American Outlaw (14 page)

An hour later, I awoke on the floor of the men’s bathroom, covered in piss. As I struggled to get to my feet, an orderly opened the door and found me.

“Come on, son,” he said kindly. “Let’s get you back to your bed.”

He must have told a doctor, because I remember waking up several hours later with my attending surgeon shaking his head over me. “I hear you were up last night roaming around.” He clucked his tongue. “Seems a little early for that, don’t you think?”

I cleared my throat. “No, I’m fine, sir. Can I go home now?”

“You are most certainly
not
fine, Mr. James,” the doctor said. “You had a complex surgery last night, and you will be recuperating here for the rest of the week, is that clear?”

“No,” I said, “I mean it, I’m good to leave. Seriously,” I assured the surgeon, “the knee feels good. You did a great job.”

“You are not listening, Mr. James. I am telling you, stay put, right here, in the hospital.”

“You can’t make me stay,” I said, the panic gripping me again. I had to leave. It was the only thing I cared about. “You can
advise
me, but I know my rights. I can leave if I want to.”

The doctor looked at me, annoyed. “All right, Mr. James,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you what: there’s a flight of stairs at the end of this hallway. If you can go down those stairs all by yourself, I’ll feel confident in letting you go. How’s that?”

“Fine,” I said.

By this time, the sedative they’d used in the operation had worn off completely. There were no painkillers left in my bloodstream, but I inched myself off the bed and, wobbling badly, tried to stand.

“How about some crutches?” I asked, wincing.

“Certainly,” the doctor said, and he fetched me a pair. I braced them under my arms, and started off down the hallway. Each time I made an impact into the slick tile, my knee would jostle. It felt like knives twisting into my flesh. Slowly, I approached the stairs.

“Mr. James, this doesn’t seem wise,” the doctor said.

Stiffly, I jabbed the plastic tip of a crutch onto the first step, and pushed off with my standing foot. My body hovered over the wobbly padding. With great effort, I managed to straighten my body, and I came to rest one stair lower.

“All right, son, that’s quite enough. Back to bed.”

I ignored him. Sweating hard, the pain surging through my entire system, I jabbed again, this time using the opposite crutch. I pushed off. All my muscles seized, as I wobbled down another step safely.

I repeated my movements, over and over, the muscles of my neck and back clenching awfully, sweat pouring down my brow, the fabric of my flimsy hospital gown flapping behind me. After a hellish, painful eternity, I arrived at the landing.

My shirt was soaked. Panting, I looked up at the doctor.

“So?” I gasped, my heart pounding. “Can I go?”

He looked at me with some sympathy. “Yes, son,” he said quietly, after a moment. “I’ll sign the release document.”

——

I went to my dad’s place. It was two weeks before I could get up and move around the house comfortably. Each day was a struggle with pain, a test of my will to even make it through the day. But it was worth it to be home. The hospital had frightened me badly, though I did not at the time fully understand why.

Slowly, things got a little easier. Over the next two months, I worked diligently to rehabilitate my shattered knee. The surgeon had done his job well. If I brought everything I had to the table, there was a good chance I would play again.

“Hey, look at this, you’re
alive
!”

“Josh,” I said, grinning. “What are you doing here?”

“My moms made you some cookies.” The mammoth man held up a dinner plate in his hands. It was covered in aluminum foil. “I told her I had a friend who was a weak little bitch, he needed nourishment before he passed away completely.”

“Gee, that’s nice of you.” I laughed, taking the plate from him. “Tell your mom I’d like to thank her in person, okay?”

Josh walked slowly around my homemade gym, taking in the weights and straps I’d scattered around my backyard. “Nice little setup you got here.”

“I want to get back on the field,” I told him.

“Rhonda’s been asking about you,” Josh said.

I waved him off. “That’s way over, man.”

Josh shrugged. “Good for you,” he said. He lowered himself to the ground and opened up the foil that covered the dinner plate to seize a chocolate chip cookie. He popped the entire cookie into his mouth, crumbs falling down the front of his shirt.

“I thought those were for me.”

“I need
something
to cheer me up as I watch your sad little comeback workout, don’t I?”

“Make yourself useful, dude,” I said. “Throw on some tunes.”

He reached around in his pocket, and with some effort, managed to pull out a cassette tape. “Time for some Joey Shithead!”

Music blasting, we sweated in my backyard.

“YOU CAN’T DO IT!” Josh screamed, as I lifted up a thirty-pound weight with my left ankle. My knee shook with the effort.
“Too weak!!”

“QUIET, BLACK PUNK-ROCK MAN!” I shouted, trembling with the effort. “No one can crush me!”

It took immense effort, but finally, I was ready to head back to school. My rehabilitation had been so thorough that my hurt knee had actually become stronger than the good one. My crutches were a thing of the past. I walked almost completely without a limp.

I got my bag ready excitedly. It was like summer vacation in reverse: I was returning to the one place I felt at home.

“Heading back today?” my dad asked.

“Yep,” I said. I checked myself out in the mirror. I’d probably lost some weight, looked a little gaunt around the face, but overall I was still looking all right. I cracked a grin at the old man. “Hope you won’t miss me too badly around here.”

“Nope,” he said.

I didn’t let his shitty mood deflate me. Nothing could touch me, today.

“Can’t wait to get back to that team, huh?” he asked.

I looked at him. “I’m excited, yes.”

“You just remember something, Jesse.” He nodded his head at me, seriously. “You’re nothing but another body to those people. Much as you think you’re using them, they are using
you.
”

We stared at each other for a second.

“You know,” I said slowly. “You’re just an old, pissed-off man who hates the world. You always have been.”

He snorted. “But am I
wrong
?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You are wrong, okay? The whole way you see the world is totally skewed.”

