CG: Yes ma’am. I find myself rereading it just about every day.
CALLER: And the question I have is, I was hoping for advice you might have for my sons, to go out and help their community.
CG: That’s a hell of a—oops, I can probably be a little cleaner after Ms. Anita reminded us of works, can’t I? Let me say that that gives us a fine segue to bring up something you wanted to mention tonight, Coach.
GZ: Sure does, Carvell. Friday evenin’, the team’s gonna be headin’ over to the pediatrics wing of King Hospital to visit some very special kids. It tells you what kind of young man we got in Reshawn that he came up to my office last week and said he was so overwhelmed by people’s response to what his mama’s goin’ through that he wanted to give somethin’ back, to the community. So, like I said, we’ll be at Pediatrics this Friday. If you’d like to donate, you can go to their website.
CG: Amazing. Just—amazing. All right, Octavio from Siler City.
With twice as many challenging classes as I’d ever taken and a hundredfold more football responsibilities than last year, I enjoyed only a few waking hours with Thao, late at night and early in the morning—times I had no desire whatsoever to ruin with the fights and misunderstandings and rushed explanations my confession would inevitably occasion. I would tell him. I would. Just later today. Just tomorrow. Just the day after that.
Meanwhile, Chase and I were finding excuses to be alone. We left class together and ended up walking the length of West; we intended to drive to Training Table and found ourselves crossing the county line as we traded stories about our lives as ambitious high school athletes who’d had desperate crushes on teammates, discussed the special exhaustion born of endless vigilance, and how that exhaustion gets stacked with all your other tiredness and puts you at a distinct disadvantage with your straight competitors. I talked about Coach Johannsen obsessively, while Chase talked about his father. There was one anecdote in particular he circled back to again and again. He was eleven, and his father took him on a day trip to Fernandina Beach, outside Jacksonville. This was the busiest, most ambitious period of Mr. McGerrin’s career, when his mania to build his fortune kept him at the office from long before Chase woke until long after Chase went to sleep, and outings like this were rare for father and son. They got to Fernandina Beach early and spent the day swimming in the warm ocean, eating the fried chicken and potato salad Chase’s mother had packed, and, best of all, standing in the sand and throwing a football, with Chase paying close attention to his father’s instructions on how to grip the ball’s laces, how to pretend to brush the ball against the top of his head just before he released. They were throwing the ball one last round that afternoon when Mr. McGerrin noticed something down the beach. He beckoned his son to come over, and Chase ran as fast as his young legs could carry him (he still dreamt about running, the sand sliding beneath his bare feet, preventing him from getting to his father). When Chase reached him, Mr. McGerrin took a knee, draped his arm around Chase’s shoulders, and used the football to point to where the sand was being darkened by the rising tide. Two young men strolled there, wearing nothing but a matching pair of Speedos. Mr. McGerrin said, “You see those two, son? Those are queers.” Said it matter-of-factly, as if showing his child a seagull.
Mr. McGerrin flew up to Blenheim the week before the Notre Dame game, and after practice Chase invited me to have a beer with the two of them. We drove to a hole in the wall in downtown Blenheim that Mr. McGerrin was fond of, a place called Dombey’s with thick iron grates over the windows and a balding, portly white man behind the bar who spoke in a Cockney accent.
—Have a goooood feeling about next Saturday, Mr. McGerrin said.
We carried our pints to a booth in the corner. We sat—Mr.
McGerrin, then Chase, then me—and raised our beers to toast King Football.
—How long are you here, Dad? Chase asked.
—Tomorrow night. The Crown Committee’s touring the third floor of the Hay in the morning, and then we have a meeting over at Town Hall.
Mr. McGerrin’s alcohol tolerance was undiminished; we had been sitting there all of a minute and his pint was already half gone.
—Meeting the mayor about a redevelopment project, he continued. We’ve put together a consortium. Real estate, architecture, design.
Mr. McGerrin took a pen from his computer bag and used the underside of his coaster to diagram the consortium’s plan: The red brick warehouses downtown once used to store tobacco would be transformed into high-end condominiums; here you’d have a row of the kind of upscale shops that had once been the rule at the Blenheim Mall; there you’d get fancy restaurants for King parents who were visiting. A convention center, a multiplex, a greenway that would repurpose a mile-long stretch of abandoned railroad tracks.
—I love this place, he said, meaning the bar we were sitting in, though he lowered his voice so the bartender couldn’t hear. We used to come here after games, and that same guy used to serve us, if you can believe it. But you can’t lure tourists to a place with your old college drinking memories. I need to move on—Blenheim needs to move on. Forget Charleston, Atlanta, Nashville. Blenheim can become the cultural hub of the South. And don’t think that’s not relevant to the program. The more attractive you make this city, the better recruits we get.
Mr. McGerrin stopped, smiling at himself.
—Can’t turn it off, can I? What were we talking
