Bleachers

  “We won eight games that year, lost only two, and the legend of Eddie Rake was born. My senior year we lost one game, then in 1960 Coach Rake had his first undefeated season. I was away at college and I couldn’t get home every Friday, though I desperately wanted to. When you play for Rake you join an exclusive little club, and you follow the teams that come behind you. For the next thirty-two years I followed Spartan football as closely as possible. I was here, sitting up there in the bleachers, when the great streak began in ’64, and I was at South Wayne when it ended in 1970. Along with you, I watched the great ones play—Wally Webb, Roman Armstead, Jesse Trapp, Neely Crenshaw.

  “On the walls of my cluttered office hang the photos of all thirty-four of Rake’s teams. He would send me a picture of the team every year. Often, when I should be working, I’ll light my pipe and stand before them and look at the faces of all the young men he coached. Skinny white boys in the 1950s, with crew cuts and innocent smiles. Shaggier ones in the 1960s, fewer smiles, determined looks, you can almost see the ominous clouds of war and civil rights in their faces. Black and white players smiling together in the seventies and eighties, much bigger kids, with fancier uniforms, some were the sons of boys I played with. I know that every player looking down from my walls was indelibly touched by Eddie Rake. They ran the same plays, heard the same pep talks, got the same lectures, endured the same brutal drills in August. And every one of us at some time became convinced that we truly hated Eddie Rake. But then we were gone. Our pictures hang on the walls, and we spend the rest of our lives hearing the sound of his voice in the locker room, longing for the days when we called him Coach.

  “Most of those faces are here today. Slightly older, grayer, some a bit heavier. All sadder as we say good-bye to Coach Rake. And why do we care? Why are we here? Why are the stands once again filled and overflowing? Well, I will tell you why.

  “Few of us will ever do anything that will be recognized and remembered by more than a handful of people. We are not great. We may be good, honest, fair, hardworking, loyal, kind, generous, and very decent, or we may be otherwise. But we are not considered great. Greatness comes along so rarely that when we see it we want to touch it. Eddie Rake allowed us, players and fans, to touch greatness, to be a part of it. He was a great coach who built a great program and a great tradition and gave us all something great, something we will always cherish. Hopefully, most of us will live long happy lives, but we will never again be this close to greatness. That’s why we’re here.

  “Whether you loved Eddie Rake or you didn’t, you cannot deny his greatness. He was the finest man I’ve ever met. My happiest memories are of wearing the green jersey and playing for him on this field. I long for those days. I can hear his voice, feel his wrath, smell his sweat, see his pride. I will always miss the great Eddie Rake.”

  He paused, then bowed, and abruptly backed away from the microphone as a light, almost awkward applause crept through the crowd. As soon as he sat down, a thick-chested black gentleman in a gray suit stood and marched with great dignity to the podium. Under his jacket was the green jersey. He looked up and gazed upon the crowd packed tightly together.

  “Good afternoon,” he announced with a voice that needed no microphone. “I’m Reverend Collis Suggs, of the Bethel Church of God in Christ, here in Messina.”

  Collis Suggs needed no introduction to anyone who lived within fifty miles of Messina. Eddie Rake had appointed him as the first black captain in 1970. He played briefly at Florida A&M before breaking a leg, then became a minister. He built a large congregation and became involved politically. For years it had been said that if Eddie Rake and Collis Suggs wanted you elected, then you got elected. If not, then take your name off the ballot.

  Thirty years in the pulpit had honed his speaking skills to perfection. His diction was perfect, his timing and pitch were captivating. Coach Rake was known to sneak into the rear pew of the Bethel church on Sunday nights just to hear his former noseguard preach.

  “I played for Coach Rake in ’69 and ’70.” Most of those in the crowd had seen every game.

