Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ifound Pops in the equipment yard at Jones Outdoor with one boot on the running board of a flatbed truck and a clipboard in his hand like retirement was an ugly rumor people kept trying to start about him.
“You know we got people for that.”
He didn't look up. “And yet the people ordered the wrong edging for the Hill District job.”
“Yvette corrected it yesterday.”
“Because I saw it.”
“Because Yvette saw it and corrected it.”
Pops finally turned his head. “That what she told you?”
“That’s what the report said.”
He grunted. “Reports got a way of making things sound settled.”
I smiled because arguing with my father before noon was one of the ways he preferred to receive affection.
The yard smelled like damp soil, diesel, cut grass, and work. Trucks moved through the gate while a crew loaded pavers near one of the garages. Old soul played somewhere in a bay beneath equipment, engines, and men calling instructions across the property.
This place had raised me too.
Pops signed the clipboard and handed it off before heading toward the original brick office. I followed him inside past the framed picture of his first truck and the hand-painted Jones Landscaping sign he refused to throw away.
The company had grown around that little building. Glass conference rooms, design studio, dispatch, computers that made Pops accuse me of turning dirt into corporate foolishness.
The old break room had survived everything.
Scarred table.
Same vending machine.
Same coffee pot that had apparently been threatening employees since the Clinton administration.
Pops poured himself a cup.
I declined because I respected my stomach.
He noticed.
“You got something on your mind.”
“That on the clipboard?”
“No. On your face.”
“What face?”
“The one you had at thirteen when you broke my hedge trimmer and tried to confess without confessing.”
“I did not break that thing.”
“You absolutely did.”
“It was old.”
“It was mine.”
“That was almost twenty years ago.”
“And yet I remember.”
He sat at the table, moving a little slower than he had when I was young but still with purpose. More gray filled his beard now. His hands remained broad through the palms, knuckles thick from work, nails scrubbed without pretending they had never touched dirt.
When I was a kid, those hands looked like the strongest things in the world.
Some days they still did.
I sat across from him.
“Coach Price offered me the running backs job.”
Pops nodded like I'd told him rain was coming.
“I figured.”
“You figured?”
“You been looking like a man waiting on a phone to ring.”
I looked away.
“They want me in now. Quiet transition, then official. Forge are four and six going into Week Eleven, and that running back room needs help.”
“They do.”
“You watched?”
“I got eyes.”
“You also fall asleep in the third quarter.”
“Because they play ugly football.”
I laughed.
Pops drank that terrible coffee and waited.
“So why is it a hard decision?”
“Because it changes everything.”
“Most things worth doing do.”
“The schedule is heavy. Facility every day. Film. Practice. Road games. Staff meetings. Businesses still have to run. My knee still does what it does.” I rubbed my jaw. “Imani and I are finally…”
I let it die.
Pops heard it anyway.
“You've always been good at telling everybody what they need to fix.”
I gave him a look.
“Am I lying?”
“You enjoying yourself?”
“A little.”
“I’m trying to have a serious conversation.”
“So am I. You been seeing the field since you were a boy. Used to come home from practice correcting grown men's footwork like they had hired you.”
“I was right.”
“Made you right and annoying at the same time.”
My mouth almost moved.
“But you were good at teaching,” he continued. “You showed people. Walked it through. Stayed until it made sense. You didn't just bark and leave.”
His eyes held mine.
“Seems simple from here.”
I looked down at the table.
“I’m afraid of failing.”
Pops didn't move.
There it was.
Ugly and honest enough that I couldn't take it back.
“I know football. I know what those backs are missing. But playing at that level and teaching it ain't the same thing. If I walk back into that building and can't help them, everybody will know.”
“You survived everybody knowing before.”
“My body failed me before.”
His expression changed.
I looked down at my hands.
“I did everything right. Rehab. Treatment. Strength. Recovery. Came back every time they told me I had a chance. And my body was still done before I was.” My voice lowered. “Maybe I don't trust myself going back into that building with another job that depends on me being useful.”
A truck beeped outside as it backed through the yard.
Work kept moving.
Pops looked at me for a long time.
“That knee did not fail you.”
My jaw tightened.
“It ended something,” he said. “That is not the same.”
“It felt the same.”
“I know it did.”
