The alarm goes off once more. I get out of bed and find Bill and Anne already in the kitchen and dressed for Mass. David and Brent are sound asleep. Brent snores loudly. Not even five hours ago Bill was who knows how may beers deep, eardrums probably blown out, a total mess. Now his eyes are clear, his beard looks trim and clean, and he’s wearing this great blue suit. Anne looks elegant in a green dress. I rightly feel underdressed in my wrinkled jeans and blue zip-up sweater, holes in the elbow spaces, and I regret not packing some nicer clothes.
Mass is at 8 AM. It’s basically right out the door. We leave the house and travel hardly fifty feet before taking a left and crossing through a park onto Napoleon Avenue to St. Stephen’s church. It is a gorgeous church. Like Saint Mary’s in Natchez, the interior is ornate and colorful. Everything seems set in a green hue. The columns appear to be a milky green leading up to a brown roof that matches the color of the pews. The raised altar is up on some type of green colored stone. The tabernacle is in the middle with the crucifix probably ten feet above. There are myriad statues and iconography on the back wall, a half-dome type design that looks almost like a grotto, behind the crucifix. Like all good churches, St. Stephen’s has a communion rail.
The Mass is solemn. The priest gives a sermon on the Divine Mercy chaplet. Knowing many of the parishioners pray a daily rosary, he asks them to consider adding a daily chaplet, too. The choir sings beautifully. The communion hymn is Adoro Te Devote.
I think to myself: what greater personal relationship with Jesus can there be than receiving Him—not symbolically but truly, His actual Flesh and Blood, the same Flesh and Blood that was nailed to and spilled upon the Cross—in Holy Communion? Jesus makes clear, in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, that unless we eat this very Flesh and Blood we will not have life within us. Why ignore, downplay, or spin this passage?
I have argued John 6 a few times with my friend Increase Stoddard. Increase is the most Protestant Protestant I have ever met. Plus he’s a real good fisherman, avid outdoorsman, and can play practically anything on the piano, from memory and without notes. Increase was raised a Presbyterian, joined the Episcopalians when he was in college, and then became a non-denominational guy, attending both mega churches and former stripmall outlet shoe store churches, in the flock of both cool clothes backwards baseball cap pastors and suit and tie super not cool old man pastors. He found this lacking somehow, he told me, and soon was pining for the finger lickin’ good fire and brimstone Puritanism he used to know. I was enjoying some really good barbeque with him at the time he was explaining all this to me. Increase returned to the Presbyterianism of his childhood. It’s not like he had a choice anyways, he made clear.
Increase doesn’t have a detailed response to my questions about John 6 other than to say that Christ was speaking symbolically. He is sure Christ was speaking symbolically because of John six: sixty-three, the passage about the Spirit giving life while the flesh profits nothing. The flesh profits nothing? Really? Then what of the Incarnation, that very fleshy moment in human history when the Second Person of the Holy Trinity assumed human nature in order to redeem mankind? Why do this if the flesh profits nothing? Matter bad/spirit good is not Christian, it’s gnostic Manichean dualism, one of the oldest heresies in the book. And then what about God saying, in Genesis, that all he created was good? Could it not be, I ask Increase, that the way the Church has always explained this passage—that the only way a person can understand the Eucharist is by the light of the Holy Spirit, not by our own weak reason, our profitless flesh profitless in trying to probe unfathomable mysteries—is in fact the correct interpretation?
Additionally, I ask (and at this point in our conversation I can see in his eyes that he’s getting excited. Not because he agrees with me but because I’m on a roll, going all Jonathan Edwards on’em, yes a papist mucho popery version of Edwards, but still…oh, also, I heard once that before distributing communion at his church service Edwards would spend all night in prayer in a type of “Eucharist Adoration.” But he didn’t believe in the Real Presence, right? So why did he do this? ) him why is the word to gnaw or to chew used to describe eating Christ’s Flesh? Why did so many followers leave Jesus after He taught this, claiming it was a “hard saying” and “who could accept it?” I ask him to tell me what is hard about accepting something symbolically? Why did all the early Christians believe in the Real Presence of the Eucharist? Why did Paul caution people not to eat and drink their own damnation by receiving the Eucharist unworthily? How can your receive a symbol unworthily, how do you profane a symbol?
