The Prophet

by Michael Koryta

  A chorus of “no, sirs” came, but he was already turning away from them in disgust.

  “Colin, Lorell, Damon! Get down here.”

  In came his three senior all-state studs. When Kent stared them down, they all met the gaze, but Colin did it with hunger, almost as if he’d been hoping it would go this way. Kent understood. There was an excruciating fatigue that came when every pair of eyes that looked your way seemed to read a FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE label on your forehead.

  “What do you think of your team’s effort today?” Kent said.

  There was a murmured “Not great” from Damon, a “Poor” from Lorell, and a nearly shouted “Awful, sir!” from Colin.

  “So no one is impressed?”

  Three heads shook.

  “Anyone feel like we’re ready to win with this effort?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right then. We’re going to keep at it down here, and while we do, you can hit the bleachers to demonstrate the sort of effort that you want, as captains. Move.”

  They moved—off the field and through the fence and into the bleachers and began to run, six feet hammering on the aluminum in unison.

  “When they see enough from you,” Kent said, turning back to his team but shouting loud enough for the benefit of the three running the bleachers, “they’ll come back down to join us.”

  He saw heads turning from him, eyes drifting away, and for an instant he was enraged—they were still not going to give him focus?—but then he saw the police uniform by the fence, and he, too, was distracted. It was Stan Salter.

  “Coach Byers, get these boys fired up,” Kent said, and then he walked over to Salter.

  “How’s your team doing, Coach?”

  “Could be better. How’s your investigation going?”

  “Could be better.”

  Kent nodded and waited. Salter had sunglasses on, and he looked from Byers up to the rattling bleachers. Damon Ritter stumbled, slipping in the burgundy leaves that were raining silently down. That would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Kent’s best defensive player blowing out a knee running sprints to make a point to the team.

  “That the Mears boy you got running?” Salter asked.

  “It is.”

  “How’s he holding up?”

  “This will help him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Salter nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “You spoken to your brother?”

  “I have not.” Kent was still staring into the bleachers.

  “I could use your help with him.”

  “He’s not going to be any more cooperative with you if I’m the middleman. If anything, it will make things more difficult for you.”

  “You don’t know that he’s investigating Rachel Bond’s murder, I take it.”

  Kent turned to Salter, seeing his own reflection in the cop’s sunglasses.

  “Investigating?”

  Salter nodded. “I got a call today from a woman of… potential value to the investigation. Seems your brother went out to interview her yesterday morning, then called again today. Told her he was a private investigator. She didn’t think much of it at the time, because his name didn’t resonate with her. Then she talked it over with a friend this afternoon and realized how disturbing an answer he’d given her when she asked who he was working for.”

  “Who is he working for?”

  “His sister,” Salter said. “That’s what he told her, at least. He said he was working on behalf of his sister.”

  Kent leaned on the fence, tightened his right hand around the chain link. “He said that?”

  “Yes.”

  Neither of them spoke then. Behind them the coaches shouted instructions and the kids grunted with effort and the tackling sleds slapped and rattled on their frames. Beside them the bleachers shook and Colin Mears screamed out encouragement as he took the steps—Come on, show them something, show them how we do this! The wind was pushing across the field in strong gusts, fat orange and crimson leaves tumbling.

  “I would like,” Stan Salter said, “for your brother not to jeopardize my investigation. I understand that the two of you are not close. But I need you to understand that I can’t have him doing what he’s doing.”

  “On behalf of his sister,” Kent repeated. “That’s what he told her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did his sister want, Lieutenant?” Kent’s voice was choked, the whistle back in the corner of his mouth now, teeth grinding against it. “Do you know?”

  “Suspects.”

  “Suspects.” Kent nodded. Spit the whistle out. Looked away. “Tell you what, Lieutenant. You let me talk to my brother.”

  “Thought you didn’t do much of that.”

  “I don’t. But it’s time.”

  15

  IN THE YEARS SINCE HE’D faded into the mists of memory, Rodney Bova had drifted out of Chambers County and then returned, with stops at three jails and one prison in between.

  The first bust—at least the first available to the public, his juvenile record was protected—had been in 1994, for selling weed. He did thirty days in jail in Sandusky and then got out and migrated back east, pausing in Cleveland to be arrested for trafficking with an inmate at the Cuyahoga County Jail and sentenced to three months. Back out again, long enough to sniff the fresh air and decide he didn’t like the smell, and then through the revolving door and into the Lorain County Jail for a three-count conviction involving assault, drug possession, and an unlicensed firearm after he was arrested during a bar fight. The judge in that case had less patience with young Rodney and sent him to prison for an eighteen-month stay. Mansfield Correctional had been his home from the autumn of 1998 to the spring of 2000.

  The facility had also been home, those years, to Gideon Pearce.

  And, later, to Jason Bond.

  Something began to tick inside Adam as he read through the arrest records and constructed his timeline. It wasn’t a bad feeling. Not at all. More like the application of a match to a part of him that longed for heat, ached for it.

