I straightened him up, lifting his chin. “Steel bars can’t kill me. But these bars on my heart?” I searched the stands for Audrey. “I need a little help with those.”
The cameras caught our movement when we walked out of the trees on the far side, sending people scurrying off the sideline. We met them in the end zone. Everybody in the bleachers stood and began chanting, “Rocket! Rocket! Rocket!”
Wood managed the crowd around us and made space for Roddy to pass through with a few of his friends. They were younger guys, and I only knew them by reputation. Roddy introduced them. “Guys, Rocket. Matthew…” He gestured to his buddies. “Posse.”
I shook their hands. “Thanks for coming. Guys, this is Dee, but I call him Clark Kent. If it’s all right with you, I’ve asked him to help me out.”
Roddy handed me a pair of cleats. “As you requested. You need me to remind you how to put them on?”
I laughed. “Probably.”
He held up a second pair and pointed to Dee.
I responded, “Yep.”
He handed the cleats to Dee, who held them like an egg. Dee looked at me. “Can I accept these?”
I laughed.
I turned to the crowd of reporters. There must have been fifty video cameras pointed at me. “I’d like to thank everybody for coming out on such short notice. I realize that’s rather high maintenance of me, and—” Most everybody laughed. “That’s not my intention. After a short layoff…” More laughter. “I am officially expressing my intent to reenter the National Football League.” Several reporters began shouting questions, but Wood raised his hands and silenced them. I continued, “I know all of you have questions, and we’ll get to each one. But I’ve invited you here this afternoon to assess my ability. To let you see me in person and determine for yourselves if you think there’s a spot for me in the league. I know many of you have doubts about a video made of me in prison. If I were you, I’d have doubts, too, so you’re in good company. I have a bit of a history with rather fantastic and unbelievable videos.” Most got the joke and the uncomfortable laughter spread. I paused. “I’ll address that on the field.” I turned to Dee. “I’ve asked a good friend of mine to join me today.” All the cameras moved to Dee. What color had slowly returned to his face immediately fled. “This is Dalton Rogers.” I smiled. “You might keep an eye on him, as you’ll be hearing more about him.” I turned back to Wood. “You got the bird?”
He held his earpiece with one hand while speaking into the other. Whoever was listening on the other end quickly responded. Wood smirked. “Ready.”
“Mount up. We’re headed south. You can catch up.” I turned back to the reporters. “If I were you, one of my first questions about me would deal with my level of fitness. Of strength. Can I play through the fourth quarter and into the fifth?” I paused to let that settle in. “For the record, this is the same workout I’ve done since I was here in high school. For those of you who have vehicles, you’re going to need them. For those of you who don’t, don’t worry. Have a seat. Get comfortable. The show will start momentarily.” I turned to Roddy, his guys, and Dee. “You ready?”
Roddy laughed. “Old man, I’m ready for whatever you think you’re man enough to dish out.” He pointed at my and Dee’s tattered black boots. The video cameras followed. “You sure you want to run in those?”
I placed a ball in Dee’s hands. “Show them how it’s done.”
We ran through the woods, climbed up on the tracks, and started south. I watched Dee out of the corner of my eye. He’d turned the corner. He was running like a deer. When the helicopter appeared overhead and filed in behind us, with Wood staring down and a harness-mounted cameraman recording our every move via live-feed, Roddy thumbed over his shoulder and said, “What is that?”
I patted him on the back. “That’s Wood. Broadcasting what we’re doing on a giant screen on the field we just left. You always did like an audience.” Roddy cussed under his breath and quickened his step.
After a mile, Dee stretched his legs, covering two railroad ties at a time, then three. He followed the drill to the letter. At five miles, we turned around. One of Roddy’s fellow receivers had dropped off, the other was sucking wind and lagging behind. Roddy was talking in my ear. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Nope.” I pointed at Dee. “Just trying to show them what he’s made of.”