My dad waved me off. “Go on. Time to get back to your fantasy world. I’ll be here when they use you up and spit you out.”

I pushed past him and stomped out the door.

I was returning just in time to catch the tail end of our season. Our schedule was nearly completed: we had a single remaining regular season game, and then the playoffs. Steadily, I walked through the campus, down toward the stadium.

Coach Meyer and Coach Brown, our defensive coordinator, were waiting on the steps to greet me when I arrived.

“Well, if it isn’t Jesse James,” Coach Meyer said. He stuck out his hand for me to shake. “How goes it?”

“Really great,” I said.

“That’s what I’ve been hearing,” he said. “Paxton said he’s been visiting you at home, supervising your progress. He says you’re ready to rock.”

“Josh has been a terrible distraction, sir.”

“That’s what I figured,” Coach Brown said, laughing. “You look good to me, son! Stand up, so we can take a look at you.”

I stood up for them.

“Take a deep-knee bend for me?” said Coach Brown. I did it. “No pain?”

“None,” I said, breathing deep.

“You got hit hard as hell.”

“This is one tough kid,” Coach Meyer said, looping an elbow around my neck. “My sense is, he’s ready to play.”

They both looked at me, waiting for me to speak.

“That’d be a quick damn rehab, Barry.”

“Let’s leave it to the boy to make the decision,” Coach Meyer said. “He knows what his body can do.” He turned to look at me. “How does that knee feel for you?”

“Nice,” I said, flexing it. “It feels pretty strong.”

“You see?” Coach Meyer said. “He’s ready. I tell you what, Jesse, those four sacks you got against Long Beach were un-fucking-real. We could use some more of that in the playoffs, I’ll tell you that much.”

I said nothing, just sitting there, looking at the ground.

“Well?” Coach Meyer prodded me. “Everybody says you’re ready to play.
Do
you want to play?”

It was a beautiful fall day. The sun shone down on our faces, and you could smell the cut grass on the field. I was an athlete. This was what I had been born to do.

I looked up at my coaches and told them, “No, I’m done.”

Both of them looked shocked.

“Excuse me?” Coach Meyer asked quietly.

I shook my head firmly, feeling more sure of my decision. I had never liked to side with my father, but in this case, I couldn’t help it. He was right. I was a commodity to these people. I’d been broken, but now I was fixed. They’d changed my flat. Now they wanted me to head out, full throttle.

“You know,” I said, “someday I might have some kids.”

Meyer stared uncomprehendingly, as if he was listening to a foreign language. “And?”

“Well, I was just thinking,” I continued. “Someday, I might want to pick them up and run with them.”

I picked up my bag, nodded respectfully, and left them sitting there.

6
 

As soon as they found out that I’d quit the team, the school stripped me of my scholarship. That was that—I was gone. As relatively cheap as RCC was, I couldn’t afford to be there if I had to pay for it myself.

I set out to scrub my dorm room of my existence. Pants, socks, undershirts, cassettes, toothbrush: I stuffed them all into two green army duffels. The job took me about ten minutes to complete. I had nothing, really.

“I’ll see you again,” Josh said.

“Nah,” I said.

“Sure, I will. You’ll be that guy out there on the freeway, begging for cash,” Josh said. “I’d always give you a nickel, Jesse James.”

“Cool, I’ll remember that.” I stripped the cheap, dirty linens from my bed and, after looking at them cheerlessly for a moment, crumpled them into my duffel.

“You’ll have a bitchin’ homeless tan,” Josh continued. “All brown and healthy-looking.”

“Hey, look. Thanks for helping me out with my rehab and everything. I appreciate it.”

“Can’t have you out begging with a broken knee,” Josh said. “Good luck, Jesse.”

I headed back home to my dad’s place, dreading the homecoming. I knew he’d make me eat some crow for coming back. Sure enough, the knowing grin that spread over his face when he saw me just about made me sick.

“Well, what now?” he said, hardly even trying to hide his smile.

“I’ll figure something out,” I muttered.

“Stay here as long as you need,” he said magnanimously.

Right off the bat, we started butting heads. About a week after coming back home, we got into a fight concerning some car parts that I’d sold out of the garage.

“Where’s my cut?”

“What are you talking about?” I said, outraged. “What does this have to do with you?”

“You stored ’em in my garage, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Are you paying rent around here?”

“No, but . . .”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so!” His eyes blazed. My dad’s temper had been ignited by the subject of money. All his attention focused on me now. “You come here whenever you want, and you use this house as your own personal storage bin . . .”

“I won’t anymore,” I said. “I’m gone.”

“. . . you’re making deals on my damn front steps and paying no rent? No, no way. Not in my house.”

“I told you I’m leaving.” I pushed past him. “So stop fucking talking.”

He laughed rudely. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you had so
many places to go. Tell me, Jess, where are you headed? Back to school? Oh, no, they didn’t want you there.”

“Get away from me.”

“How about to your little friend Bobby? No, wait a second, he sold you down the river once already. Better not go there.”

My temper was rising, and so was my frustration. “I’m telling you to
shut up,
man.”

“You think you can get away from all this shit, don’t you? But the truth is right here.
You can’t run.
This is your goddamn
life.
” He stood for a second, his hands on his hips, a smug expression on his face. “Sooner you figure that out, the better.”

I looked at him—at the pitiful specimen that was my father. His bald head sprouting stray hairs. The beard he had always been so proud of was more gray than black, now. His 1970s big-collar print shirt looked faded and out of date, and a potbelly bulged out from beneath the lower half of it. The sags of age had added rings beneath his eyes, and crow’s-feet poked from the corners of them. He looked tired. When he smiled, his teeth looked worn down. It was a grim sight.

“I’ll clean out the garage this afternoon,” I told him. “You won’t see me after that.”