The playbook, p.2
The Playbook, page 2
“Drop it, Mom,” he says, irritated at her insistence. “I have just one more year after this one.”
“Stop saying that,” Vanessa orders.
“I’m just facing facts,” he insists as he looks up at her. “I’m not Dad. Won’t be an All-American, or an NFL All-Pro. And I’m okay with that.”
She reaches for his hand and he lets her hold it. “Don’t sell yourself short, Son,” she says.
“I know what I am, Mom,” he says gently. “An average high school quarterback, smarter than most but slower too, and a slightly below-average passer. I do fine with the skills I have, but I play primarily because it’s what you and Dad want for me.”
“You like it too,” Vanessa pouts.
“But I’m not obsessed with it.”
They stare at each other, neither backing down.
“I’m as stubborn as you are,” Ty says, determined to hold his ground.
“Show me your knee,” she insists.
Ty drops her hand and pulls up his pants’ leg.
“It’s the size of a grapefruit!” moans Vanessa as she sees the knee.
“I’ll ice it down,” says Ty.
Vanessa carefully examines the swollen knee, probing and pressing like the nurse she once was. Ty winces a couple of times as she works, and she shakes her head as she finishes. “I’m cancelling your throwing session with Coach Paul tomorrow,” she says.
“Don’t do that,” Ty says. “I’ll wear the brace you bought me.”
“You think that will help?”
“It has before.”
She leans back. “Okay. But you’re definitely seeing the doctor on Monday.”
Secretly relieved that he’ll finally see a doctor, Ty nods and pulls his pants’ leg back over his knee. Though giving into his mom irks him, he also knows that something inside his knee is wrong, perhaps greatly so.
The rain splatters down in sheets, flooding Chelsea’s windshield in spite of her busy wipers. Squinting though the deluge, she spots somebody running on the roadside. Swerving to the left, she glances over and recognizes Palmer’s vague outline. Slowing the truck, she hits a button and lowers the passenger window. “Hey, Palmer!” she yells. Palmer turns to her but keeps running.
“Hop in!” Chelsea yells. “I’ll give you a ride!”
Still running, Palmer waves her off. Rain splashes into the truck from the open window.
“Come on!” Chelsea orders. “You’re soaking wet! Get in!”
Palmer stops and she brakes and pushes the passenger door open.
“You sure?” Palmer calls over the rain. “You know, these days. A woman coach, a…” he hesitates to say it.
“A male player?” Chelsea finishes the sentence for him. “Don’t worry about that! It’s a monsoon out there! Climb in!”
Palmer hops in and brushes water off his face as Chelsea hits the button to roll the window up.
“Thanks,” Palmer says, catching his breath.
“No problem.”
Palmer leans toward the heat vent as Chelsea drives off. “Your place?” she says. “How far from here?”
“Couple miles up this road,” says Palmer. “Take a left. Four miles past that.”
The windshield wipers thump as Palmer shivers and the heater blows. They ride in silence for a minute and Chelsea glances at Palmer, then back to the road. “Something happen with your ride home?” she finally asks.
Palmer stares out the window for a few seconds. “My motorcycle broke down,” he finally says.
“A bad night for that to happen.”
Palmer lays his hands on the vent and falls silent again as Chelsea turns left.
“You like it here?” she asks, trying to make conversation.
Palmer shrugs. “It’s okay.”
“You live with your uncle if I recall.”
He nods but doesn’t speak.
“What does your uncle do?” she asks.
“He plays music.”
“You play too?”
He blows on his hands. “You ask a lot of questions,” he says.
Chelsea hesitates, not sure whether to press ahead. But she knows almost nothing about Palmer and, because he hardly ever speaks when he’s with the team, this is probably her only chance to find out anything but the bare facts about him. “I’m your coach,” she explains. “But the truth is you’re a blank page to me. And you don’t know me either. So…”
She waits for him to respond but he’s staring out the window like he’s watching a parade march by.
“I’m not trying to intrude,” she says, still hoping he’ll loosen up. “But you, and all my players, are important to me.”
