American Outlaw (10 page)

Immediately, our squad retaliated with the deranged force of teenaged fury. Our littlest man, Paulie Thompson, jumped atop Notre Dame’s giant center, clawing at his face, trying to force his mouth guard down his throat.

Both benches emptied. I dropped the football and fled back to the scene of the crime, screaming gleefully. Even our band rushed on the field, swinging their tubas and drum kits like barbarians.

“Save CORNEJO!”

Bobby was buried under a pile of Notre Dame assistant coaches who flailed about, determined to smother him and send the funeral bill to his mother.

“SAVE CORNEJO!”

The stands emptied and packs of psychotic parents jumped into the melee, swinging. Cops swarmed the field, and the rabid mob instantly seized their billy clubs.

The fighting and general mayhem raged on for what seemed like forty-five minutes. Finally, backup cops arrived and the crowd was subdued. The game was called: a double forfeit. I felt it was a pretty punk rock night of football.

“My jaw feels broken,” Bobby groaned, when we were back in the locker room.

“I’m kind of torn up myself,” I admitted, surveying the damage the mob had exacted upon me.

“I don’t even really
like
Cornejo,” Bobby confessed. “I was just there for the punching.”

Gingerly, I pulled my sweaty uniform off me. “So . . . what was it you wanted to talk to me about before?”

“Oh yeah, the
store
!” Bobby said, instantly cheered. “The
haul.
Man, we got so much shit, we don’t even know what to
do
with it.”

“That easy, huh?”

“Goddamn, man, it was child’s play.” Bobby spat on the floor. “You’d think they’d have realized that people know how to disable a burglar alarm these days. I mean, they truly gave us no credit at all.”

“That’s . . . very rude of them,” I said, gently.

“Eh,” said Bobby, shaking it off. “Anyway, I can’t keep all of it at my place. I literally don’t have the closet space. What do you say you hold some pieces for me, until I can sell them off? I’ll give you half the dough I make in exchange.”

I considered. “Yeah, sure. Whatever I can fit in my room, how’s that?”

“Perfect.” Bobby looked relieved. “Look, I owe you one, okay?”

“Save Cornejo,” I answered. We looked at each other, then busted out laughing.

——

As the season wore on, I began to realize that it could actually be really cool to bring up the kids who were struggling. When we ran our sprints at the end of practice, I’d generally be among the first guys to finish, but I’d push myself to continue running until the last guys were through.

“Come on!” I’d encourage them, doing my best to channel Gil Lake, my crazy first coach. “Let’s get it, guys. Let’s
go
!”

We didn’t have any bullies on the team. I made sure of it. And we didn’t follow a big-dick hierarchy, where the grunts carried all the equipment while the seniors sat back all rested and laughing. We were a tight unit. We watched one another’s backs. I came from a fairly crazy one, so maybe I’m not the best judge, but it almost felt like a family to me.

“Dude, Jesse,” moaned Mike, my backup on offense, “aren’t you
ever
gonna let me get in, man? I haven’t played a dang play the whole season.”

“Mike, I’m sorry, man,” I said. “I swear, I’m gonna take a quarter off one of these days. That sound good?”

“Sure,” he said. His big freckled face looked glum, resigned to benchwarming. “Coach wouldn’t let you come out of the game even if you begged him to.”

“Hey,” I said seriously. “We’ll get you in a game before the season’s over. I promise.”

Mike looked at me. “Yeah, okay,” he said, finally.

It seemed like my life was finally leveling out. Scouts had been coming to my games all season. Bit by bit, I’d begun to receive recruitment letters from a handful of Division One schools. In my dresser at home, all stacked up on top of one another, I had envelopes from Pitt, Hawaii, Iowa, and Colorado. At night, I’d take them out and read them over and over again. A hazy vision of the future was beginning to build in my mind, and it felt promising.

I was feeling so good, I guess I let my guard down. And that’s when they got me.

I was reading a comic book in my bedroom one evening, dreaming about college cheerleaders and spacious, comfy dorms, when Nina came knocking at my door. Two uniformed Long Beach police officers stood behind her. “These men need to talk to you, Jesse,” she said, with a smug tone in her voice.

“We just need a moment of your time, son,” one of them said. Both of them walked into my room. Their eyes scanned every surface.

