Birthright (11 page)

Maybe her mother, like her, just needed a little goading to find the courage to stop playing it safe.

W
ALLY
D
RUMMER
was already seated at a table when Aaron arrived at the Sunnyside Café at three-thirty Monday afternoon. Tall and tan, Wally looked better now than he had when he’d been coaching the high-school basketball team. Back then, of course, Aaron had viewed him through the eyes of an angry, alienated fifteen-year-old, a kid in far too much debt to the brusque burly coach who’d ventured into the police station one morning to shoot the breeze with his buddy Frank Garvey and noticed Aaron sitting in the holding cell.

“That’s one of my kids,” Wally had said, crossing to the cell.

Aaron remembered how he’d shrunk back on the bench, pressing his body against the cold cinder-block wall. In a lifetime of bad nights, the one he’d just spent had been the worst. His mother hadn’t come for him. No one had come. He’d sat by himself all night, unable to sleep, unable to think about anything other than how alone he was. He’d refused the breakfast the clerk had given him, and he’d refused to speak when Frank Garvey had transferred him the two blocks to the courthouse to be arraigned. “I’ll enter a plea of not guilty for you,” the judge had said. “One hundred dollars’ bond. Take him back to
the station house, Officer. He’s too young for my jail.”

Once he was back in the holding cell, the clerk had tried one more time to get him to eat. He couldn’t. His stomach ached from rage, not hunger.

Through the bars he saw the phys-ed teacher from his high school, a man he didn’t know too well because he’d spent more of his phys-ed classes cutting out to have a smoke than doing jumping jacks and situps in the gym. What he knew of Drummer he didn’t like. The guy had a temper. He shouted a lot. He thought Aaron was a screw-up, which certainly didn’t make the coach unique among the Riverbend High School faculty.

“What’s he doing in here?” Wally asked.

“I found him in an alley last night, drinking beer.”

Wally approached the holding cell, a tall looming figure through the bars. “Drinking beer, huh?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve caught him loitering late at night when he ought to be at home. Caught him drinking before, too. He’s gotten more than his share of warnings. And he was working his way through a six-pack. He had an empty on the ground next to him and four more sitting unopened, nice and cold, waiting for him to work his way through them. I couldn’t just give him a slap on the wrist and send him home.”

Sure,
Aaron had thought. The cops in Riverbend had nothing better to do than to arrest a guy for chugging a couple of beers in an alley.

“You can’t lock him up,” Drummer argued.
“He’s one of the stars on my team. How do I get him out of there?”

Aaron was certain he’d misheard Drummer. One of the stars on his team? Hardly. He was no athlete. If he’d pursued any sport, it would have been track—he was good at running away from people like Garvey. But sports meant going to school every day, and staying after school for the team practices. It meant hanging out with the jocks, the insiders, kids like the River Rats. Well-bred, studious, popular kids. Kids who knew who their fathers were. Kids who would never drink beer in an alley at midnight.

To say nothing of the fact that the only basketball Aaron ever played, outside of the few gym classes he didn’t cut, was shooting hoops in the street outside the duplex where he lived, tossing the ball through the rusty ring the landlord had nailed to a tree.

But there was Drummer, writing a check for Aaron’s bond and getting him released from the holding cell. Too dazed and exhausted from his sleepless night to question why the coach had lied and put out his own money to spring him, Aaron followed Drummer out of the police station and into the glaring morning sun. “You look like you could use some breakfast,” Drummer observed.

“Not at the Sunnyside.” Aaron’s mother would be there—she generally worked from before breakfast to midafternoon—and he didn’t want to see her, not after she’d made him spend the night in jail. At that point, he would have been happy never to see her again.

Drummer drove Aaron to the Burger Barn on the outskirts of town. He bought a jumbo coffee for him
self and a fried-egg sandwich and a large milk for Aaron. They sat on one of the picnic tables beneath the awning out front, and Aaron wolfed down the food. Hot breakfasts were a rare treat for him.

Drummer still hadn’t spoken by the time Aaron finished his sandwich. He’d studied the man across the table from him. Drummer had a stern face, with blunt features and iron-colored hair, but without a whistle on a cord around his neck he seemed a little less intimidating, a little less official.

