by Claire Adams
“Gus! What on earth are you doing?” I cried as he brought the large piece of metal up over his head and then slammed it down on the ground, making it ring like a tuning fork.
“Sweetness, twice in two weeks,” he said, setting the hammer down and wiping his sweaty brow with his forearm. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“I need advice,” I said. “And you’re the only one I could think of who would give me an honest answer.”
“Go into my office and grab a soda out of the fridge, child,” he said as he worked to catch his breath. “I’m just gonna finish my workout and then I’ll join you.”
“Is that what that is? A workout?” I laughed as I looked at the contraption he was pounding and then back at him. He motioned toward the office and I went inside. A few minutes passed, but I heard no more pounding and I wondered what he was doing. I peeked out between the crack in the doorframe and saw Gus holding a pose that I recognized from one of my yoga classes.
“I told you to sit down and be patient, child,” he said without opening his eyes. I let out a small giggle and then ducked away from the door. A few minutes later, Gus joined me with a towel around his neck and an amused smile on his face.
“You have been a nosy little thing ever since you were small,” he smiled as he opened the small fridge he kept stocked and grabbed a bottle of juice. “It’s nice to see that some things stay the same. Now what was so important that you had to come all the way out here to see me?”
“I did something today, Gus,” I said, suddenly feeling shy about telling him my news. “I think it’s a good thing, but it’s going to make my mother angry, I think.”
“Well, now that’s just fantastic, isn’t it?” he grinned, holding up his bottle to toast. “You’ve done something you think is good, and you didn’t let your mother’s expectations slow you down. Now there’s a cause to celebrate!”
“I don’t know,” I said glumly. “It’s not something normal, but it has the potential to get me the job I’ve always wanted. I’m not sure it’s the right time or the right thing to do, Gus.”
“Why don’t you tell me what this thing is and then I’ll tell you why you made a good choice,” he suggested as he sat down behind his desk and put his feet up on the stool he kept underneath it.
“Dax Connor asked me to be his girlfriend,” I blurted out. For a moment, the room was dead silent. So silent that I swore if I listened closely enough, I’d be able to hear my father and grandfather rolling over in their graves. “Say something, Gus!”
“Sweetness, I’m going to say several things, but first I want to tell you that this is the best news I’ve had all year! Congratulations!” Gus said as he pulled himself up out of his chair and came around the desk to hug me. “Good on you, child. Good on you.”
“Mother is going to be furious,” I said in a frightened voice. “And what will the media say? They’re going to play this out like a huge family drama and it’s going to affect the Bears and the Storm!”
“Shush, shush,” Gus said, patting my head like my father used to do when I’d get a little too wound up on game day. “Stop that nonsense that’s running through that big brain of yours. Now tell me how you met him and why I’ve never heard of you dating him before.”
“That’s just it,” I said dropping my gaze to the floor. “I haven’t been dating him. We negotiated a deal that will give him media exposure for the team and will give me a potential husband to present to Mother. I’m not in love with him, Gus. I don’t even know the guy, really.”
“Then why did you agree to this, child?” Gus asked calmly. “You had to have had a reason.”
“He’s going to let me sit in as acting GM and learn the job,” I explained. “And then, after he’s had a chance to conduct a proper search and interviews, there’s a chance he might appoint me as the new GM, but it’s not guaranteed.”
“This sounds a bit fishy to me, Sweetness,” Gus said skeptically. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know, Gus!” I cried. “I don’t know if this is right or not, but I know that it will get Mother off my back about getting married, and it will give me a chance to learn the job I know I can do, but I’m worried about what people are going to say and how Mother is going to react. She’s going to be furious, Gus.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt she will be, but child, you can’t live your life worried about what people are going to say,” he said, shaking his head as he moved back around and settled into his chair. “If you live that way, you’ll be frozen in one spot forever.”
“I know, I know,” I sighed. “But this is a big decision, Gus. If I screw this up, there will be consequences. Do you think I’m crazy?”
Gus chuckled softly as he laced his fingers together across his abdomen and rocked a little in his chair. He silently stared down at the cluttered surface of his desk, full of papers detailing every training regimen and physical therapy routine of every single Bears player on the roster. I waited for him to speak, and after a long silence, he did.
“When I was growing up, there was little expectation that anyone in my South Side neighborhood would do anything that would enable us to get out,” he said softly. “We were young and black and the expectations were low, but my parents told me and my brother that if we worked hard and got good grades, we could do anything we wanted to do in life. And I believed them.”
I sat perched on the edge of my chair knowing that whatever Gus was sharing with me was going to help me make my decision, but, as usual, I felt impatient and wanted him to get to the point. And if I was honest, I also wanted to know that he wasn’t going to judge me for the choices I was making.
“I know you want me to get to the point, child,” he said, watching my eyes widen in surprise. “But some things just can’t be rushed.”
I nodded and ducked my head to hide the color in my cheeks.
