American Season: Prologue, Chapter's 1 & 2

Prologue

Every life is a collection of memories and dreams. And while I have heard it said that the mind keeps a record of every moment, I don't really know about that. I do know that memories, and the emotions they bring with them, will sneak up on you sometimes unexpectedly, perhaps when you're cleaning out the garage, say, and you come across an old sweatshirt, or when on a late summer afternoon you find yourself watching your children race across the yard and you think back to your own golden childhood, or those times when an old familiar tune pops up on the radio, blanketing your mood with violet reminiscence. I know I shall never forget the autumn season of my senior year at Lassiter College, for it was a season filled with the deepest of memories. That season is now a part of me, and I will always be haunted by those memories and dreams.

There were two seasons for me in the fall of that year at Lassiter, Connecticut: one rich bronze autumn of ripening for my own heart and mind and one season in which I played, for the last time, a crazy and simple game that we call, here in the States, football. I remember, as if it were yesterday, one shimmering image from that year. It was the last few days of August and the summer was as hot in Connecticut as it would ever be. We were working out in full pads and I had a coach who would push us in these practices until the fibers of our jerseys were soaked with sweat and coated with dust from the trampled grass at our feet, and only then would he justify a halt to the scrimmage. In that brief break it was a tradition at that school to allow every player a single cup of ice cold water. The act was more ritual -- a sacrificial offering -- than real relief. Hell, I could've drunk a bucketful and still been thirsty! Yet in all my life it's doubtful I've consumed a sweeter taste than that spare swallow. The ice water ran across our tongues and swirled down our throats in a fleeting moment of absolute fraternity, virgin pureness and crystalline clarity. We became linked in that drama, not only with each other, but with the essence of our existence, the unclouded sustenance of our lives. The memory ties up for me much of the pain and unreachable desires of my last year at Lassiter. I came to terms with the magnitude of my thirsts that year: in me the presence of an unquenchable thirst for passion and triumph, a deep flowing thirst for love and respect and, finally, a thirst for justice. It was the season I came of age, and this is the story of that season.

Chapter 1

This story is about – mostly – the events that transpired during my last year at Lassiter College. From time to time, as this story unfolds, you may think, distracted by a sudden familiar footstep, or an autumn breeze, that you’ve heard parts of this story before. You may even recall a scene or two from your own life and marvel at the detail of my re-telling. But it is all coincidence, believe me. Dreams, fiction and history are close companions. I am an American child, raised in the dust-hooves of the continent, dirt-faced and mean, and it is likely that we share a history. 

It is true that much of my story is typical of many young Americans growing up in the last stages of the twentieth century. We were starry-eyed kids, feeling our way blindly through the ambiguities, challenges and delights of college towards the impending uncertainties, fears and freedoms of adulthood. This story takes place in a weird time, a time well after the disillusionment of Nixon and Vietnam, a time before the Roaring Nineties and the slurp of The Bubble. It has been described as a lost time, a time when inflation was the Big Enemy and Disco battled Punk and Metal for The Stage. We all have our histories, fictions and dreams. And we all have our secrets.

The year was 1981. It was the year in which I would reach my highest achievements as an athlete, the year in which I would encounter the most painful truths about the mortality of man and, indeed, my own mortality, and the year in which I would learn the hardest lessons of the powerful and the powerless. It was the year that I would explore the depths of Edgar Allan Poe through the greatest English teacher on earth, and a year in which I would begin to understand the demons caged within me and how they could defeat me in a single unguarded moment of fervor or ignite in me a fire whose tendrils could reach every slick and ivy-covered gutter of a quiet New England school. To this day I maintain that it was all my sister’s fault.

What can I say about Lisa Rae? She was different. That’s probably the best compliment I can give her right now, given my state of mind. Lisa Rae was two years older than me by the calendar, but leagues ahead when it came to intellect and intuition. I don't know how she came to such acute perceptions. She looked just like me -- God bless her soul -- and I can attest to the modesty of her upbringings and genetic pool. One or more of the Muses must’ve made her acquaintance at some point in her youth, because it was a fact: she had ways. She could teach a cat to fetch slippers. Tie sailor knots blindfolded. Climb Fealey’s oak in a minute and a half, and do a one and a half into Winowee’s Creek. She could make perfect sense of Shakespeare while still a sophomore in high school. I envied her and idolized her and resented her, in my best moments. She tolerated me, at best, most times, but we were all we had in our family.

