Muck City (39 page)

The quarterback then stood up.

“Yall boys know that after that Skyline game, all the criticism came: how I’m too short, too fat, too slow. How we aint ever gonna have a winning season. You know, that hurt me inside. They said we couldn’t get past the first round of the playoffs. You know why? They said that ’cause of me. They don’t think I have the ability to carry my team on my back. But I’ve told yall from day one that I’d get us back to the promised land. Last year, after we lost, I just sat on that field and stared at the scoreboard. I told Coach Hester that we’d be back. And I be damned, we back.

“I took all the criticism for yall,
bwah
,” he said, his voice rising from his gut. “Yall feel me? I put my recruiting in jeopardy for yall. But we here now. So let’s go and win this shit.”

The room erupted with applause, and Hester rose and addressed his captain, repeating what he’d told Mario, the team, and the town all season long.

“Coaches on the team talkin about you. Players talkin about you. I tell them what I told you. I’m the coach and you the guy.
You the guy
.

“You wanna replace him? Who we gonna replace him with? Who else is better suited to lead us than him? We got capable quarterbacks that could do
okay
, but they don’t give us the best chance to win. Mario, you always said I got your back. Well, homeboy, I got yours.”

The exchange between the coach and the captain seemed to tap an emotional reservoir in each boy that lay guarded under lock and key. Before Hester could sit down, Courtney Porter stood and asked to speak.

Porter was a reserve defensive back, an ambitious student with dreams of college and becoming a math teacher. He’d come a long way from Jacksonville, where, as a boy, his father had sold crack to a procession of addicts that moved through their house day and night. Courtney’s grandmother in South Bay had finally taken him after one of the junkies extinguished a cigarette on his chest. “I just remember them wiping off the blood,” he once said. “After that, I learned to watch my back.” He’d been four at the time.

Porter now stood among his teammates and addressed Hester. “I aint ever had a pops in my life,” he said. “He’s been in jail trying to raise me from the mail, and it’s never worked. But over these three years you’ve been with me, Coach, you’ve been like a pop to me. Just you, Coach.”

Tears were already running down Hester’s face as he walked toward Porter and embraced him. A man hugging a boy who needed to be hugged, who needed to know that a man’s love could be healing and real. And when it was over, Hester briefly excused himself from the room.

As he composed himself in the hallway, he realized what was happening. It had snuck up on him like a heart attack, made him weep like a child. After three years of struggling to win them over, persuading them to trust and to believe in themselves and the program, to allow themselves to be loved, he was finally breaking through. It occurred to him that no matter what the scoreboard said later that night, no matter the wins or losses on the season, the ranking in the national press, inside that small room, the Raiders were already winning their greatest victory.

Standing in the doorway of what could be their greatest day, surrounded by the safety of four walls and teammates who’d bonded as family, one that did not lie, cheat, or walk away, many of the boys let their emotions run.

They stood one by one and gave their testimony, let go some pain. They spoke of failures, disappointments, and regrets, and, at the same time, described a feeling of pride in themselves they’d never before experienced.

“I got kicked off the team last year,” said Baker. “But Coach Randy came to me every day this season, talkin to me about what I needed to do in school and stuff. Boobie kept tellin me good work and to keep my grades up. So I made an effort. First nine weeks, I didn’t get into trouble, no talking back to teachers. My first report card I had As and Bs and one D. I hung it on the fridge like a kid. My sister even gave me money. And every game I worked hard and I listened, and it worked. Last year I cried, but this year we’re back. We in state.”

Seniors confessed to having cried the whole night, fearing what lay ahead when the sun rose tomorrow.

“The last time I cried I was in like seventh grade,” said Oliver, “but I cried last night. It’s my last time to play football with yall, and I love yall. And when coach calls a running play, I’m gonna be blocking my ass off.”

“Ever since I got to Glades Central,” said Page, “football has been like a light, like an everlasting light compared to what I’ve been through in my life. This has been a journey I never imagined. I just feel like I’m living a dream right now.”

What had started in the quarterback still pushed to be free, and after some time, he stood, trembling all over. For the first time in his life, he spoke openly about his parents.

