Her tone of voice and the look on her face told me she was being kind, not uncaring. “How will I know?”
She shrugged. “If he starts sleeping more, doesn’t move around much, appears to be getting stiff and doesn’t let you touch him, you’ll know he’s in more pain than he can bear and he’s started the slow, and in his case painful, process of dying.”
For reasons I could not explain, that hurt me. I picked him up, cradling him. “Thanks.”
She looked at me with an honest but caring look. “Sometimes we find them too late.”
I held Tux in my arms. “Right now, I’m living on the singular hope that sometimes love heals things that seem impossible.”
She smiled. “That it does. I’ll hope with you. Let us know if we can help.” She gently wrapped her fingers around his good leg and held it. “He’s in good hands.”
Obviously, she had no idea who I was, and I had no intention of correcting her. “Thanks.”
I spent most of what little I had on designer dog food, some high-nutrition treats, a padded lamb’s wool bed, and the prescription. When I got him home, I fed him, gave him a treat, and showed him his bed, where he promptly curled up and went to sleep.
About that time, a horn started honking at what sounded like my gate. When it hadn’t quit after ten minutes, I cranked the bike and idled down the road to where a man I didn’t know stood leaning into his Audi A8, pressing hard on the horn. Early twenties, he wore a baseball cap, khaki pants, oxford shirt, Rolex watch. I pulled up to the gate as he lifted his hand off the horn.
“Sir, can I help you?”
While the engine purred, he strolled around the car, carrying a bag. His shirt read ESPN. The smirk on his face made me pretty certain that I did not want whatever was in that bag. When he reached the fence that separated us, he tilted his cap back and seemed to chuckle. He did not look familiar.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe it’s you.” Another half chuckle. “After all this time, I mean, it’s really you.”
I didn’t respond.
Without warning, he tossed the bag over the fence. It climbed a few feet in the air and dropped onto the dirt at my feet. I never took my eyes off him. He nodded. “Go ahead. It won’t hurt you.” A final chuckle. “Least not nearly as much as me.”
The brown bag had been stapled at the top. I knelt, hefted the bag, and then slowly pulled at the staples. I found a worn and hand-oiled NFL football inside.
I looked up but said nothing. He responded with, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Still I said nothing.
He adjusted the hat on his head. “Funny. I can’t forget you.” He paused, scratched his chin, then stepped up to the fence and hung his hands on the chain link. “It took me years to see this, but… you’re the worst kind of human being.”
I turned the ball in my hands. It read, Mac, Blessings on your life and dreams. Matthew #8.
The pieces fell together and I remembered. “You’re that kid from the ESPN audience after the draft.”
“And you’re the pathetic lying fraud who betrayed us all.”
I held the ball in my hands as he spat through the fence, turned, stepped into his car, and drove away.
I watched as his car disappeared. I turned the ball in my hands. At one time, it had seen a lot of use. When I looked up, red taillights had been replaced by light-blue headlights. The expensive kind.
The windows were tinted too dark to see inside but when the Bentley pulled up to the gate, I could see a left hand. One large ring stood out. And there’s only one type of ring that is that big and that gaudy.
A Super Bowl Champion ring.
The car stopped, and Roddy stepped out. Designer shades, designer watch, designer suit, designer shoes. He looked like a million dollars, and what he was wearing probably cost fifty thousand. He pulled off his glasses, walked to the fence, and smiled. A large diamond stud in his left ear. A single nod. “Rocket.”
I shook my head. “I wondered when they’d send you.”
He weighed his head side to side. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I was looking for an excuse to get down here anyway.”
I pulled open the gate, and he hugged me. After twelve years in the league, ten Pro Bowls, two Super Bowl MVPs, three World Champion rings, and a slew of endorsements to his name, he was fit and strong as ever. He said, “You got a few minutes?”
