Hangman's Game (37 page)

But for the most part I am enjoying my enforced downtime. My mother and Aaron have rented an apartment in the Jefferson for the month, and they bought a small outdoor barbecue and set it up on my balcony. She grills lunch here almost every afternoon—turkey burgers or chicken sausage or fish. Some days, I smell the charcoal and I ride the sense memories back to the summers of my childhood, when my mom would grill at the house we would rent for a couple of weeks on the shores of Lake Cayuga.

Then I see Aaron sitting on my sofa, reading
The Atlantic
magazine while absent-mindedly scratching his inner thigh, and I jolt back to the present.

I have been receiving people just about every day—Freddie, Jessica, and at least half the Sentinels roster have dirtied my rugs over the last few weeks. My teammates freely describe me with a word I have come to loathe—
hero
. It fits so poorly with what I have learned about what happened out in the woods, on what Freddie now likes to refer to as the Night of the Punter.

In Willie Reckherd I know that I confronted not a man gone bad, but a mind gone wrong. I could see it his eyes that night, when he came at me in his underwear, swinging his blades, biting my throat. Science has since confirmed it.

My kick snapped the neck of Willie Reckherd. He died instantly. The autopsy afterward revealed extensive brain damage, believed to be the result of having sustained multiple head injuries while playing the game. His thoughts had darkened, and he had lost his impulse control. I could not celebrate what I had done to Wee Willie because the man wasn't evil. He was injured.

And how did he receive this injury? By living by the same creed that I and so many other players did, that you play through the hurt.
It's just pain
.

With many former players, brain damage leads to suicide. In the case of Willie Reckherd, he turned his violence outward—with his choice of target becoming more inevitable, the more I learned about his final months.

Rabidly competitive all his life, Willie has been a demanding restaurant boss in the best of times. But in the past couple of years at the Rib Revue, he had made the transition from hard-ass to asshole. If a table wasn't cleared promptly, or if he saw thumbprints on a brass rail, Willie would dress down his employees in front of his customers. Among the locals, Wee Willie's quickly became known as a place to witness an unpleasant scene.

After a point, Willie's partner—Gordon, who I met at the Rib Revue that night—convinced the marquee attraction to stay away from the restaurant. But still, Willie was living his life in Berry and getting into yelling matches with bank tellers and supermarket checkout girls. You tell enough locals to fuck off and there goes the profits.

So Willie became a disreputable figure in the town where he was once adored, and his restaurant was falling into unprofitability. Then there was Luke, who went to Willie's old school, who wore his number, and who was going to become the quarterback Willie never had the chance to be. Until Samuel Sault came along and sent his boy to the hospital not once, but twice. It would have been hard enough for him to see Luke get cut by the Hartsburg Hyenas, but Luke made it even worse by telling Willie he was going away to live in an ashram in the Kentucky hills and study meditation and healing—which, to Willie's old-school ears, was about one step short of Luke saying he was going to Sweden to begin treatments for gender reassignment surgery.

Then Willie turned on the TV and saw a press conference trumpeting Samuel's arrival in Philadelphia, and his $64 million contract. He grabbed his rifle and drove to Philadelphia and visited, among other places, Stark's, which he knew from his playing days, and enlisted a waitress as his sentry.

After the shooting, Gordon figured out what had happened. He confronted his childhood friend and business partner, and Willie confessed every detail. Gordon took Willie's gun from him, mostly out of fear that Willie would kill himself. He stayed by Willie's side, on a suicide watch. Then Alice called Willie's phone, threatening blackmail; Gordon spoke to her and offered her money in exchange not just for silence but reports. Our champagne picnic, it seems, was part of Alice's reconnaissance work, a chance to debrief an eyewitness. And when it was clear that I had seen nothing and the police were focusing their attention on Jai, Gordon realized he had an opportunity to throw suspicion off Willie permanently. He executed the frame-up to save his friend and his business.

