Authors: Bryan Mealer
With four minutes left in the game, Cocoa began chewing the clock and letting it bleed. On the sidelines, Hester waited for the big play. The defense had been performing miracles all season. It was only a matter of time, he thought.
Who’s it gonna be? In the final chapter, who’s gonna make the big play?
But the only big play came from Page, who accidentally grabbed a face mask. The penalty pushed Cocoa deeper into Raider territory. Boobie and the defense managed to hold the Tigers to third down and three. But with 2:39 left, Folston fought loose on the right side and seized the first down.
The coaches knew.
“That did it,” said Sam.
Hester shook his head. “Yeah.”
On the sideline, the Raiders watched with blank expressions as Campbell took a knee at 1:34 to run the clock down. As the crowd chanted,
“THREE-PEAT! THREE-PEAT!”
a lone voice could be heard over the din.
It was the quarterback, standing halfway on the field, still clutching his helmet.
“Do something!”
he shouted.
“Do something!”
• • •
THE TIGERS RUSHED
the field in triumph. Many fell to the ground, released from the burden of work, and laughed in one another’s arms. They behaved the way true champions did, by raising the sword and passing the credit. Wilkinson, drenched in a victory bath from the Cocoa water jugs, walked the field whispering something to his small son, whom he held in his arms.
Glades Central, once again the losers, did not fall and weep. Instead they stood in stunned disbelief, then discarded their helmets on the turf
like tools they’d never use again. By the time the officials erected two platforms for an awards ceremony, most of the Raider Nation had found the exits. But about a hundred stayed behind, among them gamblers who’d just lost thousands. And when Jessie Hester was announced as the coach of the second-place Raiders, they rose to their feet and booed him. Later, as Hester walked off the field toward the locker room, an older man chased him down along the railing, raised his arm, and called him a piece of shit.
For them, nothing was good enough.
As the players packed their bags in silence, more silver medals found their way to the floor. One belonged to the quarterback, who’d bent down and taken his prize like a sickness. Mario had left immediately following the ceremony with Gail and his sisters, his only consolation being that he’d done everything in his power to win.
As the team readied to load the bus, Hester sat alone on the opposite side of the locker room. Elbows on his knees, he stared vacantly at the floor. Minutes passed. Seniors left with parents without saying good-bye. No one dared disturb him. As the room emptied, one could hear the sounds of shouting and loud music. On the other side of the wall, the Tigers were celebrating.
“I’ve just been sitting here listening to it,” he said, not looking up. “I just want to hear what it sounds like.”
He’d been rewinding every play in his mind, searching for an answer: Should they have kicked the field goal? Was it Jaja’s absence on the return? At some point he realized that none of that even mattered. The premonition he’d felt before the game had been correct. Except Cocoa was more than just a team playing lucky. They were a team of destiny. And teams of destiny could not be defeated.
Destiny once had its place in the muck, but those days may have passed. Sitting there now, the coach doubted they would ever return again. Not to a town that devoured its own, a town that had lost its way. Destiny had no place where dark forces were free to roam.
S
ix days later, Jessie Hester was fired.
School principal Anthony Anderson delivered the news the Friday before Christmas break in a meeting with athletic director Edwin James that lasted less than five minutes. The principal did not mention the loss in Orlando, or the group of angry fans who’d crowded his office that week demanding a change. The coach who’d returned home to give something back, whose record was 36–4 with two state championship appearances, was being fired over grades.
“We are grateful for the three years that Mr. Hester spent with our football program at Glades Central,” Anderson said later in a statement. “As we move forward to connect the bridge of academics with our athletic program, we have decided to move in a different direction.”
Despite widespread outrage over play calls during the Cocoa game, particularly Hester’s decision not to kick the field goal, the news of his firing stunned and angered parents and fans. Many saw academics as a veiled excuse for not bringing home the title. In the days that followed, they flooded the comments section of the
Post
story, lamenting the loss of a role model and mentor. They also criticized a culture that valued winning over all else and routinely tore down its heroes.
“For the past three years with Hester, he has made them not only believe in themselves, but each other as a team,” one parent wrote.
