Devon is staring at his shoes. The boy was always a conflicted player. He wears his struggle on his face. I understand at once how E.J. gets pulled into the boy’s indecision. “Devon,” I begin, “do you remember when you played for me?”
Devon looks me squarely in the eye. I know I only have a short while before I lose his attention. I’ve seen him straddle this fence before. It’s why he gave up after a year on my team.
“Do you remember the night you intercepted on Edgewater? You ran for sixty-five yards. A touchdown. Biggest one of your career. Do you remember what I said?”
Ellis interrupts, “Boy, this man ain’t your friend. Get your mind out of them football dreams of yours.”
Devon is watching me, unsure of what to do.
“I said, ‘You can do this. Just reach deep inside and pull out your best effort. Do you remember that day? Do you remember what you were able to do when you gave it your all? What the hell you doin’ wasting your life like this?”
Ellis is ready to attack. He is closing in on me and Juliana is screaming for him to back off. I shield her as best as I can with my arms, and my pulse is shooting through me.
Devon searches my eyes. He wants to speak up. He’s my player again, and like most players, he needs a firm hand to guide him.
Ellis’s breath is all over my face. It stinks of booze and cigarettes. He’s a formidable man, and although he is terrorizing me and my daughter, I do my best to mask my fear. “This ain’t no football game, Coach,” he rasps.
I take a step closer to him. Our faces are almost touching, and I am breathing in his awful odor. “Don’t you dare threaten me again,” I say. “I will destroy you.”
That’s when I feel the gun against my belly and things take a chilling turn.
Devon stammers, “Pop, leave him alone.”
Ellis flinches. “Boy, what’d you say?”
This is the first time I have had a gun pressed against me, and adrenaline runs up my chest and seizes rational thought. I am shaking inside, but I’m fairly certain I haven’t imagined Devon’s words. Until he says them again: “Leave him alone.”
“You fallin’ for this hero worship?” he says, swatting Devon in the head with the side of the gun. “You think you’re some football star because he says so?”
It is quiet around us, but for Ellis’s nasty voice and the beats of my heart. I am watching as Devon deteriorates under his father’s fists. “You ain’t got no future in football, son. You never did. Tell him, Coach. Tell him he ain’t ever as good as Evan James. Tell him he ain’t got no shot being good at anything. Pigheaded fool.”
I focus on Devon, drawing courage from the young boy’s indecision. “Do you remember what else I said to you that night?”
He doesn’t nod his head or speak. His eyes lock on to mine, and I know.
You may never understand how proud I am of you. It’s remarkable to witness the revitalization of someone who has been beaten and burned, ridiculed and bullied. Everything about them changes. Their face, their eyes, their posture. That night Devon had drunk up my words. If only he could have held on to those words longer.
Ellis is royally pissed and turns again to me. He waves the gun in the air like some prize and wields his power in our faces. I am no longer breathing. I am acting, protecting, stuffing fear away until it’s replaced with guts. “Don’t make me pull this trigger, boy,” he says.
“Devon,” I begin, steadying my voice. “You don’t need to do this. It’s not too late to set things straight. To tell the truth about that night. You gotta come forward. It’s the only way I can help you.”
The boy is breaking before my eyes.
“If you love your brother at all, you gotta man up. Don’t let him go down for this. I know why you did it. There’s something to be said for that. There’s leniency.”
My words infuriate Ellis Whittaker. I don’t see the punch to my face coming until the sting sears my skin, and I am flayed on the floor. Juliana is shouting at him, calling him an animal, and I bark at her to stop, to clear out of there, but she resists. My fingers find my nose, and the wet liquid stains my fingers. I get to my feet and see that Devon is wrestling the gun away from his father. Ellis shouts obscenities in the air, threats that sound like bullets. I scream at Juliana to get behind me. “Juliana! Now!” I have to shield her from this madness.
Devon is no match for his father. They are wrestling on the ground, and the gun falls by my feet. With Juliana cowering behind me, I race to pick it up. Blood drips from my nose, but I am a man with everything to lose. Fear grips me, a trembling that burrows deep in my chest. The flight-or-flight response kicks in and I take action.
