Loving the Rain

by Jeff LaFerney

  “Well, it’s kind of like a clown, I guess. Someone who, well, makes a fool of himself while trying to be funny. This man’s name, though, is Buf-phone, I believe.”

  “Do you think he’s nice?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “’Cuz if he went to my school, everyone would call him ‘Buffoon,’ and I think that would make him mean.”

  Mr. Thomas regularly observed that his son thought things through a little more deeply than most ten-year-olds. He was also starting to perceive that they were running short of time and the likelihood of getting a signature was fading fast. Mr. Thomas wasn’t the only perceptive Thomas, however. Clay realized that time was running short, but he also sensed that getting this autograph was more important to his dad than it was to himself. His dad would feel like he let his son down if they didn’t manage to get at least one signature on “Autograph Night.” Clay looked at the football player just as Doug Buffone looked up, and they made eye contact. Clay thought, “Please give me an autograph.” The Bear’s linebacker surprisingly stood and motioned for Clay to come forward.

  When Clay got to the table, the linebacker said, “I only have a minute. Would you like an autograph?”

  “Yes, please.”

  As he signed, Buffone asked, “Is that all you want?”

  “Like what else?”

  “How ’bout if I get a sack or an interception for you in tonight’s game?”

  “That’s all right. I kind of want the Lions to have a chance.”

  Buffone laughed. “I knew when I laid eyes on you, you were a good kid. Enjoy the game.”

  As Buffone walked away, Clay said, “He is a nice man, Dad. I’m sure glad I don’t have his name though.”

  Mr. Thomas laughed and said, “You should have asked for his jersey or wristbands or something. I think he’d have given you whatever you wanted.”

  Young Clay just shrugged and thought to himself, “That wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.”

  When Clay looked back on his childhood, he pinpointed that encounter with Doug Buffone as probably the first time he’d controlled a person’s mind. By the time he was 13, he had learned what he could do, and somehow he had also begun to learn that he needed to be careful and rarely use his powers. He could have made Doug Buffone act like a buffoon if he’d wanted to, or even a baboon if he knew what baboons acted like. But even as a ten-year-old, Clay didn’t think that would be the right thing to do. He eventually determined that no one should know the power he possessed, so he kept it to himself and never told anyone…

  That football game was 30 years ago. Clay had secretly lived with his powers for 30 years. At times, those years were remarkably frustrating and lonely. And as he evaluated his life, something that he had been doing a lot since he became suspicious that his son might have the same power, he felt that his most important relationships were less than fulfilling as well. He wasn’t the husband or the father that we wanted to be. So he had finally decided it was time to share the secret with someone, maybe not Tanner just yet, and certainly not Jessie, but there were some things that needed to be discussed, and the sooner the better. He needed to sort out what to do before Tanner did something they both regretted.

  CHAPTER 6

  Pete Piggott was a buffoon. He was also the boys’ varsity basketball coach at Kearsley High School. He was not a teacher. He was approximately 5’6”, maybe 250 pounds. When seated, he had to lean back and then propel his head forward over his bulging waist to get enough momentum to stand. He had such tiny, meaty, sweaty hands that he couldn’t get a good grip on a handshake, leaving whomever it was that he met to feel as if he or she was squeezing a small, wet guinea pig. The handshake didn’t inspire much confidence, nor did his beady black eyes which were always on the move, searching for something that they never seemed to find and avoiding whomever it was that had just released the disgusting “guinea pig” and was wiping his or her hand off on the nearest article of clothing. He hurled insults at his players, blamed everyone else when things went wrong, was apt to have tremendous and often hilariously embarrassing temper tantrums, and somehow managed to win more games than he lost. The only real relationship he had with any known human being was a cousin in the area who took pity on him. The players just called him Pig or the Pigman—respectfully, of course.