Palmer turns and eyes her as if trying to x-ray her insides. “Me and Dirk,” he finally answers. “We play music together when he’s home.”
She smiles. “Thanks,” she says. “For telling me that.”
He stares out the window again.
“Can I ask another question?” she asks gently.
“I don’t reckon I can stop you, can I?”
She laughs. “What kind of music do you and Dirk play?”
“All kinds. But mostly country.”
“My law firm played country music in the lobby on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she says, glad to find a connection, even if slight, with him.
“You were a lawyer before this?” He faces her and finally asks a question of his own.
“Six years in litigation.”
“You make more money as a lawyer?”
“Stacks more.”
He laughs a little. “You must like coaching.”
Chelsea chuckles too. “Most days.”
Palmer shivers again and Chelsea turns the heat to its maximum. “You have a lot of potential, Palmer,” she says.
“You ever play football?” he asks.
“High school, then small college. I was a kicker.”
“I reckon there ain’t a lot of woman coaches.”
“True dat.” She slows the truck as they approach a run-down farmhouse with a small porch with two steps on the front. “This the place?” she asks.
Palmer nods and she stops and puts the truck in park. An old tractor rusts in a weedy yard to the side of the house. One light burns in a window. A beat-up shed sags out toward the back.
Palmer pulls a wet dollar from a pocket and offers it to her. “For gas,” he explains.
“It’s okay,” says Chelsea, refusing the money.
“Well,” he says, pocketing the dollar and reaching for the door. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Don’t forget, Palmer,” Chelsea says. “You could be really good.”
Shrugging, he hops out and rushes to the run-down house as Chelsea, feeling sad for reasons she can’t explain, pulls away into the rain.
CHAPTER TWO
A Saturday morning sun brightens a double-bay window. Inside, in a large family room, Coach Dub, standing barefooted and wearing red flannel pajamas, holds a paintbrush by an artist’s easel. Paintings of flowers and fruits hang in various spots on the walls. Patrice, fully dressed in a tan sweater and brown slacks and shoes, enters with two cups of coffee on a tray. She hands one cup to Dub and eases down to a chair beside him.
Dub takes a sip of coffee with one hand and points to the easel with his brush. A candy-red apple stares back at him from the canvas. “My teacher is making me paint fruit, Patrice,” he complains.
“Most people like fruit,” Patrice replies, sipping coffee as she studies the painting.
“But I’m a football coach! She should take that into consideration!”
Patrice smiles. “I think a fruit-painting man is kind of sexy.”
“Well, I am a sensitive guy.” He grins at her.
Patrice sips some more coffee and clears her throat.
“Thirty minutes to lose the jammies, Van Gogh,” she says. “I’m ready for brunch.” She stands, pats him on the back, then hurries out.
Dub makes one more stroke on the apple, lays down the brush, and studies his work with a raised eyebrow. “That’s one fine piece of fruit if I say so myself.”
Dressed in baggy navy pants and a matching shirt with “Rabon Motel” stitched over the front pocket, Palmer walks into a dirty motel bedroom and glances around. An overflowing trash can fills one corner, empty beer bottles another. Filthy towels lay over a lamp on a dresser and at the foot of a messy, slept-in bed. Several plastic cups, teeming with cigarette ash complete the disarray.
Stepping into the hallway, Palmer pulls a clean-up cart into the room and starts to work, jerking the filthy sheets off the bed, hauling them to the cart, grabbing fresh ones, and beginning to make the bed. A pretty but tough-looking teenage girl, with a tattoo on the inside of her left wrist and dressed exactly like Palmer, saunters in as he slips the clean sheet over the mattress.
“Hey, Molly,” he says as his stomach churns, as it does every time she enters a room with him.
Molly pushes brunette hair from her face and studies him through deep brown eyes. “You again?” she asks as if irritated by his presence. Her accent is Southern and a bit rough around the edges.
“I been here every weekend for the past two months,” Palmer says as he drapes a clean bedspread over the sheet.