He hollered beneath the noise of the helicopter. “My contract doesn’t say anything about running on any railroad track, and if it weren’t for that camera above my head, and the fact that Roderick Nation is watching this live, I’d give you the finger and tell you where you could put this railroad track.”
I always loved playing with Roddy. The trash-talking was priceless.
At ten miles, we were clicking off close to five-minute miles. We ran down off the tracks, up the dirt road, past the cabin, and hit the base of the Bucket at full stride. We were all suffering, but we were also flying.
Behind me, I heard Roddy laughing. Halfway up, I tapped Dee on the shoulder. “Go on.” He found his last gear—the one we’d spent all summer creating—and Roddy struggled to catch him. When we got to the top, Roddy put his hands on his knees and looked at Dee, “Boy! Who is you? What college you play for? You SEC? PAC 10? Big 12?”
I laughed and started trotting down. “Come on, you’re about to find out.”
On the field, we laced up our cleats and started throwing the ball around. Pretty soon, we led into drills. Then patterns. Routes. Multiple reads. We spent a lot of time at twelve-to fifteen-to twenty-yard routes. Hitting outside shoulders, timing patterns. These were the bread and butter. The money routes. A lot of folks put a lot of emphasis on long balls, but it’s the short, quick routes that win. Death by a thousand cuts.
I stayed close to Dee, stayed in his ear, and talked him through. “Remember the junkyard. The throws are just the same.” I pointed at Roddy and his posse, helping Dee make the connection. “Michelin, B.F. Goodrich. MINI Cooper. Pirelli. Goodyear. Remember the catapult. And follow through.” He nodded, settled in, did everything I did, and began firing bullets.
Somewhere in here, he threw a pass to one of the other receivers and it tore the receiver’s glove at the seam. “Oohs” and “aahs” erupted out of the receiver core. Pretty soon, they started calling him Superman and Kryptonite. The banter proved to be a windfall, as the other receivers were soon lining up to run routes for him. Dee was in the middle of his count, audibling to his receivers, when he stopped, turned to me, winked, and then finished his count.
That’s when I knew.
I stood back behind him, letting him have the center of the field. A few minutes later, Damon broke his clipboard over his knee and walked out of the stadium through the tunnel.
After about twenty minutes of underneath routes, Dee called an audible at the line and hit one of Roddy’s guys on a forty-two-yard post with very little air beneath it that brought the scouts to their feet. And when he hit Roddy in stride on a fifty-five-yard fly, everybody in the stadium hit their feet and ESPN began broadcasting live from the field. Roddy brought the ball back to me and whispered, “You done playing, prison boy?”
I looked out across the field and heard the echo of my father. His smile. Our laughter. I saw Wood’s sweat-stained face in the huddle. The scoreboard. I remembered the smell of cut grass, wet paint, and the singular sound of a girl who held my heart in one hand and a penny-filled milk jug in the other—screaming at the top of her lungs.
Despite my pain and the conclusion that was swiftly coming, I remembered the wonder and majesty and beauty of this game. I remembered my love.
And when I lifted a heel, setting Roddy in motion, and began my count, “Blue forty-two, blue forty-two. Hot check razor. Hot check razor,” the bars melted.
Roddy ran behind me, taunting me. “You sure you can throw it that far? Don’t want you embarrassing yourself in front of all these people.”
Roddy reached the left hash.
“Hut-hut-hut.”
I snapped the ball to myself, and Roddy looked as if he’d been shot out of a gun. While everyone in the stands and on the sideline saw just me and Roddy on the field, I read the linebacker’s outside swim of the corner, telling me that he was closing off the inside and Roddy was going long into the corner of the end zone. I dropped five steps, read my weak side receiver who’d been stuffed at the line, faked to a back in the flats to draw the safeties, and then turned, ducked under the defensive tackle who’d beat my leftside tackle, rolled right evading the outside linebacker, set my feet, pulled down on my left arm, and launched a rocket into the corner of the end zone, where Roddy wasn’t yet but would be in about two and a half seconds. The ball spiraled, turned nose down, and Roddy caught it seventy yards downfield, in stride, over his left shoulder in the corner of the end zone.