“What kind of message does this send to our kids?” asked another.
Hester’s players were equally shocked by the news.
“I can’t understand it,” said Robert Way. “He was the best coach I ever had. No one ever motivated me like him. We all looked up to him.”
“I thought we should have kicked the field goal,” said Davonte. “But that was no reason to fire him.”
Others were not surprised. “That’s how they do you in Belle Glade,” Mario said. “Nothin’s changed.”
• • •
FOR MARIO
, the crushing loss and firing of his mentor made the ground he walked on seem all the more poisonous. He ached to leave Belle Glade, and his official visit to Hampton University in late January appeared to be his only option.
The week before flying to Virginia, Mario was selected starting quarterback in an all-star game for local seniors, held in Boca Raton. The game would be his last time to wear his Raider helmet and offered a chance to at least go out a winner.
After six weeks of rest, the quarterback’s shoulder was feeling better and his headaches were gone. But the time off had also added pounds. “Damn, Mario’s big,” his sister Jamekia said, watching from the bleachers as her brother squeezed into his flak vest and pads. She turned to Canisa and Aunt Gail. “Look at him.
He’s fat
.”
Gail said that ever since the loss in Orlando, Mario had been calling a lot, needing a boost. “He keeps saying, ‘I need to get out of here, I just can’t wait,’ ” said Gail, who wore a wool shawl and purple scarf to keep out the cold wind. “He told me as long as the two of us can talk every day, he’ll be okay. We just need to keep him positive.”
She sighed and added, “He never got counseling. People gave him material things, but they never filled that emotional void.”
Despite his added weight, Mario gave the crowd another tireless and
riveting performance. As captain of the American team, he passed for 140 yards against the Nationals, ran for one touchdown, and threw two more—one of them to his trusted receiver Jaqavein Oliver. The other came in the last seconds of the fourth quarter. With American down 20–13, Mario hit Dwyer wideout Shawn McClaine for a thirty-nine-yard score, but the two-point conversion failed just as the clock struck zero. Once again, the quarterback found himself one point shy of victory.
The crowd in Boca couldn’t have cared less; they whooped and cheered as Mario was awarded his team’s MVP. Standing at the far end of the bleachers was Hester, who slipped out just before the ceremony.
A few days later, Mario traveled to Hampton and received his much-awaited official treatment: campus and facility tours, a hotel room and restaurant dinners, beautiful chaperones, assurance of a role as middle linebacker—and, more important, a vision of a new home. Upon leaving, Coach Field said they’d be in touch with the details of the offer. Mario was ecstatic.
“Hampton’s on point!” he announced on his Facebook page. An unfettered joy seemed to radiate from his beaming profile photo.
The trip came just in time for Signing Day, held the following Wednesday. And just in time for Mario’s name to be printed on a large placard along with the other Raiders signing to Division I programs that afternoon: KB, Davonte, and Robert Way.
Mario awoke that morning and dressed for school, throwing on his maroon polo and pressed khakis. The ceremony and visions of college life filled his thoughts and made him miss his parents even more. But as he drove to campus, he received a text message from Coach Field. After talking to head coach Donovan Rose, he said, the Pirates could only extend a partial scholarship of $14,000. Full tuition was around $27,000, and Mario knew the difference was impossible to cover. He quickly considered taking out a loan, then realized the true meaning behind Field’s text. Hampton did not really want him. Not only did they not want him, but the coaches couldn’t even bother making a phone call to tell him so themselves.
Mario’s mind spun out. He sat in his car in the school parking lot, flattened by the news and ashamed to go inside. He called Canisa and told her what happened. The sound of his voice made her worry, so she called Gail. When Gail rang Mario minutes later, she repeated what she’d been telling him since Mary and James died, ever since she’d wrapped him up trembling in her arms.
“God has something planned for you,” she said. “You have purpose. You were put on this earth for a reason.”
They made plans for Mario to come stay with her in Fort Lauderdale that weekend, to get a change of scenery and go to church on Sunday. Mario always felt better after hanging up with Auntie Gail. Because if he could not hear his mother’s voice, then Gail’s was the next closest thing.
