Football Hero (2008)

by Tim Green

  "Well," Uncle Gus said, grinning up at the ex-player, "back to work. That was delicious."

  "I bet it was," Mike said.

  Uncle Gus turned on Ty and Charlotte, flicked his fingers to shoo them down the hall, and said, "Hurry up."

  "He's big," Ty said in a low voice.

  "Six-seven, four hundred pounds these days," Uncle Gus said. "Seventh-round draft pick by the Giants in 1986. Blew out his knee halfway through his rookie season, put a hundred pounds on during rehab, and never got back onto the field. Let's go."

  Uncle Gus jumped ahead of them and held open the swinging door, waving them into the main bar.

  Ty and Charlotte carried in the equipment and supplies. Lucy's was a dingy place with battered wooden chairs and tables carved with graffiti. It smelled of stale beer, and Ty's sneakers made sticky sucking noises as he walked.

  "That's Lucy," Uncle Gus said, nodding toward the front window, where a tired row of men, their backs to the glass, sat hunched over their drinks. One sat apart from the rest like a shepherd guarding his flock.

  "You don't even try to talk to him. Be careful of the bar if you ever clean over there. Don't bang your mop into it. His father made it. And, if he catches you looking at the burn mark on his face, you'll have a couple burn marks of your own. Get it?"

  "Lucy? He's a man," Ty said without thinking.

  "And not a nice man," his uncle said.

  Uncle Gus pointed to the back and said, "You see that red door next to the bathrooms? That door's closed, you don't touch it. If it's open, you go in there and clean the bathroom and empty the trash. Don't touch anything else. That's Lucy's office. The bar, the office, and his scar, just be careful with all of it."

  At the corner of the bar the man named Lucy sat with a bottle of beer, a newspaper, and a bowl of peanuts.

  "What's that thing next to the peanuts?" Ty asked.

  Uncle Gus glanced Lucy's way and said, "A crowbar. I've seen him use it, too."

  Lucy wore the shadow of a beard and the hungry face of someone who hadn't eaten for days. Ty presumed the shiny red lozenge in the middle of his sunken cheek was the burn. With one hand, Lucy snapped open the peanuts, popping them into his mouth and slowly grinding them down before adding their shells to the mess on the floor. With his other hand, he worked a cell phone, talking, dialing, and text messaging nonstop. He kept his eyes glued to the TV above the bar, where a Mets game played without sound.

  Uncle Gus pointed to the vacuum and told Charlotte to get going. She carried the machine over to the thin carpeted area where a dozen tables sat between two rows of booths. Charlotte plugged the vacuum into the wall and got right to it, filling the room with a whir so loud Ty had to lean closer to his uncle to hear.

  "I said start with the bathrooms," Uncle Gus said, nudging a bucket with his toe and rattling the contents--a toilet brush, a mop, a sponge, and a bottle of ammonia.

  Ty picked up the bucket and headed for the far wall, where the men's and women's rooms stood side by side, each with several holes punched into it. Before going in, he glanced back to see his uncle sweeping up the pile of peanut shells beneath Lucy's stool. His uncle glanced up and made a snarling face and Ty ducked inside.

  The smell made him retch. A reddish brown spray of vomit coated the tiled wall above the urinal. The floor was yellow and sticky. Inside the stall, the bowl had been jammed with a mound of soggy paper and crap. Ty uncapped the ammonia and spilled it into the bucket, wincing as the acrid smell burned his eyes.

  The bucket wouldn't fit into the sink.

  He looked around for a spigot he could use to fill it with water but found nothing more than filth smeared across the walls. After several minutes, he returned to the bar, where the peanut shells had disappeared. His uncle now sat beside Lucy, bent over a mug of beer and pointing to something in the newspaper.

  "I don't care what that says," the wiry owner said, punching a text message into his phone. "The spread's three, take it or leave it."

  Ty cleared his throat and the men spun around. Lucy glared and crushed a peanut in his fist.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TY STARED AT HIS sneakers, determined not to look at Lucy's scar.

  "Big birthday boy. See what I said about this kid?" Uncle Gus said, banging his mug on the bar.

  "Didn't get his brother's legs, I tell you that," said Lucy, flicking a peanut shell so that it bounced off Ty's chest.