  Rumor had it that Piggott had spent time in jail for assaulting a paperboy in Missouri who brained Piggott with a throw from the street. Logical minds believed he probably hadn’t committed a felony or the school district wouldn’t have hired him, but practically everyone believed there was some truth to the story. Piggott worked security for Harding Metals, Jack Harding’s Flint-area scrap yard specializing in the buying and selling of scrap metal, machinery, electrical supplies, and auto parts, among other things. Piggott guarded the junk and supposedly chased off the homeless and any would-be thieves and vandals. No one could even fathom that he once played the game himself, but he claimed to have been an all-conference point guard for Cass City in the early ’70’s. “I was thin, quick, and didn’t sweat as much,” he once said at a meet-the-team, demonstrating the only hint of humor he’d ever shared. Jack Harding’s son, Kevin, would be a senior guard on Piggott’s Kearsley basketball team. Pete Piggott didn’t seem to really like anyone, except possibly Kevin Harding, but even with Kevin it was hard to tell for sure. The truth was that Piggott resented Jack so much that he actually felt compassion for his son. Coach Piggott wasn’t married but was rumored to frequent many of the area “Gentleman’s Clubs” in search of a certain dancer that he had his heart set on marrying. The story is that the dancer, a Miss Honey Suckle, had fled to Canada.

  ***

  Like every typical high school boy, Tanner wasn’t very motivated by the ringing telephone. “Get the phone!” Jessie yelled. It was Saturday afternoon, the weekend before basketball practices were to begin.

  Tanner casually lumbered over to the phone and snatched it off the cradle on approximately the eighth ring. He said, “Hello,” just as Jessie stormed out of her bedroom with some kind of gook on her face.

  “Tanner, this is Coach Piggott,” Piggott boomed into the phone.

  “It’s for me, Mom! Hey, Coach.” Jessie shook her head, scowled at her son, and went back to whatever it was that she was doing to her face. Clay was outside, moving the snow blower from the shed into the garage, getting ready for winter.

  “Just letting you know we’re practicing at midnight Sunday. Midnight Madness.”

  “We have school on Monday, Coach.” Though he knew it would do no good, Tanner was still hoping to change his coach’s mind. The season before, during middle-of-the-night practice, the Pigman got so angry that he kicked a ball to the ceiling. It smashed against one of the hanging lights, knocking it out of its bracket. The safety chain unfortunately was unhooked and the huge light fixture fell to the floor, less than a foot from killing one of the players. Glass and metal flew everywhere. Two players cut themselves during cleanup, sending Piggott into a tizzy. “I ain’t doin’ no stinkin’ paperwork! Friggin’ injury reports! If you’re still bleedin’ by the time we get this cleaned up, you’re cut!” No pun was intended—a line like that would have been too clever for the raving lunatic. The Pigman, who didn’t seem to learn lessons like most moderately intelligent people did, later in another fit, hurled a basketball against the wall. This time it hit the fire alarm, breaking the glass and setting the alarms ringing. Practice ended when the firemen and the school superintendent showed up. Piggott left the gym, rubbing his reinjured, chronically sore rotator cuff. Both injured players, by the way, bandages still on their fingers two days later, got cut anyway.

  “Take a nap, Thomas.”

  “I have a bruised thigh, Coach. I could use a few more days’ rest.”

  “Kevin Harding would love to be point guard, Thomas. Rest in the off-season. I’ll see you midnight Sunday. Be early.” And he hung up.

  Piggott loved midnight madness. He was used to working thi
rd shift, so the hours made no difference to him. And it didn’t matter to him in the slightest that it was a school night. What he loved was that he could tell Jack Harding that he wouldn’t be coming in to work. Jack could find someone else to post guard over his shady business dealings—shady in the sense that Jack was a criminal. He was a small-time criminal, but a criminal nonetheless. He fenced a few stolen items here and there and dabbled in money laundering, gambling, loan sharking, and was making a nice profit on the illegal sale of firearms. Harding Metals was reasonably legit, but that was daytime business. It was the nighttime business that Jack Harding lived for…that and his son, Kevin, who Jack thought was a fine basketball player. Finer, of course, than he really was, but Jack hadn’t seemed to notice his shortcomings over the years. He also had Pete Piggott in his back pocket. Pete Piggott worked security at Harding Metals so that if need be Jack could blackmail the coach and thereby expand his criminal activities by one. Jack looked at it as diversifying.

