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Bleachers

By John Grisham

Most of the Spartans sitting quietly in the bleachers did not know Messina without Eddie Rake. And for the older ones who were very young when he arrived as an unknown and untested twenty-eight-year-old football coach, his influence on the town was so overpowering that it was easy to assume he’d always been there. After all, Messina as a town didn’t matter before Rake. It wasn’t on the map.

The vigil was over. The lights were off.

Though they had been waiting for his impending death, Mal’s message hit them hard. Each of the Spartans withdrew to his own memories for a few moments. Silo set his beer bottle down and began tapping both temples with his fingers. Paul Curry rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the field, at a spot somewhere around the fifty-yard line where his Coach would storm and fuss, and when a game was tight no one would get near him. Neely could see Rake in the hospital room, green Messina cap in hand, talking softly to his ex all-American, concerned about his knee and his future. And trying to apologize.

Nat Sawyer bit his lip as his eyes began to moisten. Eddie Rake meant much more to him after his football days. “Thank God it was dark,” Nat thought to himself. But he knew there were other tears.

Somewhere across the little valley, from the direction of the town, came the soft chimes of church bells. Messina was getting the news that it dreaded most.

Blanchard Teague spoke first. “I really want to finish this game. We’ve been waiting for fifteen years.”

Paul: “We ran flood-right, Alonzo got about six or seven, and made it out of bounds.”

Silo: “Woulda scored but Vatrano missed a block on a linebacker. I told him I’d castrate him in the locker room if he missed another one.”

Paul: “They had everybody at the line. I kept asking Neely if he could throw anything, even a little jump pass over the middle, anything to loosen up their secondary.”

Neely: “I could barely grip the ball.”

Paul: “Second down, we swept left “

Neely: “No, second down, we sent three wide and deep, I dropped back to pass, then tucked it and ran, got sixteen yards but couldn’t get out of bounds. Devon Bond hit me again and I thought I was dead.”

Couch: “I remember that. But he was slow getting up too.”

Neely: “I wasn’t worried about him.”

Paul: “Ball was on the forty, about a minute to go. Didn’t we sweep again?”

Nat: “To the left, almost a first down, and Alonzo got out of bounds, right in front of our bench.”

Neely: “Then we tried the option pass again, and Alonzo threw it away, almost got it picked off.”

Nat: “It was picked off, but the safety had one foot over the line.”

Silo: “That’s when I told you no more passes from Alonzo.”

Couch: “What was it like in the huddle?”

Silo: “Pretty tense, but when Neely said shut up, we shut up. He kept tellin’ us we were stickin’ it down their throats, that we were gonna win, and, as always, we believed him.”

Nat: “The ball was on the fifty with fifty seconds to go.”

Neely: “I called a screen pass, and it worked beautifully. The pass rush was ferocious, and I managed to shovel the ball to Alonzo with my left hand.”

Nat: “It was beautiful. He got hit in the backfield, broke away, and suddenly he had a wall of blockers.”

Silo: “That’s when I got Bond, caught that sumbiscuit fightin’ off one block and not lookin,’ buried my helmet in his left side and they carried him off.”

Neely: “That probably won the game.”

Blanchard: “The place was a madhouse, thirty-five thousand people screaming like idiots, but we still heard the hit you put on Bond.”

Silo: “It was legal. I preferred the ones that were not legal, but it was a bad time for a penalty.”

Paul: “Alonzo picked up about twenty. The clock stopped with the injury, so we had some time. Neely called three plays.”

Neely: “I didn’t want to risk an interception or a fumble, and the only way to spread the defense was to send the receivers wide and go from the shotgun. On first down I scrambled for about ten.”

Nat: “Eleven. It was first down at the twenty-one with thirty seconds to go.”

Neely: “With Bond out of the game, I knew I could score. I figured two more scrambles and we’d be in the end zone. In the huddle, I told them to make sure they put somebody on the ground.”

Silo: “I told ‘em to kill somebody.”

Neely: “They blitzed all three linebackers and I got nailed at the line. We had to burn our last time-out.”

Amos: “Did you think about a field goal?”

Neely: “Yeah, but Scobie had a weak leg accurate but weak.”

