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orders from Rake. He drove the team bus, cleaned uniforms, maintained equipment, and, most important, supplied Rake with all the gossip.
    The field lights were mounted on four poles, two on each side. Rabbit flipped a switch. The lights on the south end of the visitors’ side came on, ten rows of ten lights each. Long shadows fell across the field.
    “Been doing that for a week now,” Paul said. “Rabbit leaves them on all night. His version of a vigil. When Rake dies, the lights go out.”
    Rabbit lurched and wobbled back to the clubhouse, gone for the night. “Does he still live there?” Neely asked.
    “Yep. He has a cot in the attic, above the weight room. Calls himself a night watchman. He’s crazy as hell.”
    “He was a damned good math teacher,” Couch said.
    “He’s lucky he can still walk,” Paul said, and everyone laughed. Rabbit had become partially crippled during a game in 1981 when, forreasons neither he nor anyone else would ever grasp, he had sprinted from the sideline onto the field, into the path of one Lightning Loyd, a fast and rugged running back, who later played at Auburn, but who, on that night, was playing for Greene County, and playing quite brilliantly. With the score tied late in the third quarter, Loyd broke free for what appeared to be a long touchdown run. Both teams were undefeated. The game was tense, and evidently Rabbit snapped under the pressure. To the horror (and delight) of ten thousand Messina faithful, Rabbit flung his bony and brittle body into the arena, and somewhere around the thirty-five-yard line, he collided with Lightning. The collision, while near fatal for Rabbit, who at the time was at least forty years old, had little impact on Loyd. A bug on the windshield.
    Rabbit was wearing khakis, a green Messina sweatshirt, a green cap that shot skyward and came to rest ten yards away, and a pair of pointed-toe cowboy boots, the left one of which was jolted free and spun loose while Rabbit was airborne. People sitting thirty rows up swore they heard Rabbit’s bones break.
    If Lightning had continued his sprint, the controversy would have been lessened considerably. But the poor kid was so shocked that he glanced over his shoulder to see who and what he had just run over, and in doing so lost his balance. It took fifteen yards for him to complete his fall, and when he came to rest somewhere around the twenty-yard line the field was covered with yellow flags.
    While the trainers huddled over Rabbit and debated whether to call for an ambulance or a minister, the officials quickly awarded the touchdown to Greene County, a decision that Rake argued with for a moment then conceded. Rake was as shocked as anyone, and he was also concerned about Rabbit, who hadn’t moved a muscle since hitting the ground.
    It took twenty minutes to gather Rabbit up and place him gently on the stretcher and shove him into an ambulance. As it drove away, ten thousand Messina fans stood and applauded with respect. The folks from Greene County, uncertain as to whether they too should applaud or boo, just sat quietly and tried to digest whatthey had seen. They had their touchdown, but the poor idiot appeared to be dead.
    Rake, always the master motivator, used the delay to incite his troops. “Rabbit’s hittin’ harder than you clowns,” he growled at his defense. “Let’s kick some ass and take the game ball to Rabbit!”
    Messina scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter and won easily.
    Rabbit survived too. His collarbone was broken and three lower veterbrae were cracked. His concussion was not severe, and those who knew him well claimed they noticed no additional brain damage. Needless to say, Rabbit became a local hero. At the annual football banquet thereafter Rake awarded a Rabbit Trophy for the Hit-of-the-Year.
    The lights grew brighter as dusk came to an end. Their eyes refocused in the semi-lit darkness of Rake Field. Another, smaller group of old Spartans had materialized at the