Play Dirty

CHAPTER 7

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, GRIFF HAD A HITCH IN HIS BACK from sleeping on the soft mattress, which sagged in the middle. He denied that the chronic pain was a holdover from thirteen years of getting slammed into by tacklers-eighth grade through his years with the Cowboys.

His right shoulder also bothered him more than he wanted to admit. Over the course of his playing days, he’d had four fingers broken, one of his small fingers broken in the same place twice. The second time, he hadn’t bothered to have it set, so it had healed crooked. Assorted other gridiron mishaps and melees made getting out of bed every morning a slow process.

Fondly recalling the comfort of Marcia’s perfumed and silky sheets, he limped into the drab kitchen, boiled water for instant coffee, toasted a piece of bread, and washed it down with a glass of milk to chase the bitter pseudo-coffee taste from his mouth.

Before he forgot, he called the probation officer assigned to him. Jerry Arnold’s voice-mail recording had made him sound like a likable enough guy, and now his live voice sounded even friendlier and nonthreatening. “I was just calling to make sure you got the message I left yesterday,” Griff said after an exchange of hello-how-are-yous.

“Sure did. But let me repeat the info back to you, check to see I got it right.” He recited the address and phone number Griff had left.

“That’s right.”

“How about a job, Griff? Anything yet?”

“I’m seeing about that today.”

“Good, good. Keep me posted on any progress.”

“Will do.”

“Well, you know the conditions of your probation, so I won’t bore you with them again.”

“They’re etched onto my brain. I don’t want to go back to prison.”

“And I don’t want you to.” The bureaucrat hesitated, then said, “You were a hell of a ballplayer, Griff. A thrill to watch.”

“Thanks.”

“Well, good luck today.”

That chore out of the way, Griff headed for the shower. It had furry black stuff growing on the tile grout, but to his surprise the hot water was plentiful. He dressed quickly but carefully, choosing the best from the clothing Wyatt Turner had left in the apartment for him. He made a mental note to ask his lawyer where the rest of his stuff was being stored and how he could go about retrieving it.

Then he remembered that if the Speakmans came through with their down payment, he could go out and buy all new stuff. The thought made his gut purl with happy anticipation.

However, he wouldn’t know until after two o’clock today if they’d come through as promised. In the meantime, he had other errands to run.

He got to the walk-in medical clinic at eight-thirty and was out in under an hour. “How soon before I can pick up the lab results?”

“Three to five days.”

“Make it three,” he said, giving the nurse a wink and his best smile. Simpering, she promised to try. Obviously she didn’t follow Cowboys football.

From the clinic he drove to a branch of the public library-the one nearest his former Turtle Creek address. He doubted there was one in the neighborhood of his present apartment, doubted many of the residents in the area could read.

He arrived at the library only to discover it didn’t open until ten. A cluster of toddlers and young mothers-when had young mothers got so damn good looking?-had congregated at the doors waiting for them to open.

Moms and kids alike regarded him curiously. At six feet four he towered over all of them. The cut and bruise on his cheekbone, Rodarte’s contribution, drew their attention, too, making him feel particularly conspicuous among the Thursday Morning Story Time at the Library crowd.

Once the doors were unlocked, the moms herded their children to a far corner while he went to the information desk. The librarian smiled pleasantly and asked what she could do for him. “I need to use a computer. And I’ll probably need some help.”

Five years of advancement in computer technology equaled aeons. But the librarian patiently showed him how to access the Internet and do a Google search, and soon he was knee-deep in information on SunSouth Airlines and, more specifically, its owner.

First, he got an overview of Foster Speakman’s background. Starting in the 1920s with his great-great-grandfather, his family had amassed a fortune from oil and natural gas. As sole heir, Foster was bequeathed megamillions in addition to vast parcels of land in New Mexico, Colorado, and Alaska.

He held an MBA from Harvard Business School and was a polo player of renown. He had received countless citations and awards from business and civic groups for community service. Economic analysts lauded his courageous takeover and turnaround of the foundering airline.

If he’d been a football player, Speakman would have been the starting quarterback for the Super Bowl champs and voted MVP.

He and Mrs. Speakman-not Laura-were photographed attending various charity and social functions. One photograph accompanying an article in Forbes showed Foster standing tall and proud in front of a SunSouth jet, arms crossed over his chest, looking like a man who’d just conquered the world. He appeared robust and strong.

Which meant that somewhere between the time he’d bought the airline several years ago and now, he’d become paraplegic. Illness? Cataclysmic event?