Lisa Rae had her own perspectives on how the world worked. She spoke too well for her class, I believed. It probably had something to do with her voracious appetite for books. I hardly ever saw her without a book in her lap or at her side. It was as though she found escape from the slow, quiet reality of Lumberton in the pages of her novels. She believed in the power of dreams, but saw little value in the passions of sports. I couldn't side with her on that one.  “Johnnie Boy,” she'd call me. We'd be driving down some dirt road, on our way to Hendersonville to visit Aunt Rachel who lived near the lake, perhaps. “We're doomed, you know? Just look around. I can't pick out a single relative on either side that's ever amounted to anything. It's in the genes.” Sometimes, in my bolder moments, I would counter her. “Well, Aunt Rachel's done alright by herself.” Lisa Rae drove poorly, particularly on a back road with no oncoming obstacles. She had a mind for concepts, but not much of an eye for geometry or physics. When my big sister was driving I always kept one eye geared toward the road and one hand fastened to the car door.

Our Aunt Rachel lived in a large two-story home, sitting in the middle of about five acres. The front drive was framed by huge oak trees like something out of Gone with the Wind.

“Inherited it,” Lisa Rae told me. “Got it all from Uncle Ned's folks, who inherited it from one of their grandparents, who struck oil in Louisiana. I hardly call that making it. Though she is just about the nicest Aunt in the bunch.”

“Yeah, and she's got a ski boat.”

“Yeah, that counts for a lot.”

Lisa Rae and I saw eye to eye on many things within the family, but she never quite understood the dynamics of athletics, nor my own obsession with sports. Many books have been written about sport, but it is a subject still surrounded by the mysteries of human evolution.  For most of my life competition on the field of play ruled my life. I think it was mostly because I was good at it. As a child I took quickly to the strategies of every sport I took up. Though never particularly big (even in college I was but 5' 10” and weighed a mere 175 pounds) I nevertheless had quick feet and a feeling for the angles, and I used every trick I could create if it would give me an advantage. Some folks called me just plain lucky. Usually, after some wacky touchdown, where I'd stop in mid-field, offering the defender one leg, then another, only to snatch them both away at the last moment, and slip by him to sideline. I insisted it was the natural warrior instinct of the Natchez Indian.

My father, or Sarge, as he was not so affectionately known around Lumberton, was my greatest fan and sternest critic. It was he who tossed me my first rubber football at age two. It was he who took me to Wal-Mart to pick out my first baseball mitt, he who nurtured my thirst for athletics when the challenges were greatest, he who cheered loudest when I faced adversity and emerged victorious, and he whose disappointment at my failures most often broke my spirit and endangered my love for The Game. Everywhere, Sarge saw a world of violence, where the meek inherit nothing but despair. Even at a young age he would line up against me and force me to try to tackle him, or bring out some old pugil sticks to stage mock battles in the back yard. I remember once catching him in the groin with an errant stab. His face turned red, then he whirled and batted me in the jaw. He stood over me and grinned as I looked for my teeth in the grass. No spanking went on in our house. It was called whippin'. I learned quickly to keep my smart mouth shut and if the thought of devilry crossed by mind I'd better be damn sure I could get away with it. My mother kept secret many of my larger transgressions, saving what little ass I have left. Even with her protection, however, I seemed to always be in trouble for something, as though I was at once at war with my father, while still his most trusted soldier.

