Jenny had tears in her eyes when he drew back and kissed her good-bye.
On the way to school, Jim realized again how true his prayer was. Jenny had always believed in him, always encouraged him. Sure, they had times when they disagreed about the kids. He thought she spent too much money on Bailey and she was a little too forgiving when the kids left a light on or didn’t clean their rooms. Jenny called Jim reclusive when he slipped off to watch a football game during a CKT party now and then.
There was a time when his faith hadn’t nearly been what it was today. But even through those stages, Jenny was patient, gently sharing a Bible verse or complimenting him about his coaching and telling him she was praying for him in the same breath.
After Bailey was born, Jim had taken a harder look at his life and also his eventual death. He had realized that if he didn’t wake up one day, he wasn’t sure whether he’d land in heaven or hell. He joined Jenny at church and started going to a triple-B class: Basic Beginner’s Bible study. He learned about God and grew closer to Jenny along the way.
Jim wasn’t perfect. Once in a while he still yelled a little too loud at a player or grumbled about the school district’s handling of sports schedules.
But for sixteen years he hadn’t been afraid to fall asleep.
He could only hope that after tonight, the same would be true for his players.
Word must’ve gotten out, because every player on the Clear Creek football team gathered in the locker room for the seven o’clock meeting. Christmas break had officially started, and today they’d gotten out of school before lunch. Jim wasn’t sure how many guys would care enough to come back.
But here they were. Captains Tanner Williams, Jack Spencer, and Todd Carson. Brandon Reeves, the clean-cut kicker, and the small group of guys who hadn’t touched a drink all season. And sitting by himself, a pale Cody Coleman.
Jim looked around the room, taking count again, meeting the eyes of the players grouped together on benches, leaning on lockers, and sitting on the floor. He’d been right the first time. They were all here.
Never mind that football had ended weeks ago. The locker room smelled the way it always did—of teenage sweat and heavy rubber mats and the faint hint of pine cleaner. The guys settled down, and even the whispers and occasional clang of a shutting locker fell to an expectant silence.
Jim stood in a back corner and studied his team, the guys who had hung on his every word during the season. Let them listen now more than ever, Lord. Please . . .
Jim had talked to Ryan about the meeting and Joe’s Aguedo’s involvement. Ryan was unable to attend, but he’d given Jim the go-ahead.
Jim had asked Joe to go first. Normally on the sidelines Joe was a jovial guy. The players had come to expect a handshake or a joke from him. But here, he looked like the steely-eyed, street-smart police officer he must’ve been in his glory days. He stood at the front of the room with his feet apart, arms crossed. “Coach asked me to share a little something from my days as a police officer, working the streets of LA.” His voice was deep.
Jim saw a few of his players sit a little straighter.
“Word around school is that this team has a drinking problem.” Joe made eye contact with Cody, then Tanner Williams. “Captains, leaders . . . going to parties, getting drunk.” His tone fell short of defeat but just barely. “Guys your age think you’re invincible. Big, strong football players. Taking third place in regionals.” He paced along the front of the room and looked at Jack Spencer and Todd Carson. “You think it’ll last forever.”
Jim studied his players. Some of them were staring at their shoelaces, probably counting down the minutes until the meeting was over. But Cody was listening. Tanner, too, and maybe a third of the others. Jim kept praying.
Joe stopped and faced them again. “You think you’ll always have the privilege of wearing the Clear Creek blue and gray because you’re an athlete, and the games and practices and girls clamoring for your attention will be one long joyride that’ll never end. And like football players all over the country as far back as the sport itself, you think it’s cool to drink. Throw down a few beers at a party, get so drunk people have to tell you that you climbed a tree in your underwear before you threw up.”
A few quiet chuckles sounded from the players.
“Exactly.” Joe smiled and pointed at one of the guys. “See? It’s all a big joke, right? ‘Lay off, Joe. . . . Leave us alone, Coach.’” Joe’s smile dimmed. “Only here’s the part that isn’t funny.” His gaze became hard and intense. “It isn’t funny when you take a call at one in the morning and find the twisted remains of two cars that hit each other head-on at fifty miles an hour.” He cupped his hands together and held them out. “All the brains in your head could fit right here in the palms of my hands.”
A couple of guys looked down. But no one was laughing.
“That’s right; look away. At those crazy drinking parties, no one ever talks about what it’s like to see a teenage boy’s brains splattered on the road, lying there between sheared-off bumpers and shattered glass and empty beer cans.” Joe bit his lip and let his intensity settle down for a moment. “I can talk to you all night about what I’ve seen, about the hysterical parents rushing into an emergency room too late to say good-bye. All because a couple of football players thought it was cool to drink.”
The guys were gripped now; Jim could sense it. God was working here, even if the players didn’t know it yet.
Joe shook his head. “I’m not going to do that. There isn’t enough time.” He walked to the DVD player. “Everything you need to know about drinking and driving is right here in this film.” He nodded to Jim, and Jim hit the lights. Then Joe pushed a few buttons on the player, adjusted the sound, and took a spot along the side wall.
