“But you could be heading down that road if you continue to expose yourself to these stressors and triggers on a daily basis. Because what you’re describing to me is classic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and PTSD, left untreated, can lead to even more serious difficulties.”
“Is that even a real thing?” I said. “I mean, I’ve heard of PTSD, but I’ve always thought it was just sort of a cop-out for people who have been through something traumatic and wanted to wallow in it.”
“You tell me if it’s real,” she said. “You’re the one who can’t sleep. Does the lack of sleep cause you to be lethargic during the day? Do you have trouble concentrating? Have you developed a fatalistic attitude toward life in general? Do you have violent thoughts?”
I didn’t want to answer, because the answers to all the questions would be affirmative. “It isn’t that bad. I just need some more time. Time heals all, right?”
“You need to stay away from the triggers, at least for a couple of years. Can you go back to school, find another way to make a living?”
“I don’t want to find another way to make a living.” I felt a sudden surge of anger, and my voice rose involuntarily. “I’m not a quitter. I’m not going to just give up my law practice because you say I have PTSD.”
“I’ve upset you,” she said. “I apologize.”
“Apology accepted.” I stood and started walking toward the door.
“You’re leaving? We still have a lot of time.”
“I’ll show myself out.” I dropped the two hundred on a table by the door. “Have a nice day.”
CHAPTER 2
As I looked out over the football field four days after my visit to the doctor, I felt a sense of peace and satisfaction I hadn’t felt in a long time. I knew it was only temporary, but it was nice just the same. It was Tuesday night, late October, and it was mop-up time in the Boys & Girls Club city football championship game. The team I was helping coach, a group of fifth-and sixth-grade children from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, was on the verge of winning.
Bob Ridge, a high school and college buddy of mine and a longtime Knoxville cop who played four years of football at the University of Tennessee, was the head coach. I coached the linebackers and called all the defensive signals during the games. Bob had been coaching kids who attended Stratton Elementary for seven years. He’d won two city championships during those seven years and was about to win his third. He’d asked me to help not long after I was released from prison, saying he thought it would be good for me, and he was right. This was my second year coaching, and it was one of the most pleasurable things in my life. I still couldn’t sleep, but at least there weren’t any prosecutors or judges that I was arguing with, and no clients that were lying to me and stiffing me out of my fees. And I genuinely cared about the kids. Winning and losing didn’t matter that much to me, but I cared about how they were doing at home, how they were doing in school, how they got along with each other. I thought about Dr. Benton and her suggestion that I was becoming a nihilist. Nihilists didn’t care about groups of youngsters. Nihilists didn’t volunteer their time to help needy kids.
The group of kids we coached were diverse in terms of skin color. We had fifteen black boys, fourteen white boys, and five Mexican boys. The one thing they all had in common was poverty. I’d learned that poverty didn’t discriminate. It was equally cruel to all who were held in its viselike grip. About 80 percent of the kids we coached came from broken homes. Many of them lived with grandparents or aunts and uncles or foster parents. Several were being raised by single mothers, some that worked multiple jobs, and some that were substance abusers and lived off government assistance.
Many of their fathers were in jail or prison, and many who weren’t locked up were abusive. We would see bruising occasionally around the eyes or mouth and ask what had happened. Inevitably, the boy would say he ran into a door or fell down some steps. One boy, whose name was Chuckie Stone, was thrown off his front porch by his father. When he landed, his femur snapped. Chuckie’s brother, who was also on our team, witnessed the incident and told Bob and me about it. It was a difficult dilemma for us, because the father actually had a job and provided for the family. If we’d had him arrested, he would have gone to jail, and the family would have been devastated. So we—the entire coaching staff—decided to pay Daddy a visit. There were eight of us, led by Bob Ridge, who was a six-foot-seven-inch, 280-pound wall of muscle. We went to Chuckie’s home and invited his father outside. When he came out, we informed him that if we ever caught wind that he had so much as cursed at either of the boys again, we would come back and break both of his legs and both of his arms. He wet his pants right there in front of us, the coward, and threatened to call the police. Bob pulled his badge out of his pocket and said, “I am the police, motherfucker.”
Some of the boys went to bed hungry at night, but Bob and I and the rest of the coaches did everything we could to make sure that they were all fed after practice every day during the football season. Feeding thirty-four hungry boys five days a week was expensive. We’d become creative about it—we held fund-raisers and solicited donations from local businesses and restaurants and food banks. Somehow, we managed to pull it off, but like I said, it was only during the football season, which ran for three months. The other nine months of the year, the boys were pretty much on their own. Bob and I talked about them often. What frustrated Bob more than anything was that he couldn’t help much beyond the football field, and that the kids moved on through so quickly. They would be on the team for two years if they stuck it out the entire time, and after that, he might never hear from them again.
As the clock wound down, a sixth-grade boy named Julius Antone walked up to me and spread his arms. I wrapped my arms around him and picked him up off the ground. Julius was the team’s middle linebacker, a smart, tough, incredible kid.
“Congratulations, Julius,” I said. “You’re my man.”
I set him back down, and he stood there, grinning from ear to ear.
“Thank you, Coach,” he said. “You’ve taught me a lot.”
“You’ve taught me more,” I said.
I knew Julius didn’t have a phone—only a couple of the kids on our team did—so I said, “I’ll come around and see you at Christmas. How’s that sound?” I knew where he lived. I knew where all the kids lived, because I’d hauled them all home at one time or another. Julius lived in a small house in an old government housing project with his mother, her boyfriend, two brothers, and a sister.
“That would be great, Coach.”
“What can I bring you for Christmas?”
“You don’t have to bring anything, just come by and say Merry Christmas. That’ll be enough.”
“Do you guys do a big Christmas thing? Turkey and all that?”
He looked down at the ground and scraped his cleats through the grass. “Nah, we don’t do much. It’s just another day.”