Hometown Favorite: A Novel

by BILL BARTON

  Dewayne disconnected the phone and slipped it into his suit coat pocket.

  Sly knew something was up when his agent took his BlackBerry away from his ear long enough to slap him on the back and told him to shake it off and be glad he wasn't playing for last year's worst team in the league. Sly clicked off his phone, forgetting there was an NFL coach on the other end, and watched Dewayne hold up his Stars jersey with the number 1 written on the back and front. His friend was going blind from the white light of all the cameras flashing in his face, and he felt the envy in his gut for not receiving this honor, even if it was last year's worst team. He wished he were holding up the jersey, the first to shake hands with the commissioner, the first to go blind from the lights of the cameras. He needed to be happy for his best friend. In time, he would get over the snub.

  But the next newsflash made the sting to his feelings irrelevant.

  What made Sly's blood turn cold, what muted every cell phone and BlackBerry conversation in the green room, what brought the world of professional football to a standstill, was Dewayne's announcement.

  "I'll be-" were the only words heard in the green room before the entire place detonated.

  The flight down to Houston on the Gulfstream G5 was smooth, and for Dewayne and Rosella, it was not long enough to enjoy the luxurious comfort and the pampered attention from the two flight attendants who indulged their every whim. Sam Thomas and Coach Gyra along with several of the Stars staff were there to meet the couple when the limo whisked them into the private entrance of the stadium past the gathering press corps and diehard fans who wanted their first glimpse of the man who had stirred up so much excitement. The public relations office thought the stadium was the perfect backdrop to parade the new star before the press and the city of Houston. The draft in New York had just closed, so Thomas and Gyra gave Dewayne the nickel tour of the locker room and workout center while Rosella looked over the contract before they all sat down to go over the simple terms of the agreement. Thomas commented on how exceptional it was for Dewayne's wife to be so involved in the business side of things, and not some agent.

  "She's an exceptional woman with an exceptional mind;" Dewayne said.

  When they toured the locker room, a few veterans of the team about to leave for the day got the surprise of their lives with this unexpected visit. Gyra introduced the vets to their new teammate, and Gyra and Thomas passed Dewayne off to Harrison Barrow, a three-hundred-pound offensive tackle. Harrison gave Dewayne a tour through the maze of state-ofthe-art rooms, from a small medical center to a relaxation room equipped with a kitchen and minibar, oversized leather chairs and sofas, and a plasma television covering most of one entire wall. Before Harrison gave Dewayne back to Gyra, he stopped him in the relaxation room.

  "Been in the league a long time. Never seen anything like what you did;" Harrison said. "They're calling this the deal heard round the world."

  Harrison placed his meaty hand on Dewayne's shoulder.

  "Me and some of the old-timers were talking. We probably would have been casualties of the salary cap this year, but thanks to your deal, we might get to stay in Houston."

  Dewayne was hoping for this kind of result, and he might have made his first friend out of the deal.

  "This approach makes the most sense to me;" Dewayne said.

  "Anything you need you let me know," Harrison said, patting Dewayne's shoulder a couple of times. "You'd better go. Sam gets grumpy when he's off schedule"

  Harrison pointed him in the direction back to the main locker room.

  "Hey, Jobe. You gonna finish school?"

  "I wouldn't want to get on the bad side of my mama now, would I?" Dewayne said as he went around the corner.

  Sam Thomas took the first few minutes of the press conference to extol Dewayne for his athleticism and his character, and he gave the general outline of Dewayne's deal, just signed ... only waiting for the ink to dry before being given his signing bonus check and playbook and put on the plane to Los Angeles. Thomas ended his comments by saying in all his twenty-seven years in the league, he thought he had seen it all until today.

  When Dewayne took over from Thomas, no reporter had the standard questions about his size, his college history, his alleged use of steroids, and his loss of the Heisman. The why of today's decision trumped those questions.

  "It's simple;" he said. "When it comes to the salary cap every year, you see great players who've paid their dues to a team and the league being forced to renegotiate smaller contracts just to stay employed and help their team. I'm not a proven commodity. Those guys are. For a team to be successful, we need their experience and dedication. I look up to them. I'm just doing my part now because I plan to be around for a long time and be part of a winning team"

  Rosella and Dewayne stared at the check for $2.5 million propped against the binder of the Stars' playbook sitting on the tray table in front of them. The Gulfstream would have had to be flying at full throttle to have kept up with their speeding hearts.

  "Ten percent goes to God," Rosella said.

  "No argument," Dewayne said.

  Dewayne reached out and ran his finger over the embossed bumps along the cut check that outlined the total, as though he was reading Braille. "I want to pay off Mama's mortgage"

  "No argument"

  Rosella took her turn swiping the raised sum with her finger. "I'll pay off the SportsPlex, and then maybe I should buy a car.

  "Good. I'm getting tired of driving you everywhere."

  They both started to giggle.

  "You should agent my endorsement deals. Keep it in the family;" Dewayne said.

  "How much you pay me?"

  Dewayne's bright face went pensive as though descending deep into thought. "How about minimum wage and all the lovin' you can handle?" he said, his face as straight as a union negotiator's.

