The Prophet

by Michael Koryta

  When she reached him and took him in her arms, he saw that he was getting blood all over her, staining her with it, and he did not like that. There were tears on her face, and those were bad, too. She was telling him something about an ambulance, and he wanted to listen because it clearly mattered to her, but all that drew his attention were the tears and the blood. He wanted to clean them from her, but he was out of strength for that now, she’d have to do it on her own.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. He was sure the words made it to her, he was sure they were clear, but she did not respond to them, she was still talking about the ambulance. He didn’t answer, couldn’t think of anything to say, but then she told him that she loved him and he knew what to say to that, that one was easy, because he loved her, too, always had. He was glad that she was there with him but wished it didn’t have to be like this, with the blood and the tears.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and this time she seemed to understand how hard the words came, how much they took. She laid her hand on the side of his face, her palm a soothing cool in a world that had grown far too hot.

  “I know, baby,” she said. “I know. It’s all right. It’s okay.”

  50

  ADAM WAS IN THE AMBULANCE by the time Kent arrived, but the police did not delay him long. They took him to the hospital without much pause, and so it was there that he learned his brother was dead.

  A surgeon told him. Dead on arrival, he said, one hand applying what was supposed to be a reassuring touch to Kent’s arm. Shotgun wound. He was very sorry. The police could explain more than he could. All he could say was that it was over.

  Agent Dean was there by then, and Stan Salter. They did not ask questions yet, and for that Kent was grateful.

  “He got Grissom,” Dean told him. “We don’t know much more yet. Grissom was dead inside the house, though. Your brother made it out, but did not make it far.”

  Kent nodded and asked if he could have a moment before they spoke any further. Dean said of course, he could take whatever time he needed, and asked if he wanted them to call Beth or if Kent wanted to do that himself. Kent said he would do it himself, and then he walked down the long, brightly lit corridor, his shoes slapping off shining disinfected tile, and out into the parking lot. His legs held up long enough to get him beyond the rows of cars and then he knew they would not last much longer, and he sought the closest place that looked dark and alone. There was a loading dock nearby, the doors down, no trucks in wait, and he made it that far, lowered himself onto the pavement, put his head between his knees, and wept for his brother.

  He wasn’t sure how long he remained there. He was aware of Dean and Salter coming to the hospital doors, and though they saw him they did not approach. Eventually his eyes ran dry, because that was the way it went; they had no other choice. He looked at Robert Dean and thought of what he’d said just hours earlier, when he filled Kent in on the relationship between Grissom and Sipes, of his theory that one had murdered the other.

  Two men walked out of a house with a secret, and one remains.

  He stood up, brushed the dirt from his pants, and walked back to where the police waited, back to explain how it was that his brother had come to die.

  Inside the house at 57 Erie Avenue police found items belonging to Rachel Bond, and identified the deceased Dan Grissom and Clayton Sipes as the primary suspects in her homicide. Privately, Dean told Kent that the story had produced three calls from current inmates and one from a former inmate wishing to discuss Grissom. He believed that these accounts and forensic evidence from the house would be enough to close the Bond case, certainly, and, he hoped, several others. Kent asked if they would have been able to convict Grissom had he lived. Dean said they’d have had a strong shot.

  Penny Gootee, Rachel’s mother, told any news outlet that asked that she was pleased with the results and that Adam Austin had promised her the very killings he had delivered. That story went national fast. International, even. Kent received calls from reporters in France and England. That Sunday he met with his coaching staff and told them he’d step back for the remainder of the season, because his team didn’t need that kind of media scrutiny, and he wanted to be with his family. He named Byers the acting head coach. He left them to the work that needed to be done then, closed the door of the conference room behind him, and left the locker room, pausing for one look at the picture of the 1989 championship team, the two Austin brothers standing together.

  They buried his brother on Tuesday morning, just after dawn, in a private ceremony that was to be attended only by Kent’s family and Chelsea Salinas. Stan Salter asked Kent if he could be there as well. Kent agreed. It was a swift, simple ceremony. The goal was to avoid media attention, and they managed that. When they left, Kent sent Beth on with the kids and asked Chelsea if he could have a minute with her.

  She was wearing an elegant black dress and heels, but when they reached her battered old Corvette, she slipped the shoes off and then slid herself onto the dirty hood of the car. Kent stood before her in his suit and asked her what it had been like for his brother at the end.

  She told him all that she could. Her voice wavered sometimes but never broke. Adam had known he was dying, she said, but she thought that he was glad to see her. He did not seem afraid, he seemed sorry. She wanted to remove that from him, to give him some peace as he went, and she was not sure if she’d succeeded.

  “I’m glad you made it to him,” Kent said, and he meant that. “But I wish I had, too.”

  “He would not have wanted to see you,” she said, and on that point her voice was firm. “He did not want you to have to go near it.”

  “It was mine to deal with.”