Paul: “Plus, he hadn’t kicked a field goal all year.” Silo: “The kicking game was not our strongest suit.” Nat: “Thanks, Silo. I can always count on you.” The final play of the miracle drive was perhaps the most famous in all of the glorious history of Spartan football. With no time-outs, twenty yards to go, eighteen seconds left, Neely sent two receivers wide, and took the snap in the shotgun. He quickly handed off to Marcus Mabry on a draw. Marcus took three steps, then abruptly stopped and pitched the ball back to Neely, who sprinted to his right, pumping the ball as if he would finally throw it. When he turned upfield, the offensive line released and sprinted forward, looking for someone to level. At the ten, Neely, running like a mad man, lowered his head and crashed into a linebacker and a safety, a collision that would have knocked out a mere mortal. He spun away, free but dizzy, legs still churning, got hit again at the five, and again at the three where most of the East Pike defense managed to corral him. The play was almost over, as was the game, when Silo Mooney and Barry Vatrano slammed into the mass of humanity hanging on Neely, and the entire pile fell into the end zone. Neely sprang to his feet, still clutching the ball, and looked directly at Eddie Rake, twenty feet away, motionless and noncommittal.

Neely: “For a split second, I thought about spiking the ball at him, but then Silo flung me down and everybody jumped on.”

Nat: “The whole team was down there. Along with the cheerleaders, the trainers, and half the band. Got fifteen yards for excessive celebrating.”

Couch: “Nobody cared. I remember looking at Rake and the coaches, and they didn’t move. Talk about weird.”

Neely: “I was lying in the end zone, getting crushed by my teammates, telling myself that we’d just done the impossible.”

Randy: “I was twelve years old, and I remember all the Messina fans were just sitting there, stunned, exhausted, a lot of them crying.”

Blanchard: “The folks from East Pike were crying too.”

Randy: “They ran one play, didn’t they? After the kickoff?”

Paul: “Yeah, Donnie blitzed and nailed the quarterback. The game was over.”

Randy: “All of a sudden, every player with a green jersey was sprinting off the field no handshakes, no postgame huddle, just a mad rush to get to the locker room. The entire team vanished.”

Mal: “We thought y’all’d gone crazy. We waited for a spell, thinkin’ you had to come back to get the trophy and all.”

Paul: “We weren’t coming out. They sent someone to retrieve us for the ceremony, but we kept the door locked.”

Couch: “Those poor kids from East Pike tried to smile when they got the runner-up trophy, but they were still in shock.”

Blanchard: “Rake had vanished too. Somehow they got Rabbit to walk out to midfield and accept the championship trophy. It was very strange, but we were too excited to care.”

Mal walked up to Silo’s cooler and pulled out a beer. “Help yourself there, Sheriff,” Silo said.

“I’m off duty.” He took a long sip and began walking down the steps. “Funeral’s Friday, boys. At noon.”

“Where?”

“Here. Where else?”

Thursday

Neely and Paul met early Thursday morning in the rear of the bookstore, where Nat brewed another pot of his highly addictive and probably illegal Guatemalan coffee. Nat had business up front, near the tiny and semi-hidden occult section, with a sinister-looking woman who had pale skin and jet-black hair. “The town witch,” Paul said somewhat proudly, as if every town needed a witch, and very softly, as if she might fling a curse their way.

The Sheriff arrived a few minutes after eight, fully uniformed and heavily armed and looking quite lost in the only bookstore in the county, and one owned by a homosexual at that. Had Nat not been a former Spartan, Mal would’ve probably had him under surveillance as a suspicious character.

“You boys ready?” he growled, obviously anxious to leave.

With Neely in the front seat and Paul in the back, they sped away from downtown in a long white Ford with bold lettering along the doors, announcing that the car was the property of the SHERIFF. On the main highway, Mal pushed the accelerator and flipped a switch turning on the flashing red and blue lights. No sirens, though. Once everything was properly configured, he cocked his weight to one side, picked up his tall Styrofoam cup of coffee, and laid a limp wrist over the top of the wheel. They were doing a hundred miles an hour.

