shorts were too small. I looked like a pro basketball player from the eighties, if basketball players had shoulders like a bull. But at least I had a whistle, and sometimes that’s all that matters.
As we approached, all eyes shifted to me, the new guy. The white new guy. The players were all wearing their generic practice jerseys, which made distinguishing them from one another nearly impossible. Yet I knew Coach Samson knew them all by shape, size and probably smell.
The team was 1-4. One win and four losses. This might be Coach Samson’s first losing season in 27 years.
Unless, of course, I could do something about it.
The fall afternoon was bright-and hot. The kids were already sweating under their football pads. In heat like this, I did not miss the extra twenty pounds of equipment strapped to my back.
Coach Samson blew his whistle and the players fell in, forming seven remarkably straight rows.
I stood before the team with the other coaches. The faces behind the face masks were all black. I could feel their eyes on me. Sizing me up. Watching me, the Whitey. Probably wondering who the hell I was and why I was here.
They were too young to remember me.
And now they would never forget me.
Coach Samson stepped before them; his massive shadow fell across the practice field. Hell, one of the biggest shadows I’d ever seen. The others stood with their hands casually behind their backs, inspecting the integrity of the seven lines of young men.
As Coach Samson spoke, his deep voice boomed easily to the back of the columns, and no doubt to the apartments far behind the field. “The man you see before you is white, in case you haven’t noticed.” There were some chuckles. I smiled, too. “Despite this liability, he went on to become one of the biggest badasses I have ever had the pleasure to coach. Hell, he single-handedly filled that trophy case you see in our gymnasium.”
I tried not to blush.
“This man went on to play at UCLA, and if not for one hell of a disgusting injury to his leg he would probably still be in the pros.” He paused, his eyes sweeping his team. “So, can any of you tell me who this man is?”
Half the hands went up.
“Anderson.”
A voice spoke up from the middle of row three. “He be Knighthorse, coach. He hold every record here.”
Samson looked at me and grinned, but didn’t hold the grin too long, as that would be uncoachlike. “They know you, Knighthorse.”
“As well they should.”
Samson shook his head and seemed to hold back a smile of amusement. “He’s here because I asked him to help us. And, brothers, we need all the help we can get. Coach Knighthorse would you like to say a few words?”
The sun angled down into my face. I’m sure my cheeks had a pinkish hue to them. I never felt whiter in my life.
I inhaled, filling my chest. Screw the speech.
“Who wants to hit the Whitey?” I asked them. Hitting, as in tackling drills, or recklessly hurling one’s body into another. Reckless only if you didn’t know what you were doing. And most high school football players didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
Samson looked at me and raised an eyebrow. Some of the players laughed. One kid in the front said, “But you ain’t wearing any pads,” he said, then added, “coach.”
“I graduated from pads long ago.”
More laughter.
“I’ll hit the Whitey,” said a big kid from the back.
“Come on up,” I said.
He came up and stood before me, face sweating profusely behind the facemask. Skin so dark it looked purple. A big boy, he outweighed me by about a hundred pounds.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“I promise I won’t cry,” I said. “Now get down in your stance.”
He squatted down as sweat dribbled off the narrow bars of his facemask. He reached forward and knuckled the grass in front of him with his right hand, a classic three-point stance. Most of his weight was on his hand.
I assumed a similar position about seven feet in front of him, but my weight was more evenly distributed.
I nodded to Samson.
The coach blew his whistle.
And the kid burst forward, charging recklessly headfirst. With my arm and shoulder, and a lot of proper technique, I absorbed his considerable bulk and used my legs to thrust upward. He went careening off to the side. Landed hard, but unhurt.
Some gasps from the players. I think I had just brushed aside their best athlete. I helped him to his feet and patted him on his shoulder pads. He was embarrassed.
To help him save face, I said, “I got lucky.”
He grinned and shook his head in what might have been amazement and went back to his place in line. I looked out at the other players. Others were smiling, laughing. Maybe, just maybe, Whitey wasn’t so bad after all.
“It’s mostly about technique and heart, and some skill,” I said. “But you can make up for lack of skill with heart and hours in the weight room.” I surveyed them. “So who wants to hit like that?”
All hands shot up.
I grinned. “So who else wants to hit the Whitey?”
The hands stayed up. Despite himself, Coach Samson threw back his head and laughed.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Sanchez and I sat in my Mustang outside Harbor Junior High in Anaheim. A low vault of cobalt gray clouds hung low in the sky. We were eating donuts and drinking Diet Pepsis, the staples of surveillance. In a few minutes school would be out.
“You ever going to get a new car?” asked Sanchez, sipping his diet soda with one hand, and working on a glazed with the other.
“No.”
“How about some air conditioning?”
“How much is air conditioning?”
“Eight, nine hundred bucks.”
“No.”
We waited some more. I think I dozed. I felt an elbow in my rib, but might have dreamt it.
“You’re snoring.”
I sat up. “Not anymore.”
“Some detective you are.”
“You’re the one detecting,” I said. “I’m sleeping.”
“I bought the donuts, which means you’re on my time.”
“Fine,” I said. “You have a picture of the kid?”
Sanchez removed from his shirt pocket a folded up page torn from a school yearbook. He pointed to a goofy- looking kid with big ears. “He’s our man.”
“What’s his name?”
“Richard.”
We drank some more Diet Pepsi. Occasionally, a cold wind rocked the Mustang, whistling through the cracked windows.
