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

had left. Of course, upper most in my thoughts was the trial and Ricky. I again poured over every detail of that event as I made the three-hour trip back to my boyhood home.
I arrived at the reunion at six sharp and met all the old friends whom I hadn’t seen in years. Boogey, Tojo, Lard, Cromag, Stinky, the whole bunch were standing over in the corner laughing and backslapping, just like the old days. The main difference, of course, was large bellies and baldheads, however their antics appeared to have remained unchanged.
“Beamy!” came the united cry from the group as I approached them.
“Where the fuck have you been? We haven’t seen you in years, not since we graduated” asked Boogey loudly.
“Been around” I replied vainly hoping to avoid relaying the story of my life.
“Around doing what?” chimed in Tojo, thereby obliging me to tell my tale which I did in the most succinct manner possible. My job, my wife, my kids, the whole nine yards.
Eventually, the conversation came around to Coach’s trial and the events leading up to it. I knew full well that it would, and it did.
“What ever happened to Ricky? I knew he wouldn’t be here. He never did graduate. He went into the Marines right after the trial.
You guys all knew about that, right?” I asked.
There was a silence and then Tojo spoke.
“He’s never going to be here. He got killed in sixty two.”
“Killed! How?” I replied in disbelief.
“Got killed in Vietnam. He was one of the first guys sent over there. They called them ‘advisers’, but being called an adviser didn’t stop the Viet Cong from killing him,” answered Tojo.
“What a shame. The guy sure got a raw deal, first being accused of something he didn’t do, then being forced out of town even though he wasn’t guilty and then that” I thought to myself.
“What a bitch!” concluded Tojo.
Everyone paused for a moment and then Boogey spoke, immediately turning the conversation elsewhere.
Ricky! Dead! It was hard to believe!
But, I guess if you have a lot of bad luck going for you, that’s the way it works.
The news put me in kind of a stupor. I went to the men’s room and doused my face with some cold water. I felt a little better.
I rejoined the group and had a wonderful evening in spite of the frequently interrupting mental flashes of the bygone days that I’d had with Ricky. As the reunion with all of is nostalgia ended we were all pretty drunk. I decided to stay at the hotel for the night. In my condition I really had no choice. I called Sally and told her that I would be home the next day and proceeded into the hotel bar for a few more with the rest of the boys.
We continued the stories of old adventures and boyhood pranks well into the night. As the evening wore on, the group ebbed away until only Tojo and myself remained.
I looked down the bar through my intoxicated haze and spied a familiar looking face at the far end.
I squinted hard, while trying not to be obvious, so as to get a better view.
“Hey To, who’s that down at the end?” I asked.
He too, then squinted but in a more obvious fashion than I.
“That’s Marlene. I’m pretty sure” he replied.
“Marlene who?”
“Marlene, Moose’s sister. She’s in here a lot, most every night. Really puts ‘em down too, the way I hear it.
I guess she’s kinda bent outta shape after her brother, Big Moose.”
“Big Moose? What happened to him?” I asked eagerly.
“He killed himself. Hung himself in the garage of the house and she was the one who found him. Not too good!
She always was a pretty good drinker but that put her right over the edge.”
“When did this all happen?”
“About, let me see, it was six or seven years after you left town, so it had to be at least, maybe thirteen years ago.”
“Why did he do it?” I exclaimed.
“Nobody really knows. He never left a note.
Some people say it was because he never made it in the Pros. He wound up driving a truck for Gensinger’s Lumberyard.
Everybody in town expected more from him and I guess he expected more from himself too. I suppose he felt disgraced and he just couldn’t take it anymore, so he killed himself.”
He paused and then continued.
“Then again too, other people say it had something to do with Coach dying. Coach was like a father to him. After he died, Big Moose was never the same.
You know how he used to be one of the boys, always out drinking and having a good old time?
Well, his buddy Frank Shank, the guy he used to hang around with, he told me that after Coach died Big Moose just kind of curled up in a ball. He stopped going out; he just came home from work and sat and stared at the TV, drinking beer until two in the morning every night.
So who knows?” concluded Tojo.
“Man, that’s a bitch. So she comes here and drinks herself shit faced every night?”
“Sometimes she goes to Harold’s Place but most of the time she’s here,” he answered.
“She still works at the police station I suppose?” I asked.
“Yeah! I think they just keep her on out of respect for her brothers and all she’s been through. I really don’t think they can get much work out of her at this point” he replied.
I continued to stare down the bar. I always kind of liked Minnie Moose as we used to call her. Under the gruff, mannish, outward appearance she was a nice person with a big heart.
Upon hearing Tojo’s story about George, that was Big Moose’s real name, I felt compelled to express my sympathy.
