American Outlaw - Jesse James [37]
“Yes. And so do you, I believe.” He grinned and extended his hand for me to shake. “My name’s Josh Paxton.”
“I’m Jesse James,” I said, taking his massive paw in my hand.
“Like the outlaw?”
“Just like,” I said.
Josh made a finger gun and shot me with it. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, you weakass-headphone-wearing punk.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” I said.
We became instant friends. Josh was smart, funny as hell, and best of all, he seemed to hate everyone on the football team even more than I did.
“Every motherfucker’s out for himself,” he complained.
“I hate it,” I agreed.
“These chumps all think they’ll be suiting up in the Big Ten two years from now,” Josh said. He looked at me. “What do you think?”
I said nothing for a moment. “I’m here to play football the way it’s supposed to be played.”
“Course you are,” Josh said, laughing. “You wouldn’t leave even if they begged you, would you, Outlaw Jesse?”
“Well, I didn’t say that,” I admitted. “If a scout comes up to me and wants to talk, then we’ll talk.”
But the scouts were precisely the problem. There was always a murmur going around our locker room: Scouts are coming to the next game! Scouts’ll be at practice on Thursday! Talent snoops for big colleges became these mythical figures who could deliver us from our drab lives.
Discontent isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to football. A talented coach would have harnessed our resentment at being outsiders, hitched it to our physical brutality, and made us into a fearsome squadron. But our head coach was trying to get out, too. He’d had offers at UNLV and UTEP, and by God, he was going to sniff them out. Everyone wanted to get out of Riverside and the bush leagues once and for all. That’s the universal dream of junior college, after all: to leave junior college.
And I was as guilty of entertaining those fantasies as the rest of them. Each morning I got up thinking I should be at Pitt, or Hawaii, or Iowa, or U of Colorado—any of those teams that recruited me. I was a talented athlete and a leader, but due to my own idiotic lack of foresight, I had ended up going to junior college in the same damn town where I’d gone to high school. We even played our games on the same field I’d played on in high school. I felt like I was on the hamster wheel, running faster now, but in the exact same spot.
It felt even more like that when I found out that Rhonda had enrolled as a student at Riverside Community. She and I ran into each other several times, shared several awkward glances, until one day, she finally approached me.
“Jesse,” she said, “I just want to let you know how sorry I am about the way things turned out.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. “I’m over it.”
She looked down. “No, I’m serious. I really . . . I really loved you.” Rhonda touched my arm. “I’ve never felt the same about anyone.”
I fell for it, of course. Soon, we were dating again. On Sunday nights, I’d drive us downtown, to get a pizza and a couple of Cokes. But I was ridiculously poor.
“Hey,” I said, “I hate to ask, but . . .”
“It’s no problem,” said Rhonda, smiling, taking out her pocketbook. “You can get us next time, okay?”
I felt embarrassed, but the constant practices and classes kept me so busy that I didn’t have any time to work a job. Stealing was kind of out of the equation nowadays, so pocket cash became hard to come by. I had a beat-up car, but I lacked the money to drive it very often. More than once, I found myself scrounging around in the backseat, digging for seventy-five cents so I could put enough gas in my car to go home.
All the players seemed to be poor. The locker room was falling apart. Only two out of the four showers worked. Our quarterback’s shoes were covered in duct tape. One day, after a particularly grueling practice, I dragged myself up the steps to the parking lot, only to find one of my teammates breaking into my car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said, stunned.
He looked up at me sheepishly. “Oh, is this your car, Jesse?”
“Yes, asshole.” Immediately, my