American Outlaw - Jesse James [30]
“Aargh!” I yelled. “I pulled something!”
I lay on the ground, grimacing in pain.
“I must have pulled a muscle in my groin, man,” I told the offensive coach who ran onto the field. “You gotta get me out of here. I can’t freaking move.”
I limped off the field, my arm around my coach’s shoulders.
“Mike!” Coach barked, when we reached the sideline. “Get in the fucking game!”
Mike’s eyes were wide. He stared at me, unwilling to believe his eyes. “Jesse,” he sputtered. “What happened?”
“Mike!” our coach screamed. “What are you waiting for, an engraved fucking invitation?”
“Pull on your helmet, Mike,” I advised. I pointed to the field. “They need you out there.”
With an expression of pure dread on his face, Mike jammed his helmet over his mop of red hair.
“Go on, Mike,” I urged. “You can do it.”
He gulped big. “All right, I guess I got no choice, now.” Eyes blinking rapidly, he sped out to the line as fast as his fat haunches would carry him.
“How’s that groin, James?” my coach asked.
“Ooh, yeah,” I said, rubbing it. “Hurts bad.”
I had never before witnessed a play of high school football from the bench. It was a strange vantage point. I stood next to my teammates on the sidelines, cheering loudly as the two teams lined up for the final play of the game.
The whistle blew. Our center fired the ball through his legs to the quarterback, who in turn deked, then handed off to Bryson Young. I watched, flabbergasted, as none other than Mike threw a perfect block for him. Bryson clambered over Mike’s broad back into the end zone and scored the winning touchdown.
Our bench cleared. We ran to mob the players. Mike was standing up, waving his arms excitedly.
“Fuck, man!” he yelled. “I did it!”
The look on his face was indescribable. I’d never seen anyone in my life that stoked or that amazed at what was going on. Then I happened to look into the stands. A huge man with a mop of red hair and a hefty frame was doing a wild dance of joy.
“Hey, Mike, is that your dad?”
He grinned. “Aw, yeah. That’s him.” He waved up to the stands. After a second, his crazed dad whooped it back.
“MIKEY! Way to DO IT, SON!”
It kind of gave me the shivers. I was real happy for the fucker. Yeah, sure I was.
——
The California Youth Authority was your standard concrete hellhole of a government facility. Razor-sharp barbed wire encircled the top of the aluminum fence that surrounded the unit, discouraging even the fantasy of making a run for it. Hostile guards and wary administrators patrolled the halls, looking dour and threatening. I was fingerprinted at intake, made to fill out a thick sheaf of forms, then issued a bunk in a giant room with seventeen other kids. I received two undershirts, four pairs of underwear, a tan uniform with a shirt that buttoned down the front, tan pants, and a tan jacket—a typical junior-jail outfit. I got the shoes, too, junior-jail slippers. We lacked many full-length mirrors in the facility, but if I’d been able to check out my reflection, I would have seen that I approximated the genuine article.
I was directed to a little dented locker, where I would be allowed to store any personal items I might accumulate. Then I received a half-sized green toothbrush, a travel tube of toothpaste, and a plastic yellow soap dish.
“Don’t lose ’em,” a sullen attendant warned me. “Replacements will not be furnished.”
The California Youth Authority was a transitional zone. It was more serious than juvie and the sentences were generally longer, but it was still for minors, and that meant it was way less dangerous than real jail. If you fucked up after you got done here, however, then you were probably headed to the next level, meaning grown-up prison. There, you wouldn’t be met with the same kind of mercy. Boneheads and punks roamed the hallways and the cafeteria of CYA, thinking they were tough, but I saw through that illusion pretty swiftly. The grand majority were just a bunch of confused stoners, trying not to get their heads lumped by the guards.
It was a depressing place, to be sure. The name of the