Another young man sat in the shotgun seat and a third sat in the back. Strange saw tightly braided hair on the front-seat passenger, little else.
Strange had slowed his steps and was studying the car. He was letting them see him study it. His face was impassive and his body language unthreatening as he moved along.
Now Strange walked to his own car and popped the trunk. He heard them laughing as he opened his toolbox and looked inside of it for . . . for what? Strange didn’t own a gun. If they were strapped and they were going to use a gun on him, he couldn’t do a damn thing about it anyway. But he was letting his imagination get ahead of him now. These were just some hard-looking kids, sitting in a parking lot, getting high.
Strange found a pencil in his toolbox and wrote something down on the outside of the Pee Wees’ manila file. Then he found the Midget file that he had come to get for Blue. He closed the trunk’s lid.
He walked back across the lot. The driver poked his head out the window of the Caprice and said, “Yo, Fred Sanford! Fred!”
That drew more laughter, and he heard one of them say, “Where Lamont at and shit?”
Now they were laughing and saying other things, and Strange heard the words “old-time” and felt his face grow hot, but he kept walking. He just wanted them gone, off the school grounds, away from his kids. And as he heard the squeal of their tires he relaxed, knowing that this was so.
He looked down toward the field and noticed that Lorenze, Joe Wilder’s uncle, had gone.
Strange was glad Terry Quinn hadn’t been with him just now, because Quinn would have started some shit. When someone stepped to him, Quinn only knew how to respond one way. You couldn’t answer each slight, or return each hard look with an equally hard look, because moments like this went down out here every day. It would just be too tiring. You’d end up in a constant battle, with no time to breathe, just live.
Strange told himself this, trying to let his anger subside, as he walked back onto the field.
chapter 6
THE Pee Wee offense said “Break” in the huddle and went to the line. Strange saw that several of the players had lined up too far apart.
“Do your splits,” said Strange, and the offensive linemen moved closer together, placing their hands on one another’s shoulder pads. Now they were properly spaced.
“Down!” said Dante Morris, his hands between the center’s legs. The offense hit their thigh pads in unison.
“Set!” The offense clapped their hands one time and got down in a three-point stance.
“Go! Go!”
On two, Rico took the handoff from Dante Morris, bobbling it a little, not really having possession of the ball as he hesitated and was cut down by two defenders behind the line.
“Hold up,” said Quinn.
“What was that, Rico?” said Strange. “What was the play?”
“Thirty-one on two,” said Rico, picking some turf off his helmet.
“And Thirty-one is?”
“Halfback run to the one-hole,” said Joe Wilder.
“Joe, I know you know,” said Strange. “I was askin’ Rico.”
“Like Joe said,” said Rico.
“But you weren’t headed for the one-hole, were you, son?”
“I got messed up in my head.”
“Think,” said Strange, tapping his own temple.
“You had your hands wrong, too,” said Quinn. “When you’re taking a handoff and you’re going to the left, where’s your right hand supposed to be?”
“On top. Left hand down at your belly.”
“Right. The opposite if you’re going right.” Quinn looked to the linemen who had made the tackle. “Nice hit there. Way to wrap him up. Let’s try that again.”
In the huddle, Dante called a Thirty-five. The first number, three, was always a halfback run. The second number was the hole to be hit. Odd numbers were the left holes, one, three, and five. Evens were the two-, four-, and six-holes. A number larger than six was a pitch.
They executed the play. This time Rico took the ball smoothly and found the hole, running low off a clean Joe Wilder block, and he was gone.
“All right, good.” Quinn tapped Joe’s helmet as he ran back to the huddle. “Good block, Joe, way to be.”
Joe Wilder nodded, a swagger in his step, his wide smile visible behind the cage of his helmet.
CLOSE to dark, Strange blew a long whistle, signaling the boys into the center of the field.
“All right,” said Blue, “take a knee.”
The boys got down on one knee, close together, looking up at their coaches.
“I got a call today,” said Dennis Arrington, “at work. One of you was asking me how to make his mouth guard from the kit we gave you. Course, he just should have asked me before he did it, or better yet, listened when I explained it the first time. ’Cause he went and boiled it for three minutes and it came out like a hunk of plastic.”
“Tenderized it,” said Blue, and some of the boys laughed.
“You put it in that boiling water for twenty seconds,” said Arrington. “And before you put it in your mouths to form it, you dip it in some cold water. You don’t do that, you’re gonna burn yourselves fierce.”
“You only make that mistake one time,” said Strange.
“Any questions?” said Blue.
There were none.
“Want to talk about somethin’ tonight,” said Strange. “Heard you all discussing it between yourselves some and thought I ought to bring it up. One of your teammates got himself in big trouble at school today, something to do with a knife. Now I know you already got the details, what you heard, anyway, so I won’t go into it, and besides, it’s not right to be talkin’ about this boy’s business when he’s not here. But I do want to tell you that he is off the team. And the reason he is off is, he broke the deal he made with his coaches, and with you, his teammates, to act in a certain way. The way you got to conduct yourselves if you are going to be a Panther. And I don’t mean just here on the field. I’m talking about how you act at home, and in school. Because we are out here devoting our time to you for no kind of pay, and you and your teammates are working hard, sweating, to make this the best team we can be. And we will not tolerate that kind of disrespect, to us or to you. Do you understand?”
There was a low mumble of yesses. The Pee Wee center, a quiet African kid named Prince, raised his hand, and Strange acknowledged him.
“Do you need to thee our report cards?” said Prince. The boy beside him grinned but did not laugh at Prince’s lisp.
“Yes, we will need to see your first report card when you get it. We’re especially gonna be looking at behavior. Now, we got a game this Saturday, y’all know that, right?” The boys’ faces brightened. “Anybody hasn’t paid the registration fee yet, you need to get up with your parents or the people you stay with, ’cause if you do not pay, you will not play. I’m gonna need all your health checkups, too.”
“We gettin’ new uniforms?” said a kid from back in the group.
“Not this season,” said Strange. “I must answer this question every practice. Some of you just do not listen.” There were a couple of “Dags,” but mostly silence.
“Practice is six o’clock, Wednesday,” said Blue.
“What time?” said Dennis Arrington.
The boys shouted in unison, “Six o’clock, on the dot, be there, don’t miss it!”
“Put it in,” said Quinn.
The boys formed a tight circle and tried to touch one another’s hands in the center. “Petworth Panthers!”