  ***

  “You ready for practice?” Jack Harding asked his son on Sunday evening as Jack was preparing to head to the junkyard for another night of shady dealings and Kevin was packing shoes and Gatorade into a bag. Jack was a decent-looking man, slightly over six feet, muscular build, black hair, and a short, neatly trimmed goatee that he felt was an important amenity when doing business with the criminal types he often found himself dealing with. He would occasionally shave to impress “respectable” people. His bushy eyebrows hid his eyes a bit—eyes that always seemed suspicious or angry but never happy. He made a habit of wearing a suit and tie, even at Harding Metals, because it made him look more important than he really was. On his tie was a picture of a car crusher and a smashed vehicle the size of a small dresser.

  “Yeah, I guess,” replied Kevin.

  “You gonna win the point guard job this year?”

  “No. Tanner Thomas is the point guard.” Kevin, at times, had more common sense than his father.

  “You’re better than him. I’ll have to talk with that moron coach of yours to make sure you get the spot.”

  “Dad, Tanner is better than me.”

  “No he isn’t. You made all-conference last year.”

  “I made honorable mention. Tanner made first-team. Tanner averaged more than 17 points a game. I averaged almost eight. I’ll start, but not at point guard. Leave Coach alone, okay?”

  “If he put you at the point, you’d be first-team.”

  “Probably not, but thanks for saying so. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Kevin exited the house, no more excited about practice than Tanner was. He was thinking of the time last year when the Pigman got so crazy he started blowing his whistle uncontrollably. His cheeks were completely puffed out and his face was beet-red and sweating, yet he continued to blow the whistle until he literally passed out. Kevin remembered Mike Powell remarking, “If Piggott needs mouth-to-mouth, I think he’s gonna die.” Kevin laughed to himself, but it really wasn’t a “good” memory. Something bad almost always happened in Piggott’s practices.

  ***

  Though Jack Harding had a daughter, he cared more about his son because it was through his son that he relived the sports career that he always felt was stifled by idiot teammates, bad breaks, and retarded coaches. Jack vowed that Pete Piggott was not going to stand in the way of Kevin’s success. Harding first met Pete Piggott about 11 years previously. Pete wasn’t as fat then, but he was still quite round and stupid looking. He was unemployed at the time and living in a small house in a neighborhood known as “Little Missouri” on the southeast side of Flint. Jack, who had dabbled in the bail bonds business (before switching to the more lucrative loan sharking business), got a call to bail Pete Piggott out of jail. Pete’s angry and nearly incoherent story had something to do with hurting his shoulder and returning newspapers to their rightful and “bleeping owner.”

  Pete, being unemployed and barely literate, was unwilling to pay for the daily Flint Journal newspaper delivery. The newsboy, however, was getting his kicks out of irritating his non-customer, so he kept delivering even after Piggott made it very clear that he wasn’t paying. He told Piggott that newspaper articles were written at the third grade reading level, so if he read carefully, it was possible that he could understand a few of the shorter ones. The newsboy would fold the paper into thirds, as he did his regular newspapers, but for Pete Piggott, he would fold the top and bottom into additional thirds, leaving it in an approximate four-inch by four-inch block. He would then bundle the brick securely with several rubber bands and fire it into Piggott’s screen door with amazing speed and accuracy. Piggott would holler and scream and even occasionally throw one back, one time connecting with his attractive neighbor who was walking her dog. When she threatened to sue him, he decided that he had finally had enough. After drinking half a bottle of Jack Daniels and stomping around his house in anger, he finally summoned his courage and gathered his unread Flint Journals into a large burlap bag. Staggering each step of the way, he managed to drag them to the newsboy’s home and started firing the newspapers back at the kid’s front door. He stood in the street and screamed, threatened, and carried on while chugging the other half of the bottle of whisky. By the time he was nearly done with his pile, he had torn his rotator cuff and had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. While Police Officer Lance Hutchinson hooked a handcuff around Piggott’s left wrist, Pete’s last throw glanced harmlessly off a shrub. He had managed to connect with the house just five times in nearly 40 attempts. Jack Harding agreed to post the 1,000 dollars needed to free Pete from jail, the surety bond to be paid back at 15 percent interest after Jack appeared in court.

