The Rome of Fall

by Chad Alan Gibbs

  “Marcus Brinks,” Deacon said, squeezing my shoulder too hard but otherwise not turning violent, “welcome back to Rome, my old friend.”

  “Hi, Deacon,” I said, not mentioning that we were never friends and that he was about to break my collarbone. He let go with one last knee-buckling squeeze, slapped my back a couple times, and when I realized he intended to watch the pep rally with me, I asked if he had kids on the team because I couldn’t think of any other reason a grown man would be here if he didn’t have to be.

  “No, no,” Deacon said, “not yet. My oldest is a seventh-grader. Starting quarterback on the JV team. Kid’s got a damn cannon.”

  “Good for him,” I said, still not sure why Deacon was here.

  “I’m president of the Quarterback Club,” he offered, and with a dismissive wave at the spectacle before us, added, “Gotta be at these things.”

  “Silas told me Jackson disbanded the Quarterback Club,” I said, and Deacon glared at me and said, “Jackson isn’t as powerful as he thinks.”

  The band, which was half the size it’d been two decades ago, took their place in front of us, and the lights cut as the cheerleaders entered the door to our right, wearing dark red cloaks and holding electric candles.

  “Fake candles?” I whispered to Deacon.

  “Few years ago, a girl’s hair caught on fire,” Deacon said. “Now the fire marshal makes ’em use those. I suppose it’s safer, but kinda ruins the effect.”

  The cheerleaders filed into the darkened gym, took their positions along the stage, and switched off their candles. The room took a collective breath, and a spotlight hit center stage to reveal Jackson Crowder, wearing a purple windbreaker and sitting high upon a throne I recognized from the drama club’s production of Macbeth.

  “That’s new,” I said to Deacon, who shook his head and said, “They wanted him to do that last year, but he kept acting all modest. The asshole. A lot of things are different around here, Brinks. This isn’t the Rome we loved.”

  The spotlight pulled back to reveal the entire Rome football team seated below their leader, and when Jackson raised his arm, a bass drum hit, and the crowd jumped and shouted as one.

  The rest of the pep rally was indistinguishable from one twenty years ago. Cheerleaders gyrated, seniors performed skits, and team captains informed the crowd that this was their house, and no one walked into their house and lived to tell about it. But then one of the captains handed Jackson the microphone, and he addressed the adoring crowd, something Coach Pumphrey never did.

  Jackson motioned toward his team below and said, “These sons of Rome sacrificed their summer for you. While you lounged poolside, they were on the field of battle, puking their guts out ... for you ... for Rome! They are prepared. They are coiled and ready to strike. But they cannot do it alone. They need you; I need you—every one of you—in the Colosseum tonight.” The crowd roared their intention to attend, and Jackson began to shout, “We need you there early, and we need you loud. It’s the least you can do for these who’ve given so much to you! Now, who is ready to die for Rome?”

  The crowd roared even louder, and Jackson shouted, “Victory or death!” before dropping the mic. Deacon turned to me and said, “Your friend thinks he’s the damn king of Rome.”

  “He’s not my friend,” I said.

  Deacon raised an eyebrow. “Good to know.”

  After the alma mater played, the team, led by their coach, exited the gym to the rhythmic clapping of their classmates, and just as Jackson reached the door, an old man standing next to us shouted, “Watch out for Middlesboro, Coach!”

  For the briefest moment, Jackson looked our way, then he was out the door, and Deacon turned to the old man and said, “We don’t even play Middlesboro, you old fool.”

  The old man stared at us with wild eyes then walked away, and Deacon shook his head in bemusement before turning to me and asking, “You going to the game tonight?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not much of football fan.”

  “Well, all right then,” Deacon said, slapping me on the back with his bare hand. “I’ll see you around, Brinks.”

  There was a flyer taped to the wall behind us from Rome First Baptist, asking everyone to invite their friends to hear Coach Jackson Crowder share his testimony on Wednesday, September 6. Deacon ripped the flyer from the wall and stuffed it into his pocket before following the last player from the gym like he was part of the team. I wasn’t sure if I could leave yet or not, so I turned to find someone I could ask and ran smack into Becca Walsh.

