Southern Hospitality (Hot Southern Nights)

by Amie Louellen

  He pulled behind the school, parked beside the field house, and got out of the car like he’d done a thousand times when he was kid. The field house looked okay, as did the bleachers on the south side. But the north bleachers—the home side—had completely caved in. No doubt the concession area beneath would also be damaged. Coach MacKenzie had taught Gabe and his teammates from the first time they’d stepped foot on that field that this was their house and it was to be respected and loved. It hurt to see his house in shambles.

  Damned tornado season. There hadn’t been an actual funnel cloud, but straight-line winds could be as bad. There was a swarm of boys with garbage bags picking up debris. They’d chosen to wear their jerseys to clean up their house. Gabe walked onto the field, found a garbage bag, and joined them.

  The team greeted him but were too subdued to be very jovial about it. When he’d been home last summer, Gabe had spent a lot of time working out with these boys, so he was old hat with them, something that he found oddly restful and reassuring. According to one of the assistant coaches, Coach MacKenzie was at an emergency school board meeting.

  They all worked steadily for two hours, with Gabe pausing once to order fifty pizzas.

  Finally, QB-One Lance Owens called out, “Hey, there’s Coach Mac!”

  En masse, Coach MacKenzie’s players stood, put down their garbage bags, and removed their ball caps.

  “Gentlemen,” Coach MacKenzie said to his team. “No one asked you to come here today, but here you are. I won’t forget it.”

  He still looked good—solid and athletic. There was a little salt with the pepper but not much. Neyland had his chestnut hair and brown eyes, but it looked better on her.

  Too good.

  Just then, the pizza arrived. Coach MacKenzie almost smiled when he met Gabe’s eyes. “I might have known since you’re here, food would follow.”

  “Two hours is a long time for a man to go without eating.” Gabe stepped forward to shake Coach’s hand, but they ended up in one of those shoulder-patting half-hugs.

  “Gentlemen,” Coach called out. “Grab some shade, eat your food, and be sure to hydrate. I’m going to do a little catching up with your pizza benefactor. I’ll be back in an hour, and we’ll finish what you started.”

  Gabe snatched one of the pizzas and two waters from the cooler. “Pepperoni all right with you?”

  “Sounds good,” Coach said. “Don’t tell Vanessa. She’d have me eating tofu pizza if she could.”

  Gabe followed Coach into the field house, through the locker room, to Coach’s office.

  Gabe let himself down in the same green metal chair that had been in front of Coach’s desk for as long Gabe could remember. “I still can’t sit in this chair without being scared shitless of what’s fixing to befall me.” The wall behind Coach was filled with pictures of players who had drifted through this stadium, including one of Gabe with his Heisman Trophy and another in his San Antonio Wrangler uniform.

  Coach helped himself to pizza and propped his feet on the desk. “It wasn’t that bad. I sometimes called you in to compliment you. And it must have done you some good. Here you are, picking up trash, nastying up your fancy, sissy-boy clothes.”

  “You don’t like my shorts? They’re Tennessee Vol orange. I wore them just for you.”

  That got a half-smile out of Coach. He loved the University of Tennessee, had played center there in the seventies. After graduating, he’d been drafted in the seventh round by the Buffalo Bills, though he was cut after the preseason. Then he’d come back to where he’d played his own high school ball to coach.

  “I’ll get you a pair if you want them,” Gabe said.

  “I think I’ll pass. But I appreciate your loyalty.”

  “I’ve been in town a week. I meant to get down to see you sooner,” Gabe said.

  “I heard about Nickolai Glazov. How is he?”

  “Fine.” Gabe took another piece of pizza. “He’s been in the hospital all week because he was running a little fever. But they’re letting him go today.”

  “The paper said he’d be out a few weeks but ought to be able get in on the playoffs.”

  “Yeah. So you’ve been to a school board meeting? What’s the word on the stadium?”

  “We’ll get to that. I want to hear about you.”

  Gabe had seen Coach when he’d been here for Christmas, but not since. “Well, you saw how it went in January … ”

  The whole world had. But what the whole world didn’t know was why he’d dropped an easy, perfect pass that would have made NFL history.

  It had been twenty years since that summer night when Gabe had stood helpless with his twin Rafe and Jackson, and watched the vacation beach house burn with their parents trapped inside. He’d trained himself to never think of his mother standing on the balcony crying with two-year-old Camille in her arms.

  “Catch your sister, darling,” she’d called to Gabe. “You have to catch her. You can do it!” And she’d believed that—believed it because, even at ten, he’d been tall and his athletic ability uncanny. Catching came easy to him, but not that night. Thank God his mother had run back into the house before she saw Camille fall to her death at Gabe’s feet.

  Growing up, whenever that memory had threatened to seep into his soul, whenever he’d remembered how Camille’s silky hair had felt when it’d brushed the back of his hand after the fabric of her little nightgown had slipped through his fingers, Gabe had distracted himself. He’d trained and practiced until he was the best, until he could be sure he would always catch what was thrown at him. The irony was that his sin had made him into one of the best wide receivers in the nation. He seldom missed, and never when it counted.

  That is, until last January. He didn’t expect he’d ever know why, when he’d looked up and reached, the ball had disappeared and Camille had appeared in its place.

  When he’d looked down to see only a dead ball instead of his dead sister, it had been impossible to get very distressed over a lost football game, even one that would have given the Wranglers their third consecutive Super Bowl victory.

  Unfortunately, the rest of Texas hadn’t felt that way, and the ESPN commentators seemed to have no end of opinions on the matter. So, to escape, he’d met up with his twin, and they’d gone skiing, Rocky Mountain ice climbing, deep-sea fishing, and skydiving. When Rafe left to go back on the circuit, Gabe had hidden out at Jackson’s Aspen house until it was time to come to Beauford. He’d invited Courtney and let her bring whomever she wanted along, because his rule was the more the merrier. But for once, no amount of more or merry had kept him from remembering how jealous he’d been of his little sister and his twin.

  No one knew why the baby had taken to Rafe, but the two of them had bonded, and Camille had been able to tell Gabe and Rafe apart when no one else, except their mother, could. Everyone except Gabe thought it was charming and funny; Gabe had found no humor in sharing his twin. They’d always had each other, while Jackson and their youngest brother Beau were especially close. But after Camille had gotten old enough to look around and fall in love with Rafe, Gabe had felt alone.

  And maybe that’s why he’d let her fall. And maybe he’d let that football slip through his hands because he didn’t deserve a third Super Bowl ring.

  “Sorry, son,” the god of football said with his Texas drawl. “Only two rings for boys who kill their sister out of jealousy.”

  His contract was up, and regardless of what had happened, his overall record couldn’t be ignored. The Wranglers wanted him back to the tune of an additional fifteen million for three years, but he hadn’t signed.

  And though he hadn’t told anyone, even his long-suffering agent, he might not.

  “Yeah, Gabe.” Coach brought him back to the Beauford Blue Devils’ field house office. “That was rough. But you can’t win every game.”

  Gabe laughed and was thankful for the opportunity. “That’s not what you used to say to us out there in that locker room.”

&nb
sp; “That’s not what I say to them now, but it’s true. Your parents would have been proud of you.”

  Yeah, Coach. They’d be especially proud of how I as good as killed their baby.

  A little frown crossed Coach’s face as it always did at the mention of James and Laura Beauford. Gabe’s mother and Vanessa MacKenzie had gone to Harpeth Academy together and, as teenagers, had attended Aunt Amelia’s charm school. Coach and James Beauford had grown up together and had met their future wives when Aunt Amelia had pressed them into service for the dance she always had at the end of the charm school. Gabe and his brothers had attended their fair share of those dances, too, but no marriages had come out it.

  Having no wish to respond to Coach’s comment, Gabe said, “I think they’d be proud to see Jackson marrying Emory. They’re real happy.”

  “Neyland tells me Emory’s going to keep the events business open. I thought she might close it and start having babies.”

  “I don’t know about babies, but Emory loves Around the Bend. Speaking of Neyland, I’ve just come from seeing her.”

  “Yeah?” Coach raised an eyebrow.

  “It was nice of her to move her business back in with Noel for a while. This has been a really rough week for Noel with Glaz in the hospital. What with Rafe home and all that wedding stuff going on, I haven’t spelled her at the hospital as much as I would have liked.”

  Coach sighed and laid down his pizza. “Is that what she told you? Neyland is a good friend to Noel, sure. They’ve got their little group—them, Emory, Christian, Gwen, and Abby. But that’s not why Neyland closed her store. She’s got big ideas and not much patience. She closed her store because she can’t afford to pay the rent. Kurt Blaxton let her out of her lease and is letting her pay half to keep living in the apartment upstairs, but with the understanding that if the next tenant wants the apartment, Neyland has to move. That won’t be long. You know how those art types are always wanting to set up shop in town.”

  “But her jewelry looks nice. And it’s expensive.”

  Coach nodded. “I guess. But she hasn’t sold what she calls an important piece in a while. I think she does well enough with those little silver gewgaws, but not enough to do much more than get by on.”

  Gabe shook his head. “I don’t understand. I tried to buy something from her today for a gift. And she wouldn’t sell it to me.” He wondered if Neyland would consider that “tattling” on her.

  “That girl. I reckon she has her reasons for what she does, but it’s nothing I understand either, Gabe.”

  “I had no idea. I don’t think Emory does either.” Gabe took a drink of his water and mulled this over. “Tell you what, Coach. I’ll go back over there and talk to her about whatever I did to piss her off and see if she’ll reconsider.”

  He was a little too happy at the thought of seeing her again and having a chance to spar with her.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, son.”

  Oh, well. Probably for the best anyway.

  “It’ll encourage her, and she’ll go on another buying spree,” Coach went on. “She’s got a perfectly good teaching degree from UT. Mavis Montjoy is retiring when school’s out next month. Neyland could slide right in there and teach English. I’ve told her she could move back in with her mother and me. We’d love to have her, especially with Todd at UT.”

  “All right,” Gabe said, “if you think that’s best, I won’t go back.” It probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway.” She’d been pretty steamed at him, as best he could tell, about a website that he had no control over.

  “I do.” He nodded. “She’s going to have to face it sometime, and it might as well be now. There’s nothing wrong with her making her little bracelets and things on the side if she wants to. But that’s a hobby, not a living. I swear I wish I’d never let her work summers when she was in high school for that bizarre woman, Crystal Rain. And I wouldn’t have, if I’d known that ridiculous hippie was going to run off to Mexico with a silversmith and give her equipment to Neyland. That’s what started this whole thing to begin with.”

  Gabe was usually sympathetic to people who didn’t get to do the work they wanted to, but under these circumstances, it was hard to scrape up much compassion for Neyland. She could have sold him that necklace and saved him a trip to Cool Springs. Sometimes you had to compromise. After all, though he had wanted to play for the Tennessee Titans, he didn’t argue with anyone when the Wranglers drafted him in the first round.

  “Okay,” he said. “She’ll work it out, I guess. People generally do. Now tell me about the stadium.”

  Coach got a worried looked on his face and briefly massaged his forehead.

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you believe that.”

  “I do. It will. The thing is, we need an expansion and a renovation. I asked for it. The school board and town council have been kicking it around for a while, and it looks like we’re going to get it. I’m glad about that. It’s the time frame I’m not too thrilled with. And here I was talking about my baby girl not having patience. I guess she came by it honest. I haven’t had much time to adjust, but things move fast in the aftermath of disaster.”

  “Is it a money issue?”

  “Yes and no. We’ve got insurance to pay for the storm damage, no problem. But the powers that be think this is a good time to go ahead and raise the rest of the money and do the expansion.”

  “What’s the but?”

  “There’s no way to raise the money in time to have the work done by fall. We're talking over a million dollars here—though they are fairly confident they can have the money and start by fall. So Joy Daniels has already been on the phone with the superintendent over in Dalton about sharing facilities with Madison Grove.”

  Oh, hell no! “Sharing facilities? With Beauford’s arch rival? How’s that going to work?”

  “It’s going to be up to me to get the schedule rearranged so we can play our home games over there on Thursday nights on the weeks they have home games. We can have Friday nights when they’re on the road.”

  “But either way, it’s a bus, forty miles, and not at home.”

  Coach nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Can you practice here?”

  “Maybe. Depending on what’s going on with the construction. My guess is not much.”

  “Then where?”

  “We can share the middle school field when they aren’t using it, but if we want to practice on the field we’re going to play on, we can have Madison Grove weekdays and Saturdays when they’re finished.”

  “That’s going to make for a hard season.” Gabe wouldn’t have said the words aloud, but Coach knew what he meant. No playoffs, no championship, maybe not even a winning season.

  “Don’t I know it, son. I hate it most for the seniors.” Coach rose. “I hate telling them, but it’s got to be before it comes out in the paper tomorrow. Might as well be now.”

  “Then I’ll go and give you privacy with your team. I’ve got a few things I need to do anyway.”

  “Thank you, Gabe. I’ll see you at the wedding.”

  As he walked to his car, Gabe added another item to his to-do list.

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