  “In late July 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court had finally had enough. Fifteen years after Brown versus Board of Education, and most schools in the South were still segregated. The Court took drastic action, and it changed our lives forever. One hot summer night, we were playing basketball in the gym at Section High, the colored school, when Coach Thomas walked in and said, ‘Boys, we’re goin’ to Messina High School. You’re gonna be Spartans. Get on the bus.’ About a dozen of us loaded on the bus, and Coach Thomas drove us across town. We were confused and scared. We had been told many times that the schools would be integrated, but deadlines had come and gone. We knew Messina High had the finest of everything—beautiful buildings, nice fields, a huge gym, lots of trophies, a football team that had won, at that time, something like fifty or sixty straight. And they had a coach who thought he was Vince Lombardi. Yes, we were intimidated, but we knew we had to be brave. We arrived at Messina High that night. The football team was lifting weights in this huge weight room, more weights than I had ever seen in my life. About forty guys pumping iron, sweating, music going. As soon as we walked in, everything was quiet. They looked at us. We looked at them. Eddie Rake walked over, shook hands with Coach Thomas, and said, ‘Welcome to your new school.’ He made us all shake hands, then he sat us down on the mats and gave us a little speech. He said he didn’t care what color we were. All his players wore green. His playing field was perfectly level. Hard work won games, and he didn’t believe in losing. I remember sitting there on that rubber mat, mesmerized by this man. He immediately became my Coach. Eddie Rake was many things, but he was the greatest motivator I’ve ever met. I wanted to put on the pads and start hitting people right then.

  “Two weeks later we started two-a-day practices in August, and I have never hurt so much in my life. Rake was right. Skin color didn’t matter. He treated us all like dogs, equally.

  “There was a lot of concern about the first day of classes, about fights and racial conflict. And most schools saw a lot of it. Not here. The principal put Coach Rake in charge of security, and everything went smoothly. He put all of his players in green game jerseys, same ones we’re wearing right now, and he paired us up, a black player with a white player. When the buses rolled in, we were there to greet them. The first thing the black kids saw at Messina High was the football team, black and white players together, everybody wearing green. A couple of hotheads wanted some trouble, but we convinced them otherwise.

  “The first controversy was over the cheerleaders. The white girls had been practicing all summer as a squad. Coach Rake went to the principal and said half and half would work just fine. And it did. Still does. Next came the band. There wasn’t enough money to combine the white band and the black band and have everybody march in Messina uniforms. Some kids would get cut. It looked like most of those left on the sideline would be black. Coach Rake went to the booster club, said he needed twenty thousand dollars for new band uniforms. Said Messina would have the largest high school marching band in the state, and we still do.

  “There was a lot of resistance to integration. Many white folks thought it was only temporary. Once the courts got finished, then everything would revert back to the old system of separate but equal. I’m here to tell you, separate was never equal. There was a lot of speculation on our side of town about whether the white coaches would actually play us black kids. And there was a lot of pressure from the white side of town to play white kids only. After three weeks of practice with Eddie Rake, we knew the truth. Our first game that year was against North Delta. They hit the field all-white. Had about fifteen black guys on the bench. I knew some of them, knew they could play. Rake put the best players on the field, and we soon realized that North Delta did not. It was a slaughter. At halftime, we were leading forty-one to nothing. When the second half started, the black kids came off the bench for North Delta, and, I have to admit, we relaxed a little. Problem w
as, nobody relaxed with Eddie Rake. If he caught you loafing on the field, then you got to stay on the sideline with him.

  “Word spread that Messina was starting their black kids, and soon the issue was settled all over the state.

  “Eddie Rake was the first white man who ever yelled at me and made me like it. Once I realized that he truly did not care about the color of my skin, then I knew I would follow him anywhere. He hated injustice. Because he wasn’t from here, he brought a different perspective. No person had the right to mistreat another, and if Coach Rake got wind of it then a fight was coming. For all of his toughness, he was terribly sensitive to the suffering of others. After I became a minister, Coach Rake would come to our church and work in our outreach programs. He opened his home to abandoned and abused children. He never made much money as a Coach, but he was generous when someone needed food or clothing or even tuition. He coached youth teams in the summer. Of course, knowing Rake, he was also looking for the boys who could run. He organized fishing rodeos for kids with no fathers. Typically, he never sought recognition for any of this.”

  The reverend took a pause and a sip of water. The crowd watched every move and waited.

  “After they fired Coach Rake, I spent some time with him. He was convinced that he had been treated unfairly. But as the years went by, I think Coach accepted his fate. I know he grieved over Scotty Reardon. And I’m so happy that he was laid to rest this morning next to Scotty. Maybe now this town can stop the feuding. How ironic that the man who put us on the map, the man who did so much to bring so many together, was also the man that Messina has been fighting over for ten years now. Let’s all bury the hatchet, lay down our arms, and make peace over Eddie Rake. We are all one in Christ. And in this wonderful little town, we are one in Eddie Rake. God bless our Coach. God bless you.”