“Hey,” I objected. “You don’t have permission to come into my room. Where’s your warrant?”

“We do have permission,” he said, pointing to Nina. “You’re still a minor. Aren’t you, son?”

“Your dad said you were probably up to no good,” said Nina. “He said he figured these gentlemen had plenty of reasons to see you.”

The policeman smiled pleasantly. “Mind if we take a look around?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

My room was tiny. It took them less than two minutes to discover the pile of Canon cameras and lenses that Bobby had unloaded on me.

“Funny,” the first cop said, looking at the expensive equipment. “That’s precisely what he said we’d find here.”

“Who, my dad?” I fumed.

“No,” the cop said. He checked a notebook. “I’m referring to . . . Robert Murphy.”

“Bobby?”

“You’re acquainted with Mr. Murphy, son, are you not?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, he’s my friend. So what?”

The cop patted his notebook in a businesslike manner. “We found stolen goods at Mr. Murphy’s house this afternoon, goods that appeared to match those taken from the burglary at Rybeck’s Cameras on September sixteenth of this year.”

It was a small town. It figured that even these idiots had been able to put two and two together. “Yeah, and?”

“Mr. Murphy has stated on record that he received these stolen goods from you.” He smiled again, then shoved the knife in deeper. “He informed us that if we came to your house, we’d find the real stash. According to him, he was simply holding the cameras until you had time to sell them.”

With his own ass on the line, Bobby had sold me down the river. For a minute, I didn’t say anything. I shook my head, sadly.

“Yeah,” I said dully, after a minute. “You got me. I did the break-in.”

The cops looked at each other and shared a victorious grin. “We’re going to need you to come with us, son.”

“He’s in trouble?” Nina asked.

“Oh yes, ma’am,” the cop said, smiling. “This young man is in quite a
lot
of trouble.”

——

I had an extensive record and a probation officer. I’d already used up all my chances. Now they were ready to do me in.

“Do you realize the severity of your crime, Jesse?” Ms. Torres asked. I suppose she felt kind of vindicated—I’d been proven to be a real-life criminal, after all.

“Yep,” I said curtly.

“You can’t just go around burglarizing places. Do you understand that?”

“Are you done yet?”

“You have absolutely no remorse, do you?” she snapped at me. “Well, listen to me, you better change that attitude before you see the judge. You are going to serve time for this, Jesse. Do you realize that?”

What she said scared me. But I was so furious, her words barely cut through. My father, Bobby, the cops: none of them gave a damn about me. Just like it had been for my entire life, the people closest to me had fucked me over the hardest. So the state wanted to send me to jail, huh? Well, then
great.
Maybe that was the best place for me.

At my hearing, several of my coaches showed up and spoke on my behalf. They said I was a good leader and a credit to our town. They pled with the judge to give me another chance, or, barring that, to reduce my sentence.

He frowned. “How much of the football season do you have left, gentlemen?”

“Two more weeks.”

The judge looked me over sternly. “Given the gravity of your crime, Mr. James, and your past criminal record, I’m inclined not to hear any pleas on your behalf. But these men seem to believe in you.”

I looked up at the judge, who held my future in his hands.

“I will reluctantly agree to suspend your sentence, Mr. James, until you have completed the final football game of this season. Immediately after, you will enter the California Youth Authority, where you will serve ninety days of rehabilitative therapy.” He banged his gavel. “That is all.”

I exhaled, relieved. I’d have a chance to finish out the season. But I’d miss the following three months of classes. If I wanted to
graduate, I’d have to go to summer school for sure. Awesome. I was well on my way to being a loser.

“Hey, man, let me explain,” Bobby said, when I saw him at practice the next day.

“No,” I said coldly.

“Aw, James, you don’t get it, man. If Dave got nabbed for this, he’d do real time. You’re just going to juvie, man.”

“Beat it,” I snapped. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t talk to me either, James. I get it, man,” he said. “I really do.” And Bobby loped away.

I walked around for my last two weeks of freedom in a depressed stupor. The football field was my only refuge. More recruitment letters arrived at my house each day. Clemson, Michigan State, Wisconsin: everybody was talking scholarship. They all wanted to come down and meet my parents “when the time was right.” I laughed drily, picturing Nina serving up a martini to a Big Ten coach, my dad trying to sell him a case of reclaimed tuna, found at auction.