  “Oh, I’m sorry—Marcus!”

  “Becca!” I said, then my brain overheated, leaving my mouth to fend for itself.

  She hugged me and said, “Oh my God. I heard a rumor you were teaching this year but didn’t believe it. It’s so good to—” Like a ninja, Becca grabbed a kid by the arm and shouted, “No running, Tyler!” She turned back to me and said, “Sorry, Marcus, I’ve got to make sure these hellions get back to the middle school. Will you be at the game tonight? We’ve got to catch up!”

  “I wasn’t ... uh ... yeah,” I said. “I’ll see you there.”

  Becca smiled and said, “It’s a date,” before sinking into a river of preteens flowing back toward Rome Middle School, leaving me there, hating myself.

  “There’s a tension here, an album that rhythmically all but begs listeners to their feet then lyrically knocks them right back down.”

  —Rolling Stone, 5-star review of Dear Brutus by Dear Brutus, November 23, 1997

  Chapter Five (1994)

  “Brinks, you’re coming with us Saturday night, right?”

  It was Thursday, pizza day, the week after Rome’s first football game of the season, and I sat across a lunchroom table from Jackson.

  “It’s either that or the game on Friday,” I said. “My mom has a weird one-night-out-per weekend rule. What exactly are you doing Saturday again?”

  “We are cruising, Brinks” Silas said, collapsing less than gracefully into the seat next to me. “All three of us.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I sort of wanted to go to the game because—”

  “Because Becca Walsh said you were her Friday night boyfriend?” Silas interrupted. “Homie, that was a joke. Skip the game. Cruise with us.”

  “Maybe you should go to the game,” Jackson said. “I’ll get to play most of the fourth quarter, and—”

  “Skip the game; cruise with us,” Silas repeated.

  “I’m leaning toward Saturday,” I said, “but I still don’t know exactly what we’re doing.”

  “Okay,” Jackson said, soaking up the extra grease from his pizza with a stack of napkins, “have you seen that old George Lucas movie?”

  “Star Wars? Yeah, I’ve seen Star Wars.”

  “No, not Star Wars, dumbass, the other one. Silas, what’s it called?”

  “American Graffiti,” Silas said, after shaking his head at Jackson’s ever-growing pile of grease-soaked napkins.

  “Right, American Graffiti. Have you seen American Graffiti?”

  I pointed toward Jackson’s napkins and said, “You’ve ruined pizza day for me.”

  Jackson shrugged and asked again, “Have you seen American Graffiti?”

  “I don’t like space movies,” I said.

  “It’s not a space movie. It’s about teenagers driving around and talking to each other.”

  “Han Solo is in it,” Silas said, “but he’s not Han Solo.”

  “Indiana Jones?” I asked.

  “No, I think his name is Bob.”

  “Focus, people,” Jackson said. “On Saturday, we’re cruising, and you’re cruising with us.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” I said. “The two of you drive up and down, what street is it again?”

  “Main Street, in Riverton,” Jackson said.

  “The two of you drive up and down Main Street, and girls get in the car with you?”

  “What?” Silas asked.

  “You
said something about picking up chicks,” I said.

  “No, dumbass,” Jackson said, “we don’t literally pick them up. We’re not running a taxi, Brinks.”

  “We just flirt with them,” Silas said, “and sometimes we get a car full of girls to pull over, and then we pull over too and talk to them and stuff.”

  “And stuff?”

  “Yeah,” Silas said, without offering details on said stuff.

  “Okay,” I said, “how many times have the two of you cruised Main Street?”

  Jackson and Silas looked at each other, and Jackson said, “Maybe twenty times.”

  “Twenty or thirty,” Silas added.

  “And of those thirty times, how often has a car full of girls pulled over and talked to you ... and stuff?”

  They hesitated, looked at each other again, and Jackson said, “There were those girls from Glencoe last summer.”

