Fighting in the Shade

by Sterling Watson

  Boys milled and yelled. Some looked about to join the fight. Coach Leone blew his whistle and Prosser bellowed, “STOP!” Billy stepped inside the circle of Rentz’s windmilling arms and slipped his right fist up hard under Rentz’s chin. His knuckles thudded chin bone, and Rentz’s teeth cracked together. Blood burst from Rentz’s chinstrap, spraying Billy’s face.

  Prosser shoved between them, a hot wind of man sweat and sour breath, swatting them apart as though wasps beset his angry red face. He flung Billy like a rag to the ground. Took Rentz by the cage of his helmet and forced him to his knees like a hobbled bull. “YOU! YOU! Fighting on my practice field! Goddamn you two.” Prosser pushed Rentz’s face all the way to the dirt, put his foot on the back of the helmet, and leaned, thigh muscles bulging.

  A few seniors, scared, wanted to step in, stop this. Coach Leone moved up behind Prosser, then stopped. Coach Rolt watched Prosser, smiling. The silence of held breath in the bleachers pressed down onto the field. Prosser stepped back, releasing Rentz. “You two shake hands in front of me right now.” His voice was menace.

  Billy got up on unsteady legs and offered his hand. Rentz took it, glaring his grudge at Billy through the mud-caked cage of his helmet.

  Prosser looked around at the boys relaxing now, some of them grinning. Charlie Rentz stood trembling, shamed. Billy could see that some boys sided with him. Admiration for the punch he had thrown glittered in their eyes. He picked at the bloody knuckles of his right hand. Was the blood his or Rentz’s or both? He held the smarting hand against his belly and watched Prosser.

  Now Prosser would have to save the moment, turn it into a lesson. His cursing and manhandling the boys would get around, Billy knew that. Not that it would matter much to people in Oleander. What mattered was winning football games and teaching virtue to boys who would later run the town. Prosser said, “All of you listen to me. We don’t fight amongst ourselves. We save our anger for the people we meet on the field. And there, on the field of honor, in a measured and certain way, we deliver to them… destruction.”

  Yes. Yes, it sounded like what Billy heard from the pulpit at the First Baptist Church. A preacher’s tongue, the music of Amos and Isaiah. And it worked. Billy knew that. The whole town knew it. Prosser was a spellbinder, they said. Could talk the very lightning down from the storm.

  Prosser shoved both hands onto hips still slim under an engine-block chest and gazed around him, inviting every man and boy to say yea or nay. All eyes earnestly learned the hot sand of the field. Prosser turned on raking cleats and strode to the edge of the scrimmage, punched the whistle into his mouth, and blew a long, burring bleat.

  “Dyer! Get back to the huddle. Let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”

  The crowd in the bleachers exhaled audibly, clapped, and cheered.

  Legs astride, forearms folded, cold sneer restored, Prosser watched Billy.

  Billy stared at the huddle. The offense waited for him in their circle. He grinned at Prosser, shook his head, spit grit from his teeth, observed the blood weeping from under Rentz’s chin strap.

  Don’t move him! Damnit, I said don’t move him! Give him air. You boys get back to your formations. Huddle up, offense!

  Billy Dyer woke up blinking into the yellow sky, his helmet pulled off and lying on the sand. Doc Runkle held a bag of ice to the side of his head.

  “Who hit me?” Billy asked.

  Huge, ginger haired, and close, Prosser chuckled deep in his chest. Billy’s vision widened to a circle of faces that shaded his own. There was Coach Leone. There was fat Coach Rolt. The other face in the circle was pimpled Eddie Doerner, the student manager. Billy shook his head and felt the pain above his left ear. It lit his nerves so hot they seared channels of blackened flesh through his face and neck. It hurt, but he wasn’t hurt. At least he didn’t think so.

  “Who hit me?” he asked again.

  “Never mind that, son.” Prosser pushed himself up, taking the shade from Billy’s eyes. The other two coaches stood when Prosser did. Doc Runkle stayed on the ground, holding ice to Billy’s skull. Doc Runkle, tall, sallow, a chain-smoker, his shirts always dusted with cigarette ashes. Billy pushed the ice away. He had heard impatience, not care, in Prosser’s voice.

  Doc Runkle said, “Can you get up? Can you walk?”