  He was lost in the web of overlapping names and dates and prisons when his phone began to ring, and he silenced it without a glance, didn’t look at the display until the second call, an immediate, impatient follow-up effort, and then it froze him.

  Kent was calling.

  Kent did not call.

  Five rings before voicemail, and he let it get to four before he picked it up.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s me.”

  “I noticed that.”

  Silence. Kent said, “We need to talk, Adam.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yes. I’d rather it be in person.” There was a hard edge to his younger brother’s voice. The coach’s tone, that’s what it was, the ruler of young men, captain of the ship, and it raised a bristle in Adam. Always did. Coach your boys, Kent, don’t coach me, he’d said more than a few times, back in the days when they spoke.

  “I’m not at home.”

  “That’s fine. Tell me where you are.”

  “Busy.”

  “That’s not a place, Adam.”

  “It’s a condition, Kent. So you’re right. But it’s still true.”

  “True for me, too. I’ve got a game tomorrow, I’ve got two kids and a wife at home, and I’ve got police calling me, looking for you. But I’m making time, and you will, too.”

  Adam let a few seconds and a few responses float by, and while he did that, Kent said, “Tell me where I can find you, all right? Just do that much.”

  “Let’s go to Haslem’s.” This was designed to get a rise out of him, just the sort of needle Adam couldn’t bring himself to put down with Kent, even when he tried.

  “I’m not meeting you at a strip club.”

  “The house, then.”

  The only place that would appeal to Kent less than the titty bar was their childhood home. You could practically see his skin crawl when he crossed over the thresho
ld. How long had it been since he was inside? Adam couldn’t remember.

  “Okay,” Kent said after a pause, and then Adam pulled back on the offer, a poker player immediately regretting his bluff.

  “Like I said, I’m not there. Tell you what, Coach, I’ll come out to the school. Meet you in your office. That way you can get some work done while you wait.”

  “I don’t want to wait.”

  “Then I’ll hustle right along,” Adam said, and hung up. He bounced the phone in his palm and stared at the wall and eventually he became aware of a pain in his jaw and realized how tightly he was clenching his teeth. He set the phone down and opened the refrigerator. There were five beers left in the twelve-pack he’d bought last night.

  “See you in five, Franchise,” he said aloud, and then he opened one of the Coronas and took another in his free hand and walked outside to drink in the cold.

  Kent was glad Adam had picked the school. He didn’t want to chase his brother through the town’s grunge bars and he certainly didn’t want to see him at either of the two places he called home: one that belonged to a married woman with an inmate husband, or one that belonged to bad memories. Carefully preserved bad memories.

  He knew when he hung up that Adam would take his sweet time appearing. He had to do that, had to try to establish the alpha status in whatever sad way possible. Kent had said he did not want to wait, and that meant he would be made to wait.

  The coach’s office and locker rooms at Chambers were in a single-story concrete-block building behind the end zone. When he pulled in and parked in the empty lot he could see posters and silver and red streamers covering the walls, handiwork of the boosters and parents and cheerleaders. PLAYOFFS: WIN OR GO HOME! one of the signs shrieked.

  He was so sick of going home with a loss he could hardly bear it, so sick of uttering the same damned reassurances of how he was proud of his kids and proud of their character and proud of the season, the season that had ended with his kids watching their opponents celebrate.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen again this year. Not with this team. They were too good, they were too well prepared, they were too experienced. Every part was there, every element a championship squad needed was in place. They were the best this town had ever seen. Better than the ’89 team by a mile. But the ’89 team had put a trophy in the case, they had rings on their fingers. Their work was done. His was not.

  He had one of those rings himself, but it didn’t count. He’d been a freshman that season, never took a snap in the playoffs, just stood on the sidelines with a clipboard and charted plays while Pete Underwood, the senior starter, ran the careful, plodding offense, the world’s most boring offense, a two-running-back set that asked very little of the quarterback beyond the ability to complete a handoff. It was tedious to watch, but Walter Ward was not interested in entertaining, he was interested in wins. They had a big bruising line and a committee of big bruising backs, and they just wore teams down. In the state championship they’d used fifteen straight running plays on their final drive. Fifteen. The opposing defense had everyone down in the box, essentially ignoring the threat of a vertical passing route, committed to stopping Chambers up front, confident that if they did that, they’d win the game, because Underwood was not going to beat them with his arm. And Coach Ward had looked at that, at the way his team was being dared to pass, and he’d kept running the ball. All the way into the end zone.

  Prophet right.

  Prophet left.

  Prophet right.

  Prophet right.

  Prophet right.

  Never showing a trace of emotion, no hint of fear, not even when they got to fourth and two, just kept calling those plays in a flat, steady voice, everyone in the stadium knowing exactly what was coming, including the defense, all of it on Adam, who was the prophet, who was the telltale blocker out front, promising contact. Coach Ward just stood there with his arms folded across his chest and gave it to them again and again, relentless and confident—You must stop this, and you will not be able to.