Devon is saying something. I think he is swearing, trying to tell his father what he plans to do. “I’ve gotta go to the police,” he says.
His father disagrees, pinning his son to the ground and grabbing his neck with his large, spiny fingers. “Over my dead body, son.”
And a shot is fired.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
JULIANA
I clamp my eyes shut to avoid seeing the blood. My legs have given out, and I am heaped on the ground in a puddle beside my daddy’s gray sweatpants. If I open my eyes, everything will have changed. Someone will be hurt, or worse.
“It’s okay,” my father says, but I don’t trust words right now. Daddy may be all right, but someone else isn’t.
The firing of the weapon startles the two on the ground. No one is yelling anymore. There is silence, except for the wind that rattles the fence around the parking lot. I hear their voices: Ellis and Devon. My eyelids slowly trust the night sky, opening and closing until they are convinced that we are safe. And there is no more blood. Slowly, relief washes over me in fits of nervous tears. I had bottled them up until they came gushing out. A single streetlight illuminates the enclosed area. I clamp my eyes shut and pray for E.J. to be here. I pray for him to talk some sense into his crazy family.
Daddy’s holding the gun in his hand, aiming the pistol at the dark sky before turning it on Ellis. There’s hatred in his eyes, someone I don’t immediately recognize. I want to shout at him to stop, this madman with a gun, but I can’t. I’m terrified. And the gun in Daddy’s hand is the way it has to be. He’s firm when he tells them to get off his field. “You don’t belong here,” he says.
When Devon repeats, “I’m going to turn myself in,” Ellis bows his head and keeps his wicked thoughts to himself. Now that Daddy has the gun and it’s pointing right his way, Ellis is a lot quieter.
I study E.J.’s father, wondering how it is possible that I could love someone who came from such evil. I shiver inside. “I’ll do it,” Devon says again, this time directed at my dad.
“Ellis, you hear that? Your boy’s going to do the honorable thing. I’m thinking I might call Buford over here right now. Sure he’d enjoy this little party.” Daddy sounds rational and calm, but I know there’s fear licking the tips of his words. Until Ellis disappears, Daddy will pretend for me. That’s what he does.
Ellis slowly backs away. He wipes at his pants and shirt, as though erasing evil were that simple. “Keep hearing what you want, Coach. You ain’t gonna fix this. You might be the local hero around here, coaching them boys and all, but you ain’t gonna sink your vampire teeth into my sons.”
“Go to hell!” I hear myself shout at Ellis Whittaker.
Daddy takes my arm and pulls me close to him. I’m ready to punch Ellis in the face and tell him what a disgrace he is as a father.
Ellis stands less tall, and his eyes are raging mad with defeat. “You got a fiery one over there, Coach. Better get her under control.”
“Think you’d better worry about your own kid.”
“Devon don’t know what he’s talkin’ about. He ain’t turnin’ himself in. No speech from a tired coach is going to change that.” Devon eyes Daddy with defeat. Ellis continues, “Now get up, boy. We’re going to find your brother, and we’re gonna mess with him good.”
I be
g my father to stop them. He is holding me back with his stare and an outstretched arm. I scream at Ellis with no shame. One thing spending hours on the football field has taught me is how to swear like a boy.
“Let ’em go,” he whispers to me. “They’re not worth it.”
“They’re going to hurt E.J.”
“No, they’re not. They can’t. Ellis needs E.J.”
We watch as the two men drive off into the dark. Daddy still has the gun in his hand, and he unloads the chamber and throws the bullets into a nearby trash can. I am too frightened to ask how he knows to do that. There’s a lake behind the field, and I watch him walk out to the fringes and toss the gun far into the center of the water. In its absence, we both begin to breathe a little easier. He refuses to let me drive home alone, so we leave my car at the school and get into his.
Neither of us speaks as we head toward home. I shield my eyes from the blood that drips from his nose.
“This isn’t what I wanted for you.”
“Daddy . . .”