I opened the gate wider, and he drove that quarter-of-a-million-dollar car with a five-hundred-dollar detail onto my dusty road. I led him to the house, where we sat on the front porch and he stared at the disheveled mess around my cabin, and the charred remains of the mattress in the front yard. “Visitors?”
“Just some folks expressing their opinion.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I saw the prison video.” He shook his head. “It impressed a lot of people.”
“I heard.”
“They asked me to convince you to come out of retirement.”
I squinted. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”
He laughed and opened the brown bag. Pulling out the ball, he read the signature. “What’s the story with this?”
“It’s complicated.”
He stood, mounted a GoPro camera on his window, and tossed me the ball, backing up down the dirt road. “Come on. I know you’re old and rusty, but I thought I’d do you a favor and make you feel like the man you once were.”
The GoPro sat some thirty-plus yards from me. Maybe closer to forty. “That thing on?”
He smiled. “HD.”
I tossed it back, weak, off course, and with too much arc. He raised an eyebrow and returned it to me. “Prison do that to you?”
I caught it and wobbled a duck back in his general direction. He flung it back at me, hard and tight spiraled. “You need me to remind you?”
I shook my head. “No. I can remember just fine.”
He smiled and slid his glasses onto the end of his nose. “Then throw the ball.”
I did as he asked. The ball left my hand, whistled through the air, and dissected the GoPro from its mount on the window. The camera went one direction, the mount the other. Roddy nodded in approval, retrieved the ball, and pitched it back. I caught it, set my feet, and shot a bullet at his head. He just had time to get his hands up before the pigskin split his part. He paused, smiled wider, and tossed it back. This continued a few minutes. After a dozen or so throws, he retrieved a pair of gloves from his car and mimicked shooting a syringe into his arm. “You sure they didn’t feed you some juice in that prison?”
“Orange juice on Monday and Wednesday. Cranberry Tuesday and Thursday. Fruit punch on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Room-temp water anytime you want it.”
Having seen and felt enough, he trotted to me, handed me the ball, and then spread out wide to my left, the dirt road stretching out in front of us. He raised an eyebrow and waited.
I smiled. “You okay running in those shoes? I don’t want you to pull a hammy and sue me when the team releases you.”
“I can handle whatever you dish out.”
“Red muscle thirty-two, sticky free china.”
He chuckled and followed it with a slow nod. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”
“And don’t get stuffed at the line.”
He laughed louder and nodded. I snapped the ball and he took off. I loved watching Roddy run. Poetry in motion. And after a decade in the pros, he could fly. I watched him float, thirty, forty, fifty. When he hit fifty-five yards, I released the ball and he caught it in stride seventy-plus yards down the road. He trotted back, breathing slightly, and handed me the ball.
We returned to the porch, where I offered him a warm ginger ale that he accepted. We sat in the quiet a few minutes, neither talking nor feeling the need to. When he did speak, it was purposeful. He sipped from his soda can. “I know you’ve got a few things stacked against you, but they’d like you to consider trying out. Quietly. No press. Just you and me. Asked me to lean on yo
u.”
I stared down into my glass. “Roddy—” I shook my head.
He stood, pulled on his suit coat, and slid his glasses back over his eyes. The diamond glistened, matching his pearly white teeth. He straightened his coat, fixed his tie. When I reached out my hand, he accepted it and held it. He said, “I don’t pretend to know what happened. If it’s true—” He paused. Shook his head. “But I’ve played twelve years. Been with three teams and caught passes from maybe a dozen guys who stood behind center. None of them have what you—” He eyed the road. “Still got.” He let go, walked to his car, collected the pieces of the GoPro, and then paused, holding onto the door. He wanted to say something else, but when it got to the tip of his tongue, he thought better of it and stepped into his car.
