Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
I sounded crazy, muttering to myself all morning while making coffee, skimming through the news, brushing my teeth, and taking in my view in the mirror; I looked ragged from another night of fitful sleep. Something had been off during my conversation with Rakell last night…I’d definitely felt a disconnect. The unsure vagueness in her recounting when she talked about the audition and dinner, made me feel like I was playing a loosely defined detective game, and it was eating at me. I grabbed a protein shake, thankful that I was heading to the stadium to meet Dwayne and Coach Easton. It was a welcome distraction.
Dwayne had said he would try to get there early to review Jaxton’s file. We were going to discuss draft picks today, and Jaxton Meurtran—a talented senior at LSU (Louisiana State University) who played like a seasoned NFL wide receiver—would be our primary focus. However, he came with a big question mark. He had been in four physical altercations on the field. If someone took a cheap shot or piled on him when the play was over or said something antagonistic, he drove into them, fists swinging. It was clear that the other teams in the SEC were aware he had talent but knew his Achilles heel and weren’t above taunting him; it benefited them for Jaxton to lose his shit on the field, costing his team yards. Twice, Jaxton’s physical aggressions had resulted in suspension, which was good news for the competition, since he was unquestionably one of the best wide receivers in the SEC.
I knew Dwayne had already spent hours watching the LSU tapes, and we were all grappling with this kid’s gifts versus his hot head. Ironically, he had no reputation off the field, as in not a peep. “He does nothing, literally,” the LSU coach had said. “He never goes out with the guys, not for beers, dinner, hell, not even for putt-putt. And after they win, he can be seen in a sea of hootin’ and hollerin’ guys with his head down, like he’s trying to block out all the noise.” The LSU coach had added, “Plus, he’s an island of pent-up anger.”
We’d all watched Jaxton and had to admit his talent and football acumen surpassed Dwayne’s at the same age, but the other teams in the league would be reluctant to jump on him. Using a first-round pick on a person who felt tenuous was risky, and it was anybody’s guess if the kid would grow out of it or if he were simply hardwired that way. But I couldn’t help but think how his life growing up must have molded him into who he was; maybe he became a loner because he was trying to hide what was happening at home.
The reports said that his dad was violent; would that explain his quick temper on the field when people touched him? If you watched the tapes, you could see his response was automatic, like a switch had been tripped, going after others like the threat was real. I rewatched the tape where a kid playing linebacker from Arkansas had dropped back on the field, bumping into Jaxton on a full run. Once he regained his balance, Jaxton jerked his whole body around, both fists balled up, pouncing on the Arkansas player, howling, beating down on the guy's back. I viewed that film repeatedly, noticing that when they pulled Jaxton off the kid, Jaxton looked around, bewilderment blanketing his face, seeming unaware of where he was or what had just happened. Coach Easton said it was disturbing to watch. I kept thinking Jaxton wasn’t purposefully doing this, that something else happened inside him when he felt threatened. Honestly, that gave me more pause. There was an automaticity to his reactions that I wasn’t sure could be undone.
I swung open the conference room door, gave Dwayne a quick chin-nod, and stalked straight to the coffee maker, hoping more coffee would pop me awake. But I knew no amount of caffeine could override the insistent spiraling thoughts, imagining Rakell and Bernardo.
“Good morning to you, too. It looks like you had a night, dude,” Dwayne said, his tone somewhere between humor and concern.
Turning toward him, I forced a smile to my lips. I knew I looked disheveled, not bothering to shave or put more eye drops in, and I wasn’t doing a great job of hiding my shitty mood. Dwayne probably figured that Rakell and I’d had one too many glasses of wine last night. I hadn’t told him about her surprise audition but didn’t have the stomach to talk about it rationally yet.
Without so much as a greeting, I asked, “What do you think about Jaxton?”
Dwayne came back with, “Good morning, nice to see you, too,” in a rather irritated voice. “Don’t come in here acting all huffy just ‘cause you stayed up too late and overdid it last night.”
I retorted, “I didn’t overdo it last night. I have something on my mind that I’m trying to ignore, so I was launching into a football discussion to block it out. Don’t ask me what it is ‘cause I don’t want to talk about it.”
Dwayne looked at me with a ‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?’ expression. Added to that was his ‘I know what the problem is' face. We both knew what and who the problem was. “Um, trouble in paradise already?”
“Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it,” I added dismissively. “So, what do you think about Jaxton’s background?”
“I didn’t get a chance to finish reading it. I wanted the electronic file, but there was no one in the office. I’m waiting on that to finish, but I’ve watched a lot of footage with that kid, and I know his stats, so I say yes to going after him.”
