The Prophet

18

IT WAS MATT BYERS WHO first expressed concern with Colin’s approach to practice. They were halfway through drills when the defensive coach sidled over to Kent and spoke in a low tone.

“He’s going to burn himself out in ten more minutes like this, Coach. Look at him.”

Kent had been looking at him. They were running no-contact drills—as the playoffs lengthened, as he hoped they would, contact would be less and less common in practice as he tried to protect fatigued bodies—but still the kid was burning jet fuel, smoking through every pattern and then returning to his spot at the rear of the line to run in place or do jumping jacks or push-ups. It was a cool afternoon but the sweat dripped out of his helmet.

“He may need to burn himself out, Matt.” Kent was fairly certain that he did, in fact. Today, Colin was coming off a sleepless night after hearing the details of his girlfriend’s murder. Today, every one of his teammates and classmates was whispering about what they’d learned. They all knew how she had died, and if Colin had not shown up at practice, Kent would almost have been relieved.

Colin was trying to sweat it all out. To empty himself of all that he carried, and while it was not possible, it might help. If he broke himself down enough to sleep through the night, that might help.

“He’s freaking these guys out,” Matt said.

Kent looked at him, the bills of their caps close together, voices still low. “He’s not what’s freaking any of them out. They understand it, Matt. They know. Let him give what he can today. When he’s done, I’ll stop him. Okay?”

Byers nodded.

Over in the receivers line, Colin, never a vocal leader, had begun to shout. Demanding faster feet, better hands, more effort. Slapping helmets as his teammates went by, and, yes, all of them looked a little shaken. No one more so than Lorell McCoy, who threw a few awkward passes, his always-polished release hurried, responding to Colin’s frenetic energy.

Kent left them there and walked down to the other side of the field, where the offensive and defensive lines were working on their splits. Hickory Hills ran an option offense, and did very little with it except pitch the ball to the fastest kid on the team and try like heck to open a hole for him, rarely with much success. This meant their offense would play with wide gaps, trying to spread out the Chambers front line, and hope they could get around the end faster than the Cardinal defenders.

They could not. He was sure of that, but he was also sure that his defense would see the same option plays, the same veer approach, soon enough, and there would be much greater speed to it then. Hickory Hills was in many ways a perfect opponent, because they would give Chambers a chance to polish fundamentals before running into a higher level of talent.

Kent was pacing, nudging at the feet of his offensive linemen, when he heard Steve Haskins, the receivers coach, shout for a trainer.

Kent turned then and saw that Colin Mears was on his hands and knees on the fifty, throwing up.

He did not rush to him. Every one of the kids was watching anxiously, and Kent tried to communicate calm to them through patient motion. By the time he reached midfield there was already a trainer with Colin, wiping his face down with a towel and offering a bottle of Gatorade. Colin took a sip, swished it in his mouth, and spit it back onto the turf. His chest was heaving.

Kent knelt and laid a hand on his back.

“You all right?”

Colin nodded. Retched again, brought nothing up, and then spoke between gasps.

“Good to go, Coach. Good to go.”

“Go sit down. I’ll tell you when you’re good to go.”

“No, sir. I’m fine. I’m—”

“Son, you want to tell me what you just said?”

Colin spit again, then turned back to him. “I said that I’m fine, I’m ready to—”

“Let’s take another look at this situation, a little slower. I told you what I wanted from you. And you did what?”

Colin’s breathing was beginning to steady, but his eyes were confused.

“You did what?” Kent said again, making sure his voice was clear enough to be heard by others, trying his best to stare the boy down the way he would have at any other practice, any other day.

“Argued,” Colin said.

“That’s right. You’re a senior, am I correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many times have you seen someone have luck arguing with me on my football field?” Voice rising now. Let them all feel this day was normal, from Colin to his teammates, let them find some familiarity in this practice so that they would not lose their heads.

“None, sir.”

“That’s right. It won’t start today. Go sit your ass down. I’ll tell you when you’re ready to go.”

Colin rose on wobbly legs and went to the sidelines. Kent stood and looked up and down the field, saw all the uneasy faces watching, and shouted, “That’s what we call effort, gentlemen. You might want to remember it. I suspect you’ll need it to win a few more football games.”

They got back to work, Colin sitting on the grass just off the field, his helmet still strapped tight. Kent walked to him and knelt, spoke out of the side of his mouth, his eyes still on the field.

“You tell me the truth, son. What helps you more—being here or being home?”

“Here, sir.”

“You know this doesn’t matter,” Kent said. He waved a hand at the field. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“It matters. I need it.”

Kent nodded. “I’ll be here, Colin. I can’t promise you anything that will help, but I can promise you I’ll be here. You have something you need to tell me, or want to tell me, do not hesitate.”

“Thank you, Coach.” He was crying now, and though Kent knew it he pretended otherwise.

