Coach, Walt Sautter [ereader for android .TXT] 📗

arrived, the doorways were draped in purple and black bunting. School was ended at one o’clock so everybody could go to Coach’s wake over at Mallon’s Funeral Home.
I didn’t go. I figured that me being there would only start more trouble.
I walked by Mallon’s at two-thirty and the line was wrapped around the block. The whole town was in mourning. Purple and black bunting was hung not only at the school but also at the police station and the firehouse. Flags were at half-staff all over town and many of the shop windows bore signs of lament.
“Coach – We will miss you”
“Coach – We love you”
“Coach - You’ll be a winner in heaven too”
Every storefront pronounced words of sympathy and grief.
The viewing was to be for five days. Many of the same people attended night after night. Coach had no family. He had always referred to his players, past and present, as his family. He had no children and no surviving brothers or sisters, no real family save his wife Annie. She was an only child and was without relatives.
Big Moose stood by Coach’s wife through every afternoon and evening of the five days. At the first viewing he had brought his All American trophy, placed it in Coach’s arms and asked Annie that it be buried with him. She agreed.
Mourner’s came from everywhere. Former players from far and wide crowded the small Highburg Hotel at the center of town. At the mayor’s request, Mallon had agreed to extend the awake for the two extra days at his own expense to accommodate the multitude.
The day of the funeral came. Ten o’clock on Saturday at St. Andrew’s. The procession, led by Highburg’s two police cars with lights flashing, extended two miles to the cemetery at the outskirts of town.
A mob, two hundred strong crowded the grave sight as the casket was brought from the hearse carried by Big Moose, Coach Ryan and four other former players. Coach’s wife followed, attired completed in black, save the white handkerchief she had pressed against her face.
The coffin was positioned and the words of Coach Ryan echoed across the graveyard as his departing tribute to “the greatest coach the game has ever seen”.
His despondent uttering was followed by the less eloquent but equally sorrowful intonations of Big Moose. At the eulogies’ conclusion, a woeful sigh rose from the crowd and Coach was lowered to his final rest.
The next day, Mr. Robertson again appeared at the door of my English class and promptly marched me down the hall to his office. Standing at its entrance were the Chief and Ricky.
“Boys, I want you two to go with the Chief” and with that the three of us walked to the waiting police car at the front of the school. When we arrived at the station house, I was seated in a side room and Ricky in the Chief’s office. The doors were closed and there we each sat alone, in nervous solitude. After a half hour or so, my door opened and the Chief accompanied by Officer James entered.
“Do you know why you’re here, son?” the Chief asked.
“Not really, unless it’s somethin’ to do with the last time you talked to me at school” I stammered back.
“Well, yeah it is” he answered, “That and more.”
“Ya know we kinda found out that Coach didn’t really just up and die.
The county ME says it looks like he was choked.”
“ME?” I interjected.
“Medical examiner! He’s the guy who checks out to see if someone just died or if maybe they were murdered” Officer James answered.
“Murdered!
Coach was murdered! I don’t know nothin’ about that. I just know what I told ya last time. That’s all. Nothin’ else” I exclaimed frantically.
“We’re not sayin’ you do, but we still wanna ask ya some questions, just in case” said the Chief in a voice as reassuring as he could muster.
“Now let me see if I got all this stuff straight from last time. You and Ricky went to Coach’s house on Mischief Night to soap up his windows just for fun, right?”
“Yeah” I replied.
“You walked all the way out there, almost two miles, just to soap some windows?” he continued.
I hesitated.
“I don’t want to get Flash or anybody else into this but if I were to lie and get caught, well that won’t be too good for me or Ricky” I thought to myself.
“No. We got a ride.”
“From who?” asked the Chief.
“Flash. Don Wheeler. He rode us out and then dropped us off. He said he didn’t want no part of it so he just dropped us off” I reluctantly explained.
“Okay, then you guys when up to the house and when you were getting’ ready to do your stuff you looked in the window and saw Coach and Howie like you said. Is that right so far?”
“Sure. That’s right.”
“Then, after seein’ what you said you saw, you both ran out to the road and walked on back to town, two miles?” he continued.
“Well, not quite. We got a ride from Moose when we were about half way back.”
“You mean, Al Marovich?”
“Yeah, Moose” I replied.
“Then what?”
“We came back to town and hung around Snookie’s for a while and then Flash came by again and he gave us a ride home and that was it,” I answered.
“Let me ask you a little bit about your friend Ricky. When you and him went to Coach’s that night what was he wearing?”
I paused and tried to think.
“I’m not really sure. Probably just blue jeans and a sweatshirt like usual. I’m pretty sure it was a hooded sweatshirt cause it was kinda chilly and I remember both of us havin’ the hoods up. Now that I think of it, yeah, that was it.”
“Was he wearin’ a hat?” asked James.
“Sure! He always wears his Brown’s hat.”
“Was he wearin’ that night?”
