by Tim Dorsey
To this day, almost everyone involved remembers what happened next like the climax of a sports movie, drawn way out in extra-excruciating drama. Not that it needed any more.
Chris stepped up to the holder and addressed where the ball would be placed. Then she took measured steps backward and two more to the left. She shook her dangling arms at her sides to loosen nerves. She looked up at the home stands. Berserk people jumping and clapping. She saw their mouths shouting but she couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t hear any sound. Then a shrill ringing grew louder in her ears, and a pounding heartbeat. She looked toward the holder and nodded. The holder turned toward the blocking line and nodded at the center. People held breaths, prayed.
The ball was snapped.
It was ultra-slow motion. A tenth of a second ticked off the clock. Shoulder pads violently collided. Chris had done this a million times. She began running toward the holder, synchronizing her approach with the arrival of the ball. Click. Another tenth of a second. The ball seemed to hang in the air forever on the way to the holder. More shoulder pads crashed. She saw the linebackers take their first step forward for their leaps to attempt the block.
The ball reached the holder’s hands. Click. She could see individual laces. The ball went toward the ground. Chris took another step and got ready to plant her left foot. There would be another step after that. Her kicking leg would swing.
The holder got the ball to the ground. Click. He spun the laces away.
Chris was suddenly hit in the chest with utter terror.
While spinning the ball, the holder had muffed it. The ball slipped out of his hands and it now lay sideways on the ground. He tried to right it, but too late. Chris was already there. She had to pull up and abort the kick.
The team had a plan for such a misplay. They’d drilled it and drilled it in practice. But it was never conceivably meant with Chris in mind. Nonetheless, she had dutifully gone through all the practices with the other kickers, and now it was the mindless instinct of repetition.
Click. The horn sounded. The clock read zero.
Chris swung out of her kicking approach, running wide right. The holder pitched her the ball. She caught it in stride. The Belle Glade defense had loaded up for the block, and now most of their players were entangled in that snarl of limbs at scrimmage, allowing Chris to round the end. And damn if she wasn’t faster than anyone would have guessed. Rabbits.
But all appeared to be for naught. The Raiders were anything but slow, and a pair of them bounced outside and swept toward her path. The farther one was toward the middle and had a ways to go, but the closer was almost straight ahead and in perfect position.
He’d placed himself to be able to beat her to the sideline. Unless she wanted to run out of bounds and end the game, her only option was to do what he wanted: to veer inside toward the middle of the field, where he’d have help from the other player, and maybe more. She’d easily be tackled.
Either way, checkmate.
She kept running full sprint. Then she did something the defenders didn’t expect. She began curling toward the sideline. Those in the home stands who had been holding their own heads began slapping them. “What’s she doing?” “He’ll run her out of bounds!”
The closest player couldn’t believe his luck. Must be her lack of experience, probably thinks she can beat me to the corner and tightrope it into the end zone. He adjusted his course along with hers. Then Chris surprised him even more. She increased her angle toward the sideline. He thought: Has Christmas come early?
They were only yards away, a split second left. He leaned forward to shove her out of bounds.
Chris took a last stride with her right leg toward the sideline. But instead of continuing, she dug her foot into the turf, hitting the brakes. The player flew by in front of her. His feet went out from under him as he tried to reach back, but Chris had already hit the gas again.
She still couldn’t hear the crowd, but now it was because they were almost silent, mouths open.
The last defender had expected to merge with his teammate and sandwich her just inside the five. That was off the table now, and the footrace was on. He had the edge in distance and speed, but nothing was settled yet.
Chris had no more “Reggie” cuts in her bag of tricks. No argument that she’d be tackled inside the two. It was just a question of geometry.
She reached full sprint speed and left her feet like a track star in the long jump. Except this time it was headfirst. The Raiders player had been expecting that, and dove to hit her at the waist, hoping to drive airborne Chris off the field.
As she was coming down, Chris stretched out an arm and reached as far left as she could, swiping the tip of the ball against the orange pylon in the front corner of the end zone.
The referee’s arms went up. Touchdown. No need for that overtime.
Players and fans swarmed the field. The insane jumping in the home team’s stands would have registered on seismic instruments.
Calhoun and Reggie stood on their toes at the fence. They couldn’t have been happier as they watched the team carry Chris off the field on their shoulders.
Chapter 38
Celebration
Car horns honked nonstop all over town. Screaming on Main Street. People whipped team towels in circles over their heads. The epicenter of the bedlam, of course, was Max’s Shake Spot.
Chris was the talk and the toast. She was still carrying the game ball that the head coach had presented to her. No way she would be allowed to pay for anything tonight. And not just Chris. Max himself came out and made the announcement personally: All players eat free tonight.
“Hooray!”
The revelry continued into the night, players becoming bloated on free burgers, chocolate shakes and root beer floats.
“Pahokee! . . . Pahokee! . . . Pahokee! . . .”
Players took selfies and group photos with cell phones. The students, especially the seniors, knew this was a night they would well remember into the decades to come.
