The stadium looked as if the Barnum & Bailey Circus had come to town.
The high-profile trial of a star athlete was a three-ring circus. But a football game featuring star athletes on two top-ranked high school teams on a Friday night in Texas was the biggest circus of them all. It was late October, and the heat and humidity of Houston had finally broken. The air was cool and filled with excitement and the sound of the bands competing from opposing bleachers across fifty-three and one-third yards of manicured green grass that rivaled the fairways at the country club. Twenty-five thousand parents and students and lovers of football filled the stands; thousands more without tickets stood outside the perimeter fence at the south end zone to watch the game on the video screen in the north end zone. Frank Tucker had a ticket. Two. Normally, he would have been put on a waiting list and waited at least five years to purchase season tickets. But parents of the players got moved to the front of the line. A perk of your son playing football on the number one ranked team in the state of Texas.
This public high school enrolled four thousand students in grades nine through twelve. Two thousand were boys. A football team played eleven boys on offense and eleven on defense. All the coaches needed were twenty-two athletes out of a pool of two thousand. They found them. Big white boys from working-class families, fast black boys from the 'hood, and a rich quarterback from River Oaks. The public school that served River Oaks also served the Fourth Ward. The inner city. Blacks and Latinos. Two-thirds of the students were minorities; one-third was white. One hundred percent were poor. The rich kids were in private schools. But not William Tucker. Because his father did not want his son to hate him. Football was his dream. For the other players, it was their way out of the Fourth Ward.
Cheerleaders in uniforms jumped and somersaulted and performed stunts on the sideline. Students roamed the open area around the home concession stand. Their parents sat in the stands.
It was not an Academy crowd.
The girls wore body-hugging clothes that seemed more befitting of street hookers than high school students. The white boys wore sweatshirts bearing college logos—UT and A&M, not Harvard and MIT—and the black boys wore hoodies and their pants below their butts revealing colorful undershorts. The parents did not wear the latest from Neiman Marcus but instead the latest from Nike and Adidas, as if they all had endorsement contracts. Sweat suits and sneakers and football jerseys. Caps on backwards and tattoos on their arms and ankles and lower backs. Pickups and SUVs made in America filled the parking lot. Video cameras made in Asia filled the stands; the parents captured their sons' glory days on tape for college coaches or posterity.
Frank stood along the sideline fence. Alone and without a video camera. He didn't know any of the other parents and Liz refused to come; this multicultural and working-class environment was too far below her social standing. She had encouraged William to transfer to this public school so he'd become a star, but she didn't want to personally witness his path to stardom, similar to wanting to be a politician but not be willing to dive into the filthy muck called fundraising. Frank had grown up in just such a working-class environment, but he did not feel at ease. The times and attire had changed. The people had changed. Many of the dads still worked in the petrochemical plants that lined the Houston Ship Channel and the moms at jobs that served the industry, but they did not seem like the moms and dads he had remembered as a boy. Those moms and dads seemed like TV parents, like Ward and June Cleaver. These moms and dads seemed like the Osbournes.
"Fuck you, asshole!" one of the dads yelled to the referees.
"Not exactly a River Oaks polo crowd, is it?"
Sam Jenkins, the college scout, stood next to Frank. He smoked a cigar and remained loyal to Old Spice. Polo was in fact played in River Oaks.
"Nope."
Sam laughed. "This is a football crowd, Frank. You don't get a lot of JDs and MBAs and PhD's at a high school football game, except at the Academy, and what those boys do doesn't qualify as football. This is your working class. NFL is built on the working class and Latinos. Shit, you been to a Texans game?"
The Texans were Houston's pro football team.
"No."
William followed the Cowboys, so he had not pressured Frank to take him to the Texans' games.
"Like going to a bullfight in Juarez, everyone speaking Spanish. And in the high-dollar seats. They don't have health insurance, but they'll pay brokers a thousand bucks to watch a pro football game. For the lower class, football's an escape from their fucked-up lives."
"You're a psychologist now?"
Sam shrugged. "Part of being a scout, figuring people out, what makes them tick. You see a boy, he's got all the physical tools, but you've got to figure his mind out, does he have ice in his veins, does he burn with the competitive desire, does he want to win more than live, does he have the confidence to be the man."
William's new team was big, strong, and fast. Big, strong white boys and fast black boys. They ran a pro offense. William had thrown thirty-two passes in the first half and completed twenty-seven for two hundred seventy-five yards and four touchdowns. He had also run for another seventy-five yards and a touchdown. Eight games into his sophomore season, William Tucker was the top college prospect in the nation. He was sixteen years old.