I graduated from Jackson High School in 1975. Originally built in 1927, the gym burned down in 1940 and again twenty years later. A new stadium was built in 1962 and a new wing added in 1965, but these were the only major additions to the original ruby-red bricks. While the age of the institution provided some sort of pride to some members of the community, the students found the building awkward and outdated. Like much of southern Mississippi, large pines and oaks rose up in the courtyard, giving the grounds a scenic beauty. But inside it was different.  Every day you could smell some strange, peculiar odor, not unlike the mixing of linseed oil and pine sol. Most of the classrooms had no air-conditioners and during the warmer months of the year we would literally drip perspiration onto the carved-up desk, struggling to follow the teacher's uninspired lessons. During spring the pollen from the yellow pines that surrounded the school would float in with the hot breezes and wreak havoc on everyone's nasal passages. The school was a dinosaur, lurching forward on the momentum of historic tradition. I did well there, both academically and athletically, but my case was not typical. Racial prejudice was pervasive in the town where I grew up. Though the high school had been desegregated in 1970, the cultures which created the segregation died less swiftly. I had been raised to be fair and honest and to judge people by the same measures, but it was a difficult stand to uphold. My mother was a devout Methodist. She viewed all humanity in terms of their capacity for goodness and the value of their eternal soul. In these regards she told us (and the preacher at least seemed to back her up) all of us are equal. Though my father had been raised in a segregated world, the Army had seasoned him to the realities of our time. There is something about war which awakens the humanity of all men, but one does not easily supersede ones time.

Coping is enough. Shifting the balance of a few hearts and minds, perhaps that is all one should aspire to. By the time I was old enough to give sociology much serious thought I could see only two conclusions: I liked women and I wanted the ball. I had tasted the recontre and it was sweet. In my senior year a transfer from Texas joined our team who could really throw, and our offense suddenly evolved into a lively force in southern Mississippi. We ran and threw with equal nonchalance and I began to recognize the true discrepancies between my own talents and those of my peers. We made it to the state finals, where we got beat narrowly by a much better team from Tupelo. I took the defeat graciously, for I'd contributed my share. I'd set a slew of records and had refined open-field maneuvering into an art form. Our bus trip back to Lumberton after the final game was quiet, but not sorrowful. We'd given it our best shot and been defeated by a superior team. We were out-manned.

I remember our fans awaiting our return in the school parking lot late that night. I recall their applause as the team stepped off the bus and the way they lit up as I began my descent. I'd entertained them for three years and led them to the best season the school had seen in seventeen years. I looked out across the crowd. I heard them raise their voices in praise, heard the cheerleaders call my name in unison, saw the faces, both white and black, giving me the finest curtain call I was capable of absorbing. My family and my girlfriend waited near the door and we all hugged in sympathy and celebration. My father shook my hand in firm military fashion. He pulled a twenty dollar bill from his wallet. “Take Stacey out for a pizza,” he said, handing me the keys to the Ford. “Fine season, son.” I looked into his dark eyes, glossed over by the phosphorescent lighting and the lateness of the hours, and caught within them the approval and the recognition which he bestowed so rarely. He was at his finest in such moments. This is how I choose to remember Lumberton and Jackson High. The academic backwardness, the racism, the conflicts with my father, the lost loves: all are relics I prefer to keep hidden from my recollections, a dusty chest deep in the corner of my Freudian attic. It was the best of times, not only for me, but for my community, and we reveled in the excitement and brotherhood occasioned by our simple game. One can choose to forget or remember anything, but one must always pay the consequences.

  

Chapter 2

How I ended up at Lassiter College is a tale of one girl's compelling energy and pure chance. My father thought Ole Miss was the top of the line when it came to colleges. He harbored regional prejudices and his only uncle -- Jimmy Sloan -- was an Ole Miss graduate. Located in Oxford, Ole Miss was Mississippi's largest university and close enough to Lumberton to make it a comfortable day trip. Though Sarge had never attended a day of college, he was a Mississippian and nothing would thrill him more than watching his son strap it on at the state’s preeminent university. My mother was mostly noncommittal, but she knew better than to openly question my father’s wisdom. Plus, I believed at the time, she wanted me close enough to keep an eye on, for her own reasons. She prayed the Lord would guide me to the right choice.

During my last semester at Jackson High I struggled with the implications and opportunities that the different scholarship offers presented. It had never occurred to me the importance of college athletic programs, nor how significant my selection might be for my own future. I knew nothing about the many schools that sent me scholarship offers, or the importance my selection might portend for my own future. With the exception of their geographical location and the record of their football team, they all looked alike. I was unprepared for the multitude of offers. Even before the season was over several members of the Ole Miss and Mississippi State alumni caught me in the parking lot to chat. They stopped just short of slipping me five-dollar bills, but their intentions were obvious. I let them banter, but their backslapping 'good-ole-boy' prodding didn't help their cause. They had mistaken my background and my motives. In the first week of eligibility the pace heightened. Nearly every division I and II school in the southeast and Texas sent letters of invitation, often followed up with phone calls and personal visits by recruiters. As I played out my last season of organized baseball I shuffled through these distractions clumsily.

