The barn door squeaked when I pushed it open. I turned up the flow of gas on the lantern and walked in. When the light from the brilliant white mantle showered the inside of the barn, I stood back in wonder.
A shade barn was designed to hang and dry shade tobacco. On average, barns were fifty feet wide by a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet high—nearly the same size as a basketball gymnasium. They were vented on the sides, top and bottom, by hinged doors that ran horizontally along the length, intended to control the heat and humidity. Inside the barn, rafters crossed the entirety of the interior. Five feet apart, each ran the width of the barn, spanning its entire length from front door to back. The rafters started just overhead and climbed every four feet like ladders to the roof. The inside of the barn looked like a laundry rack for tobacco leaves, and a monkey would have had a heyday. For Wood and me, it was better than Disney World. We would climb the ladder to the first rafter and then pick our way like Spider-Man all the way to the far end without ever touching the ground.
Given the decline in shade farming, few barns remain in the South. You can find a few in Connecticut, but most have been disassembled board by board and sold for the value of the heart-pine lumber. Heart-pine is a unique feature of pine trees. Turpentine, a natural product of the tree—which is farmed and refined into kerosene or Pine-Sol or a thousand other things—resides in the fibers of the wood. It’s the sap. When cut, the sap remains, leaving a natural fire starter in the wood with almost the same ignition qualities as gasoline. On cold nights, I have dug up more than one pine stump out of the dirt, peeled away a small section of bark with my knife, lit the raw, exposed end of the root, and watched it burn like a torch for hours. And if you find the true heart of the pine, where the thickest sap resided, it will create a blowtorch sound when lit.
Given that the barns are constructed of what is essentially fire starter, it’s no wonder that when one of these barns catches fire, it makes quite an impression. There’s a very short window to stop it before it gets out of control. Within seconds, it can turn into a raging blaze. Best thing to do is back up and watch the show. You’ll seldom see its equal.
The aroma of manure, tobacco, earth, and turpentine, delivered in the suffocating packaging of humidity and heat, filled and reminded me as I walked in. It’d been a long time. And while the memories were sweet, they paled in comparison to those hanging inside.
Filling one third of the barn were posters, awards, plaques, game balls, jerseys, newspaper articles, every form of memorabilia ever associated with my career had been found, bought, uncovered, purchased, or stolen and hung on the inside walls, where it was accessible and viewable by absolutely no one other than Wood and Coach Ray. I climbed the rafters, rising in the heat, and hung the lantern. Thirty feet off the ground, I straddled the beam and viewed in amazement my own private hall of fame. One wall was covered in the WELCOME TO GARDI—HOME OF MATTHEW “THE ROCKET” RISING sign stolen from the city limits. On the ground below me, covered in dirt and manure, lay the head of my bronze statue, along with pieces of arms and elbows. I had no idea where this stuff had come from, who had collected it, and had never seen most of it, but sitting there I felt thrust back into a world from which I’d been banished and that I’d tried to forget.
I climbed another twenty feet to the top of the rafters and stared out the vents. The world around me was dark. Quiet. In the distance beyond the cabin, a train sounded. One of the things I’d always loved about Audrey was her resolve. Relentless and unwavering. But now that resolve was aimed at me, and rather than fighting for me, she was fighting me.
Below me, the door squeaked. A tall figure stepped into the lantern’s umbrella of light. He looked up and found me hanging in the rafters. “Mr. Rising? Sir?” The voice was young, deep, male, and I didn’t recognize it. I climbed down and dropped onto the dirt before him. Nearly eye level with me, his large hands held a well-worn football. He asked again. “Mr. Rising, sir?”
He was dressed in the uniform of St. Bernard’s. White button-down. Shirttail tucked in. Belt. Dark-blue pants. Tie. A good-looking, handsome kid. His skin color suggested that one of his parents was black and the other white. His features were distinct, chiseled, not much fat on him, pretty muscled.
He extended his hand. “Sir, my name is Dalton Rogers.”
I shook his hand. “Matthew.” His grip was strong, firm, and calloused.
He got right to the point. “Sir, I need some help.”
I glanced out the barn door. “Kid, they can put me back in jail for having this conversation.”
