by Glenn Stout
love with. You just fall in love.
True. Sorry you chose me
when I’m scitzo lol
Like I said before. If anything happens to be just
by a chance of luck. Tell my family everything
You’re gonna be ok. And of course I’ll tell
them but nothing is gonna happen
Friday, November 13, 2015. 5:30 p.m.
Zac Easter stood on the dock leading out onto Lake Ahquabi, pistol in hand, ignoring the calls that had started pouring into his cell phone a few minutes after his Facebook post. Instead, he opened Snapchat and posted a photo of the lake: “God bless America,” he typed.
The third time Ali called, he picked up. She heard terror in his voice. “I can’t do this,” he told her. “It’s never going to get better.”
A friend recognized the lake from the Snapchat photo. Deputies from the county sheriff’s department rushed to the state park while Ali tried to keep Zac on the phone. “Listen to the sound of my voice,” she told him.
“I’m losing my mind,” he replied. “This is it for me.”
Then a pause, a shift in tone: “Ali, did you send these cops here?”
His phone died. Ali sent him a frantic text at 6:12 p.m.: “Baby its my Winslow jist talk to me. I need to know you’re okay.”
Out on the dock, Zac pointed the gun at the sky and fired: a warning shot to tell the police to keep away.
Zac’s father, alerted by friends, sped his pickup truck into the park, down the hill toward the lake. The first sheriff’s deputy he saw recognized him. More squad cars raced into the parking lot. Another deputy—a former all-conference linebacker for Easter Sr. a few years back—pointed an assault rifle at his son. Lasers from police rifles danced on Zac’s body. It was past dark and getting cold. Myles Sr. peered inside Zac’s car. He saw an empty six-pack of Coors Light, an empty bottle of Captain Morgan, and a pill bottle.
Floodlights illuminated Zac. The sun had set on the far side of the lake, dropping a black curtain on the water behind him. He stood up from a picnic table and walked wordlessly down the pier toward a wooden fishing hut at its edge. A few more steps and he’d be inside, alone on the water, out of sight.
“Put your gun down!” the deputies shouted.
“Nope!” Zac yelled with an anguished laugh. “Not gonna do that!”
His father realized with a flash: Zac wants the police to shoot him. I can’t let this happen. He sprinted down the wooden pier. “Zac!” he shouted.
If he shoots me, he thought, he shoots me.
“Dad, stop!”
“Nope, I’m coming. Put your gun down.”
Zac laid the gun down, then disappeared inside the hut.
Seconds later his father reached the door. Inside, he saw a sad, sick look on his son’s face. His vibrant boy was gone. Zac looked worn-out. Beaten.
“Dad, I’m in trouble,” Zac said quietly.
Myles Easter Sr. spoke gently to his son. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll get this figured out. But we gotta get through this part right now. We’re in deep shit. We can’t make it any worse.”
Back on land, the deputies surrounded Zac and eased his wrists into handcuffs. They put him in the back of an ambulance, drove him to Des Moines, and checked him into Iowa Lutheran Hospital.
Seven hundred miles away in Cleveland, Ali was still in limbo, panicked, convinced Zac had hurt himself. Before he hung up the phone, his voice had gone flat. For 62 minutes, she had no idea if he was dead or alive.
Finally, a text popped up on her phone. Zac’s elder brother: “They got him.”
December 5, 2015
They took all the guns out of the house. They took all the alcohol out of the house. They were constantly on edge. Myles Sr. and Brenda encouraged Zac to go to his therapy appointments, and he would—but then he’d sit in the parking lot and have a panic attack and never leave his car. He went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but then he’d wake up in the middle of the night after a bad dream and start drinking from a whiskey bottle he’d hidden in his room.
Something had shifted inside of him. No longer did he worry that he might be going crazy; now he was certain of it. Fatalism swept over him. He told his mother he’d made a bucket list: Things to Do Before CTE Takes Away My Mind. Travel overseas. Camp in the timber in winter. Hike across the country, or at least through Colorado. Go rattlesnake hunting on the family’s land.