On the screen—before any credits or title or buildup—was a car full of guys. The driver and two of the kids in the backseat were drinking beer as they barreled along a two-lane highway. Music blared, and the only thing louder was the laughter from the kids as they shared a brief memory from earlier that night about a couple of girls and how easy they’d looked passed out on the sofa at the party they were at.
It was a typical scene—guys being guys. Jim guessed every player in the room could relate.
Maybe fifteen seconds into the film, the driver looked back at one of his buddies, and as he did he veered into oncoming traffic and the headlights of a minivan. The explosion of glass and metal and screeching tires played out as the camera appeared to catch in slow motion the horror happening inside the car full of teenage boys.
This part of the film was a reenactment, slow with blurred images. But when the wrecked vehicles came to rest and the noise died down, the footage became real. The video put everyone in the locker room inside a speeding police car, heading to the scene of a two-car collision with possible fatalities. One of the officers in the car was Joe Agueda. A voice-over explained that in an attempt to discourage teenage drinking and driving, a program had been started in Los Angeles. Student videographers were invited to ride along to late-night weekend accident calls.
In a rush of urgent adrenaline and action, the officers pulled up first on the scene. The video captured the officers as they scrambled from their cars and for a split second stopped cold.
“Dear God,” Joe whispered in the film. “Check for survivors.”
His partner ran to what remained of the car. “Two kids in the back. We’ll need the Jaws of Life.”
The carnage and body parts that lay scattered amid the wreckage were graphic and unspeakable.
Around the room, a few of the boys covered up the instinct to gag by coughing hard or shading their eyes.
“Don’t look away,” Joe bellowed. “This is cool, remember? Drinking with your buddies on the weekend. Climbing trees in your underwear.”
No one laughed.
In the background of the video, a siren began to wail and then another. From inside the minivan a baby wailed. As the camera focused
on one body, the voice-over kicked in again. “Johnny Harris was seventeen. He was a junior for Western High’s football team, a captain, a running back. Beneath his yearbook picture, taken a week earlier, he had supplied this caption: ‘Carpe diem—seize the day.’ Johnny wanted to attend college and earn a business degree. He loved fishing with his dad, playing video games with his little brother, and watching movies with his girlfriend.”
The angle of the camera changed, and another body came into view. “Andy Bennett was eighteen years old. Quarterback at Western High, Andy hadn’t been a drinker through high school. He was a senior, and his friends later said he figured it was time to have a little fun. His dream was to be an astronaut. . . .”
One by one, the voice-over gave an obituary for the teenagers, all dead on impact. Inside the minivan, a young mother also lay dead. Her two children—a baby and a toddler—survived the crash.
The video ended with the emotional footage of the woman’s husband speaking at her memorial service. “She didn’t live to see our babies walk or run or learn to read. She’ll never watch them grow up or head off to school or get married.” He hung his head, tears pouring down his face. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to understand this . . . trying to forgive.”
The song “Far Away” accompanied a slide show of each of the teens—their school pictures and shots of them hanging out with friends or practicing the game they loved. Each set of photos ended with the graphic picture of the boy’s body the way it looked in the wake of the crash.
When the song ended and the last image faded to black, Joe turned off the player. Around the dark locker room there was nothing but complete and utter silence. From his place in the back corner, Jim closed his eyes. Joe was right. The video was hard to stomach. But it was also exactly what his players needed to see.
After a full minute of silence, Jim flipped on the lights.
Joe was still at the front of the room, his own eyes damp. “I keep thinking, what if those Western High players were you guys? What if one of them was Cody Coleman or Tanner Williams or Jack Spencer or Todd Carson?” He looked at the teary eyes before him. “Or any of you.” He paused, and his chin quivered. This was the softhearted Joe they were more familiar with. He gritted his teeth, sounding angry and passionate and desperate as he finished. “Don’t drink, guys. Don’t do it.”
Joe moved back to the spot at the side of the room, and Jim took the cue. He walked between a few of his players and took his familiar place near the dry erase board. He turned to face them, and he wondered if they could hear the way his heart pounded. He still felt queasy from the video, but the timing was right. There was no time like now to tell his story, the one he rarely ever told.
“When I was a junior, I played football for my high school, same as you. I was a linebacker, good enough to get interest from top colleges.” Jim leaned against the board. “I met my wife, Jenny, that year.”
He didn’t want to drag the story out. It was important that they keep the impact of the video. He moved away from the board and came closer, meeting their eyes. They were curious, which was good. They needed to know this part of his past.
Jim took a quick breath. “One night during spring break, a bunch of us met at a park near the school. It was a place where people hung out and drank.” He clenched his jaw. “That night—for the first time—I decided to join them. Too many years of saying no, of being the only guy who didn’t drink.”
Understanding flashed on Brandon Reeves’ face. The way it would’ve flashed on Jim’s back before that awful night.
“I had two beers, maybe three, by the time the night was over and it was time to go home. Jenny was there—keeping an eye on me. She didn’t drink then, and she doesn’t drink now. As we headed for my pickup, we were fighting. She was telling me she couldn’t date me if I drank and what a waste it was when I’d stayed away from the stuff for so long.” He glanced at a few of his players in the back row. “You know how it is.”