That one got them talking and silenced the critics.
Turning, I spotted Audrey for the first time. She was sitting in “her seat,” cheering, wearing Dee’s jersey. I waved once. She placed her hand over her heart and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
I pulled down slightly on my collar and showed her the dove around my neck.
I threw for almost an hour and ESPN2 covered the entire workout live.
At eight p.m., Wood blew the horn and Dee and I gathered in the middle of the field where we began fielding questions. The first reporter shoved a microphone in Dee’s face and said, “Dalton, what college do you attend?”
“Um—” I smiled as Audrey slipped through the crowd where Dee could see her and she could hear him. “I’m a senior here at St. Bernard.”
The response was effusive.
One of the reporters asked, “How old are you?”
Dee looked at me and I nodded. He said, “I’m seventeen.”
That brought the volume up until one young reporter in the front put two and two together. I watched his face as the pieces fell in line. He eyed my ankle, then Dee, then me. When he asked the question, I heard the words leave his mouth in slow motion. “But Matthew, isn’t that a violation of your parole?”
You could hear a pin drop.
I spoke loud enough so everyone could hear me. “Yes, it is.”
While silence settled over the crowd and no one knew what to say, a black Crown Vic drove out onto the track. I was thankful she hadn’t gotten here sooner, but maybe she had and was just waiting for those three words. I turned to Dee as she elbowed her way through the crowd. “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble playing this year.” I smiled. “Or next.”
The reality of what we’d just done, of what he’d done, of what I’d done, began to set in. He nodded, and Audrey slipped her arm inside his. I was glad he had her. And she, him.
Debbie stomped onto the field and spoke with great volume so everyone knew she had the floor. Which she did. “Matthew Rising, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do—” Her agents spun me around, handcuffed me, and were leading me to the car when Audrey stepped between us. She stared up at me. Her whisper was broken. “You have something that belongs to me.”
I bowed my head and she lifted the dove off my neck, holding it in her hand. The chain draped over her shaking hand and dangled between us. Dee noticed she was shaking and put his arm around her.
What bars remained, shattered.
I pressed my forehead to hers and said words twelve years in the making. “And you have something of mine.” I kissed her cheek. “Always have.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The reality of my return to prison occurred about the same time the electronic lock of my cell door clicked solidly into place. I sat on my cot and stared at my surroundings. Not much had changed. My life in sixty-four-square feet. They’d removed my anklet when I arrived, which was a strange sensation. Free but not.
Wood said that an anonymous tip had alerted authorities to my relationship with Dee. Evidence of this was the unedited video coverage of our workouts. The same I’d seen in the DVD taped to my door. Wood explained the case against me was open and closed. His experience with me and videos was not good, so he suggested I plead guilty. I told him that I was and that I intended to. He said that, by statute, the judge would rule that I serve out the remainder of my first sentence and add to that another ten years for every infraction of my parole. Given the video, we both knew what that meant.
The morning after our workout, the athletic director, along with many of the boosters at St. Bernard’s, had a rather short meeting with Damon. Dee was named the starting quarterback. Debbie had dropped any and all charges against Dee regarding the food he gave me. Now that it was proven the food had been expired, his boss even offered him his job back. In the month after my return to prison, the first three games of the season came and went. Dee played well beyond our expectations. Last Friday night Dee threw six touchdown passes and ran for three more. Street & Smith’s had him ranked in their top twenty, and he was climbing weekly. Cut from the tether of rejection that anchored him to his past, he’d blossomed, proving Audrey right.
Every soul has an anchor.
I had not let Dee come see me because I felt that seeing me in here would be too tough on him. Okay, too tough on me. I didn’t know how I would live out the rest of my days in this steel box. I hadn’t come to grips with that. I just knew that I’d been let out for a reason. That reason was to find Audrey and love what and who she loved: Dee. And I’d done that. And something in me found great pleasure in having done so. I cannot explain that. All I know was that when they shut that prison door behind me, I was lonely and there was a piercing pain in my heart, but I wasn’t angry.