  "I don't know where to fill the bucket," Ty said quietly. He glanced at the row of men who sat gripping their drinks. They stared at him with dead eyes and mouths that hung slack.

  "What do you think that hose is for?" Uncle Gus asked.

  "I didn't see a hose," Ty said, daring a look at his uncle. "And the toilet's clogged, too."

  Lucy snorted and slid down off his chair, rounding the bar and returning with a plunger that he held out in front of Ty until he took it.

  "Check in the other bucket for the hose," Uncle Gus said, "and get going. We're behind."

  "He the reason you're late?" Lucy said, snorting again. He picked the crowbar up off the bar and poked it in Ty's direction. One end of the blue metal tool flattened into a wedge while the other hooked into a claw.

  "Thought he'd stay after school," Uncle Gus said.

  "Spring football. Thinks he's his brother."

  Lucy chuckled. His phone rang and he flipped it open and said hello, replacing the crowbar and turning his back on them. Uncle Gus gripped Ty's shoulder until he looked up. Uncle Gus made his eyes really wide and jerked his head in the direction of the bathrooms.

  Ty found the piece of hose in the other bucket. He used the mixture of ammonia and water to mop the floors and the walls, and he plunged out the toilet, stopping several times to gag. The women's room was worse.

  As he finished, the door was flung open, and Uncle Gus looked around.

  "Not a bad job," he said, bending over the sink and touching the faucet with his fingertip. "I didn't even know these faucets were silver, but you're way too slow. Let's go."

  On their way to the next account, a small office building, Ty learned from his uncle that Slatz's Cleaning Services served a variety of customers, including a car dealership, a donut shop, and a dentist's office. Each of them had bathrooms that needed cleaning, and that responsibility would fall to Ty. The bathrooms in the office building weren't nearly as dirty as the ones in Lucy's Bar, but Ty also got his fill of vacuuming, sweeping, cleaning windows, and emptying garbage.

  It was nine o'clock by the time they finished the office building and their supplies were loaded back into the covered bed of the truck. When they climbed into the front, Ty's stomach rumbled loud enough to make Uncle Gus laugh.

  "Don't worry," he said. "Next stop's the donut shop."

  Ty glanced over at Charlotte, and even she moistened her lips in anticipation. When they arrived, Uncle Gus went straight to the garbage and pulled out a bag of day-old rolls.

  "Perfectly good," he said, setting them out on a countertop and halving them with a sharp knife he took down off the wall. From the refrigerator, he removed wrapped slices of ham and a stack of cheese and laid them onto the rolls before sticking them into the microwave to cook. Ty sat next to Charlotte at the counter, his mouth watering while the appliance whirred away the seconds. When his uncle handed him the sandwich, the first bite burned his mouth, so he pulled the sandwich apart, allowing the steam to curl up out of the sticky cheese and blowing hard before putting it back together and wolfing it down in three bites.

  When Uncle Gus's cell phone rang, he checked the number and licked his fingers deliberately before answering.

  "Hello, Tiger," Uncle Gus said, his eyes gleaming at Ty. "Yes, the birthday boy is right here, having a little birthday dinner. Glad you didn't forget...Oh? An agent, huh? I hope he took you to a nice place. Those agents are rolling in it...Yeah, you too. Here's Ty."

  Uncle Gus covered the phone and hissed at Ty. "We're one big happy family, right?"

  Charlotte glance
d at him, and Ty clamped his mouth shut, nodding yes until his uncle handed him the phone.

  "Hey, Killer," Thane said. "Happy birthday. You doing all right?"

  "Sure," Ty said.

  "Got a surprise for you," Thane said. "Kind of a birthday present."

  "Okay," Ty said, clenching his free hand.

  "ESPN asked me down to New York for draft day. Everyone's starting to talk about me being a top five pick. The whole thing will be on TV. It's this Sunday."

  "That's great."

  "They said I could bring a guest. That's you."

  "Me?" Ty asked, his heart doing loops.

  "I land Saturday night at six. They've got a limo picking me up and then we'll come get you and spend the night in the Palace Hotel, some fancy place. It'll be you and me, just like old times. For a day anyway. Sound good?"