“I was in Vietnam,” Mal announced, selecting the topic and giving the impression that he might talk nonstop for the next two hours. Paul sank a few inches in the rear seat, like a real criminal on the way to a court hearing. Neely watched the traffic, certain they were about to be slaughtered in some gruesome two-lane pileup.

“I was on a PBR on the Bassac River.” A loud slurp of coffee as the setting was established. “There were six of us on this stupid little boat about twice the size of a nice bass rig, and our job was to patrol up and down the river and make trouble. Anythang that moved, we shot it. We were idiots. A cow gets too close, target practice. A nosy rice farmer raises his head up from the rice paddy, we’d start firin’ just to watch him hit the mud. Our mission each day had no tactical purpose whatsoever, so we drank beer, smoked pot, played cards, tried to entice the local girls to go boatin’ with us.”

“I’m sure this is going somewhere,” Paul said from the rear.

“Shut up and listen. One day we’re half asleep, it’s hot, we’re sunbathin’, nappin’ like a bunch of turtles on a log, when, suddenly, all heck breaks loose. We’re takin’ fire from both sides of the river. Heavy fire. An ambush. Two guys were below. I’m on the deck with three others, all of whom get hit immediately. Dead. Shot before they could get their guns. Blood flyin’ through the air. Everybody screamin’. I’m flat on my stomach, unable to move, when a fuel barrel gets hit. Darned thing wasn’t supposed to be on deck, but what did we care? We were invincible because we were eighteen and stupid. The thing explodes. I manage to dive into the river without gettin’ burned. I swim up beside the boat and grab a piece of camouflage nettin’ that’s hangin’ over the side. I hear my two buddies screamin’ inside the boat. They’re trapped, smoke and fire everywhere, no way out. I stay underwater as long as I can. Whenever I pop up for air, the gooks spray gunfire all around me. Heavy gunfire. They know I’m in the water holdin’ my breath. This goes on for a long time while the boat burns and drifts with the current. The screamin’ and coughin’ finally stops down in the cabin, ever’body’s dead but me. The gooks are out in the open now, walkin’ along the banks on both sides, out for a Sunday stroll. All fun and games. I’m the last guy alive, and they’re waitin’ for me to make a mistake. I swim under the boat, pop up on the other side, take some air, bullets everywhere. I swim to the rear, grab the rudder for a while, come up for air, hear the gooks laughin’ as they spray me. The river is full of snakes, these short little creatures that are deadly poisonous. So I figure I got three choices drown, get shot, or wait for the snakes.”

Mal placed the coffee in a holder on the dash and lit a cigarette. Mercifully, he cracked his window. Neely cracked his as well. They were in farmland, speeding through rolling hills, flying past farm tractors and old pickups.

“So what happened?” Neely asked when it became apparent that Mal wanted prompting.

“You know what saved me?”

“Tell us.”

“Rake. Eddie Rake. When I was hangin’ on for my life, under that boat, I didn’t think about my momma or my dad or my girlfriend, I thought about Rake. I could hear him barkin’ at us at the end of practice when we were runnin’ sprints. I remembered his locker-room speeches. Never quit, never quit. You win because you’re tougher mentally than the other guy, and you’re tougher mentally because your trainin’ is superior. If you’re winnin’, never quit. If you’re losin’, never quit. If you’re hurt, never quit.”

A long pull on the cigarette while the two younger men digested the story. Meanwhile, outside the car, civilian drivers swerved onto shoulders and hit brakes to make way for this law enforcement emergency.

“I finally got hit, in the leg. Did you know bullets can get you underwater?”

“Never really thought about it,” Neely admitted.

“Darned right they can. Left hamstring. I never felt such pain, like a hot knife. I almost passed out from the pain, and I was gaspin’ for breath. Rake expected us to play hurt, so I told myself Rake was watchin’. Rake was up there somewhere, on the side of the river, watchin’ to see how tough I was.”

A long cancerous draw on the cigarette; a halfhearted effort to blow the smoke out the window. A long pause as Mal was lost in the horror of this memory. A minute passed.

“Obviously you survived,” Paul said, anxious to get to the end of it.