Our last game was against Norte Vista. I played with a fury that surprised even me. I knew a few of the kids on the team personally, and I decided to go for each of them, one by one. I ignored the quarterback and the direction of the play, focusing instead on taking each opponent out at the knees for one last time, simply because it felt so good to smash them down to the ground.

We were down by three in the last quarter, and it looked like I might just lose the last game of my high school career. With three minutes remaining, we made our final drive down field. We drove the ball inside the twenty, and our quarterback grimaced in the huddle, trying to decide what the hell to do.

“What do you think, Jesse?” he finally said. He looked shaken.

I shrugged. “Let’s run it,” I said. “Come on, guys! This is it. Our last time. Let’s make it count.”

We ran a play for Bryson Young, our speedy halfback. The
quarterback shoved it into Bryson’s chest, and he slipped around the end. Norte Vista’s defensive back came rushing in to grab him, but I leveled him with a block that put both of us on our asses.

Bryson made it to the three. We were just a play away from a touchdown.

“Aargh!”
I yelled. “I pulled something!”

I lay on the ground, grimacing in pain.

“I must have pulled a muscle in my groin, man,” I told the offensive coach who ran onto the field. “You gotta get me out of here. I can’t freaking move.”

I limped off the field, my arm around my coach’s shoulders.

“Mike!” Coach barked, when we reached the sideline. “Get in the fucking game!”

Mike’s eyes were wide. He stared at me, unwilling to believe his eyes. “Jesse,” he sputtered. “What happened?”

“Mike!”
our coach screamed. “What are you waiting for, an engraved fucking invitation?”

“Pull on your helmet, Mike,” I advised. I pointed to the field. “They need you out there.”

With an expression of pure dread on his face, Mike jammed his helmet over his mop of red hair.

“Go on, Mike,” I urged. “You can do it.”

He gulped big. “All right, I guess I got no choice, now.” Eyes blinking rapidly, he sped out to the line as fast as his fat haunches would carry him.

“How’s that groin, James?” my coach asked.

“Ooh, yeah,” I said, rubbing it. “Hurts bad.”

I had never before witnessed a play of high school football from the bench. It was a strange vantage point. I stood next to my teammates on the sidelines, cheering loudly as the two teams lined up for the final play of the game.

The whistle blew. Our center fired the ball through his legs to the quarterback, who in turn deked, then handed off to Bryson Young.
I watched, flabbergasted, as none other than Mike threw a perfect block for him. Bryson clambered over Mike’s broad back into the end zone and scored the winning touchdown.

Our bench cleared. We ran to mob the players. Mike was standing up, waving his arms excitedly.

“Fuck, man!” he yelled. “I did it!”

The look on his face was indescribable. I’d never seen anyone in my life that stoked or that amazed at what was going on. Then I happened to look into the stands. A huge man with a mop of red hair and a hefty frame was doing a wild dance of joy.

“Hey, Mike, is that your
dad
?”

He grinned. “Aw, yeah. That’s him.” He waved up to the stands. After a second, his crazed dad whooped it back.

“MIKEY! Way to DO IT, SON!”

It kind of gave me the shivers. I was real happy for the fucker. Yeah, sure I was.

——

The California Youth Authority was your standard concrete hellhole of a government facility. Razor-sharp barbed wire encircled the top of the aluminum fence that surrounded the unit, discouraging even the fantasy of making a run for it. Hostile guards and wary administrators patrolled the halls, looking dour and threatening. I was fingerprinted at intake, made to fill out a thick sheaf of forms, then issued a bunk in a giant room with seventeen other kids. I received two undershirts, four pairs of underwear, a tan uniform with a shirt that buttoned down the front, tan pants, and a tan jacket—a typical junior-jail outfit. I got the shoes, too, junior-jail slippers. We lacked many full-length mirrors in the facility, but if I’d been able to check out my reflection, I would have seen that I approximated the genuine article.

I was directed to a little dented locker, where I would be allowed to store any personal items I might accumulate. Then I received
a half-sized green toothbrush, a travel tube of toothpaste, and a plastic yellow soap dish.