“Huh? Why did you wait for the electronic copy?” I asked, confused. “We already know about his physical attributes and capabilities. He's fast as hell, has great hands, and all the usual stuff we look for in a wide receiver. It’s the psych stuff that has everyone questioning him. Since he’ll be kind of your responsibility, read the psychiatrist's assessment, and then we can discuss it.”
Dwayne reluctantly picked up the file, fingers sifting through the pages like he was trying to find the psych section of the report.
I couldn’t help but pick up on Dwayne’s hesitancy. I was wondering what the hell was going on. He had been one of the people pushing for this kid. I knew he knew Jaxton’s stats and had watched several videos; Jaxton had great speed (he ran a 4.2, forty, in the football world that’s blazing) and just like Dwayne, Jaxton had sticky fingers .
I glared at Dwayne as he stared at the words in the extensive assessment, but his eyes weren’t moving across the page. They seemed to be searching for bits of information. I sat down, watching him flip through it like it was a picture book.
I remembered Dwayne’s words about Jaxton; he’d said that aside from himself, he’d never seen anyone with such natural acumen, that instinctive sense of where the ball was headed, but there was so much more to this kid than football skills. I cleared my throat just as Dwayne turned the page to the kid's transcripts, his eyes growing wide and eyebrows shooting up.
“Huh?” I muttered, my eyes on Dwayne as he lifted his head, acknowledging me.
“Yeah, kind of amazing. Some of these classes I’ve never heard of…” he trailed off.
“He’s a double major in astrophysics and Russian,” I clarified.
“That combination sounds threatening,” Dwayne commented as if pondering what someone would do with that information.
“Yeah…but his psych background is what is most concerning.” I punched the word psych , really wanting to get Dwayne’s input from it.
Dwayne lowered his eyes and murmured, “I’m fine with it…we all got shit in life.” He sounded way too casual; there was no way he would react this way to the information in that report. I wanted to grab his shoulders and tell him to get his head in this. I thought about asking him who he had fun with last night, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear his latest between-the-sheets tale.
I let out a low sigh. “There’s stuff we go through, then there’s shit that can screw you up for life—big difference.” Damn, I didn’t have the energy for this. This was not like Dwayne, and I fucking did not need to be figuring him out, too…but as I sat there looking at him, his eyes downward, his fingers fiddling with the corner of a paper in the file, it hit me that he hadn’t even read the report. “So you got something you want to get off your chest, ’cause you didn’t read that. Read the goddamn report; Coach will be here soon. He’s going to want to make a decision on this, and you are fucking over here screwing around when you need to know what you’re signing up for. Come on!”
Dwayne didn’t move; his eyes shot up, but his head was still bent. In a nonconfrontational tone, he said, “Damn, you're in a bad mood. Everything okay?”
I ignored him. Why the hell was he so reluctant to understand Jaxton’s background ? Why was he deflecting? “Dwayne, it’s the attachment at the end. They did a lot of tests on him. The psychologist must have suspected something more than a bad temper. Are you having second thoughts about the kid?”
“No, but I'm not sure why we need to make such a big deal out of the psych report,” he said, flipping through the file to the end.
“Jesus, just read it and you’ll get it,” I barked, shaking my head, moving away from the conference table toward the wall of windows. “Damn, it’s nice out there, perfect wine-tasting weather,” I commented casually, but when I turned back, Dwayne’s mouth was moving. He was looking at the papers, slightly sounding out the words. I stopped talking.
He took an excruciatingly long time to finish the first page. When he turned to the second page, he stole a hasty glance at me watching him, and then Dwayne’s eyes started moving quickly across the page, and his lips stopped moving. He seemed to be reading at a regular or fast pace now.
“Do you want to take this on? He’ll be assigned to you.”
Dwayne closed the file, his shoulders settling back, exhibiting no emotional reaction after reading a disturbing passage. One I had to reread because it was so over the top. Then he casually said, “It’ll be fine. He seems like a good kid who’s a bit of a hothead. I don’t see the problem.”
I pulled up a chair across the conference table from him, his eyes fixed on the closed folder. What the hell? He was avoiding me. There was no way he’d read that report; at the very least, Dwayne should have been shocked by the information regarding Jaxton’s dad and Jaxton’s potential diagnoses hypothesized in the report: oppositional defiance disorder with mood swings. Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d spent a couple of hours researching ODD. “Dude, he’s an emotional mess. It’s no surprise, given everything he’s been through. Don’t you think this is going to be tough?”
He lifted his head, dismissively looking at me. “Jake, you know things weren’t easy for me, either.”
What the hell did that mean? I couldn’t tell what the message was there…was he insinuating that I didn’t get what it was like to grow up hard? True, but something with Dwayne was off…he was always such a straightforward communicator. I was only operating on a few hours of sleep, but I couldn’t be misreading him that much.