  Bracing on Runkle’s shoulder, Billy dragged his legs under him. Twenty-one statues made of armor and mud, vaguely human forms, waited for him to rejoin them or go to the bench. Or worse, their aggrieved and glassy eyes said, be a pussy and stumble off to the locker room. He shut his eyes to think about it and found the cold dizziness there in the dark. He didn’t think he could take another hit, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to the locker room. He gagged, retched reeking strings of bile. He lifted a hand to his mouth to hide the shameful substance.

  Doc Runkle said, “He’s through.”

  Behind him, Coach Prosser said, “Coach Rolt, Coach Leone, get that boy off the field. I don’t want him back here until Doc tells me he can play football.”

  Billy felt himself lifted by the two coaches as though he were nothing, a piece of flotsam they were about to toss from a pitching boat. They walked him, knees buckling, not to the sideline but toward the field house.

  “Wait a minute,” he muttered. “I can. I can…”

  “No you can’t,” said Coach Leone in his quiet, serious way. “Not today, anyway.” Billy liked him.

  Coach Rolt chuckled. “You got your bell rung, Billy boy.”

  Billy did not like Coach Rolt. If he could get his legs under him, get a good firm grip on the earth and sky, he would tell the man about this feeling, invite him somewhere close by for a discussion of their differences.

  They walked him through the runway between the bleachers, into the shade of a tall eucalyptus tree, to an old wrought-iron arch. Atop the arch stood the fierce wooden effigy of a Spartan warrior, bronze shield and lance in phalanx order. A plaque at the soldier’s feet, painted to resemble a pedestal of stone, read, Dienekes was told that the Persian archers were so numerous their arrows would blot out the sun. He replied, “So much the better. We shall fight them in the shade!”

  The coaches let go of Billy’s arms. Tradition held that only players passed under the arch. Others walked around it. Even coaches.

  Coach Leone said, “Go on to the locker room.”

  Then Billy remembered something. Thought he did.

  Pussy.

  Had he really heard it, muttered, not shouted? Had someone really hissed the word as he was taken away? Who? Whose voice? Rentz? Sizemore? Maybe he had imagined it. Maybe he was imagining each slow step that took him toward the Spartan arch. Angry, he stopped and glanced back, searching the blurry formation for the mouth that had stained him. No one looked at him. To them he was gone. He lifted his gaze to the bleachers. The small crowd had thinned, but the men in suits still lounged at the top. One of them, tall, gaunt, casual, lifted his gaze from the clutch of struggling boys, settled it on Billy, and nodded once.

  THREE

  Blake Rainey said, “Gentlemen, I think we’ve seen enough for one day.” Three rows down, two men rose from the bleachers and smiled carefully at Rainey and Cam Sizemore.

  They waited to see what Rainey would do. Out on the field, in the heat that would not abate until sundown, the boys had run the last play of the scrimmage. They were lining up for the final exercise of Prosser’s brutal practice. Wind sprints. Some wobbled on gone legs, their sucking mouths appealing to the yellow sky. Most supported heaving chests with hands on knees. A few crouched on all fours waiting to run when the whistle blew.

  A man appeared in the shadowed runway between the banks of bleachers, peered up at the men standing in the sun at the top, and raised a hand to hood his eyes.

  Rainey called, “Don’t come up, David. We’re coming down. Wait by the car.”

  With a loping stride, Rainey descended two rows at a time, and the others followed, a line of men in dark suits or carrying suit coats, watchin
g their steps on the sagging planks.

  At the bottom, the men clustered in the shade of the runway, pulling white handkerchiefs from coat pockets and mopping their brows.

  Rainey said, “The boys look good this year. Sure do.”

  His men nodded, muttered, “Real good.” They gave one another the grave glances of enthusiasts.

  One said, “That Billy Dyer’s a talent.”

  Another said, “Don’t seem to know it, though. Talent hides in him. Needs to let it go, give it life.”

  Rainey said, “You see that lick he gave Ray Rentz’s boy? That’s life, you ask me. We need boys like that in Oleander.”

  David Dyer approached the group.

  Rainey said, “David, you missed it. Where you been?”

  “Doing your bidding.” The newcomer was tall like Rainey, slender with black hair and dark, sunken eyes. He looked toward the playing field where the pounding feet of fifty boys raised a cloud of gray dust.

