American Outlaw Read online

  The whole thing made me tired. Being broke and without allies could wear the strongest guy down. One evening, after another interminable practice, I pumped the last three dimes I had in the world into the candy machine in our dorm. I was tired as hell. My stomach was growling. All I wanted was a candy bar. I was going to eat it in two bites and collapse into bed.

  My money in the machine, I stood in front of the window, sizing up the selection carefully. My eyes fell on a Whatchamacallit, and suddenly, I grinned. Whatchamacallits reminded me of being a kid: when I was nine or ten, my dad had gone to one of his auctions and returned home with a truckload of them.

  “What’s that?” I asked, my young eyes bugging out.

  “Fuckin’ candy bars,” he said.

  “Who . . . who are they for?” I asked, breathless, hoping against hope.

  He looked at me as if I were stupid. “You. Me. Have as many as you want. Hell, eat ’em all, get ’em out of my life.”

  There was something fishy about the boxes upon boxes of candy bars, of course: they were probably stolen from some cargo truck years earlier, then bought for pennies on the dollar by my dad, who didn’t know what the hell to do with them. But for his giant, hungry, ten-year-old son? Absolute heaven. I ate Whatchamacallits that summer until I couldn’t stand them. Until I was straight pooping Whatchamacallits.

  I had not tasted a Whatchamacallit in almost a decade. But locked in this dorm of loud, delinquent football drunks, broke beyond belief, suddenly, I desperately needed one. I needed something that reminded me of home. I put my change in, pressed the button on the machine, and waited. Nothing happened.

  “Goddammit,” I growled.

  I tried again: nothing. The Whatchamacallit, encased in its tan and brown wrapper, hung on its hook, smugly.

  “Come on,” I groaned. I shook the machine, then kicked it. The candy bar wobbled, but remained in place. Where was my goddamn Whatchamacallit?!!

  “Yo, yo, Outlaw, what’s the problem?” said Josh Paxton, approaching on deceptively quiet, graceful fat-man feet.

  “This machine, man!” I pointed at it, outraged, near tears. “It stole my money!”

  “Calm down, calm down.” Josh patted me on the back. “Go to sleep, Jesse. You’ll have a candy bar in the morning. I promise.”

  I looked at him and nodded. He was right. I was having an episode. It was, after all, only a candy bar. The next morning, I awoke early. Opening my door to the hallway, I was surprised to discover a small pile of assorted sweets scattered right outside my room. Whatchamacallits, Twix, Bonkers, Hubba Bubba Bubble Gum, about ten or fifteen packages of candy in all. Slowly, I walked down the hallway to investigate. The candy machine’s plastic casing was completely shattered and open to the public. I laughed and patted the ruined machine softly. Some punk must have murdered it for me. Now, that’s a real friend.

  ——

  Football remained my principal reason for being alive. Yet for the first time, I was beginning to entertain tiny shreds of doubt in my own ability. In high school, I’d always been the most physically gifted guy on the field at any point in time. Being six foot three and 225 pounds means quite a lot in high school. At RCC, every single player was big. To a man, we were lean, healthy young animals.

  My biggest problems arose when we began running the slant, a defensive lineup designed to help more agile players like myself use raw speed to combat the strength of giant offensive linemen. When you run the slant, instead of hitting the opposing players straight up when they snap the ball, everybody on your line all lunges in one direction. I thought it was a great strategy: if I tried to butt heads with big, fat, tub-of-lard linemen, I’d lose every time, but if we ran the slant, often I’d be past them before they even got their hands off the ground.

  The only catch was, I had to be really fast off the line. And for one reason or another, that wasn’t happening.

  “What’s up, James?” Coach Meyer asked me after one game.

  “What do you mean?”

  He stared at me. “Zero sacks tonight. Only a couple tackles. That’s not your typical performance, is it?” He frowned and pointed to my knees. “Are you having issues, son?”

  “No,” I said, surprised. I wore a knee brace in every game, but only as a preventative. I’d worn them all throughout high school, to the point that it felt totally natural to me. “I’m fine.”

  “Then why aren’t you coming off the line?” he snapped.

  After staring me down for a few more seconds, Meyer put up his hands in frustration, turned on his heel, and left.

  I couldn’t figure out why, but all that week in practice, I was slow off the line. I just couldn’t dig in the way I used to. The other guys had an edge on me. I felt useless.

  “Damn, Jesse, you suck,” Anton Jackson said. He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Time to quit, man, don’t you think?”