  She pushed her hair back over her ears, stared at the cemetery grounds, and said, “He never could stop trying to make up for Marie. It’s sad as hell, but it’s also one of the reasons I loved him.”

  “I could have helped,” Kent said, “and I did not. If I’d made some different decisions, or involved him more in those, then—”

  “You know what he told me the other day, Kent? He told me that he wished he’d been able to coach with you. He wouldn’t have wanted to be the head coach. I believe he wanted the defense only. And you know what that tells me? He was proud of your decisions. Maybe not all of them, that’s impossible. But as a rule, he trusted them.”

  Kent worked on an answer and couldn’t get to one.

  “Should he have done what he did?” Chelsea said. “No. But he didn’t do it for himself.”

  She looked away from the cemetery grounds and back to him and said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “The place he sent you. The address he gave you. Was it outside of town? Amherst Road?”

  He nodded. “How did you know that? What’s the significance?”

  For the first time, tears pooled in her eyes. She wiped them away and shook her head. “I just had a feeling,” she said, and though he wanted to know more, he sensed that he should not ask. This one stood between his brother and Chelsea, and should remain there.

  “I’ve been told he has no will,” Kent said. “But I want you to be involved, because he would have wanted that.”

  She shook her head. “Trust fund for his niece and his nephew. All of it. That’s what he would have wanted. And a few other things. A few priorities. I can handle one. That’s clearing Rodney Bova. I’ll take care of that. The other one I think should come from you.”

  “Which is?”

  “You can tell your sister what happened.”

  “Talk to my sister.”

  “It’s what Adam did,” she told him. “He’d like her to know, I think. I believe that would matter a lot to him.”

  Once this would have struck Kent as madness, but no longer.

  “You know I could have gotten her home,” he said.

  Chelsea regarded him silently.

  “Adam was supposed to drive her,” he said. “But he’d told me he wasn�
��t going to. He’d decided to let her walk. And all I was doing was watching game film. I could have walked her home myself, run back, it would have taken ten minutes. It all fell on Adam, but I knew the situation, and I made the same call he did. I said it was five blocks, what could go wrong. He wasn’t the only one who failed to look out for her.”

  Chelsea said, “You ever tell him that?”

  “No,” he said, and his voice was unsteady. “No, I never did. But I wanted to tell you.”

  Chelsea’s palm was cool when she touched his arm. “Tell your sister,” she said. “Tell her that, and all the rest. It would have mattered to Adam.”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “Will you be around, Chelsea? If we could talk at some point… I think we should. Please.”

  She looked away. “We can talk, Kent. But I don’t think I’ll be around for long.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But it’s time for me to leave. I know that much. He was ready to, and so was I, and now… well, now I’m what’s left, right? But we weren’t wrong about its being time to leave.”

  She slid off the hood of her car, and they said good-bye then, all that could be said, but she paused with her hand on the driver’s door.

  “I read in the paper that you’re done coaching for the year.”

  “That’s right. I don’t belong on a football field right now, Chelsea.”

  “Your brother,” she said, “would have kicked your ass over your shoulders for that.”

  Those were the last words she said to him before she got into the old Corvette and drove away. Kent took his wife and children home, and then he went to Adam’s house, alone, to tell his sister that her brother was dead, and explain how he had gone, and why.

  Matt Byers coached the team through the week. Kent did not make any appearances at practice. He wanted the news crews to go away, to leave his boys alone, and his presence there would not help. He stayed in a hotel with Beth and the kids until Thursday, when they finally ventured home. The cameras were gone. Some neighbors came by, but most people kept their distance, gave the family some space.

  “You’ve got to be at the game,” Beth told him. “You know that.”

  He knew it. They went together and sat in the stands, the first time he’d been in the stands for a Chambers game since he was a child, and watched as Byers used a run-heavy offense and a blitz-heavy defense to guide the Cardinals to a 14–10 halftime lead over the Center Point Saxons, a program known more for its marching band than its football team until this season. Lorell tried to connect with Colin Mears on two plays, both unsuccessful. He did not go back to him in the second half, and though the offense couldn’t generate anything, the defense played brilliantly, giving up only a field goal to preserve a 14–13 win and earn a berth in the state championship game in Massillon.

  The next week was supposed to be the same. He met with his coaching staff on Sunday and said that they’d done great work, and that he offered nothing but a distraction and that he needed to be with his family and not his football team. They told him they understood, and he told them that he knew they would get a win, and that was supposed to be the end of it. He’d sit in the stands in Massillon, that hallowed ground he’d dreamed of all year, and he’d watch from a distance.

  On Monday evening, though, the doorbell rang and Kent went to answer it expecting a reporter and found Colin Mears instead.

  “Can I have a minute, Coach?”

  Kent didn’t want to give him a minute. He didn’t want anyone in his home except for his family, but of course he could not say that, so he let the boy in and listened as Colin told him that Kent needed to return to the team.

  “I appreciate it,” Kent said. “I do. But right now is not a time for me to be involved with football. You need to understand that.”