The importance of Samuel in Willie's imagination—the extent to which he had made Samuel the scapegoat for all his son's shortcomings—became clearer when I received a letter from Luke Reckherd. Although “received” is the wrong word, because the letter was not delivered to me. Luke wrote me an open letter—which, like an open relationship, can leave you wondering exactly whom the openness is supposed to benefit, besides the person who suggested it. He posted his message on his Facebook page. Actually, it was on the Facebook page of his ashram.

But its tone, at least, was welcome.

Dear Nick Gallow,

I write to you from a place of peace and understanding, a place in which people use their strength not to conquer and hurt, but to help and heal. I believe this is a needed antidote, the yin to the yang of the life I have led.

The first time Samuel Sault injured me in college, my father guided my rehabilitation, and he motivated me with hate. He placed pictures of Samuel on my mirror and told me that Samuel symbolized all that I must overcome. Then Samuel hurt me again, and his message became more intense, more unhealthy. I was supposed to be angry at Samuel, but by this time, I was really angry at my father for this mission he was forcing on me. So I tried to ruin his plans indirectly. I would smoke pot on the library steps and get busted, but the school would keep giving me second chances, and my father would push me harder still.

Even after I was cut by the Hyenas, my dad wouldn't let it go. So I let him go. I told him his demons were his, not mine. I said this without realizing how many demons he had.

I want nothing more than to heal. I am still learning how much I have to overcome. My dad had wounds that couldn't be let go of, but I believe I can let go of mine. Nick, I hope you can as well. I want you to know that I bear you no ill will.

Namaste, Luke Reckherd

Jessica comes by regularly enough that I am able to monitor the slow fading of the darkness that Willie's blow left around her eyes. On her first visit, she came in the company of her husband, Dan. She and I never did get to exchange notes about our wishes for the future, but showing up with Dan was message enough. He was wearing a sports coat, despite it being a warm Saturday when he visited.

“It's so nice to finally meet you,” he said. “Even though all we did is exchange e-mails, can I tell people that I knew you when?”

To see Jessica together with her husband that day disturbed me more than I thought it might. He was wispy and physically weak, as I had seen in pictures, but in person he radiated a confidence and ease that was its own kind of strength. Jessica had talked about Dan so dismissively, for the most part, that I had come to picture them as two predatory animals at opposite sides of a cage. But seeing them side-by-side, occupying the same space so easily, he unthinkingly placing his hand on her arm when he asks her a question, and she not minding at all—they bore an uncomfortably close resemblance to a happy couple. Their marriage was missing something, obviously. But not everything.

“Sure,” I told Dan. “Drop my name. Why not?”

“I feel embarrassed about those e-mails I sent you,” Dan said, smiling sheepishly. “Invitations for dinner and all. As if I didn't have some ulterior motive. I should have just come out and asked you what I wanted to ask. You probably guessed it from the very first.”

I looked at Dan expectantly, waiting for him to fill in the blank.

“Tickets,” Dan said. “I wanted to see if you could get me a block of tickets to the Washington game in October. I had this idea that I was going to invite the Open Market Committee staff up here. You wouldn't believe how crazy the guys down in DC get about football.”

“Oh, I'd believe it,” I said, almost disappointed it was all so simple. “Here's what I'll do for you, Dan. I promise that if I play for the Sentinels this season, I'll round up every ticket for you I can.” His eyes lit up. And this is a guy who helps manage the largest economy in the world. I would have been able to really make Dan's day by hooking him up with DaFrank Burns, but unfortunately DaFrank is no longer in Washington. He was cut after his team's minicamp. He's now hoping to hook on in Miami.

“But you have to be back with the team, right?” Dan said, concerned. “The Sentinels can't cut you. After all you've done, that would be a PR disaster for them. They wouldn't do that just to get a little bit better a punter, would they?”

A little bit better a punter
. Such an insignificant position. This, in the middle of asking me for a favor.

“I wouldn't put anything past anyone at this point,” I said.

Dan leaned in close, but not too close.

