CHAPTER SEVEN

The town sat a block away. I could see the flashing BAIL BONDS sign of Wood’s office. Thirteen years prior, the city council had passed a resolution declaring the first day of college football season “Matthew Rising Day.” They had also commissioned a sign to be built in my honor. And because they were so proud of one of their own, they’d sought to do so with permanence. The base was brick and the sign was the size of a Ford truck. It read:

HOME OF MATTHEW “ROCKET” RISING

THE WINNINGEST, MOST-DECORATED QUARTERBACK IN THE HISTORY OF HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL

TWO-TIME HEISMAN TROPHY WINNER

THREE-TIME NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP WINNER

THREE-TIME BCS MVP

Mounted on an impenetrable and permanent foundation, the sign climbed some twenty feet in the air. To further embarrass me, and at considerable taxpayer expense, the town had commissioned the casting of a larger-than-life bronze statue that depicted me in midthrow, just before I released the ball. Including the base, the statue stood ten feet tall and weighed well over a ton.

On the day of the unveiling, surrounded by the media and most everybody who lived in or around Gardi, the mayor had handed me a gold-plated key to the city and asked me to say a few words. That night, Audrey and I climbed up the back of the sign and sat on top, our feet dangling across the top of the T in Rocket, and ate raspberries.

The shine wore off quickly.

During the trial, someone had spray-painted #1 PICK IN THE NFL DRAFT AND CERTIFIED SEX OFFENDER. After my conviction, the city council was faced with a dilemma: what to do with the sign. And given the graffiti, the situation couldn’t wait. In reaction, the council voted to remove the sign, but an argument ensued regarding the statue. Both sides agreed that I’d embarrassed the town, but one half felt that, due to the expense, the town should simply rename the statue in honor of “the football player” and sell the idea as a faceless testimony to the greatness of the game. Make lemonade, so to speak. This argument won, so the losing side quickly gave the winning side what they’d asked for. Under the cover of dark, somebody hooked a chain to the statue. But given the zeal with which it was cast, it proved far more stout than believed; so when the truck sped away, the chain tightened, the body did not give, and the chain snapped off the head. By then, people were sick of talking about it and nobody really cared if the statue had a head or not. Most thought it fitting, so they left it.

Over the years, vandals had spray-painted their dissatisfaction with me across various portions of my body. Further, someone had returned with a chain and snapped off both my throwing arm at the shoulder and my balance arm just above the elbow. To finish me off, someone had taken a cement cutter or chainsaw or something and cut deep grooves and gashes in the torso and legs. A fitting depiction. As I stared at my headless, armless, stubby, carved body, a gentle rain began to fall.

Welcome home, Matthew.

The town of Gardi grew up and around shade tobacco—cigar wrapper leaf. Flourishing in its exportation, the growing season began in May where young plants were tied to guide wires that lead the plants outward and upward. Cloth tents made from gauzy cheesecloth were then spread over the plants to increase humidity and protect them from direct sunlight. Doing so created a more stable climate for the plant but a brutal environment within which to work. Farmers and their workers spent the summer tending the plants, pulling off shoots and tobacco worms, then harvesting in late summer. Once gathered, the leaves were sewn together so that they could be strung on a series of laths and hung to cure in the rafters of huge barns that were on average fifty feet wide by a hundred and fifty feet long. Wood’s family were also cattle operators, as the manure was used to fertilize the shade. To feed the cattle, they planted corn and peanuts and fed the cows inside the barns where he used the peanut hulls as bedding. On average, three hundred tons of manure would cover about twenty acres of shade.

Shade farming peaked in the 1950s and ’60s, with the last hurrah being 1961. Squeezed between foreign competition and severe drought, most farmers went broke—including the Jacksons—leaving only the land.

And Wood’s barn.

When tobacco died, two opposing forces remained. The first took up residence at Amen Corner, or the intersection of Main and Church Streets, where the First Baptist Church, Main Street Methodist, Christ Church Presbyterian, and the Gardi Church of Christ sat facing and quietly arguing with one another. The opposing force, or the redheaded stepchild, took up some fifty acres on the outskirts of town—adjacent to Wood’s property.

St. Bernard’s of Clairvoux was a church, school, orphanage, monastery, and convent that lay relatively sequestered and forgotten behind a twelve-foot-high brick wall until about twenty-five years ago, when one of the priests decided to give the orphans an outlet for all their energy and field a football team. The balance of power at Amen Corner remained relatively unchanged and undiscussed for about three years until the Saints of St. Bernard’s starting winning. And win they did, so much so that the good neighbors at Amen Corner quietly pitched in, helped build a stadium at St. Bernard’s, and became rather vocal supporters of a good Catholic education. We used to sit in history class and marvel at all the wars fought in the name of God and religion when all the world needed was a grassy field, a few sweaty boys, and a piece of pigskin to garner the peace. And while there was much disagreement as to the Blessed Mother Mary, the actual nature of the elements during communion, the role of the sacraments, what happened during baptism and the “correct” way to perform it, who would end up in heaven, and where God resided on Sunday morning, there was unanimous consent as to where He spent His Friday nights. And on those Friday nights, those blue-haired beauties from the Baptist church, those sans-a-belt-slack Methodists, those teetotaling Presbyterians, and those non-clapping, non-singing, quiet-as-a-church-mouse Church of Christ members got along fabulously with the Mother-Mary-adoring, rosary-reciting, bead-counting, genuflecting, Jesus’s-body-eating-and-blood-drinking Catholics.