“I’m not downplaying that your dad was gone a lot, then died, and what that meant to your family, especially the pressure on your mom. But Jaxton’s dad was a physically abusive asshole to both him and his mom all his life. The fact that his dad killed…” I shifted here, testing to see how much, if anything, Dwayne had read.
He sat up quickly. “Shit, his mom, did his dad kill his mom? Holy shit…”
“No, he killed Jaxton’s dog, and apparently, that was the last straw for his mom, so she shot and killed his dad. Which was way beyond what you endured,” I stated matter-of-factly, trying to cover up my frustration with Dwayne.
He jumped in with, “Whew, that’s a lot. I understand all of that. I am ready to take him on and mentor him. He’ll know I don’t judge him, and I will be sure he knows he’s got a big brother in me. I’ll watch out for him and guide him.”
I shook my head, still unclear if Dwayne understood what he was taking on. “Okay, sure, but why in the hell didn’t you fucking read the report?”
“I didn’t have time…don’t push it,” Dwayne barked, agitation leading his voice, his fist balling up on the table. “Don’t get up in my shit because something happened with you and Rakell.”
“Fuck…I’m just asking.”
The door swung open, and Coach Easton charged in, his eyebrows pinched together. I was sure he’d heard Dwayne and me arguing; his eyes narrowed on us as if he had just interrupted a showdown. We broke from our boxer posturing. “Look, if you two lovebirds want to squabble, do it on your own time. I’ve got work to do. Want to tell me what has you two so heated?” Coach demanded, tossing a few files on the table before setting a large thermos down. Pulling his chair out, he slumped down into it, his large torso twisting slightly as if finding a comfortable spot. Coach Easton was a big man, a pro linebacker who’d put on some weight since coaching and was always trying to lose it.
I thought back to my first interview with him. I knew he had a lot of life experience I could learn from. Coach Easton also possessed his dad’s humility, which I hadn’t often seen in a man at his level in the NFL. He’d grown up playing ball—he’d been a linebacker for Penn State, then gone on to play for the Steelers for eight seasons before coaching at the University of Florida, then Wisconsin. After that, he accepted his first NFL position for a brand-new team that was forming in Sacramento.
I’d learned a lot from playing backup quarterback to the star of the Seattle Seahawks for almost three years, but damn, I didn’t want to stay on the sidelines forever. So when my agent told me that a new team was forming in Sacramento, that they were impressed with my speed and passing game, I had to walk Coach Easton through all the reasons I could be an asset to this new team.
He’d paused and looked at me, tilting his head to the side, pulling his lips into his mouth, studying me. I felt like I was in some kind of counseling session and was reminded of the way my parents would look at me when I did something stupid, as if they desperately wanted to figure out how to rewire my young, impulsive brain.
“Son, let’s chat about what’s holding you back,” Coach had said, with his big index finger directly aimed at my head, a huge grin stretching across his face. He tapped his finger in the air, as if the answer to what was holding me back had just occurred to him. My eyes focused on his finger as it dropped downward, squarely pointed at my crotch. Ahhh, apparently, the answer to what was holding me back.
All I could think was, Fuck, I’m never going to escape this reputation . I’d been sure Coach Easton had already determined that my well-documented off-the-field antics—mostly women and sometimes a crossed-eyed, slap-happy drunk me—would be a liability for the new team.
He’d cleared his throat, his eyes widening, “I expect my players to be above reproach on and off the field, and I expect myself and the other coaches to be an example of that.” Easton lowered his head, his eyes boring into me, emphasizing his statement. “Well, Skyler, do you think you can represent this team?”
Realizing I had just been given a reprieve, I responded with a quick “Yes, sir. I’d be honored.”
I caught the slump in Dwayne’s face when Coach probed to find out what we had been arguing about, so I jumped in. “I was challenging Dwayne a bit about Jaxton, just saying that maybe Dwayne shouldn’t take on a guy whose own father was killed by his mom. He’s known as a hothead on the field and pretty much anti-social off the field. Then ‘Mr. I Can Take on Anything’ over here got all twisted up.” Dwayne’s shoulders softened, his face adopting his usual affable expression, so I adjusted my tone. Dwayne and I could go head-to-head, but we had each other’s backs; that was a given. “I can now vouch that Dwayne is committed to this,” I stated, looking over at Dwayne with a ‘got ya covered’ look.
Dwayne piped in: “Yeah, you don’t always want feedback from the guy who’s so sure he can do anything that he even has his own word for that overconfident approach. In case you missed it, Coach, that is known as ‘Jaking’ it. We’re going to go with the new, improved version of that and ‘Dwayne’ this situation.” Dwayne beamed, clearly thinking he had just made a clever joke.
Coach Easton, evidently not amused by either of us, barked, “Enough of this shit. You two want to strut around like peacocks trying to piss on some stupid term when one already exists for that? If you two goofballs don’t know, it’s called ‘getting things done.’ That is what we’re gonna do right now. Let’s chat about Jaxton and the current batch of free agents so we can get started on narrowing down potential draft picks.
