Muck City (35 page)

“But if I submitted those, I wouldn’t qualify because my scores are too high,” she said. And what if college was really hard and she needed the tutors? As much as it pained her to do so, she’d swallow her pride and stay in the program.

“But that’s even if I decide to go to Florida State,” she said.

She and Theresa planned to drive to Tallahassee in February for a campus tour. By then she’d have more information about financial aid and scholarships. There were just too many balls up in the air right now to make a decision.

She’d texted Vincent as soon as she’d received the letter. “I thought you were going to FAU,” he wrote back. “I don’t know why he cares,” she said, sitting at home on the living-room sofa, dressed in white shorts and pink socks. “He’ll be okay wherever I go. He wants me to be home with Mom. How do you think I feel? He’s all the way in Virginia. I told him that he’s just afraid because I’m going to Tally, the big city. But he just brushes it off.”

She laughed, then added, “We text every day. He didn’t get my text yesterday. I said ‘Hey,’ and he didn’t text back. He said he tried to send something but I didn’t get it. That dorm room, I swear. So now at the end of the text messages, I send the time. He’s not getting it till the next day. Maybe it’s his new phone. Whatever it is, they need to fix it.”

Vincent’s mother had passed away during his senior year, thus severing his strongest tie with Belle Glade. Now, with football and living out of state, he came home less and less. Vincent had not returned for Thanksgiving, had not been there to feast on the jambalaya with shrimp and sausage that Jonteria had cooked, along with her mom’s curried chicken and
grandmother’s collard greens, ribs, and sweet potato bread. “Mom says my seasoning is better than Zatarain’s,” she said. “It was good.”

But Vincent would be home in mid-December to spend Christmas with his aunt Peggy. His arrival was just two weeks away. He and Jonteria had not seen each other in seven months, since the previous May. At the time, Jonteria had been so busy with final exams, college classes, cheerleading, and work that she’d had to cancel some of their dates and hardly saw him. It had bothered her ever since. For this visit, she’d been working double time to make sure her schedule was clear. She wanted to make the visit special, nothing less than perfect.

“I’m going to take him out for his birthday,” she said. “I want to take him somewhere nice. We like to go to Applebee’s.”

But her dream place was the Seafood Bar restaurant at The Breakers, the 140-acre beachfront hotel and resort in Palm Beach. She’d attended a scholarship banquet there with Jessica Benette and her cousin Donalle, who was the third-ranked scholar at the school. Jessica had won the award, but it hardly mattered. Jonteria had been spellbound.

“It’s the richest place,” she said, imagining it now. “The window is right there by the beach. It looks like the water is going to come right in. It’s
gorgeous
. The thought of being able to sit there and relax, and to be able to afford it—that’s what I want someday. I hope I get to go there again.”

Of course, there was that place that occupied the other end of her dreamworld, the University of Miami. But unlike The Breakers, there was a danger now that the university would remain just a fantasy, a dream that got away.

What had happened was this: After paying the rent, car payments, phone, and grocery bills, plus the added expense of the holidays, Jonteria and Theresa had scraped the bare bottom of their bank account. Jonteria had received fee waivers for her applications to FAU and Florida State, but not for Miami. The application fee was sixty dollars and they simply did not have it.

Sixty dollars
. Certainly she could borrow sixty dollars from friends or
teachers. She could ask her boss at the grocery store or even Dr. Grear, who loved Jonteria like her own blood. And if that didn’t work, certainly she would be justified in taking one of the boys’ football helmets and walking the fenceline at practice, or into the lobby of U.S. Sugar or Duda & Sons or any of the handful of firms whose fortunes had blossomed from that soil, to put forward her worthy case, to present to them one of those rare moments to quietly redeem their place on the land, to plant the small seed that bore the righteous fruit.

But she didn’t, because she knew that if she applied to the University of Miami, she would most likely be accepted. She had no guarantee, though, that she would receive any of the scholarship money for which she applied. And because her mother had vowed those many years ago to deliver the dreams of her daughter, Jonteria knew Theresa would bury herself to make the tuition, which was now $36,000 per year.

For her, it would be too devastating to have to throw away an acceptance letter. So one night, sitting alone in her room, Jonteria simply let go of the dream. She would not apply.

•   •   •

SIX HOURS NORTH
in Tallahassee, Kelvin Benjamin looked bored. The receiver sat slumped at a small table in the Seminole locker room tucked deep in the bowels of Doak Campbell Stadium, staring vacantly at a large-screen television. It was rivalry weekend in college football, two days after Thanksgiving, and Florida State was hosting the enemy Gators later that afternoon.

Benjamin was taking his “official visit” and had been in town since Wednesday, attending practice, shadowing the team as they prepared for the big game, even crashing with Greg Dent, his former teammate on the Raiders and one of the Seminoles’ promising young receivers.

All of this had been arranged by Coach Dawsey and Big Mike, who now sat across the table with his wife, Melanie, and their two children. Mike and
Melanie owned a second home just outside Tally and spent Thanksgiving up north during rivalry week. On Thursday they’d fed KB his turkey and souse (a form of headcheese) and given him back to the Seminoles. The weekend visit was Mike’s last-ditch effort to thwart the Gators and give his alma mater the gift of a future first-rounder.

The lieutenant was dressed in his khaki PBC sheriff’s uniform, which earlier that morning had exhibited incredible power in slicing through stadium security, even negotiating an otherwise impossible parking spot three streets away.

“They been lovin on him all week,” said Mike. “Look at him. He’s worn out.”