It was my sister who noticed the odd letter from Dr. Francis Cannon, an alumnus of Lassiter College, an exclusive, private school just north of Hartford, Connecticut. I certainly would have quickly disposed of the inquiry had it not been for Lisa Rae's persistence. Dr. Cannon had played tackle for Lassiter back in 65. He now was an ophthalmologist in Hattiesburg. The letter was quiet in its tone, but included an intriguing sentence intimating that he could twist some arms if I needed help negotiating the academic requirements at Lassiter.  What the hell, I thought. I had a 3.5 G.P.A. Who were these freaks?

Lisa Rae did some research for me. Indeed, she often gave me a full review of the schools on my list before I knew where they were located. She was unforgiving of their academic mediocrity. To this day, I don't why I lent her viewpoint such credence. After all, she seemed satisfied enough with Biloxi State, a school of rather modest dimensions in all respects. She told me that love shaded her considerations. (Her boyfriend, and later, her husband, was a sophomore there). Besides, nothing in her prep record recommended her to a scholarship at such a prestigious school. A college education is an investment in the mind and spirit, she told me. When it was all said and done, not even professional tutoring would be sufficient to equal out the disparities between us; but it might give me an edge. She convinced me that I lacked the intelligence and ambition to overcome the environment that we both had inherited. If the Colton’s were to make out of the swamps, therefore, the burden rested firmly on me. She would be the light, she told me. It was up to me to do the legwork. I knew she was right at least in this respect: I had to get out of Mississippi. Perhaps, like my father, I would one day return, set down roots in familiar soil. But the time was right for a gamble. The dusty air was full of chance. I could feel it my bones like a fresh cold. So it was that Lisa Rae called Dr. Cannon and set up the paperwork that eventually led to me being offered a full scholarship, including a travel stipend, to a prestigious northern university, in southern Connecticut, in the middle of New England, and as far away from my current world as the moon.

For a kid like me, used to playing it safe when off the field of play, it was a gritty call. Sarge was not one to be dismissed lightly; he had his prejudices and preconceptions about how the world worked. None of us knew anything about Lassiter, Connecticut – or New England for that matter – and my dad was not impressed with their academic resume. I think, in the back of his mind, he had given some thought to the possibility of me taking over his hardware business. We had grown up in different times, with different opportunities; it was too early to let him in on how different were our visions of the world.

The Boys were equally unimpressed. At one of the many parties thrown to celebrate the conclusion of our senior year, my closest friends tried their best to dissuade me of my crazy notions. We were at Reynolds farm. We’d dragged a couple of kegs out behind their barn, down where the lake had been cleared out, and things started to seem right with the world. On a moonlit night in Mississippi, when the hormones are raging and the cold beer is flowing, and a cheap stereo is honking out Lynyrd Skynyrd classics and over-played Led Zeppelin tunes, there’s only one place on this earth to be – at Reynolds’s farm. It was the prime spot for a party when Rabbit Reynolds and his wing man Little Dipper could work it out. Rabbit’s folks were always making trips to New Orleans, or somewhere else exotic, so on those weekends Reynolds’s farm became The Spot. We’d pool our cash for kegs or cases, devise stories for the folks, put on too much cologne, wait for dusk, and then head down the dusty dirt roads for Reynolds’s Farm. 

Most of The Boys had been there a while, when my girlfriend Stacy had hiked her way to the house with some of her girlfriends. The Boys and I made our way naturally toward the lake shore, where a huge oak supported a tire swing on one of its muscular limbs. Even at this hour someone would occasionally throw off their shirt and swing out over the lake and fall in with a howl. It was clear they’d had a head start.

At one point Red Simpson grabbed me from behind.

“You ready to go in, college boy?” he asked me.

Red was the shortstop and point guard at Jackson High, about the quickest little bugger in school, with hands like painter. Had he been a few inches taller the boy might’ve played a few years, but at 5’ 5” he was always viewed as a novelty. So far, only Colleton Community College and Biloxi JuCo had showed any interest.