  I racked my brain for reasons for my demise. Maybe it was the knee brace? It was technically possible. Maybe it was slowing me down, impeding my natural first step. Perhaps my only recourse was to play without it. It was risky, certainly, but it might be worth it. My head reeling, I walked all over campus. Finally, I headed back to the dorms to change for dinner.

  As I returned to my room, I found Josh Paxton slipping a note under my door.

  “What the hell are you up to?” I demanded.

  “Oh,” Josh said, whirling around to face me. “This ain’t nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, annoyed. “What’s on the note?” I pushed past him to pick it up. “To whom it may concern?”

  “I was gonna leave it anonymously,” Josh explained.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” I snapped. I read aloud: “To whom it may concern. Your girlfriend is seeing Dan Konte behind your back.”

  I stared at the big man. The two of us were alone in the hallway.

  “Man, I wish you hadn’t come around,” said Josh sadly. “I was trying to leave that anonymously.”

  I felt numb. Dan Konte was a teammate of ours, a huge lineman who had a stereotypical lineman dumbness to him. “Should I take this seriously?”

  Josh nodded mutely. “Konte told me,” he said, finally.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” Josh said, looking down at the floor. “He said . . . well, he said she’s real sexy.”

  I stood there, trying to get a hold on the emotions that were running over me.

  Finally, I managed to nod. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess that’s true.”

  That next Saturday, for the first time in five years, I played a game without a knee brace.

  Trust no one, I thought. Fuck ’em all.

  My knee felt light. My whole being felt light, in fact. The anger ran in me like a fever, and I absolutely dominated. I got three sacks in the first half.

  “Killing!” Coach Meyer exclaimed at halftime, shaking his fist joyously. “That’s cold-blooded killing, son!”

  It was true. I was out there murdering everybody. The second half began, and we continued to destroy them. All the life and enthusiasm drained out of the Long Beach City College football team like a warm, gentle piss. Can’t stop me, I thought, deeply vindicated. You might as well go home . . .

  “Killing!” Josh Paxton screamed, as we ran up the score on them, ran their hopes and dreams into the muck.

  With four minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, I sacked the quarterback for a final time. Standing up, I raised my arms up to celebrate. It was the best I’d felt on a football field since arriving at Riverside Community Shithole. No adversity could stop me. Not poverty, not drunks in my dorm, not Rhonda, not my deadbeat dad.

  Meanwhile, the hugest lineman on the Long Beach team sped toward me.

  I am Jesse James, I thought with satisfaction, my helmet tipped down over my eyes. And I am headed for greatness!

  Just then, the lineman drilled me right in the knee. My pain was so immediate and so intense that I puked in my helmet even before I hit the ground.

  “F
UGGGHHH!” I wailed, vomit spraying out of my mouth and coating my chin.

  It was a crippling hit. The force of impact folded my leg up completely, until my ankle touched my hip. In a single instant, I realized what had happened. Staring at my leg in disbelief, the adrenaline took over, and I went crazy with rage. I was well beyond livid: I needed instant revenge. But unfortunately, I couldn’t stand up. My knee was totally shattered.

  “YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” I screamed, trying to hobble my way toward anyone on their team. Unable to move, in desperation, I heaved my vomit-smeared helmet toward the other coach. “YOU CHEAP FUCKING BASTARD!”

  Emergency attendants dashed onto the field and strapped me to a stretcher, dodging my blows as I swung at them. I strained against the taut nylon restraints of the stretcher, tears involuntarily streaming from my eyes. “No. No.”

  I was rushed to the hospital, and they performed surgery that night. I don’t remember much of the operation. They knocked me out pretty good for most of it.

  But when I woke up that night, I was more afraid than I had ever been in my whole life.

  ——

  I lay in my hospital bed in a white gown, sweating and staring up at the ceiling. My heart was trip-hammering a million beats a minute.

  I have to get out of here, I thought. I have to leave here.

  I tried to propel myself out of my bed but, to my dismay, found I couldn’t move. My leg, packed into a huge fabric splint, felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

  I cannot be here, I thought. I looked straight up above me, into the faintly glowing fluorescent light fixture. An industrial hospital aroma, part antiseptic, part flower-scented air freshener, surrounded me. The faint yet constant noise of beeping machines emanated from all corners.

  Terror gripped me full force, and with a start, I wrenched myself out of my bed and hopped to the floor. Horrible pain stabbed through my knee. I opened the door, and pulling my hospital gown around me, began to inch my way down the hallway.

  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.
r />   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.”