Football Hero (2008) (3 page)

TY’S BIRTHDAY SURPRISE WAS
a work permit from the state of New Jersey.

“Most kids can’t work until sixteen,” Uncle Gus said with a nod. “’Cept if it’s a family business. Which this is.”

Uncle Gus nodded toward the truck and Charlotte’s impassive face. On the side of the rusty black F 150 was a plastic sign with red letters that said: “Slatz’s Cleaning Services, Proprietor: Gus Slatz.”

“Coach V wants me to play wide receiver,” Ty heard himself say. “He thinks I’m the fastest kid in my class.”

Uncle Gus smiled, glancing at his wife as if Ty were telling a joke.

“Fast enough for him to give you a big fat contract
like your brother’s gonna get?” Uncle Gus said. “They gonna pay you, you’re so good?”

Ty opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“No, they ain’t,” Uncle Gus said, then he poked one of those stubby red fingers into Ty’s chest. “You got to make money in this world, boy. No time for games. You ain’t no football player. You ain’t Tiger and your daddy didn’t leave you no insurance money when he ran his car off that road. He didn’t leave you with nothin’ but us. That’s it. Now, I could be bitter about that, my wife’s brother just dumpin’ his kid on me when I got my own already, but I’m not like that. I’m bigger than that, the churchgoing type.

“Give a man a fish, feed him for a day,” Uncle Gus said, glancing at his wife with a knowing look and taking on the aspect of a preacher. “But teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. I’m gonna teach you to fish. Teach you to work.”

Ty looked at the mountain of wood and the three long, tall rows he’d split and stacked over the previous months.

Uncle Gus grinned and winked at the woodpile, then he shook his head. “See? You think
that
was work. You got no idea, but I’m gonna show you work. Every day. You get right home after school. Four till midnight, you’ll get a full day’s work. Happy birthday, boy.

“Now, get your scrawny butt in the truck.”

According to Uncle Gus, the ride to Lucy’s Bar took
twice as long because they had to go back home and pick up Ty and now they were caught in traffic. He complained about that the whole way, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Ty’s eyes watered from the smoke. When he reached over to roll down the window, his uncle slapped at his hand and told him to leave it up.

“You trying to give Charlotte an allergy attack?” Uncle Gus asked, scowling so that the vein in the middle of his forehead bulged.

Charlotte popped her gum and stared straight ahead without saying a thing. Her dirty wheat-colored hair hung limp and straight and long, parted in the middle to expose a scalp line as pale as the skin on her face and her bony arms. Sometimes, she reminded Ty of a horror movie victim, with her hunched narrow shoulders and vacant milky green eyes big as jumbo marbles.

But the simple curves of her round face and the faded pink polish on her nails suggested something more pleasant might be hidden within. And, although she’d never said anything particularly nice to Ty, neither had she ever said anything particularly mean. In Ty’s lonely world, he considered her to be on the friendly side of the ledger.

Eventually, they did get there, pulling off the highway onto a broken service road littered with low, grimy buildings. The telephone wires hung slack between their poles as if exhausted, unadorned by
birds of any kind. This close to the tidal swamps of Secaucus, the hazy air owned a funk that made Ty wrinkle his nose as he climbed out of the truck. They entered Lucy’s Bar through the back.

Uncle Gus left the two of them with the buckets, mops, brooms, vacuum, and cleaning supplies in a little hallway and disappeared into the front. Ty peered into a tiny kitchen where a man as big as a bear, wearing a full beard and a backward Jets cap, smoked a cigarette while laying circles of dough into a vat of boiling grease. On his massive bare arm, swirling snake tattoos surrounded the name “
MIKE
.” Ty sniffed at the scent of donuts mixed with stale bread and hamburger meat gone bad.

Mike turned his head and squinted at Ty through the smoke. Ty felt dizzy.

Ty and Thane walked out of the Old Forge theater into the night. When they turned the corner to where their car was parked, they startled a crooked old man picking through the garbage. In his hand was a half-eaten chicken leg smeared with ketchup that he quickly concealed behind his back, licking his lips. He blinked at them and sniffed and stepped sideways off the curb to make room so they could pass.

