Page 98 of High Notes & Hail Marys

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You know there will be hell to pay for the fight, and it’s not long in coming down. The next morning, you are summoned to Coach’s office.

Larry Beausoleil has an office at the $136 million Cyclones training facility that is not unlike the man in question: small, efficient, and to-the-point. The carpet is shockingly industrial, and the walls are painted an unremarkable shade of slate blue. His big desk takes up one whole side of the room. Behind him are walnut shelves holding signed footballs and three different iterations of the Cyclones’ helmet behind glass. There’s a framed Far Side comic on the wall; something with talking sheep. He’s got a tree in a large pot, tall enough to almost graze the dropped ceiling. The one concession to his vaunted position is the view: it’s a corner office, and the walls adjacent to and opposite his desk are all windows. Beyond them, the practice fields are an expanse of rolling green. Two leather chairs are in front of the desk. He looks up at you when you knock at exactly three minutes before your appointed meeting, andgestures to the seat on the left.

“Do I need to call my union rep?” you ask before sitting down.

“This isn’t an official disciplinary meeting, Reinhart,” Coach says tightly. “Sit the fuck down.”

You are strangely calm as you do what you’re instructed. Running on maybe two hours of sleep, your head is sensitive, but clear. Coach scares the shit out of you normally. But you don’t have the luxury of freaking out.

Whoever designed Coach’s office had football players’ proportions in mind. The chair is roomy, deep, and spaced far enough from the desk that you can stretch your legs and cross them at the ankles.

“What can I do for you, sir?” you ask.

The expression on Coach’s face can only be described as withering. Despite his age and multiple chins, it still carries impressive hauteur. His grayish eyes are sharp behind their wire-rimmed grandpa glasses. It’s been over forty years and almost seventy-five pounds of fat since Larry Beausoleil touched a gridiron himself, but the man’s mind and football intellect are sharp as cut glass.

“Don’t act like a fucking ingénue,” he says. “You know exactly why you’re in here.”

You don’t reply, figuring that anything you say will be used against you, just like in court. Being in court might be less intimidating, actually: Coach is judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up into one mustachioed package. You steeple your fingers and lean back. Might as well make your ass comfortable before it gets chewed clean off.

“Since you asked,” he says sarcastically, “Heller won’t need surgery to fix his jaw. He’ll be on a liquid diet for six to eight weeks and won’t be enjoying life very much, but it will heal. I was sent a photo this morning by a member of the team staff. In complex medical terms, you fucked his face up, Reinhart.”

“Good,” you answer back.

Coach’s eyes narrow, nearly disappearing in his chubby jowls. “Save the disrespect for your idiot teammates,” he barks. “I brought you in here to talk to you, but this can pivot into something formal real quick if I think it needs to.”

You pull a deep breath in through your nose and exhale it through your mouth, then do it again.

“I brought you in here,” Coach repeats, “to hear, in your own words, exactly what the hell you thought you were doing. You think I don’t know Heller’s a bad apple? You think I don’t know what he gets up to in his free time? That’s not the kind of man I was raised to be, Reinhart, and I knowthat your mama sure as shit didn’t raise you to be like that, either. It’s part of professional sports. You deal with assholes left and right. Sometimes you get real lucky and they’re your associates. Can’t help it. I thought that someone like you would have known better. What I want to know is, why didn’t you? It’s unlike you.”

“That’s two questions, sir,” you say. “Do you want to know why I hit GoGo, or do you want to know why I didn’t know better?”

“Both.”

You lift your chin slightly. “I hit him because he needed hitting. And I did know better, but I just didn’t care. Sir,” you add.

You half-expect Coach to throw something at you, but, instead, he pulls his glasses off. Rubs irritably at the bridge of his nose, where there’s an indent from the frame of the glasses. He seems to be taking a second, so you stare across the landscape of his desktop. There’s an old-fashioned blotter, every day’s box filled with notes. A framed photograph of Coach and his two sons, both of whom graduated Notre Dame, where he used to coach, but didn’t play football. A gold-and-brown plaque:

There Is No Limit To What A Man Can Do Or Where He Can Go If He Doesn't Mind Who Gets The Credit.

Ronald Reagan

“Kaius,” Coach begins, startling you just when you were finishing reading, “I think of you as a leader on this squad. I know you don’t have a captain’s patch, because you haven’t gone out of your way to make a lot of friends. But I see it all. The effort. The commitment. The way these young guys look at you. They hold you in esteem. That’s not something that money can buy. You’re a fine man, Reinhart. Onandoff the field. I knew it when we drafted you, and you still manage to defy expectations.”

“I appreciate you saying all that, sir,” you tell him. “It means more than you can imagine. I’m, uh, guessing there’s abutcoming up, though.”

“It’s a bigbut,” Coach confirms. “That bullshit yesterday has me questioning your judgment, Reinhart. You should know better than to lower your standards to the level of jackasses like Heller. If you had hurt him much worse, you could have been looking at fines. Maybe even charges. To say nothing of the bad press. Youareaware that there were reporters crawling all over that field, right? That all it would have taken would be one of them poking their head in the locker room before their allotted time? Seeing Heller sprawled out on the floor, looking like Wile E. Coyote after he got hit with the anvil? Nobody’s going to know about it, but that’s by the grace of God, honestly.”

Again, you say nothing.

“What would that boyfriend of yours have thought?” Coach asks, his tempo merciless. “How about his reputation? You’re famous now, Reinhart. If I’m not holding you to a different standard, the world is going to. The media. That was a boneheaded thing you did, son.”

You stiffen in your chair. When you mentally ran your lines on this interview last night while you were awake and not sleeping, you hadn’t prepared for that. For Coach to go there.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he asks finally.

“I’m not sorry,” you answer.

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