“I was lucky. The other five got boxed up and shipped home. The boat burned and burned and at times I couldn’t hang on because the hull was so hot. Then the batteries exploded, sounded like direct mortar hits, and she started to sink. I could hear the gooks laughin’. I could also hear Rake in the fourth quarter, ‘Time to suck it up and go, men. Here’s where we win or lose. Gut check, gut check.’ “

“I can hear him too,” Neely said.

“All of a sudden, the shootin’ stopped. Then I heard choppers. Two of them had seen the smoke and decided to explore. They came in low, scattered the gooks, dropped a rope, and I got out. When they hauled me in I looked down and saw the boat burnin.’ I saw two of my buddies lying on the deck, burnt black. I was in shock and finally passed out. They told me later that when they asked me my name, I said, ‘Eddie Rake.’ “

Neely glanced to his left as Mal turned away. His voice cracked just a little, then he wiped his eyes. No hands on the wheel for a couple of seconds.

“So you came home?” Paul said.

“Yeah, that was the lucky part. I got outta there. You boys hungry?”

“No.”

“No.”

Evidently Mal was. He stomped the brake pedal while veering to the right, onto a gravel lot in front of an old country store. The Ford fishtailed as Mal brought it to a violent stop. “Best darned biscuits in this part of the state,” he said as he yanked open his door and stepped out into a cloud of dust. They followed him to the rear, through a rickety screen door, and into someone’s small and smoky kitchen. Four tables were packed close together, all surrounded by rustic-looking gentlemen devouring ham and biscuits. Fortunately, at least for Mal, who appeared to be ready to collapse from hunger, there were three empty stools at the cluttered counter. “Need some biscuits over here,” he growled at a tiny old woman hovering over a stove. Evidently, menus were not needed.

With remarkable speed, she served them coffee and biscuits, with butter and sorghum molasses. Mal plunged into the first one, a thick brownish concoction of lard and flour that weighed at least a pound. Neely, on his left, and Paul, on his right, followed along.

“Heard you boys talkin’ last night up in the bleachers,” Mal said, shifting from Vietnam to football. He took a large bite and began chewing ferociously. “About the ‘87 game. I was there, so was everybody else. We figured somethin’ happened at halftime, in the locker room, some kind of altercation between you and Rake. Never heard the real story, you know, ’cause you boys never talked about it.”

“You could call it an altercation,” Neely said, still prepping his first and only biscuit.

“No one’s ever talked about it,” Paul said.

“So what happened?”

“An altercation.”

“Got that. Rake’s dead now.”

“So?”

“So, it’s been fifteen years. I wanna know the story,” Mal said as if he were drilling a murder suspect in the back room of the jail.

Neely put the biscuit on his plate and stared at it. Then he glanced over at Paul, who nodded. Go ahead. You can finally tell the story.

Neely sipped his coffee and ignored the food. He stared at the counter and drifted away. “We were down thirty-one to zip, just getting the heck beaten out of us,” he said slowly and very softly.

“I was there,” Mal said, chewing without interruption.

“We got to the locker room at halftime and waited for Rake. We waited and waited, knowing that we were about to be eaten alive. He finally walked in, with the other coaches. He was way beyond furious. We were terrified. He walked straight up to me, pure hatred in his eyes. I had no idea what to expect. He said, “You miserable excuse for a football player.’ I said, ‘Thanks, Coach.’ As soon as I got the words out, he took his left hand and backhanded me across the face.”

“It sounded like a wooden bat hitting a baseball,” Paul said. He, too, had lost interest in the food.

“That broke your nose?” Mal said, still quite interested in his breakfast.

“Yep.”

“What’d you do?”

“By instinct, I swung. I didn’t know if he planned to hit me again, and I wasn’t about to wait. So I threw a right hook with everything I could put into it. Caught him perfectly on the left jaw, flush to the face.”

“It wasn’t a right hook,” Paul said. “It was a bomb. Rake’s head jerked like he’d been shot, and he fell like a bag of cement.”

“Knocked him out?”

“Cold. Coach Upchurch rushed forward, yelling, cussing, like he was going to finish me off,” Neely said. “I couldn’t see, there was blood all over my face.”

