“David Teel,” a voice said, causing Jason to sit up straight on the bench in surprise.
“Um, hello, Mr. Teel?” Jason said, realizing that saying the reporter’s name in a questioning tone was stupidly redundant since the writer had already answered by using his name.
“Yes, this is David, what can I do for you, sir?”
It occurred to Jason that the strategy session the day before hadn’t included a conversation on exactly what to say upon reaching one of the reporters. “Sorry,” he said. “I actually thought I would get your voicemail.”
Teel laughed. “I always come in on Sunday mornings because it’s quiet and I need all the quiet I can get to write my Monday column.”
“Is your house very noisy?” Jason asked, curious, though realizing the question was completely irrelevant.
“Well, I have a five-year-old daughter,” Teel said.
“Got it,” Jason said.
There was a pause, and Jason realized he needed to start telling Teel why he was breaking up his quiet morning.
“Oh, well,” he said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but my name is Jason Roddin and I’m a freshman at Thomas Gatch Prep.”
“How you enjoying TGP so far?” Teel asked.
Without knowing it, Teel had cut directly to the chase.
“Well, it’s been interesting,” Jason said, stalling for time so he could think about exactly what he was going to say. “I’ve only been here a week and I’m kind of trying to figure the place out.”
“And you think I can help you figure it out in some way?” Teel said. “I don’t get over there very often because I mostly cover colleges…”
“Yes, I know,” Jason said. “But I found some stories about the TGP football and basketball teams that you’ve written in the past…”
“True,” Teel said. “Not all of them complimentary.” He paused a moment and then said, “Is that why you’re calling me, Jason? Do you play football or basketball?”
“Football,” Jason said.
“What position?”
“Well,” Jason said, “that’s kind of why I’m calling.”
“Tell me more,” David Teel said.
* * *
Jason’s father had forced him to watch All the President’s Men when he was eleven, and they had watched it together several times since. Jason loved the movie, the idea of two Washington Post journalists bringing down a corrupt president with dogged reporting. He had watched the movie often enough that he knew what off the record meant. Teel had to agree to not use his name or any direct quote in any article before Jason would tell him more. If Teel didn’t agree and Jason told him the story, he risked the possibility of a headline that said TGP FRESHMAN CHARGES RACIAL BIAS AT SCHOOL.
“Mr. Teel, before I say anything else, I need you to let me go off the record,” Jason said.
“First, it’s David,” Teel said. “Second, I’m impressed that a high school freshman knows what off the record means. And, third, since you don’t know me at all, I’m willing to go off the record with the provision that if you tell me something that I think is a story, we try to work out a way for me to get it into the newspaper without putting you in jeopardy at TGP.”
Jason thought about that for a moment and decided it was fair. “Okay,” he said.
“Begin at the beginning,” Teel said.
Jason did—without going into too much detail. He told Teel how he and Tom had decided to come to the school—leaving out all the details about their mothers’ reluctance—and how Tom was an excellent quarterback and Jason an excellent wide receiver.
“Tom’s got an amazingly accurate arm, but he’s not that fast,” Jason said. “I have a lot of speed, but don’t throw the ball that well.”
Teel stayed silent while Jason talked, clearly not wanting to interrupt his story.
“First day of practice, I went with the receivers, he went with the quarterbacks,” Jason said. “The coaches told us we were in the wrong place. I was a quarterback, they said; Tom was a wide receiver.”
Teel stopped him at that point. “Hang on,” he said. “Is your friend Tom African American?”
Wow, Jason thought, he figured that one out quickly.
“Yes,” he answered.
There was another pause at the other end of the line.
“Keep going,” Teel said. “Remember, you’re off the record, so tell me everything.”
Jason wasn’t sure he wanted to do that, but he kept going anyway. He told Teel how he and Tom had said to the coaches that they were out of position and had been informed very firmly that they weren’t. He finished by telling him how neither of them had played at all in the scrimmage.
“That’s when Tom and Billy Bob began wondering…”
“Wait a minute,” Teel said. “Who’s Billy Bob?”
“My roommate.”
“And his name’s really Billy Bob?”
“Yes, sir. He’s from Alabama.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t think he was from D.C.,” Teel said with a laugh.
Jason liked him.
“I think I know where this is going,” Teel said. “And my guess is, Billy Bob’s got it right. You guys think old Bobo doesn’t want a black quarterback on his team.”
Jason sighed. “It’s just a theory,” he said. “We were thinking it would at least be worth doing some research to find out how many African American quarterbacks TGP has had under Coach Johnson.”
“No need for any more research,” Teel said. “I can tell you the exact number—zero.”
Jason wasn’t completely stunned by the statistic, but he was surprised that Teel knew it with such certainty. “You sure?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Teel said. “It’s been a subject of conversation among a few of us for a while. It isn’t so much that he’s never had a starter at the position—he’s never had anyone at the position. In this day and age that’s unusual, to put it in polite terms.”
“Have any of you ever written about it?” Jason asked.