  The string quartet played a mournful ballad that went on for ten minutes.

  ______________

  Leave it to Rake to have the final word. Leave it to Rake to manipulate his players one last time.

  Neely certainly couldn’t say anything bad about his Coach, not at this moment. From the grave, Rake had apologized. Now he wanted Neely to stand before the town, accept the apology, then add a few warm words of his own.

  His first reaction, upon receiving the note from Miss Lila that a eulogy was requested, was to curse and ask, “Why me?” Of all the players Rake coached, dozens were certainly closer to him than Neely. Paul suspected it was Rake’s way of making a final peace with Neely and the ’87 team.

  Whatever the reason, there was no proper way to decline a eulogy. Paul said it simply could not be done. Neely said he’d never done one before, had never spoken in front of a large group, or a small one either, for that matter, and, furthermore, was considering an escape in the middle of the night to avoid the entire matter.

  As he walked slowly among the players, his feet were heavy, his left knee aching more than usual. Without a limp, he stepped onto the small platform and situated himself behind the podium. Then he looked at the crowd, all staring down at him, and he almost fainted. Between the twenty-yard lines—sixty yards total—and up fifty rows, the home side of Rake Field was nothing but a wall of faces peering down to admire an old hero.

  Without a fight, he succumbed completely to fear. He’d been afraid and nervous all morning, now he was terrified. Slowly, he unfolded a sheet of paper and took his time trying to read the words he’d written and rewritten. Ignore the crowd, he told himself. You cannot embarrass yourself. These people remember a great quarterback, not a coward whose voice is cracking.

  “I’m Neely Crenshaw,” he managed to say with some certainty. He found a spot on the chain-link fence along the track, directly in front of him, just over the heads of the players and just under the first row of the bleachers. He would direct his comments to that part of the fence and ignore everything else. Hearing his voice over the public address calmed him a little. “And I played for Coach Rake from ’84 to ’87.”

  He looked at his notes again and remembered a lecture from Rake. Fear is inevitable, and it is not always bad. Harness your fear and use it to your advantage. Of course, to Rake that meant sprinting from the locker room onto the field and trying to cripple the first opposing player in sight. Hardly good advice when eloquent words were needed.

  Staring at the fence again, Neely shrugged and tried to smile and said, “Look, I’m not a judge and I’m not a minister, and I’m not accustomed to speaking before groups. Please be patient with me.”

  The adoring crowd would allow him anything.

  Fumbling with his notes, he began to read. “The last time I saw Coach Rake was in 1989. I was in the hospital, a few days after surgery, and he sneaked into my room late one night. A nurse came in and told him he would have to leave. Visiting hours were over. He explained, very clearly, that he would leave when he got ready, and not one minute before. She left in a huff.”

  Neely glanced up and looked at the players. Lots of smiles. His voice was solid, no cracks. He was surviving.

  “I had not spoken to Coach Rake since the ’87 championship game. Now, I guess everybody knows why. What happened then was a secret that we all buried. We didn’t forget it, because that would’ve been impossible. So we just kept it to ourselves. That night in the hospital I looked up and there was Coach Rake, standing beside my bed, wanting to talk. After a few awkward moments we began to gossip. He pulled a chair close and we talked for a long time. We talked as we had never talked before. Old games, old players, lots of memories of Messina football. We had a few laughs. He wanted to know about my injury. When I told him the doctors were almost certain that I would never play again, his eyes watered and he couldn’t speak for a long time. A promising career was suddenly over, and Rake asked me what I planned to do. I was nineteen years old. I had no idea. He made me promise that I would finish college, a promise that I failed to keep. He finally got around to the championship game, and he apologized for his actions. He made me promise that I would forgive him, another promise I failed to keep. Until now.”

  At some point, without realizing it, Neely’s eyes had drifted away from his notes, and away from the chain-link fence. He was looking at the crowd.

  “When I could walk again, I found that going to class took too much effort. I went to college to play football, and when that was suddenly over I lost interest in studying. After a couple of semesters, I dropped out and drifted for a few years, trying to forget about Messina and Eddie Rake and all the broken dreams. Football was a dirty word. I allowed the bitterness to fester and grow, and I was determined never to come back. With time, I tried my best to forget about Eddie Rake.

