CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Before every game, I, along with my coaches and players, would watch film and then piece together a strategy of what we thought would work against the opponent. It’s what we hoped would happen. We called it a game plan. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. When it didn’t, it was up to me to read where the defense was beating us and call an audible. That was my job. And it was something I was good at—at one time.

The problem with a game plan is that you never knew if it would work until you were in the game.

Wood would do his part. Roddy his. Now the wait began. Would they show? I had no idea. Needing to clear my head, I shoved my hands in my pockets and struck out on a walk. The night had turned cool, or at least cooler, and it felt good. It smelled like football. Kicking up dust in front of me, I remembered something my dad had told me a long time ago: You can only control what you can control. Don’t worry about what you can’t. Won’t change anything.

A while later I found myself staring at the shade barn. The moon was high and bright. Casting our shadows below us. Below me, Tux growled. The hair standing up on his back. In the distance, I saw someone with a flashlight walking across the field en route to the barn.

I cradled Tux, quieted him, and we followed at a distance. She opened a side door and strode in. We crept in through an end door and opposite her, out of sight and sound. Her flashlight landed on one of several boxes stacked on a wall. She lifted the lid off the box, leaned over it, rifled through its contents, and finally pulled something out. She held it up in front of her, put the lid back on the box, and returned out the same door she’d come in. Before she left, she straightened a picture on a wall, glanced quickly around with her flashlight, and disappeared out the same door she’d come in.

In Audrey’s absence, I pushed open the door and stood staring up at all that I’d once accomplished while Tux sniffed the dirt and peed on all the support timbers. I took my time, sifting through boxes and staring at the displays on the walls. The memories flooded. Old cleats, jerseys, shoulder pads, helmets, game balls, awards, framed listings of achievements and records, newspaper articles, magazine covers. Each memory was tied to a sweet place in me, but when I walked up close and drank from the spigot, the aftertaste was bitter. As a disconnected observer, I examined my life, and when it struck me, I didn’t fight it. The sum of my life accounted for nothing. A forgotten dustbin in south Georgia. And without Audrey, I’d done nothing. I stood among the rubble and ruins of a world that had long since crumbled around me.

I opened the front and rear barn doors and then cranked open the vents along the lower walls, creating a vigorous draft. Standing in the middle felt like an elevator shaft lying on its side. I poured the kerosene around the base of the timber and lit the match. I’d always loved that smell. The kerosene caught and began licking up the side of the wood. Within seconds, it’d climbed to the roof and was crawling along the underside to the far end.

I turned from the fire, picked up Tux, and began walking away. Flames climbed out of the barn, showered me in heat, and cast a bronze shadow on the road before me. A quarter mile away, I turned and watched as the flames lit up the night sky, showering the air in sparks, heat, and the residue of memory. In less than five minutes, the insatiable appetite of the fire had consumed the barn, which had crumbled and filled the air around me in flittering ash. Out of fuel, the fire receded into a pile of heat and cinders. By morning, there’d be little left.

Just a black stain on the face of the earth.