PROLOGUE

 

 

I remember the year a shy, introverted teenager with low self-esteem and a general lack of confidence learned a valuable lesson about success. In the process, he transformed himself into a winner in football and in life.
    On an a typically bone chilling Louisiana night in early mid-November, Eddie Shavers, a sixteen-year-old, African American junior football player endured the boos and heckling of five hundred Leesville High School and local spectators. He trudged his way from the corner of the end zone across a frigid, sleet-soaked gridiron towards the home team bench. He had just dropped his third pass of the game after being inserted into the lineup in the second quarter as a tight end following the starting tight end’s game ending injury. 
    As he passed members of the field goal unit trudging onto the field, none of the players offering encouraging words or rear end pats could comfort him in his downtrodden state. The varsity players realized that he was just a junior varsity insert who had been groomed for such a high-pressure varsity game. 
    A whooshing wind met him head on as he crossed the field. It slithered through the top of his shoulder pads and into his chest. 
    Waiting for him on the sidelines was the far end of a cold, wet, metal bench. His water-soaked bottom contacted the icy cold surface, which sent a chill from his chest to his toes. At that moment, he winced as he felt his toes almost become numb. He plopped down, like a jumbo plane making a hard landing on a runway. He then reached to the top of his helmet to pull mounds of wet Bermuda grass from his facepiece. At that moment, he had never felt more discouraged in his entire life.
    Eddie had worked extremely hard to make the junior varsity squad, though he lacked the talent and coordination of other kids his age. Lacking any previous football experience, the lanky, dark-skinned, and athletically built Eddie stood out amongst his peers. At six feet, two inches, he was the tallest of the kids trying out to be pass catchers. Their compassionate junior varsity head coach Jim Beaumont, who was also the varsity wide receiver coach, had decided not to cut any of the kids that tried out for the junior varsity team, especially since they had worked so hard to prove themselves. Eddie had been impressive enough in tryouts to not only earning a spot on the junior varsity roster, but he also made the traveling squad for road games.
    During the six junior varsity contests, Eddie had increasingly gotten more playing time week to week and had shown an incredible knack for catching passes in traffic, though he hadn’t scored a touchdown. They name him the starting tight end on the squad for the final two games. 
    This terrible event in Eddie’s life had started earlier that week when junior varsity head Coach Hank Beaumont stopped Eddie in the school hallway while Eddie was on his way to six period. Coach Beaumont informed the junior varsity receiver that that three of the four receivers on the varsity squad would not be available for the upcoming varsity game against their cross-town rival Deridder High School. Both schools were in competition for a spot in the regional playoffs. They needed him to join the varsity squad that evening to practice as a back-up tight end for the upcoming game. No other junior varsity players had taken any snaps all season at the tight end position, except for Eddie. Since the offensive playbook for the varsity and junior varsity teams were similar, Beaumont had convinced the varsity head coach it was worth the risk to select one of the junior varsity receivers to fill in rather than selecting a different non receiver positional player for that role if needed. It left Eddie in a conundrum having to give up a chance to start in a junior varsity game just to be a back-up and not see any playing time in the varsity game.
    Moreover, Eddie was nervous about the opportunity since the contest would be pivotal in deciding the final slot in the high school regional playoffs and would draw a capacity crowd from the student body and the local community. 
    Eddie wiggled around gingerly on the bench, having received a strawberry bruise on his right hip from the dive in the end zone. There was only one consolation for this personal disaster. His failure to grasp onto a perfectly thrown touchdown pass would not be the cause of another football loss. The field goal kicker missed wide-right, sending the varsity team home without the playoff clinching win.
    As the game was nearing to a close, offensive teammates made their way to the sidelines, wet, tired, and frustrated. They blew another game against a rival opponent. Eddie’s feeling of embarrassment was beginning to overshadow the pain he suffered from the hard impact on the ground. The loss of a sure touchdown when the ball was jarred from his clutches by the impact would not be forgotten despite the blown field goal opportunity. 
    Suddenly, a small group of second-string bench warmers walked over and offered consolatory pats on his shoulder pads. Yet, Eddie surmised it was a gesture to camouflage their loss for words.
    As they walked away, murmuring their frustration, Eddie glanced up at the scoreboard clock and noticed that the final buzzer was less than a minute away, meaning his misery, barring a miracle, would be over within the next half hour and he could head home. He would have a brief time to compose himself before heading home. He didn’t want his feeble Grandma Nellie to see him arrive home in his current state of mind. 
    But as the rainfall poured endlessly, the game clock descended slower than the sands through an hourglass. Frustrated, he continued to slump over and drifted further into his thoughts. The bench became colder as the home crowd grew silent and began to filter out of the stands and towards the parking lot, resigned to the inevitability of another home defeat and their third straight loss of the season after winning their first five games. 
    Moments later, as the opposing quarterback knelt in their victory formation to the final buzzer, the game came to another disappointment end with Deridder High defeating Leesville High by the score of 17-15. Yet, despite the loss, the team’s playoff hopes were still alive if they could win the final two home games. 
    For the next few minutes, Eddie became so deep in thought that he didn’t hear other players voicing the school fight song as they garnered encouragement from the band while they started trudging their way towards the locker room. As most of the players sauntered down toward the west end zone sideline, Eddie stood up and stuck out like a sore thumb. He overheard a mumble Loser directed at him by a couple of overzealous, angry hecklers. So, he sat back down onto the cold bench, pulled the football overcoat over his head, and decided to wait until most of the fans in the nearby bleacher section departed. 

