American Season
​Prologue
Every life is a collection of memories and dreams. And while I have heard it said that the mind keeps a record of every moment, I don't really know about that. I do know that memories, and the emotions they bring with them, will sneak up on you sometimes unexpectedly, perhaps when you're cleaning out the garage say and you come across an old sweatshirt, or when on a late summer afternoon you find yourself watching your children race across the yard and you think back to your own golden childhood, or those times when an old familiar tune pops up on the radio, blanketing your mood with violet reminiscence. I know I shall never forget the autumn season of my senior year at Lassiter University, for it was a season filled with the deepest of memories. That season is now a part of me, and I will always he haunted by those memories and dreams.
There were two seasons for me in the fall of that year at Lassiter, Connecticut: one rich bronze autumn of ripening for my own heart and mind and one season in which I played, for the last time, a crazy and simple game that we call, here in the States, football. I remember, as if it were yesterday, one shimmering image from that year. It was the last few days of August and the summer was as hot in Connecticut as it would ever be. We were working out in full pads and I had a coach who would push us in these practices until the fibers of our jerseys were soaked with sweat and coated with dust from the trampled grass at our feet, and only then would he justify a halt to the scrimmage. In that brief break it was a tradition at that school to allow every player a single cup of ice cold water. The act was more ritual -- a sacrificial offering -- than real relief. Hell, I could've drunk a bucketful and still been thirsty! Yet in all my life it's doubtful I've consumed a sweeter taste than that spare swallow. The ice water ran across our tongues and swirled down our throats in a fleeting moment of absolute fraternity, virgin pureness and crystalline clarity. We became linked in that drama, not only with each other, but with the essence of our existence, the unclouded sustenance of our lives. The memory ties up for me much of the pain and unreachable desires of my last year at Lassiter. I came to terms with the magnitude of my thirsts that year: in me the presence of an unquenchable thirst for passion and triumph, a deep flowing thirst for love and respect and, finally, a thirst for justice. It was the season I came of age, and this is the story of that season.
​Chapter 1
Shifting the Balance
This story is about – mostly – the events that transpired during my last year at Lassiter College. From time to time, as this story unfolds, you may think, distracted by a sudden familiar footstep, or an autumn breeze, that you’ve heard parts of this story before. You may even recall a scene or two from your own life and marvel at the detail of my re-telling. But it is all coincidence, believe me. Dreams, fiction and history are close companions. I am an American child, raised in the dust-hooves of the continent, dirt-faced and mean, and it is likely that we share a history.
It is true that much of my story is typical of many young Americans growing up in the last stages of the twentieth century. We were starry-eyed kids, feeling our way blindly through the ambiguities, challenges and delights of college towards the impending uncertainties, fears and freedoms of adulthood. This story takes place in a weird time, a time well after the disillusionment of Nixon and Vietnam, a time before the Roaring Nineties and the slurp of The Bubble. It has been described as a lost time, a time when inflation was the Big Enemy and Disco battled Punk and Metal for The Stage. We all have our histories, fictions and dreams. And we all have our secrets.
The year was 1981. It was the year in which I would reach my highest achievements as an athlete, the year in which I would encounter the most painful truths about the mortality of man and, indeed, my own mortality, and the year in which I would learn the hardest lessons of the powerful and the powerless. It was the year that I would explore the depths of Edgar Allan Poe through the greatest English teacher on earth, and a year in which I would begin to understand the demons caged within me and how they could defeat me in a single unguarded moment of fervor or ignite in me a fire whose tendrils could reach every slick and ivy-covered gutter of a quiet New England school. To this day I maintain that it was all my sister’s fault.
What can I say about Lisa Rae? She was different. That’s probably the best compliment I can give her right now, given my state of mind. Lisa Rae was two years older than me by the calendar, but leagues ahead when it came to intellect and intuition. I don't know how she came to such acute perceptions. She looked just like me -- God bless her soul -- and I can attest to the modesty or her upbringings and genetic pool. One or more of the Muses must’ve made her acquaintance at some point in her youth, because it was a fact: she had ways. She could teach a cat to fetch slippers. Tie sailor knots blindfolded. Climb Fealey’s oak in a minute and a half, and do a one and a half into Winowee’s Creek. She could make perfect sense of Shakespeare while still a sophomore in high school. I envied her and idolized her and resented her, in my best moments. She tolerated me, at best, most times, but we were all we had in our family.
Lisa Rae had her own perspectives on how the world worked. She spoke too well for her class, I believed. It probably had something to do with her voracious appetite for books. I hardly ever saw her without a book in her lap or at her side. It was as though she found escape from the slow, quiet reality of Lumberton in the pages of her novels. She believed in the power of dreams, but saw little value in the passions of sports. I couldn't side with her on that one. “Johnnie Boy,” she'd call me. We'd be driving down some dirt road, on our way to Hendersonville to visit Aunt Rachel who lived near the lake, perhaps. “We're doomed, you know? Just look around. I can't pick out a single relative on either side that's ever amounted to anything. It's in the genes.” Sometimes, in my bolder moments, I would counter her. “Well, Aunt Rachel's done alright by herself.” Lisa Rae drove poorly, particularly on a back road with no oncoming obstacles. She had a mind for concepts, but not much of an eye for geometry or physics. When my big sister was driving I always kept one eye geared toward the road and one hand fastened to the car door. Our Aunt Rachel lived in a large two-story home, sitting in the middle of about five acres. The front drive was framed by huge oak trees like something out of Gone with the Wind.