And for the first night all season, there were an unusually large number of white people. It wasn’t suspicious. It was the usual suspects from the scouting ranks across the southeast and all the way up to Ohio and Michigan. They knew the delicate line of what they could and couldn’t say to avoid violating eligibility. All night long: “Great game! Here’s my card. Florida State . . .” “. . . Here’s my card. Georgia Tech . . .” “. . . Auburn . . .” “. . . Ole Miss . . .”
Former coach Calhoun arrived and headed toward a picnic table, smiling bigger than he had in years. Chris suddenly noticed him in the crowd. She jumped up and gave him a strangling hug. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
“Easy, you’ll break my neck,” said Calhoun. “And I should be the one thanking you. At my age, you don’t think there’s much more to learn in life, but you’ve taught me so much.”
A Plymouth pulled up and emptied. Serge led the gang through the crowd.
“Uh-oh,” said Calhoun. “I think you have some more fans.”
“Chris!” said Serge, shaking her hand. “I’ve heard so much about you! Such an inspiration in our times of crisis!”
“Uh, do I know you?”
“No, but I’m a friend of a friend of Coach Calhoun.”
“Then you’re my friend.”
More students arrived and crowded round the table. “That was fantastic!” “You were great!”
Cheyenne tugged Serge by the sleeve. “We should let her be with her friends. It’s her big night.”
“I was going to start a wave in her honor, but I’ll defer to your female judgment,” said Serge. “That’s my new life motto: When in doubt, ask a woman. Because us guys are doing such a bang-up job, right?”
She tugged his sleeve harder. “There are some seats in back . . .”
Chris said she had to go to the bathroom.
“Too much information.”
“Just hold my seat.”
She walked around the dar
k side of the building for the restrooms.
“Chris!” someone yelled. “Great game!”
She turned around. “Thanks . . . Do I know you?”
“Doubt it,” said the man in the cab of the pickup. “I’m a college scout. If only you were a boy . . . I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”
“I know what you meant.” She grabbed the handle of the door to the women’s room.
When she walked out moments later: “Could you come here a second?”
“Why?”
“We don’t recruit girls for football in Division One, but you’re a natural,” said Crack. “There are a number of sports you could easily adapt to.”
Chris walked halfway to the truck. “Like what?”
“Tell me what else you play,” said the captain. “You’re probably thinking we’re just trying to comply with Title Nine, which we are. But this is no charity: You can definitely play. Full scholarships rarely come along for girls. Ever try volleyball? Lacrosse?”
A couple more steps. “I really haven’t tried any other sports.”
Captain Crack opened his door and stepped out. “Let me show you these brochures from the school I represent.”
“What school did you say that was?”
“I didn’t.”
And before Chris knew it, Crack had her by the arm, twisting hard. She yelped as he tried pushing her into the pickup. She was putting up a lot more fight than he had expected from a girl, but a sock in the jaw ended that nonsense.
Two boys came around the side of the building, yucking it up. Chris screamed from the open window as the pickup patched out.
The boys raced back to the picnic table. “Some guy just snatched Chris!”
“What? Who?”
“I got a picture on my cell phone.” He held it up.
Someone leaned over his shoulder. “I know that truck!” yelled Ricky. “I know that guy. I’ll never forget him as long as I live!”
It took mere seconds for alarm to sweep the crowd. Serge burst through and saw the phone. “I overheard you say that you know where he took her?”
The boy nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Ricky.”
Calhoun frantically pushed his way in. “What’s going on? Where’s Chris?”
“No time,” said Serge. “Seconds are precious . . . Ricky! Coleman! Come with me! . . . Coach, take the others in your car and follow us!”
Soon the Plymouth was barreling out of town, out into the darkness of flowing cane stalks. The needle spiked at over a hundred, leaving Calhoun and the others in the dust. Ricky filled Serge in along the way: His own beating in the cane fields years earlier, sure he was going to die until his rescue. Then the murder of his rescuers in the exact same spot, which the authorities ruled to be a drug deal gone sour, but Ricky knew better.
“Slow down,” said the boy. “The turnoff’s coming up.”
The Plymouth rolled to a crawl.
“There it is,” said Ricky.
Serge couldn’t see anything down the dirt road, but he did make out fresh tire tracks leading into the field. “Ricky, you need to trust me. Get out and wait here by the road for the others for your own good. This is my specialty and I work alone.” He pulled something from under the seat and Ricky opened the door. “And you didn’t see this.”
“What gun?” Ricky closed the door.
Serge hit his high beams and sped off into the black desolation of the cane field . . .
Soon, other headlights came up the highway. They caught Ricky waving madly on the side of the road. Calhoun pulled alongside. “What’s happening?”
Ricky stuck his head in the window. “He went in after him. And I’m not supposed to tell you, but he has a gun.”
“Shit!” Lamar cut the wheel and raced his car down the dirt road . . .
Serge’s lights eventually hit the back of Captain Crack’s pickup. Dark and empty. Bad sign. “Coleman, wait in the car. I may need you to drive this out of here in a hurry.”