On the sixth anniversary of the day Zac bagged his ten-point buck, Myles Sr. decided to take his son hunting. Perhaps they could recapture some of the tranquillity of those days. They got up before sunrise, ate bacon and eggs, and got in the truck.
It’s a 40-minute drive from their house to the family’s timber, a good time to talk. They sipped coffee. Myles told his son that he was proud of him, that Zac was smart and talented and successful. He said they would fight through this as a family. “I’m sorry about the concussions from football,” he told his son. “I didn’t understand it earlier.” Zac didn’t want his dad feeling guilty. He told him that he loved football. He told him he even missed football.
They got out of the truck. Zac watched his dad pull the shotguns out from behind the seat, where he’d stashed them away. Myles Jr. met them and they hiked into the woods. From the tree stand Myles Sr. was heartened by the sight of his boys together, walking down the hill, laughing. Today, at least, Zac seemed like his old self. “I thought maybe we were getting better,” Myles Sr. says.
They hunted till after sunset. On the ride back home, Myles Sr. picked up a six-pack of Coors Light tallboys for them to split. Zac’s mom wouldn’t have liked this—alcohol, she knew, only made his problems worse—but hell, Myles just wanted things to go back to the way they used to be with his son. As they rumbled home on the gravel country roads, Zac turned to his father. “This was one of the best days I’ve had,” he said.
They fell asleep next to each other in the living room, watching Iowa play Michigan State in the Big Ten championship game. It was a tough, ugly defensive battle, the exact kind of football game they loved.
December 7, 2015
Brenda Easter came home to find Zac’s car gone from the driveway. She called Ali, catching her in the middle of an exam, and Ali texted Zac.
Where are you babe?
I’m ok and I’m in Oklahoma ;)
He told her he’d been feeling cooped up at his parents’ house, thinking about losing his mind, and he needed to get away. So a few hours earlier he’d gotten in the car and just started driving. He was headed for Oklahoma, then turned around and started making his way back; after a wrong turn he wound up in Kansas City and got a hotel room for the night. He joked to Ali that he was going to hit a strip club, but all he did was sit in his hotel room and order pizza. The next morning, he made the three-hour drive back home.
Friday, December 18, 2015. 8 p.m.
Myles Sr. was in the upstairs bathroom, covered in blood. He’d taken their two dogs hunting in the woods behind the house, and Tito, the fat white rat terrier, had killed a possum. Tito was squirming in the tub when Zac walked in. He’d just gotten a haircut for family pictures the next day.
“Boy, you sure look good,” his dad said, grinning.
“You’re in deep shit if Mom sees that,” Zac said, looking at the blood-soaked dog. Myles asked him for a hand, so Zac held the dog in place while he finished washing off the blood. Then Zac disappeared into his bedroom. Ali was home for winter break and she’d invited him out with friends that night, but Zac declined. He was feeling down and didn’t want to be around people. Myles turned the dog loose, then went downstairs and fell asleep on the couch.
Five weeks had passed since Zac’s suicide attempt. Next week—the day after Christmas—Zac was heading to California for a facility that treated both alcohol addiction and mental illness. But Zac wasn’t sure he wanted to go. He didn’t see the point.
Saturday, December 19, 2015. 12:24 a.m.
Ali was still out wi
th her friends at a bar in downtown Des Moines when a text arrived from Zac.
“Thank you for everything,” he wrote. “You’ve helped me through so much and never ever blame yourself for anything. I love you and will always be over your shoulder looking after you no matter what. Always keep having fun. Always remember me. Always keep striving for greatness or shall I say first female president. Never quit fighting for what you believe for ;) I love you Winslow”
Ali wrote back immediately: “I love you, too babe but that sounds so past tense and is making me worried. I don’t want you to talk that way . . . Are you okay. Please be honest. I can call you”
No reply. She called him, but he didn’t answer. Called again. No answer.