While pondering the possibilities, Griff came across Elaine Speakman’s lengthy obituary. She had died after a valorous and lengthy battle with leukemia. No children had come from the marriage.

The widower had married Laura Speakman one year and five months following Elaine’s death.

Foster and Elaine had been well represented in the press. But Foster and Mrs. Speakman II were featured nearly daily-which explained his allusion to their being celebrities.

Then Griff found what he’d been looking for. One year and seventy days into their marriage, Foster and Laura Speakman’s lives were irrevocably changed. The story made the front page of The Dallas Morning News under a banner headline and a graphic photograph. The news hadn’t reached Big Spring. Or if it had, he’d missed it. Or if he had heard about it, he’d forgotten it because it didn’t pertain to him and he’d had no interest.

Griff read the story twice. There were links to numerous follow-up stories. He read them all, then, using the back icon, returned to the original story and read it yet again. And when for the third time he reached that telling sentence, which explained so much, he sat back in his chair and said, “Huh.”

It was a nice neighborhood. Unlike the one he’d grown up in, there were no loose shutters or curling window screens on these houses. Lawns were mowed, hedges were clipped, and flower beds were weeded. The basketball hoops actually had baskets, and if the driveways were littered with anything, it was shiny bikes and skateboards, not rusted-out cars sitting on blocks.

Although this neighborhood was younger by twenty years, it had the same kind of “family” feel as the one where Coach and Ellie Miller lived. Where he’d lived from the day Coach had removed him from his mother’s ramshackle place. Coach had contacted Child Protective Services and handled the legalities, which were incomprehensible and uninteresting to Griff as a fifteen-year-old. He supposed Coach got himself appointed his guardian. In any case, he’d stayed with the Millers until he graduated high school and went away to play football for the University of Texas.

He located the address he sought and drove past the house slowly, checking it out. On either side of the front door was a pot of white flowers. Above the backyard fence, Griff could see the top of a swimming pool slide. Two kids were tossing a football back and forth on the front lawn. They were old enough to be cautious of strangers and eyed Griff warily as he slowly rolled past.

He went to the end of the block and turned the corner. He realized his palms were damp with apprehension. And that made him angry at himself. Why the hell should his palms be sweating? He had as much right as anybody to be on these nicely maintained streets. The people who lived here were no better than he was.

But he’d felt the same anxiety that day when Coach Joe Miller had pulled into his driveway and said, “Here it is.” Griff had looked at the house with the welcome mat on the threshold and the blooming ivy crawling up a trellis and felt as out of place as a turd in a punch bowl. He didn’t belong here. But he’d die before he let on that he felt inferior.

Sullenly, feet shuffling, he’d followed Coach up the steps and through the front door. “Ellie?”

“In here.”

Griff had seen Coach’s wife at the games. From a distance, she looked okay, he guessed. He’d never really given her a second thought.

She turned to them as they entered the kitchen. Her hair was in curlers, and she had bright yellow rubber gloves on her hands.

“This is Griff,” Coach said.

She smiled at him. “Hi, Griff. I’m Ellie.”

He kept his like-I-give-a-shit frown in place so they wouldn’t guess that his heart was beating harder than it did before a fourth-and-goal play, and in the hope they wouldn’t hear his stomach growling. He’d glanced through the open door of the pantry. Besides at the supermarket, he’d never seen so much food stored in one place. On the counter was a pie with a golden crust, oozing cherry juice. The aroma was making Griff’s mouth water.

Coach said, “He’s going to be staying with us for a while.”

If this news came as a shock to Ellie Miller, she hid it. “Oh, well, good,” she said. “Welcome. Now, can you give me a hand, Griff? That pie leaked sticky stuff all over this oven. I’m trying to get the racks out so I can clean it while it’s still warm, but my gloves will melt if I grab hold. Pot holders are there in the top drawer.”

Not knowing what else to do, he’d got the pot holders and removed the hot metal racks from the oven. With no more ceremony than that, he moved into the Millers’ house and into their lives.

He always suspected that Coach and Ellie had discussed the possibility of this before Coach came to get him that morning. Because he was shown into a room set up for an adolescent boy. It had a double bed covered by a red-and-white blanket with the image of the high school team mascot on it-a fiercely scowling Viking. Other sports pennants were tacked to the wall.

“That’s the closet. Let me know if you need more hangers.” Ellie glanced down at the small duffel bag Griff had brought with him but didn’t comment on how little it would hold, how little he had. “You can keep your folding clothes in this chest. If anything needs washing, the hamper is in the bathroom. Oh, goodness, I haven’t shown you the bathroom.” It was so clean, he was afraid to pee in the toilet.