Jim let himself get lost in the story. That night as he was climbing into his truck he’d realized that maybe Jenny was right. Maybe he’d had too much to drink, so he shouldn’t drive. About that time his best buddy, Trent Tinley, was wandering around looking for a ride home. Trent and Jim went way back to the days of Little League T-ball and capture the flag on the elementary playground. Trent wasn’t much of an athlete, but he loved football. He was brilliant at algebra and Spanish and easily the funniest guy Jim knew. Some people called them brothers; they spent that much time together.
Jim could feel himself being sucked back to that fateful night. He’d called Trent over. “I can’t drive, man. You do it; you drive. You can stay the night at my house.”
“Sure thing. Maybe the chicks’ll think this baby’s mine.” Trent had jumped at the idea. Times like this Jim could still hear his friend’s voice, still see his grin. Jim felt a lump in his throat. He had replayed the next half hour a thousand times, hoping for a different ending.
But there wasn’t one.
What had happened next would stay with him forever. Jim looked around the room at his players as he told the next part of the story. Trent had taken the driver’s seat, laughing about some kid in his chemistry class who turned the clock ahead the last day of school before spring break, winning the early release of everyone in the class. His laugh had been contagious, and as they pulled out of the parking lot, Trent, Jim, and Jenny were all laughing.
What Jim didn’t know, what he was too drunk to realize, was that Trent had been drinking too. Twice as much as Jim. But that wasn’t obvious even when Trent hit the main road driving way too fast.
“Hey, slow down,” Jim had told him. He was sitting next to the passenger door, with Jenny between them. He had her hand in his.
Trent had reached over Jenny and slapped Jim on the knee. “Live a little, Jimbo. Let’s see what this baby can do.” Trent laughed as if that were the funniest thing he’d ever said. Then he eased off the gas. “Just kidding. I’ll be careful.”
Jenny didn’t have her license, but her parents were strict. She whispered into Jim’s ear, “Trent’s been drinking, Jim.”
Jim blinked at his players. They were hanging on every word, some of their faces marked by surprise and others by a knowing of having been in similar situations themselves.
Jim shook his head. “I told her not to worry. We were dropping her off first, and we’d be there in a few minutes.” He sighed. “Back then we didn’t have cell phones, no way to call home and find a way out of the stupid things people around you might do.” Jim took a breath as the memory came more fully to life.
They were halfway to Jenny’s house, driving on a stretch of curvy, narrow road, when Trent lost control. “Jim . . . help!” he shouted.
Jim grabbed at the wheel, but it was too late. Those were Trent’s last words. He overcorrected and the truck flipped twice, screeching upside down off the roadway and rolling ten feet down an embankment. The truck landed on the roof, and when it stopped sliding down the hill, Trent was dead. The accident had broken his neck, killing him instantly.
Jim let the memory return to its permanent place in the back of his mind. He swallowed hard. He would live with the regret of that night forever. If only he hadn’t asked Trent to drive. “If I would’ve been sober that night, I could’ve driven Trent home. Maybe he’d be here beside me, telling you how dumb it is to drink.” He felt his lip quiver a little, and he gained control. “Trent was my best friend. I miss him still.”
The eyes of Tanner and Cody glistened with sorrow, and a handful of other players stared at the floor.
Jim wasn’t finished yet. He filled his lungs and prayed for the strength to go on. Especially with Trent’s smile so fresh in his mind. “The crash cut Jenny’s thumb nearly off. By the time the paramedics arrived, Trent was gone, and there wasn’t anything they could do to save the top part of Jenny’s thumb.”
Cody leaned forward, disbelief on his face. He had probably noticed Jenny’s thumb be
fore—he was around too much to have missed it. But now he knew the story behind her loss, and it looked like enough to knock him off his seat.
“When they got us clear of the wreck, I tried to stand, but I fell to the ground. I couldn’t feel my legs. They took us to the hospital, and for the next two days the doctors thought I was paralyzed.”
Jim would never forget his father walking into the hospital room, eyes swollen from crying. His dad gave him no lecture or harsh words. He only leaned down, hugged Jim close, and sobbed over what they’d lost in one night. Because of one stupid mistake, one bad night of drinking.
Two days later, the swelling went down around the disk in Jim’s neck that had been crushed in the accident. All feeling returned to his arms and legs, and the next year he suited up with his team for his senior year of football.
“But I was never the same.” Jim blinked back tears. “And I haven’t had a drink since.”
The room was so quiet that Jim could hear the kids breathing. This was the part that mattered most. He’d brought a stack of contracts to the meeting, and he picked them up off the small table behind him. “I prayed about this decision, and I don’t mind saying so. We’ve done a pretty good job of taking God out of public education, but when a coach finds out most of his team is drinking, maybe it’s time to ask Him back in.”
There were a few nods around the room.
“I’m giving you a contract.” Jim handed the documents to a few of the players and motioned for them to take one and pass the rest on. “Each of you will read the contract and sign it.” His voice was strong now, strengthened by the passion he felt for the matter at hand. “You’ll sign it or you won’t play football at Clear Creek High.”