  “A couple of months ago I heard that he was very ill and probably would not survive. Fourteen years had passed since I last set foot on this field, the night Coach Rake retired my number. Like all the former players here today, I felt the irresistible call to come home. And to come back to this field where we once owned the world. Regardless of my feelings about Coach Rake, I knew I had to be here when he died. I had to say farewell. And I had to finally, and sincerely, accept his apology. I should have done it earlier.”

  The last few words were strained. He gripped the podium and paused as he looked at Paul and Silo, both nodding, both saying “Get on with it.”

  “Once you’ve played for Eddie Rake, you carry him with you forever. You hear his voice, you see his face, you long for his smile of approval, you remember his tongue-lashings and lectures. With each success in life, you want Rake to know about it. You want to say, ‘Hey Coach, look at what I’ve done.’ And you want to thank him for teaching you that success is not an accident. And with each failure, you want to apologize because he did not teach us to fail. He refused to accept failure. You want his advice on how to overcome it.

  “At times you get tired of carrying Coach Rake around. You want to be able to screw up and not hear him bark. You want to slide and maybe cut a corner without hearing his whistle. Then the voice will tell
you to pick yourself up, to set a goal, work harder than everybody else, stick to the basics, execute perfectly, be confident, be brave, and never, never quit. The voice is never far away.

  “We will leave here today without the physical presence of our Coach. But his spirit will live in the hearts and minds and souls of all the young boys he touched, all the kids who became men under Eddie Rake. His spirit will move us and motivate us and comfort us for the rest of our lives, I guess. Fifteen years later, I think about Coach Rake more than ever.

  “There is a question I’ve asked myself a thousand times, and I know that every player has struggled with it too. The question is, ‘Do I love Eddie Rake, or do I hate him?’ ”

  The voice began to crack and fade. Neely closed his eyes, bit his tongue, and tried to summon the strength to finish. Then he wiped his face and said, slowly, “I’ve answered the question differently every day since the first time he blew his whistle and barked at me. Coach Rake was not easy to love, and while you’re playing here you really don’t like him. But after you leave, after you venture away from this place, after you’ve been kicked around a few times, faced some adversity, some failure, been knocked down by life, you soon realize how important Coach Rake is and was. You always hear his voice, urging you to pick yourself up, to do better, and never quit. You miss that voice. Once you’re away from Coach Rake, you miss him so much.”

  He was straining now. Either sit down or embarrass yourself. He glanced at Silo, who clenched a fist as if to say, “Finish it, and fast.”

  “I’ve loved five people in my life,” he said, looking up bravely at the crowd. His voice was fading, so he gritted his teeth and pushed on. “My parents, a certain girl who’s here today, my ex-wife, and Eddie Rake.”

  He struggled for a long, painful pause, then said, “I’ll sit down now.”

  ______________

  When Father McCabe finished the benediction and dismissed the crowd, there was little movement. The town was not ready to say good-bye to its Coach. As the players stood and gathered around Miss Lila and the family, the town watched from the stands.

  The choir sang a soft spiritual, and a few folks began drifting toward the front gate.

  Every player wanted to say something to Jesse Trapp, as if chatting him up might delay his inevitable return to prison. After an hour, Rabbit cranked up the John Deere mower and began cutting the south end zone. There was, after all, a game to be played. Kickoff against Hermantown was five hours away. When Miss Lila and the family began moving away from the tent, the players followed slowly behind. Workers quickly disassembled the tent and removed the tarp and folding chairs. The home benches were arranged in a straight line. The field paint crew, a highly experienced squad of boosters, began scurrying around, already behind schedule. They worshiped Rake, but the field had to be striped and the midfield logo touched up. The cheerleaders arrived and began working furiously to hang hand-painted banners along the fence around the field. They tinkered with a fog machine to enhance the team’s dramatic entry through the end zone. They looped hundreds of balloons around the goalposts. Rake was only a legend to them. At the moment, they had far more serious matters to think about.

  The band could be heard in the distance, on one of the practice fields, tuning up, practicing maneuvers.

  Football was in the air. Friday night was rapidly approaching.

  At the front gate, the players shook hands and hugged and made the usual promises to get together more often. Some took quick photos of the remnants of old teams. More hugs, more promises, more long sad looks at the field where they once played under the great Eddie Rake.

  Finally, they left.

  ______________