“Silo stepped up and grabbed Upchurch by the throat with both hands,” Paul said. “He lifted him up, threw him against the wall, said he’d kill him right there if he made another move. Rake was dead on the floor. Snake Thomas and Rabbit and one of the trainers were squatting beside him. It was chaos for a few seconds, then Silo threw Upchurch to the floor and told all of them to get out of the locker room. Thomas said something and Silo kicked him in the butt. They dragged Rake out of the room and we locked the door.”

“For some reason I was crying, and I couldn’t stop,” Neely said.

Mal had stopped eating. All three were staring straight ahead at the little lady by the stove.

“We found some ice,” Paul continued. “Neely said his hand was broken. His nose was bleeding like crazy. He was delirious. Silo was screaming at the team. It was a pretty wild scene.”

Mal slurped down some coffee, then tore off a piece of a biscuit, which he dragged across his plate as if he might eat it, or he might not.

“Neely was lying on the floor, ice on his nose, ice on his hand, blood running down his ears. We hated Rake like no man has ever been hated. We wanted to kill somebody, and those poor boys from East Pike were the nearest targets.”

After a long pause, Neely said, “Silo knelt beside me and yelled, ‘Get your butt up, Mr. Ail-American. We gotta score five touchdowns.’ “

“When Neely got up, we stormed out of the locker room. Rabbit poked his head out of a door, and the last thing I heard was Silo yelling at him, ‘Keep those sumbiscuites away from our sideline.’ “

“Hindu threw a bloody towel at him,” Neely said, still softly.

“Late in the fourth quarter, Neely and Silo got the team together by the bench and told us that after the game we were running back to the locker room, locking the door, and not coming out until the crowd was gone.”

“And we did. We waited in there for a long time,” Neely said. “It took an hour just to settle down.”

The door opened behind them as one group of locals left while another trooped in.

“And y’all never talked about it?” Mal asked.

“No. We agreed to bury it,” Neely said.

“Until now?”

“I guess. Rake’s dead, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Why was it such a secret?”

“We were afraid there’d be trouble,” Paul said. “We hated Rake, but he was still Rake. He’d punched a player, and not just anybody. Neely’s nose was still bleeding after the game.”

“And we were so emotional,” Neely said. “I think all fifty of us were crying when the game was over. We’d just pulled off a miracle, against impossible odds. With no coaches. Nothing but sheer guts. Just a bunch of kids who’d survived under enormous pressure. We decided it would be our secret. Silo went around the room, looked every player in the eyes and demanded a vow of silence.”

“Said he’d kill anyone who ever told,” Paul said with chuckle.

Mal skillfully poured a pint of molasses over his next target. “That’s a good story. I figured as much.”

Paul said, “The odd part is that the coaches never talked about it either. Rabbit kept his mouth shut. Total silence.”

Chomp, chomp, then, “We sorta figured it out,” Mal said. “Knew something bad happened at halftime. Neely couldn’t pass, then word leaked that he was wearing a cast the next week at school. Figured he hit something. Figured it might’ve been Rake. Lots of rumors over the years, which, as you know, ain’t hard to find in Messina.”

“I’ve never heard anyone talk about it,” Paul said.

A pull on the coffee. Neither Neely nor Paul were eating or drinking. “Remember that Tugdale kid, from out near Black Rock? A year or two behind you boys.”

“Andy Tugdale,” Neely said. “Hundred-and-forty-pound guard. Mean as a yard dog.”

“That’s him. We picked him up years ago for beatin’ his wife, had him in jail for a few weeks. I played cards with him, somethin’ I always do when we get one of Rake’s boys in. I give ‘em a special cell, better food, weekend passes.”

“The perks of brotherhood,” Paul said.

“Somethin’ like that. You’ll appreciate it when I arrest your little banker’s butt.”

“Anyway.”

“Anyway, we were talkin’ one day and I asked Tugdale what happened at halftime during the ‘87 title game. Clammed up, tight as a tick, not a word. I said I knew there’d been a fight of some sort. Not a word. I waited a few days, tried again. He finally said that Silo had kicked the coaches out of the locker room, told ‘em to stay away from the sideline. Said there had been a rather serious disagreement between Rake and Neely. I asked him what Neely had hit to break his hand. A wall? A locker? A chalkboard? None of the above. Somebody else? Bingo. But he wouldn’t say who.”

