by Bill Syken
“Do you have directions to the funeral?” I ask Freddie.
“No, not really,” Freddie says. “But it can’t be that hard to find. The town probably has three streets in it, right?”
I go to the driver’s side of the car to take over command of the expedition, and Freddie tosses me the keys without argument. We drive up the highway about five miles and pass a small sign that reads WELCOME TO VICKERS, POP. 580. We also pass a small brick post office, a Quonset-hut agricultural supply shop, and a gas station.
And then nothing. We don’t realize that we just passed through downtown Vickers until we are back in the countryside.
I make a sharp and bumpy U-turn on the hardpan, circling partway off the road and then back on again. Freddie puts a hand on his stomach.
“That barbecue not sitting too well?” I ask without sympathy.
“Sitting beautifully, friend,” Freddie says through a grimace.
I pull into the gas station and ask the attendant for directions. He is a young man with the name ELVIS stitched in red letters on his pale blue work shirt. Leaning down to the level of the open car window and resting a hand on my door, he gives instruction that includes such phrases as “take the first left after the soybean field” and “take a right at this really big tree.” We can’t miss it, Elvis says.
“I’d be at the funeral myself, if we didn’t have to stay open,” he says. “I hear the team paid for the whole spread. Hey, you’re the Sentinels’ punter, aren’t you? Nick Gallow?”
“Yes,” I say. To be recognized in public—this is a first. And out of town, even.
“That fucking JC,” Elvis says bitterly. “I hope they hang the bastard.”
“We’ll see,” I say. “A man’s innocent until proven guilty, right?”
“If that JC ain’t guilty, I’ll eat my own shit,” he says.
Nice to see a man standing behind his convictions. I thank Elvis for the directions and go.
We turn off the main road and after a quarter mile we are driving over loose gravel. The landscape offers only intermittent farmland and occasional clusters of modest houses. “What do people here do at night?” Freddie wonders out loud.
These are the roads that Samuel must have pushed his mother’s Chevy Malibu along when he was a teenager. I imagine Samuel doing that on a scorching day like this one, where the sun castigates anyone who ventures out of the shade. If Samuel played defensive end with that same stubborn determination, he would have been worth his $64 million.
After five minutes of driving, I feel lost. My leg is not in great pain but my hamstring is tweaked enough that I am aware of it, and that awareness is adding to my cumulative anxiety.
Then I see lines of cars and trucks bumper-to-bumper along the roadside. All of a sudden the parking is as tight as it is on Broad Street in South Philly. As I drive along, I scan the bumper stickers, but see only flags, fish, and sports team logos—many, many sports team logos, mostly from colleges and high schools.
We continue on the road and see the church itself, which looks like an old barn that has been painted white and had a cross hammered to its side. The service, we can see, is being held outside. At least five hundred people are here, many more than the church can hold. And I can see that the service is already in progress. We drive a couple hundred yards past and finally find a parking space on the roadside.
Television cameras capture Freddie and me walking up late to the ceremony. With the chairs all occupied, a businesslike teenager in a black suit and a skinny red tie directs us to stand in the back. He hands Freddie and me white paper fans with which to cool ourselves. Tanner, sitting with the others a few rows from the back, turns and notes our late arrival with an angry flash from those blue eyes. Great. Whatever Woodward Tolley is doing right now, he is gaining on me.
We join the back row and I put the heel of my injured leg forward and lean slightly back, trying to stretch my hamstring as much as I can without being ostentatious.
The service is being led by a heavyset older man in sunglasses and a flamboyant purple-and-orange robe. He has no podium or dais; he is on the grass, speaking into a handhold microphone he has removed from its stand, stalking back and forth, speaking in call-and-response style to the audience.
“God gave Samuel a gift!” the preacher says.
“Yes!” comes the congregation’s response.
“God made Samuel fast and strong!”
“Yes!”
“People called Samuel the next big thing.”