Maybe the only comfort I had was knowing that Audrey would be okay. That day at the field, I saw relief in her. And release. Wood has been sitting next to her at all of Dee’s games, shaking a penny-filled milk jug right alongside her. He told me that she looked better, not so gaunt. No black circles under her eyes. Even gained a few pounds. And that every time he saw her, she was wearing the dove—not hiding it. I was glad about that. Really. He said she’d been working some in the garden. She’d shown him the recreation of the play, even showed him his likeness on the field. He’d laughed. He said she was making some changes. Even planted a young oak tree next to the wall.
I don’t know what happened that last day on that field. I would not say that Audrey grew to trust me, nor would I say that she had forgiven me for what she believed I’d done. But she learned to live with it. She saw what I did for Dee and while that did not erase the past, it made the memory of it not so painful. The torment was gone.
Gage appeared at seven p.m. with a transistor radio and folding chair. He sat on one side of the bars, and I lay on my bunk on the other. We rested the radio between us. Several of the guys around me leaned against their walls and listened. Fourth game of the season and it was homecoming. St. Bernard scored early and often and, from the sound of things, Dee was in control of everything around him. In the second quarter, the announcer said that he just learned there were over forty college scouts in the stands. I smiled. Word had spread. It’d worked.
At halftime the seniors paraded across midfield. Dee had asked Audrey to walk with him. I’d like to have seen that. As each senior began the walk with their folks, or whomever they’d chosen to walk them out, the announcer spoke about the achievements of each one. When Dee and Audrey started at the goal line, the announcer attempted to speak but was drowned out by applause and stomping on the metal bleachers. I could see Dee escorting Audrey out along midfield, his helmet under one arm and Audrey locked in the other. And in my mind’s eye I could see Audrey’s smile—her pride in and for him.
The announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Dalton Rogers is a graduating senior with a 4.27 GPA. For the last three years, he has stocked shelves and bagged groceries at a local grocery store. Until a few weeks ago he was unsure if he’d be able to go to college…” We could hear laughter from the folks in the stands. “But with all the events of the last few
weeks, he now has over fifty Division I offers to choose from. Dalton is, as of today, Street & Smith’s number one high school pick in the nation.” At this point, the applause drowned out the announcer. When he was able to continue, he said, “But Dalton says while he is grateful for that, he is more grateful to the two people who made it happen, Audrey and Matthew Rising.” There was no applause this time. Just silence. “Dalton says that he was orphaned as a child and left at St. Bernard’s. He has no memory of his biological parents, and St. Bernard’s is the only home he’s ever known.” In the background, we heard a high-toned whistle and somebody screaming, “Dalton, we love you!” The announcer again, “Mama Audrey, as he calls her, helped raise him. She’s the closest thing to a mother he’s ever known. She taught him how to read, tie his shoes, and throw a football. He says the two of them, thanks to her extensive video collection, have watched over a thousand hours of video analyzing the quarterback play of Matthew Rising.” The announcer paused and said, “As an aside, I’m told you can ask Dalton about any game in the Rocket’s career and he can tell you what plays were run, where, and the score of each game. He says that while he has watched countless hours of video, and heard the stories and rumors and legends of Matthew Rising, it was only this past summer that he got to know him when Matthew was paroled from prison. He credits Audrey with teaching him the mechanics of football, and in a large sense, making him the quarterback he is today. Without her, he’d not be here, but he says it was not until he met ‘the Rocket’ that he fell in love with the game on a deeper level and learned how to play it out of his heart and not his head. He says he realizes folks may not understand that, but Matthew taught him how to play out of what he loved, and not what he hated or what he feared. He says if it weren’t for Mama and the Rocket, he’d not be here tonight, and, with their permission, he’d like to dedicate this season to them.”