“Sir, I’ll sign a waiver or whatever. You can put me on video saying that I came to you. Do whatever. I just know that I need to fix a few things and Sister Lynn, she always said—”
“Sister who?”
“Sister Lynn. She always said that if you weren’t in prison, you’d be the best coach I could ever find, and now that you’re out and, well—”
Audrey’s middle name is Lynn.
I glanced down the road leading back to the cabin and on through the gate where the boom trucks were parked. “And what would you have me do for you?”
He mimicked a throwing motion with his right arm. “Help me.”
“Why?”
He tried to find an answer and couldn’t. “Sir, I’m—I don’t know. I just—I’d like to play in college and, since last season, things have gone from bad to worse, or even real bad. I can’t seem to—”
“I can’t help you.”
He looked confused. Like the person he was talking to didn’t match the image that someone else had created in his head. “But you said—”
“I said what?”
“You said you’d love to coach one day.”
My eyes narrowed. “When?”
He looked up above me, then at me. “After the Texas game, your sophomore year. And then when you beat Louisiana in Death Valley. You said after your pro career, or if one didn’t pan out, that you’d—”
He was right. I had said that, but the interviews he spoke of were fifteen years old and films of them weren’t just lying around. “Where’d you see these interviews?”
He pointed toward the school.
It wasn’t out of the ordinary that St. Bernard’s would have film of me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they still had all my high school films, but that’s high school. Not college. There’d be no reason for them to have film of me that contained both the game and postgame interviews. Unless someone donated them.
“You’ve watched film of me?”
Not feeling the need to say more, he simply nodded. “All your high school games.” Another nod. Followed by, “And college.”
“You’ve seen a few of my college films?”
He shook his head. “No. All of them.” A pause. “Maybe a hundred times.”
“You’ve seen my college films a hundred times?”
He nodded matter-of-factly. “Yes, sir. Sister Lynn and me. She—” He chuckled at what he thought was an embarrassing admission. “She loves football, and knows a pretty good bit about it too. She lets me into the archive at school and she’s even watched them with me, but she doesn’t let me check them out. She makes me watch them right there.”
After that one visit at the prison, Audrey disappeared, along with everything we owned—including the $27,000 left in our checking account. I had always assumed that she had emptied our house and pitched my belongings, including my film library, in the nearest Dumpster.
“You two have watched my films together?”
He nodded matter-of-factly.
“For how long?”
He held out his hand, level with the ground, about waist high. “Long as I can remember.”
I tested him. Starting off easy. “Who did we play third game of my freshman season?”
“Mississippi State. 42–20. You threw six TDs.”
“Junior year, what play did we use to start the fifth game of the season?”
He smiled. “Quarterback sneak. The safeties were playing twenty deep, so you audibled at the line and went eighty yards. 52–0.”
“Twenty back fade storm deep sticky weak.” He held up a finger. “Except Roderick Penzell ran a fade and not a post, which there’s no way for him to know that unless you read it in the defense and called it at the line, but the film doesn’t show that too well.”
He’s right. I had called it but not at the line. Only Roddy, Wood, and I knew the truth.
He continued. “Mr. Kneels asked you about that pass in your last interview before your arrest. And Sister Lynn—” He dropped his eyes and wouldn’t look at me. “Your wife.” He made eye contact. “She talked about it, too.” He turned, almost embarrassed. “And so did Roddy in a later interview, after you’d been locked up and he was playing with the Steelers.”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“Sister Lynn isn’t really a sister, but that’s what we all call her. She made me promise not to tell anyone about her, and you, ’cause… well, she just did and I never have. That is, until just now.” He tucked the ball beneath his arm. “Will you help me?”
I wanted to. I really did. I lifted my pant leg.
“Can’t.” I walked out in front of him. The thought of him living in my shadow for one second longer bothered me. I turned. “Can I give you one piece of advice?”
“Sure.”
“You’d do well to remember that I didn’t make me. All that stuff—I was just being me.”
He smirked. “You said the same thing to Jim Kneels.”
“True then. True now. Good luck to you.” I left him alone in the dark of the barn and returned to the cabin, where I kept looking over my shoulder. I laid awake a long time.