“Yes!”
The congregation grows progressively more boisterous with each response, though I can see Tanner sitting stonily, frowning, eyes shifting, while others clap and shout around him. I am not aware of Tanner’s religious beliefs, but whatever they are, it is apparently not this.
“Some say he is the next evolution of man.”
“Yes!” Freddie yells idiotically, hand cupped to mouth, as he joins the call and response—ironically, of course. I nudge him with my elbow and glare.
“But we all know Samuel’s real strength!”
“Yes!”
“It is his love of Jesus!”
“Yes!”
“Samuel is with Jesus right now!”
“Yes!”
“Jesus doesn’t care if he’s fast or strong!”
“Yes!”
“There’s only one measure that matters in heaven!”
“Yes!”
“It’s how much love you have in your heart!”
“Yes!”
And so on and so forth. I don’t especially care for the lyrics of his speech, but I enjoy the music of it, and latch on to the one idea in there I can appreciate, which is the hope that somewhere and some way, goodness is eventually rewarded.
After the righteous reverend finishes, he calls up the next speaker: DaFrank Burns, who is sitting in the front row. The two men hug as they pass.
DaFrank, wearing a black suit, places the microphone back in its stand. Since I saw him at the hospital he has touched up his already short haircut with fresh tapering on the side. He looks nervous as he fiddles with the mic stand to raise it up to his height.
“Welcome, my brothers and sisters,” DaFrank begins in a Southern accent more pronounced than I had heard from him in our previous encounters. “I’m happy to see so many people here to honor such a wonderful man. It shows how much love there is in this town and in this world for my brother Samuel. I see Samuel’s mother and father and his sister, Selia. I see aunts and uncles and cousins. I see many friends here from Western Alabama. That’s Puma pride right there. I even see some people here from the Sentinels. And then there are the television cameras, and I am glad they are here because they represent people all around the world who have only come to know Samuel in death.”
At this last note people’s heads turn to the cameras. One cameraman is kneeling in the center aisle for a straight-on shot of DaFrank, while another is to the side, his camera trained on the front-row mourners.
“I have been thinking and thinking,” DaFrank says, “how do I tell people all about my brother. And I decided that the best way to do this is to use Samuel’s own words. Words that come from his heart. I’m going to read an e-mail that Samuel sent me. He wrote this ten days ago, not long before he signed the contract that made him a Sentinel.”
DaFrank reaches into his jacket pocket and removes from it a folded sheet of paper.
“Before reading this, I want you all to know that Samuel is a private man, and he didn’t like to say much in public. I think the only thing in this world he was afraid of was a microphone.” He looks up. “So if you are watching, Samuel, I am sorry, but I have to do this.”
DaFrank unfolds the piece of paper and reads:
I need help, DaFrank. I don’t know what to do. I’m so confused. All anyone talks about is how much money I’m going to make, how big a star I’m going to be, how I can have anything I want. I listen and I nod my head and all the time I’m thinking, why?
But if I say I want to just stay home, everyone would be mad at me. The team would be mad at me. Fans would be mad. Cecil would be mad. Everyone in Vickers, they’d all make jokes about how stupid I am to turn down all that money. They’d say I’m a mama’s boy. Or that I’m whipped. But I want to spend my life right here. I think I’d be happier if I wasn’t a Sentinel. Tell me, is that crazy?
DaFrank lowers the paper and slips a thumb and forefinger underneath his glasses to daub the tears.
“Samuel, here’s my answer. You wouldn’t be crazy, brother. You wouldn’t be crazy at all. You knew what you loved and what mattered to you, and there is nothing crazy about that. I wish everyone on Earth was that crazy.”
DaFrank lowers his head and holds his fist to his lips. He appears to be on the brink of full-on weeping. He rushes out his last words: “I just wish that’s what I had told you then.”