“I don’t remember him not wearin’ it but I remember him sayin’ that he lost it right after we got back from Coach’s house. He thought he lost it in Flash’s car and he looked all over for it in the back seat but he couldn’t find it. I remember that real good because he got pretty upset when it got lost”, I replied.
“Did Ricky ever say anything else about that whole thing at Coach’s. Did he ever say anything about talking to Coach or seein’ him after that?”
“Not to me. No!”
“Alright that’s about it. Officer James, take him back to school. Again remember son; I don’t want you saying anything to anybody about this.
Understand?”
“Yes sir” I replied.
We left the room, passing the slightly opened door of the Chief’s office and by Minnie’s adjacent desk. I glanced in to see Ricky, hands folded and foot tapping, anxiously awaiting his interrogation.
James drove me back to school.

Chapter 8
It was two days after my trip to the police station. School let out at three o’clock like usual. I left through the side door. I was alone as usual.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps hurriedly approaching behind me.
“Hey Beamy, wait a minute.”
I turned to see Tojo running to meet me.
“Yeah. What?” I answered, disguising my surprise. Neither he nor anyone else had spoken to me in weeks, ever since the “incident”, as I liked to call it, in the locker room with Howie.
Tojo stopped next to me and hesitated. Then we both started to walk.
“Hey man, I never wanted to stop hangin’ with you and Ricky but after what happened I just didn’t have the guts to hang with you guys. Everybody was sayin’ stuff about ya. You know what I mean?” he began in an apologetic tone.
There was a brief silence and I then replied.
“Well, how come you’re talking to me now?”
“To tell ya the truth, I kinda believed that shit about Coach. I couldn’t say nothin’ because I didn’t wanta get myself or anybody else in trouble.”
I stopped and turned to him.
“What do you mean ‘anybody else’?” I asked.
Tojo bowed his head a bit and spoke.
“My brother Hal” he said softly.
“But you can’t tell nobody this, right?”
“I won’t tell nobody,” I answered with conviction.
“Promise?” he replied.
“Promise!” I answered.
“You know Hal played for Coach about four or five years ago. He was wingback, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“When I came home from practice that day, after Ricky and Howie got into it, I told Hal the whole thing. I thought he would get all upset and start sayin’ ‘no way, Coach not never’, but he didn’t say shit. He didn’t even act surprised or pissed off or nothin’.
So when I saw that, I asked him how come?
Then he told me about when he was on the team, how he heard one of the guy’s talkin’ with Coach in the office, all alone, one day. He said it sure didn’t sound like any football talk. He didn’t say exactly what he heard but he said it sure made him wonder about Coach’s maybe bein’ queer.
He never said nothin’ about it cause he sure didn’t wanta start no trouble and besides the guy Coach was talkin’ to, would definitely beat the shit outta him if he did.”
“What do you mean? Hal’s a pretty tough mother. Who’s gonna beat his ass?” I interrupted.
“I don’t really know who he was talkin’ about but evidently he was a lot tougher than Hal, cause Hal didn’t want any part of him.
Even right now, five years later, he won’t tell me. No way, I asked him a couple of times who it was and he got pissed off at me. He said if I asked one more time, he was gonna kick my ass, so I shut up.”
We continued to walk.
“Somethin’ else I gotta tell ya” he began.
“They got Ricky in jail.”
“In jail!” I shouted.
“Yeah, jail. James, the cop, is my cousin and he told me. He said they got him there and they’re keepin’ it real quiet. They don’t want no town’s people comin’ around and makin’ trouble and all, so they’re really not sayin’ anything about it out in the open.”
“Why do they have him locked up?”
“Well, they’re sayin’ that they think he killed Coach.”
“Killed Coach!” I exclaimed.
“I didn’t even know Coach was killed. I thought he just died regular like!” I continued in surprise.
“From what my cousin says, the people from the county investigated and they found marks on his neck and blood spots in the back of his eyes and that means somebody choked him to death.”
“Holy shit!” I was stunned.
Again, there was a brief silence.
“So what’s Ricky got to do with it?”
“Freddy says they found Ricky’s hat in the car with Coach.”
“Freddy? Who’s Freddy?”
“He’s my cousin, Freddy James, the cop, like I told ya.”
“Oh!”
“Why do they think he did it, besides findin’ the hat, I mean?”
“They’re not really sure but they kinda think its got somethin’ to do with you guy’s sayin’ that you saw Coach and Howie that night” explained Tojo.
“Got what to do with it? How would they think that made Ricky kill Coach?”
“Here’s what Freddy told me they’re sayin’.
They’re sayin’ that when you and Ricky were at Coach’s that night, he lost his hat so the day Coach died he went back up there to find it and Coach saw him. Then him and Coach got into a fight about the whole thing and Ricky choked him.”
“And so why were they in Coach’s car?” I asked.
“They said probably Coach was gonna give him a ride back to town