Chapter One

Coach Taylor stirred at 12:20 AM and turned in bed to draw his wife back against his chest. He felt blindly in front of himself, but his arm landed only on the uninhabited mattress. It was another few seconds of grasping for her imaginary form before he was awake enough to remember she was dead.

The pain swelled like a wave rising from the pit of his stomach to his heart, just as it had that first moment of realization, a little over a year ago, when he'd gotten the late night call from the hospital.

The phone was ringing now too.

He rolled again to his left and banged about the nightstand until he had it in his hand. He fought the urge to slam it down and instead murmured a sleepy, aching "Hello?"

"Coach Taylor?"

"Yes."

"This is Sheriff Chavez."

"Hey, Raul. It's late." He closed his eyes. He had a faint idea of what was coming, but he prayed it wasn't the case.

"Yeah…uh…I've got your kid down here. In the drunk tank. Again."

"I'll be right down."

Coach Taylor rubbed the sleep dust from his eyes as he cranked his Ford pick-up to a start. He adjusted his black coach's cap up and down on his forehead and tried to blink the road into focus as he drove. When he walked into the station, he went straight to the Sheriff's desk. "You got the paperwork for me?"

"Look…uh…I can't just give him a slap on the wrist this time. I know y'all had a big win tonight, and some of the other boys were drinking too."

"I realize this is the third time you've picked him up for public intoxication. And I assure you I will come down hard on him. I will – "

"- It wasn't just public intoxication this time, Coach. He was driving."

"What? I took away his keys!"

"He was driving Billy Joe's car. But that's not the main problem. He blew 0.2%."

"Jesus Christ," Coach Taylor muttered. "That high?"

"They were getting into Bobby Vee's moonshine."

"Was there an accident?"

"No one was hurt, thank God, but he was all over the road and tried to escape me through a cotton field. Did some damage. Joe McKinney is going to want some compensation, I'm sure."

"Jesus," Coach Taylor muttered again.

"You can post bail tonight, but he's going to have to come back for his court date. This is his first DUI, and if you get Luis Rodriguez to represent him, he'll get off easy with a plea bargain. Probably just have to take antiabuse and get his driver's license revoked for six months. He's a juvenile, so his record will be sealed."

Coach Taylor took in a deep, shaky breath. "What if I leave him for a night?"

The Sheriff shook his head. "Might send a message, but, honest to God, Coach, I think he's going to need something more than a little bit of tough love here."

Coach Taylor ripped off his hat and dug his hand into his hair. "I don't know what I'm doing here, Raul, raising this boy alone like this."

"Maybe you need to get yourself a wife."

"I can't even begin to think about that right now."

"Well you need help. So, you bailing him out tonight or not?"

He did bail the boy out, and when they were sitting in his truck, with the sixteen year old partly sobered up and rocking a little in the passenger's seat beside him, Coach Taylor slammed his fist against the dashboard three times, hard, because he didn't want to slam it into his son. "God dammnit, Eric!" he screamed, "Goddammint! What the HELL is wrong with you?"

"I was just…we were just…"

"You're an embarrassment to the Taylor name. You're an embarrassment to your team. I can't keep covering your tracks for you. I won't keep doing it. I know I haven't been the best father this past year, but I don't know what I've done to deserve this!"

Eric gritted his teeth and stared outside the windshield.

"I'm pulling you from the team."

"What? We've got play-offs in three weeks!"

"Son, you're in real trouble this time. You're going to trial."

"Dad, you can't win without me."

It was true. He wasn't sure they could. Eric was good, a junior who was the star quarterback of that team. His second string, though already a senior, wasn't anywhere near Eric's ability.

"And if you pull me now, I won't get that scholarship UT's been dangling in front of my nose!"

"I know that. But if you get your head on straight and keep your record clean and come back and play for me again next year, you'll have a chance to earn another one." Hell, Eric could probably make it all the way to the NFL if he didn't kill himself or end up in jail before then.

"How can you even consider pulling me?"

"Son," Coach Taylor said, "it's time I took away football. Time I took away something you actually give a shit about, because you don't seem to give a shit about much else!"

"Me? You're the one who cares about it! It's you're whole goddamn life! This entire season you've made me get up at 5 AM to run plays."