Thane dug into his pockets, removing their change from the movie and holding it out for the startled old man.

“I think you dropped this,” Thane said, waiting for
the man to hold out his hand. When he did, Thane let the money fall. He took Ty by the arm and led him away.

Ty glanced over his shoulder. “Why’d you do that? That was for ice cream. That guy was a bum.”

“What if he wasn’t?” Thane asked.

Ty wrinkled his brow and said, “What do you mean?”

“Don’t judge someone by what you see,” Thane said. “I met this bum once who was a doctor. His wife died and he kind of lost his marbles. Sometimes people just run out of luck and they start to look like something they’re not. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes they’re exactly what they look like, but you always have to wait to find out. It’s what’s inside that counts.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

From the pocket of his enormous jeans, the cook removed a switchblade knife, flicking it open and turning the point so that it glinted at Ty. Mike’s grin proved to be missing the front teeth. On the knuckles of his hand were the letters “K-I-L-L.” Ty stepped back, bumping into Charlotte, who shoved him so that he tripped and stumbled halfway into the tiny kitchen.

INSTEAD OF IMPALING TY
, the colossal cook dipped his blade into the boiling vat and removed two golden brown miniature donuts. He let them slide from the knife into a paper bag, which he shook, producing little puffs of white smoke. Then the knife went back into the bag and Mike held the powdery donuts out for Ty with a grunt, nodding his head until Ty removed them and handed one to Charlotte.

“Thanks,” Ty said. He took a small bite, then devoured the rest, the dough and sugar melting together into his watering mouth.

The door at the end of the little hallway banged open, and Uncle Gus reappeared, wiping his bushy gray mustache on a sleeve. Uncle Gus’s watery eyes left Ty thinking that he’d had a drink. He had the look
of a Saturday afternoon when he’d sit watching ball games in his chair, drinking beer after beer. Uncle Gus glared as Ty licked clean the remaining powder from his lips.

“Hey,” Mike said in a loud rumble from the kitchen.

“Gus.”

Uncle Gus’s scowl brightened instantly at the sign of Mike. He stepped into the kitchen and looked up at the cook, wringing his hands and telling him how much it meant to the kids that he would give them a snack.

“It’s not every day a middle-school kid gets a donut made by a former NFL lineman,” Uncle Gus said.

“Wait there,” Mike said in a deep, rumbling voice. He stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and turned to his stove.

Uncle Gus spun around at Ty and made sneering faces while Mike removed another donut from the vat. Ty looked past his uncle to see the big man stick a finger into his nose and remove a bloody booger with a half-inch tail of quavering snot. Mike winked at Ty, then smeared the mess onto the donut before popping it into the bag of sugar. Ty curled his lower lip into his mouth and clamped down hard.

“You think something is funny?” Uncle Gus asked, his face going red.

Uncle Gus calmed down, though, when Mike nudged him and removed the donut from the bag with
his switchblade. Uncle Gus took it, forcing a smile, and Mike sucked on his cigarette. Mike gave a thumbs-up and squinted at Uncle Gus until he popped the entire donut into his mouth, chewing so that his big mustache danced up and down on his face. Mike smiled and nodded, laughing so deep that the cigarette tumbled from his lips and Uncle Gus joined him. Ty stole a look at Charlotte’s blank face and thought he saw a twinkle in her eye. Laughter burst from him, and Uncle Gus looked at him uncertainly, swallowing in the nick of time. Mike walloped him so hard on the back that Uncle Gus stumbled out into the hallway.

“Well,” Uncle Gus said, grinning up at the ex-player, “back to work. That was delicious.”

“I bet it was,” Mike said.

Uncle Gus turned on Ty and Charlotte, flicked his fingers to shoo them down the hall, and said, “Hurry up.”

“He’s big,” Ty said in a low voice.

“Six-seven, four hundred pounds these days,” Uncle Gus said. “Seventh-round draft pick by the Giants in 1986. Blew out his knee halfway through his rookie season, put a hundred pounds on during rehab, and never got back onto the field. Let’s go.”

