It Emptied Us Read online

  It Emptied Us

  Rick Collins

  Copyright © 2019 Rick Collins

  All rights reserved. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2019

  ISBN:

  9781098923754

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this book to my wife, Betsy Collins. I am because she is.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  ix

  Chapter 1

  Broken Glass

  1

  Chapter 2

  Fumbles

  6

  Chapter 3

  Pistachios

  10

  Chapter 4

  Bigger and Stronger

  14

  Chapter 5

  Hidden Bruises

  15

  Chapter 6

  The Jones Boys

  19

  Chapter 7

  East and West

  21

  Chapter 8

  A Change at the Top

  25

  Chapter 9

  Fire and Ice

  30

  Chapter 10

  The Classic

  33

  Chapter 11

  Quick Lou Zarro

  40

  Chapter 12

  Thunderbolt

  43

  Chapter 13

  Easties and Westies

  46

  Chapter 14

  The Beaumont Varsity Warriors

  54

  Chapter 15

  First Scores

  59

  Chapter 16

  Mary Jones and Gwen Wilson

  62

  Chapter 17

  In Your Face

  66

  Chapter 18

  Hard Stuff

  70

  Chapter 19

  Missing Mom

  73

  Chapter 20

  States

  77

  Chapter 21

  More Than a Game

  80

  Chapter 22

  Smoke and Fire

  86

  Chapter 23

  Breath of Life

  90

  Chapter 24

  Cold Rain

  95

  Chapter 25

  Moving Pictures

  97

  Chapter 26

  Scrubbed Away

  100

  Chapter 27

  Bloody Elbows

  103

  Chapter 28

  The Good and the Great

  104

  Chapter 29

  Repeat

  108

  Chapter 30

  Broken Promises

  111

  Chapter 31

  My Job

  115

  Chapter 32

  Bad Dreams

  120

  Chapter 33

  Carolina

  122

  Chapter 34

  Dented Metal

  126

  Chapter 35

  The Winning Streak

  130

  Chapter 36

  The Great Steve Staber

  134

  Chapter 37

  Fast Food

  137

  Chapter 38

  I Love You Guys

  141

  Chapter 39

  Summer Burdens

  143

  Chapter 40

  Leaders and Followers

  146

  Chapter 41

  Seniors

  153

  Chapter 42

  Swinging Helmet

  156

  Chapter 43

  Back Time

  159

  Chapter 44

  Bottles and Stones

  161

  Chapter 45

  Chasm

  165

  Chapter 46

  Blocking Drill

  167

  Chapter 47

  A Pass in the Mist

  170

  Chapter 48

  Arrested Development

  179

  Chapter 49

  A Time to Lose

  183

  Chapter 50

  Choice Lies

  187

  Chapter 51

  Tired Eyes

  191

  Chapter 52

  For the Ages

  193

  Chapter 53

  A Win and a Loss

  197

  Chapter 54

  True Life

  201

  Chapter 55

  Letter Jacket

  206

  Chapter 56

  Fireballs

  211

  Chapter 57

  Waiting Rooms

  215

  Chapter 58

  Pizza for All

  222

  Chapter 59

  Open Doors

  225

  Chapter 60

  The Light of Stars

  228

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  231

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of Vangella Buchanan. Without her guidance and experience, I would not have been able to finish what I set out to do. I also want to acknowledge my dear friend, Douglas Haddad. He believed in me and motivated me with his kind and constant support and encouragement. Finally, I want to thank all of the teachers, coaches, and friends from my hometown of Andover, Massachusetts. What a wonderful place to grow.

  Chapter 1

  Broken Glass

  “We have to leave,” Donna Wilson yelled from the bedroom. “We don’t have time!”

  Donna’s mother, Gwen, sat on a chair in the kitchen, rocking her twelve-year-old son, Bobby. His beautiful blond hair was plastered with blood and his elbows were cut and bruised. He was Donna’s twin, but right now, he was very much a little boy. Bobby stopped crying and pulled himself up. His sister’s voice was urgent.

  “I called Aunt Carole! She’s coming now. She’ll get us to the bus station.”

  “Go, Bobby,” Gwen urged. “Get some things. Put them in your duffle bag. We’re leaving.”

