by James, Jesse
I was stunned into silence.
He rotated the fast-food box in his hands, carefully. “We’ll figure out something for you. Meanwhile, I want you to do the rest of your time like a man.” He looked at me hard. “Do you hear me? No more fights. No more hardheaded shit.”
I swallowed hard over the lump in my throat. “Sure thing, Coach. Thanks for the Happy Meal.”
For the remainder of my time in isolation, I went over Pfieffer’s words in my head a hundred times. Slowly it sunk in: I wasn’t going to be playing big-time football, after all. I wasn’t going to escape to another part of the country, to an Iowa cornfield or a rainy Pittsburgh steelyard, or any of that. It all had been just a fake little dream. I shook my head. I should have known better.
A six-week tail remained on my sentence after I got out of the tank, and there was little choice but to serve it. For the remainder of my time at the California Youth Authority, I composed myself to be a model inmate. I spoke rarely, and when I did, I didn’t cause any trouble. When Zuccolotto made his rounds, I didn’t give him any eye contact.
“James,” Johnny Pinece whispered. “I hear Zuke wants another shot at you.”
I shook my head. Just wasn’t going to happen.
Christmas came when I was in there. I remember lying in my bed during the day, feeling lonely and tired. A religious group came and handed out oversized candy bars. I chewed mine slowly, ruminating. Savoring every little piece of nougat.
I asked for more responsibility. I was given a job: floor polisher. Twice a day, I’d wheel the big silver machine into the middle of the mess hall by its plastic handlebars. Unwinding the long, blue electrical cord from around its base, I’d find an outlet in the wall. The plug was big and black and had dirt and gunk smeared onto its casing, the collected detritus of ten years of hard cleaning. But I’d jam it into the outlet enthusiastically, and then flip the switch, kick-starting the whirling machine to life.
I pushed the floor polisher for two hours every day, watching the bristles speeding in a ring-shaped orbit, until they blurred with their own purposeful velocity. Patiently, I worked every inch of grime off the cafeteria floor. I worked the machine for six weeks, every day, twice a day, until it felt like it was mine.
5
When I finally got out of the California Youth Authority, I’d missed eighty-three days of class.
“Would you like to graduate, Mr. James?” my guidance counselor asked me wearily.
“You know what?” I said. “I would.”
So it was off to summer school for me. They had some pretty cool classes in summer school in those days, gotta say. My favorite was High School Cafeteria. They tossed me an apron, jammed a white paper cap on my head, and taught me how to be a short-order cook. Not bad, not bad at all. A couple weeks in, I could flip a mean hamburger. Just add ketchup.
At nights, I was back at Golden Apple, either leafing through comics or working an event. One evening my boss motioned me to his side.
“You interested in more work, kid?”
“Always.”
“A buddy of mine needs a security guy to work a volleyball tournament. He needs someone to supervise setup and breakdown—is it okay if I give him your number?”
“Absolutely,” I answered.
“Lucky kid,” he said, shaking his head. “Chicks on the beach. Man, I wish I was you!”
The tournament was put on by the AVP, the Association of Volleyball Professionals, but they were sponsored by Miller Lite, so there were all kinds of bikini girls there. One young woman in particular caught my eye. Her dark, bobbed hair and tight little body stood out against her red swimsuit.
“Need help with anything?” I asked her, hoping for a crumb of affection.
She just sort of looked me up and down.
“No,” she said kindly, after a moment. “Thank you.”
I shrugged, moved on. I don’t know, maybe she smelled teenaged convict on me. Little did I suspect that adding to my bad-boy image would catch her eye later. Midway through the summer, I amassed enough cash to get myself a used motorcycle, a broken-down, turquoise 1976 Harley-Davidson. I know, turquoise Harley: sounds pretty wretched. But this was the eighties. It was my Duran Duran bike.
I loved that cycle dearly. It seemed so incredibly fast to me. And the sound! When I started her up, the straight pipes were like two cannons going off. BAHPAHBAPABAH!! I felt like I was going to bust windshields. It was pure bliss.