Increase doesn’t give me an answer. Catholics are just wrong, he says. Catholics are wrong because, basically, every Protestant denomination ever, even if we don’t agree on anything amongst ourselves, do agree that Catholics are wrong. So…case closed. Then he says something along the lines of God “wouldn’t do that.” God can’t be in a million places at once if that’s true what Catholics says about the Eucharist, that each Host is His Body. How can God do that? is a good and fair question. Could it have something to do with God being God?
After Mass we walk past the house and head down Magazine in the opposite direction. We walk into a French bakery, La Boulangerie.
We order, we receive our order, we leave.
We cross the street and eat breakfast at Bill and Anne’s house. Brent is awake and dressed. David is still asleep. When he wakes up all that’s left is one fifth of the baguette and half an éclair. Anne made Bill save it for David. He gave her a look, a “c’mon” look, while pointing to the sleeping David. David won’t mind because he won’t know. Anne makes him save it.
A few hours later we walk over to the next-door park, the same one we passed through this morning on the way to Mass. A few people are already setting up plastic tables. Other people are laying newspapers on the tables. There’s going to be a neighborhood crawfish boil. Bill says a lot of people might show up. Last time more than twenty came. Brent, David and I try to help with setting up. We’re told repeatedly, by a few different people, that the best thing we can do to help is to go away for an hour or so. We’re guests, we’re told, and guests shouldn’t have to do any of the work.
I grab a basketball from Bill’s house and the three us of walk up the street to a macadamed court—rusty rims and chain metal nets—and play knockout. I win each game. I think at least an hour has passed. We see more people gathering in the park for the boil. We head back. We’re almost back when we see a homeless man sitting on the street corner, right at the edge of the park. Brent reaches into his pocket and gives him some money. David does the same. I give him what I have in my wallet: two five-dollar bills, a one, a quarter, two pennies. The man says the same thing to all three of us.
“Thank you. God bless you.”
I make eye contact with him. He is disheveled and poorly dressed. But his eyes are a striking brown. They are clear, wild, and somehow I feel…as if “pierced.” It’s a very strange feeling, made no less peculiar by a premonition that I know this man somehow, from somewhere.
We sit down at one of the tables just in time. Soon small mountains of crawfish take shape on old pages of the Times-Picayune. The crawfish is good but I like the potatoes and little corn on the cobs best. I can’t stop thinking about the homeless man. Who is he?
I look over to the street corner but he’s no longer there. He’s walking towards the boil, talking to Bill, who, I guess, saw him like we did and extended an invitation. The man sits down right in between Bill and Anne and Marvin and his wife. He sits down in what can only be described as the place of honor at this boil, this banquet. In a spot that seems to have been prepared just for him all the while. Watching him sitting there I get the feeling he’s been transformed in some way, transfigured. He looks like a perfect mix of the grimiest, dirt poor street beggar and the most distinguished and noble looking King. The mix isn’t pasted together awkwardly; it’s not the rushed conjunction of two disparate parts, beggar and King. Rather there’s an obviou
s, but impossible to pin down, symbiosis between the two parts, each wholly unified yet without losing the full measure of the individuality in each. As if perhaps hypostatically (?) melded into one non-contradictory identity?
“Who is that guy?” Brent asks.
“The homeless guy?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know.”
“Bill knows him?”
“I don’t know.”
I keep eating. I keep watching him. I don’t particularly want to keep watching him but I can’s help it. At one point he stands up and hands something to Anne. She thanks him and puts it in her pocket. He turns and leaves.
“Hey,” David says, sitting down next to Brent and me. “Y’all know that guy? The guy’on the street. I can’t place’im. It’s killin me but-eye know-eye-know’im from somewhere.” I shake my head, grabbing another piece of corn. “I don’t know.”
We stay and talk with Bill and Anne for a long time after everyone’s left. We help with the clean up, we insist on it. It’s almost five-thirty and if we want to be back in Starkville before midnight we better get on the road soon. Anne gives us a few candles. The vanilla scented one smells good enough to eat. We get on the road. David puts on a country mix CD. The first song is “Suds in the Bucket.” We cross back into Mississippi just as the sun dips below the horizon.
CHAPTER FIVE
Father Will has discovered that I played in the NFL. Everyone who knows me eventually does. I don’t talk about it much, but thanks to the Internet you can find out practically anything about anyone. People find out eventually.
Four seasons: three with the Kansas City Chiefs, one with the San Diego Chargers. My time with the Chiefs was spent almost exclusively on the practice squad. I played in four regular season games, mostly on special teams and a little as a wide receiver, my main position, where I finished with 2 catches for 17 yards. My one season with the Chargers was my “breakout season,” or something like that. What to call a fourth rate version of a breakout year? I stayed on the active roster the entire season and made the league minimum, close to half a million dollars. It still boggles my mind how much athletes get paid. Three of my teammates in San Diego were making over fifteen million annually. I played in all 16 games, caught 19 passes for over 300 yards (17.1 yd/catch) and scored two touchdowns. One was a 77 yard score on a fifty or sixty yard bomb I ran under after outrunning the secondary. The other came on a punt return.
I’m fast. I’m actually very fast and somewhat of a freak athlete. That’s why I made it to the NFL. Guys from Boise State are expected to set stat sheets on fire. I didn’t. The top receivers in my college conference, the WAC, the guys who could entertain a hope of the NFL, had season stat lines like 100 catches for 1,100 yards and 13 touchdowns. My best season was my junior year when I caught 52 passes for 790 yards and 8 touchdowns. My numbers dropped to 44-706-5 my senior year. My first three seasons I didn’t play at all, including a redshirt.
Guys like that, like me, aren’t serious NFL prospects; fringe guys, at best. They don’t get invited to the Combine, the annual seedbed of first-rounders and franchise cornerstones. But some NFL GM knew a scout who knew this other scout who knew a scout who was childhood friends with my college head coach, Chris Petersen. Coach Pete told someone that I could run a 4.4 forty-yard dash. That earned me an invite.
I destroyed the Combine. I was in the top five of every category amongst receivers taking no small pleasure in watching big time prospects from Oklahoma, Clemson, Miami, Notre Dame and USC get pwned by this average looking guy from an out of the way state whose team played on a blue field. I’m about six feet tall, 6’ 0-5/8”, and at the time I weighed a little over two hundred pounds. I’m closer to one-ninety now. I recorded a vertical jump of forty-one inches and broad jumped 10’9”. I bench pressed 225 19 times. Most importantly, I ran the 40 in 4.37. It was enough for the Chiefs. They drafted me in the seventh round, the last round of the draft.
Playing in the NFL is one of the greatest experiences of my life. I have no real bad memories, no bitterness. I made more than a few good friends.
Playing in the NFL, no secret here, doesn’t make you immune to the torpor. Actually being at the pinnacle of any profession sometimes exacerbates the feeling of ultimate emptiness. The, is this really all there is? feeling. When I returned the punt for a touchdown it put us up 23-17, at home, and we ended up winning the game by that score—ironically against my former team.
I was the hero for the one and only time in my NFL career. Reporters flocked around my locker because in the NFL obsessed country we live in a 3-11 team beating a 5-9 team in a meaningless late season game, both teams long eliminated from playoff contention, is headline news.
I felt nothing. I was kind of numb. Not numb like someone probably is when summiting K2: numbed by the sheer magnitude of it all, standing near the roof of the world equal parts exhausted and triumphant both feelings heightened by oxygen depletion. I was numb like bored-numb. That’s when I knew the next game would probably be my last. The Chargers helped me avoid any agonizing decisions about whether to retire or return when they released me following the regular season. There isn’t a great market in the NFL for undersized receivers who record 21 catches over four seasons, struggle to get open against press coverage, and mix in a few drops here and there when they do get open.