“Dwayne, if you are really up to it, I’d like to draft Jaxton using our first-round pick and have you mentor him. Word out there is that most of the other organizations don’t want to take a chance on the kid. He’s gonna need more than just some flippant on-field advice. He’s going to require whole-life coaching. Do you think you’re ready for that?” Coach Easton then added, “We don’t have to worry about him off the field like some other players. It’s on the field where he’s like a ticking time bomb. I don’t know what kind of support he’s getting, but I think his team gave up on trying to pull him into the group.”
Dwayne’s features shifted; I watched his eyes, usually flickering with amusement, take on a sober expression. “Yes, Coach. I want to give the next guy a chance to get over the hump, so to speak.” His tone took on a business-like air. “You have helped me grow up in this league, and as much as I hate to admit it, this joker next to me,” Dwayne said, his gaze sliding in my direction, “has mentored me to where I am now. I’m ready to take this on. I’d love to do it for him and the team.”
“Okay, so now that we’ve decided that, I want to schedule an appointment for you to discuss Jaxton’s psychological profile with Dr. Capstone. She can educate both of you on some of the more specific issues Jaxton is dealing with. I know a bit about oppositional defiant disorder. Authority will be an issue for him, so we must consider our approach when guiding him.” The coach stated this with a straightforward delivery, but there was no way to miss the underlying emotional gravity in his tone.
“Coach, can I say something about that?” I asked tentatively.
“Go on…” Coach prompted.
I felt Dwayne’s focus on me; he knew me well enough to know that my next words were sincere, that I had thought about this kid and what this would mean to our team.
“From what I read, Jaxton was diagnosed in his last year of middle school after several outbursts. The school had already restricted him from recess and all extracurricular activities in response to his behavior or refusal to do his work. His outbursts got worse, and he totally shut down. Then they brought in a county social worker who gave him that diagnosis.” Pausing, I let my gaze glide in Dwayne’s direction. His chin nodded; he knew I was feeding him the information from the report, nudging him to jump in.
Dwayne sat up in his chair, clearing his throat. “I can see a kid shutting down more if the things he excels at are taken away. Shit, I was the opposite. I kissed ass, smiled at teachers, offered to do errands…whatever, so they would like me, so I could keep playing ball.”
Coach chuckled. “Dwayne, I can see you shmoozing your teachers.” He let out another quick laugh. “They were probably smitten with you. That’s not good either, but it’s definitely a life skill. You probably got that from your mama.”
“She forced me to be that way,” Dwayne added, “but I’m just thinking that I can see a middle school kid getting crazy pissed off. No one knew what he was dealing with, and then they took away the one thing he loved…to punish him. It makes me think my folks got me more than I thought…” Dwayne’s voice trailed off.
“Yep, same. I read the letter from the high school coach who went to bat for him and actually took him in after the incident. He said he was one of the most intelligent players he’d ever coached, and that he saw a decrease in his behavior when he got a lot of playing time,” I added, looking at Dwayne.
“If we draft him, maybe I can chat with his old high school coach if Jaxton approves,” Dwayne inserted, sitting up straight. “What’s next, Coach?”
“Let’s address some of the other positions since we’re good with the receiver. We’ve been looking at some of the inside linebackers who are hitting the free agent market, so that should give a good anchor up the middle, and we won’t need to use draft picks there. We’ll aim for a defensive back in the early rounds and another middle linebacker for some depth. Obviously, we’ll keep an eye on the board to see who’s up there, but we’re not ruling out getting some big bodies for our offensive line if one of the better guys doesn’t get snatched up by the other teams.”
I jumped in with, “Hey Coach, I don’t think we should ignore an early-round, big-bodied tight end to give me another target and help with the running game.”
Dwayne seconded it: “Yeah, Coach, a Kelce or Kittle-like tight end would go a long way.”
Coach seemed to consider it and retorted, “I’m pretty comfortable with our offense the way it is. Grady is young, but he listens well and surprised us all last season, especially for his first year. He caught a few of your pistol-like throws, Jake. I do appreciate your insight that a Kelce or a Kittle would be helpful. Maybe just dial up a Mean Joe Green for the D-line while we’re at it,” Coach added, obviously mocking us. “One of our soft spots last year was on the defensive side of the ball. We’ll focus on the defensive priorities I mentioned. Also, you can never have too many big bodies on the O-line to keep our quarterback safe and open the running holes. We need to get Tracey comfortable jumping in for you. Rodger will be back as a player-coach, but this is his official last year. That said, we’ll keep an eye on who is available in the free agency market and during the draft weekend. We won’t pass on a big upgrade if we can grab one.”