In the front row, I see a woman with blond hair, her shoulders shaking. I can’t tell for sure from behind, but I am guessing this is Kaylee Wise. Strangely, she has a couple of seats to herself; no one is by her side.
After hearing Samuel’s letter, I wonder afresh about Samuel’s contract with the Sentinels, and how Cecil agreed to it so early, rather than waiting until closer to training camp like most rookies do. If Cecil knew Samuel had been wavering in his desire to play, he would have wanted Samuel to sign when he was in a mood to do so, whether it was the best offer or not. Cecil couldn’t risk Samuel changing his mind later in the summer. If Samuel had quit on the Sentinels, Cecil’s reputation would have never recovered.
* * *
After the service, I walk forward, toward Kaylee Wise. I expected that she might be a difficult person to get an audience with—pregnant, sort-of widowed, possibly about to be rich, and in her hometown. But no. As mourners stream from the service area toward a buffet set up on folding tables behind the church, she moves slowly and alone. Wearing a sleeveless dark-blue maternity dress, she is struggling with her pronounced baby bump on this sweltering day.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Ms. Wise?”
“Afraid so,” she says with a soft Dixie accent. Up close, she looks even younger than she did in her photo. Her cheeks are puffed and her eyes are bloodshot, and she grips a white handkerchief with her long, unpainted fingers.
“Hello,” I say. “I’m Nick Gallow, the punter with the Sentinels. I was with Samuel…”
“I know,” she says, cutting me off but then smiling. “I know.” She is covered with a film of sweat. She squints toward the food line, already at least a hundred deep.
“Look at all those people,” she says tiredly, crossing her arms.
“I’m sure everyone would let you go right to the front…”
“Forget it, I don’t like owing anyone anything,” she says. “I’m just going to sit for a minute.”
Before I can say anything she turns and retreats to the folding chairs, grabbing the nearest seat. They are empty now, except for a young man in a crisp white suit sitting toward the back. He has a shaved head and is bent in what appears to be intense prayer. He is broad-shouldered and lean, and I would not be surprised if he was a teammate of Samuel’s from high school or college.
“Do you know who that is?” I ask Kaylee quietly as I sit down beside her and tilt my head in the direction of the praying figure.
“Never seen him before,” Kaylee says. “But that’s a Southern funeral for you, it brings everyone out of their tree stumps. You ever been to one before?”
“No.”
“These things go all day, all night,” she says, and then she squeezes her hands and knocks her knees together. “I just want to go home. My mom’s all by herself. She had a stroke two years ago, she can’t hardly get around anywhere.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It happens,” she says with a faint smile. “If it wasn’t for my mama’s stroke, I wouldn’t have been with Sam. When she came home from the hospital, she couldn’t get up the stairs by herself. I’m friends with Sam’s sister, Selia—at least I was—and Selia asked Sam to come by each morning and carry my mom down the stairs. At night he’d return and carry my mom back up.”
Kaylee fiddles with a ring on her finger. It is a simple and inexpensive ring without any stone, just a metal heart at its center.
“What did you think of the e-mail DaFrank Burns read at the service?” I ask her. “I had no idea Samuel has such mixed feelings about coming to Philadelphia.”
She turns her eyes to me with pity, for my ignorance. “Wasn’t anything mixed about it,” she says. “Two weeks ago he flat-out told his agent he wasn’t going to Philadelphia. I was in the room when he made the call. But that, Cecil Wilson talked him out of it.” She was turning bitter now. “Cecil said to him, ‘Just give it a chance. If you don’t like it, home will always be there for you.’”
Her face remains expressionless, but tears flow down her cheeks.
“Did you think about following Samuel to Philadelphia?” I ask.
“I would have loved to go,” she says. “I’m so sick of all the dimwits in this town. But I couldn’t abandon my mama. I’m not that kind of daughter.