Uncle Gus jumped ahead of them and held open the swinging door, waving them into the main bar.

Ty and Charlotte carried in the equipment and
supplies. Lucy’s was a dingy place with battered wooden chairs and tables carved with graffiti. It smelled of stale beer, and Ty’s sneakers made sticky sucking noises as he walked.

“That’s Lucy,” Uncle Gus said, nodding toward the front window, where a tired row of men, their backs to the glass, sat hunched over their drinks. One sat apart from the rest like a shepherd guarding his flock.

“You don’t even try to talk to him. Be careful of the bar if you ever clean over there. Don’t bang your mop into it. His father made it. And, if he catches you looking at the burn mark on his face, you’ll have a couple burn marks of your own. Get it?”

“Lucy? He’s a man,” Ty said without thinking.

“And
not
a nice man,” his uncle said.

Uncle Gus pointed to the back and said, “You see that red door next to the bathrooms? That door’s closed, you don’t touch it. If it’s open, you go in there and clean the bathroom and empty the trash. Don’t
touch
anything else. That’s Lucy’s office. The bar, the office, and his scar, just be careful with all of it.”

At the corner of the bar the man named Lucy sat with a bottle of beer, a newspaper, and a bowl of peanuts.

“What’s that thing next to the peanuts?” Ty asked.

Uncle Gus glanced Lucy’s way and said, “A crowbar. I’ve seen him use it, too.”

Lucy wore the shadow of a beard and the hungry
face of someone who hadn’t eaten for days. Ty presumed the shiny red lozenge in the middle of his sunken cheek was the burn. With one hand, Lucy snapped open the peanuts, popping them into his mouth and slowly grinding them down before adding their shells to the mess on the floor. With his other hand, he worked a cell phone, talking, dialing, and text messaging nonstop. He kept his eyes glued to the TV above the bar, where a Mets game played without sound.

Uncle Gus pointed to the vacuum and told Charlotte to get going. She carried the machine over to the thin carpeted area where a dozen tables sat between two rows of booths. Charlotte plugged the vacuum into the wall and got right to it, filling the room with a whir so loud Ty had to lean closer to his uncle to hear.

“I said start with the bathrooms,” Uncle Gus said, nudging a bucket with his toe and rattling the contents—a toilet brush, a mop, a sponge, and a bottle of ammonia.

Ty picked up the bucket and headed for the far wall, where the men’s and women’s rooms stood side by side, each with several holes punched into it. Before going in, he glanced back to see his uncle sweeping up the pile of peanut shells beneath Lucy’s stool. His uncle glanced up and made a snarling face and Ty ducked inside.

The smell made him retch. A reddish brown spray of vomit coated the tiled wall above the urinal. The floor was yellow and sticky. Inside the stall, the bowl had been jammed with a mound of soggy paper and crap. Ty uncapped the ammonia and spilled it into the bucket, wincing as the acrid smell burned his eyes.

The bucket wouldn’t fit into the sink.

He looked around for a spigot he could use to fill it with water but found nothing more than filth smeared across the walls. After several minutes, he returned to the bar, where the peanut shells had disappeared. His uncle now sat beside Lucy, bent over a mug of beer and pointing to something in the newspaper.

“I don’t care what that says,” the wiry owner said, punching a text message into his phone. “The spread’s three, take it or leave it.”

Ty cleared his throat and the men spun around. Lucy glared and crushed a peanut in his fist.

TY STARED AT HIS
sneakers, determined not to look at Lucy’s scar.

“Big birthday boy. See what I said about this kid?” Uncle Gus said, banging his mug on the bar.

“Didn’t get his brother’s legs, I tell you that,” said Lucy, flicking a peanut shell so that it bounced off Ty’s chest.

“I don’t know where to fill the bucket,” Ty said quietly. He glanced at the row of men who sat gripping their drinks. They stared at him with dead eyes and mouths that hung slack.

“What do you think that hose is for?” Uncle Gus asked.

“I didn’t see a hose,” Ty said, daring a look at his uncle. “And the toilet’s clogged, too.”