The following weekend, I had another volleyball tournament, and of course I rode my cycle all the way to Manhattan Beach. As it happened, the bikini model I had a crush on saw me getting off it.
“What’s this?” she said, smiling.
“Just my Harley,” I said casually. “It needs some work.”
“Oh, wow, I love bikes!” she exclaimed, caressing the handlebars. “Do you think you might take me for a ride sometime?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, grinning, unable to believe my luck. “Anytime you want.”
“Well, how about . . . tonight?” she said coyly. Her hand drifted from the bike to my forearm, as if it were an extension of the machine.
Nothing much ever came of us; I think she figured out pretty soon that I was fresh out of high school, and that kind of killed it. But damn, the motorcycle had sure opened the door for me. Of that, I took careful notice.
At the end of the summer, I received a battered cardboard package in the mail. I sat down on my front steps and ripped it open with my hands. It was my diploma. Well, how about that? I thought, laughing. They’d pushed me down, but they hadn’t beaten me yet. Life could have been a lot worse.
After all, I could have been Bobby. He called me one night, out of his mind with worry.
“What should I do, man?” he asked, tense. “My girl . . . she’s pregnant.”
I shrugged. Bobby and I had never really been the same after the CYA. He’d apologized, of course, and I’d accepted it, but I was still pretty touchy about serving his sentence for him.
“That’s up to you,” I said finally. “I can’t help you make that decision.”
He sighed. “I have the strangest feeling that I’m about to do the honorable thing.”
He did. At the age of eighteen, Bobby married his girlfriend. They found a place to live and set out to raise their child together. You had to respect him. He’d stepped up.
And me? Well, I was headed to community college. The Division One schools might have withdrawn their scholarship offers, but that sure as hell didn’t mean I was never getting on a football field again.
“Jesse,” Coach Pfieffer said, “you do a strong couple of seasons on one of these teams, and we’ll have Kansas banging on the door again, I promise. And this time when they come, you’ll be ready.”
I nodded, not fully convinced. “I’ll do my best.”
Luckily for me, a strong junior college was right around the corner: Riverside Community College. Like all junior colleges, they were a bit more forgiving when it came to tolerating players’ various idiosyncrasies, like having committed multiple burglaries. They needed a linebacker, and with Coach Pfieffer’s help, a scholarship had been set aside with my name on it.
“I made my decision,” I told my dad one afternoon, as he was restoring an oak dining set for the coming weekend’s swap meet. “I’m heading to RCC.”
My dad didn’t look up from his lacquering. His small brush moved steadily and with confidence. “That’s good.”
I watched him work for a while, my hands stuffed into my pants pockets.
“So, I guess I won’t be seeing you for a while.”
Patiently, my father continued to apply lacquer to the chair’s thin, ornate spindles.
“Any thoughts?” I asked impatiently.
“You got a place to live?” he said, finally.
“I’ll be in the dorms.”
“We can’t afford that.”
“You don’t have to pay a dime,” I said. “I’m on scholarship.”
&n
bsp; “Oh. Okay.” My dad glanced up at me briefly, his paintbrush held between his index finger and thumb. He appeared lost in thought. “Well, stop by when you can.”
“Right,” I said. After a long silence, I added, “Thanks.”
——
On our first day of football practice, our new team assembled in a small locker room, unconsciously segregating ourselves according to ethnicity. The black kids, most of whom came from Compton High and South Central L.A., sat sullenly on one side of the room, staring down the beefy, working-class white knuckleheads who’d gathered together on the other side. In between us sat the Mexicans, the Samoans, and the Tongans in one big group. Instead of a football team, we looked like three gangs getting ready to rumble.
The assistant coach squinted at his clipboard, his chewed-up yellow pencil poised over the roster.
“Jackson, Anton?”
A thin, muscular black kid raised his hand. He wore cornrows and baggy jeans. His eyes emanated a quiet hate. I recognized him immediately from the California Youth Authority. He hadn’t been a friend, exactly.