  Gwen gently moved her son toward his room. He stepped over broken plates and some smashed glasses. He moved pass the stove and stepped over the frying pan and the dinner that littered the floor. He slipped on some blood, but he caught himself before he could fall; the jolt of it sent him in tears again. Bobby stepped toward his room door and used his special key to unlock it. The lock clicked and he pushed the door open. He pulled a duffel bag from his closet and stuffed in some jeans, t-shirts, socks, and underwear. He grabbed a Cleveland Brown’s football jacket and a Jim Brown Bobble Head before he turned to leave the room. The family picture on top of his clothes drawer caught his attention. He picked it up and held it for a moment. He looked at the faces of a perfect family and a rage surged through him. He pulled back his fist and smashed it against the glass surface. Shards of glass crashed against his bedroom wall. Blood flowed from his knuckles. He threw his bedroom key on the floor and he walked out. His crying was over.

  Bobby’s twin, Donna, helped her mom pack. She stuffed clothes and toiletries into an old green suitcase, the one her mom was given as a wedding present back when her husband seemed to love her and he had a steady job and he didn’t drink so much. Donna felt the back of her head. A clump of hair was matted down with blood. She had bruises on the palms of both hands. She pulled out a card from the b
ack of her jeans. Youngstown Police: To Protect and to Serve. On it were the name and number of the officer who talked with her before she left the police station. She wrapped her fingers around the card, and crumpled it. She walked to the bathroom and dropped it into the toilet and flushed. The water made a gurgle and Donna watched the card disappear and get swallowed into the pipes.

  Gwen stood up and crammed clothes into the suitcase. She bumped her arm into her bed stand and a shot of pain blazed through her bicep and into her shoulder. She dropped a sweater. She stooped to retrieve it and more pain rippled through her back. She tried to use her good arm to rub the deep, black bruise, but it didn’t help much.

  Donna heard tires on the gravel driveway. She quickly grabbed her mother’s suitcase in one hand and hers in the other.

  “She’s here! Let’s go.”

  Donna hurried her mother and brother out the front door. Gwen’s sister, Carole, ran to hug first Gwen, then Bobby, then Donna.

  “My God! Oh, my God. Get in the car. Quick, get in the car.” Tears streamed down her face as she took the suitcases and put them in the trunk of her old faded-green Chevy. She ran back and jumped in the waiting car. Donna got to ride shotgun. Bobby carefully helped his mother into the back seat. He buckled her seatbelt and slid in beside her and held onto her. The blood had dried in his golden hair.

  Carole put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway. She threw the car into first and accelerated down the state road. The car bucked when she tried to kick it into second, and jostled Donna and Bobby and Gwen. Carole glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw her sister wince. Gwen had a black eye and a swollen jaw. Carole watched Bobby as he held his mother. If it wasn’t so horrible, they both would have looked sweet.

  The State road led back to town. To get to the bus station, Carole drove pass the GM plant where they made the Buicks and the Chevys and the Cadillacs. She slowed and passed the police station. She held her breath, and the station disappeared behind her. She knew her sister’s husband was deep inside that place and she knew he was going to be released soon. He always got released. She gripped the steering wheel and tried to keep a steady pace until she entered the center of town.

  The bus station was run down, even for Youngstown. A guy in a glass booth sold tickets. Carole pulled the car into a parking slot and helped her sister and her niece and nephew take their bags and they sat in a darkened part of the station. They smelled diesel fumes and years of dust. Carole went to the ticket guy and bought three one-way tickets. She looked around to make sure no one watched. Faceless people walked and took no notice. A bus pulled into the station and people got off. They moved off and went where they were going to go. A bus driver with the name “Stan” sewed on his shirt pocket stepped down the stairs and went to relieve himself. His shirt was dotted with food stains. A gust of wind swirled some wrappers into the air and threw them nowhere. It was a hot day. A threat of a thunderstorm was in the air and the sky looked green. Gwen felt sweat roll down her back.

  “I got you three tickets.” She pointed to the same bus that had just pulled in. “That bus is going to St. Louis first, then down to

  Memphis, then Tulsa, and Phoenix, and then to Bakersfield.”

  “That’s so far,” Donna whispered. “I’ll be so far from you.”

  “It has to be far away,” Carole continued. “Anyway, when you get to Bakersfield, you call. Tell me where, and I’ll send you money. I don’t have much, but it’ll have to do.” Carole pulled her sister up and hugged her. “You have to leave here. You’ll die in this place. You know that.”

  Donna stood up and took her mom’s hands.

  “She’s right, mom. We have to go.”

  She picked up the suitcases and Bobby grabbed his duffle bag. Carole hugged them both. She looked deep into Bobby’s eyes.

  “You did right by your mom. Never forget that.”

  She kissed him first on one cheek and then the other. She wet her fingers and tried to clean some of the blood from Bobby’s hair. She worked at it but the blood was dry and wouldn’t wash out. People boarded the bus. The driver came back with a Coke and a burger. He didn’t have a napkin.

  “Get on the bus, Gwen.”

  Carole gestured to the bus and Gwen Wilson and her twin children stepped up the steps and walked toward the back and sat by themselves. They held their luggage close. The driver started the bus and the air brakes hissed. He pulled the bus out of the station and drove it down the road pass the police station. Gwen looked at the station through the dirty bus window and she wished the bus would drive faster. Her husband was in there and she wanted to be gone.

  The bus drove pass the car factories with broken windows and the mills with mostly empty parking lots and past the dry cornfields and finally pass their old house. Gwen and Donna and Bobby looked at their old house one more time. The bus drove on. They turned their faces away for the last time and they traveled west and did not look back. The thunderstorm broke and rain fell hard and cleaned the town of most of its sins.

  Chapter 2

  Fumbles

  Tim placed his hands under center. He was nine years old and the quarterback of the “B” team Beaumont, Massachusetts Chargers. He looked across at the other team and saw the eyes of his best friend, Andy Jones, linebacker for the rival Central Colts. Andy’s eyes smoldered as Tim readied for the snap. He was intent on one thing, best friend or no best friend. He was going to sack Tim. And Tim knew it. Tim’s dad, Coach Joe of the Beaumont High School Warriors, watched from the sideline. He kept his distance from the other fathers. He stood motionless, like a statue of some war hero. If he was nervous like his son, it didn’t show.

  Tim called out the cadence in his high-pitched, nine-year-old voice. This was supposed to be a pass play and Tim was ready to show off his arm. He knew exactly who was going to catch his pass. Jeff Tony, the team split end, readied himself as the ball was snapped. Jeff bolted, raced in an arc toward the sideline, and flew downfield. He looked back and expected to see Tim’s pass, except, no pass came. A pile of black and white jerseys piled onto a lone blue and gold figure. The snap was perfect, but Tim pulled his hands out too quickly. The pigskin plopped onto the muddy turf. Tim pounced, panic in his eyes. Too late. Andy saw the bad handoff and leaped onto the ball. He fought Tim until he wrestled the ball out of Tim’s hands.

  “My ball. My ball!” Andy hollered.

  The referee untangled the pile and signaled, “First down, Colts!” Andy leaped up and held the ball skyward. The other Colt players leaped in celebration.

  The first play of the game was an utter disaster for Tim. He slowly pulled himself onto his knees. His hands were gummed with mud. His shoulders heaved and he cried within his helmet. The cheers from the Colts knifed into Tim. He turned his head and looked to the sideline and he saw his father standing by himself away from the other parents.

  “Get up, son.”

  Coach Joe saw the fumble. Everyone saw the fumble. The other fathers turned away quietly. They were glad it wasn’t their kid who just fumbled on the very first play of the season.

  So, “Get up, son.” was all Tim heard, not in a booming voice, just simply, “Get up, son.”

  Tim pulled himself up. He wiped the mud from his hands and picked himself off the turf and looked at his father. Tim nodded once and turned away from the pile of Colt players. He jogged back to the sideline and bent over and tied his cleats. He stood back up and took a deep breath and let it out slowly, just like his dad taught him to do when things didn’t go so well.

  The Chargers never got back on offense. The Colts moved the ball deliberately down the field. Andy carried the ball on most plays. He never broke off a long run, but he simply would not go down. His older brothers, Zeke and Alex, members of the Colts “A” team and two years older, cheered each time Andy spun off a tackle, drove an extra yard, or fought for another inch.

  Coach Joe watched Andy and the Colts move the ball down the field. Andy ground his way one last time for a t
ouchdown. He hauled three Charger tacklers through the mud. Again, the referee yanked the Chargers off Andy, and again, Andy leaped up, this time with a scream of joy. His teammates mobbed him.

  When the game ended, Tim and Coach Joe drove home. They lived alone since when Tim turned three. Coach Joe looked at his son and wished she could have seen him grow up and hit baseballs and learn to read and skate and shoot baskets and catch fish. He wished she could have been at Tim’s first communion or the day he broke his arm when he jumped off a swing or his first football practice and the day he tried on his football helmet to make sure it fit.