He shut the door, and the dust swirled behind him as he drove slowly out the drive. I whispered, “It means more than you know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tux slept for the better part of a week and into the second. Morning and evening, I worked with Dee, trying to straighten out his arm. Because Dee’s desire to please his coach, win his approval, ran deep, so did the wound. Hence, progress on his arm was slow. I’m not knocking his heart; all players want to please their coach. Dee’s case was different because he never knew his dad, and Coach Demon, like it or not, filled an empty place in Dee’s heart. All coaches do. Problem was, he was filling it with violent tirades, poor coaching, and betrayal. And based on what I could gather, Dee would experience more betrayal before this season was over.
During the day, I laid low and kept clear of public places. And each night, I crept back across the half mile that separated us, hunkered below the window, and waited until I heard the remote control fall onto the floor. I lingered longer as Audrey lived out her nights in worn-out reruns and a self-induced coma. Sitting on the floor next to her bed, I’d slip my hand beneath hers, marveling at the callouses earned in her garden. I’d brush the hair behind her ears, wanting desperately to trace the lines of her figure but feeling guilty at the thought. In that conflicted place I sat, bathing in the sight and smell and sound of my wife. And, yes, I worried a good bit about the unknown effects of the drugs on her life and how long she’d been taking them. Watching her shower proved she’d lost at least ten pounds since I’d been gone. Maybe more. And she never really had it to lose. In the dark, listening to her breathe, “life without parole” took on new meaning. Each night, the glue that held me to the floor grew stronger.
One Thursday night around ten p.m., I looked through Audrey’s window to find her room empty. Scratching my head, I thought I heard laughter. A strange sound rising from the pious reverence of a convent when so many haven’t spoken in years. What’s more, the laughter was familiar. I hadn’t heard it in a long time, but there was no mistake.
I climbed the wall and followed my ears, circling around to a large, well-lit building in the center. Well-lit wasn’t a good place for me, so I shimmied off the wall and onto the roof of the building where the skylights had been opened.
I crawled on my belly, poking my eyes and nose over the edge of the skylight, staring down on the circus below. Audrey sat, legs crossed, on the carpet, looking through reading glasses at Dee, who was standing in front of her. Scattered around her were several multiple-choice tests where the bubbles had been filled in. A large table off to one side, a couch behind her, and a very large flat-screen TV hung on the wall. Reel-to-reel and VHS films filled one wall of shelves. The handwriting on the covers and spine was mine. So that’s where they went. On the table behind them sat a messy stack of papers and one very thick book simply entitled, SAT.
The TV had been turned on, and frozen on the screen stood me. My senior year of high school, I’d been made the Joker of the Homecoming Court. In good humor, the school had revolted against me and said I’d already won enough awards, so I had been appointed court jester. It was a lot of fun. The night before homecoming, I’d performed a one-man skit, poking fun at myself. I’d slicked my hair over, wore a whistle on a cord around my neck, pocket protector, white tape around the nosepiece of my glasses, shorts hiked up, socks rolled up, and high-top sneakers. I was the epitome of a cliché nerd. My voice and stage presence was Patton. My body posture was Carol Burnett—meaning I stuck my butt a foot out over my heels at all times. And my voice was as close as I could get to the sheriff in Cool Hand Luke in his famous phrase, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” I had morphed myself into “Professor P.E.,” and I was giving the gym class an exercise in how to throw the football. In my best Tim Conway impression, I was stumbling over myself, couldn’t throw a spiral to save my life, rattling off about kinetic chain… it was marvelous fun. The school gave me a standing ovation. I think they enjoyed watching me let my hair down for once. The TV had been paused as I was demonstrating the catapult.
Below me, Dee stood center stage. Football in hand, a whistle around his neck, a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses with a piece of white tape wrapped around the nosepiece, a pocket protector containing an assortment of pens had been taped to his chest, his shorts were hiked up to his armpits, and his socks were stretched to the tops of his knees. He had contorted his voice to sound older and, in all honesty, more constipated. His forehead was wrinkled and his hand motions looked oddly familiar. Lastly, his hips and butt had been shoved out. His entire body was one giant caricature. Of me. I listened and caught him in midsentence. “So, what we have here, young man, is a failure to commune-cate.” He spun the football and rolled the whistle around his mouth. His accent was spot-on, and his imitation of the sheriff was better than mine. “This is a football, made of Grade A pigskin. It’s not an egg. You didn’t lay it. You throw it. Like this.” More Carol Burnett. “See here—you are a giant catapult. Kinetic energy starts in your feet, travels up your shin bone into your thigh bone—”
Audrey was holding out one hand like a stop sign and laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.