“No,” Teel said firmly. “It’s not the kind of thing you can write about without tangible proof or someone willing to go on the record and say that Bobo doesn’t want a black quarterback. It isn’t something that is directly provable, so you basically need someone to say, ‘I know he won’t play an African American kid at the position.’ If you write that story without having it nailed down, the best-case scenario is that you become a pariah in the coaching community down here for taking on the most successful coach in the state and one of the better-known high school coaches in the country.”
“What’s the worst-case scenario?” Jason asked.
“That you get sued,” Teel said. “You can’t mess around on a story like this. Like I said, you have to have it nailed down.”
“What does nailed down mean?” Jason said.
“Someone has to be willing to go on the record and say that they know Bobo won’t play an African American at quarterback. Being honest, even if you and Tom were willing to do so—and end your careers before they start—that wouldn’t even be enough.”
“Why not?” Jason said.
“Because you have no proof,” Teel said. “All you have is your opinion that Tom should be throwing the ball and you should be catching it. Bobo could shoot that down in a second: he could claim your speed makes you a double threat and forces the secondary to come up to guard against the run, and Tom’s hands make him a good possession receiver and they need someone like him right now. Or he can just point to his record and say, ‘Who knows more about football, me or a couple of high school freshmen?’”
Jason felt deflated. The latter had been exactly the tack Coach Johnson had taken.
“Do you think any of that’s true?” he asked.
“Does Bobo know more about football than you and Tom? Absolutely,” Teel said. “But I also think you’re onto something.”
“Why? What you just said could make perfect sense.”
“Because I’ve known Bo
bo Johnson and a lot of coaches like him for a long time,” Teel said. “They would like to turn back the clock four or five decades. And, with the talent he recruits every year, he isn’t putting his job at risk by ignoring the potential some African American players—like Tom—have to become good quarterbacks. He can still win a lot of games. And has won a lot of games.”
“The guys playing quarterback right now aren’t as good as Tom,” Jason said. “Billy Bob is the best of them, but I don’t think he’s as good as Tom.”
“Billy Bob’s a quarterback?” Teel said.
“Yes, he’s third string right now, but that’s just because the guy who is second string is a junior.”
“The starter’s going to be Jamie Dixon, right? He’s supposed to be good.”
“He is good. But I’m not sure he’s better than Billy Bob, and I know he’s not better than Tom. Tom is really good.”
“So Tom may be better than Billy Bob, yet Billy Bob’s the one who brought up the idea that maybe Bobo didn’t want Tom at QB because he’s black?”
“Yes.”
“Billy Bob sounds like an interesting kid.”
“He is,” Jason said. “And a smart one, too.”
“We need to talk more,” Teel said. “I need to talk to Tom and to Billy Bob.”
Jason was nodding, even though Teel couldn’t see him. “Okay,” he said. “But do you think we can prove this?”
“I have no idea,” Teel said. “But it’s certainly worth trying to find out if we can.”
9
Jason hadn’t noticed that while he was talking to Teel, Tom had gotten up and walked off a ways, giving the two of them some space to talk. Apparently, he had also reached someone. In fact, he was still talking when Jason walked over to him after ending the call with Teel.
“Yes, sir, we’ll be in touch soon,” Tom was saying. “See you, I guess, on Friday night.”
He ended the call a moment later.
“What was that about?” Jason asked.
“I reached a reporter named Tom Robinson at the Virginian-Pilot,” Tom said. “He said everyone in the Virginia media knows that Bobo has never had an African American quarterback at TGP but there’s no way to write about it because there’s no way to prove it’s anything more than coincidence.”
“That’s exactly what David Teel said to me. He knew just where I was going even before I told him the whole story.”
Tom had been standing under a small tree while talking on the phone. Now he sat down heavily on one of the benches.
“How can it be that every reporter in the state knows about this but no one has written about it?”
“Well, it makes sense, really,” Jason said, sitting down next to Tom. “If you’re a reporter, you can’t just say, ‘Coach Johnson is a racist because he’s never had an African American quarterback.’ You have to be able to prove he’s a racist before you write that he is one.”
“How do you do that?” Tom asked.
“That’s exactly the problem,” Jason said. “I doubt if someone said, ‘Coach Johnson, why haven’t you ever had a black quarterback?’ that his answer would be, ‘Because I’m a racist.’”
Tom leaned back on the bench and sighed.
“Robinson said he’s going to come over here for the DeMatha game on Friday. He wants to talk to us then. I wonder if Teel would come, too.”
Jason shook his head. “Reporters from different newspapers working on the same story?” he said.
Tom shrugged. “I told Robinson I thought you might be talking to Teel. He said they were good friends.”
Jason was a little surprised by that, but he shrugged. “Well, if that’s the case, I’ll find out if Teel can come on Friday as well. Two guys working on the story has to be better than one.”
“We may need more than two guys,” Tom said. “We may need an army of guys.”
“And a navy, too,” Jason said. “Let’s go see if our good Christian roommates are back from church yet.”
* * *
Billy Bob and Anthony were back, and the four of them gathered in Jason and Billy Bob’s room so that Jason and Tom could update them.