He had, it was true, but mostly because he'd been awake since 3 AM every day. He'd wanted the company. He hadn't slept more than 4.5 a day since she died. He'd get up early in the morning and try to pray, but there would be no words. He'd tried to read, but the lines would blur. He'd run in the morning, before the sun rose, when it was still cool, his breath making faint clouds in the early November air, and finally, he'd pound on Eric's door shouting, "Hut, hut! Time to get up! Got to run those plays! Got to run those plays!"

"And you make me run those plays over and over again. I can never do them good enough for you!"

Coach Taylor did, it was true, make Eric run those plays a few too many times, perhaps, but coaching was something he was good at. Improving Eric's game was something he could do. It was something he could control. It was something. "That's not true, son," he lied. "You know that's not true. I just want you to achieve your best."

Eric shook his head. "Fine. Go ahead and take me off the team. Watch it go down like a, like a…"

"Too drunk to think of a good simile?"

"See, nothing is ever good enough for you!"

"Eric, you're right. Your C- average is not good enough for me! Getting drunk in public and being hauled in to the station is not good enough for me! You risking the lives of two of your friends because you got behind the wheel of a car drunk off your ass is not good enough for me!"

He cranked the engine on. He drove in silence all the way to the house, but when they were in the carport, and the engine was off, he spoke, slowly and deliberately. "I can't do this anymore."

"Do what?" Eric asked.

"I don't know what to do with you. I know I haven't done a good job of raising you alone this past year. I know that." Coach Taylor sighed. "I can't handle you." He glanced at Eric. The boy's nostril flared. It looked like he was fighting back tears. "Your mother would have…she would have…This never would have happened, if she were alive. And I just can't do it by myself anymore." He pulled the keys out of the ignition. They jangled loudly. "I'll help you get off easy on the drunk driving charges. I'll get you a damn good lawyer. After you've had your court date, I'm sending you to live with your grandfather for the rest of your junior year and most of the summer. You can come back for summer training in August. Repeat your junior year next year. Pull up those grades."

"What? Send me where?"

"To live with your Grandfather Maddox. Your mother's father." Warren Maddox had not approved of Deacon Taylor eloping with his daughter when she was just a ripe eighteen, especially given that Deacon himself was already twenty at the time and had been living under the old man's roof and in his trust. Coach Taylor's relationship with his father-in-law had been somewhat strained ever since. "He's in Weslaco now."

"Where the fuck is Weslaco?"

Coach Taylor knew he should correct the boy for swearing. There was a time he would have. There was a time Eric wouldn't even have considered swearing in his presence. That time was gone, and he was too weary to correct him now. He was just so tired. That was the worst thing about her death – not the grief that ebbed and flowed like a tide pulling back and rolling in, but the sheer tiredness. The goddamn tiredness. He was just so tired all the time, even when he was running, even when he was yelling, even when he was on that field, bringing his boys to victory, even when he was doing the thing he loved most in this world – most besides her. "It's…it's near Brownsville," he said, and said it through his teeth, so he wouldn't cry. He looked to his left, at the kitchen door, so Eric wouldn't see the wetness in his eyes either.

Coach Taylor didn't know exactly when everything had fallen apart, when Eric had completely stopped saying "yes, sir" and "no, sir," when he'd started drinking, when he'd let his grades slip. It was sometime after his mother died, of course, but he couldn't pinpoint the exact moment it had started, because, well, the truth was, he hadn't been paying attention to his son, except when they were playing football, and then he wasn't paying attention to his son so much as paying attention to his plays, his form, his runs. Maybe it was because the boy looked to damn much like her, or maybe it was because he himself was a shit father and his wife had been the only one holding the family together…he didn't know. He just knew he was failing his son, and if he couldn't give the boy what he needed, someone else had to.

"That's on the border! That's at least 400 miles away!" Eric said, and Coach Taylor couldn't tell if it was fear or anger or sadness in his voice, or maybe all three at once, multiplying one another. "And I've seen Grandpa Maddox….like…three times in my entire life. Why would you….why would you send me away? Send me to live with him?"

"Because that's what he does on his ranch, your grandfather. He helps troubled teenagers."

"So that's what I am to you? A troubled kid you need to pawn off on some ranch?"

"Eric, do you think you aren't troubled?"

"Clearly, I'm in trouble, anyway."

"I'm sorry, son, but I don't know what else to do." He threw his shoulder against the truck door. Eric didn't get out.

Coach Taylor left the porch light on, and the kitchen door unlocked, and his son just sitting there, staring through the windshield. He crawled back into his too-big bed and pulled a pillow to himself. Damn if it didn't, after all these months, and all these washings of sheets, still smell like her shampoo.