He continued. “Into your belly bone. Which is in here.” He made a circle around his stomach. “It swirls around in there before shimmying up your funny bone, your backbone, on into your neck bone and jawbone, spinning around your eye bone, and finally dribbling out your shoulder and finger bone. Now you want to hold the ball—” He mimicked a terrible grip and an awful-looking throw where the ball fell out of his hand and rolled around the floor. He kicked it every time he tried to pick it up. All the while, his voice had me pegged to a T.
In between breaths, Audrey managed, “Stop! I’m about to pee in my pants.”
Dee ran both hands along the inside band of his shorts, lifted his feet like both heels were stuck in gum, and continued his impersonation.
He was fantastic.
With his left hand, Dee hit resume with the remote and we all three watched me, Professor P.E., hold class almost seventeen years ago.
In the video, I invited my sidekick, Miss Cleaning Lady, onto the stage to help demonstrate. Audrey walked up on stage, carrying a mop and wearing my jersey and a pink skirt in which the butt had been stuffed with an enormous pillow. She picked up a bag of about ten footballs and began throwing tight spirals out into the audience. The place went crazy. In the background, I attempted to critique an otherwise perfect throw, telling her, “No, honey, that’s not, that’s not the way you…” The audience was eating out of her hand. In homage to George C. Scott and his famous speech at the beginning of the movie Patton, I spun my whistle, marching left and right on the stage and spoke into the microphone as she continued throwing balls into the balcony. “Now, in tomorrow’s game… we’re not having any of this nonsense about holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that.” I began thrusting my fist like a car engine. “We will be advancing our position continually…” The crowd loved it. Between her throws and my best attempt at Patton, we’d brought them to their feet.
With her bag empty, Miss Cleaning Lady slung it over her shoulder, curtsied for the audience, and kissed Professor P.E. on th
e cheek. “Thanks, Professor.” Finally, she hooked her arm in mine and we bowed for the crowd.
Dee cut the video. Audrey sat up, wiped her eyes, and just sat there shaking her head, a smile on her face. She spoke both to Dee and herself. “That seems like another lifetime.”
Dee began adjusting his nerd attire back to normal and commented, “You two made a pretty good team.”
Several seconds passed before she responded. “Yes, we did.”
They packed up, turned out the light, and the sound of their steps and Dee’s continual mimicking of me faded away down the hall, leaving me on the roof staring up at the stars, wrapped in the sound of my wife’s laughter.
And while part of me was jealous of their time together, the other part marveled at a man-sized kid named Dalton Rogers and the role he had played and continued to play in Audrey’s life. Lying there, I realized that Dee had done and was doing what I could not.
He made my wife laugh.
And I loved him for it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mid-July. Dee arrived unannounced in my drive. I stepped off the porch and walked up to the van where he sat with the windows down and engine running. He was still wearing his apron with his name on the front and his pin, which read, THREE YEARS OF SERVICE. A sweat towel was draped over his shoulder, as the AC in the van was evidently not cooling too well.
“Thought you were working,” I said.
“I am.” He thumbed over his shoulder. The back of the van was packed floor to ceiling with canned and boxed goods and sodas and other nonperishables. “Every few weeks, we haul the expired stuff to the food bank in Valdosta. I’m headed there now.” He spoke without looking at me. “I was just wondering if maybe… you wanted to maybe help me unload some of it—” He wiped his forehead. “Here.”
It took me a second to realize that Dee was offering me food. “I can’t—”