  "I..." Ty said, his mind spinning. Uncle Gus gave him a crooked smile. "I got to ask Aunt Virginia and Uncle Gus."

  "You don't think they'll let you?" Tiger asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Well, put Uncle Gus on," Tiger said. "Let's see what he says."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TY HANDED HIS UNCLE the phone.

  Uncle Gus smiled at him and waggled his finger at the broom before pointing to the floor over by the entrance to the shop. Then he pointed at Charlotte and motioned with his thumb for her to get started in the kitchen. Charlotte rose from her seat without expression and floated past them, bending to scoop up a bucket of supplies without slowing down. Ty gripped the wooden handle of his broom and walked away, listening. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that Uncle Gus had turned away and was now hunched over the phone, muttering something to Thane.

  Ty strained his ears, gently flicking the dust and dirt on the floor into a pile. He heard words like "in his best interest" and "church seems to be helping so much" and "wouldn't want to set him back." He knew instinctively that Uncle Gus was lying about him, but he couldn't think of what to do. When Uncle Gus said good-bye, Ty doubled his sweeping efforts and concentrated hard on the pile he'd created, ignoring the sound of his uncle's footsteps as best he could. He heard his uncle go to the glass case behind the counter and pick out a donut before he ambled toward Ty.

  When Uncle Gus cleared his throat, Ty pretended to be surprised at his sudden presence.

  "Oh, Uncle Gus," Ty said. "Can I say good-bye to Thane?"

  "I said good-bye for you."

  "What did he want?" Ty asked, trying to sound innocent.

  Uncle Gus poked the rest of a jelly donut into his mouth and licked away the spot of powder still clinging to his finger.

  "Brotherly love," Uncle Gus said through the mash of his donut. "Wants to spend a little time with you this weekend. Some ESPN thing, the draft and all that."

  "Oh," Ty said, staring hopefully.

  Uncle Gus swallowed and folded his arms across the belly of his pear-shaped torso.

  "So, can I?" Ty asked.

  "Well, that depends, doesn't it?" Uncle Gus said, stroking his thick mustache now and working a little blob of jelly into its bristles. "On how you're doing. Your attitude. Let's see how work goes. That's a good way to measure."

  "Okay."

  "Your brother is about to become a very rich man," Uncle Gus said.

  "Oh."

  "But he's not your guardian," Uncle Gus said. "I am. I'm the one with the grocery bills. I'm the one who has to be responsible."

  "I know that, Uncle Gus," Ty said apologetically.

  Uncle Gus pointed to a spot on the floor where someone had left a small wad of gum. "Pick that up."

  As Ty bent down to do it, Uncle Gus walked away whistling.

  In gym class the next day, Ty stifled a yawn and followed Coach V into his office while the rest of his classmates played dodgeball on the other side of the glass. Their hooting and hollering muscled its way through the walls, making the small, square office feel like an underwater chamber. The air was crowded with the smell of damp socks and basketballs.

  Coach V sat in the squeaky chair, slid open his desk drawer, and removed a stapled stack of papers that he handed to Ty.

  "Our playbook," the coach said, clapping his hands on the big hairy legs protruding from his shorts.

  Ty squinted at the Xs and Os and the arrows and nodded. He'd seen Thane draw similar things on the backs of napkins for their father, explaining secret plays they would run against upcoming rivals, plays that put the ball into Thane's hands.

  "Next fall," Coach V said, "you're gonna be my Z."

  "Z?"

  "Strong-side wide receiver," Coach V said, pointing to a single O on the very edge of the first page, the player farthest removed from all the others, the player with a long arrow sprouting from him like a spear. "That's our 'go' route. You just go, run as fast and as far as you can, and the quarterback heaves it up for you. With your speed, we could go, go, go. I'll show you out there today. After what I saw yesterday, I'm penciling you into the starting lineup. What do you think of that?"

  "Coach."

  "Some of your teammates aren't going to like it, but they'll get over it."

  "Coach."

  "Winning is like deodorant. I think John Madden said that. Something like that."

  "Coach."

  "What, Lewis?"

  "I can't," Ty said, placing the stack of plays gently onto the desk.

  "Don't worry about experience, it's speed. The game is about speed. Don't say you can't do it. Trust me, you can."

