Coach Johannsen pinged between Mom and Dad—alternately sentimental and ecstatic. Up to then, the fanciest outfit I’d seen him wear was a pair of faded blue jeans and a stretched-out polo shirt, but that night he was in dark slacks, a pressed white oxford shirt, and the gold Wyoming class ring he kept polished to a high shine. He hugged me more times that evening than he had in the decade I’d known him, and when hugging wasn’t an option he would watch me with a pride so intense I’d have to look away. He’d brought three bottles of merlot, and over the course of dinner I watched his teeth darken with the wine.
My parents called it a night, leaving Coach Johannsen and me to sit at the table. Soon Coach drifted into the past, reminiscing about his own freshman year of college, how Laramie had seemed like the fanciest place on the planet. He told me playing-days stories I’d never heard, as well as about the thrilling, out-of-body experience of sitting in his off-campus apartment while he got the call about the NFL draft. I perked up, thinking I would finally learn why he hadn’t played for the Jets; but when he finished talking about the draft he grew quiet and licked his lips, staring at the empty bottles arrayed on the table.
I didn’t want him sad, not tonight. I thought I could cheer him up by telling him about the stripper party, which I’d kept secret since I returned from Blenheim. I cast the story in a humorous light, but it didn’t have the intended effect. Coach Johannsen only got graver as I spoke, and when I told him what happened to Charlie, he stood unsteadily and asked me to drive him home.
A blizzard had swept through the state earlier that week, and though the strong Colorado sun had melted away most of the snow, the storm system wasn’t quite done. Violent gusts lashed the long blond grass that lined the roads’ shoulders, ripping tumble-weeds from their roots and sending them skittering across the pavement. The wind knocked my dad’s small Dodge Colt from side to side, forcing me to white-knuckle the steering wheel. Coach Johannsen calmly watched the dark shape of the Rockies fill the windshield as we drove west.
I thought I heard him say something.
—Coach?
He used the hand crank to roll down his window. He lifted his face to the cold air, wind blasting through his thinning red hair.
—That black kid’s got nothing on you, he said.
I might have disliked Reshawn, but I’d seen the highlights they’d shown during his Signing Day broadcast. He and I were two different species.
—He’s pretty good, Coach.
—No, Johannsen said, pushing my arm, which was the last thing I needed while driving in this wind. You’re going to show people when you get there. It’s like Zeller said. You are … you’re a diamond.
We pulled into his condo’s parking lot, where leftover sand laid down for the blizzard whirled in little eddies. I parked in front of Coach Johannsen’s unit.
—Were you listening? he said.
—Yeah, Coach. I’m a diamond.
He unbuckled his seatbelt, but only so he could face me more fully.
—You can play at King. And you can go to the League. But listen to me, Miles. People are gonna tell you college is when you’re supposed to open up. That … that you can be the person you can’t be at home. Bullshit. There are no second chances in football. You have one chance.
He was holding up his index finger to reinforce that number—one.
—Do you want me to help you get upstairs?
—Listen to me, goddamn it! He paused, breathing hard.
—You got the rest of your life to be what you are. Life is long. Too fucking long. You just keep making football your love. And love—love can come after.
I realized I was clasping the steering wheel so hard my hands were starting to tremble. Every time I thought Coach Johannsen had intimated he knew I was gay—a glance, an oddly slanted laugh—I had dismissed it as wishful thinking. He would hate me if he knew, would never talk to me again, abandon me, scorn me. But he knew. He’d known. And understanding this now was at once exhilarating and dreadful. Exhilarating because he seemed to be telling me he wasn’t disgusted, that he was willing to sit and breathe not eight inches from where I sat and breathed, that he had been my greatest advocate for years even though he’d known. And dreadful because I had been convinced I was an expert at hiding myself and was now being told I was anything but—that I was giving off signals that were invisible to me or, worse, had fooled myself into thinking weren’t signals at all.
—Yes sir, I said.
I released the wheel and softly exhaled, hoping he would sit with me for a while. But he opened the door and gripped the top of the frame with both hands, clumsily hauling himself out of the car. He slammed the door and stuck his fists into his pockets as he hunched through the wind.
I remained parked there, trying to decide whether he had meant to slam the door.
TWO
That summer my parents surprised me with a used Saturn station wagon painted the color of butterscotch. They called the car my reward for winning a scholarship, but I knew the real reason they’d bought it was that a thousand bucks for a pending junker was much cheaper than flying me back and forth between Colorado and North Carolina over the next four years. Dad was still grinding away at temp jobs, while Mom had traded her harassing court gig for a daycare service she was struggling to get up and running out of our living room. But I didn’t care why they’d bought it. I