 

CHAPTER 1

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Eddie continued to sit stoically as he glanced around to notice the equipment staff packing up the football lockers. At that moment, his thoughts drifted to his grandparents, as he wondered what they would think of him at that moment. 
    Eddie was one of those few and fortunate African Americans in the small central Louisiana town to be born to affluent parents, who’d become wealthy because of a successful seafood wholesaler in the state with distribution centers in six different South Louisiana cities. 
    By the time Eddie was seven, his birth parents, Johnathan, and Lilly Shavers, had purchased and moved him into a large French colonial chateau, formerly owned by a retired lumber executive. The home was located on a farm acreage in Vernon parish’s rural area about ten miles southeast of the city of Leesville. 
    As his impromptu daydreaming continued, oblivious to the activity around him, he began to drift off in thought about his life as far back as seven years old. That was the earliest he could remember being fascinated by the tremendous estate that his parents moved into to accommodate his elderly grandparents. Living in the plus estate home was like a fantasy, especially for an African American kid growing up in the south. The estate grounds were magnificent, containing an Olympic-size swimming pool, a horse stable, an apple grove, and a tennis court. There was plenty of space for a curious kid to wander around and not exit the safe confines of the exterior fencing. Eddie would often walk the entire circular length of the fence line on days he felt bored and needed something to do to pass the time until his father came home from work. There were times when both of his parents were away on business trips that he felt alone and abandoned. There were other times when both parents were present, he still felt alone because they were always consumed in conversation about their travel and business ventures and spent little time engaging their only son about his activities. They seemed unaware of a young boy’s mental challenges associated with teenage angst. 
    Eddie’s mother Lilly was a shy, tall, and had fair straight hair of a Cajun woman. She was a Louisiana State University graduate who had moved to Leesville to pursue a career as an elementary school teacher. There, she met the wealthy and eccentric John, and they soon thereafter wed. She succumbed to John’s desires for parenthood but talked him into seeking to have only one child. That had strained their personal relationship which they hid through business interest. Yet, Eddie was exposed to many arguments and hostility between the couple in their disagreements between personal and business goals. Eddie grew to be a loner and existed in a world of large material things and material-driven people that all seemed larger than life. His only early contact with other young children was through the time he spent at the Berchmans Academy in Grand Couteau, Louisiana. 
    As the couple became independently wealthy, they decided to send Eddie to private school. Eddie began attending Berchmans Academy at age ten. At the end of each summer, he found himself headed back to the academy unfulfilled with activities of a sterilized environment. He kept a few friendships during his years there, although there were many children he had been there. Permanent attachment was exceedingly rare for these kids. They became less important as he grew. 
    At age thirteen, after three years in private school, he became disenchanted with the thought of finishing private school and sought the socialization of public school. During the summer before ninth grade, he began to argue with his parents and about continuing in the academy. 

    Then, the first major change happened in Eddie’s life. His mother Lilly was diagnosed with breast cancer which quickly metastasized into her heart and lungs. She immediately stopped traveling and working and was bedridden within three months. Initial chemotherapy and radiation had failed to stop the rapidly growing tumors. Within four months, Lilly Shavers passed away. 
    Now Eddie was left without a mother and had a father who continued working and traveling. In fact, John began to travel more often to his south Louisiana distribution, using the excuse to check on the growing business instead of admitting that he was sheltering himself from being at home and having to confront his own grief. That’s when his grandparents Nellie and Phillipe Shavers, who went by the nickname Pepĕ, moved into the upstairs part of the chateau and Eddie began to converse with his grandparents daily. 
    Pepe, a descendant of Cajun French ancestry, and Nellie, his wife of fifty years, both had been suffering from declining health. With the often absence of his parents, Eddie quickly grew closer to his grandparents than his parents.
    During the first year after Lily’s death, Eddie’s father John spent most of his time, when at home, on the computer, coordinating remotely with his shrimp trawlers Captains in the Gulf of Mexico and his distribution center chiefs. 

 
    A year later, at age thirteen, Eddie began to realize that there was more to life than expensive gifts and the wealth of his family. The loss of his mother had made him appreciate life and gave him a desire to do as much as he could with his own life. He would’ve never imagined seeing his mother, who seem so full of life, shrill up and die so quickly after taken ill. He wanted to experience the passion of success and achievement; something all the frankincense and mirth of a wealthy upbringing could not provide. It was unusual for a youngster that age to wonder if he would find peace within himself. He sensed that as the years of his adolescent life passed by, he would never become closer to that fulfillment of his dreams of being successful and popular. His tryout for the junior varsity football team had been his first test.
    It was the first time that he voiced his desire to transfer to a public school. Earlier that summer during summer camp, he met many students from Leesville High School. He told his parents of the extreme pleasure he had with the associations he had made during the three-month long camp. They were friendships that would come to heartbreaking ends with his return to the academy. Eddie’s parents continually rejected the idea of a change. As he became more depressed and disturbed, he became more alerted to their inattentiveness and selfishness. He soon realized that the private institution had freed his parents from him and to more personal exploits. 
    Eddie became more resentful of his father by their lack of concern for his desires. He felt secondary, unimportant in comparison to his father’s business. As he began to vent the normal hostilities of a teenager, John became more distracted by their growing business commitments and rarely focused on his son. Eddie would then do something irresponsible to gain his father’s attention. What bothered him most was that his father seemed undisturbed by it all. 
    While at the academy, he longed for attention from the other kids. He always felt unnoticed in large groups. The school organized many games and activities, but his participation had always met with constant failures. His lack of athletic talent made his dreams of heroism seem far, far away. 
    Even before Eddie’s great grandfather, Wendell Shavers, had succumbed to poor health, Grandpa Pepĕ had been quite ill from pneumonia which led to various permanent heart problems. Wendell had insisted that only a family member would receive heir to their fortunes of valuable paintings and ancient artifacts that the family possessed and had passed down through two generations. Thus, Pepĕ and his father agreed to the plan to heir the business partly to the next generation. This would ensure that the chateau and business would remain in the family.
    As the year went on, John found himself so ingrained with his business responsibilities that he’d spent weeks at a time on the road rarely having time to answer Eddie’s phone calls. 
    John was now a major seafood wholesaler in Louisiana whose distribution of shrimp began to expand to the Caribbean. John’s attention became split between the attending to the needs of own son, while also accepting the transition of the family business from his father Pepe. 
     During the summer between Eddie’s freshman and sophomore years, Pepĕ officially retired and appointed John as CEO of the business. John, who took advantage of a growing shrimp market, quickly became the youngest leader of a major shrimp distribution company in the South. Eddie didn’t understand the impact of having a father as a big business giant was having on his loneliness. So, it drew him into the sheltered friendship of his grandfather, Pepĕ. 
    Despite Pepe’s constant trip to see the doctors for medical needs, he stayed focused on his grandson’s plight during their many conversations on the front porch. Pepe had a great understanding and empathy for his grandson’s teenage troubles. Pepĕ had logged in the most quality time with Eddie during the past two years than Eddie’s own father. His father had never taken time to console him through his misery like Pepe had.
    As Eddie slumped over further, with his hand under his chin, his thoughts shifted to his grandfather. Not expecting to see either of his parents that evening, Eddie couldn’t wait to get home to Nellie to shelter his disappointment into their warm and comforting arms. She always had a big hug waiting when he returned from an athletic failure with his various bumps, bruises, and psychological wounds. Without the loss of his mother, it was Nellie’s love that filled the void and sustained him during his darkest emotional moments. 

 

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CHAPTER 2

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Eddie broke from his daydream momentarily to glance up at the clock as the stadium engineers extinguished the power on the scoreboard. 
    For a moment, he had thoughts of joining his teammates in the locker room. But this inclination only lasted for a moment. Disappointment and embarrassment resurfaced. 
    He then overheard his friend and teammate Jimmy Oliphant yelling at him from the tunnel. Jimmy had noticed that Eddie hadn’t made it into the locker room, so he rushed out to find him. As he approached him from a distance, he halted near the end of the grandstand to avoid the sleet splashing in his face and yelled out, “Hey Eddie, the guys are meeting at Emilios after the game. Are you going to join us?”
    Eddie sighed heavily and yelled back, “No, man, I’m headed home . . . nothing to celebrate tonight.”  
    “Oh lighten, up bro,” Jimmy pleaded with him yelling again and deciding to walk closer. “This loss ain’t all on you, 
my man.”
    Although soaked from his hip pads to his socks from the wet bench, he made no effort to accommodate Jimmy’s idea and just scooted further down on the vacated bench to a drier spot. 
    As he drifted further from reality, he became slightly tearful and fought to hold back sobbing. He had become friends with Jimmy Oliphant over the summer after meeting him at the academy. Jimmy was the first real friend that he had since leaving the academy. He started playing flag football with him after school. It was the first occasion that one of the boys he had met from the academy had visited him at the estate. It was one of the most cheerful times of his life, having a friend. 
    Jimmy Oliphant was the son of bi-racial military parents, African American mother, and Hispanic father, who lived at nearby military base Fort Johnson who had managed to stay at the former Fort Polk for ten years. High schoolers of the military base went to Leesville High School because there was no high school located on the base. Like Eddie, Jimmy, a Junior and two-year letterman in football, track, and wrestling, was also tall for his age at 6 feet, two inches. Jimmy became the star halfback and Co-Captain of the varsity squad. He was an athletic, bulky built youngster whose parents made the commitment to send him to a public high school to explore his athletic gift in hopes he’d get a scholarship to a major university.
    Eddie and Jimmy first met when Jimmy noticed a distraught young boy standing alone on the playgrounds of the academy. They soon became good friends as Jimmy tried to share some of his athletic knowledge with him. In return, Eddie Shavers, whose talents move toward academics, would tutor him through some of their lessons. Their friendship was joyful, and fun filled. Eddie had finally found someone who loved pulling practical jokes as much as he did. Even negative sanctions and punishment would help feed Eddie’s thirst for attention. 
    Jimmy liked practical jokes for a different reason. He just enjoyed being the bully type, physically larger than most other teenagers at high school. Thus, no one could get even with him. It made him the master of practical jokes at the academy first, and then at the high school.
    Many times, during Jimmy’s last year at the academy, Jimmy and Eddie would walk into the boys’ bathrooms, crawl under the doors, and lock the stalls from inside. Then they would hide holding back laughter as other boys would try and enter the stalls. They did this about five to ten times a week, without being discovered. It was worth the laugh to risk getting caught, just to get away with it as many times as possible. They swore they would try and break their records if they ever joined forces again in another school. That motivated Eddie to reunite with his friend when they reunited the previous summer during high school orientation week. 
     
    During his freshman year, Jimmy had tried out and made the starting lineup for junior varsity as a halfback. Thereafter, his physical talents took over. At twenty pounds heavier and faster than any back in the district, he had a stellar year and was named to first team all-district. 
    Seeing his close friend achieve such success had become frustrating and brought out jealousy in Eddie. Eddie would often abstain from congratulating him on the sidelines after he made a big play. Jimmy rarely noticed his abstinence since he was always overwhelmed by accolades from other team members. There was indeed a sense of jealousy and selfishness that Eddie possessed. He didn’t understand why he had those feelings but knew it controlled his thinking. He desperately tried to hide these feelings from his grandparents, and other teammates. Yet, this jealousy fueled his further obsession.
    As Eddie continued to mope on the end of the bench with his chin in his palm, Jimmy took a deep breath and resigned to coming back onto the sideline to speak to Eddie directly.
In a positive tone, he said to Eddie, “Hey, nice try, bro. You almost made a great catch down there!” 
    “Cut the crap, man,” Eddie responded. “I just blew the game again, like I do every week.” Eddie lowered his head in obvious dejection. 
    “Hey, shake it off,” Jimmy added, with encouragement as he patted him on the shoulder pad.
    Eddie quickly emitted a glimmer of a smile, appreciative of Jimmy’s effort to cheer him up. 
    Jimmy then said to him, “I don’t think, even I could’ve hung onto the ball hitting that frozen ground like that. Hey man, if we hadn’t played like crap, we wouldn’t have been behind anyway.”
    “C’mon, man. Who are you kidding!” Eddie argued. “I had the ball in my arms. I heard people cheering when I got up. Everybody thought it was a touchdown. I can’t believe I dropped it.”
    “Hey, man, the heck with them,” Jimmy replied. “These people are just fair-weather fans, anyway. They ain’t out here sloshing around in this mud. I am playing for me, not for them.” 
    During the season, Jimmy had often become perturbed with the way the Leesville fans would turn on you, especially those that had been drinking. He remembered when he fumbled the ball on the two-yard line in the season opener and was greeted with a chorus of boos when he ran off. The school principal, Dr. Russell, had put a stop to the negative chants during the season, but Principal Russell was not in attendance at this game because of a bout with COVID. So, it had become an opportunity for the lukewarm locals to display their displeasure with negative plays throughout the game. 
    Jimmy patted Eddie on the shoulder again, as the ice sleet pinged against his face. “Just loosen up man. We ain’t’ out of it. We’ll get ‘em next week.” Jimmy moved towards a cooler and filled two Styrofoam cups with orange Gatorade. He slapped Eddie’s shoulder pads twice, letting him know he wasn’t the least bit upset and was ready to move on from the disappointment of the loss. 
    They drank as Jimmy continued to make efforts to cheer up the obviously crestfallen junior classman. However, he wasn’t gaining any positive responses. 