“I worked hard and got good grades, but when it came time to go to college, I wasn’t able to get enough scholarship money to pay my tuition, so I took a job as the equipment manager for the football team and took a side job with one of the neighborhood hustlers my father had warned me about,” he said with a look in his eye that told me he was remembering exactly what it felt like to take the job. “During the day, I worked for the team and I did my absolute best to do everything exactly right, but there was one coach who simply didn’t like me. I don’t know why he didn’t other than I was black, and he tried to make my life a living hell because of it. Do you know what I did, Sweetness?”
“Fought back and got justice?” I offered in a tentative voice.
“Hardly,” he laughed. “I worked 10 times harder to prove I was equally capable of doing the job that the white equipment managers were doing. Do you know what he did in response?”
“Came around and saw that you were a hard worker and a good person?” I tried again.
“Child, you’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies,” Gus laughed as he shook his head. “He hated me even more is what he did, and he redoubled his efforts to make my life miserable. But I stayed. I stayed because I had my eye on the finish line and I picked my battles. And I stayed because I worked nights for the hustler delivering packages and working security in one of his clubs. I knew that if the football coach hated me enough to actually get rid of me, I wasn’t going to lose my shot at education. Did I like the fact that I was knowingly doing things that were either illegal or counter to the values that my parents had taught me? No, I did not. But did I see the benefit of doing them? Yes, I did. I finished my degree and found a job working as an athletic trainer for one of the farm teams for the Cubs. It was hard work and I was on the road all the time, but I got a lot of good experience treating injuries and helping players through rehab.”
“So how did you wind up here?” I asked.
“Patience, child, I’m getting to that part,” Gus smiled. “I’d been out of college a year when I got married. My wife had insisted that I give up the hustling
job and had begged me to give up the farm league job for one a steady position at Chicago County Hospital. I agreed not to hustle, but I really didn’t want to leave the farm team, but I knew that if I didn’t, my wife was going to leave me!”
“I think that’s kind of unfair,” I said as I thought about my mother’s ultimatum. “She was forcing you to give up your dream!”
“Those are the kinds of sacrifices you make when you love someone, Sweetness,” he smiled. “When it happens to you, you’ll do the exact same thing.”
“But if someone loves me, they won’t ask me to give up the thing I love!” I stubbornly protested.
“Young folks are always so sure about defending their right to do what they want,” he sighed. “But that’s not the point of the story, either.”
“Then what is it, Gus?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air in exasperation.
“I’m getting to it,” he said waving me back to the chair across the desk. “The day after I put in my notice with the farm team, I went over to County to sign all the employment papers and who should I run into in the lobby, but the assistant coach from the college team. He asked what I was doing and when I told him how I’d traded in the traveling sports life for a job at County, he asked if I’d be interested in a sports job that didn’t require as much travel. I told him that any sports job would appeal to me more than a boring hospital job, but I wanted to make sure that my wife didn’t leave me.”
“What did he do?” I asked excitedly leaning forward.
“He took my number and told me he’d call me that night,” he said as he reached out across his desk and grabbed the cup sitting on the edge and took a sip. He grimaced slightly and then resumed speaking. “I didn’t say anything to my wife. I didn’t want to get her hopes up, and I wasn’t sure if the man was going to follow through. And honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t talk me out of it. The hospital job was a good, solid job with benefits and a pension, you know?”
“Gus, what happened?” I asked breathlessly.
“That night after dinner, the phone rang and the man on the other end asked if I’d be interested in working in the Bears training room,” he said. “I said I would and then hung up the phone. Five minutes later, the phone rang again and I answered it. It was the man asking if I didn’t want a little time to talk it over with my wife. I told him I didn’t need to, and when he asked why, I said that she was a Bears fan and that’s all she’d need to hear. He laughed and then told me where to report the next day.”
“That’s amazing, Gus!” I exclaimed. “What a luck you had!”
“Oh, it wasn’t luck, child,” he said with a knowing look on his wide brown face.
“But you were in the right place at the right time,” I said confused by his statement.
“No, that coach had been trying to track me down for months,” he said. “He’d finally caught up with me at the hospital thanks to one of the farm team trainers.”
“Did he say why he was looking for you?” I asked. “You said your life was hell in the college training room.”
“That’s why he wanted to hire me, Sweetness,” Gus said, savoring the moment and the lesson. “He said that anyone who could rise above the abuses of that training room and still want to stay in the field, was someone he wanted in the Bears locker room. So, you see, Sweetness, sometimes you have to endure the hard stuff and hustle until you can get to the good stuff.”
“Are you serious?” I asked looking at him skeptically. “That story sounds a little too neat and clean to me.”
Gus’s smile split his face in half as the laughter bubbled up from within his broad body. “Sweetness, when that man puts you in charge of his team, you are going to make the best GM any team ever had. I did clean up the story a bit, but it’s true in all the right places. It’s about making hard choices and trusting that things will turn out the way they’re supposed to.”
“Gus, are you telling me it’s okay?” I asked. “That it’s okay to agree to trade with Dax for what I need?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, Sweetness,” Gus smiled. “I’m just waiting for you to figure it out yourself and then tell me what you’re going to do.”