Serge planted his feet in the soil and crouched to listen. A brief gust of wind carried a snippet of noise. He crept like a ghost in its direction, quietly parting cane stalks. The sound grew louder. Voices. Soon they weren’t hard to follow. The captain had chucked all his business rules. He chugged Johnnie Walker straight from the bottle as Chris lay crying in the dirt at his feet. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“Shut up!” A swift kick to her ribs. “Just dig!”
“I’m trying!”
More weeping, more kicks, more Scotch. Chris trembling too much to make progress in the soil. It wasn’t going anyplace good.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She heard a click and looked up and saw the cocked pistol. “No!”
Then another sound, unexpected. The clack of metal on skull.
Captain Crack thudded to the dirt like an unhooked punching bag. In the space where he had been standing, another person now stood. Chris recognized him as someone she had just met back at the burger joint.
She ran crying into his arms.
He quickly held Chris out by the shoulders. “You have to pull yourself together. I know you can do it! Others are counting on you, okay?”
She nodded and stifled her sobs down to sniffles.
“Good,” said Serge. “If I’m correct, Coach Calhoun should be arriving just about now. I need you to walk straight down this one row of cane and start calling out for him.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Chris.
“You and Ricky and the other kids deserve to be happy. And safe. And that will never happen under the status quo.” Serge nodded in the direction of the cane. “Now get going. And don’t look back . . .”
“Coach Calhoun! Coach Calhoun! . . .”
Lamar’s headlights had just hit Serge’s Plymouth parked behind a pickup truck. He slammed the brakes and got out.
“Coach Calhoun! Coach Calhoun! . . .”
Lamar looked at Kyle and Cheyenne. “Did you hear that?”
“It’s coming from over there!”
They crashed through stalks. “Chris! We’re over here! We’re on the way!”
Moments later, they all burst through the last rows of cane, and everyone embraced in terrified relief.
“What happened?” asked Calhoun.
“I don’t know,” said Chris. “The guy was going to kill me for sure. I just know it. But then that friend of yours came out of nowhere.”
“And where are they now?”
She shrugged. “He just told me to leave and not look back.”
Kyle and Cheyenne glanced at each other. They heard sirens in the distance. A lot of them.
Calhoun took off his Pahokee football jacket and wrapped it around Chris’s shoulders. “We need to get you to my car.”
Back at the highway, Ricky was waving a long line of police cars down the dirt road. Blue and red lights flashed through the crops as the speeding vehicles kicked up a long plume of black dust.
The officers arrived at Calhoun’s car just as the former coach and the others emerged safely with Chris.
But the ’69 Plymouth and pickup truck were gone.
Highway 78 Revisited
High beams pierced the black countryside.
Nothingness for miles. The pickup’s windows were down, allowing a cool night breeze to accompany the peaceful, silent, green glow from the instrument panel.
It hadn’t started that way. In the passenger seat, the captain had been quite chatty. What do you want? I have money. I’ll give you anything. Blah, blah, blah.
Serge put a stop to the annoyance with another bloody skull crack from his Colt .45. Calmly as a librarian: “Shhhh . . . I’m enjoying the tranquil drive.” He kept the pistol in his left hand, aiming across the pickup’s cab as he steered with his right.
It was indeed a mellow ride. Dim fields of wildflowers under the economic light of a crescent moon. More miles of blood-pressure-reducing serenity through the wilde
rness.
Finally, Serge let off the gas, and the pickup truck from a marine-towing company uneventfully rolled to a stop with the sound of small crushed white rocks under the tires. He ordered the good captain out of the car at gunpoint.
A gold Plymouth arrived and parked behind. “Coleman, wait here until I get back.”
A hike began. Crack Nasty looked around in the night landscape. Emptiness only led to even more emptiness. His thoughts pinballed as they can at a moment like this. Heaven, hell, God, the devil. Anything you want! I’m begging! Crack!
Another half hour.
Serge poked a gun barrel in ribs. “Walk down the bank and watch your step.”
It was precarious, with loose soil and gravel collapsing and rolling down the incline under their feet, but they made it with only a couple of stumbles. They arrived at a modest shoreline.
“We’re here,” said Serge. “Sit down.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait for someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s your problem,” said Serge. “Your least.”
They sat, as they say in kindergarten, crisscross applesauce, amid sounds of insects and bullfrogs and rustling leaves.
Serge’s ears perked, and he stood. “Here they come.”
“Who?”
“Like I said, I don’t know.”
“You’re insane, aren’t you?”
“My gain is your loss.”
Crack Nasty opened his mouth to scream, but Serge bashed him once more before he could get it out. “Try to yell again, and it’s game over. Two taps to the head. But play nice and you might get away. Here’s my offer: If you behave and wait until I release you, you’re free to swim for it. But utter a peep, even in the water, and I can plug you way over here. Deal? Just nod.”
He nodded.
“Great! A cooperator! Sit still . . .” Serge listened intently as the distant motorized sound grew louder. “That’s the person I’ve been waiting for. Okay, Florida Man, take off all your clothes.”
“You want me to get naked?”