He shared his father’s dream of having a son win a championship ring, how his brothers had been unable to deliver that gift. How life as he knew it had lost all purpose once his father died, and it was only because of his sister, his coach, and the brothers in the room that he now found reason to live and be great. But it was no rousing homily, no message to inspire or stir the team into battle. Rather, it was a boy staring down from the peak of his young life and wanting nothing more than to share it with his mom and his dad.

“I just wanna tell yall,
bwah
, if you got a mama, just love her,” he said, his voice strained and weakened from tears. “I got to look at my mama and
daddy in a picture every day, and it hurts me to death. I just want yall to know that there aint nobody like your mama. There aint nobody like your mama ’cause when she gone, she aint ever coming back.”

He could lead his team as promised, carry them to their crowded hour, yet what he said now suggested that he could never fully savor its reward, for there would always be an emptiness inside of him, one he would always keep searching to fill.

The captain sat down, buckled under the weight of his grief. And for one of the last times in his life, his Raiders put their hands together and assured him, “You got us.”

•   •   •

THE TEAM BOARDED
the bus at four o’clock, cloaked in a confidence that wrapped them like new skin. Never before had they felt such an accord, such union of mind and purpose.

They said little as the bus rounded West Church Street and the Citrus Bowl came into view, looming colossal, every bit as intimidating as the occasion. As the afternoon sun began to fade in the sky, the stadium glowed from within, as if brimming with treasure. The early game was still in progress, a triple-overtime thriller between Davie-University School and Ocala Trinity Catholic for the 2B title. Minutes after the bus pulled into the lot, University failed on a two-point conversion to lose the game 56–55. The running back who’d been stopped inches from the goal line had remained on the turf and wept.

Through the windows of the bus, the Raiders watched University exit the stadium like the walking wounded. They steadied themselves on parents and girlfriends, their faces drawn and their eyes dim, swollen, and red. When the Raiders took over their locker room, it still hummed with sweat and the off-gassing of adrenaline.

Second-place medals littered the floor and greeted the team like dead, bloated animals. Baker stepped around one and eyed it with disgust. “Don’t
want no silver,” he said to himself, then looked up. “Silver don’t buy you shit in Belle Glade.”

The boys found their lockers and began to dress with a strange, pressing urgency. Above the door leading to the field, a giant digital clock ticked down the minutes and seconds until kickoff. Its bright neon numbers seemed to lord over the room like a moon pulling tide, speeding time and the beat of the heart, drawing everyone toward the door and into uncertainty.

“Tighten up. Let’s go!” shouted Coach JD, blasting his whistle for warm-ups.

The team hurried through the door and onto the field, then slowed to a jog to drink it all in. Under a crisp, dark sky, the lights of the Citrus Bowl were radiant and white and illuminated every object like a dream of heaven. The turf glowed electric green and seemed to stretch a thousand yards. Cameras were everywhere as Fox Sports Florida prepared to beam the broadcast across the Sunshine State.

Up in the visitors’ stands, the mucksteppers were already several thousand strong and still arriving. The lights and distance from the field blurred their features into a patchwork of the Glades: dark skin and maroon mixed with the green and gold of the Glades Day whites. When the Raiders appeared in sight, they let out a collective roar.

The Cocoa Tigers entered the field as the Raiders began their drills. They wore slick, all-black uniforms with numbers and cleats punctuated in bright neon orange, a combination that evoked an image of speed. Up high in the opposite stands, the Tiger Nation formed a matching sea of black and orange and rumbled to life, waving tiger paws and already chanting
“THREE-PEAT-THREE-PEAT.”

At the sight of Glades Central at the far end, the Tigers let out a battle cry and began to run. They stopped at midfield, and, in a rare display of bravado, raised their helmets in victory, letting it be known the champions had arrived.

Back in the locker room, the clock reeled off the seconds and stirred
the room into a frenzy. But in the far corner, the quarterback appeared impervious to the pull of its current. He sat in a metal chair outside his locker, wrists and cleats immaculately wrapped in tape, his body battered and tired.

