by John Brandon
He was up from the bed and pacing now, arms crossed, pulling in whole breaths. There his suits were in the closet, dormant, dutiful. A fly was buzzing around over near the window, probably trapped behind the screen. What Ainsley had told Garner about the fullback was picking at him. It was number 41. He remembered the mohawk. He’d noticed the kid last Saturday, easily the best blocker on the team, one of those kids who had that innate knack for colliding squarely with another human. He was stout enough to lead inside and quick enough to pull wide on outside runs, and when the offense got stuck they’d sneak him out of the backfield and throw to him. Usually that type of offense didn’t even use a fullback, but this kid was always out there. Several times Garner had even seen him directing traffic before the snap.
Garner sat down on the bed and plucked his phone from the nightstand. He looked up the lines and found that Coastal was favored by nineteen points that Saturday. Almost three touchdowns. They were on the road, at North Florida. Three touchdowns on the road. Their star fullback wouldn’t be playing and nobody knew it yet.
Garner reclined stiffly onto his back, the fly in the window quiet now, gone or else resigned to its fate. He stared into the dark and must’ve slept an hour here and there, and in time, as it had to, the sour bluish light rose up into the world. He showered and dressed and drove his mother’s Honda directly west on Route 8 until he came to a town two counties in where no one knew him. He had to wait fifteen minutes for the bank to open, and then he went in and withdrew everything he could from his checking without having to close the account—a little over two grand. He didn’t love the idea of using cash, of using a live bookie, but that last credit card didn’t have nearly enough room on it, so here he was, doing this the old-fashioned way. This was the way desperate people bet and he was desperate.
The teller asked if he needed anything else and he said he did. Garner had an old money market he’d opened with the commission from his first big deal. He’d never touched it, had planned to leave it be until he was older, when he’d be able to tell people it was the first score he’d ever made. Then he’d do something magnanimous with it, maybe gift it to some ambitious young man he would have begun to mentor.
It hadn’t had time to accrue much interest; it was still around five thousand. Garner drew a steadying breath and told the teller he wanted to close the money market.
On the drive back to the coast, he felt a pang of contrition over the fact that he’d gotten the information for the bet he was about to make from Ainsley, information she wasn’t supposed to have shared with him, but he told himself he was being ridiculous. No one would find out why he’d made the bet, and no one was getting cheated except the bookie. He’d make this one bet, and after he won he could figure out a better way to get some money coming in.
He pulled up behind Cuss Seafood, an ancient, tidy diner where everyone knew the owner took wagers. Garner had never been in the place. He poked his head into the storeroom and asked for Cuss and after a minute a wiry black man with one of his eyes askew walked out and accepted Garner’s money like it was twenty bucks. Cuss reeked of harsh, outdated soap. It was hard to tell if he was looking at Garner or off into the live oaks. He peered at Garner’s driver’s license, scribbled in a little booklet, then slipped Garner’s cash into a blue envelope stamped LOWER COUNTRY ENTERTAINMENT. “You sure this just for entertainment?” he said. “We a entertainment outfit.”
Saturday morning Garner’s mother’s hot water heater crapped out. He insisted to her that he’d take care of it, having no clue how much a hot water heater cost. He wasn’t going to look into it until after the game. A hot water heater would be the least of his worries if he lost the bet. He’d get to find out what rock bottom felt like.
He skipped a cold shower. Down at the end of the block he puffed away at one of his Russian cigarettes and when he got back to the house his mother’s friends were appearing. They were putting hors d’oeuvres together for the game. They liked to watch it here, on the big TV.
Garner said his hellos and returned each woman’s hug. The big woman who tottered around in high heels, the skinny one who always wore a ball cap. Lucas’s mother was there again. Lucas’s band was rehearsing, she said, or he would’ve come over. They were getting ready to record a demo, so they had to practice every chance they got. They always received terrific reviews in the local papers, Lucas’s mother told Garner. He should go listen to them sometime.