Lucy snorted and slid down off his chair, rounding the bar and returning with a plunger that he held out in front of Ty until he took it.

“Check in the other bucket for the hose,” Uncle Gus said, “and get going. We’re behind.”

“He the reason you’re late?” Lucy said, snorting again. He picked the crowbar up off the bar and poked it in Ty’s direction. One end of the blue metal tool flattened into a wedge while the other hooked into a claw.

“Thought he’d stay after school,” Uncle Gus said.

“Spring football. Thinks he’s his brother.”

Lucy chuckled. His phone rang and he flipped it open and said hello, replacing the crowbar and turning his back on them. Uncle Gus gripped Ty’s shoulder until he looked up. Uncle Gus made his eyes really wide and jerked his head in the direction of the bathrooms.

Ty found the piece of hose in the other bucket. He used the mixture of ammonia and water to mop the floors and the walls, and he plunged out the toilet, stopping several times to gag. The women’s room was worse.

As he finished, the door was flung open, and Uncle Gus looked around.

“Not a bad job,” he said, bending over the sink and touching the faucet with his fingertip. “I didn’t even know these faucets were silver, but you’re way too slow. Let’s go.”

On their way to the next account, a small office building, Ty learned from his uncle that Slatz’s Cleaning Services served a variety of customers, including a car dealership, a donut shop, and a dentist’s office. Each of them had bathrooms that needed cleaning, and that responsibility would fall to Ty. The bathrooms in the office building weren’t nearly as dirty as the ones in Lucy’s Bar, but Ty also got his fill of vacuuming, sweeping, cleaning windows, and emptying garbage.

It was nine o’clock by the time they finished the office building and their supplies were loaded back into the covered bed of the truck. When they climbed into the front, Ty’s stomach rumbled loud enough to make Uncle Gus laugh.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Next stop’s the donut shop.”

Ty glanced over at Charlotte, and even she moistened her lips in anticipation. When they arrived, Uncle Gus went straight to the garbage and pulled out a bag of day-old rolls.

“Perfectly good,” he said, setting them out on a countertop and halving them with a sharp knife he took down off the wall. From the refrigerator, he removed wrapped slices of ham and a stack of cheese and laid them onto the rolls before sticking them into the microwave to cook. Ty sat next to Charlotte at the counter, his mouth watering while the appliance whirred away the seconds. When his uncle handed
him the sandwich, the first bite burned his mouth, so he pulled the sandwich apart, allowing the steam to curl up out of the sticky cheese and blowing hard before putting it back together and wolfing it down in three bites.

When Uncle Gus’s cell phone rang, he checked the number and licked his fingers deliberately before answering.

“Hello, Tiger,” Uncle Gus said, his eyes gleaming at Ty. “Yes, the birthday boy is right here, having a little birthday dinner. Glad you didn’t forget…Oh? An agent, huh? I hope he took you to a nice place. Those agents are rolling in it…Yeah, you too. Here’s Ty.”

Uncle Gus covered the phone and hissed at Ty. “We’re one big
happy
family, right?”

Charlotte glanced at him, and Ty clamped his mouth shut, nodding yes until his uncle handed him the phone.

“Hey, Killer,” Thane said. “Happy birthday. You doing all right?”

“Sure,” Ty said.

“Got a surprise for you,” Thane said. “Kind of a birthday present.”

“Okay,” Ty said, clenching his free hand.

“ESPN asked me down to New York for draft day. Everyone’s starting to talk about me being a top five pick. The whole thing will be on TV. It’s this Sunday.”

“That’s great.”

“They said I could bring a guest. That’s you.”

“Me?” Ty asked, his heart doing loops.

“I land Saturday night at six. They’ve got a limo picking me up and then we’ll come get you and spend the night in the Palace Hotel, some fancy place. It’ll be you and me, just like old times. For a day anyway. Sound good?”

“I…” Ty said, his mind spinning. Uncle Gus gave him a crooked smile. “I got to ask Aunt Virginia and Uncle Gus.”

“You don’t think they’ll let you?” Tiger asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, put Uncle Gus on,” Tiger said. “Let’s see what he says.”