Tangerine (34 page)

Suddenly I was startled by the sound of the garage door opening and the sight of Mr. Donnelly backing toward me at high speed. I had to push off quickly to get my bike out of his way. He slammed on his brakes and rolled down the window. He was all flustered.

"Are you OK, Paul?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sorry. I should have been looking. There are too many kids around here. I should have been looking."

"That's OK. I'm all right." He didn't say anything else, so I did. "I just talked to Betty Bright. She said that she brought Antoine Thomas to see you."

"That's right. Did she tell you what we talked about?"

"No, sir."

Mr. Donnelly thought for a few seconds. "Then I'd better not tell you, either. Let's let everybody find out the right way, in tomorrow's paper. OK, Paul?"

"OK."

Mr. Donnelly pulled away, leaving me wondering what Antoine could have told him. I pulled out onto the road and started pedaling, thinking,
I guess we'll all have to wait until tomorrow.

I managed to avoid Mom and Dad for most of the day. I know they were in the alcove for hours with that yellow legal pad. At five o'clock the three of us sat down in a circle around a pizza, but no one was hungry.

Mom said to me, "We're going to have an important meeting here tomorrow at noon, Paul. We'd like you to attend."

I said, "OK."

Dad added, "We've invited some people. You should be one of them."

"OK."

We all picked at the pizza in silence, and then we all reacted to the same disturbing sound. It was the sound of a chair scraping on the floor overhead. Erik, apparently, was holed up in his room—hiding his face.

I was up before dawn today, waiting for the news. The bad news. I was standing on the sidewalk when a white van with squeaky brakes drove up. A thin arm reached out of the passenger-side window and tossed the Sunday edition of the
Tangerine Times
onto the driveway. It was oversized, and heavy, and double-wrapped in a plastic bag.

The same thing was happening all over Lake Windsor Downs; the same thing was happening at all the other developments. The white vans were pulling up, and these fat plastic bags were flying out the windows, bursting like water balloons in the homes of the football fans of Lake Windsor High School. It sure was a mess.

Our phone started ringing at 7:00
A.M.
Dad answered it upstairs and heard the bad news from another football father. I don't even know which one.

I was already down in the great room, reading all about it. The story filled the bottom right-hand corner of the front page. It took up two columns there and was continued on page 10. The headline said, "Lake Windsor Athlete Confesses in Football Scandal." There was a photo of Antoine Thomas leaving the Tangerine County Municipal Building with the caption "Star quarterback Antoine Thomas leaves emergency meeting of the Tangerine County Sports Commission."

The front page was just the tip of the iceberg. The article continued inside, with photos, charts, and quotations spread across all of pages 10 and 11. There were photos of Antoine, Coach Warner, and the three members of the Tangerine County Sports Commission. There was a chart showing the territorial boundaries of Lake Windsor High School and Tangerine High School, and another chart showing the Lake Windsor football records before and after the arrival of Antoine Thomas. The quotes were from Coach Warner and Mr. Bridges. They were both "shocked" by the news. Neither admitted to knowing anything about anything.

The article itself began, "The Tangerine County Sports Commission, meeting in emergency session last night, voted to nullify all victories by the Lake Windsor High School football team over the last three seasons. This drastic action was taken in response to a confession made by Lake Windsor quarterback Antoine Thomas to the Commission members. In a signed statement, Thomas confessed to lying about his eligibility to attend Lake Windsor High School."

The article quoted a Commission member as saying that Antoine "had contacted them, had met with them, and had presented them with a notarized statement." The same member said they "had no choice but to uphold the regulations of the Commission and to nullify all the victories in which Mr. Thomas was involved."

I couldn't believe what I was reading. I had thought that
maybe
Lake Windsor would get fined. Or they would have to forfeit their last victory against Tangerine High. But not this. I never even suspected that the Commission had such power. It was like they were rewriting history.

Lake Windsor had had a 7–3 record in Antoine's first season; they were 9–1 the next season and 10–0 this season. That's a total of 26 wins and 4 losses. Now they're 0–30. Zero wins and 30 losses over the last three seasons.

And if that's not bizarre enough, every record that they set with Antoine on the team has been nullified, too. There was a boxed list of those. Most of the records belonged to Antoine Thomas, but Erik Fisher was in there for the longest field goal, the highest field-goal percentage in a season, and the most extra points in a season.

Not anymore. They're all nullified.

There was another article that focused on a guy who lives in Tangerine, on the same street as Antoine Thomas. He's a black guy about twenty-five years old, who had played football at Tangerine High and then at Florida A & M. This is part of what he said: "Everybody knows how it is. If you want that bigtime football dream, that Heisman Trophy thing, you get out of Tangerine. No big-time scouts ever come here. Ever. So you get yourself an address in Lake Windsor. You have your mail sent there, but you continue to live here. You live a lie. Everybody knows what's happening. Nobody asks any questions ... But now Antoine is the one standing up saying that it's all a lie, so people have to listen."

I had finished reading all of the articles in the front section by the time Dad walked into the great room. He still had the phone in his hand, and he had forgotten to turn it off. I could tell by his face that he had already been told the basic facts. I handed over the front section without comment, and looked to see what there was in the sports section.

Dad sat down in a heap on the floor. He finally turned off the phone, and he started to read. But the phone rang again immediately. He listened impatiently, then said, "I have no idea. I haven't even had a chance to read the paper yet." He hung up again and held the paper in front of him with both hands, like he was grabbing some guy by the lapels.