He had been there for all of it. Surgeries.
Rehab. Days when I came home angry because pain had stripped away everything I thought made me myself.
Pops had never been sentimental, but he had been there.
Driving me to treatment. Sitting in hospital rooms. Leaving food close enough for me to eat once I stopped being pissed at the world.
“You think your body is the only way a man proves he belongs around football?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
I didn't answer.
That was enough.
The break-room door opened before he could press harder.
Mama came in carrying two glasses of tea and a plate of pound cake with the casual expression of a woman who had definitely been listening from somewhere nearby and didn't intend to confess.
“Don't drink that coffee,” she told me. “It has been disrespecting people all morning.”
Pops frowned. “Ain't nothing wrong with my coffee.”
“There is everything wrong with it.”
“It wakes a man up.”
“It threatens him.”
I took the tea.
Mama kissed my forehead and touched my cheek.
“You look tired, baby.”
“I’m all right.”
“That wasn't what I said.”
Pops huffed. “See? Everybody in this family answers around questions.”
“Because you ask them like a deposition.”
“I ask clear questions.”
“You interrogate.”
They stared at each other before Mama touched his shoulder on the way out.
“Don't keep him too long.” Then she looked at me. “And Andre?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Whatever you decide, make sure fear does not get a vote it did not earn.”
She left.
I stared toward the door.
Pops picked up pound cake. “Your mama loves a line.”
“She’s good at them.”
“Been practicing on me forty years.”
I drank the tea.
“The other part is Mani.”
“What about her?”
I looked down at my tea. “If I take this, football gets hungry again. Film before sunrise. Practice. Road games. Calls at midnight. I know what that world can take when you let it.”
Pops waited.
“I just got her back. I don’t want to turn into the man who expects everything else to move around the game because football says jump.”
“Then don’t.”
I looked up.
“You know what that man looks like now,” he said. “More important, you know what it cost. You don’t have to stay away from football to prove you learned something. Walk back in there different.”
“That sounds easy when you say it.”
“Most hard things do.”
He nodded toward the old landscaping sign on the wall.
“You see that?”
“Every time I'm in here.”
“That started with one truck. Then it grew. Growth changed what your mama and I had to carry, how much time I had, how much responsibility came home with me. We had to learn new ways to stay married every time life changed.”
My eyes moved from the sign back to him.
“You and Imani got work to do. Fine. Do it. You take the job, don't expect her to read your mind when you're tired or gone. She travels, she can't decide your silence means the same thing it meant eight years ago. You both know what hurt already.”
He tapped the table.
“Use what you learned.”
Something in me loosened.
Pops stood and took his coffee with him, because apparently his stomach had given up years ago.
At the doorway he looked back.
“And Dre?”
“Yeah?”
“If you take that job, don't walk into that building trying to prove your knee didn't beat you.”
I swallowed.
“Walk in there to teach those young men how not to let the game take more from them than it gives.”
Then he left.
I sat there with tea, pound cake, and a decision that felt a little less like a threat.
The next morning, I called everybody in.
At eight, the people responsible for each of my companies sat around the Jones Motor Group conference table looking like the meeting invitation had carried a warning.
Chuck and Deja represented the dealerships. Lena and Omar came from North & Vine. Yvette and Darren represented Jones Outdoor. Pops occupied the chair at the far end despite telling me twice he didn't need to be there.
He had lied.
Nobody except him knew why I called the meeting.
Chuck looked around. “You selling something?”
“No.”
“Buying something?”
“No.”
Omar leaned back. “Then why am I here before lunch?”
“You work before lunch.”
“I cook before lunch. Meetings are different.”
Lena looked toward him. “Can we begin before he gets worse?”
“He arrived this way,” I said.
Pops pointed toward me. “You invited the circus. Talk.”
I looked around the table.
“The Forge offered me their running backs coach position.”
The room changed.
Yvette spoke first. “Next season?”
“Now. They want me involved immediately.”
Omar whistled.
Chuck leaned forward. “You taking it?”
“I’m considering it.”
“Which means he wants it,” Deja said.
I looked toward her.
She met my eyes calmly.
My employees were getting entirely too comfortable.
Lena crossed her arms. “What does it mean for us?”
“That’s why you're here.”