“If Sam had been drafted by Atlanta, everything would have been fine. We could have come up and back all the time. Atlanta was trying to trade up for him, too. But I guess you all up in Philadelphia just had to have him.” She raised her handkerchief and daubed at her eyes. “I just don’t get why a burger flipper can choose between Burger King and McDonald’s, but a player worth $64 million has no say at all in where he goes.”
Kaylee obviously did not appreciate the rigidity of the league’s drafting system, or its goal of equitable distribution of talent. She just cared about her ailing mother, her unborn child, and the man she loved.
“I really wish I could get out of town,” she says. “My last year or so all my cousins have been treating me like I’m a bucket of pig slop because I was dating a black man. Like they’re anything special. Then last night they come by the house like everything is all fine and dandy between us, all because they think I’m going to be rich. Where were they when I needed them?
“And Sam’s family, they used to like me, but now they’re mad at me, all because I went along with that lawyer, this jerk from Birmingham with a silk necktie who told me I was entitled to a bunch of money and he could get it for me and I wouldn’t have to do anything except sign a piece of paper. That’s what the devil does, right—just asks you to sign a piece of paper.”
She slumps in her chair, which makes her dress ride up on her thighs. I look over to the food line, which has doubled in length since we sat down.
“Let me get you something to eat,” I ask.
“Sure,” she says, folding her hands on her belly. “I won’t move a muscle.”
I do not believe my instincts are infallible, and I have only spoken to Kaylee Wise for five minutes. But if it turns out that she had anything to do with Samuel’s shooting, then I should give up ever trying to figure out anything about anything.
I walk gingerly to the buffet area, coddling my hamstring. My leg is better than it was, but it isn’t feeling right, either. Tomorrow I will go to the Sentinels’ facility and get a massage from a trainer.
The food line is a long one. The guests who have already filled their plates are reassembling the chairs from the service and sitting down to eat and talk and laugh. It is as if the buffet is a magic tunnel, removing the funereal mood from all who pass.
I notice Tanner and Udall speaking with an older man and woman, both over six feet tall, who have a girl alongside them, nearly six feet herself. Cameras are trained on the group as O’Dwyer and Cordero hove
r nearby. This must be Samuel’s family—which means the girl is Samuel’s sister, Selia. She is a slim girl with high, regal cheekbones and long, thin braids. As her parents talk to Tanner and Udall she leans on her father’s meaty shoulders, her slender arm threaded through his, and her head is turned away. I remember how Samuel wasn’t one for making nice with strangers, and his sister seems to share his aversion.
I look back to the seating area and Kaylee is still alone, head now propped on one hand, looking overwhelmed. The young man in the white suit is still sitting several rows behind her, head bent. He, at least, is not here for the food.
I scan the crowd and the line ahead for Freddie, but I don’t see him anywhere.
I finally arrive at the food tables, my stomach yawning, and see that the buffet is a cardiologist’s nightmare: fried chicken, fried fish, fried pork chops, fried okra, sliced ham, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, French fries, sweet potato pie, banana pudding, yellow cake, and chocolate cake. There are mustard greens and collard greens, but they have thick chunks of ham in them.
The entire menu is outside my diet, but I am hungry. I take pieces of fish and chicken. Plus the mustard greens, and the mac and cheese. This is for Kaylee and me to share, I tell myself. So I take a couple of more pieces of chicken and fish, and some more greens, too, trying to avoid the bigger hunks of ham.
My plate full, I walk back to the chairs. Kaylee is now gone. So, for that matter, is the young man in the white suit. I peer around but I do not see Kaylee anywhere. I wonder if she had enough and went home to her mother.
I sit alone with my full plate of food and start in on the fried chicken. Which is crunchy and juicy, and even though I suspect that the “juice” is lard, the chicken is about the best thing I have eaten since I don’t know when. I take another bite and then another.
I am on my second piece when I am joined by Freddie.
“Have you tried this chicken, buddy?” I ask. “Forget that barbecue stand. This is the meal you’ll be telling stories about.”