They all went to Sears that afternoon so Ellie could “pick up some things,” but what they came home with was new clothes for him. He’d never had food like Ellie cooked, including the pie they ate for dessert that night. He’d never been inside a house that smelled good, that had books on shelves and pictures on the walls.

But he learned from the oven-cleaning experience that such luxuries didn’t come free. He was expected to do chores. Never having been required to do a damn thing in his life except stay out of the way when a man was in the bedroom with his mother, Griff found that this aspect of family life took some getting used to.

Ellie’s rebukes were gentle and usually included some reproach to herself. “You forgot to make your bed this morning, Griff. Or did I forget to tell you that sheets aren’t changed till Friday?” “You won’t be able to wear that favorite T-shirt tomorrow, because I didn’t find it under the bed until after I’d done the laundry. Be sure it gets in the hamper next time.”

Coach was less subtle. “Have you finished your history paper?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it due tomorrow?”

He knew it was. One of his assistant coaches was Griff’s history teacher. “I’ll get it done.”

Coach turned off the TV. “Right. You will. Now.”

Whenever he was disciplined, Griff muttered rebellious plans to leave. He was sick and tired of their harping. Do this, do that, clean up this, carry out that. Only dorks went to church on Sundays, but had he been given a choice? No. It was just expected. And what did he care if the car was washed and the lawn mowed?

But he never followed through on any of his threats to leave. Besides, his muttering was largely ignored. Ellie chatted over it, and Coach either turned his back or left the room.

Coach didn’t go soft on him at practice, either. If anything, he was tougher on him, as though to assure the other players that Griff was nothing special to him just because he was lodged under his roof.

One afternoon, still mad over being denied access to the TV the night before, Griff sloughed off during drills. He didn’t connect a single pass to the receivers. Running backs had to come take the ball from him because he didn’t scramble to get it to them. He fumbled a snap.

Coach watched him; despite his scowl, he didn’t blow the whistle on him, give him a pointer, or chew him out.

But at the end of practice, when everyone else headed for the locker room, Coach ordered him to stay where he was. He placed a blocking dummy thirty yards away and tossed Griff the football. “Hit it.”

Griff threw the ball with no more effort than he had put into the rest of the practice and missed the dummy. Coach glared at him. “Try again,” he said, tossing him another football. Again he missed.

Coach handed him a third football. “Hit the damn thing.”

“I’m having an off day. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that you’re a chickenshit.”

Griff threw the ball then, straight at Coach. The ball bounced off his barrel chest. Griff turned toward the locker room.

When Coach grabbed him by the shoulder and whipped him around, his helmet nearly flew off, taking his head with it. Before Griff could recover, Coach planted his wide, leathery hand in the center of his chest and shoved. He landed hard on his ass. Pain shimmied up from his tailbone, straight along his spine, and directly into his brain. It hurt so bad, he caught his breath and tears came to his eyes. They were more mortifying than his position on the ground.

“I’m not scared of you!” he shouted up at Coach.

“Do I have your attention now?”

“Why don’t you pick on somebody else for a change? Phillips missed ten of ten today. I don’t see you making him kick till he gets one between the frigging uprights. How many times did Reynolds fumble during the last game? Three? Four? Why aren’t you on his ass? Why is it always mine?”

“Because Phillips and Reynolds don’t have any talent!” Coach seemed to use up all his breath in that one roar. His voice was much softer when he said, “And you do.”

He flicked sweat off his forehead with the back of his thumb. He looked away, then back at Griff, who was still sitting in the dirt because his butt bone hurt too bad to try to stand.

Coach said, “Not another player on this team, not another one in this school, or in any of our rival schools, has talent to match yours, Griff. And you’re pissing it away, feeling sorry for yourself and carrying a chip on your shoulder because your mother was a whore. You’ve had a lousy life up till now, no denying that. But if you let it ruin the rest of your life, who’s the fool? Who will you be spiting? You, that’s who.

“You may not be scared of me, but you’re scared shitless of yourself,” he said, jabbing the space between them with his finger. “Because in spite of yourself, you’re better than the two who made you. You’re smart and good looking. You’ve got more natural athletic ability than I’ve ever seen in any sport. And because of those gifts, you just might make something of yourself.

“And that scares you, ’cause then you wouldn’t be able to wallow in your goddamn self-pity. You wouldn’t be able to hate the world and everybody in it for the shitty hand you were dealt. You wouldn’t have an excuse for being the self-centered, self-absorbed, complete and total jerk that you are.”