• • •
MARIO DID NOT
appear at the Signing Day ceremony at four o’clock with the rest of his team. The auditorium was packed with students and family. People had heard what had happened to the quarterback and were already whispering. But that news was suddenly superseded when Hester walked through the doors. He’d told his boys he would watch them sign, and despite his bitterness and confusion over his dismissal, he’d swallowed his pride and kept his word. It was odd how he suddenly seemed out of place, like a character from a previous story who’d walked into another book. He heard about Mario and dropped his head, the gesture expressing the worry that most everyone now felt.
Signing Day commenced with jubilation but few surprises. Benjamin stepped up to the podium, which was festooned with maroon and gold balloons. He thanked God and his coaches. “And with that,” he said, whipping on a Seminoles cap, “I’d like to further my education at Florida State.” Both Robert Way and Davonte announced they were joining the Marshall Thundering Herd. All three players then posed for photos with Hester. But
the joyous mood quickly turned ugly. As people walked out the doors minutes later, they passed the former head coach engaged in a seething argument with Anderson.
Mario finished the school week in a mild panic. Watching his boys in their college caps filled him with both sorrow and desperation. He would now join Oliver, Page, Purvis, and the other seniors navigating their way into a DII or junior college, whoever would have them. Hester called and assured him, “We’re gonna find you a home.” But still, Mario feared he would have to go it alone.
The thing with Hampton upset Gail. She was still hot when she called Canisa Friday morning. “How can those coaches not even call him?” she said.
But Gail was never one to lie down. “The power of life and death is in the tongue,” she always told her niece. “
Speak life
and you will speak things true.”
She’d spoken life to Mary’s doctors at the hospital those many years ago (“My sister is gonna walk outta here!”), and now Gail was speaking life to Mario’s uncertain future.
“Just because one person passed him up,” she said now, “doesn’t mean someone else won’t come and get him.”
Canisa and Gail spoke on the phone nearly every day, usually for an hour or so. But for some reason Friday was a marathon. The two of them jawed well into the afternoon, covering just about everything. Gail said she was having dreams, the way she did, but more of them recently. She was dreaming of her mother and father, both of whom had passed. A few nights after Mario’s all-star game, she’d even seen her sister Mary. “The dream was about her and my mom,” Gail said, “but I still haven’t been able to put it together.”
For Canisa, talking with Gail was effortless, like having a conversation with herself and her mother at the same time. They even talked again at nine thirty that evening. Gail was already in bed, and she sounded tired
and maybe a little sick. She wanted to know if Canisa and Mario were still coming to stay the night tomorrow for church on Sunday. Canisa told her, “Yes, we’ll be there. I’ll call you in the morning.”
But that night, alone at home, Gail died in her sleep.
Her goddaughter Ginell found her body the next evening, still under the covers. Her hands were clasped under her chin. “Like an angel,” said Canisa. The family suspected she had suffered a heart attack.
Canisa heard the news as she prepared to drive to Gail’s house. She’d started doing laundry that morning and completely forgotten to call as she’d promised. Then her cousin Carmen rang and said, “Have you talked to my mom? I’ve been trying her all day.”
Strange
, Canisa thought,
Gail always answers her phone
. Something instantly felt wrong, as though the temperature had dropped. Canisa dialed and dialed and only got Gail’s voice mail. She began to pray,
Please God don’t let anything happen to my auntie. She’s all I got left
. Her cousin called back and said Ginell had a key and was on her way over. The next thing Canisa heard was that they’d found Gail’s body. She dropped the phone and began to scream.
Mario was at a classmate’s house for debutante practice, along with Les’Unique and several of his Raider teammates. He took the call outside from his nephew William Likely. “Get home,” Will said. “They found Auntie Gail. She’s dead.” Mario repeated the news to Les’Unique but he refused to believe it himself. “We’re going to her house tonight,” he kept saying. As Les’Unique stood by, crying, Mario frantically paced the yard and dialed his auntie’s number.