“Go ahead Red,” I answered, “I’ll join you in a few. The night is still young and the beer is still cold.”    

Jazz Kaufman, our quarterback and Romeo, chimed in. “Well, you better drink up boys, ‘cause the keg by the barn is on its last leg.”

“Not a problem,” Scooter Leaks informed us. “I’ve got a bottle of Jack Black in the trunk.” Scooter played center on the football team and was a state finalist wrestler. He was a good man to have on your side.

“Just one?” I asked him.

“As far as you know, Colton. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be in training for big time college football? What’s the name of that place: Connecticut School for Disadvantaged Women?”

“Lassiter College,” I corrected him, “Though I hope to leave a few disadvantaged women in my wake.”

Red continued the line of questioning. “Yeah Colton, what’s the deal with that, anyway? I heard Ole Miss sent you a letter.”

Heads seemed to suddenly turn our way from all around us in the shady moonlight.

“Who told you that?” I asked him.

“I’ve got my sources,” was all he would say.

I suspected perhaps my sister had let it out, then, reconsidering, I realized it was probably my old man, running his mouth at the barber shop, or over the counter at the hardware store.

“Well I lost track of them,” I fessed up, facetiously. “Who knows? I mean, after The Bear stopped by for supper, they all faded into mediocrity.”

“The Bear?” Scooter queried. “Bear fuckin’ Bryant? You’re crazier’n a possum on moonshine.”

“Sonafabitch could eat some pie, though. I’ll tell ya that!”

Suddenly, Hallie Matson burst into our circle, with her 38 DD’s tightly testing the fibers of her Ole Miss t-shirt.

“What’s this about Ole Miss?” Her voice was as southern and seductive as a warm pecan pie.

“Colton thinks he’s Shakespeare!” Red told her, stepping forward so his nose was mere inches from glory. “Or….at the least….Faulkner.”

“Shakespeare?” Hallie wondered aloud.

Scooter spoke up. “Yeah, Colton is heading north. Mississippi’s not good enough for him.”

“Well, I’m going to Ole Miss, John,” Hallie said, stepping too close for her own good. I tried to regain my composure, one eye on her t-shirt, one on the hill beyond, where Stacey might soon be returning.

“I sure don’t know what I’m going to do, Hallie. Ole Miss is a pretty big school, you know. I’m just a little peanut of a player. All that physical contact gives me the willies.”

Hallie smiled and moved close enough to whisper in my ear. “That’s not what I heard,” she told me.

I looked straight ahead, nonplussed, across Sadie’s lake, where the reflection of the full moon rode the light ripples of the evening breeze. I could feel the moisture from her breath on my earlobe and smell the sweet aroma of bourbon and I must admit it sent a charge throughout the weaker angels of my existence. I leaned toward Scooter Leaks and put a hand on his shoulder, as if to ground me from her electrical charges.

“Well, we’ll see,” I said. “Who knows? Perhaps I’ll apply for admission in some first class Ole Miss fraternity. One of those houses with the big columns out front and keg parties every weekend, win or lose.”

“Oh yeah!” Hallie encouraged me. And everyone else seemed to concur.

“Sounds good to me,” Kerry said, slapping Scooter’s hand.

“I can only imagine running into some coed like you, Hallie, on a wild Saturday night in Oxford after we just laid a butt whuppin’ on The Tide.”

Pete Kaufman brought me back to reality. “Well, the first part has some basis in reality. Seriously Colton: you don’t think you can play in the SEC?”

I tried to answer the question in a way that was politically correct; and not make me seem too much of a coward. “That’s a good question,” I told him, distracted once more by Hallie Matson’s perfume. A bullfrog jumped into the lake with a splash.

“I really don’t know, guys. Truth is, I’m just not sure. You remember the semi-finals against Biloxi? You remember that linebacker that knocked Cooley out of the game and ran down Daughtery on the corner?”

Scooter certainly did. He answered. “Jason McKinney. I heard he’s committed to Texas A&M.”

“Yeah. McKinney. Kid was on the state champion 880 relay team. You guys think I got the moves to beat a whole field of McKinney’s?”