“Don’t interrupt me.” He grips the wheel. “I never wanted the hatred of this world touching you. Seems your mama and I haven’t done a very good job protecting you from much.” He looks at me, taking his concerned eyes off the road to make sure I understand. I’m a strong person, but every once in a while it’s nice to have someone take my hand and tell me that everything is going to be all right. That’s what my Daddy does. He takes his hand off the wheel and reaches across to find mine. “I promise you this will all work out. It’ll be all right. I know you miss your mama. I know you miss E.J.”
“It’s not your fault, Daddy. You couldn’t help Mama. You did everything you could. We both did. She just needs to figure it out on her own. Isn’t that what you told me? And how you help those boys every day, how they look up to you. Do you know how proud I am of you? Do you know what it feels like to hear them say you changed their lives?”
He is squeezing my hand tighter: “It’s you who changed my life.”
Sleep comes so deeply that night that I am unsure if the banging is something exploding in my head or the grumbling of dreams. I awake with a start, and the clock says it’s two in the morning. Daddy’s shouting down the hall for me to stay in my room. My body is stiff with fear, and I’m not sure I could move if I tried. Someone is hammering at our door. The persistence can mean only bad things.
I hear a shuffling down the hall and the opening and closing of doors. Voices permeate the house. They are loud and frantic. “E.J.,” I shout, heading for the hallway and the voice I think I know.
“Get back in your room,” my dad screams. “Now!”
The house is dark but for the exterior lights casting a glow through the windows. A familiar car is parked in the street, and I can make out the shape of a figure slumped against the front foyer. Usually the area is covered in boots and jackets and somebody’s keys. Tonight it’s covered with limbs and legs and that person is crying out something awful. The face is covered, but I recognize the black parka and scuffed shoes. It’s Devon.
I tiptoe back to my room, and by instinct I dial E.J. I need to hear his voice. He needs to be okay. The call goes right to voice mail, and I feel the bile rising in my throat. I sit at the doorway with my head pressed to the frame. My father is coaxing Devon out of a stupor. I hear things like “talk to me” and “tell me what happened,” but Devon doesn’t respond. He is writhing and moaning in a way that sounds like death.
Then I hear Daddy dialing someone, and I know things are really dire because he says, “A boy has been badly beaten.” And he gives them our address.
“Juliana!” he shouts, and at once he is father and coach. “Get me something to stop the bleeding.” I spring from my room toward the linen closet and grab a handful of towels. I do not turn on the light. The grunting sounds of the part boy, part animal by the front door guide me in his direction. Daddy knows this, too, and spares me from having to see the damage to Devon Whittaker. I don’t need a light on to know the boy is in bad shape.
“Who did this to you?”
I drop the towels by his side and see the whites of Devon’s eyes glaring at me. A jumble of pain and regret is staring back at me.
“Go grab some ice.”
I follow Daddy’s instructions and return with a foamy pack from the freezer. He is tending to wounds and bumps in a darkened haze, all the while calming Devon with his voice. I escape to the opposite side of the room, my eyes clamped shut.
“Devon, you gotta tell me what happened.”
“I shot him,” he weeps. “My dad. I shot him.”
The blaring sounds of the sirens approaching our house combine with my relief.
“He’s gone,” he adds.
I am ashamed to be relieved that someone has died.
“He came after me,” he pants. “He said I betrayed him. The gun went off . . . he was dead. I had to get away . . . his car.” He stops to catch his breath. “He would’ve killed me. He was ready to shoot.”
Daddy is listening to all this, trying to stay calm. “You did right,” he says. “You were protecting yourself, son. He won’t hurt you anymore.”
Devon succumbs to his injuries and falls out of consciousness. I’m not really sure where his wounds are, though I know what it feels like when a parent disappoints you. The EMTs are in the house, crawling along the dark space surrounding Devon. When they turn the lights on, I have to leave the room. I don’t walk. I run toward the hallway and kick my door open. I dial E.J. again, just to hear his voice on the message. I hang up and call again and again and again.