 

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CHAPTER 3      

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Moments later, as the windswept sleet intensified and became almost blinding, the stadium was suddenly empty, except for Eddie and Jimmy and a few members of the stadium cleanup crew. 
    At the opposite end of the stadium was the twelve-person cheerleading squad that was approaching their way from the north end of the stadium. They had just finished gathering their bullhorns and pom-poms and were heading towards their cars, which were parked in a lot adjacent to the north side tunnel. None of the cheerleaders empathized with Eddie’s look of dejection except for one, Karla Dunlap, the head cheerleader, who halted in front of Eddie and Jimmy. 
    One of the other cheerleaders said to her, “Karla, what’s going on? Why are you stopping here? We gotta get to Emilios before the crowd gets there and takes up all the seats.”
    She quickly replied, “I’ll catch up to you guys in a minute.”
    As the other cheerleaders proceeded towards the tunnel, she stood watery eyed, clearly recognizing the player, slumping over the bench beside the well-known running back, was her on and off boyfriend, Eddie. 
    Karla Dunbar was a sixteen-year-old, Caucasian girl with long glossy black hair, rosy cheeks, and a well-developed figure. Her dreamy blue eyes had caught Eddie’s attention when he’d often gawked at her from across the lunchroom as she sat with her friends. Later that school semester, mutual friends introduced them to each other at the after-school hangout, Emilios Family Restaurant. She responded to Eddie right away; with a heart of gold and the affinity she possessed for sensitive men with physical limitations. She quickly attached herself relentlessly to his youthful charm and wit. They soon became close friends and by Christmas, they were officially dating. But during the spring Semester, their relationship became strained by Eddie’s continual unhappiness within himself. 
    Their relationship became further strained during the summer as his obsession with athletic acceptance grew and his attentiveness plummeted. When they were together, he’d spend the entire date preoccupied with conversation about his own desire for self-improvement. 
    From summer until the present school year, she’d decided to forgo a monogamous attitude toward their relationship and began to date other guys to feed her own need for focus and attention. Their relationship was now a roller coaster. Either they were enthusiastically happy or fighting with each other on every dating encounter. Yet, deep down, she felt a sense of commitment to him, an inherited trait from her mother who stayed 12 years with a husband who abused her.
    Although Karla continued to answer the call when Eddie needed help, she became imprisoned with unhappiness but remained attached to him emotionally. It was a strange and peculiar role for a teenage girl who could have guys crawling at her feet if she wanted. 
    Her constant consolation of Eddie turned to embarrassment as the other cheerleaders began to tease her and they tried to influence her to permanently break up with him. They loved to bother her about him; wondering why she would waste her beauty and attractiveness on a guy they considered bipolar and selfish. 
    As Karla sat next to him on the bench, and Jimmy moved away to give them space to talk. 
    Karla sensed embarrassment by the expression on Eddie’s face. She recalled seeing the same expression during basketball season when he missed two free throws that would have won an important junior varsity game against their rival team. 
    “Eddie, you have to quit acting like the world’s coming to an end.”
    Jimmy overheard and nodded, saying, “She knows what she’s talking about, bro.”
    Eddie then replied, angrily, “Maybe y’all need to give me some space, okay.” It was a clear sign to Karla that he wasn’t interested in talking to her or her effort to console him.
    Karla took the hint and with a feeling of disgust, immediately stood up and said, “Everything ain’t about you, Eddie.”
    Eddie rolled his eyes and turned away.
    “What the hell’s wrong with him?” Karla asked rhetorically, turning to Jimmy.
    Jimmy proceeded to jerk his head towards the north where the other cheerleaders were waiting at the entrance to the tunnel, not wanting Karla to walk that way in the darkness. 
    “Just leave him alone for now, Karla,” Jimmy offered. “We’ll catch up to you, later.”
    As she started to walk away, she said back to Jimmy loud enough for Eddie to hear, “Don’t bother if he’s gonna act this way.”
    Eddie caught a final glance at her looking back towards him and shaking her head as she and the other cheerleaders proceeded down the tunnel towards the parking lot to exit the stadium. 
    Meanwhile, Jimmy helped Eddie unstrap his shoulder pad harness and pulled the top gear off his body, succumbing to the conclusion of a sad evening. 
   As they got up and walked towards the tunnel, Jimmy’s words to Eddie, “Hey, man. That’s girl’s always in your corner but you’re gonna lose her if you don’t get your act together.”
    At that moment, as Eddie walked with Jimmy in silence as Jimmy stared at him, Eddie found himself not able to focus on heeding his best friend’s warning. He was too selfishly consumed in his own self-pity.