  "I've seen what happens when I have all the lovin' I can handle" She patted her belly. "I think I'll just take the money."

  Their laughter vaulted above the roar of the Gulfstream's engines.

  Within forty-eight hours of their return from Houston, Rosella hired a lawyer to advise her on the first endorsement deals offered Dewayne. This was no Monopoly game or college assignment. Jobe Enterprises, Inc., was established with Rosella as president so any and all who requested Dewayne's commercial talent would deal with a professional company. In everything Dewayne did he wanted to establish a reliable reputation in this nascent stage of his career, and he did not mind manipulating the commercial world of advertising to make up for what was universally considered a salary deficit when it came to his football contract. His gravy train had left the station and was building a full head of steam.

  Dewayne settled his account with the SportsPlex the moment the Stars' check cleared the bank. On the same day, he paid the organization its fees and each personal trainer a thousanddollar bonus and shot his first photo session for SportsPlex print materials, which would recruit prospective college athletes destined for the NFL, touting the excellent facilities and personal attention. For a business barely in operation, the success was marvelous.

  Cherie's second visit to Los Angeles was for another celebration. She sat between Sabrina and Bruce with Joella and Franklin behind them in the bleacher section for the families of all the graduates. When the names of Rosella and Dewayne Jobe were announced one after the other, Cherie ignored any embarrassment she might cause by her jubilant display of shouting, waving flags from USC and the Houston Stars, and hopping in the stands like her shoes had hot coals in them.

  Bruce had embraced every aspect of his new life. Sabrina rebuffed every kindness. It had been an odd and painful adjustment for Franklin and Joella since the kids had moved in with them. To begin with, they did not know each other. Sabrina reminded her grandparents of Bonita. They felt her rejection from the beginning, as though Sabrina had picked up where Bonita left off. Sabrina seemed to carry the wounded memories of her mother's rages against her family; her mother had sp
oken in the vilest of terms about her upbringing and how her parents treated her and never understood her, and how, by God, she was never going to raise her kids that way. But Sabrina also held the tender but hazy memories of a grandmother who made rare visits to street corners to deposit sacks of food, clothing, and cash for Sabrina, her brother, and her mother. It was like a visit from a fairy godmother who drove up in a fine carriage, delivered her gifts, and then disappeared until the next surprise visit.

  Her rusted parenting skills in need of retooling, Joella tried to stay out of Sabrina's way. Much like the days when she left a cache of goods on the street corner, Joella would leave purchases and gifts with personal notes in Sabrina's room or on the table in the foyer. It was as if Joella was trying to coax a wild animal to trust her with enticing treats, but Sabrina's hardened exterior was tough to crack.

  Bruce was polite and ate the scheduled meals with them while Sabrina usually ate alone in her room or outside. He loved his own room, although the technical gadgets that came with it beset him. Exposure to such things had been limited, and his skills at activating a computer, a TiVo, and an iPod were untried. When Franklin took the time to show him how to operate the equipment, it was as if Bruce had entered a new world. Within a short time, he was a master engineer, even showing Franklin tricks with remotes he never knew existed. These shared times created a male bond sorely needed in their lives. Franklin needed a way to connect with the lost life of his daughter, and Bruce was the way to get in. Bruce needed male relationships free of danger that allowed him the opportunity to find out what it might be like to be an innocent little boy.

  For Sabrina and Bruce, having Cherie in the Caldwell house for the days around graduation added an extra dimension of stability. Each night she and Joella joined forces in the kitchen, and the infectious mirth and contentment shared between the two as they went about preparing food were like the main attraction on the entertainment bill. Bruce would sit on a bar stool and watch them organize and assemble each dish, listen to their stories of exotic travels or the simplicity of small town life, and accept their knowledge and counsel when they were dispensed as if he were hearing words from great sages.

  Sabrina was a harder nut to crack even by this charming, female duo. She usually shut herself in her room when she came home from school each day, but gradually she ventured into the kitchen for the last half of dinner preparations. When Joella asked if she would be willing to set the dinner table, Sabrina inquired about where she kept her dishes. Joella offered a muted prayer of thanks for this fissure in Sabrina's durable exterior.

  So this was their introduction to normalcy. This was their view of how a family could function without chaos, uncertainty, bloodshed, and violence. This was what a full stomach felt like. This was what love had to offer. The first great question Bruce and Sabrina had to ask themselves was, how had their mother walked away from all this?

  Dewayne and Rosella made every effort to be a part of their lives, and they decided a new start for everyone in Houston was the best thing. When asked if they were ready to take on the parental responsibility of a seventeen- and thirteen-year-old when both were in their early twenties, Dewayne and Rosella said it felt more like big brother and big sister stepping in. Rosella added that it would be good practice for when their own kids became teenagers. Franklin and Joella would make frequent visits for Stars home games, but would remain in Los Angeles to stay involved in Bonita's progress. Perhaps if everything went well, they could all have Christmas together.

  At the prospect of a real Christmas, even Sabrina brightened. Both children had had very little experience with the holiday, but since their mother's trial, their new life already felt like Christmas.