Hours later we—me and my dad—are back in CMC-Mercy sitting in Devon’s room. People like Devon don’t get many visitors. Ruby’s boss wouldn’t let her leave her job to come visit. The way he sees it, he can’t let his employees leave whenever one of their kids gets into trouble. The other visitor is a detective with the local police. He had spoken with E.J. earlier in the day, and now it’s Devon’s turn to corroborate the story.
Devon has several broken ribs, a broken arm, a mild concussion, and multiple stitches along his cheek and back. There is some internal bleeding from where Ellis kicked him in the stomach with his work boots. His face is badly bruised and his top lip, a scary shade of purple.
It hurts for him to talk, but he opens his eyes to confess. The detective informs him that a surveillance video at the burglarized home had a clear picture of Devon’s face. Because the jewelry was returned and E.J. explained the circumstances surrounding Devon’s plight, the couple who lived in the house decided not to press charges. They took a liking to E.J. and the graceful way he protected his brother. Besides, they got their jewelry back. They figured it was best to put the event behind them. E.J. would have gone on lying to protect his brother forever. That’s the boy I fell in love with.
I can tell the minute he walks into the hospital room that he wonders why I’m there. Why does this boy have to be so darn pigheaded? With Ellis and his threats gone, there is no reason for us to be apart. He disagrees. But he’s seen what one incident in his family’s life can do to us. That’s why he argued with me that people like us need to know when it’s time to let go. I didn’t want to let go. And I think he will soften over time. He is just feeling spooked. Doesn’t he know I will never give up on him?
“You’re lucky Mama’s not here to see you,” he says to his brother, taking a seat beside his bed. Devon is in a half sleep, caught between painkillers and wanting to crack a smile. He doesn’t say much, though he knows we are all there.
E.J.’s wearing a black Lees-McRae College sweatshirt that I think Daddy gave to him. His sweatpants are neon yellow, the same ones I sat on a few weeks ago, long before everything went crazy. And there is his scent, traveling through my nose to my mind and to the secret parts of me that only he can inflame. He looks in my direction and nods.
I wish I could go to him. I am not sure that my heart will listen to the stampeding denials of my brain. Daddy sees me eyeing E.J. as he takes
hold of his brother’s hand. E.J. has beautiful hands, rich brown with long, long fingers. I must radiate thirst, because Daddy tells me to go to the cafeteria and grab him a diet Coke.
When I return, I hand Daddy a regular Coke instead. “Aspartame will kill you,” I say.
Usually this would get a laugh out of E.J. Not anymore. E.J. is distant. He talks to my dad as though I’m not in the room. It feels like I have intruded on something, and the exclusion hurts.
Angry and confused, I escape into the hallway and slump to the linoleum-covered floor. Their voices drift through the hallway and into my ears. I shut my eyes and listen.
“I wish I could give you some wise fatherly advice right now, like how to deal with grief. There’s no quick fix. Time. That’s about it. One day at a time.”
E.J. says he’s all right. “Ellis was never my daddy. My mama raised me. She was the one who made sacrifices.”
Then Daddy starts talking to him about football and his future. E.J. says, “You saved my brother.”
“Devon saved himself.”
“You believed in him.”
“I believe in all my boys. They need to trust what’s inside of them. It’s been inside Devon all along. I told you, son, when you love something, you have to learn to protect it. You fight for it. For them. You don’t let them go.”
I am certain Daddy is referring to me, and I feel the blush across my cheeks. But when he says what he says next, the blood drains from my face.
“Football. Football is going to take you out of here. When you love something this much, it’ll love you back. I know you’ve been battling stuff. We all got battles. Some we win and some we lose. What matters is how you handle those battles. Win with integrity. Lose without losing yourself. Stay faithful to who you are, E.J., and you’ll always be a winner.”
E.J. mumbles something, and Daddy tells him he expects him on the field tomorrow. “And Devon, as soon as you’re back on your feet, you can come too. It might not be much to start, but you’ll help me with operations. Maybe I’ll even let you assist my defensive line coach. One caveat: you keep your nose clean. I won’t protect you again.”
Where We Fall: A Novel Page 20