  He realized as he said it that if anyone understood, it was of course this seventeen-year-old boy.

  “I’ll be there to support you,” Kent said. “You know that. But, son, I just don’t have much to contribute right now.”

  “You’ve seen me play,” Colin said. “You’ve seen exactly what I’ve contributed to these games. Nothing. But, Coach? I didn’t quit on anybody.”

  “I’m not quitting on you,” Kent said, but it was a hard position to defend. He’d chosen the stands over the field. It was the right choice, he thought, but how to make that clear to Colin, he was not sure.

  “I promised Rachel we’d win it,” Colin said. “You told me that didn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “When you promised me you’d be there regardless, did that matter?”

  The boy was bristling with anger. It went beyond anger, actually. Betrayal, that was the word. Kent looked at him, told him he’d consider the request, and took him to the door. When he closed it, Beth was waiting.

  “You heard?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “You told him you need to be with your family now,” Beth said. “But that team is part of your family, Kent.”

  And so he returned. He was at the field when the team arrived for Tuesday’s practice, and nobody said a word to him, not coaches or players, they just waited to hear what he’d come to say.

  “I’m not in a very good place right now,” he told his team. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be to you. But I’d appreciate it if you all would let me be around to watch you finish what you started.”

  He let Byers run practice, and he helped with the position drills, commenting on technical details, not saying much, just observing. That night he watched video for the first time. Their opponent, Center Grove, was very good. They had a fine quarterback and skilled receivers and they spread teams out and scored lots of points. Their number-one receiver was a great route runner with sure hands, and their number two, a kid named Shepherd, was not so reliable, but he was fast. He could fly, and that threat opened the field. Kent spent an extra hour watching him.

  On Wednesday he called Colin aside and asked if he’d watched video from both sides of the ball. Of course Colin had. He watched everything.

  “If we needed you to,” Kent said, “could you play press coverage on Shepherd? Could you stick with him?”

  Colin stared at him. “You mean at cornerback?”

  Kent nodded. “He’s going to give us trouble with his speed. I know you can run with him, and we don’t have anyone else who can. But are you able to play the position if we asked you to go man-to-man on a few plays? Be honest.”

  “I know all the routes,” Colin said. He was giving the idea careful consideration, and he nodded. “I can play it.”

  “We might never use you,” Kent said. “But it’s an idea.”

  They were three minutes into the second quarter when Colin Mears caught his first pass—from the opposing quarterback. The game was tied at seven, and it was the third time they’d rotated him in to play press coverage as a cornerback. Kent was limiting him to down-and-distance situations where he knew they would pass. The first time he chanced it, they ran a draw instead of passing, but Colin flew to the ball without hesitation, coming in wild but fast, laying himself out to assist on the tackle. It took self-sacrifice to hit like that; you couldn’t offer contact without taking some yourself. The next time he lined up at corner, they tried a pass to the tight end, and then, on the third attempt, Center Grove finally tested him. They sent Shepherd on a go route, pure speed down the sideline, and the quarterback put it out in front where only he could get it.

  That was the idea, at least. But Colin was with him, it was speed on speed, and while the ball was in the air, he pulled a full stride ahead of Shepherd, eyes up, a receiver’s instincts taking over now, forgetting his man to play the ball.

  Just knock it down, Kent thought. That was all he needed to do, just knock it down.

  Instead, he caught it. Pivoted and looked surprised, then saw open field ahead of him, and took off. Brought it back to midfield befo
re he was tackled. On the sidelines the kids mobbed him, and Colin was smiling and Kent realized it had been five weeks since he’d seen a smile on the boy’s face. It would not last, but it was there, and he was glad.

  “Reward one, risk zero,” Byers said in Kent’s headset.

  “My brother’s idea,” Kent answered, pacing down the sideline. The headset went quiet then, none of the other coaches sure what to say, but that was fine. Kent said, “Let’s make them pay, gentlemen,” and then it was football once more.

  They led 14–7 at the half, and early in the third quarter, Lorell tried a pass to Colin on a slant route. The Center Grove fans seemed confused by the roar that went up from the Chambers crowd when he caught it for a simple gain of seven yards. He caught another just two plays later, and then Lorell scored on a run, and it was 21–7 and Byers asked Kent if he wanted to try Mears at cornerback again.

  “I think we’re good,” Kent said.

  It was never a ballgame in the second half. The final score was 35–10.

  Beth met him at midfield, the kids at either side, and Kent said, “Why are you crying?” but then her arms were around him and he was crying, too. She reached up and pulled the brim of his hat down to shield them, her face pressed against his, her tears on his. She held him for a long time, and then she leaned back and wiped his face clean with her hand and said, “Go talk to your team.”

  He went to them. They circled at midfield, the way his teams had in so many season-ending games before, but this one was different. He did not need to tell them where the victory was tonight, where they might find it. The trophy was making its way through the ranks, everyone wanting a hand on it, and Kent watched and tried to prepare the right words.