“That’s great police work, Mal,” Paul said. “I might just vote for you next time.”

“Can we leave?” Neely said. “I don’t like this story.”

* * *

They rode in silence for half an hour. Still flying with all lights on, Mal appeared to doze occasionally as his ponderous breakfast got digested.

“I’ll be happy to drive,” Neely said after the car eased onto the gravel shoulder and flung rocks for half a mile.

“Can’t. It’s illegal,” Mal grunted, suddenly wide awake.

Five minutes later he was fading again. Neely decided conversation might keep him awake.

“Did you bust Jesse?” Neely asked as he tightened his seat belt.

“Naw. The state boys got him.” Mal shifted his weight and reached for a cigarette. There was a story to tell so he limbered up. “They kicked him off the team at Miami, out of school, barely got out with no jail time, and before long he was back here. Poor guy was hooked on the stuff and couldn’t shake it. His family tried everything, rehab, lockdowns, counselors, all that crap. Broke ‘em. Heck, it killed his father. The Trapp family once owned two thousand acres of the best farmland around here, now it’s all gone. His poor momma lives in that big house with the roof crumblin’.”

“Anyway,” Paul said helpfully from the rear.

“Anyway, he started sellin’ the stuff, and of course Jesse could not be content as a small-timer. He had some contacts in Dade County, one thing led to another and before long he had a nice business. Had his own organization, with lots of ambition.”

“Didn’t someone get killed?” Paul asked.

“I was gettin’ to that,” Mal growled at his rearview mirror.

“Just trying to help.”

“I always wanted a banker in my backseat. A real white-collar type.”

“And I always wanted to foreclose on the Sheriff.”

“Truce,” Neely said. “You were getting to the good part.”

Mal reshifted, his large stomach rubbing the wheel. One more harsh glance into his mirror, then, “The state narcs slowly crept in, as they always do. They nabbed a flunkie, threatened him with thirty years of prison and sodomy, convinced him to flip. He set up a drop with narcs hidin’ in the trees and under the rocks. The deal went bad, guns were grabbed, shots went off. A narc took a bullet in the ear and died on the spot. The flunkie got hit, but survived. Jesse was nowhere around, but it was his people. He became a priority, and within a year he was standin’ before His Honor receivin’ his twenty-eight years, no parole.”

“Twenty-eight years,” Neely repeated.

“Yep. I was in the courtroom, and I actually felt sorry for the scumbag. I mean, here’s a guy who had the tools to play in the NFL. Size, speed, mean as heck, plus Rake had drilled him from the time he was fourteen. Rake always said that if Jesse had gone to A&M, he wouldn’t have turned bad. Rake was in the courtroom too.”

“How long has he served?” Neely asked.

“Nine, ten years maybe. I ain’t countin’. Y’all hungry?”

“We just ate,” Neely said.

“Surely you can’t be hungry again,” Paul said.

“No, but there’s this little joint right up here where Miss Armstrong makes pecan fudge. I hate to pass it.”

“Let’s keep going,” Neely said. “Just say no.”

“Take it one day at a time, Mal,” Paul offered from the rear.

* * *

The Buford Detention Facility was in flat treeless farmland at the end of a lonely paved road lined with miles of chain-link fencing. Neely was depressed before any building came into sight.

Mal’s phone calls had arranged things properly and they were cleared through the front gates and drove deeper into the prison. They changed vehicles at a checkpoint, swapping the roomy patrol car for the narrow benches of an extended golf cart. Mal rode up front where he chatted nonstop with the driver, a guard wearing as much ammunition and gadgets as the Sheriff himself. Neely and Paul shared the back bench, facing the rear, as they passed more chain link and razor wire. They got an eyeful as they puttered past Camp A, a long dismal cinder-block building with prisoners lounging on the front steps. On one side, a basketball game was raging. All the players were black. On the other side, an all-white volleyball game was in progress. Camps B, C, and D were just as bleak. “How could anyone survive in there?” Neely asked himself.

At an intersection, they turned and were soon up at Camp E, which looked somewhat newer. At Camp F they stopped and walked fifty yards to a point where the fencing turned ninety degrees. The guard mumbled something into his radio, then pointed and said, “Walk down that fence to the white pole. He’ll be out shortly.” Neely and Paul began walking along the fence, where the grass had been recently cut. Mal and the guard held back and lost interest.