The guys had to stop for a second and consider that one. They were the best judge and jury I could put together for such a verdict and they were unsure. After a moment, Red stepped in. “Couldn't catch me.”

We laughed and imagined the scene. It was true. Red Simpson was quicker than a jackrabbit in the open field. Red and I had grown up together and in a backyard football game I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone tackle him in the open field. Even in full pads, as a sophomore, he struck terror into the hearts of defensive backs. But it was no matter. He would always be too small. And he knew it.

Red’s father was a true farmer. He grew peanuts on his arable land and catfish in the wetlands. Zeke Simpson was a mean sonafabitch, but you always knew where you stood. Red’s mom, Lizzie, was as big as a bear and just as sturdy. It was no wonder Red had developed quick reflexes. I’d seen him snatch catfish out of the pond with his bare hands. He was the only kid in the neighborhood that could keep up with me in a race down Oak Root Alley to Creel’s Creek. That was a three block path that wound through the largest oaks in the county down to a deep, cool pool in the creek. The overhanging limbs and thick moss provided the perfect canopy for a race to the finish and a dive headlong into the refreshing, crayfish-filled stream.

As the party at Reynolds’s farm progressed, we laughed, traded barbs and continued drinking to excess, as only young men full of vim and vigor can do. I couldn't explain to them why I was casting all my fortunes in with an unknown school at the far edges of our known civilization. The more I had thought about it, the less sense even I could make of it. I was born and raised in Mississippi. I loved this state and just about everything about it. Standing by the lakeside at full moon, re-living old times with my best friends (a symphony of frogs and crickets providing background music), it was an easy place to love. But Lisa Rae had convinced me there was more out there to be experienced. But how would a simple country boy from southern Mississippi fit into the Ivy League?         

Lisa Rae tried to drag me though the apprehensions I carried with me throughout that long summer. Sometimes on a warm Friday night we'd sneak out for pizza and end up sharing a bottle of wine with our feet hanging off the old train trestle over Winowee's Creek. She could point out every planet lit up in the sky and half the constellations. She had a sense of the misgivings in my head and she tried her best to bolster my spirit.

“It's cold,” she said. We sat with the rusted steel beam tucked beneath our legs, leaning forward across the cable, looking down. The creek slipped by us quietly in the darkness far below.

“Should've worn some long pants,” I counseled, “Or even some shorts.”

“Oh. You're embarrassed now.”

“Hey -- just cuz' my older sister walks into Pizza Hut with half her ass hanging out: no cause for alarm!”

“Well, it’s so sweet that you're worried about my reputation.” She threw her long brown hair back, letting the soft breeze toss it down her back, then she spit off the edge.   “Though perhaps it’s your infamous name that you're worried about.”

“Nope. Too late for that. My virtue and virginity are well documented. I've been turned down by every high school age female in Lamar County.”

She laughed, a mere whisper. “And now you have the whole of Connecticut to corrupt. I see your strategy now. Hey, pass the wine.”

“Hmpf. I don't know about that. Seems like a bunch of spoiled rich kids to me.”

“These girls are gonna be cultured, honey....sophisticated. They might even know how to behave in public. And unlike your current harem, most of them will speak English.” Lisa Rae had an obsession with the proper use of the language. She used to drive all my friends crazy with her constant corrections of their natural southern slang.

“Well, as long as they can pronounce the answers to my favorite questions -- yes and more -- I'll be happy.”

“Hah! Yes and less, you mean.”

She passed me the bottle back just as a bullfrog lit up far below us on the far bank. The cacophony of crickets seemed to rise up to meet the challenge of song. There would be no old, abandoned train trestles in Lassiter, Connecticut, few warm nights to ride the breeze, and no Lisa Rae to guide me through the stars. She held my hand and told me how much I'd be missed. We were in this together, she said, and I couldn't help but cry a little when she gave me a kiss on the cheek. I smiled and looked toward the planet Venus, rising like a diamond over Crowder's farm. I pulled her to me with a firm hug and we looked out into the moonless night, our lives fixed on a precipice so thinly drawn only the fibers of our own mysterious love could guide our wild and roaring futures towards balance. Just then, we saw a shooting star blaze through the western sky. And we made a silent wish.