  “Your boy got hurt, Dave,” one of the men said. “Got into a scrap with Ray Rentz’s boy, then got hurt. Took him in early.”

  “Hurt?” David Dyer said. “Billy?” He squinted as though a strong beam of light had been shot at his eyes.

  “Don’t worry, David,” Rainey said, “Your boy’s all right. He’s a tough little nut, your Billy.”

  The men walked to Dyer’s old car. He reached into the front seat, removed a worn leather satchel, took from it a sheaf of documents, selected one, and spread it on the hood. The men gathered around.

  “Judge Billingsly will sign the order condemning the land.” Dyer’s forefinger traced a line drawn in blue pencil from a point north of the city, down a corridor of empty country, through the city, and out again to the south, into what the men knew was scrubland, forty miles of green that led to Sarasota. “And the judge’s man in Tallahassee will see to it that the state pays our price.” David Dyer tapped the map with a forefinger. “It’ll run through Carver Heights, just like you planned, Blake.”

  “I planned? We all planned, gentlemen. And a beautiful plan it is.” Rainey looked at each man in turn. “This road gives us two things: money and health. I know you have all thought about the money, probably more than you should, but have you considered well enough the health? We’re getting rid of what’s unhealthy in our town, and so our public service is double. It’s double, gentlemen.”

  Rainey stopped, pleased at his own invention. He took a long, satisfied breath of orange-smelling air. “Good work, David. And you gave the judge our token of appreciation?”

  “I gave it to him.” David Dyer lifted his finger from the blue line on the map, looked at his hands, then at the field where the boys had just cheered—a ragged, exhausted echo—after their last sprint. Now they would run or stagger to the locker room. He turned back to Blake Rainey. “He said to tell you he appreciates it.”

  “Oh,” said Rainey, “appreciation is a part of it, but ownership is the better part. We own a judge now, gentlemen. For a while I thought I’d have to make one of you a judge.” He looked at them, all lawyers, the way he always did when the subject of their profession came up, with an expression of comic tolerance. “But the material here is thin.”

  The men chuckled or groaned, all but David Dyer. He glanced up at the trees that shaded the parking lot, oaks that had stood here a hundred years. He closed his eyes and rubbed their lids with a thumb and forefinger.

  Cam Sizemore said, “Blake, spare us the cracker wit. Save it for the great unwashed.”

  Rainey gave him the brief, sharp look, then grinned a reprieve.

  “I won’t even say fuck you today, Cam. I’m just too happy. You’ll take care of our good David for me?”

  “I’ll take care of him.”

  David Dyer gathered the papers and put them back into the satchel. The men scattered to their cars. Dyer caught up with Sizemore and held him back by the arm. “Cam, is Billy all right?”

  “Yeah, like Blake said.” Cam Sizemore looked at his arm until David Dyer let go, then he put two fingers to his forehead and tapped. “Just got his bell rung. But if it happens again, you should worry.”

  FOUR

  The dim, silent locker room stank of wintergreen liniment, rancid sweat, and the pine tar that was painted on blistered feet. Later, the stinging odor of ammonia would become almost unbearable when last year’s varsity heaped their uniforms on the floor. Eddie Doerner would stay late into the evening running the mountain of laundry through the industrial washers and dryers in the training room. Boys who had not yet made the team took their uniforms home for washing. After practice, these boys scattered off through the town carrying reeking gym bags or, the poorer ones, football pants stuffed like scarecrows with reeking jocks, socks, and jerseys.

  Lying naked on a bench, Billy heard a hundred feet pounding toward the locker room. He must have fallen asleep again. He shoved himself up, held his head in his hands, and tried to breathe sense and grace back into himself. Crazy. Charlie Rentz had gone crazy out on the field. Rentz would be after him now, more than ever. And Charlie’s best friend was Sim Sizemore. And what had Prosser said? Until Doc tells me he can play football. Billy walked to the showers ahead of the crowd and held his head under the spray, kneading a rising bump with his fingers. It hurt less now, but his eyes still saw strangely, as though down a long hazy tunnel.

  Behind him, the locker room filled with the noise of heaving lungs, scraping cleats, and sodden cloth slapping the floor. Hot bodies crowded toward the cooling spray. Ted Street pushed past Billy, then stopped. “How you doing, Dyer? Feeling better? You sure was blocking your young ass off out there today.”

