She did know he was a liar. That much she told me. The real assistant coach was Mr. Briggs, a paid teacher that taught history at Jonesville Middle and was JV coach, plus helping out with the high school team. In practices he coached defense, where Coach worked mainly with offense. U-Haul was just an errand boy, paid part-time out of the booster funds. Angus said he acted more important than he was, and got away with it by saying he was “nobody” while pretending he’s assistant coach. Like bowing down and sweeping his lies behind him.
We got on okay, myself and Angus. After our tricky start. Fashion advice, no thanks, but she told me what to look out for at school, being two grades ahead, and I told her some of the history of me. How was I related to Betsy Woodall, where all had I lived. This would be after her dad went to bed at seven p.m., seriously. We’d do homework and watch TV in this upstairs bedroom with no bed in it that she called the den. Just beanbag chairs and the TV she rescued from the sports tornado downstairs. She had an absolute rule of no athletic equipment allowed in her den, penalty of death. As far as other entertainments, popcorn fights, throwing M&M’s at each other’s mouths, pretty much anything went in the Den of Angus. I felt bad for Mattie Kate having to clean up, but Angus said the same thing, she needed her job so don’t take it away.
It was hard to get used to being tended to like that. And to rules. Homework gets done, period. No running around on school nights. Pharm parties, not on your life. I didn’t even bring up the idea of getting into her dad’s liquor. Angus had her whole tough act and called a lot of shots in the house, helping to make the grocery list, calling to get the heater fixed, that type of thing. Coach wouldn’t notice till the fridge went empty and the pipes froze, the man was just all football. But Angus had no big worries that I could see. Everything in that house got taken care of, me included. If I stayed here, would I turn into one of these Jonesville Middle School babies? Not something to worry about, I knew. Nobody ever kept me that long.
30
I’d dreaded middle school for the reason of running up against bigger guys that might pound me. Up to that point in fourth and fifth being the tallest, I was the type of loser that people could hate on but were scared to mess with. The world turns though. School dumps you out from top drawer to the bottom again. It’s true Jonesville Middle was a litter of pups, but not without its big dogs. In time I sniffed them out, hunkered around the smoking barrel, lazing in back of class with their big untied shoes propped up on empty desks. Guys that repeated enough grades to roll into eighth with respectable sideburns and pack-a-day habits. They could break my ass.
But sixth grade had tricked me out as a new Demon. I was still me but with sixty-dollar shoes, so. A loser in disguise. Living with Coach was like packing heat. I walked down the hall and the crowd parted. Not like pee-yew, I smell foster-boy ass, but like, Wow. There he goes.
Nobody at first knew what I was to Coach exactly. Me included. Not his kid, but he was the one to sign my permission forms, like was I allowed to watch the Family Life film. Not that he knew. We’d bring our forms to supper and he’d sign off with his eyes under those woolly eyebrows watching a replay in his mind, jaw grinding his dinner like a cow on grass. He’d have given the okay on me watching porn in study hall. Not saying I did. But if I was anybody’s to claim, I was Coach’s.
And then I was more so, because he let me help out at Saturday practice. Only as errand boy of the errand boy, but even still, freaking amazing. To be chalking hash marks and dragging sleds and body shields, me, Demon. On the grass of the Five Star Stadium where Creaky took us for Friday-night prayer meetings and we screamed for a Generals bloodbath. Inside the Red Rage field house, in the presence of greatness. Or the wet towels and jockstraps of greatness.
I only did Saturdays, not after school, with Coach having homework rules and Angus being the enforcer. She didn’t like me being at practices, but Coach said a boy can’t stay cooped up, so. I couldn’t put my own clothes in the washer at the house, but I bagged up dirty team laundry like my life depended on it, and watched varsity guys running drills. Figuring out plays if I was able. Fast Forward was long gone, but these guys had good hands, hard hitters. Coach at practice was a different human. Knees bent in a crouch, eyes sharp, he’d watch guys run a drill or complete a pass, and I’m saying he saw them. Memorized them. Picking out a fumble or even the risk of one, yelling at them to run it again and not screw up this time. Run it again, they did. Twenty times if need be. Where was sleepwalker dad? That guy we had to step out of the way of so he wouldn’t walk through us like doors? Not in the Five Star Stadium. There he fired on all cylinders, riding his Generals till they gave him the shine he wanted, then telling them they were the best of men. Clapping them on the back as he sent them off the field to go shower up.
And one of the men was me. I was three years from any shot at Generalhood, and miles from knowing my ass from any hole in the ground. But one day after he dismissed the team and we’re loading up equipment, Coach yells, “Damon, heads up!” and here comes a ball at my face. I catch it, goddamn miracle, and go to put it with the other balls but no, Coach says let’s throw some passes. Him throwing, running me down the field to see what kind of legs I have. What kind of wind. Now let’s see your arm. I’m shitting myself trying to remember anything Fast Forward ever showed me about holding the ball, using my field of vision. Giving my all.
My all was no great shakes, but Coach made me want to die trying. The big teeth finally fit his mouth, and busted out shining like sun through clouds. Unforgettable. The way he looked past my arms and legs into the soul of the General I might be, totally tuned in on me and the ball between us, curve of a wrist, turn of a head. And I saw the General he’d been on this field once, pumping a crowd, flashing those teeth at some girl in the stands that would steam up his truck in the postgame ceremony. Angus’s mom, I thought. Wondering, was she a cheerleader or what.
But no. Being one of Miss Betsy’s girls, no window steamer. Angus said they’d met at UT Knoxville where he went on a football scholarship. Running back, one year, then tore up his shoulder and had to major in education. I wondered if Angus even knew this other person her dad woke up to being at practice. I hoped she did. Then I thought about it, and hoped she didn’t.
School took a wild turn, thanks to this one teacher Mr. Armstrong. He was seventh-and eighth-grade English, so not my teacher, but also guidance counselor, meaning he’s looking out for the bigger picture on kids that are headed for trouble.
At Jonesville Middle they’d just dropped me into classes, and it took me one hot minute to go down like the Titanic. Math, pop quiz: “Simplify the expression using order of operations blah blah rational numbers.” A page of numbers and stuff not even numbers, like freaking code. “Here’s your simplified expression,” I wrote on my blank answer sheet: “Fuck me.”
I scratched that out before the teacher collected them up, so I didn’t get sent to the principal. Just straight directly to the dummy class, where I got acquainted with the gentlemen in the sideburns and unlaced size thirteens. We all moved together, a big slow herd, from Howdy Doody math to remedial everything and a lot of study halls where our reading material was Hot Rod Magazine, Muscle Machines, Car & Driver. Or Allure and Cosmo if girls, because we had females among us. Instead of sideburns, some serious racks. Our destiny was the Vo-Ag track in high school where we’d shuffle to the vocational center for auto mechanic classes or if girls, beauty school. So who cared if we read magazines all day? Getting a jump on our career ladders.