“James, Jesse?”
I raised my hand. “Right here.”
Anton Jackson sneered. “I know you, motherfucker,” he said softly, looking right at me.
I didn’t smile.
Our team could not have differed more strikingly from my high school squad. Riverside Community College specialized in tough kids from rough neighborhoods, standout athletes with messed-up families and severe attitude problems whose extensive juvenile criminal records and inability to function inside a classroom had conspired to keep us out of real colleges and universities. We were hoods, every one of us. And we were none too happy to join forces.
“You thought you were the baddest dude at the Youth Authority, huh?” Jackson said, his voice low and soft.
“Was I wrong?” I said, disliking him more every second.
He nodded. “Real wrong.”
A sick feeling filled my stomach as I studied my teammates. But my mood darkened further that evening, when I discovered that I had been assigned to live in the “football dorm.”
“BREWWWWW!” Peter Ososoppo bellowed. The curly-haired, three-hundred-pound Samoan was the cornerstone of our offensive line. “BREWWWW!”
“Line up, bitches,” cried Kevin Ososoppo, Peter’s fraternal twin. “Get your mouth open, it’s chuggin’ time!”
“Yo, Jesse, what the fuck!” Peter yelled happily. “Get in here, man. It’s Miller time!”
“Hi,” I said politely. “Look, I think I might try to get some sleep. Up early, you know?”
“Sleep? In this place?” Kevin shouted. “Good LUCK!”
As if to further convince me of the futility of ever closing my eyes again, Kevin wrenched the volume knob of his stereo violently forward. Def Leppard’s Hysteria exploded forth at top decibel.
“Pour . . . some . . . sugar on meeeee!” the giant lineman sang.
“In the name of love!” added Peter. The twins shared a long, silent moment of fraternity, followed by a sweaty embrace.
“Love you, big dog,” Kevin sniffed.
“Love you, too, baby bro.”
I winced. Fuck. This.
I hefted my book bag over my shoulder and scuttled down the hallway, toward any kinder fate. For example, swallowing a box of razor blades.
Outside, away from the chaos, I felt more sane. I tried to assess the situation with some calm: this was college, or close enough, so the library might be a relatively okay place to be. There would be books there, and comfortable chairs to lounge in. I hadn’t started my classes yet, but being in an environment where the smart kids hung out might make me feel like I hadn’t deliberately stationed myself in a sea of degenerates for the remainder of my education.
I hoofed it to the library and made my way to the bottom floor, where I collapsed in an uninhabited corner. Feeling the strong need to rinse the last vestiges of Def Leppard from my eardrums, I pulled my Walkman out of my backpack and popped in one of my favorite albums, Slayer’s Hell Awaits. Pulling the plastic headphones over my ears, I settled back happily in my chair, where I closed my eyes and let the music flow over me.
My peace was short-lived.
“Motherfucker, hey!” A brisk knocking on my desk interrupted the music. A huge black dude with a shaved head and a gold front tooth swayed over me. “Turn off that shit.”
I slipped the headphones off my head, angrily. “Why should I?”
“Because this is a library,” he said. “You have the volume up so high, I can hear every last goddamn drum solo.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize you could hear it.”
“You should have, with those cheap-ass headphones,” the giant said, laughing. I realized this guy was a football player, too—I’d seen him at the meeting, but we’d never talked. “You got those for free, huh? Found ’em in the trash?”
“I bought them.” I scowled.
“Well, you overpaid, tell you that much,” he said and laughed cheerfully. “Man, that’s not even Slayer’s best album. All that Satan shit? Corny as a motherfucker!”
I inspected him more closely. “What do you know about Slayer?”
“Oh, because I’m black, I can’t know metal?” His thick eyebrows knitted together, and suddenly, he looked annoyed. “Are you for real, man? Are you actually saying this shit to me?”
“Calm down,” I told him. “I just didn’t expect it. That’s all.”