“You are so frustrating!” I cried as I looked up at the ceiling and realized that there wasn’t anyone who could tell me what to do. I tried a different line of questioning. “What do you think my grandfather would have done?”
“Oh Lord, child, I think he would have strung you up by your thumbs for sleeping with the enemy,” Gus said letting out a low whistle as he shook his head slowly. “Loyalty was everything to that man.”
“But this is my life,” I said softly. “It’s my choice. I have to do what I think is right because, in the end, I’m the only one that has to live with it.”
“Now you’re talking some sense,” Gus said nodding approvingly. He leaned over and pulled open the door to his little fridge and asked, “Drink?”
“No,” I said standing up. “I need to get home and pack up my things. I’m moving into Dax’s penthouse tomorrow.”
“Good on you, Payton Gale,” Gus said smiling as he pulled a bottle of juice from the fridge and cracked the top. “You’re going to be just fine, Sweetness.”
I smiled, nodded and then walked out of the office and back to the side door where my cab driver was waiting. The whole ride home, I thought about how I was going to break the news to my mother.
Chapter Seventeen
Dax
By the time the sun cast its golden-pink light on the lake the next morning, I had convinced myself that Payton moving in would not radically change the way I conducted my life. I hadn’t slept much because I’d spent the night checking and double checking the suite of rooms I’d designated as hers, making sure that everything was perfect, and then castigating myself for giving a shit what she thought about my home.
The teenager in me wanted to impress the popular girl and ensure that she would see me as the hero of this narrative, but the independent freewheeler in me wanted to back off and let her figure it out for herself. The war inside my head kept me awake most of the night, and finally, at dawn, I’d given up on sleep and went to the kitchen to make coffee. I looked around at the empty room and tried to remember the last time I’d had anyone around the kitchen table for a meal. I quickly gave up because the fact that I couldn’t remember made me feel depressed.
The night before, I debated driving over to Gram’s, breaking the news to her and then spending the night in my childhood bedroom, but by the time I’d looked at my watch, I’d realized it was way past Gram’s bedtime, and hadn’t wanted to disturb her.
I thought about all the nights I’d spent sitting on the back porch with Pop, watching him smoke his cigars and drink his beer while we talked about everything under the sun. He’d been my North Star as I’d navigated my way through junior high and high school. Always ready to talk about anything I needed to discuss, but never interfering with my business.
I’d asked him once about why he gave me such a long tether, and he’d said it was the only way he knew how to let me prove I was trustworthy. I’d wanted to ask him about whether he’d done the same with my father, but the subject of my parents had always been a sore spot for Pop.
I remembered sitting on the top step of the porch looking back over my shoulder as Pop pulled the tab on his second can of Pabst and relit the cigar that he’d let burn out in the ash tray. He was wearing his after-work clothes: a clean white t-shirt and a pair of overalls that Gram laundered several times a week. The t-shirts had to be spotless or he’d tell Gram to turn them into rags. When I asked why he did this, he’d told me that while he worked a manual labor job, he didn’t want to live like an animal. Tonight, he was in a good mood, and was talking up a storm, so I decided to test the water.
“Pop? Did you give my dad the same freedom you give me?” I asked without looking at him.
“Humph,” he replied as he took a big swig of the beer and then clamp
ed down on his cigar. “Why are you asking?”
“I’m just curious,” I shrugged, trying not to let on that I desperately wanted to know more about my father and what he’d been like. “Just questions about the family history for school and stuff.”
“I see,” Pop said. I could feel the weight of his silence as I waited for him to decide whether to answer my question or to mind my own business. I knew that this could go either way. It took a few minutes, but when Pop spoke again, his voice was tinged with sadness and regret. “Son, your father was a bum. I rode him hard from the day he was born until the day he left this house. I did what my father did to me, and I turned out fine!”
“Is that why he left?” I asked, venturing out a little further past the shallows.
“It might well be,” he said sighing heavily. “I don’t know. Your gram says it’s because of the drugs, but who really knows. I thought pushing him was the way to get him to achieve his full potential.”
“But you push me,” I said as I turned and leaned back against the wood handrail that ran down the steps and looked up at him. “You tell me to get good grades and you don’t let me ditch school like Rickey’s parents do. And I’m not a bum, am I?”
“Son, you’re definitely not a bum. But different people respond to different tactics,” Pop said looking down at the beer can in his hand. “Your dad didn’t respond well to the way I raised him.”
“It’s not your fault, Pop,” I said.
“Never said it was,” he replied gruffly as he chomped on the end of his cigar and squinted out at the backyard. My grandfather was a big, barrel-chested man who stood well over six feet tall, but right now, sitting in his chair on the back porch, he looked rather fragile.
“You know, maybe he’ll come back, Pop,” I said, trying to find the bright side of what was obviously a sad memory for my grandfather.
“Why the hell would I want him to come back now?” Pop barked. “We’ve already done all the hard work raising you. What the hell could he offer now?”