“Let’s say both reporters come over here Friday,” Billy Bob said. “How are any of us going to talk to ’em without someone noticing? It’s possible none of us will get in the game. Anthony’s got the best shot. But, even so, why would someone other than a reporter from our hometown be interested in talking to any of us? The coaches see us talking to those guys, and they’ll figure that something’s goin’ on.”
“Why? Are we banned from speaking to the media?” Jason asked.
“No, we’re not,” Tom said. “At least as far as any of us knows. But Billy Bob is right. Let’s say you talk to Teel and I talk to Robinson after the game outside the locker room. Some of the coaches will be bound to see us. When our pal Coach Ingelsby asks us why two reporters wanted to talk to us, what’s our answer?”
“For a story on freshmen, adapting to living away from home?” Billy Bob said.
“That’s not bad,” Anthony added.
Tom nodded. “It’s a start, but we’d have to tell them to talk to some of the other freshmen, too, to make it look good.”
“What happens when there’s no story about freshmen?” Jason asked.
“Maybe they can write one,” Tom said, “as a cover.”
That wasn’t the worst idea any of them had heard, but it needed work.
Thank goodness, Jason thought, they had five more days to smooth out the rough edges.
* * *
The week itself was anything but smooth. Tom and Jason continued to receive very few opportunities in practice. None of the coaches, even Coach Cruikshank, seemed at all interested in anything they were doing. Jason began to feel invisible.
The most football they played was tossing the ball around on the quad outside their dorm once in a while.
The good news was their new table in the dining room. All four of them had moved to table 6D—sixth row from the front, fourth table from the left side of the room—to join Juan del Potro and his friends. The first meal they shared, Tom noticed that he and the other new guys were all sitting across the table from the regulars.
“Donald Trump would not like our table,” Tom said.
“You got that right, Presidente,” Juan said with a grin. “He’d want a wall down the middle of it.”
From the beginning, there were a lot of arguments filled with friendly insults at the table—all of them centered on what was the best sport to play: baseball, football, or soccer.
The only problem was that, according to protocol, the table was supposed to be broken up at the end of the week. Everyone was supposed to find a new place to sit.
“I already told you: Don’t worry about it,” Juan said to Jason at Wednesday breakfast. “We’ll sit in different seats next week, and I guarantee you no one will notice. No one around here ever does. They just announce stuff like that so they can tell parents about how open they are here and what a great place it is to meet people who are different from you.”
“I get it. Meet them, yes,” Jason said. “Get to know them is another story.”
Still, the decision had been made that they would stick together until someone broke them up. Juan said it wouldn’t happen till the end of the season—baseball season.
* * *
That afternoon, the narrative of TGP’s football season changed—before the team had played a single game.
Practice was just about over, but the coaches hadn’t been especially happy with what they had seen from the offense, so they decided to add a couple of extra series to the afternoon’s work. That didn’t make anyone happy. It was hot, they were all tired, and everyone had homework to do that evening.
Coach Johnson didn’t seem to care. “Ones on offense, ones on defense,” he said. “Let’s try to get this right.”
Ones were the first-stringers, twos the second-stringers, and so on down the line. There wasn’t a lot
of call during practice for threes—like Tom—and even less for fours—like Jason.
Jamie Dixon took the ones back on the field. He was a strong, confident passer but not nearly as good at making decisions in the running game. The running game had been a problem all afternoon. The only quarterback who was even reasonably good when the ball wasn’t in the air was Billy Bob.
Now Dixon barked out a play at the line—calling an audible, as he’d been instructed to do—and took the snap. He dropped back two steps as if planning to pass, then turned to pitch the ball to slotback Kendall Franklin, who was supposed to be coming from the left side to take an option pitch while running right.
But Franklin had heard the audible call wrong. Dixon turned to flip him the ball and found nobody there. He tried to plant his foot to go from reverse to forward to make something out of a broken play. But as he planted his foot, he let out a scream of pain that Jason, Tom, and Billy Bob heard clearly from the sidelines. They looked up to see Dixon collapse in a heap.
Whistles blew everywhere. No one had touched Dixon—quarterbacks wore red jerseys to indicate they shouldn’t be tackled—but he was down, writhing in pain, reaching for his right knee.
Trainers came running. The practice field was completely silent, except for Dixon’s moans.
“That’s not just a twisted knee,” Billy Bob said. “I’ve seen it before. He did something bad.”
As if to confirm Billy Bob’s theory, the team’s trainer, Dave Billingsley, stood up for a moment and said, “We need a stretcher, Coach. And you better call one of the docs.”
It took a couple of minutes for the managers to wheel a stretcher onto the field. With Billingsley guiding them, four of the linemen gently lifted Dixon onto the stretcher. His teammates gathered around him to offer encouragement. He was clearly in a world of pain.
“Okay, give him some space,” Coach Johnson, who looked quite pale, said finally.
“We’ll get him to the hospital and do an MRI,” Mr. Billingsley said to Coach Johnson. “Let you know as soon as we know.”
Jason turned to Billy Bob as the stretcher was wheeled in the direction of the locker room.
Backfield Boys Page 7