His head was still not right. The headaches still visited him—ribbons of pain that shot across his temples and popped out of his eyes—but they came with less frequency now. He also seemed thinner. For once the quarterback’s gut no longer spilled from under his flak vest, and his face appeared wan. He leaned forward in his chair, fingers locked, and stared at the floor. As banged up as Mario was, he’d never felt more ready to play football in his life.

Just like the quarterback, Davonte was playing hurt. That week, he’d managed to find the only hole in the Raider practice field and twisted his ankle. It had swollen up and sent pain shooting up his leg when he’d tried to walk on it. He sat out for two days, and, on Grandma Nora’s orders, soaked the ankle in warm water and Epsom salts until his toes shriveled and turned gray. It was still tender when the trainer wrapped it with tape, but after a dose of ibuprofen and a few seconds under the bracing lights, he could have run all the way to Belle Glade and back.

Sitting there waiting to begin, the receiver calmed his mind by picturing the ring on the shelf next to his old Bible. There it was, the power and the glory. Deacon Julius could no doubt find a sermon in that one. He focused on the ring until it was clear in his mind, until the light began to sparkle off its crown of diamonds. And once he had the ring, he imagined two.

With only minutes left until kickoff, Hester stood before his team one last time. He’d been studying the faces, he said, and there were still some in the room who were not ready, some who still did not understand.

“We’re not just happy to be here,” said the coach. “We’re here to win. Nothing else. We are here to win.”

He took a show of hands: Who was ready to walk through that door and take it from the champions? The response was staggered. “Yall who
put your hand up first,” he said, “you got some scared ones with you. You got to show them that it’s okay. Show the ones who are a little scared that it’s okay. Show ’em how to fight. Show them the way.”

The clock signaled it was time to go. The Raiders lined up according to number, with Mario standing at the lead. As the announcer called their names, they ran through the door and into the light.

•   •   •

IN TERMS OF
size, the Cocoa defense could have been Muck City boys in different dress: small, agile, and liquid fast. Anchored by the linebacker Antonio Wallace and Rick Rivers in the secondary, they’d held opponents to an average of just six points per game. No team had scored on them in the first quarter. To add ornament to their menace, the defense had even named themselves the Dark Side. They hung together outside of school, dressed in black whenever possible, even lobbied the Tiger band to learn “The Imperial Death March,” the theme music for Darth Vader.

On the Raiders’ first snap, they turned on the dark.

Mario dropped back in the shotgun while four receivers flew out of the gate. He saw Davonte on a short route up the right side, and slung the ball. But from out of nowhere, a black jersey sealed the hole and swatted it down. The message was sent.

A false-start penalty pushed the Raiders back five yards, and then Baker rushed into nowhere, leaving Mario with third and long.

He shouted to the Dark Side,
“No three-peats tonight!”
then took the snap. He found Oliver wide open on the very same route and made the Tigers pay. The catch was good for twenty yards and the first down.

The next play, Baker ran once again into a wall as linebacker Grady Redding hit the halfback at full speed in the gap. The sound of helmet meeting bone echoed through the stadium and raised up a howl. Baker shook it off and walked to the backfield to reload.

Seeing the pattern, the defense then gave Mario a three-man front,
daring him to go deep. He teased them instead, lobbing a short floater up the left side for Jaime that gave the Raiders a fresh set of downs and carried them across midfield. The mucksteppers cried,
“MOVE THEM STICKS!”

In the days before the game, Rick Rivers must have caught word that he was a soft target. Indeed, the defensive back—whom Hester identified as the crack in the Dark Side through which the flyboys would sail—kept his brown locks braided with bright orange beads. They poked through from underneath his helmet, swayed whenever he ran, and complemented the orange Tiger trim of his jersey. The six-foot-one cornerback may have given up the pass in the miraculous win over Orlando Jones, but tonight, with the cameras rolling, pretty boy Rivers was snapping.

On the next play, he remained one step ahead of the Raider offensive line as Mario dropped back and found Davonte five yards upfield. As soon as the ball touched Davonte’s hands, Rivers appeared from shallow space and drove the receiver into the backfield for a loss of three yards.