I don’t talk about my NFL career mainly because I don’t want to brag. I was in a select club of some of the best athletes in the entire world. I was one of them. I also don’t talk about it because I want to be taken seriously as an academic. “Oh, you’re the football player historian, the ex-football player to whom history is probably a kind of hobby.
Sure we’ll consider publishing your paper—your ‘paper,’ (cough)—in this peer-reviewed journal…
I don’t hide my playing career. It’s right there on my CV, near the end. Inconspicuously listed but listed. I’m proud of the accomplishment and consider it a great blessing. My football career, namely the concerns surrounding the long-term impact of concussions, influenced my decision to study brain disease in a historical context. I do prefer to let others find out about my athletic background and then ask further questions if they want.
I am a former professional athlete but I’m not exorbitantly wealthy. What I mean is that I’m not a millionaire and I never was.
After I retired from football I gave some of my money to Konrad and A.C., both of whom fiercely protested, especially Konrad who I basically had to tackle, subdue, and then stuff the check down the front of his shirt. If you can’t give your money to your brothers who can you give it to? I started giving tithes to the Church for the first time in my life. Before, practically all my life, I would usually put a few handfuls of loose change in the collection basket at Mass. That was my pathetic contribution, a kind of anti-Widow with Two mites parable. I put some of the money here, some there, the majority of it going into a house I bought in Boise which I’ve been renting out for the past five years while on my Southern sojourn.
My bachelor’s degree is in mathematics. I was going to become an accountant, like my mother. I bought a nice house in Boise’s North End and was going to get on with my life. My father encouraged me to pursue history, my college minor and something I’ve had a passion for since I was a little boy. Some of my earliest memories are of touring the Gettysburg battlefield when I was four or five years old. I don’t remember why we were in Pennsylvania—most likely to visit my aunt Clarissa, who still lives in the “Back Mountain” in a small town called Dallas with her husband Carlos and their seven Rhodesian Ridgebacks—but I remember the clump of trees like I saw them yesterday.
People are usually surprised when they find out I played in the NFL. Many first reactions are along the lines of “No way. No. C’mon, you’re joking.” As if every NFL player is 7’11, 505 lbs. of ripped muscle with 1.8% body fat and walks around with the words FOOTBALL STUD tattooed on his forehead. This so the common folk peasantry can pick them out e
asier. “Well, honey. I’m not quite sure. I think, I think that gentlemen there is an atha-lete. Yes, darling. His forearms are bigger than my head. I’m pretty sure…oh yes, how did I miss it? The neon sign on his forehead, ha ha, silly me.”
I was at the Sanderson Center yesterday wearing Chargers workout shorts when a guy in a Denver Broncos shirt came up to me.
“You a Chargers fan?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He laughed, patting me on the back. “Hang in there, buddy.”
He started walking away but then stopped and looked back. “You ever been there for a game? To San Diego?”
“Yeah,” I said, “a few times.”
“Me too,” he replied. “I went a few years ago when they played my boys,” tapping the Broncos logo on his chest. “Destroyed you guys.”
I laughed.
“You should have seen the seats we had,” he said. “Fifty yard line, it was almost like being on the field. So sick. Later, bro.”
Father Will has invited me to speak to the St. Joseph’s Catholic college youth group. They meet every Friday, today, in a little white house next to the church. The night we got back from New Orleans, last Sunday, Father Will emailed me about it; come in and share your story, that kind of thing. A combination, I suppose, of what Protestants call “your testimony” and what chocolate covered fluffy baby bunny modern Catholics call “your faith journey.” I’m supposed to be there in twenty minutes so I decide to head out. Just as I’m shutting the front door my phone buzzes.
Shannon: U in Starkville tomorrow night?
Me: Yeah, whats up?
Shannon: Wanna go get dinner?
Dinner? What? A lump comes into my throat.
Me: Sure. Where?
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