They’d roused KB out of bed at Dent’s place around nine that morning. Dent and another teammate lived in Burt Reynolds Hall, the dormitory which had housed football players since the 1980s and was named after one of the ‘Noles’ most legendary boosters. Take-out containers were stacked against the wall. The carpet was worn and ratty, and the bathroom was a science experiment. A typical dude’s place.

Like many college teams, most of the Seminoles stayed in a hotel the night before games in order to review film and keep out of trouble. They were still being quarantined by the time KB and everyone reached the stadium.

The locker room where they sat doubled as a shrine to Seminole greatness throughout the decades: glass cases displaying the jerseys and cleats of heroes past, players such as Deion Sanders and Heisman-winning quarterbacks Chris Weinke and Charlie Ward, both of whom had led the team to national titles.

Freshmen and redshirts who didn’t suit up—and therefore did not stay in the hotel with the rest of the team—passed through the room, as did a handful of other high school recruits on hand for their visit. But KB did not acknowledge them, didn’t even look up. When told about the Raiders’ amazing victory the night before against American Heritage, his eyes became wide for a second before he looked away, not even asking questions.

It wasn’t until a Seminole equipment man appeared in the locker room with a stack of towels that Benjamin came alive.

“Man, this guy’s gonna have his own case in here someday,” Mike told him. “He’ll be a first-round pick, too.”

“Yeah,” the equipment man said. “I suited him out when he was here whippin’ butt in that seven-on-seven.”

Benjamin beamed. “These coaches still talkin about that,” he said. “That’s when they first started noticin me.”

The praise was like a fix. Once it reached the bloodstream, the body and mind could function. One could tell the Seminoles had been feeding him the drug all week.

“Jimbo’s a good coach,” KB said. “He likes to throw, but they don’t got a good line. They good at blocking but can’t go out for the pass. He’s lookin to get that tool, and that’s why they want me.

“Receivers they pick turn out to be sorry,” he added. “Just ’cause they good in high school don’t mean they good in college.”

A coach entered the room and said the day’s events were about to begin. The recruits would be treated to a short film, he said, then get a chance to walk the field during warm-ups. Benjamin rounded a hallway and was soon joined by dozens of other players and their parents. He towered over all of them and immediately caused a stir—a giant among boys, and with his own police escort!

“Wanna see the best receiver in our county?” a player wearing a jersey from Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens said.

“Who that?” his friend said.

“Back there, in the sweat suit.”

“Dang.”

A large black man, perhaps a coach or a father, then approached.

“You a
receiver
?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Yeah.”

“Hey.” He turned to the crowd. “Yall ever see a receiver that big?”

The players and their families were guided into a large meeting room
with a projector screen. When KB entered, one of the coaches hosting the event led him to a front-row seat and slapped his leg. A young and pretty student escort passed out 3-D glasses and the film began. It was a dizzying montage of Seminole highlights spliced with Coach Fisher’s rousing locker-room speeches, all in three-dimensional splendor and accompanied by a thundering soundtrack that featured the rush of jet engines, clashing light sabers, and beats by Eminem and Jay-Z.

The film ended with timpani drums pounding out the rapturous anthem of the National Football League, as if the message could not be more clear. All that seemed left was for Bobby Bowden himself to step off his bronze pedestal out front and come crashing through the wall. When the lights came on, there wasn’t a person in the room, young or old, who didn’t want to suit up that second and go pancake a Gator.

As everyone stood up to leave, the coach who’d seated KB directed one of the smiling blondes to personally escort the prized recruit onto the field.

“This guy here’s a nightmare for any opposing team,” he told her, then
looked at Big Mike. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years, and he may be the best I’ve ever seen.”

More than eighty thousand fans packed the stadium by the time KB entered the field. The news of his visit had spread across the blogosphere. Boosters and diehards knew him by sight. Once they saw him, many began to shout from the lower sections.

“How GC do last night?”
yelled one.

Others screamed his name and gave him a tomahawk chop in salute.

A fat guy appeared on the sidelines and grabbed his arm. “We need you, bro.”

A gorgeous, light-skinned escort then approached and gave him her number. KB’s gold teeth sparkled as he watched her walk away.

“People wanna know you,” he said, grinning. “People you don’t even know wanna be seen with you ’cause they think you gonna be a star.”

When both the Seminoles and Gators had taken the field for warm-ups, KB stopped and scanned the opposite sideline, looking for someone.

“Coach Z called and talked to me last night,” he said. “He just somehow knew I was here. You can’t hide nothing from these recruiters. They know everything.”

The Gator assistant coach who’d been courting KB for two years had implored the receiver not to “drink the punch” of Florida State, KB said. The phone conversation had lasted two hours. Now, on the sideline, KB fixed his gaze, looking for Azzanni or, better, for Urban Meyer.

“I just want them to see me,” he said, then laughed.

If Coach Z was afraid of Benjamin drinking the Seminole punch, his team certainly didn’t help matters that night. With Tebow and the championship squad now graduated and gone, the Florida offense looked raw and out of sync. Up in the stands with the other recruits, KB saw all he needed to see. Florida rarely passed the ball. In fact, quarterback John Brantley only appeared out of the wildcat formation every third down to attempt a
pass. At the half, Florida had only thrown for thirty yards, compared to 167 by FSU quarterback E. J. Manuel.

Florida State went on to win the game 31–7, the first victory over their archrivals in six years. As the clock hit zero, the Seminole players took a victory lap around the stadium, hoisting the head of a stuffed gator. Later, Benjamin joined receivers Dent and Bert Reed for a night of heavy clubbing. “We
need
you here, bro,” they too implored.

On Monday, Coach Z sent the following e-mail: