Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(43)
Rick didn’t know what to say. He was taken back by the intensity resonating from across the table. And for the first time he was glad that Ray Ray Pickalew was on the team.
“Anyway,” Ray Ray continued, scraping his teeth on his fork as he wolfed down a bite of eggs. “Tommy may be down right now, but he’ll be back. Us boys . . .” He gave a quick jerk of his head. “We just don’t know any different.”
29
Hazel Green, Alabama is a small town just a few miles south of the Alabama-Tennessee border. In 1967, led by a rugged all-state center named Rickey Clark and a skinny sophomore shooting guard named Stanley Stafford, the Hazel Green Trojans won the 2A Alabama state basketball championship. Most folks in Hazel Green of a certain age will tell you they remember two things about high school sports during the ’50s and ’60s. They remember Stanley Stafford hitting a jump shot at the buzzer to win the state championship in ’67.
And they remember when Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant came to Trojan Field in 1959 to see Tom McMurtrie play football.
It had been homecoming in late October. The Trojans were playing Sparkman in an important game in the race for the county championship. The air was crisp and cool, and many of the crowd had paper cups filled with hot chocolate. There had been rumors all week that Coach Bryant might come to the game, so the stands were packed an hour before kickoff, everyone turning their heads this way and that to see if the great man would actually visit.
He arrived midway through the first quarter. The referees literally stopped play as they got word that the Bear was on the premises. Coach Bryant rode in a black Cadillac marked by two state trooper sedans in front and one behind. The motorcade pulled to the front of the stadium, and according to Principal Ebb Hanson, the Bear was out of the back seat before the wheels had stopped rolling. Principal Hanson shook Coach Bryant’s hand and escorted him into the stadium as fans from both sides of the field rose and clapped. The Hazel Green band even broke into a rendition of “Yeah, Alabama.” The black-and-white pictures taken of the event show Coach Bryant in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie, with a black overcoat to keep off the cold. His head was covered with his trademark houndstooth fedora.
Principal Hanson led Coach Bryant into the stadium, flanked on the sides and in the back by four uniformed state troopers. Eventually, the Bear and his entourage were seated in the home stands on the fifty-yard line.
Coach Bryant, pursuant to his request, sat right between Sut and Rene McMurtrie, the parents of the boy he had come to see. Tom, watching from the field, heard one referee whisper to the other, “Sweet Jesus, look how big the son of a bitch is,” as the Bear shook Tom’s father’s hand and kissed his momma on the cheek.
The Trojans actually lost the game 17–14, but no one ever talks about that. They only talk about Coach Bryant’s entrance to the stadium, and the eight minutes of the first half that he watched.
Eight minutes in which Tom McMurtrie sacked the quarterback three times, had two tackles behind the line of scrimmage, caused a fumble, intercepted a pass, and blocked a field goal. Though his daddy couldn’t understand much of what Coach Bryant had said, given the noise in the stadium and the Bear’s gravel-like voice, Sut had told Tom later that he did hear the word “stud” several times. “Besides,” Sut had said, rolling his eyes, “he spent most of his time listening to your momma.”
Sure enough, a Huntsville Times cub reporter had gotten a great snapshot of the three together and put it on the front page of the sports section, which Sut said summed up the experience better than words could ever do. In the picture Sut is sitting bolt upright, arms folded, eyes focused intently on the game. Coach Bryant, smiling pleasantly, is leaning toward Tom’s mother, Rene, who is pointing at the field and telling the Bear something.
The next afternoon, seated at the kitchen table of the McMurtrie home, Coach Bryant offered Tom a scholarship to play football for the University of Alabama.
Sitting now in the same chair that his father had sat in those many years ago, Tom leaned his elbows on the table and held the framed newspaper photograph in his hand. Tracing his finger over the three faces—his daddy, Coach Bryant, and his momma—he knew that these three people had probably had the most influence on who and what he had become in life. Sometimes, like last year in the courtroom in Henshaw, he could still hear their voices. Encouraging him. Still teaching him lessons long past the grave.
And as he rubbed the wounds on his face, still raw from the beating outside of Kathy’s Tavern, and felt the bandages on his ribs, he thought he could hear one of their voices now. Crystal clear and spoken firm and direct. “Don’t ever tolerate a bully . . .”
Tom had been in the fifth grade and had come home from school with a black eye. A seventh-grader had been picking on him, taking his lunch, and when Tom attempted to fight back, the boy had punched Tom in the face. Tom had tried to defend himself, but it was no use. The boy was bigger and stronger, and Tom got his ass whipped. He had hung his head in shame when he got home, not wanting to face his daddy. His momma had found him crying in his bedroom. She had hugged him and kissed his eye. Then she had made an egg custard pie, Tom’s favorite.
After they had eaten their pie and washed it down with some sweet tea, his momma had taken him by the shoulders and looked him directly in the eye. She did not mince her words. “Tom, if that boy ever picks on you again, I want you get a stick and beat the tar out of him, you hear me?”