Molly grunts and dumps the ash-filled cups into the trash bag on the cart. “What a buncha idiots,” she complains. “It’s a non-smoking room.”
Palmer pulls clean pillowcases off the cart and weighs his response. Though he wants Molly to like him, she pushes his buttons in ways that frustrate him to no end. “You smoke,” he finally says, unwilling to give her the final word.
“I smoke outside, Idiot. In the fresh air.”
“That don’t matter to your lungs.”
Molly stops and stares at him. “How I treat my lungs is none of your business.”
Palmer speaks again before he can stop himself. “It’s disgusting, is all.”
“I expect you an expert on disgusting.”
Angry that he took the bait she always seems to throw at him, Palmer stuffs a pillow into a cover. “You know zero about me,” he grumbles.
Molly stops dead still and stares at him as if she’s a queen about to pounce on a rebellious servant. “What are you?” she asks. “Fifteen? Sixteen, tops?”
Her phone dings and she glances at it. A text. “It’s the front desk,” she says. “Some idiot puked in 112.”
Relieved to have escaped her wrath, Palmer quickly finishes with the bed. “’I’ll clean 112,” he offers. “Since I’m the expert on disgusting.”
Molly laughs for a moment, grabs a hotel pen and notepad from the cart, scribbles a number on the pad, and hands it to him. “Reach out if you want,” she says.
“You not even nice,” he says with a pout, though pleased that she’s given him her phone number.
Molly hops onto the bed and starts swirling, her arms out like a ballerina in a play. “I know you been watching me,” she laughs as she spins. “You want some a this. You know it, I know it, all God’s children know it.”
Palmer tries to ignore her, but his thrumming heart won’t let him, so he watches her, a doll twirling around and around as he stands still, in a trance. Gradually, she slows and finally stops.
“Don’t hold your breath on me calling,” he says softly as he pockets the number.
“We both know you’re bluffing,” says Molly. “Just do it, Idiot.”
Unable to speak, Palmer turns away and hustles out, his stomach doing flips as he touches his pocket where her number rests.
A metal rack filled with footballs stands alongside Ty on the Knights’ football field. He’s wearing his Knights’ helmet, football shorts, and jersey. Reaching to the rack, he pulls out a ball, drops back, and throws at a stationary target forty yards away. Almost immediately, he grabs another ball and spins it toward the target. Over and over. Ball after ball.
Coach John Paul, a short, stocky man in his fifties with a Knights’ hat on backwards, a purple lollipop in his mouth, and a towel dangling from a pocket, runs down the balls Ty throws and drops them into a gray bag, then hustles back and refills the rack.
After throwing thirty passes in a row, Ty stops to adjust his knee brace as Paul reloads the rack.
“What’s with the brace?” Paul asks.
“Got hit last night,” says Ty. “The last play.” He grabs a football from the rack and drops back, His throw misses the target by a couple of feet.
“Load up on your back foot,” Paul coaches. “And whip the ball all the way through.”
Ty nods, drops back, and throws again, this time hitting the center of the target.
Paul whoops his approval and waves his towel in the air. “That’s it! Perfect! Take a break.”
Ty pulls off his helmet and jogs over to Vanessa and Russell, who are watching from the sidelines.
“You’re throwing clean today,” Russell says, patting Ty on the back as Paul joins them.
Vanessa hands Ty a water bottle. “Should you move back to the fifty-yard line?” she asks. “Make some throws from there?”
“I’m good from forty to forty-five,” replies Ty. “Not so much at fifty.”
Vanessa turns to Paul. “He needs accuracy from fifty yards, doesn’t he? To play college ball?”
Paul sucks his lollipop, raising an eyebrow at Ty. They’ve both heard the question before. “Fifty is a minimum,” agrees Paul.
“What can he do to add that next ten yards?” Vanessa asks.
“Sometimes it’s just the tools you’re born with,” suggests Ty, frustrated that his mama is re-plowing the same ground for the thousandth time. “You either can or you can’t.”
Vanessa ignores Ty and presses Paul. “Your job is to turn his can’t into a can,” she says.
“Maybe you’ll grow another inch or two,” says Paul, addressing Ty. “Extra height means extra leverage and that could mean extra distance on your throws.”
“Whatever he needs, Coach,” interrupts Russell. “Nutrition. Speed training. Strength coaching.”
Ty winks at Paul to make sure he’s in on the joke. “I hear good things about growth hormones,” he offers.
Vanessa cuts her eyes at him. “Don’t be silly.”
“I’ll check with Coach Dub again,” Paul says, backing away from Vanessa’s anger. “See if he’s heard of any new training techniques we can try.”
“We just want Ty to maximize his chances,” says Vanessa.
Paul nods. “We’re all on board with that.”
“Don’t discount the hormones,” Ty teases again.
Vanessa waves a finger at him, and Ty slips his helmet back on and hustles back to the field.
“Fifty more throws!” he yells. “Maybe I’ll find that magical ten yards on the last one.”
A banjo in hand, Palmer lounges on a worn-out green sofa in his uncle’s living room and picks softly as the late-afternoon sun drops outside. A wood fire burns in a fireplace across from him, the crackling somehow comforting in the quiet of the house. A couple of wood chairs frame the fireplace, and a rectangular coffee table fronts the sofa. Nothing decorates the dingy beige walls. One lamp burns on the mantle over the fireplace and a TV hangs on the wall over that.
Palmer begins to sing as he plucks the banjo, his voice gritty but clear and pure. A tinge of sadness paints the notes of his music, and that sadness adds color to his singing, a touch of darkness born by suffering somewhere along the way.
Wind whips outside and something clacks across the roof. Palmer thinks of Molly’s number in his pocket. He considers calling her but isn’t sure what to say if he does. She’s older than him and he’s a new kid in town with barely a dollar in his pocket. Plus, with his motorcycle broken down, he’s got no way to go see her even if he asked and she said “yes.”
He stares into the fire. Suddenly, the front door opens and a rugged, mid-thirties guy with long dark hair and a groomed beard walks in.
“Hey, Dirk,” says Palmer, rising and placing the banjo on a stand as Dirk lays a travel bag and guitar case on the floor. “It’s been a minute.”
“What’s up, Dude?” asks Dirk, stepping to him with open arms.
“This and that,” says Palmer, accepting the bro hug. “You grow another inch since I been gone?” asks Dirk as they back away from each other.
“They measured me for the football program. I’m six feet, four inches.”
“Wow,” says Dirk, walking to the fireplace and warming his hands. “You getting to be a big one.”
“I didn’t hear you drive up,” says Palmer.
“My truck is part ninja.”
“It’s prime for a proper burial is what it is.”
“I’m thinking about buying a new one,” Dirk says, throwing another log on the fire. “Get me some leather seats this time.”
“How long you home for?” Palmer asks, hoping one thing but expecting another.
“Not long. The band’s playing in Nashville again real soon.”
Palmer pushes aside his disappointment. “Ya’ll are killing it these days,” he offers.
“We’re not big time,” Dirk says humbly. “But we’re earning our share of gigs.”
The fire blazes higher. “There’s a couple slices of left-over pizza in the kitchen,” he says.
“Any mold on it?” teases Dirk.
“Not that I noticed.”
“Then I’m all in.”
They laugh as they head toward the kitchen. “By the way,” says Palmer, “this town sucks.”
Dirk shrugs. “Nobody’s holding a gun to your head to stay.”
Dressed in black sweatpants and a Georgia Bulldogs jacket, Ty limps slowly down the winding second-floor staircase to the family room. A picture of Russell in a Falcons’ uniform hangs on one side of a stone fireplace, and one of Vanessa accepting a Volunteer of the Year Award from Rabon’s mayor adorns the other. Clear windows cover the opposite wall, offering a view of a yellow moon staring down on the mountains in the distance.
Russell enters the room from one side, Vanessa from the other. Russell grabs car keys off the mantle as Vanessa pulls a coat from an entry closet. “Come on, Ty,” she encourages as he gingerly reaches the landing halfway down the stairs. “We’re starving.”