“Seriously zac,” she texted. “I’m worried now. I know you’re having an off day but it will be okay—I know you have the fight in you, Please talk to me”
No reply.
“Zac. Please talk to me”
Back at the house, Myles Sr.’s ringing phone woke him up. It was his eldest son, asking if Zac was upstairs. Myles Sr. went up to Zac’s room, but it was empty. He noticed a frayed piece of notebook paper on Zac’s bed and went back downstairs to get his glasses.
Ali texted Zac again: “Baby. It’s winslow. Please think of me please talk to me. I believe in you. I know you’re upset but please talk to me”
No reply.
“I need you to text me back”
Myles Easter put on his glasses and read what his son had scrawled on the sheet of paper.
“Please!” it began. “Look on my computer and print off my story and last wishes to everyone. PLEASE FULLFILL MY last wishes! My comp pass zacman (all lowercase)”
The 20-gauge shotgun that Myles had given Zac for his 12th birthday was missing from the backseat of his truck. One hollow-point 20-gauge Winchester slug was missing from Myles’s ammunition cache in the basement. Brenda’s keys weren’t in the kitchen, and her car wasn’t in the driveway.
By the time Myles got to Lake Ahquabi, a patrol car was already there. “I’m sorry,” the deputy told him. His son’s body was in the parking lot, the 20-gauge slug torn through his chest.
Four Days Later
Eric Kluver stood over his former player’s casket at the cavernous Catholic church in Indianola. Kluver loved all his players, but this wasn’t just one of his players. This was Zac Easter. His top assistant’s son. Every summer, Kluver picks hardworking students in need of extra cash to help him with his landscaping business. Two summers in a row, Kluver picked Zac. It wasn’t even that long ago. Now Zac was in a casket.
Is this my fault? Kluver kept wondering. He and his staff had always taught Zac proper tackling technique, of course . . . but they never discouraged his aggression. If anything, they’d encouraged it. Zac was the model—the type of hard-nosed player every football coach dreams of. And yet Kluver knew that football had played a role in Zac’s destruction. Football, and football culture.
When Kluver played high school football, one of his best friends suffered a brain injury after a big hit. He wound up in a wheelchair and later died. During a practice in 2008, when Kluver was already well into his career at Indianola, a sophomore linebacker named Joey Goodale absorbed what seemed like a normal hit on a kick return and smacked the back of his head on the turf. A few minutes later, he collapsed. He was unconscious, his body rigid. Zac Easter was there on the field that day, watching his childhood pal get loaded into an ambulance. Goodale was in a coma for three weeks. He spent months in a rehab facility. He never really recovered. He’s 23 now, lives with his parents, works at UPS and unloads trucks at a local grocery store, and has struggled with addiction.
Kluver could always set those two memories aside and keep going. Those were accidents. But with Zac, this was no accident. This was football. “To see him lying in that casket,” he says now, “you would think that would be enough to make you say that enough is enough.”
And yet. Months later, Kluver would lead his team onto the field for their first game of the 2016 season. After the game, he would retreat to his windowless office in the bowels of Indianola High School, the redbrick walls covered with posters of all the teams he’s coached, the three Easter boys and their father pictured in nearly all of them. In the hallways of the school, he’ll still see an occasional BIG HAMMER T-shirt. He stopped giving them out a few years ago, when it started to feel wrong.
Kluver still believes in football. He believes there is more good that comes from the sport than bad. He believes life is full of risks, and that we should not pad our children with bubble wrap. But his faith is rattled. When he hears of what Zac wrote in his journal—that he wished he’d never played football—Kluver squeezes his eyes shut and puts a hand to his forehead.
“I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum,” he says. “All the great times and the big wins, but I’ve also been attending funerals. There’s definitely been times where I’ve said, ‘Is this worth it?’”