  How the fans had loved that! You wanted to talk about smashmouth? Watch a fifteen-play drive against the state’s best defense in which the ball was never passed. Adam had been out in front of the ball carrier the whole way. He’d played every down of the state championship game, both sides of the ball, and somewhere in Ohio there were ex-linebackers with loose teeth who remembered him well. They used four different running backs on those fifteen handoffs, but just one lead blocker for all of them. It was the point of the play—promise package, they called it. When Adam came in on the offensive side of the ball, you were going to get a run, and you were going to have him out front. Every time. Usually he rotated, usually Ward saved most of his strength for defense and short-yardage situations, but not that drive. Fifteen straight.

  The way the crowd had roared after that drive… Kent hadn’t heard anything else like it in high school football. Doubted he ever would again. It had been ugly football, mean and nasty, but somehow it connected with hearts in the stands because of that. It took Kent a while to understand the reason exactly, and with it came a better understanding of the game, why it inspired such a fierce pride in towns like Cleveland and Green Bay and Pittsburgh. Like Massillon. Like Chambers.

  The way they’d roared that night—people cried in the stands, he remembered that, would never forget it, people cried— wasn’t just because Chambers had won the game. At that point, in fact, victory had hardly been assured; there were three minutes left to play, and the top-ranked team in the state had the ball and a last chance to regain the lead. No, it was because they’d started with their backs against the wall, jammed against their own goal line with a deficit and a ticking clock and then lined up in a way that said, We will have to take a beating with this approach, there is no other way, and then they’d taken it, and taken it, and taken it, until suddenly they were administering it.

  That was why people cried in the stands.

  It had taken Kent a long time to understand it.

  Tonight he was in the locker room alone, and when he flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights, the place picked up a white glow, and at the end of the locker room he could see the photograph of the 1989 team, the only team picture that he’d ever allowed to hang in the locker room. It was not all about wins and losses, he reminded his boys every day, but then there was just the one team picture hanging in the room.

  Because they won. Right, Coach? Why else? And you’re in that picture but you don’t belong in it, and all of the pictures you do belong in, well, they don’t belong on the wall.

  He went through the locker room and into his office, fired up the computer and projector and began to watch video. A little more than an hour passed before Adam arrived.

  In through the locker room door without a knock, and then Kent could see him standing out there, gazing around. The door to the coach’s office was open and the lights from the video painted it and its lone occupant with that white glow, but Adam didn’t even glance that way, just stood with his back to the office and took in the rest of the room, and Kent knew he was both remembering old ghosts and assessing the ways in which it had changed since the days when they were not ghosts at all.

  Kent rose from the chair and walked out to join him. Adam looked at him for a minute. “Not even a handshake, Franchise?”

  They shook hands. Adam’s grip was stronger. One of the reasons he liked to shake hands. He enjoyed intimidation in all of its forms, brutal to subtle. Kent was not a small man—six-two and 190 pounds that still saw several hours a week in the weight room—but around Adam he was not just the little brother in terms of years. When he’d signed with Ohio State, Adam had stood six-four barefoot, with a forty-five-inch chest and thirty-one-inch waist. Ridiculous proportions. He ran the forty in 4.7 seconds, which wasn’t blazing speed, not Colin Mears speed, but was awfully damn fast. Twenty-two years had taken the speed from him, but it had hardly made a dent in the muscle, and somehow that annoyed Kent. May
be his brother was always in a gym, and he just didn’t know it. He doubted it, though. So how did he do it? How could a man drink like that and live like that and still look like that?

  “How you doing?” Kent said, already awkward, the handshake somehow removing the sense of focused control he’d had when he walked over to meet his brother.

  “I’m all right. You?”

  “Tired.”

  “Going to get more tired, if you’re any good. Should have a few weeks left. Undefeated season’s never been done in this school. Going to get it for them?”

  “We’ll try,” Kent said. “Listen, I didn’t bring you in here to talk football.”

  “Should have. I could help your Pollyannas. Teach them how to play with blood in their eyes.”

  “Adam, listen, we need to—”

  “You remember the last time you called me?” Adam said. His dark blue eyes held a faraway sheen, and Kent could smell beer on his breath.

  “You’ve been drinking tonight, haven’t you?”

  “I drink every night. Now, do you remember the last time you called me?”

  Kent thought about it, said, “Your birthday.”

  “That doesn’t count. Remove the obligatory holiday calls and then tell me.”

  They were obligatory only to Kent; he did not receive holiday calls from Adam. But his brother’s eyes had gone serious and for some reason he was compelled to go along with it, to try and remember. He couldn’t do it. Adam saw that in his face and smiled humorlessly.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I couldn’t recall it myself.”

  Kent said, “A girl was murdered, Adam, and the police are calling me about it.”

  “I’ve heard from them, too.”

  “Apparently they don’t hear back.” Kent stepped forward, forced himself into Adam’s wandering gaze, and said, “Did you really tell some woman you were working for our sister?”

  It went very quiet then. In his office the video played, and flickers of light and shadow bled out of the room and danced over Adam’s lean face as he looked down into Kent’s eyes.