  “And those two girls from Hokes Bluff.”

  “Oh right, they were hot, but they had that ugly dude with them. And last week, we talked to Maggie Duncan and Rachel.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t count, since they go to Rome.”

  “True.”

  I stared at them until they looked at me and Jackson asked, “What?”

  I laughed. “I want to make sure I’ve got this straight, because this is my weekend we’re talking about here. You’ve cruised Main Street thirty times, and you’ve talked a car full of girls into pulling over exactly twice, and one of those cars contained 33 percent ugly dudes? I mean, playing the percentages, wouldn’t we be better off sitting on the interstate waiting for a car full of hot girls to get a flat tire in front of us?”

  “Playing the percentages, there’s a zero percent chance of a hot girl showing up in your bedroom on Saturday night,” Silas said.

  I sighed in defeat. “Good point. I’m in.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Jackson scored a touchdown in Rome’s second game of the season—another blowout win, this one 56-0 over the hapless Butterflies of Pinkerton High School. In retrospect, his reaction to the garbage-time score offered a glimpse into what success would do to his psyche, but I only recall wishing he’d shut up about it.

  Because he was one of the few guys on the team smart enough to learn all the plays, Jackson was the emergency third-string quarterback behind Deacon’s backup, Jake Norton. But when he actually saw the field, which was rarely, Jackson played strong safety, not because he was strong, but because he wasn’t fast enough to play free safety or cornerback, couldn’t catch well enough to play wide receiver, and wasn’t big enough to play any other position without risking serious injury. He claimed to be second string, and perhaps on some long-forgotten depth chart he was, but as far as playing time went, he was behind the starter, Fletcher Morgan, and a sophomore named Jimmy Anthony. Jackson only played in these 56-0 type games and twice, as a junior, bore sole responsibility for allowing a late touchdown that blew Rome’s shutout. But not this week.

  Rome’s defensive coordinator, Mr. Titus, blitzed Jackson a lot in late game situations, because it relieved him of coverage duties and significantly decreased the odds Jackson would screw up. There were less than two minutes to play, and on second down, Pinkerton’s quarterback set up to throw and was almost decapitated by Mark Porter, a Rome freshman the size of a Mini Cooper. The ball flew straight up, and as if controlled by a puppeteer, fell into the rather unsuspecting arms of a blitzing Jackson Crowder. It was, perhaps, the only imaginable scenario where Jackson would ever score a touchdown, because he was already running full speed in the direction he needed to go, and after he caught the ball, there was nothing for him to think about. He crossed the goal line before he knew what happened, and as the referee’s arms went up, Jackson dropped the ball and stood there, dumbfounded, until the rest of the defense piled on top of him in celebration. I know this version of the story because Silas told me on our way to pick up Jackson Saturday night. Jackson’s version had more details.

  “I mean, I saw Mark hit the quarterback, and I could tell by the way he held the ball it would fly back and to the left, so I adjusted my angle, and jumped a lineman on the ground, and caught the ball at its highpoint like we’re coached to do. I would have high-stepped, like Deion, but we get into so much trouble if we’re flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. So, I just took it to the house and stood there with my hands on my hips like, ‘Yeah, bitches!’”

  This was the third time in the last fifteen minutes Jackson had recounted his touchdown, though the detail about jumping a lineman was new. I suspect, when he tells the story now, Pinkerton had fifteen men on the field, and Jackson juked them all twice during his high-stepping ninety-nine-yard run.

  “Pull over, Brinks!” Silas said. “I think I see some girls lining up to give Jackson congratulatory blow—ouch!”

  Jackson smacked Silas upside the head with my mom’s umbrella while I laughed.

  “Never mind,” Silas said, rubbing his head. “They were lining up for some other third-string safety anyway.”

  We were on our way to cruise Main Street in my mom’s 1992 Buick Roadmaster station wagon—an unfortunate necessity since we wouldn’t all fit in Jackson’s Chevy S-10, Silas didn’t own a car, and just before leaving that evening, I’d noticed my Mazda 626 had a blown headlight. The Roadmaster wasn’t the ideal cruising vehicle, but we hoped the novelty would play to our advantage.

