Hell To Pay

chapter 6

THE Pee Wee offense said “Break” in the huddle and went to the line. Strange saw that several of the players had lined up too far apart.

“Do your splits,” said Strange, and the offensive linemen moved closer together, placing their hands on one another’s shoulder pads. Now they were properly spaced.

“Down!” said Dante Morris, his hands between the center’s legs. The offense hit their thigh pads in unison.

“Set!” The offense clapped their hands one time and got down in a three-point stance.

“Go! Go!”

On two, Rico took the handoff from Dante Morris, bobbling it a little, not really having possession of the ball as he hesitated and was cut down by two defenders behind the line.

“Hold up,” said Quinn.

“What was that, Rico?” said Strange. “What was the play?”

“Thirty-one on two,” said Rico, picking some turf off his helmet.

“And Thirty-one is?”

“Halfback run to the one-hole,” said Joe Wilder.

“Joe, I know you know,” said Strange. “I was askin’ Rico.”

“Like Joe said,” said Rico.

“But you weren’t headed for the one-hole, were you, son?”

“I got messed up in my head.”

“Think,” said Strange, tapping his own temple.

“You had your hands wrong, too,” said Quinn. “When you’re taking a handoff and you’re going to the left, where’s your right hand supposed to be?”

“On top. Left hand down at your belly.”

“Right. The opposite if you’re going right.” Quinn looked to the linemen who had made the tackle. “Nice hit there. Way to wrap him up. Let’s try that again.”

In the huddle, Dante called a Thirty-five. The first number, three, was always a halfback run. The second number was the hole to be hit. Odd numbers were the left holes, one, three, and five. Evens were the two-, four-, and six-holes. A number larger than six was a pitch.

They executed the play. This time Rico took the ball smoothly and found the hole, running low off a clean Joe Wilder block, and he was gone.

“All right, good.” Quinn tapped Joe’s helmet as he ran back to the huddle. “Good block, Joe, way to be.”

Joe Wilder nodded, a swagger in his step, his wide smile visible behind the cage of his helmet.

CLOSE to dark, Strange blew a long whistle, signaling the boys into the center of the field.

“All right,” said Blue, “take a knee.”

The boys got down on one knee, close together, looking up at their coaches.

“I got a call today,” said Dennis Arrington, “at work. One of you was asking me how to make his mouth guard from the kit we gave you. Course, he just should have asked me before he did it, or better yet, listened when I explained it the first time. ’Cause he went and boiled it for three minutes and it came out like a hunk of plastic.”

“Tenderized it,” said Blue, and some of the boys laughed.

“You put it in that boiling water for twenty seconds,” said Arrington. “And before you put it in your mouths to form it, you dip it in some cold water. You don’t do that, you’re gonna burn yourselves fierce.”

“You only make that mistake one time,” said Strange.

“Any questions?” said Blue.

There were none.

“Want to talk about somethin’ tonight,” said Strange. “Heard you all discussing it between yourselves some and thought I ought to bring it up. One of your teammates got himself in big trouble at school today, something to do with a knife. Now I know you already got the details, what you heard, anyway, so I won’t go into it, and besides, it’s not right to be talkin’ about this boy’s business when he’s not here. But I do want to tell you that he is off the team. And the reason he is off is, he broke the deal he made with his coaches, and with you, his teammates, to act in a certain way. The way you got to conduct yourselves if you are going to be a Panther. And I don’t mean just here on the field. I’m talking about how you act at home, and in school. Because we are out here devoting our time to you for no kind of pay, and you and your teammates are working hard, sweating, to make this the best team we can be. And we will not tolerate that kind of disrespect, to us or to you. Do you understand?”

There was a low mumble of yesses. The Pee Wee center, a quiet African kid named Prince, raised his hand, and Strange acknowledged him.

“Do you need to thee our report cards?” said Prince. The boy beside him grinned but did not laugh at Prince’s lisp.

“Yes, we will need to see your first report card when you get it. We’re especially gonna be looking at behavior. Now, we got a game this Saturday, y’all know that, right?” The boys’ faces brightened. “Anybody hasn’t paid the registration fee yet, you need to get up with your parents or the people you stay with, ’cause if you do not pay, you will not play. I’m gonna need all your health checkups, too.”

“We gettin’ new uniforms?” said a kid from back in the group.

“Not this season,” said Strange. “I must answer this question every practice. Some of you just do not listen.” There were a couple of “Dags,” but mostly silence.

“Practice is six o’clock, Wednesday,” said Blue.

“What time?” said Dennis Arrington.

The boys shouted in unison, “Six o’clock, on the dot, be there, don’t miss it!”

“Put it in,” said Quinn.

The boys formed a tight circle and tried to touch one another’s hands in the center. “Petworth Panthers!”

“All right,” said Strange. “We’re done. You that got your bikes or live close, get on home now before the dark falls all the way. Anyone else needs a ride, meet the coaches up in the lot.”

THERE were about ten parents and other types of relatives and guardians, dedicated, enthusiastic, loving, mostly women and a couple of men, who came to every practice and every game. Always the same faces. The parents who did not show were too busy trying to make ends meet, or hanging with their boyfriends or girlfriends, or they just didn’t care. Many of these kids lived with their grandparents or their aunts. Many had absent fathers, and some had never known their fathers at all.

So the parents who were involved helped whenever they could. They and the coaches watched out for those kids who needed rides home from practice and to and from the games. Running a team like this, keeping the kids away from the bad, it was a community effort. The responsibility fell on a committed few.

