His unpleasantness extended far past the practice fields. The few grudging words he’d given Coach Zeller in the first meeting were virtually the only ones I’d heard him speak so far in camp. He was a mute in the locker room; at meals he kept his head down and shoveled food into his mouth so he could get out of there quickly; and during the afternoon break he read his fat book of Dickinson, sighing if people in his cube dared disrupt his concentration by horsing around. Bighearted players like Devonté excused Reshawn’s prickliness by saying it was the inevitable result of being burdened with the fame this kid had already lived with for four straight years. Reshawn was painfully shy, they claimed, and was so modest he hated praise. But most people just thought he was an asshole. White players called him a prima donna, while black players mocked his voice—an Oregonian non-accent. Jealous rumors began to proliferate. He used steroids, was why he was so big; he was actually twenty-five and was lying about his age. But just as had happened with the commentators who tried guessing why he’d committed to King, I didn’t hear anyone here suggest corruption had played a part in why he’d come. Even at King, the players took great pride in their team, and nobody wanted to entertain the possibility that the only way someone like Reshawn would have joined our program was by receiving tens of thousands of illicit dollars. If anything, players made the opposite interpretation and took Reshawn’s presence as a sign that our program was more attractive than people thought, that it had a secret value detectable by the most discerning sensibilities.
There were also more quotidian reasons why people didn’t suspect Reshawn. A player receiving under-the-table money was expected to show that off in some flashy way, but Reshawn was ascetic, wearing faded T-shirts, walking-around shoes with soles worn down to the soft sub-rubber, no necklaces or rings or earrings that I ever saw. And wouldn’t a player who received bribes own a car? Reshawn decidedly did not, and it was his constant need for a ride that led to our first conversation during camp.
It was the third day, Wednesday, and I was walking to my Saturn to drive to lunch when I found Reshawn standing next to my passenger side door. For all the superiority I felt toward him, for how morally bankrupt I thought he was, he was still the best football player I’d ever been around, and it was exciting to see him silently ask to sit in my passenger seat.
We got in, along with four more players who piled into the back. Reshawn looked out the window at the forest that separated West Campus from Central as we started for Training Table.
—My parents brought us a mini fridge for the dorm, I told him. Pyle’s letting me stash it in the equipment room.
He nodded, still looking out the window.
—Are you in all English classes this semester? I tried again.
—And Math 103.
That was the highest math level a freshman could take.
—I’m in Computer Science, I said.
—Bet you are.
—What?
He didn’t respond, but I wouldn’t let him off so easily.
—What’s that supposed to mean?
—It means it’s a jock class, he said. It means you’re taking the same shit everyone else is.
Fuck him. I could have said I was sixteen because I’d skipped a grade. Fuck him. I could have said I’d been in the gifted and talented track since I was in elementary school. Fuck him. I could have taken Math 103, if I’d wanted to.
I parked in the Training Table lot, and before I’d undone my seatbelt Reshawn slammed out of the car—no “thanks for the ride,” nothing. I trailed him across the parking lot and marveled at how much extra effort it must take to be a prick every waking moment.
When I entered Training Table, the veterans were chanting. Reshawn sullenly climbed onto a chair.
—Say your name!
—Reshawn McCoy.
—Speak UP!
—Reshawn McCoy, he repeated, not raising his voice one bit.
—You got a song for us, McCoy?! Reshawn looked down at his shoes.
—What you lookin’ there for?!
—Thought you was supposed to be a genius! Can’t memorize ten damn words?!
Reshawn sighed and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
Players squinted and tilted their heads, looking at one another to make sure their ears hadn’t malfunctioned. The room was so silent you could hear the cicadas outside.
—This motherfucker memorized the wrong thing!
—The fight song, McCoy. Not some fucking poem!
Reshawn had stopped. Maybe he’d gotten it out of his system, maybe now he would do what he was supposed to, what every veteran in that room had himself done freshman year. When he launched into the second line, there was an exasperated groan.
For—put them side by side—
As if the words weren’t odd enough, Reshawn was pausing at odd moments, sometimes at the end of a line, other times right in the middle. At first I thought he was struggling to remember the poem, but his voice was unhurried, his face still. Other players were sunk in their own puzzlement, and to look around the room was to see the collective momentarily reduced to its parts, each player trying to figure out by himself what Reshawn could mean by doing this, not to mention what the words themselves actually meant.
The one the other will contain.
It was enough. The parts cohered once again into sum, and before Reshawn could continue there rose