“I guess we’re all just some Run D.M.C. fans to you, huh?” His gargantuan head bobbed in front of my face, eliminating all other fields of vision. “Man, I know Tom Araya. I feel his pain.”
“Shut up already,” I said. “You just caught me by surprise.” I looked him over. “You play football, right?”
“Yes. And so do you, I believe.” He grinned and extended his hand for me to shake. “My name’s Josh Paxton.”
“I’m Jesse James,” I said, taking his massive paw in my hand.
“Like the outlaw?”
“Just like,” I said.
Josh made a finger gun and shot me with it. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, you weakass-headphone-wearing punk.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” I said.
We became instant friends. Josh was smart, funny as hell, and best of all, he seemed to hate everyone on the football team even more than I did.
“Every motherfucker’s out for himself,” he complained.
“I hate it,” I agreed.
“These chumps all think they’ll be suiting up in the Big Ten two years from now,” Josh said. He looked at me. “What do you think?”
I said nothing for a moment. “I’m here to play football the way it’s supposed to be played.”
“Course you are,” Josh said, laughing. “You wouldn’t leave even if they begged you, would you, Outlaw Jesse?”
“Well, I didn’t say that,” I admitted. “If a scout comes up to me and wants to talk, then we’ll talk.”
But the scouts were precisely the problem. There was always a murmur going around our locker room: Scouts are coming to the next game! Scouts’ll be at practice on Thursday! Talent snoops for big colleges became these mythical figures who could deliver us from our drab lives.
Discontent isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to football. A talented coach would have harnessed our resentment at being outsiders, hitched it to our physical brutality, and made us into a fearsome squadron. But our head coach was trying to get out, too. He’d had offers at UNLV and UTEP, and by God, he was going to sniff them out. Everyone wanted to get out of Riverside and the bush leagues once and for all. That’s the universal dream of junior college, after all: to leave junior college.
And I was as guilty of entertaining those fantasies as the rest of them. Each morning I got up thinking I should be at Pitt, or Hawaii, or Iowa, or U of Colorado—any of those teams that recruited me. I was a talented athlete and a leader, but due to my own idiotic lack of foresight, I had ende
d up going to junior college in the same damn town where I’d gone to high school. We even played our games on the same field I’d played on in high school. I felt like I was on the hamster wheel, running faster now, but in the exact same spot.
It felt even more like that when I found out that Rhonda had enrolled as a student at Riverside Community. She and I ran into each other several times, shared several awkward glances, until one day, she finally approached me.
“Jesse,” she said, “I just want to let you know how sorry I am about the way things turned out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. “I’m over it.”
She looked down. “No, I’m serious. I really . . . I really loved you.” Rhonda touched my arm. “I’ve never felt the same about anyone.”
I fell for it, of course. Soon, we were dating again. On Sunday nights, I’d drive us downtown, to get a pizza and a couple of Cokes. But I was ridiculously poor.
“Hey,” I said, “I hate to ask, but . . .”
“It’s no problem,” said Rhonda, smiling, taking out her pocketbook. “You can get us next time, okay?”
I felt embarrassed, but the constant practices and classes kept me so busy that I didn’t have any time to work a job. Stealing was kind of out of the equation nowadays, so pocket cash became hard to come by. I had a beat-up car, but I lacked the money to drive it very often. More than once, I found myself scrounging around in the backseat, digging for seventy-five cents so I could put enough gas in my car to go home.
All the players seemed to be poor. The locker room was falling apart. Only two out of the four showers worked. Our quarterback’s shoes were covered in duct tape. One day, after a particularly grueling practice, I dragged myself up the steps to the parking lot, only to find one of my teammates breaking into my car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said, stunned.
He looked up at me sheepishly. “Oh, is this your car, Jesse?”
“Yes, asshole.” Immediately, my jaw clenched.
Sensing impending harm, he extricated himself with a quickness. “Look, guy, I’m leaving, okay?”
“See ya!” I said, fake-smiling.