“Sure,” he said. “I just might do that.”
He spent another couple minutes turning down the food the women offered him, then claimed he wasn’t feeling well and retired to his room to watch the game on a tiny old TV set that normally stayed in the back of the closet. Garner didn’t want to be around people for the game. He snuck out and fetched a beer from the fridge during the highlight show that aired during warm-ups, thinking the alcohol would dampen his nerves, but it tasted stale and he only got about half the bottle down.
He saw the opening kickoff, saw the spheroid spinning end over end against the sky, and then he watched in a trance as the first minutes proceeded exactly as he needed them to. One drive ended with a dropped pass, another on downs. Both teams were using the full play clock, like they wanted to get the game over with. The only scoring opportunity in the quarter was a North Florida field goal that sailed well wide. Everyone on the field was testy. A player on each side got whistled for a hit out of bounds, and then the Coastal tight end got ejected for throwing a punch at a North Florida safety. Both coaches stripped down to undershirts and kept yanking their headsets off to scream at the officials. The Coastal running back had no pop and wasn’t falling forward like he usually did, mostly because, to everyone but Garner’s surprise, Coastal’s fullback had been a late scratch.
Everything was moving quickly, even the commercial breaks. The stands were half empty, Garner noticed. Bad shotgun snaps and booming punts. When Coastal finally hit a long post route to that receiver Forde, the play was called back for illegal procedure because the backup fullback had lined up wrong. And at that point, watching the Coastal players begin to celebrate and then stop celebrating and drop their heads at the sight of the yellow hanky on the ground, optimism filled Garner’s guts.
At halftime, with the North Florida band forming itself into letters that would spell out AMBERJACKS, Garner was snapped out of his reverie by a rare call on his cell phone. It was Ainsley. She didn’t so much invite him as she told him he was going to come over to her house for dinner Thursday, her night off. She was going to cook Indian. She’d already been to Savannah for the spices. She wasn’t in the business of rushing things, she told Garner, but she also wasn’t in the business of stalling.
“I thought you were in the business of kissing,” Garner said.
“I am, but I’m thinking about expanding.”
“High demand, huh?”
Ainsley scoffed. “Seven-thirty.”
Garner was still holding his phone and staring at nothing when he noticed that the third quarter had begun. Coastal was pressing and suffered one pre-snap penalty after another. The offensive line was in disarray and one of the tackles came to the sideline and hurled his helmet into a fence. Afternoon was waning into early evening. Garner’s appetite was returning, but he didn’t want to leave the bedroom and break the spell.
He kept his eyes on the TV as all the scoring arrived in a fourth-quarter rush. Coastal managed a field goal and then North Florida ran back the ensuing kickoff and then Coastal, almost out of time, called that same simple dive play up the middle, a play that had been stuffed all day, and somehow none of the linebackers were home and a couple defensive backs got tangled up with each other trying to make the tackle. Sixty-yard touchdown. Kickoff. A couple doomed deep passes. The last seconds ticked off. Game over. The coaches were shaking hands. It was a three-point victory for Coastal. Garner had won his bet. He’d won it by a mile.
Garner showed up early at the diner Monday morning, walking around back with the delivery men d
ropping off the morning catch, and collected from Cuss, who said “The rich get richer” when he handed over Garner’s winnings. Then Garner raced inland to the bank, again getting there before they opened, and dealt with that same teller. He drove back to the coast and paid off a lesser credit card, had his mother’s new hot water heater installed, made sure he was paid up on his phone bill. He filled the Honda with gas and ran it through a car wash and bought a twelve-pack of imported beer for his mother’s fridge. He had his strut back. He went for a jog and shaved, straightened up his room and ate an overstuffed roast beef sandwich. Then he went to a jewelry store on the edge of downtown, his blood humming, and picked out a restored rose-gold Baume & Mercier wristwatch for Ainsley, and he left it on her front porch in a glinting gift box with a scarlet bow. He drove around the outskirts of town with his window down, the afternoon sun on his arms, getting a look at all the places that were important to him as a kid. He drove by the high school, the old swimming hole, the fields where all the youth sporting events were still held.
It wasn’t until the next day, after a morning working on his mother’s yard and an afternoon nap that left him groggy rather than refreshed, that gloom began creeping back over Garner. He lay motionless in his little bedroom, absently listening to people argue on a sports radio show, his hair matted with sweat. Reality was upon him again. He’d settled one small card but there were several big ones still bearing down on him. He had his storage unit to pay, full of the stuff from his loft that he’d been unable to sell but unwilling to throw out. And then there was the damn watch. It was too much too soon. He’d gotten carried away, had fallen back into the mode he’d lived by in Atlanta, where he’d learned everything about money except how to respect it. Ainsley would think he was showing off or something, which he supposed he had been.
He clicked off the radio, on which a caller had been mocking a baseball player who’d cried after losing his team a game. Garner stared up at the fan. It wasn’t spinning fast enough to push any air.
Wednesday Lucas didn’t have to tutor and didn’t have band practice, so Garner got him out to a rickety pier on the marsh flats where they’d gone fishing countless times as kids. The pier looked like it was about to collapse, but it had looked that way for decades. It was on a minor canal and in the first hour of fishing Garner and Lucas didn’t see another soul. The sun was out, pale and strained, like a headlight that had been left on too long. That tropical storm had never shown up; it had dragged its skirts over Bermuda and petered out in the North Atlantic. Garner felt disoriented. This guy he was sitting with on this rotten pier had once been his best buddy. The years had changed him, but not by much. His voice was the same. He had the same cowlick in his hair, the same scar on his calf from when he’d wrecked his bike when he was nine years old. Garner had the sense of watching himself from afar. He’d talked himself into the first bet and now he’d talked himself into a second, had talked himself into what he was about to do. He was watching himself prepare to close a deal.
He’d brought out gin and tonic fixings and today, for the first time in a while, was drinking right along with his company. They’d brought out some lunch, too, but as midday approached Lucas seemed less and less interested in eating. They hadn’t caught a thing but their bait kept getting stolen, which didn’t seem to bother Lucas. He was an easy-moving, even-handed guy. As Garner had built an identity for himself out of success, Lucas had built one of composure, of fruitless but dignified perseverance. It was wearing thin, Garner could see. Lucas was gray around the eyes and his shoulders were slumped.
Garner poured another round of drinks, the ice mostly melted by that point, and got Lucas to talking. Garner complained about the town, the same complaints from the old days.
“They’re a satisfied bunch,” Lucas said. “I’ll say that for them. Doesn’t take a whole lot to keep smiles on their faces.”
“I know what you mean,” said Garner.
“They’re proud of this place. I mean, look around. It’s pride for the sake of pride, I guess.”
“They think it’s a virtue.”
“Easy mistake,” said Lucas. “Clerical error. They put pride in the wrong column.”
“The main thing they’re proud of is that nothing changes. Town doesn’t change. People don’t change. The achievement is lack of achievement.”
“It’s like my mom,” Lucas said. “Bragging about me all the time. Always telling everyone about me. What the fuck have I done? Nothing. But at least I realize it.”
“You’re attempting to accomplish something worthwhile,” Garner told him. “Worthwhile endeavors are risky and they take time.”
“Maybe that’s the problem around here. There’s no risk and no reward. And nothing but time.”
Lucas’s eyes were animated, not so gray. The water was lapping under the dock to its own incoherent rhythm. Lucas told Garner he was only continuing to tutor and bus tables because he needed a dependable van. With a van, his band could play out-of-town gigs. Once they were playing steady, they could think about moving to Charleston. They could make a name for themselves in the Carolina college towns. There was a label called Bottle Tree that would sign them, once they had more of a fan base. Lucas wanted to account for himself, it seemed like—to declare his plans. He told Garner he played the upright bass and sang baritone. He hadn’t allowed the band to be named yet. They went by Music Project. Lucas wasn’t going to name them for real until they deserved it, until someone cared what their name was.