Speech over, he stood looking down at Griff a moment longer, then turned away in disgust. “If you’ve got the guts for it, suit up tomorrow and be ready to apply yourself. If not, stay the hell off my team.”

Griff was at practice the following day and for every day after that, and that season he led the team to the state championship, as he did for the three following years. Neither the incident nor Coach’s lecture was ever referred to again. But Griff didn’t forget it, and he knew Coach didn’t.

Their relationship improved. They had ups and downs because Griff constantly pushed him and Ellie to see just how far he could go before they got sick of him and kicked him out.

When he defied his weekend curfew and came in an hour and a half late, they didn’t kick him out, but Coach imposed the worst punishment fathomable-making him wait two months beyond his sixteenth birthday to take his driver’s test and get his license.

They encouraged him to invite friends over, but he never did. He’d never developed friend-making skills and didn’t really have the desire to. Overtures by classmates were rebuffed. Sooner or later people abandoned you, so why bother? In the long run, you were better off keeping to yourself.

Sometimes he caught Ellie looking at him sadly and knew she harbored unspoken worries about him. Maybe she sensed, even then, that the worst was yet to come.

Things rocked along pretty well. Then, early in his junior year, an incident in the locker room got Griff suspended from school for three days. It hadn’t been a fair fight-Griff against five other athletes, three football players and two on the basketball team.

When they were pulled apart by assistant coaches, two of the boys were taken to the emergency room, one with a broken nose, the other needing stitches in his lower lip. The other three had bloody noses and bruised torsos but didn’t require hospitalization.

Griff, instigator of the seemingly unprovoked fight, suffered no more than a few scrapes and a black eye.

“We have no choice, Coach Miller,” the school principal said as he relinquished Griff to him. “Just be glad the parents of the other boys declined to press assault charges. They could have,” he added, glaring at Griff.

Coach took him home, marched him past a subdued Ellie, and confined him to his room for the duration of his suspension. On the evening of the second day, Coach walked into his room unannounced. Griff was lying on his back on the bed, idly tossing a football into the air.

Coach pulled up his desk chair and straddled it backward. “I heard something interesting today.”

Griff continued tossing the football, keeping his eyes on it and the ceiling beyond. His tongue would rot out before he would ask.

“From Robbie Lancelot.”

Griff caught the football against his chest and turned his head toward Coach.

“Robbie asked me to thank you for what you did. And especially for not telling.”

Griff remained silent.

“He figured I was in on whatever it is that you’re not telling. I’m asking you to tell me now.”

Griff pressed the football between his strong fingers, studied the laces, avoided looking at Coach.

“Griff.”

He dropped the football. Sighed. “Lancelot weighs what? A hundred twenty-five, maybe? He’s a nerd, a geek. A pest, you know? People cheat off him during chemistry tests, but otherwise…” He looked over at Coach, who nodded understanding.

“I had finished my workout with weights and went into the locker room. I heard this commotion back by the showers. Those five guys had Robbie backed into a corner. They had his underwear. He was standing there without anything on, and they were making him…you know. Work it. Saying stuff like ‘Are you really, Lance a lot?’ ‘Let’s see this big lance of yours.’ ‘Too bad your lance isn’t as big as your brain.’ Stuff like that.”

He glanced at Coach, then away. “He was crying. Snot was running out his nose. His dick was…he was yanking on it something fierce, but it wasn’t…doing anything.”

“Okay.”

“These guys were giving him hell. So I plowed through them and pulled him away from the wall, walked him to his locker, told him to get his clothes on, wipe his nose for God’s sake, and get the hell out of there.”

“And then went back and beat the crap out of his tormentors.”

“Tried anyhow,” Griff mumbled.

Coach watched him for a long moment, then stood up, replaced the chair beneath the desk, and went to the door. “Ellie says dinner’s in half an hour. You’d better wash up.”

“Coach?” He turned back. “Don’t tell anybody, okay? I’ve only got one more day of suspension, and…and I promised Lancelot.”

“I won’t tell anybody, Griff.”

“Thanks.”

To this day Griff remembered the expression on Coach’s face as he left his room that evening. He was never able to define it, but he knew that something important had happened, that some sort of understanding had passed between them. As far as he knew, Coach had never betrayed his confidence about the incident.

By now he’d made the neighborhood block and for the second time approached the house with the white flowers on either side of the front door and the backyard pool with the slide. He’d wasted enough time. It was do or die.

The two kids with the football were still throwing passes to each other when Griff parked at the curb and got out.