I brought the schedule up on the screen. Facility hours, practice, film, travel, games. Enough to make obvious what I already knew.
“If I accept, I cannot keep being the first call for ordinary decisions.”
Chuck's brows rose. “You think we can't run without you?”
“I think sometimes I built these companies around my availability instead of letting the people I hired fully use their authority.”
From the far end of the table, Pops's mouth moved slightly.
He liked that answer.
I kept the operational part simple. Each leadership team would have clearer authority to handle routine decisions without waiting for me. Major legal, financial, reputational, or capital issues would still come upstairs. Everything else belonged to the people I had hired to know their jobs.
Omar raised a hand. “Does this include mushrooms?”
“It especially includes mushrooms.”
“They are emotional.”
“Be emotional with Lena.”
Lena smiled. “Please don't.”
The room laughed enough to release some tension.
Then I looked at all of them.
“I’m not selling anything. I'm not disappearing into football and showing up here twice a year for photos.
Strategy, capital, leadership, performance, all that is still mine.
But if every ordinary issue needs Andre Jones before it can move, then I didn't build companies. I built jobs around my nerves.”
Omar looked at Lena. “That sounded rehearsed.”
“It was,” I said.
More laughter.
Deja leaned forward. “What are you really asking us?”
I appreciated that about her even when it irritated me.
“Can these businesses run if I coach?”
Chuck answered first.
“Yes.”
“Absolutely,” Lena said.
“Jones Outdoor can,” Yvette added.
Darren leaned back. “We already do more without you than you think.”
I looked at him. “Say more.”
Chuck picked it up.
“We can run these companies, Dre. Sometimes you make that harder because you enter a problem before the person responsible for it has time to solve it.”
The truth irritated me.
Usually a reliable sign that I needed to hear it.
“Give me an example.”
Chuck gave me one from the motor group, a staffing decision where I had reached the right conclusion and still undercut his authority by stepping in before he presented his plan.
I listened.
Deja followed.
“You care about customers. That's not the problem. The problem is when everybody waits for you because they assume your care outranks their authority.”
That one went deeper.
Yvette nodded. “Same at Jones Outdoor. Crews respect you. The city knows your name. But most day-to-day issues don't need the man whose name is on the truck. They need the person holding the schedule.”
Pops smiled at the table like Christmas had come early.
Darren said, “We don't need less of you. We need a clearer version of you.”
That quieted the room.
Maybe because it was the answer.
We spent the next hour building a ninety-day plan around that idea rather than walking line-by-line through every possible emergency. Who owned what. When something came to me. What decisions didn't.
By the end, every person in the room had more authority.
Including me, in a strange way.
I had spent years believing control kept everything safe.
Maybe leadership sometimes meant building something strong enough that my hand didn't have to remain wrapped around it.
When the meeting ended, Chuck stopped near the door.
“You should take the job.”
I looked up.
“You asked if we can run. We can. Whatever else is making this hard, it ain't us.”
He left.
Deja followed him. “And your new make-right authority was overdue.”
“Goodbye, Deja.”
She smiled. “Progress.”
Omar lifted his coffee. “I support anything that keeps you from texting about mushrooms.”
“I do not text you about mushrooms.”
“You text judgment.”
“Because you send pictures.”
“They need witnesses.”
Lena pulled him toward the door.
Eventually, the room emptied except for Pops.
“You heard them,” he said.
“I did.”
“And?”
I looked at the reports on the screen and the empty chairs around a table filled moments ago with people I trusted enough to hire but apparently hadn't always trusted enough to leave alone.
“They'll be fine.”
Pops nodded. “Yes, they will.”
That should have cleared the last obstacle, but it didn’t. My phone sat beside the laptop with Coach Price still waiting for an answer. My companies could hold. My father had told me what fear was and wasn’t allowed to decide, and I knew what I wanted.
But this choice touched more than me now. I had spent too many years believing I was protecting Imani by making decisions alone and presenting them once they were finished.
I wasn't doing that again.
Pops stood.
“Talk to her.”
I looked up. “I didn't say—”
“You didn't have to.”
He left before I could argue.
For a moment, I remained alone with the reports and the strange relief of knowing one part of my life could stand without my hand around it.
Then I picked up my phone and pressed Imani's name.