Juice - Eric Walters [10]
“Yep. Kid always had the right attitude. I started training him when he was about your age. Helped him to become everything he is today. He still comes back to me. He’s got all those fancy trainers and therapists and coaches up there in the NFL, but it’s still me he calls when he needs to talk.”
“That’s incredible.”
“So, I think it’s time we got down to work.”
“You got it,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you want, whatever it takes.”
“That’s the attitude I like. We’ll talk about your individual program and then get you started. There’s no time to lose.”
Chapter Seven
“Excuse me, young man, do you have any bananas?” came a voice from behind me.
I took a deep breath before turning around. I was standing in front of a mountain of bananas, and beside me was a cart filled with even more bananas that I was going to put on the top of the mountain.
“Yes, ma’am, we have bananas and—,” I turned around. It was my mother, standing there with a big goofy smile on her face.
“Mom!”
She started giggling. I always came home and told her about the stupid questions I was asked by customers.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She pointed at the cart at her side. It was practically overflowing with groceries. “I thought I could shop and then offer you a drive home after your shift is over.”
“That would be great. My legs are really sore and tired.”
“You must have moved a lot of bananas today,” she said.
“I did. I moved ninety-six boxes, which is 9,600 individual bananas. But that’s not what got me so tired. Tony had me working my lower body.”
“Tony?” she said.
“He’s our team’s strength coach.”
“Your team has a strength coach?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yeah, isn’t that incredible?”
“It’s something,” she said.
“He’s only here for the summer. Normally he just works with the pros. Do you know he’s Jessie McCarthy’s personal trainer?”
“Who’s she?” Mom asked.
“She? Jessie McCarthy isn’t a girl. He’s a professional foot —”
She started laughing again and I knew she’d just been putting me on. “I know who he is,” she said. “So why would this Tony come here to work with some high school kids lifting weights?”
“Coach Barnes arranged it. He can arrange anything. Besides, it’s not just weight training. He’s working out an individual training plan for us that includes diet and food supplements and—that reminds me, you don’t have to buy vitamins. They provide it all.”
“That’s good. Now if I could just get them to pay for your groceries,” my mother said. “By the way, guess who dropped into the bank today.”
I knew in my head it could have been any of dozens of people, but my heart gave another answer—my dad. He hadn’t lived with us for almost nine years, and I hadn’t even seen him for eight, but that thought still popped into my head. Sometimes I thought I saw him on street corners or in stores as we passed by.
I remembered the night he left. The yelling and screaming and crying. The holes in the wall that he’d made with his fists—holes that weren’t fixed for a year after that. I thought my mother left them there to remind her.
The yelling and the tears weren’t uncommon. None of it was. That time, though, he left and didn’t come back. He still came around and saw me a couple of times a week and took me out. Then he moved out of town. There were letters and phone calls at first and then nothing. Nothing for the last seven years.
My father loved football. He played for his high school. When I was playing I sometimes pretended that he was up in the stands watching. Who knows, maybe he was. The crowds were pretty big. More likely he wasn’t there, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have read about what I was doing. Maybe he’d read that our team won the championship and that I was the MVP.
“That Coach Barnes of yours came into the bank today,” my mother said.
“What was he doing there?”
“He was opening an account, but it looked like he was running for mayor the way he was shaking hands and greeting people.”
“He’s pretty good with people. Did you talk to him?”
“He made a point of coming over to talk to me. He certainly