“Inherited it,” Lisa Rae told me. “Got it all from Uncle Ned's folks, who inherited it from one of their grandparents, who struck oil in Louisiana. I hardly call that making it. Though she is just about the nicest Aunt in the bunch.”
“Yeah, and she's got a ski boat.”
“Yeah, that counts for a lot.”
Lisa Rae and I saw eye to eye on many things within the family, but she never quite understood the dynamics of athletics, nor my own obsession with sports. Many books have been written about sport, but it is a subject still surrounded by the mysteries of human evolution. For most of my life competition on the field of play ruled my life. I think it was mostly because I was good at it. As a child I took quickly to the strategies of every sport I took up. Though never particularly big (even in college I was but 5' 10” and weighed a mere 175 pounds) I nevertheless had quick feet and a feeling for the angles, and I used every trick I could create if it would give me an advantage. Some folks called me just plain lucky. Usually, after some wacky touchdown, where I'd stop in mid-field, offering the defender one leg, then another, only to snatch them both away at the last moment, and slip by him to sideline. I insisted it was the natural warrior instinct of the Natchez Indian.
My father, or Sarge, as he was not so affectionately known around Lumberton, was my greatest fan and sternest critic. It was he who tossed me my first rubber football at age two. It was he who took me to Wal-Mart to pick out my first baseball mitt, he who nurtured my thirst for athletics when the challenges were greatest, he who cheered loudest when I faced adversity and emerged victorious, and he whose disappointment at my failures most often broke my spirit and endangered my love for The Game. Everywhere, Sarge saw a world of violence, where the meek inherit nothing but despair. Even at a young age he would line up against me and force me to try to tackle him, or bring out some old pugil sticks to stage mock battles in the back yard. I remember once catching him in the groin with an errant stab. His face turned red, then he whirled and batted me in the jaw. He stood over me and grinned as I looked for my teeth in the grass. No spanking went on in our house. It was called whippin'. I learned quickly to keep my smart mouth shut and if the thought of devilry crossed by mind I'd better be damn sure I could get away with it. My mother kept secret many of larger transgressions, saving what little ass I have left. Even with her protection, I seemed to always be in trouble for something, as though I was at once at war with my father, while still his most trusted soldier.
I graduated from Jackson High School in 1975. Originally built in 1927, the gym burned down in 1940 and again twenty years later. A new stadium was built in 1962 and a new wing added in 1965, but these were the only major additions to the original ruby-red bricks. While the age of the institution provided some sort of pride to some members of the community, the students found the building awkward and outdated. Like much of southern Mississippi, large pines and oaks rose up in the courtyard, giving the grounds a scenic beauty, but inside the school there seem to hang in the air a peculiar odor -- like the smell of linseed oil mixed with pine sol. Many of the classrooms were not air-conditioned and during the warmer months of the school year the students would literally drip perspiration onto the carved-up desk while trying to follow the teacher's uninspired lessons. During spring the pollen from the yellow pines surrounding the school would float in with the hot breezes and swell up everyone's nasal passages. The school was a dinosaur, lurching forward on the momentum of historic tradition. I did well there, both academically and athletically, but my case was not typical. Racial prejudice was pervasive in the town where I grew up. Though the high school had been desegregated in 1970, the cultures which created the segregation died less swiftly. I had been raised to be fair and honest, and to judge people by the same measures, but it was a difficult stand to uphold. My mother was a devout Methodist. She viewed all humanity in terms of their capacity for goodness and the value of their eternal soul. In these regards she old us (and the preacher at least seemed to back her up) all of us are equal. Though my father had been raised in a segregated world, the Army had seasoned him to the realities of our time. There is something about war which awakens the humanity of all men, but one does not easily supersede ones time.
Coping is enough. Shifting the balance of a few hearts and minds, perhaps that is all one should aspire to. By the time I was old enough to give sociology much serious thought I could see only two conclusions: I liked women and I wanted the ball. I had tasted the recontre and it was sweet. In my senior year a transfer from Texas joined our team who could really throw, and our offense suddenly evolved into a lively force in southern Mississippi. We ran and threw with equal nonchalance and I began to recognize the true discrepancies between my own talents and those of my peers. We made it to the state finals, where we got beat narrowly by a much better team from Tupelo. I took the defeat graciously, for I'd contributed my share. I'd set a slew of records and had refined open-field maneuvering into an art form. Our bus trip back to Lumberton after the final game was quiet, but not sorrowful. We'd given it our best shot and been defeated by a superior team. We were out-manned.
I remember our fans awaiting our return in the school parking lot late that night. I recall their applause as the team stepped off the bus and the way they lit up as I began my descent. I'd entertained them for three years and led them to the best season the school had seen in seventeen years. I looked out across the crowd. I heard them raise their voices in praise, heard the cheerleaders call my name in unison, saw the faces, both white and black, giving me the finest curtain call I was capable of absorbing. My family and my girlfriend waited near the door and we all hugged in sympathy and celebration. My father shook my hand in firm military fashion. He pulled a twenty dollar bill from his wallet. “Take Susie out for a pizza,” he said, handing me the keys to the Ford. “Fine season son.” I looked into his dark eyes, glossed over by the phosphorescent lighting and the lateness of the hours, and caught within them the approval and the recognition which he bestowed so rarely. He was at his finest in such moments. This is how I choose to remember Lumberton and Jackson High. The academic backwardness, the racism, the conflicts with my father, the lost loves: all are relics I prefer to keep hidden from my recollections, a dusty chest deep in the corner of my Freudian attic. It was the best of times, not only for me, but for my community, and we reveled in the excitement and brotherhood occasioned by our simple game. One can choose to forget or remember anything, but one must always pay the consequences.