  “I know you both think my touchdown was meaningless,” Jackson said, “but forty-nine points was our largest margin of victory ever against Pinkerton, and now it’s fifty-six because of me.”

  “Well, because of Mark Porter,” I said. “If he hadn’t hit the quarterback—”

  “—I would have stripped the ball and scored anyway,” Jackson said.

  “And I would have kicked the extra point,” Silas said.

  “And I would have made out with Becca Walsh,” I added.

  “Screw you guys,” Jackson said as we reached the bumper to bumper traffic of Main Street.

  How to describe cruising Main Street to someone who never went? Main Street was a social network, only in real life. There were hundreds of cars, each with two or three or more people inside, trucks with a dozen kids piled in back, SUV’s packed beyond any reasonable measure of safety, and one wood paneled station wagon. Everyone from Rome was there, yet we made up less than 5 percent of the traffic, which means the rest of the kids were strangers from other schools, other cities, other counties even. I suspect—and I have no way to verify this—on Saturday nights, Main Street contained 75 percent of the teenagers from a five-county radius.

  “Cop,” Jackson said, pointing toward an officer standing near the crosswalk.

  There was always an overabundance of police around, writing tickets to anyone who turned without signaling or got stuck in an intersection when the light turned red.

  “I see him,” I said, waiting for the car ahead of me to make room before I dared to cross the intersection.

  Main Street traffic violations were a steady stream of income for the city and had been for decades. When I told her of my evening plans, my mom laughed and said she used to cruise Main in high school. But for reasons I cannot comprehend, the city of Riverton put an official end to cruising two weeks later.

  “Riverton is always threatening to shut this down,” Silas said from the backseat, “but I can’t imagine why. It’s nothing like it was when our parents cruised. People don’t fight or anything. They just come here to hook up.”

  This was true. Years ago, streaking, mooning, and egg and shaving cream fights were the norm. But now, all that anyone on Main Street ever did was drive two miles per hour up and down the same stretch of road all night, talking to the inhabitants of every car they passed. No one dared do anything illegal because you were never more than a few yards from a cop. The police had every high school kid in Northeast Alabama confined to a ten-block radius, but they dispersed us back to our boring towns, and twenty-three years later, Riverton is the meth capit
al of the United States. I do not believe these two things are unrelated.

  So, though I didn’t know it at the time, that night, I hit Main Street for the first and last time, behind the wheel of the ugliest car in automotive history.

  “What exactly do we do now?” I asked once we were stuck in the middle of traffic, with two lanes of oncoming cars creeping to our left and another lane on our right.

  “We talk to skirts,” Silas said then leaned out the window and shouted, “You girls look bangin’ tonight,” at the two blondes in the Toyota Celica next to us.

  The girls laughed but otherwise paid us little attention, and when they moved on, Jackson tried his luck with the girls behind them in a white Ford Bronco. “Good evening, ladies,” he said. “Want to ride with us? OJ wants his Bronco back.”

  This time, the girls didn’t laugh, and Silas hit Jackson upside the head and yelled, “You’ve tried that OJ joke a dozen times now, and it never works!”

  We moved on, and I was about to say hello to some girls in a Geo Metro, when my view through the driver’s side window was eclipsed by the massive shape of Marshall Ford.

  “Good evening, dicks,” Deacon Cassburn said, leaning in Jackson’s window, and he was soon joined by Fletcher Morgan, grinning like a psychopathic kid who’d just learned what a magnifying glass can do to ants.

  Traffic crept forward, and the girls in the Metro were gone, but Deacon and friends continued to walk with us down Main Street.

  “Any luck with the ladies tonight?” Marshall Ford asked, and I shook my head no.

  “Well,” Deacon said, slapping Jackson’s cheek a little harder than necessary, “there’s a girl up there in a Chevy Blazer who wants to meet the guy who scored the last touchdown tonight.”