“You’re a good kid, Mazerik,” Drummer said.

“Yeah, right.” Aaron swigged some milk, admitting to himself that it tasted better than cheap beer.

“I know you’ve got it in your head that you aren’t, and you’re doing your damnedest to live up to your lousy self-image—or live down to it, I guess I should say.”

Terrific. Drummer was going to psychoanalyze him. What a way to celebrate the end of his incarceration.

“The fact is, you
could
be a star on my team.”

“Not in this life.”

“Yes, in this life.”

Aaron dissected Drummer’s statement for any hint that he was joking, but found none. “I don’t want to be on your team.”

“You’re wrong,” Drummer argued. “You do.”

Aaron risked a glance at him. The coach’s eyes were the same color as his hair—dark gray. They were also cold. “I’m not into sports.”

“You are now,” Drummer said. “I just bought you. I own you. You’re going to play for me.”

“What is this? Slavery is illegal.”

“Ah, so you’ve learned something in your history classes.” Drummer stretched his long legs out under the table, kicking one of Aaron’s boots with his sneaker. “You’re tall, you’re strong and you’re fast. I need you on the team. And you need me in your life.”

“I don’t need anybody.”

“You need someone who cares enough about you not to put up with your crap. And that’s me, Mazerik. Get used to it. Be at practice Monday after school.”

Aaron stared at him in disbelief.

“Oh, and no more beer. Or cigarettes. No smokers on my team. My boys take care of their bodies. It’s a rule.”

“Shove your rules,” Aaron retorted, swinging his legs over the bench and rising to his feet. “Sorry you blew your money on me, Coach. But thanks for breakfast.”

“You planning to walk home from here?”

Aaron halted in the dirt lot. At least two miles of hard hiking stretched between the Burger Barn and his house, but he’d hiked farther than that before, lots of times. Yet he didn’t seem able to take the first step that morning. He wasn’t able to walk away from the man whose will was as steely as his voice.

Everything Drummer had said was true—especially the part about him needing someone in his life who cared enough not to put up with his crap.

Without another word, the coach opened the passenger door of his car. Aaron climbed in. Drummer drove him home. And Aaron showed up for practice Monday afternoon.

Quitting cigarettes had taken a couple of difficult
months. Getting the other kids on the team to acknowledge him had taken a lot longer. If not for Jacob Steele, the team’s captain and undisputed leader, they would never have accepted him. He’d been only a sophomore, the youngest player. Worse, he’d been who he was, a kid who’d spent a lot of his life in trouble, a kid who didn’t fit in anywhere, a kid who played basketball not because he took pride in the school or wanted to be cool but because he was so damned pissed off at Drummer for having purchased him like a slave. He’d show Drummer. He’d play like a freaking fiend, just to show him.

Had he once hated Drummer that much? Had he once cringed when he heard the man’s voice, when he saw the metallic glint in his eyes? Despite the fifteen years that had passed since Aaron had marched out of Riverbend High School with a diploma clenched in his fist, Drummer was still Coach. Even if Aaron now had the man’s old job, Wally Drummer would always be Coach.

“You look beat,” Drummer said as Aaron slid into the booth facing him. “Are the players running you ragged?”

“You should know,” Aaron joked, shoving his hair out of his face and settling back against the stiff vinyl upholstery. This week’s group of children participating in the basketball program were just as energetic as last week’s—but this week’s group also included Mitch Sterling’s son, Sam. Aaron had his hands full, literally, trying to communicate with the boy. “I’ve got a player who can’t hear,” he told Drummer.

“Really? How are you managing that?”

Just then Lucy Garvey approached the table to take their orders. Drummer asked how she was doing and traded jokes with her about her late husband’s uncle Frank. As soon as he and Aaron had both ordered iced tea, Aaron answered Drummer’s question.

“The thing with Sam is, I’ve got to stay with him so I can tap him on the shoulder when I need to say something. If I get his attention, I can mouth the words and use my hands, and I think he gets what I’m telling him. But I can’t blow my whistle and expect him to hear it.”

“So he’s making you run more than usual. Good for him. He’ll keep you in shape.”

“Hey, I’m in great shape,” Aaron bragged, then laughed again. “The kid’s got potential. He can’t depend on his ears, so he depends on his eyes twice as much. He always knows where everyone on the court is.”