  Departures were tearful. Cherie first, and she did not mind hugging a little boy because it might embarrass him or a teenage girl because she exuded a "don't touch me" attitude. None of that mattered. They were near blood and would be treated as such, and having these children a part of their lives was God's will, she told her son as he drove her to the airport in his new vehicle-a Denali loaded with the bells and whistles and a bench front seat to accommodate his size and growing family.

  The departure for Houston brought emotional trauma for mother and daughter due to the affecting upheavals of pregnancy and because Joella was now losing the one daughter she had been close to her whole life.

  Sabrina volunteered a squeeze to Franklin and then to Joella, but did not linger with either of them. Bruce gave Franklin a manly handshake, but could not pull that off with his grandmother. She trapped him, soaking his head with another round of tears, until he could break free and take shotgun in Dewayne's Denali.

  The foursome took only what the two cars would hold. They would buy new furniture for a new house. It would be a fresh start. Rosetta had already established business and personal bank accounts in Houston and made an appointment with a Realtor. As soon as her feet hit the ground in Houston, she would start seeing the houses they had selected from the virtual tours they had taken on the computer. They packed the trunks with the goods Bruce and Sabrina received in the short time of living with their grandparents. They had not brought so much as a toothbrush from their former dwelling; they sought to create all things new for these dear children. What trepidation they felt as they pulled out of the Caldwell driveway, heading east, was minimal compared to the expectancy they had for their future.

  They built some extra time into their journey before they had to get to Houston for Dewayne to start camp. Dewayne wanted his family to see places like the Grand Canyon and to go to an Indian reservation. This adventure began to build a unit, began to create a team and establish lines of communication and trust. Sabrina's face began to carry more smiles than scowls; her demeanor became more compliant and calm. Everything excited Bruce. The world kept getting larger and larger so that his thirteen years of inner-city life began to feel like a dream, its hold on him beginning to fray.

  When the city of Houston came into sight, Dewayne took the interstate that went by the stadium so the kids could see where they would be spending their Sunday afternoons for the Stars home games.

  They rented a couple of suites at a hotel near the Sports Park where the Stars Training Center was located, and each day while Dewayne was at minicamp, Rosella and the kids looked at potential houses, checked out school districts, visited churches, and familiarized themselves with Houston's metropolis.

  Since the trial, all references to Bonita diminished. Early on, Sabrina had sworn she would leave and go find her mother, but those threats soon ended. Although Bruce never mentioned her, it was obvious to those who observed him when he was pensive, staring off into space, that he was thinking about Bonita.

  Without them knowing it, Rosella made a copy of a picture of their mother when she was a teenager still living at home and wearing her all-girls' prep school wardrobe, her face pinched in a goofy expression, her hands scrunched up on the sides of her head like deformed ears, a scarce moment of glee Joella had caught on film, and she presented it to them in a cherry wood frame as they stood in the kitchen of the empty six-bedroom house they had decided to call home.

  With each house they had toured, Rosella realized the kids were thinking perhaps Bonita would be coming to live with them and they would need a room for her. Rosella did not want to spoil any illusion they might have, and she played along with the fantasy.

  To keep faith with Bruce and Sabrina and to strengthen their growing bond, Rosella and Dewayne encouraged Sabrina and Bruce to think well of their mother, imagine her as that young, full-of-crazy-life teenager in their picture, pray for her, and start writing letters of encouragement to her at the rehab center in Los Angeles. In time, they would all know what to do.

  The money Dewayne had already made from his endorsement deals financed the purchase of the house. The private and business accounts with a prominent Houston bank would enable Rosella and Dewayne to keep track of all their funds and move portions around for investment purposes. After
purchasing the house, the next expenditures went toward furnishings for fifty-seven hundred square feet and computers, supplies, a communication system, and accessories for the offices of Jobe Enterprises, Inc., set up in an expansive room just off the kitchen.

  Rosella offered summer jobs to both kids. The thought of making money was beyond their comprehension. Sabrina would be Rosella's assistant, gradually taking more responsibility as she learned the business. Since Bruce was becoming quite the computer wizard, Rosella put him in charge of designing a program to keep Dewayne abreast of all the football statistics he would want and updating his weekly itinerary. Dewayne thought at first that it might be stretching the kids' abilities, but Rosella countered with, "These kids are bright and have never been challenged. If you always give them something easy to do, they'll never learn to trust themselves to reach for something difficult." He trusted her judgment and knew she would be a hands-on manager, and he was curious to see if her experiment with giving Bruce and Sabrina so much responsibility would work. Besides, she wanted her house and the business to be up and running smoothly by the time the baby arrived.

  Dewayne had a short window of time before training camp, and he wanted to take the family to Springdale to see Cherie and show the kids where he grew up. He would be shooting a credit card commercial in New York with Sly two days before training camp and it would be the last opportunity for them to travel as a family before the start of school and the arrival of the baby.

  Cherie acted as silly about Bruce and Sabrina as if they were royalty but without all the hands-off formality. It was as if she was a kid herself-always in grandmotherly physical contact with both of them, a pinched cheek, ruffled hair, a gentle pat, or a vigorous hug-and Dewayne was surprised not only by her behavior but also by the sting to his heart.