One Hundred Eleven The Next Spring
ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN
THE NEXT SPRING
TAYLOR AND I are on the front porch again tonight.
She’s long since moved back into her own house. But we’re spending almost as much time together as when she was living here with EJ and me, hanging out every chance we can the way we did when we were kids, sometimes even looking for excuses to do that.
And maybe we are feeling like kids again despite how both of our grown-up selves are smart enough to know that we’re more than friends now, even though neither one of us is sure where this might be going—if it will ever go further than this—but we’re willing to give it room to breathe, and time.
I know I have time.
But not all the time in the world, because I’m going to have to decide, and soon, if I want to give it another shot with the Steelers.
If I don’t, I know it’s high time for me to decide what I want to do with the rest of my—non-football—life.
Bumper is between us, as she always is when we’re out here at this time of night. EJ is off to a new book club. Vince Tarplay is living in Birmingham these days, having hooked on with the Birmingham Stallions of the United Football League as a running backs coach.
“It ain’t playing, dawg,” he’d told me when he got the job, “because nothing can ever replace playing. But it’s gonna have to do.”
“Who says they can’t teach an old dog new tricks?” I’d asked.
Helene Mayes had spent three months at the same rehab facility in Chapel Hill where I’d been. And now she and Jake Courville, working with the FBI, are just back after three months in Europe and finally Saudi Arabia, tracking down the rest of the kidnapped girls.
When Helene had called to tell me they were back in America, I’d asked how many of the girls they’d brought home.
“Every goddamn one of them,” she said.
The menacing sign at the city limits out on State Road 31, the one rumored to have been put there by the Crocketts, is gone. The good folks of Cross Rivers no longer need fear that their small town is ranked among America’s most violent because that’s no longer true.
Taylor is substitute teaching at Cross Rivers High, preparing to get a full-time job there in the fall now that she’s gotten her degree from Appalachian State. We’ve been talking about how excited she is at the prospect.
“You know,” she says, “they still haven’t hired a new football coach. I was thinking that might fill…”
I turn quickly to her, but make sure she sees me smiling as I do.
“No, it wouldn’t fill the competitive void for me, or whatever you were about to call it,” I say. “Vince might be able to get back on the field and be that close to the action and not be playing. Not me.”
“I won’t mention it again,” she says. Then she smiles and says, “At least not tonight.”
Briar Crockett and Lynyrd are in separate Carolina prisons, awaiting trial on charges of just about everything.
At the most recent hearing, when one of Briar’s lawyers had once again asked for home confinement, the state’s attorney, who’s eventually going to be prosecuting him on both murder and attempted murder, said, “Mr. Crockett remains a poster boy for flight risk.”
That had been this afternoon—just a few hours ago.
And the judge, much to the delight of the spectators in his courtroom, had actually said, “No shit. Request denied.” And remanded Briar back to Craven Correctional in Vanceboro.
Taylor and I had been talking some about that after dinner, as the judge had also announced today that he would have a trial date for Briar by the end of this week, because his latest appeal had been denied by the North Carolina Supreme Court.
“Man used to think he owned the whole world,” I say. “Now his world is the size of that cell at Craven.”
My phone is suddenly bouncing around on the table between us.
Vince
I put the phone on speaker so Tay can hear.
“Shouldn’t you be studying film for that big playoff game you got coming up?”
“Hush your smart mouth and listen,” he says. “I’m sitting here with somebody who wants to talk to you.”
I can hear a muffled voice in the background.
Then: “Silas, this is Clete Raymond. We’ve never met, but I’m—”
I cut him off. “The coach of the Stallions,” I say. “Hey, Coach.”
“Did you know my name before your buddy came to work for me?” he asks. “People don’t follow our league the way they do the NFL.”
“If it’s pro ball and they’re keeping score,” I say, “I’m following.”
“Anyway,” Coach Raymond says, “Vince says you’ve got no time for BS and frankly neither do I. So let me get right to it: Are you still interested in making a comeback on defense?”
He pauses, and then adds, “Vince told me all about you and your tryout with the Steelers last summer. And how you’re still working out with some of those big old boys from Cross Rivers High a few days a week.”
“Well, not gonna BS you, either, Coach,” I say. “It’s still in the back of my mind. The comeback part, I mean.” I pause. “Wait, you’re already planning for next season while you guys are trying to win a championship?”
“Actually,” he says, “I’m thinking about next week.”
Then the coach of the Stallions says, “How soon can you get to Birmingham?”
Before we finished up the conversation, he told me that he’d lost three more defensive linemen in the past two weeks, two to injury and one to an assault arrest, and that if he didn’t find a way to replace those guys, he was going to have to move somebody from his offensive line over to defense.
Clete Raymond finally says that if I’m willing to get back on the field and have him take a look at me, he’s willing to give it a shot, as crazy as he knows that sounds this late in the season, and a lot crazier for him than me.
“Understand, I’m not talking about next Sunday’s game,” he says. “Even as shorthanded as we are, Memphis just had their quarterback go down, and I throw better than their backup. So we’d have nearly two weeks of practice to get you ready for the championship game.”
He pauses and says, “Vince got ahold of the video from your Steelers tryout, I should mention that.”
I ask him if I can have a little time to think about it. He tells me to take as much as I need, just call him back by tomorrow morning.
Then he ends the call.
“This is even more bananas than thinking I could make the Steelers, even if it is one league down from the NFL,” I say to Taylor.
“Uh-huh,” she says. “Crazytown, absolutely.”
“I’ve only been working out with high school boys,” I say, “even if we have graduated to full pads the last couple of weeks.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Stop saying it like that, Tay. You know I’m right.”
“Absolutely.”
“Listen to me,” I say. “I don’t care what league we’re talking about.
The pros are the pros. I know there are plenty of stories about guys being signed off the street, even late in the season.
But not right before the playoffs! And, oh, by the way, not with somebody who’s never played a single down of defense in a real game of football in his life. ”
She doesn’t reply.
Just takes her own phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and starts tap-tap-tapping away.
This goes on awhile.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” I ask.
“Booking an Airbnb in Birmingham.”
She turns and gives me one of those smiles.
“We are so doing this.”
“Oh, we are, are we?”
“Uh-huh,” Taylor says.