The iced tea arrived and Aaron took a grateful swallow, savoring its coldness as it washed down his throat. Another gulp, and then he got around to adding some sugar.

“So, where did the money come from?” Drummer asked.

Aaron’s head jerked up. “What money?”

“I hear you hired a lifeguard for the swimming pool.”

“An hour a day. I think it’ll work out.”

“And you’ve lined up one of your high-school players to run the program with you, so you can expand it.”

“How’d you find out about all this?”

Drummer chuckled. “We’re in Riverbend, Maz. Everybody knows everything around here.”

“I don’t,” Aaron complained, although he was grinning. “I’m not in the loop.”

Drummer refused to let Aaron derail the conversation. “So, where did the money come from?”

“If you know everything, you should know that.” In truth, Aaron didn’t want to tell his old coach the source of the program’s newfound riches. Partly, he wanted to protect Lily; if word got out that she’d given his program a donation, everyone would be pestering her for money. But more than that, Aaron didn’t want to speak her name. He didn’t even want to think about her. Every time he did—and it was far too often—his uneasiness returned, his self-loathing…and his inexcusable longing for her.

Fortunately he hadn’t seen her since her mysterious visit to his house Friday night. A whole weekend and most of Monday he hadn’t seen her anywhere except in his dreams—or maybe his nightmares.

“I received a donation,” he finally said, because he knew the coach wasn’t going to let up until he got an answer. “The donor wants anonymity.”

“Really?” Drummer twirled his straw in his glass. “Why?”

“Like you said, it’s a small town. If that’s what the donor wants, that’s what the donor gets.”

“Well, it’s a lucky break. I think your summer program is a great idea, Aaron. I should have thought of something like it myself when I was coaching the school team.”

“You had a full plate at the time,” Aaron re
minded him. “You had all you could handle dealing with jackasses like me.” He grinned.

“If there’s anything I can do to help with the program…”

“No, it’s going fine. As long as the school board doesn’t charge me too much to use the pool, we’re all set. The kids really need some time in the water. All that running around, they get so hot. They need the chance to cool off.” He took a long sip of iced tea. He needed to cool off, too. “So how are you fighting the heat? Does that window unit do the job in your house?”

“Actually, we didn’t need it this past week. We were visiting Megan.” Drummer’s daughter was some sort of high-tech genius in Seattle. She was a few years younger than Aaron; by the time she’d started high school he’d already left Riverbend. All he knew about her was what Drummer had told him: she was a computer whiz, she couldn’t care less about sports and she was something of a loner, the way Aaron had been. Unlike Aaron, of course, she was a loner by inclination and choice.

Drummer used to talk to Aaron about his quiet, bookish daughter. He’d worried that she didn’t socialize enough, didn’t seem to have enough friends. He’d even to ask Aaron what he could do to help Megan.

Aaron had appreciated that his mentor actually trusted him enough to turn to him for advice. “With you as a father,” Aaron used to assure him, “she’s going to come through high school in a lot better shape than I did.”

What an understatement that had been. She had
soared through high school and won a scholarship to Cal-Tech, and now she was doing something important in the computer industry, work so esoteric Drummer couldn’t even describe it.

He told Aaron about the visit he and his wife had had with their daughter in the Northwest, where the sun shone only two days out of the six they’d been there and the temperature never climbed above seventy. Then the conversation wandered back to the high school, to Riverbend’s prospects for the upcoming basketball season, to Aaron’s mother, who apparently had made a fuss over Drummer when he’d entered the café today—Aaron was glad he’d arrived late enough to miss that—and from there to Abraham Steele’s memorial service. “Any idea why Jacob didn’t come back?” Drummer asked.

“You’d know better than me, Coach.” Aaron sipped more iced tea. The second half of the glass was always more lemony than the first. The sour tang made his tongue curl.

“I haven’t heard from him since just before he graduated from college,” Drummer said. “He always used to drop by to see me while he was home from the university. All of a sudden I stopped hearing from him. Like he’d fallen off the face of the earth.”

“Maybe he got sick of Riverbend,” Aaron suggested wryly. “It’s been known to happen.”