Bleachers Read Online Free PDF Page B

far end of the bleachers. Their voices were barely audible.
    Silo opened another bottle and drained half of it.
    “When was the last time you saw Rake?” Blanchard Teague asked Neely.
    “A couple of days after my first surgery,” Neely said, and everyone was still. He was telling a story that had never been told before in Messina. “I was in the hospital. One surgery down, three to go.”
    “It was a cheap shot,” Couch mumbled, as if Neely needed to be reassured.
    “Damned sure was,” said Amos Kelso.
    Neely could see them, huddled in the coffee shops on Main Street, long sad faces, low grave voices as they replayed the late hit that instantly ruined the career of their all-American. A nurse told him she had never seen such an outpouring of compassion—cards, flowers, chocolates, balloons, artwork from entire classes of grade-schoolers. All from the small town of Messina, three hours away. Other than his parents and the Tech coaches, Neely refused all visitors. For eight long days he drowned himself in pity, aided mightily by as many painkillers as the doctors would allow.
    Rake slipped in one night, long after visiting hours were over. “He tried to cheer me up,”Neely said, sipping a beer. “Said knees could be rehabbed. I tried to believe him.”
    “Did he mention the ’87 championship game?” Silo asked.
    “We talked about it.”
    There was a long awkward pause as they contemplated that game, and all the mysteries around it. It was Messina’s last title, and that alone was a source rich enough for years of analysis. Down 31–0 at the half, roughed up and manhandled by a vastly superior team from East Pike, the Spartans returned to the field at A&M where thirty-five thousand fans were waiting. Rake was absent; he didn’t appear until late in the fourth quarter.
    The truth about what happened had remained buried for fifteen years, and, evidently, neither Neely, nor Silo, nor Paul, nor Hubcap Taylor were about to break the silence.
    In the hospital room Rake had finally apologized, but Neely had told no one.
    Teague and Couch said good-bye and jogged away in the darkness.
    “You never came back, did you?” Jaeger asked.
    “Not after I got hurt,” Neely said.
    “Why not?”
    “Didn’t want to.”
    Hubcap had been working quietly on a pint of something much stronger than beer. He’d said little, and when he spoke his tongue was thick. “People say you hated Rake.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “And he hated you.”
    “Rake had a problem with the stars,” Paul said. “We all knew that. If you won too many awards, set too many records, Rake got jealous. Plain and simple. He worked us like dogs and wanted every one of us to be great, but when guys like Neely got all the attention then Rake got envious.”
    “I don’t believe that,” Orley Short grunted.
    “It’s true. Plus he wanted to deliver the prizes to whatever college he happened to like at the moment. He wanted Neely at State.”
    “He wanted me in the Army,” Silo said.
    “Lucky you didn’t go to prison,” Paul said.
    “It ain’t over yet,” Silo said with a laugh.
    Another car rolled to a stop by the gate and its headlights went off. No door opened.
    “Prison’s underrated,” Hubcap said, and everyone laughed.
    “Rake had his favorites,” Neely said. “I wasn’t one of them.”
    “Then why are you here?” asked Orley Short.
    “I’m not sure. Same reason you’re here, I guess.”
    During Neely’s freshman year at Tech, he had returned for Messina’s homecoming game. In a halftime ceremony, they retired number 19. The standing ovation went on and on and eventually delayed the second half kickoff, which cost the Spartans five yards and prompted Coach Rake, leading 28–0, to start yelling.
    That was the only game Neely had watched since he left. One year later he was in the hospital.
    “When did they put up Rake’s bronze statue?” he asked.
    “Couple of years after they fired him,” Jaeger said. “The