“They don't know, do they?” he whispered. No one else was in the room besides he and Jessica, but he seemed to think what he was saying was just too scandalous to say in full voice.

That darn Jessica. She had definitely been watching too many
Three's Company
reruns. But I guess telling her husband I was gay is, at this point, the entirely predictable explanation she would offer up to explain her jaunt to Maryland with another man.

“You'd be surprised how blind people can be,” I told Dan, “to what's going on right in front of them.”

“True dat,” Dan said, and then grinned at Jessica, like the phrase was part of some long-running in-joke between them. “True dat.”

Jessica has come back several times since then, and without Dan. We haven't so much as touched each other in these visits, and she seems afraid to even sit next to me on the sofa. But that's okay.

I've heard athletes say what they love about sports is the certainty it offers: you know the rules, you know who the winner is, and you know when the game is over. The best thing about life, I think, is that there are no rules and, as long you have your breath, you still have a shot. The game never ends.

*   *   *

I receive come-ons from agents who want me as a client. I ignore them all, even though I do need new representation. When Cecil came to visit me, I fired him.

“I will always be thankful for what you've done for me,” I told him as he stood at my bedside. “But your betting could have ruined both of us, and you knew it, and you did it anyway.”

Cecil put up the facade, at least, of a man who knew how to take a loss.

“It's funny that you're letting me go now,” he said, with an effort at a smile. “So soon before your $350,000 bonus is due.”

I am going to collect that bonus, too. Udall has assured me of this, even though I am currently on the team's physically-unable-to-perform list.

“When you get your percentage,” I told Cecil, “please put it in the bank.”

The offers I have coming from the other agents are entirely credible—I now have the attention of the biggest sharks in the ocean. But for now, at least, I am toying with the idea of representing myself.

*   *   *

I receive a postcard from Alice. The front reads GREETINGS FROM INDIANA, and it has no return address; the postmark I trace to a town chiefly of note for being on Interstate 70. She congratulates me, apologizes for her lies, and says, “I wish I knew a better way to make money.”

I have received plenty of gifts, the strangest of which was from Jai. He delivered it personally, with the help of his minions.

“Hangman, you are about to see how JC takes care of people who take care of him,” Jai said, standing in the doorway, a day after I came home.

I heard a ruckus from outside and leaned forward on my crutches and looked down the hallway. There I saw Too Big to Fail and Cheat Sheet—the latter struggling considerably—carrying what looked like a coffin, except its exterior was fabric, and purple. As they brought it near, I saw that it was decorated with a painting of Jai, nude, aping the pose of Da Vinci's
Vitruvian Man
, but with starbursts all around him. One starburst was strategically placed between his legs.

“Do I even want to know?” I asked.

“This, Mr. Gallow,” Jai said, with a beatific gleam, “is your new best friend. This is JC's personal hyperbaric chamber.”

I had heard of players using these chambers, which are supposed to spur cell development and speed the healing process. The science behind them isn't completely verified, but many players swear by them.

“This baby is the whole key to JC being JC,” Jai explained. “I spend an hour in here every day. You pop out of one of these, you're all ready to get your game on. Even if there ain't no game, if you know what I mean. It helps every inch of you recover. You get me, right?”

“I believe so, yes,” I said.

“And the best part about this baby is, it's got speakers inside, too,” Jai said. “Top-of-the-line shit. It's rigged so that the second the lid closes,
Sack Dance
is coming at you in quadraphonic stereo.”

Sack Dance
is Jai's R&B album, a collection of soporific screw songs he released a couple of years back. The single was called, regrettably, “Puttin' in the Dime Package.”

“Spend an hour a day in here, and you will cut your recovery time by thirty percent,” Jai said.

The chamber was the ghastliest and most tasteless gift with which I have ever been presented. But I accepted it, because the math was irresistible. If it really cut my recovery time by as much as Jai said, I could be back for Week One. I have been using it daily, ever since my noise-canceling headphones arrived in the mail.