Between St. Bernard’s and Amen Corner sat the relatively inconsequential courthouse. That is, until my four-week trial put Gardi on the national map. While Judge Black held the gavel, the jury of my peers—most of whom I’d known a long time—looked down their noses at me and the courthouse dispensed the justice that the country was calling for. And while the members of Amen Corner heard from God and supported the verdict, the balance in power did not shift. As long as the lights lit up on Friday night, the Catholics held the power—all given to them by a group of smash-mouth boys with dreams in their eyes.

Wood’s property shared one border with St. Bernard’s, the other with a government-owned junkyard that covered another almost fifty acres called “the graveyard.” The government stopped dropping junk there twenty years ago, but prior to that it had been in use for nearly sixty years as a final resting place for broken-down and discarded vehicles of any type. Everything from huge cranes once used to build skyscrapers to World War II planes to dump trucks, tractor trailers, old Chevys, fire trucks, and barges; we even found a tank tread when I was a kid. When the government ran out of lateral space, they began stacking vertically. Over the decades, that stacking created a maze of thousands of cars and equipment, piled on top of one another. In some places, the piles stood thirty and forty feet high. During the construction of one of the federal highways, the government used the property as a dump for fill dirt. That left a scalable mound mixed with bumpers, hood ornaments, truck bumpers, and old Fords that became affectionately referred to as “Rust Bucket Mountain.” Or simply “the Bucket.” The back side was too steep to walk or run up. It had to be climbed hand over hand—literally stepping from fender well to door handle—while the front side was the length of a highway on-ramp, only about three times steeper. And other than the NO TRESPASSING—VIOLATORS WILL BE IMPRISONED signs, it made for a magical playground. I, along with countless other boys, trespassed daily, sometimes several times a day, and climbed all over that hill. From the top—with an elevation of maybe a hundred and fifty feet—you could stare down on the football field and get a decent view of the game.

Which we did.

I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head and walked the railroad tracks west. Most mornings during high school, I’d wake before class and go for a run. And on most of those mornings, I’d run these tracks. Knowing I needed to increase my foot speed, I made myself step on every railroad tie. Quickly. Lifting my knees, forcing me to take short, quick steps, only landing on my toes. Then, in an attempt to lengthen my stride and gain some strength and endurance—sort of another gear—I’d step on every other one. Lastly, when I was trying to put some spring and explosion in my calves, I’d hop every third. This repetitive, monotonous torture drilled strength into my stomach, power into my arms, neck, and back. I did this for miles at a time.

Hence, I knew these tracks pretty well.

I climbed up the bank and was met by the smell of creosote and spent diesel. Slowly, I began stepping from railroad tie to railroad tie. Feeling my way. Pretty soon, I was jogging. The muscles in my legs and core, the ones I’d once pounded into submission that grew up under the stress and strain of constant testing, remembered what freedom and power and joy felt like and sprung to life.

I ran hard, bumping up against but not crossing my redline. As I did, my body woke, my lungs opened wide, and the memory of running without fences returned. Having starved so long, my body feasted on air and space not dissected by razor wire. Sweat soaked me, flung from my fingertips, and the miles clicked by.

After an hour, the moon had climbed high and full, throwing a shadow across the Bucket and the light poles of the stadium that spiraled up out of the pines lining the tracks. Dark, unlit, silent sentinels, they stood guard over a quiet field, waiting for somebody to throw the switch and flash them to life.

I slowed to a walk, my heart pounding, lungs and muscles burning, smiling over the thought of a blister on my right foot and left heel. Given different circumstances, I’d have described my feeling as euphoric. I scurried under the fence, rattling the NO TRESPASSING sign, and wound my way through a maze of hundreds, if not thousands, of junk cars to the mountain. Looking up, little had changed. Grass and weeds and even a few small trees grew up out of the cracks and crevices. I climbed up the back side, picking my way, hand over hand, over old Cadillacs, worn-out Chevrolets, and forgotten Fords. We used to stand up here, sing along with David Wilcox, and dance on the graves of “tail fin roll locomotives and rusty old American dreams” because after their owners were done with them, this is where they’d all come to die. When I reached the top, I stared down on the dented and mangled hood of an old Buick where we huddled as kids. We had poked holes in it to let the rain drain where our butts sat. “Rising Field,” so named during my tenure in college, spread out before me, and the breeze lifted to me, bringing with it the smell of cut grass and the memory that I once had dreamed.