Read Bleachers for Free Online

boosters raised ten thousand bucks and had it done. They wanted to present it to him before a game, but he refused.”
    “So he never came back?”
    “Well, sort of.” Jaeger pointed to a hill in thedistance behind the clubhouse. “He’d drive up on Karr’s Hill before every game and park on one of those gravel roads. He and Miss Lila would sit there, looking down, listening to Buck Coffey on the radio, too far away to see much, but making sure the town knew he was still watching. At the end of every halftime the band would face the hill and play the fight song, and all ten thousand would wave at Rake.”
    “It was pretty cool,” said Amos Kelso.
    “Rake knew everything that was going on,” Paul said. “Rabbit called him twice a day with the gossip.”
    “Was he a recluse?” Neely asked.
    “He kept to himself,” Amos said. “For the first three or four years anyway. There were rumors he was moving, but then rumors don’t mean much here. He went to Mass every morning, but that’s a small crowd in Messina.”
    “He got out more in the last few years,” Paul said. “Started playing golf.”
    “Was he bitter?”
    The question was pondered by the rest of them. “Yeah, he was bitter,” said Jaeger.
    “I don’t think so,” Paul said. “He blamed himself.”
    “Rumor has it that they’ll bury him next to Scotty,” Amos said.
    “I heard that too,” Silo said, very deep in thought.
    A car door slammed and a figure stepped onto the track. A stocky man in a uniform of some variety swaggered around the field and approached the bleachers.
    “Here’s trouble,” Amos mumbled.
    “It’s Mal Brown,” Silo said softly.
    “Our illustrious Sheriff,” Paul said to Neely.
    “Number 31?”
    “That’s him.”
    Neely’s number 19 was the last jersey retired. Number 31 was the first. Mal Brown had played in the mid-sixties, during The Streak. Eighty pounds and thirty-five years ago he had been a bruising tailback who had once carried the ball fifty-four times in a game, still a Messina record. A quick marriage ended the college career before it began, and a quick divorce sent him to Vietnam in time for the Tet Offensive in ’68. Neely had heard stories of the great Mal Brownthroughout most of his childhood. Before a game Neely’s freshman year, Coach Rake stopped by for a quick pep talk. He recounted in great detail how Mal Brown had once rushed for two hundred yards in the second half of the conference championship, and he did so with a broken ankle!
    Rake loved stories of players who refused to leave the field with broken bones and bleeding flesh and all sorts of gruesome injuries.
    Years later, Neely would hear that Mal’s broken ankle had, more than likely, been a severe sprain, but as the years passed the legend grew, at least in Rake’s memory.
    The Sheriff walked along the front of the bleachers and spoke to the others passing the time, then he climbed thirty rows and arrived, almost gasping, at Neely’s group. He spoke to Paul, then Amos, Silo, Orley, Hubcap, Randy—he knew them all by their first names or nicknames. “Heard you were in town,” he said to Neely as they shook hands. “It’s been a long time.”
    “It has” was all Neely could say. To his recollection, he had never met Mal Brown. He wasn’t the Sheriff when Neely lived in Messina. Neely knew the legend, but not the man.
    Didn’t matter. They were fraternity brothers.
    “It’s dark, Silo, how come you ain’t stealin’ cars?” Mal said.
    “Too early.”
    “I’m gonna bust your ass, you know that?”
    “I got lawyers.”
    “Gimme a beer. I’m off duty.” Silo handed over a beer and Mal slugged it down. “Just left Rake’s,” he said, smacking his lips as if he hadn’t had liquids in days. “Nothing’s changed. Just waitin’ for him to go.”
    The update was received without comment.
    “Where you been hidin’?” Mal asked Neely.
    “Nowhere.”
    “Don’t lie. Nobody’s seen you here in ten years, maybe