  "I mean, I can't play at all. I have to work. Every day. Right after school. Right when practice is."

  Ty explained Slatz's Cleaning Services. Coach V sat with his mouth open, fishlike, and blinking.

  "I got a work permit," Ty said after a few moments of nothing more than the sounds of screaming kids on the other side of the glass.

  Coach V cleared his throat and slapped his knees before he rose. He sniffed as if he'd been insulted. "Well, if you can't play, you can't."

  On his way to the door, Coach V put his hand on Ty's head, then let his grip slide down the back of Ty's neck, where he let go after a firm squeeze.

  Ty followed the coach back out into the gym, where sneakers squeaked among the battle cries. Instead of joining the ruckus, Ty put his back to the padded wall behind the backboard and let himself slip down the wall until he sat planted on the wood floor with his head in his knees. He closed his eyes and forced himself to think about Saturday night and the one thing Uncle Gus hadn't yet said no to.

  All he had to do was work hard. That's what he thought.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FRIDAY AFTER SCHOOL, UNCLE Gus sent Ty and Charlotte into the Breakfast Nook alone so he could listen to a Yankees/Red Sox game on the truck radio. They left him there, teeth grinding, hands clamped to the wheel, as Manny Ramirez stepped up to the plate.

  The Nook, as they called it, was a small restaurant in a shopping center, an easy job to start out with, but farther away than the other accounts, and that's why Uncle Gus liked to get it done first, before they went to Lucy's Bar. The Nook only had one bathroom and apparently a very neat cook. The small kitchen rarely had anything more than some spattered pancake batter to worry about.

  Ty mopped the kitchen floor, then went to work on the bathroom. He had given the toilet a final flush when he heard Charlotte squeal. He bolted back into the kitchen. A knife clattered to the bottom of the sink, and she cradled one hand in the other, stamping around the kitchen, crying.

  "I'm bleeding," she said.

  "Oh gosh," Ty said. "Hang on."

  He yanked several paper towels off the roll on the wall and handed them to her. She plastered them to the long red gash across her palm, and the blood bloomed like a rose in a science movie. Charlotte sucked air in through her teeth with a hissing sound that reminded Ty of filling his bicycle tires at the gas station.

  "You gotta hold it real tight," Ty said, clamping his own hands over hers and squeezing as well.

  After a minute her
breathing slowed.

  "I think it stopped," she said quietly.

  "Let's see," Ty said. He removed his hands and gently pulled the paper towel back. The angry red gash had begun to clot.

  "Okay," he said, "but keep holding it for a while."

  "What are you, a Boy Scout?" she asked. "You got a first aid badge or something?"

  Ty felt his cheeks flush. "No. Thane--you know, my brother--he used to teach me all kinds of stuff like that. He's a lot older."

  "Must be nice having a brother," she said, looking down at her hand.

  "Should I get your dad?" he asked.

  Charlotte glared up at him and shook her head.

  "You might need stitches," Ty said, peering at her hand until she snatched it away and put it behind her back.

  She looked scared, with her blue eyes wide open and her small red mouth making an O that reminded him of the playbook. Her blond hair had been pulled into the folds of a blue bandanna, making her face seem even rounder. It startled him to recognize something in her eyes, the same empty sadness that he saw in his own face when he looked into the bathroom mirror in school.

  "Maybe I should get him," Ty said.

  "Not when he's listening to a game. Never," she said. "It'll stop bleeding."

  "It's just a game."

  She puckered her mouth like she'd tasted something sour. "Not when you bet money it's not. When he does that, you don't want to be around. Especially if they lose. Did you ever know a gambler?"

  Ty shook his head.

  "Well, you do now. Welcome to the club. Can you finish the sink?" she asked in the soft voice of an ordinary girl.

  Ty nodded and went to work, glancing back only when he heard the sound of the vacuum cleaner that she operated one-handed. Her face had returned to normal, lifeless as a loaf of bread. She turned the vacuum off at the same time he finished the sink. When he smiled at her and said he'd fill the napkin dispensers, only her eyes flickered at him. Besides that small glimmer and the bloodstained towel, Ty would have thought he'd imagined their entire conversation.