 

 

CHAPTER  4    

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Jimmy noticed the team’s starting tight end Roy Jones walking up to him. Roy Jones was another of Jimmy’s close friends, and they always stood together during Coach Tarkenton’s post-game address to the team. 
    Seeing Roy coming their way was the cue that Jimmy knew what needed to happen. So, Jimme grabbed Eddie by the shoulder pad and said, “Time for your sulking to end, pal. Y’know, Coach Tarkenton wants everybody onboard listening when he gives his after-game speech. Y’know what’s gonna happen if we’re not in there. We’ll be running stadium laps all next week.”
    Eddie acknowledged with a subtle head nod, grabbed his helmet and the two began walking briskly towards the tunnel. 
    Roy approached him and said firmly, “Dudes, what are you’re doing hanging back here? You know that Coach Shelton’s taking accountability for everybody. Roy was referring to the offensive coordinator, Hamp Shelton, who went by the nickname Red because of his reddish hair and child-like freckled complexion. ‘Red Skelton’ was what the old timers at the game would shout out at him, remembering the 1960’s comedian. It wouldn’t be long before the baby boomers were all gone and the nickname Red Shelton would no longer have any meaning to anyone. 
    Each coordinator and assistant coach were responsible for accounting for all their specialty players and giving the thumbs up to Tarkenton to begin addressing the team.
    The three started sprinting towards the tunnel where the entrance door to the locker room was half-way down. Roy was not going to allow them to enter the locker room after Coach Tarkenton started talking and refreshed the coach’s memory of Eddie’s dropped pass. But he had to take a moment to address Eddie before he entered the door.
    “Hey Eddie, you better put on a happy face when we go in,” Roy said to him. “Don’t go in there messing up everybody’s party mood.”  
    “Why? What are you talking about?” Eddie questioned.
    “C’mon man, have you forgot we’re having Karla’s pre-birthday party tonight at Emilio’s. The results of this game ain’t stopping that. She’s your lady and everybody expects you to make her feel special.”
    “Nah I’m out,” Eddie responded despondently.
    “What are you talking about?” Roy asked.
    “I’m not really in the mood to party right now,” Eddie declared.
    At that moment, the three overheard a loud whistle from one of the coaches, followed by a voice shouting, “Alright everybody, listen up!”
    “We’ll talk about this afterwards,” Jimmy honed in.
    “Alright man, whatever,” Eddie said, with a frustrated frown. 
    Coach Tarkenton’s address lasted about three minutes, as he went through the usual after a loss, thanking the players for their efforts, reminding them that this was only one game and urging them to put the game behind them and get ready to focus on the week’s preparation for the next game. Tarkenton’s closing comment always ended with a warning to the players, and to his coaching staff about the implications of drinking and driving. As with tradition, the entire team circled together in a huddle for a final ‘Go Cats’ chant before dispersing for the evening.
    As most of the players proceeded into lockers area to load their gear and head to the showers, Roy and several other players who sustained minor knicks and injuries during the game headed to the training room to have their ankles wraps untaped and some after-game therapy. Eddie and Jimmy, who were unscathed other than their pride, skipped the training room session and proceeded to the showers. 
    “You’ll still give me a ride home, right?” Eddie asked as they walked in under shower heads next to each other.
    “No worries,” Jimmy agreed. “But I don’t see why you don’t have your own wheels by now.” 
    “Well, they have this thing about kids earning money,” Eddie responded sheepishly. “They say something about how they don’t want me to get ruined or spoiled or something like that?”
    “So, do you think you’re ever going get in some wheels before you graduate?” asked Jimmy. “You’re running up quite a tab,” he joked further. “Plus, if you’re going to hang onto Karla, she’s gonna expect more out of you than walking to the soda shop. . . if you haven’t already screwed that all up the way you acted out there tonight.
    Eddie decided to ignore the warning about Karla and replied, “My dad said maybe he and Grandpa will agree to get me a ride next summer if my grades are good,” Eddie scowled. “He believes that you have to be a Senior with good grades to be old enough to drive.”
    “I guess that’s why you’re not in a private school anymore like all the other rich kids, huh?” asked Jimmy. 
    “Yeah, but hey I didn’t want to go to one of those stuffy schools with all of the rich weirdos anyway,” Eddie replied. 
    The two dispensed with further chit-chat as they took showers, came back to the locker room, dressed in casual jeans and his football jersey then headed out the facility.
    As they walked across the campus to the parking lot where Jimmy’s car was parked, Jimmy’s sensed that the shower and conversation had Eddie feeling a little bit better.
    As Eddie grabbed the passenger side door of Jimmy’s Corvette, his attention was quickly averted by a sudden yell from a person across the lot. He saw Karla screaming out his name as she dashed up to them. 
   “Eddie, hold up!” she yelled out. She was gasping for air and wiping teardrops from her eyes. He knew something bad had happened to get the usually composed Karla in this state. 
     “Calm down Karla. What’s going on? 
    “It’s your grandpa,” Karla replied.
    Before she uttered another word, Eddie’s felt like his heart dropped to his belly. “What about my grandpa?”
     Karla paused to compose herself, sucked in a deep breath then finally said, “Your...your grandpa had a heart attack!”