Strange drove south on Georgia Avenue. Lamar and Joe Wilder were in the backseat, Wilder showing Lamar his wrestling figures. Joe usually brought them with him to practice. Lamar was asking him questions, patiently listening as Joe explained the relationships among all these people, whom Strange thought of as freaks.

“You gonna watch Monday Nitro tonight?” asked Joe.

“Yeah, I’ll watch it,” said Lamar.

“Can you come over and watch it?”

“Can’t, Joe. Got my sister to look after; my moms is goin’ out.” Lamar punched Joe lightly on the shoulder. “Maybe we can watch it together next week.”

Strange brought Lamar along to practice to keep him out of trouble, but he was also a help to him and the other coaches. Both Lamar and Lionel were good with the kids.

Next to Strange sat Prince, the Pee Wees’ center. Prince was one of three Africans on the team. Like the others, Prince was well behaved, even tempered, and polite. His father drove a cab. Prince was tall for ten, and his voice had already begun to deepen. Some of the less sensitive boys on the team tended to imitate his slight lisp. But he was generally well liked and respected for his toughness.

“There’s my office,” said Strange, pointing to his sign on 9th. Whenever he could, Strange reminded his kids that he had grown up in the neighborhood, just like them, and that he owned his own business.

“Why you got a picture up there of a magnifying glath?” said Prince. He was holding his helmet in his hands, rubbing his fingers along the panther decal affixed to the side.

“It means I find things. Like I look at ’em closer so other people can see better. That make sense?”

“I guess.” Prince cocked his head. “My father gave me a magnifying glath.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. One day it was thunny, and me and my little brother put the glath over some roach bugs that was outside on the alley porch, by the trash? The thun made those bugs smoke. We burned up those bugs till they died.”

Strange knew that here he should say that burning bugs to death wasn’t cool. But he said, “I used to do the same thing.”

Prince lived on Princeton Place, in a row house in Park View that was better kept than those around it. The porch light had been left on in anticipation of his arrival. Strange said good night to Prince and watched him go up the concrete steps to his house.

Some boys hanging on the corner, a couple years older than Prince, made some comments about his uniform, and then one of them said, “Pwinth, why you steppin’ so fast, Pwinth?”

They were laughing at him, but he kept walking without turning around, and he kept his shoulders erect until he made it to the front door and went through.

That’s right, thought Strange. Head up, and keep your posture straight.

The light on the porch went off.

Strange returned to Georgia Avenue, drove south, and passed a small marijuana enterprise run by a half dozen kids. Part of the income made here funneled up to one of the two prominent gangs that controlled the action in the neighborhood. South of the Fourth District, below Harvard Street, was a smaller, independent operation that did not encroach on the turf of the gang business up the road.

At Park Road, Strange cut east and then turned into the Section Eight government-assisted housing complex called Park Morton. Kids sat on a brick wall at the entrance to the complex, their eyes hard on Strange as he drove by.

The complex was dark, lit only by dim bulbs set in cinder-block stairwells. In one of them a group of young men, and a few who were not so young, were engaged in a game of craps. Some held dollars in their fists, others held brown paper bags covering bottles of juice halved with gin, or forties of malt liquor and beer.

“That your unit, Joe?” said Strange, who always had to ask. There was a dull sameness to these dwellings back here, broken by the odd heroic gesture: a picture of Jesus taped to a window, or a string of Christmas lights, or a dying potted plant.

“Next one up,” said Lamar.

Strange rolled forward, put the car in park, and let it idle.

“Walk him up, Lamar.”

“Coach,” said Joe, “you gonna call Forty-four Belly for me in the game?”

“We’ll see. We’ll practice it on Wednesday, okay?”

“Six o’clock, on the dot,” said Joe.

Strange brushed some bits of lint off of Joe’s nappy hair. His scalp was warm and still damp with sweat. “Go on, son. Mind your mother, now, hear?”

“I will.”

Strange watched Lamar and Joe disappear into the stairwell leading to Joe’s apartment. Ahead, rusted playground equipment stood silhouetted in a dirt courtyard dotted with Styrofoam containers, fast-food wrappers, and other bits of trash. The courtyard was lit residually by the lamps inside the apartments. A faint veil of smoke roiled in the light.

It was a while before Lamar returned. He rested his forearms on the lip of the open passenger window of Strange’s car.

“What took you so long?”

“Wasn’t no one home. Had to get a key from Joe’s neighbor.”

“Where his mom at?”

“I expect she went to the market for some cigarettes, sumshit like that.”

“Watch your mouth, boy.”

“Yeah, all right.” Lamar looked over his shoulder and then back at Strange. “He’ll be okay. He’s got my phone number he needs somethin’.”

“Get in, I’ll ride you the rest of the way.”

“That’s me, just across the court,” said Lamar. “I’ll walk it. See you tomorrow, boss.”

Strange said, “Right.”

He watched Lamar move slowly through the courtyard, not too fast like he was scared, chin level, squared up. Strange thinking, You learned early, Lamar, and well. To know how to walk in a place like this was key, a basic tool for survival. Your body language showed fear, you weren’t nothin’ but prey.

Driving home, Strange rolled up the windows of the Brougham and turned the AC on low. He popped a War tape, Why Can’t We Be Friends, into the deck, and he found that beautiful ballad of theirs, “So.” He got down low in the bench, his wrist resting on the stop of the wheel, and he began to sing along. For a while, anyway, sealed in his car, listening to his music, he found some kind of peace.