I left him alone and examined the front page of the sports section. The left side had a column written by Mr. Donnelly, with the strange title "Thoughts on an Imaginary Porcelain Plate." I almost didn't read it, thinking he had written the column before all of this Antoine Thomas stuff had happened. But I was wrong. Here is the entire column:

Not too many people know this.

For twenty years I held the Tangerine County record for the most passing yards in a single game. How I got that record had as much to do with the weather conditions as it did with my talent as a quarterback, but I didn't care. The record was mine, and I was proud of it.

On the night when I set my record, Tangerine High was playing Suwannee High during a violent thunderstorm. By all rights the game should have been called off, but no one in authority had enough sense to do that. As the lightning flashed and the thunder cracked, I, the unsung quarterback of an unsung team, rose up out of that mud not once, but twice, to achieve football immortality.

Twice we were pinned on our own five-yard line, and twice I dropped back, slipping and sliding, and heaved the ball. Twice a receiver ran under that heave and kept on running, 95 yards into the end zone. In two plays, I had passed for 190 yards. In the rest of the game, I would pass for only 37 more, but the damage had been done. The old record had been shattered. The new record was mine. It went into the record book this way: "Most passing yards in a single game, 227, William F. Donnelly, Tangerine High."

I have actually seen this record book at meetings of the Tangerine County Sports Commission. It's an old red book. And yes, I have looked up my name. That name, written by hand in a fat old book, is
it.
It's all you get. There is no trophy, no plaque, no certificate, no plate. You get that one handwritten line plus the knowledge, inside of you, that you hold the record.

Well, that wasn't enough for me. I needed something more splendid, something that I could picture in my mind. So whenever I thought about the record, which was often, I imagined a fine porcelain plate. It was a large white plate, encircled with fourteen-karat gold edging. A plate that you would display proudly on the back wall of a trophy case. A plate that gleamed at visitors and invited comment. But it was also a fragile plate, one that would last only until fate smiled on some other quarterback rising up out of some other mud puddle.

Miraculously, my plate hung intact for twenty years. When it was broken, when my record finally fell, it had nothing to do with a lucky heave or a slippery surface.

Antoine Thomas of Lake Windsor High School broke my record midway through his sophomore season. He broke it on a sunny Saturday up at Lake Windsor High, playing against my old school. In that game, he threw for 250 yards and 5 touchdowns.

But that was just the beginning. Antoine Thomas would break my record six more times. (Actually, after the first time, he was breaking his own records.) He would go on to rewrite that old red record book in dozens of single-game, single-season, and career categories, becoming the most dominant player of his, or any other, generation.

Now all that has changed.

The Tangerine County Sports Commission has ruled that Antoine Thomas was not legally eligible to play for Lake Windsor High School. Therefore the records that he broke were not legally broken.

Do you realize what this means?

The Tangerine County Sports Commission has gathered up the shards of my porcelain plate, Krazy-Glued them together, and handed it back to me.

I'm looking at it right now. I guess they meant well, but they did a lousy job. I can see the cracks, like the lines of age on a face. I can see the globs of glue, like tears that will not fall. I can see chips and missing flakes in the gold edging where the circle has been broken.

Thanks, Tangerine County Sports Commission, but no thanks. I'm not putting this thing back in my trophy case. I wouldn't even put this thing out in a garage sale. This is nothing to be proud of.

Antoine Thomas holds the record for the most passing yards in a single game. Antoine Thomas is the greatest quarterback in the history of Tangerine County.

Everybody knows that.

I was glad that Mr. Donnelly had put in one good word for Antoine, because it was clear that no one else was going to. The phone kept ringing.

A strategy was emerging from the calls that Dad received and made. They were going to blame Antoine, and Antoine alone. The families, the coaches, the teachers, the fans were all denying that they even dimly suspected that anyone was breaking any rule at any time.

Give me a break. After I heard Dad telling an assistant coach that he, too, was "shocked by the news," I couldn't take it anymore. I said, "Dad, have you ever seen any of the Lake Windsor High football guys out running?"

He looked as if he was surprised that I was there. "What?"

"Have you ever seen any of the Lake Windsor High football guys out running? Like, along the roads?"

"Yeah, sure. Why?"

"Have you ever seen them riding tenspeeds, or shooting hoops, or playing tennis?"

"Yeah."

"Have you ever seen them driving their cars?"

"Yes."

"OK. Now, have you ever seen Antoine Thomas doing any of those things? Have you ever seen Antoine out running or biking or driving anywhere around here?"

Dad looked at me curiously, but he still didn't get it. He answered, "No. I can't say I have."

"Have you seen him at the supermarket? Or at a pump at the gas station? Or getting some fries at McD's?"

Dad was nodding his head now, but he wasn't agreeing with me. He was getting annoyed. "What is this about?"

"I guess it's about your eyesight, Dad. Your eyesight, and Coach Warner's, and Mr. Bridges's, and everybody else's who's 'shocked' today. Because I've seen lots of those Lake Windsor guys in lots of places. Everywhere we go, in fact. But I've never seen Antoine Thomas. I've never seen him anywhere except at the football stadium. That's because he doesn't live around here, Dad. He lives in Tangerine. Everybody knows that."

Dad looked down. He knew that I was right. He knew the truth. The phone rang again, but he didn't answer it.

With everything else fighting for room in my head, I must confess that Mom and Dad's "important meeting" didn't seem very important to me. That's why it took me by surprise.

As I came downstairs I heard Mom's voice, tense and upset. "I want this thing to be over with, completely finished, everyone gone, by the time my parents get here."

Dad was just as tense. "What? And you think I don't? I don't want them butting in on this."