Two Weeks Later
In the kitchen, Brenda Easter’s aunts sit at the table writing thank-you letters to people who attended Zac’s funeral. In the living room, under Zac’s mounted ten-point buck, his father, his mother, his elder brother, and Ali sit in a semicircle. There aren’t many tears now; they are trying to move from mourning into doing something. Start a foundation in his honor, speak to football players about the risk of concussions, push the NFL to take the risks more seriously.
But in the living room, the television is on mute, tuned to Vikings-Packers. January football. Huge game. Hated rivals, the NFC North title on the line. The men in the house, including this reporter, peek at their phones checking fantasy-football scores.
Brenda and Myles Sr. and Myles Jr. are talking about how Zac’s suicide must not be in vain, about how they must use his name to push for awareness and research into concussions and CTE. They plan to send Zac’s brain tissue to Omalu, the pioneering neurologist and inspiration for the Will Smith movie Concussion (which itself was based on an article in GQ). They’ve found the diaries, and they’ve read as much as they could bear. They’re going to do what Zac asked. He left instructions.
Four Months Later
“Here’s what I do, and this is terrible,” Myles Easter Sr. says, standing in his kitchen, his voice low so his wife in the next room can’t hear. “I’ll drink like 18 beers maybe on a Tuesday night. I make sure I don’t drive. I’ll drink a fifth of vodka or something.”
It’s a breezy spring afternoon. Myles is wearing a chain around his neck with a metal pendant—a reproduction of Zac’s thumbprint. Zac’s ashes are in an urn on the mantel. In a few weeks, the Easters will get the medical report back from Omalu’s lab, confirming what Zac already knew: CTE. The official diagnosis brings with it a peculiar kind of relief.
But now what?
Zac left instructions: Print his story off his laptop, post it to Facebook, use the pain of his life and too-early death to warn the world about CTE. Get people like us—football fans, football players, football lifers—to face the truth about people like him.
And now we have. Those were his instructions, so that’s what his family did. So now what?
We could ban football. (But we love football.) We could allow people to play football only once they turn 18, which is what Omalu has proposed. (And what happens when 18-year-old athletic phenoms—freight trains who have never learned to tackle properly—are suddenly turned loose on one another? Is that better?) We could take away tackling. (Sorry, no one’s watching the National Flag Football League.) We could build a safer helmet. (Which will only encourage players to use their heads as weapons.) We could have a consistent concussion protocol through all levels of football. (We already do in the NFL. Ask Cam Newton how well it’s working.)
Every solution ends up not solving enough of the problem.
And for most of us, this is perfectly okay. The paradox of CTE’s discovery is that it’s given most of us a sneaky ethical out, hasn’t it? No professional football playe
r can claim now to be unaware of the risks. It’s a free country. We’re all adults here.
Unless we’re not adults. Unless we’re kids, like Zac was. Can we really let kids keep doing this? If so, how? Now what?
After Zac’s suicide, Brenda wanted the entire family to get counseling, but Myles Sr. declined. “Fuck, I don’t need no counseling,” he said. He doesn’t cry for his son. He wants to do something for his son, so he can be able to say, “Zac died for this.” But in the meantime, he drinks a few beers. He takes the dogs on walks. And then after his wife goes to sleep, he stands alone in the kitchen, and he drinks some more.
“That’s how I deal with it.”
To my family,
I just want everyone in my family to know that I love them dearly and to not dwell on my death. I have been thinking about this for years now and there is truly nothing anyone could have done to prevent this.
I ask that you do not feel guilty or blame each other! Do not blame football or specifically anything that had to do with me. Just know that I enjoyed playing through it and after fighting through it all, I still consider myself to be one of the toughest people I know. IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. I love all of you and hold no grudges. If only you all knew how guilty and ashamed I feel for taking the easy way out.
Mom and Dad. I love you both dearly and I am truly sorry that one of your sons has passed before his time. I loved both of you dearly and there is nothing you could of done parenting wise to prevent this. I know that both of you will mourn naturally over the loss of your son, but just know that I am in a place where I am free of the pain.