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CHAPTER  5    

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Eddie’s hands began trembling as he dropped his helmet onto the ground. It rolled underneath the car, but he had to desire at that moment to retrieve it. “What happened...where is he?” Eddie asked nervously. 
     “They took him to the hospital on the Fort Johnson military base,” she responded, fighting back tears.
    “That’s right,” Eddie remembered Pepe telling him about his military service, though he didn’t talk much about it because of the trauma from Vietnam. “He’s a Veteran and goes there for primary care,” Eddie explained to her. 
     “Well, that’s good. I heard they have some great doctors there. One of our cheerleaders is a military family member?”
    Eddie exhaled momentarily, feeling a temporary sense of relief from Karla’s confidence. Refocusing quickly, Eddie asked here, “So, what did they say happened to him?” 
     She responded, “I talked to Mr. Sal. When he couldn’t reach you, he called my mom who called me. He said your grandpa was working in the yard when one of the neighbors saw he had collapsed on the ground and came and found me.”
     Eddie listened no more. He raised his hand to interrupt her and grabbed her arm saying, “Let’s go!”
      “Wait!” exclaimed Karla. “I’ll drive you to my house and my father can drive us to the base. He has a visitor’s pass.”
     “You guys go. I’ll tell the coaches,” Jimmy said. 
     Eddie and Karla ran over to her car, which was a Blue Ford Fiesta. There was a momentary argument over who would drive, but Karla took charge, rushed to the driver’s side, and hopped in. She no longer had the trust in Eddie that she once did with his emotional tantrums. No emergency was too great for her to risk damage to her car or herself by someone so upset. Thus, she revved the engine, and they were off like a cheetah in the jungle after its prey. 
     Along the drive, Karla found herself committing every traffic violation imaginable. She was driving a car with her attention split between the road and Eddie's impatient inquiries about his grandfather’s accident. 
     “How could something like this have happened?” Eddie whined, rhetorically. Despite his health problems, Grandpa told me he’s been feeling great lately.”
     “Gosh, I don’t know,” Karla responded. “But Mr. Sal told me that they think he had a heart attack.”
     The remainder of the trip Karla and Eddie stayed silent.
It took them only ten minutes to reach Karla’s house where she quickly informed her father of the situation. He grabbed his keys and led them to his car where they got in and sped off. Within minutes, they were on Highway 171 which ran between Leesville and the exit to Entrance Road, which led to the main gate of Fort Johnson. 
    Eddie used that time to call Nellie on her cell phone, but she didn’t answer. Eddie was always urging his Nellie to keep her phone with her during the day. But she never took favor with mobile communications and often forgot it when she left the house. It made him more nervous as he sat shaking. “Where is my grandma? Why don’t she frickin’ answer the phone.”
    Karla broke in and replied, “Don’t worry, Eddie. Miss Nellie’s already at the hospital by his side. I’m sure they’re both doing okay.” Karla was reaching for any words she could find to comfort him until they reached the hospital. This was despite that fact internally she’d upset by his coldness towards her at the bench after the game.
    As they entered the base’s entrance road, she grabbed Eddie’s hand and replied, “Just a few more minutes and we should be there.” 
    “Yeah,” he replied simply. Internally, he was becoming more panicky by the moment. Pepe was like a father to him.
     She was grasping for anything to converse with to keep Eddie from panicking.