Garner was tired of baiting his hook and had quit reeling it back in. He took his Russian cigarettes out and there were two left. He offered one to Lucas.
“Trying to quit,” said Lucas.
“Me too.” Garner kept holding the clay-colored cigarette out until Lucas took it from him. They lit up and Garner tossed the pack away.
“What exactly is it that you do?” Lucas asked him.
“I’m in export futures,” answered Garner. “That’s what I’d call it.”
“Exporting what?”
“Anything that’s touchy to export.”
“I’ve always imagined you going a lot of places, meeting a lot of people. Hanging out in weird foreign airports.”
“It used to be fun,” Garner said. “I won’t deny it.”
“Everything used to be fun.” Lucas baited again, setting his cigarette on a damp plank and then picking it back up. “We’re not catching them,” he said. “We’re feeding them.”
“So do you have the name picked out, though? For the band?”
Lucas shrugged.
“I can keep a secret,” Garner said. “That’s another part of my job.”
Lucas thought a minute then spat. “It’s narrowed down to two. Proven Pelvis, or Lucas Graines and the Tufts.”
Garner nodded.
“I don’t know if I like either of them anymore. It’s kind of stupid, anyway—not naming the band. Makes it a little hard to get name recognition, right?”
“Your mom said you were getting ready to make a demo.”
“We’re always getting ready to make a demo.”
Lucas flicked his line around like it was caught on something. He took a drag from his cigarette and let the smoke leak out his nostrils.
“So which all players do you tutor?” Garner asked him.
“The dumb ones,” said Lucas.
“Any of the good players?”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t really been following the team.”
“How about Nigel Forde? That receiver. You tutor him?”
“He comes in sometimes. They all have to come every once in a while.”
Just then Lucas’s rod bent. He got a grip on it and dropped what was left of his cigarette in the water. The fish was stubborn but it wasn’t running anywhere. Lucas didn’t seem pleased to have hooked something. He was peering at the water and cranking. The sun was high above, and the tall reeds were leaning with a tepid breeze.
“Lucas,” Garner said, soundi
ng as sober as he could. “Lucas, you can’t tell anyone I told you this but I’m having money problems.”
Lucas’s cranking slowed, but now the fish was visible beneath the surface of the water. It was chasing itself around.
“You’re the only one who knows,” Garner said. “I’m broker than you are. I’m scraping the barrel.”
Lucas raised the dripping fish up into the light and stoically got a hold on it. The fish didn’t flail. It had done all its fighting. It wasn’t an eating fish and wasn’t big enough anyway, so Lucas freed it from the hook, lowered it off the side of the pier, and released it. He and Garner watched it swim off casually into the dark water as if nothing had happened.
“Broker than me?” Lucas said finally. “That’s a pretty brazen claim for someone like you to make. That’s big talk.”
“I need you,” Garner told him. “I need you and you don’t necessarily need me. I’m in a tight spot, but maybe you’re not. Maybe you want to stay in this same life you’ve always been in. You have that luxury. You can put a plot on layaway over at the memorial gardens and sit next to it in a lawn chair until they lower you in. You can do that, if it strikes your fancy.”
Lucas gnawed on a fingernail and spit it in the water, waiting.
“The other option, besides waiting at the cemetery, is getting a van and some gas to put in it and some better instruments and some real studio time and whatever else would help. That’s another way to go. All in.”
“Two choices,” said Lucas. “That’s more than I’m used to.”
“It’s more than most people get.”
Lucas pressed his lips together and then he sat up straight. “I’m curious to know what you got cooked up,” he said. “No denying that. I’m curious to see how your mind works.”
“Nothing fancy. We’re going to redistribute a little wealth is all.” Garner looked flatly into Lucas’s eyes. “We’re going to make a wager and we’re going to win it.”