  Street’s words were life to Billy. The older guys were stingy with praise, waiting to see who would make the cut before they extended the courtesies of teammates.

  “Thanks,” Billy sputtered from under a jet of water. “Yeah, I feel better.” He considered making a joke, something about how he hoped to stay conscious for five plays in a row, set a team record.

  Charlie Rentz brushed past, giving Billy more shoulder than was necessary. Billy looked back at him, preparing for what he had brought. Rentz grinned. Blood seeped from the cut under his chin. The entire lower half of Rentz’s face was red and swollen. He raised a hand, fingered the blood, licked it, smiled, spit bloody phlegm at Billy’s feet. “I bleeve you was trying to knock my dick off today, Billy boy.”

  Billy grinned back. “That was the general idea.”

  Rentz shrugged. “You hit hard. That’s good. We need it.” He looked over at Ted Street. “Just don’t make a guy look bad, man. We wouldn’t do that to you.”

  You’d rip my head off and shit in it.

  Billy said, “I’m just trying to make the team. Like you are.” It was the wrong thing to say.

  Rentz threw his head back and howled at the steamy ceiling, his eyes wild, his voice keening to the end of a long breath. “I already made the team. Ain’t I, Ted? We are the fucking team, Ted and me.”

  Street looked at Rentz with the cool speculation of a quarterback. “Yeah, you already made it. You could improve, mind you, but you made it.” Street moved his gaze to Billy, a hint of something like kindness in his eyes. “You. You’ll make it too, so why don’t you guys cut the personal shit.”

  Billy watched them, Street and Rentz. For a moment he wondered if they were screwing with him, but the look in Street’s eyes was steady, assessing, patient. Wouldn’t Rentz, like the rest of the team, take his cues from Ted Street?

  Billy said, “Thanks, Ted. I appreciate it. It’s not personal.” He turned to Rentz, offered his hand. Rentz smiled, looked at Billy’s hand, lifted his face so that blood trickled down his muscled throat, and howled again at the ceiling. He and Street headed deeper into the shower room.

  Billy toweled off and pulled on his clothes, hating the way they stuck to his skin. His body, thirsty and confused, could not stop sweating. He was stuffing his football pants with laundry to carry home when Sim Sizemore and Charlie Rent
z stepped out of the showers. Rentz grinned, his chin still bleeding. Sizemore stood shaking water from his long, muscled arms. Billy stopped, taking him in. God gave you those long arms for pass catching. Mine are too short.

  Sizemore said, “Wash the puke off your face, Dyer.”

  Before he could stop it, Billy’s hand went to his mouth.

  Sizemore’s lips made a kiss, then he mouthed a word.

  Pussy.

  Billy’s body went rigid. His eyes framed Sizemore, and everything else was gone. His heart flamed with violence, sickness drained from his stomach, and hot rage poured into the empty place. He took a step toward Sizemore, another. Fear leapt into Sizemore’s eyes. Another step. Sizemore stepped back, looked behind him at Rentz. Rentz moved away from him, giving ground to what would happen. And Billy let himself smile. And the voice in his bruised skull said, Enough. Enough for one day. Go home.

  Holding his head carefully upright and carrying his stinking half-man of stuffed football pants, Billy Dyer walked out of the dim field house into a fiery noon. Behind him, scrubs hooted and moaned in the showers they now had to themselves. The haze above the city was a dark, septic yellow, the color of sputum that lingers in a wracking chest.

  He stepped reverently under the Spartan arch and, crossing the practice field, stopped to consider this place empty of sweating, struggling bodies. He was obscurely proud that not one blade of grass grew on these hundred yards of ground. It was a dirt bowl flanked by sagging bleachers, a place of pain, humiliation, exhaustion, rage, and sometimes triumph. It was right that such a place was ugly. Here, he had found mysterious, necessary things in himself. He gazed around at shredded mouth guards, tape, and tatters of bandages, a ripped chin strap. He half expected to see torn flesh and teeth among the trash.

  “Hey, Billy.” A girl stepped out of the shadows between banks of bleachers. Billy flinched, shifted the reeking half-man from his shoulder to his side. She seemed pleased to startle him. It was the girl who had waved to him. She held a book in her left hand. “Did I scare you?”