Behind the building and beside the basketball court was a slab of concrete, and scattered across it were all sorts of mismatched barbells and bench presses and stacks of dead weights. Some very large black and white men were pumping iron in the morning sun, their bare chests and backs shining with sweat. Evidently, they lifted weights for hours each day.

“There he is,” Paul said. “Just getting up from the bench press, on the left.”

“That’s Jesse,” Neely said, mesmerized by a scene that few people ever witnessed.

A trustee approached and said something to Jesse Trapp, who jerked his head and searched the fence line until he saw the two men. He tossed a towel onto a bench and began a slow, purposeful, Spartanlike walk across the slab, across the empty basketball court, and onto the grass that ran to the fence around Camp F.

From forty yards away he looked huge, but as Jesse approached the enormity of his chest and neck and arms became awesome. They had played with him for one season he was a senior when they were sophomores and they had seen him naked in the locker room. They had seen him fling heavily loaded barbells around the weight room. They had seen him set every Spartan lifting record.

He looked twice as big now, his neck as thick as an oak stump, his shoulders as wide as a door. His biceps and triceps were many times the normal size. His stomach looked like a cobblestone street.

He wore a crew cut that made his square head even more symmetrical, and when he stopped and looked down at them he smiled. “Hey boys,” he said, still breathing heavily from the last set of reps.

“Hello Jesse,” Paul said.

“How are you?” Neely said.

“Doing well, can’t complain. Good to see y’all. I don’t get many visitors.”

“We have bad news, Jesse,” Paul said.

“I figured.”

“Rake’s dead. Passed away last night.”

He lowered his chin until it touched his massive chest. From the waist up he seemed to shrink a little as the news hit him. “My mother wrote me and told me he was sick,” he said with his eyes closed.

“It was cancer. Diagnosed about a year ago, but the end came pretty fast.”

“Man oh man. I thought Rake would live forever.”

“I think we all did,” Neely said.

Ten years in prison had taught him to control whatever emotions ventured his way. He swallowed hard and opened his eyes. “Thanks for coming. You didn’t have to.”

“We wanted to see you, Jesse,” Neely said. “I think about you all the time.”

“The great Neely Crenshaw.”

“A long time ago.”

“Why don’t you write me a letter? I got eighteen more years here.”

“I’ll do that, Jesse, I promise.”

“Thanks.”

Paul kicked the grass. “Look, Jesse, there’s a memorial service tomorrow, at the field. Most of Rake’s boys will be there, you know, to say good-bye. Mal thinks he might be able to pull some strings and get you a pass.”

“No way, man.”

“You got a lot of friends there, Jesse.”

“Former friends, Paul, people I’ve let down. They’ll all point and say, ‘Look, there’s Jesse Trapp. Coulda been great, but got messed up on drugs. Ruined his life. Learn from him, kids. Stay away from the bad stuff.’ No thanks. I don’t want to be pointed at.”

“Rake would want you there,” Neely said.

The chin dropped again and the eyes closed. A moment passed. “I loved Eddie Rake like I’ve loved nobody else in my life. He was in court the day I got sent away. I had ruined my life, and I was humiliated over that. I had wrecked my parents, and I was sick about that. But what hurt the most was that I had failed in Rake’s eyes. It still hurts. Y’all can bury him without me.”

“It’s your call, Jesse,” Paul said.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

There was a long pause as all three nodded and studied the grass. Finally, Paul said, “I see your mom once a week. She’s doing well.”

“Thanks. She visits me the third Sunday of every month. You ought to drive over sometime, say hello. It’s pretty lonely in here.”

“I’ll do that, Jesse.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. And I wish you’d think about tomorrow.”

“I’ve already thought about it. I’ll say a prayer for Rake, you boys can bury him.”

“Fair enough.”

Jesse looked to his right. “Is that Mal over there?”

“Yes, we rode with him.”

“Tell him to kiss my butt.”

“I’ll do that, Jesse,” Paul said. “With pleasure.”

“Thanks boys,” Jesse said. He turned and walked away.