“Whenever you feel like going,” he said, “you go.”

He stood up and began to walk away then. Colin Mears beat him back to midfield.

There were few things Kent imagined more unenviable than being a coach’s wife with two young children during the season. He tried hard to help, tried hard to ease the burden when he could, but the reality was that his evenings and nights were gone to the game for months at a time, and at this time, playoffs looming? The few hours became fewer.

It was past ten when he got home Tuesday, and that wasn’t anywhere near as late as many coaches would push it. Not as late as Kent was tempted to, either, but he’d built his program on regimented behavior, and that carried off the field and into the coach’s room. You did not waste minutes in Kent’s program, you did not waste even seconds. Focused attention, focused attention, focused attention. The kids heard it constantly, but what they did not realize was that the coaching staff heard it, too. Maybe more often. Other coaches could keep their staffs up into the wee hours watching game video with one eye, drinking beer and swapping jokes, but that would not happen at Chambers. Despite the even-keeled demeanor for which he was known, Kent had lost plenty of assistant coaches over the years because he wasn’t much fun. That was fine by him.

He came home, slipped into a dark house, kissed his sleeping son and daughter on the forehead, and went into the bedroom to have his wife tell him that Lisa had been hearing stories in school about her aunt.

“She asked me about Marie today,” Beth said. She was in bed with a Pat Conroy novel held against her chest and the TV on across the room. Something they bickered about with consistency and good nature. You can’t watch TV and read at the same time, Kent would say. It’s simply impossible. Pick one. Then she’d say, Funny, every now and then I’ll start doing other things with the TV still on and you never complain about that. And of course she had him there.

He sat on the bed beside her. “What did she say?”

“Some kids told her Marie was murdered. She wanted to know if it was true. Then she said that she’d heard it was in the newspaper. She wanted to read about it.”

Her voice was tired, and Kent laid a hand on her leg, sympathy and apology in the touch. It was an inevitable conversation that she’d had with their daughter, but it was also his to have, and she’d been forced to do it because he was gone. While he was demanding focused attention on videos of teenage boys playing a game, Beth had made dinner for two children and explained a homicide to one. There were times when his occupation felt almost foolish, when all of the We’re building character, we’re about more than the game, these kids are learning life lessons on the field felt absurd, and this was one of them.

“How’d she take it?” he asked, because he did not need to ask what Beth had told her. He knew there would have been neither coy games nor excessive detail, just gentle honesty.

“She wanted to know why you don’t talk about Marie. Why you never told her about it before. She seemed a little hurt by that.”

“Probably a fair response.”

“I told her that it hurts you to talk about it, and that a sister is a lot like a daughter and talking to her about it would probably hurt even worse because of that.”

He felt a thickening in his throat, looked away from her eyes and out to the dark window, bare limbs showing beyond the reflected light of the room. He let out a breath and swung himself onto the bed beside her, leaned his head against the pillow, and looked in her eyes. He could find peace in them, always had been able to, so many years of seeking things from within her now, so many years of having those things granted.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It might be best that I talked to her.”

“Did Andrew hear?”

“No.”

“Will she want to talk to me about it? Should I volunteer something?”

“You’ll need to talk to her. I don’t know if she’ll press it, but she’s curious. She was surprised she didn’t know. Thinks she’s far too old and mature to have it kept from her. I just said that it hurts you and that you’re very good at hiding the things that hurt you.”

When she said this, she reached out and squeezed his left knee, the bad one. He looked at her slender fingers working on the soft, damaged tissue below the kneecap.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said. “She thinks it’s unfair, and she’s probably right, and she deserves to understand her own family better than the kids at school do. I never wanted that.”

Beth said, “She’s also got another question I’ll let you field.”

“Yeah?”

“She wants to know if it has something to do with the reason we don’t like Uncle Adam.”

His gaze left her hand and returned to her eyes. “What?”

Beth nodded. “That’s exactly how she phrased it. We don’t like him. As if it’s something just understood. A family rule. We don’t like the Pittsburgh Steelers. We don’t like Uncle Adam. Casual.”

He passed a hand over his face, rubbed his forehead.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll talk with her.”

“Good,” Beth said. “What about Adam?”

“Huh?”

“Will you talk more with him?”

“No.”

“Really.”

“I said all I could say. You’re surprised? He and I don’t talk much, Beth.”

“I know that, Kent. I know that. All this, though?” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe one of you hasn’t picked up the phone.”

“To say what?”

“I have no idea. A girl’s murdered, you’re both talking to the police, you both knew her, and the whole town’s relating it to your sister. You’re right, Kent. Nothing to talk about.”

She released his knee, rolled over, and picked her book back up. He looked at her, frustrated, and said, “I’m trying to refocus and move forward, Beth. Trying to help my team do the same thing. Those are not Adam’s strengths. He circles, circles, circles. I can’t get caught up in that. I can’t.”