"You did the right thing, Frank."
"Did I?"
They had gone all in on William Tucker's career. A big public school with a pro-style offense and an indoor practice arena. A personal trainer and a nutritionist. An ex-Olympian speed coach. Quarterback school. Seven-on-seven passing tournaments. Tens of thousands of dollars. Frank Tucker had nurtured his son's gift, no expense spared. It had seemed so … American. To spend whatever it took—whether Ivy League tuition or speed training by a gold medal winner—to buy your children success. A better life. Their dreams. But, despite his misgivings, Frank had to confess that it had worked. William's improvement over the last two years was nothing less than remarkable. His skills soared. His size, his strength, and his speed increased dramatically. His footwork and throwing motion were now textbook. His vision of the field—twenty-one other players who seemed to be running around chaotically—was both omniscient and laser focused. His recognition of the pass coverage and thus which of his receivers would be open on the play was instant and unerring.
"He's a hell of a quarterback," Sam said.
Perhaps his son was born to play football just as Mozart was born to write symphonies and Bobby Fischer to play chess. Perhaps we are who we were meant to be. Pushing a boy to be a football player when he wasn't born for it, that's wrong. But allowing a boy to be what he was born to be—how can that be wrong? Some people were born to be doctors and scientists and perhaps even lawyers? Why not athletes? Why not football players?
"I've kept tabs on William," Sam said. "Saw him at the quarterback schools."
From his expression, Frank could tell that Sam was about to offer more career advice for his son. He gestured to the field where the teams were returning for the second half. The boys pounded their chests and held their arms out to the fans like victorious gladiators. Sam shook his head.
"People on TV talk about kids having no self-esteem. Complete bullshit. Kids today got self-esteems the size of fucking Wyoming. Self-esteem oozes from every pore on their bodies. They been told they're special since the day they popped out of mama and a hundred times a day since. They believe it. They haven't done a goddamn thing in their lives, but they know they're special. So when they fail at sports or school or life, it's not because they didn't work hard enough or they're just not smart enough or good enough. No, they're special, so it's got to be someone else's fault. They didn't fail. Someone made them fail. Now we've got an entire generation of fucked-up narcissists 'cause their mamas told them they're special."
"What's your point, Sam?"
"My point is, it's not bullshit with William. He really is special."
Sam smoked his cigar.
"Game program says William's six-three and one-ninety. That true?"
"It is."
"Shoe size?"
"Sixteen."
Sam grunted in obvious admiration of William's shoe size.
"And no tattoos."
"He's afraid of needles."
Sam chuckled. "Everyone's got something that'll make them sweat. I hate snakes."
Another puff on his cigar, which he then pointed at the field. At William.
"Time he's a senior, he'll be six-five, two-twenty. He's number one on my list. Hell, he's number one on every scout's list. He'll have his choice of schools."
"We've already gotten dozens of recruiting letters."
"You'll get more."
Frank sighed. "I wanted him to go to the Ivy League, but that's not what he wants. His dream is to play D-One. So, what, do we go to the schools to meet the coaches?"
"Nope. They'll come to William. Like wise men to baby Jesus."
Sam breathed out cigar smoke.
"William's life is about to change, Frank. Big time."
Becky Tucker stood down the sideline from her dad and a man smoking a cigar. She was eighteen and a senior cheerleader. The last few months, as the team had won more games and William had become the star quarterback, she had begun hearing rumors at school about her brother and the head cheerleader. Rhonda. She was a senior, too. She was not a virgin.
Not even close.
The thought of her little brother having sex with Rhonda made her want to throw up. He might be as big as a man, but he was still just a boy. And sophomore boys didn't need sex with senior girls. At the Academy, she had never heard of anyone having sex. Of course, some kids had to be doing it, but those who were didn't talk about it. At this school, that was all they talked about. Who was screwing whom. (Although no one said "whom" at a public school.) And they took cell phone pictures of their body parts and sexted each other.
Gross.
Becky had never bonded with the other girls. They were different. They were not girls. They were women. Sexually active women. Rhonda and the other cheerleaders were huddled together down the sideline, waving to the players on the sideline and then giggling. Gossiping. No doubt about who was screwing whom. Rhonda waved at the players. At a player.
"William!"
Becky saw her brother turn to Rhonda … and Rhonda blow him a kiss. That did it. Becky's anger rose inside her until she felt as if she might explode. She marched down the sideline and to the girls, put her hands on her hips, and glared at Rhonda, the bitch.
"Are you screwing my brother?"
Rhonda smiled.
"Yes."
All the girls had answered as one.