaimed in my best Charlton Heston from The Ten Commandants, “Tony Wright.” Even though his back was to me, I saw him freeze, which was the intended result for that kind of voice. “Did you just call someone a faggot?” He looked around like he was going to get some help from someone, but he realized he was very much alone, literally and figuratively. “I asked you a question,” I said, shaking some sense into him. Wright was one of those students that football ruined. They took a mean boy and had him work out, bulk up, and then reward him for hitting other people. I remember Brad’s father being the same way at this age, and let me tell you, it did nothing to raise his value in my eyes. When I was barely older than him, I was holding a rifle and being taught how to best kill a man if he got too close to you in combat. We were lean, we were hungry, and we were always taught that the skills we were learning should never be used on anyone who wasn’t a mortal enemy. But there were always guys who wanted to pick fights—over women, over dick size, over whatever they wanted to at the time, because they knew they could beat the hell out of any three guys. I hated it then, and I hated it more now.
“I-I didn’t say nothing” was all he could mutter, sounding like a damn infant too.
I was about to tell him he was in some real trouble when Tony’s voice came from behind me, sounding like it was from a speaker. “What did you say to me, you little faggot?”
I looked over and saw the sheriff’s daughter holding a camera phone. “Oh, I’m sorry, was I not supposed to record that?”
Her finger hit the replay button, and she held the video up to my face and played it again.
“In his defense, ‘I didn’t say nothing’ does in fact mean he said something. So not so much a lie as just bad grammar.” It was Kyle, and he got a good laugh out of that from the crowd.
I wasn’t in the laughing mood.
“Congratulations, Wright, you just became the first student at Foster High to meet Kelly’s Laws. If you’re lucky, your name will go up on a plaque with the rest of the intolerant people that will come after you. I’m sure your dad will be so proud.” I meant it, because his dad was no better than he was. Tony was the redneck son of a redneck asshole, and if anyone needed any proof that hatred was hereditary, all they had to do was look to Tony Jr. for that.
I tossed him in a chair and sat down across from him behind my desk. He looked like he had just eaten a bug from the look on his face.
This needed to stop, now. If I just turned this idiot over he would get suspe
nded, his father would blame Brad and the rest of the liberal assholes that have taken over this school, and Tony here would get off without any feeling of personal blame. And that wasn’t going to fly with me. What this needed was some good, old-fashioned American guilt.
“So tell me, Tony,” I said calmly. “You really don’t like Greymark, do you?”
I saw the conflicting feelings on his face. He knew if he said he had no problem that it would be a bold-faced lie, and that would make two he had said to me within five minutes. But if he admitted it, then wouldn’t that be worse? I let him stew for a few seconds before continuing.
“Don’t answer that. I can tell. You have to know yelling at him in the hallway is a waste of time, right? I mean, come on, in the end all you do is get in trouble, right?”
He nodded slowly.
“So then how about this. How about I keep him after practice one day, and the rest of the team is gone. Then you can come in there and talk with him,” I said, making air quotes. “Sound like a plan?”
He nodded slowly again.
“I mean, no witness, no evidence, just you and him and an empty gym. You can do that, right?”
Now a small smile and a nod.
“That’s what I thought. Now I have bats there. You can bring a tarp, right?”
He stopped nodding and smiling all at once. “A what?” he asked.
“A tarp,” I said again. “For his body.” Another pause. “We are talking about killing him, right?”
Tony’s face went white as he moved further back in his chair. “I don’t want to kill him,” he said loudly, almost in a panic.
“Don’t you?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. “I assumed because it was this same kind of harassing shit that got Kelly to kill himself, and I just thought you were going to try to steer Brad in that direction too.” I got up slowly. “I mean, what did we learn by Kelly putting a pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger? That you can only mock and attack fags for so long before they kill themselves? I was just trying to cut to the chase, give you a chance to do it yourself. You know, feel the blood splatter as you beat him to death.”