“She probably doesn’t even know who the hell I am after twenty years,” I thought to myself.
“I would probably just dig up old painful memories if I did.”
“Well, old buddy, it sure has been a trip seeing you after twenty years. I hope it’s not another twenty before I see you again.
I am going to see you again in five years aren’t I? That’s our next reunion, twenty five years,” said Tojo as he grasped me in a firm handshake and hug.
“I gotta go now. It’s been great” and with that he left me alone at the bar with my thoughts whirring.
I sat sipping my beer and periodically glancing at Marlene.
“Oh shit! What the hell!” I mused and got up and walked, or should I say stumbled, over to her.
She was just as big as I remembered, maybe even bigger. Her large hips overflowed and swallowed up the seat of the stool upon which she was seated. She was hunched over the edge of the bar, braced by her elbows on its rail.
“Marlene, you don’t remember me do you?” I began.
She leaned back off the bar onto the stool and eyed me head to toe.
“You look kinda familiar but I can’t say as I do” she slurred out.
“Beamy Crane!” I exclaimed expecting little or no response.
“Oh yeah, I remember you. You were the skinny little kid who lived over on Willow Street, right?”
“Right!” I replied with surprise.
“You sure growed up. I haven’t seen you around here in years. What brings you here now?” she inquired.
“Class reunion. Twenty years” I answered.
“Can I buy you a drink?” I continued in one breath.
“Why of course. I never chase away anybody that wants to buy” and with that we began our conversation late into the night.
The more we talked, the more we drank and soon the talk was reduced to near incoherent babble.
“You were involved with Coach’s murder case weren’t you? You were pals with that little colored boy that was accused but they found him not guilty” she asked.
The subject hadn’t come up during the entire conversation but I was pretty sure it would and now it had.
“What ever happened to him anyway? Never saw him again after that.”
I hesitated.
“He’s dead. He joined the Marines and died in Vietnam back in nineteen sixty-two”, I replied.
“That’s too bad” she said and cast her eyes downward into the half empty glass in front of her.
“You know, my brother George is dead too.”
“Wow, I’m really sorry to hear that” I replied feigning surprise.
“Yeah he killed himself. Hung himself”, she continued.
“Boy, that’s horrible. What do you think made him do that?”
There was a long, awfully long lull before she spoke.
“He killed himself because he had a guilty soul. He died of a guilty soul,” she repeated in a stammering voice.
“What do you mean ‘guilty soul’?”
“He done somethin’ terrible and he just couldn’t live with it any more. He only way he could get it outta his mind was to kill himself. He told me he was gonna do it long before he did but there wasn’t nothing I could do to stop him. I sure wish there woulda been because I sure woulda done it”, she blurted tearfully.
“What could he have done that was so bad that he wanted to commit suicide?” I ask consolingly.
Another long lull persisted.
“He killed Coach!” she muttered.
“He killed Coach!” she repeated.
I felt as if I had just drunk a pot of black coffee. Hearing those words sobered me almost instantly. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.
“What do you mean, ‘He killed Coach’?”
“They’re all dead now so I guess it don’t make no difference.”
“Who’s all dead?”
“George, Coach and the colored boy” she answered.
“How do you know he killed Coach Carter?”
“He told me. Told me all about it. He had to get it off his chest to somebody and I guess it was me, his sister.
George and me were always tight when we was kids. Even when he went away to college he used to write me a letter every week and tell me how he was doin’.”
I said nothing in response. It was better to say nothing than to say the wrong thing. I waited.
“George heard about that story the colored kid told about how you and him saw Coach and another guy queerin’ each other.
So happens that I come to find out that Coach did a lot of that stuff with guys on the teams over the years and George was one of ‘em too.
George wasn’t no queer boy though. He said he only did it because Coach said he would help get him a football scholarship if he did. Coach got him into Alabama. He did pretty good there too, didn’t he?”
“Sure did. All American. Can’t do much better than that” I replied.
“Well anyway, when George heard that story he wanted to go see Coach so to make sure Coach wasn’t gonna tell about him.
He borrowed Moose’s car, you know our brother Albert, and drove up to Coach’s house. I guess they got into it and George killed him so he wouldn’t say nothin’ and that was that.”
“How did the Cleveland Browns hat get into Coach’s car?” I asked.
“George found it in the back seat of Moose’s car when he was riddin’ up there. He kinda liked it and just put it on. Then I suppose it fell off when he was fightin’ with Coach.”
“So what about the story of Moose picking up Ricky the day of the murder and driving him back to town?
Was that to cover up for George?” I asked.
“No. Nobody knew nothin’ about what George did until long after the trial, maybe a couple