    Karla’s father pulled his car up to the front of Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital. Karla could see the entrance to the lower deck parking for the medical center a block away and directed him to drive there. They looked at the distance and noticed that there were no empty spaces on the ground level, so they had to go to the third deck before Karla spotted an empty space, but it was labelled handicapped. Without a moment's hesitation or remorse, she urged her father to pull into it long enough for them to exit the car. 
    As they parked, Eddie quickly leaped out and dashed towards the elevator. Impatiently, he rushed to the stairway instead, with Karla running behind him. 
    As they entered the emergency room entrance, they found Nellie and Pepĕ’s friend Ernesto Salvadore standing at the reception desk teary eyed and in an obvious state of concern. 
    Sal was a fifty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant and coal miner, who had lived and worked in Leesville for twelve years. He owned a rancher home on five acres about two miles down the road. He has been a longtime family friend. 
    Their attention shifted when they heard the voice of Eddie’s grandmother, Nellie. She was still wearing the black apron that she wore while working in her garden. She quickly informed them that Pepĕ had been pruning the hedges when he suffered the attack. She began to cry as recalled how he was conversing with Sal when he suddenly fell to the ground. 
     “Grandma, I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.” Eddie greeted her nervously as he gave her a warm embrace. 
     “I’m sorry, sweetie. I can’t keep up with that darn phone. I do worse with that phone than I do with my glasses,” she explained.
     Eddie smartly shifted, replying, “Never mind that, grandma. How’s grandpa doing?
    Nellie’s cheeks were pale with fear and concern. “They took him somewhere and told us to wait in this waiting area until they got back with us.”  Tears started streaming down her face. “I’m gonna lose my mind if they don’t tell me something soon.”
    Eddie patted her on the shoulder, “Don’t worry, grandma. We’re here now. You sit and take care of yourself. We’ll find out everything,” he continued as Karla nodded to Nellie in affirmation.
    The sight of her grandson seeming to take charge provided her with much need release of shock and anxiety. “The doctors are going to be back out soon. That is all that they told us,” Nellie said, as she made a futile attempt to compose herself. 
    “Stay with her a moment,” Karla said to Eddie. “I’ll check with the front desk to see what’s happening.”
    As Eddie walked Nellie back over to the row of waiting room chairs, Karla walked back up to them accompanied by a triage nurse who introduced herself as Rebecca Collingsworth. In a solemn and empathetic tone, she replied to them that there was no information yet on Pepe’s condition but then reassured all of them that Pepe was well cared for and was in stable condition due to the lack of a Code Blue alert.

     After spending ten minutes with each of them pacing about the waiting room, the on-call ER doctor walked in. After quick introductions, he informed them that Pepĕ was admitted into an ER room about three doors down and was undergoing intubation in preparation for movement to the surgical ward. Nellie nearly fainted at the announcement as her heart started to pound heavily and Eddie had to reach and hold her up. 
    Nellie tried to charge off behind the doctor but was asked by the nurses to remain patient and wait for updates. Nellie, though angered, nodded and proceeded back to the ER room, in a wobbly-nervous condition. Eddie now worried that she might collapse from the stress of the moment, which would result in both of his grandparents in the ER which would be overwhelming for him. 
    At that moment, he finally thought of calling Pepe’s son and his father John to inform him of the situation. But when he called, the result was not surprising and what he expected. There was a voice mail stating that he would be unavailable for the next week due to business meetings. As usual, he hadn’t given a heads-up to his only son about his status. With that, Eddie felt at that moment, if he lost Pepe, he’d not be losing John, his father, but would be losing the only man in his life he truly considered a dad.