  In the trial, which should have resulted in a simple misdemeanor, Piggott ignorantly represented himself, and after several warnings to control his temper, he was finally cited with criminal contempt of court when he snatched the judge’s gavel from her hand and fired it across the courtroom at the teenaged newsboy. The gavel sailed harmlessly into the wall while Piggott fell to his knees in rotator-cuff-induced pain. He was sent to jail for three days before being found guilty of drunk and disorderly conduct. He was fined 200 dollars and sentenced to 200 hours of community service. Piggott first volunteered his time at the Flint YMCA, coaching basketball, and eventually as an AAU coach. He realized that coaching was the only “job” he’d ever done that he was actually decent at, so when Kearsley High School needed to fill its vacated head boys basketball coaching position the day before the 2001-02 season began, Pete Piggott, the only applicant, became a varsity coach.

  After the trial, Jack Harding had hired Piggott to guard his junkyard from any potential unruly elements such as thieves, vandals, and the homeless. Piggott owed Harding 150 dollars and the court 200 dollars, so he took the job against his better judgment—he rather didn’t like the idea of working. Harding, for his part, figured the job took very little brains, and since his “business” was evolving more and more toward the criminal element, he figured Piggott could watch the place at night and never figure out what was going on. Kevin Harding was six at the time of the hiring, just about a year before his parents’ divorce. As fate would have it, he had moved back into his father’s home and would be a second-year varsity starter on Piggott’s basketball team. Since Jack Harding “owned” Pete Piggott, he was sure that he could convince the coach to move his son to point guard so that he would get the attention and recognition that Tanner Thomas was getting.

  CHAPTER 7

  Midnight Madness was exactly that—madness. Tanner’s leg was dragging as he gulped Gatorade from a bottle. Piggott was driving them like a madman, only this year he was being very careful not to break anything, so he hadn’t thrown or kicked a ball yet. He had missed his mouth with a bottle of Gatorade. He was yelling at a couple of juniors, “This ain’t little league any more. This is the big time an’ time for you momma’s boys to figure it out!” He was blathering on when he lifted his bottle for a drink; he missed his mouth completely, however, and spla
shed half its orange contents over his shirt. The juniors weren’t smart enough to keep their laughter to themselves, so the coach had his team line up again for more sprints.

  It was 2:30 AM, and Piggott was threatening them with more running. Midnight Madness was Coach Piggott’s way of making a first impression, like a strict teacher who loosens up as the year goes along, except the Pigman never really loosened up. School would start at 7:30, and they would be back in the gym practicing again immediately after it ended. The players were tired and practice was long past being productive.

  Tanner, during the last several weeks, had reached the conclusion that somehow he was able to influence what people were thinking. He could manipulate their minds, and they would do what he wanted them to do. It could not simply be a coincidence. Occasionally it didn’t work, however, so even if he had considered sharing his conclusion with anyone, there wasn’t enough evidence of “mind powers” to do so. And though he didn’t know for sure why sometimes it didn’t work, he was confident that it did work quite often, and he felt certain that his use of this power, once he could control it, could be very advantageous. Yet the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he should never share the knowledge of his ability with anyone because people would begin to suspect he was manipulating their every thought, and he couldn’t imagine anyone would be happy about that, including himself. After a parent/teacher conference a little over a year ago, his psychology teacher remarked to Tanner, “Your dad loves you, but he seems like a lonely man…what’s up with that?” Tanner couldn’t help but wonder if he chose to hide his mind-control ability from everyone his entire life, would he end up lonely too?