Iron Gut, Golden Lung Pt. 11

41

“ . . . stop staring at my junk . . .”

“. . . I swear it was a five-pound rainbow trout . . .”

“ . . . I tell you what, I pulled them yoga pants right down . . .”

“. . . my daddy was That Guy, but Peepaw was That Guy That Guy . . .”

His teammates’ prattle forced Jeremiah to the farthest corner of the locker room in order to hear the reporter on the phone. It was Saturday. Game Day.

“Who?” the reporter asked. “I don’t know who that is.”

“Jeremiah Freeman,” Jeremiah repeated louder, struggling to maintain his Cajun accent. “He’s back on the team. And he’s been training hard for the meet.”

“Mm-hmm,” said the reporter. “What’s the meet called?”

“The Bayou Bio Bowl.” On his way past the field, Jeremiah had recognized only two reporters in the stands. The Baton Rouge journalistic community needed reminding.

“What’s your name again?” asked the reporter.

“Fred Galvez. I’m his publicist.”

Silence.

“Well thank you, Mr. Galvez.”

“Do you think you could send someone?”

Silence.

“When does this start again?”

“In an hour.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, it’s kind of short notice.”

Thrown off by the unprofessional remark, his voice accidentally lowered an octave to its natural range. “It is. But—”

“Bye now, Mr. Galvez.”

And he hung up. Shocked at such rudeness, Jeremiah crossed off The Advocate and called the Weekly Press. Five rings later the phone picked up.

“Baton Rouge Weekly Press,” said the secretary.

“Hello, my name is Fred Galvez. I was hoping I could speak with the sports beat—”

“‘Miah! Somebody’s at the door for you.”

Startled at the voice, he dropped his phone, caught it, tossed it hand to hand thrice like a hot potato before it fell and exploded into pieces on the sneaker-bruised tiles. He swore, “Goddamnit-the-muthafuck-kiss-a-monkey’s-dick!”

Yards away, Latoilais was peering his bald white grinning melon around a locker.

“Well, who at the door?” Jeremiah spat.

Latoilais responded with a monosyllabic laugh that could be called a moo. Aggravated, Jeremiah made his way across the vast locker room. He blamed movies like Remember the Titans for convincing Donyelle at an impressionable age that a season opener required a pep talk within the hallowed cinderblocks of the men’s locker room. The absence of women served to remind him whatever Donyelle had to say wasn’t that important.

Along the way, he saw Ariel seated on a bench, straining his eyes and neurons at the blueprint across his knees. Kneeling on the floor, Damarius did calisthenics with a slam ball. The superstitious Follicler Lionel kept tugging and untugging his gym socks to find the winning length. They all halted to smile at Jeremiah in a way that told him in no unclear terms what gender his visitor was. Most likely a beaver he would have to dismiss politely, if sternly.

At the door was Jaelin. “Surprise!” she said with an embrace.

Indeed he was surprised, pleasantly so to see her in an LSU jacket, jogging pants, and purple Nikes. She held a Tigers pennant. “Are you excited?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s just . . . I ain’t expect to see you.”

“I wasn’t gonna miss your season opener! What else would I do today? Watch Vampire Diaries again?”

Showing gratitude with a tight smile, he asked, “Did Nanna come?”

“She had work.”

“How’d you get here?”

She rolled her eyes. “Duh. The bus. If we—”

A long belch sounded from behind him. Certainly not the first time that had happened, but he’d be damned if they acted uncouth around her. Leaning back to scold whomever, he saw Latoilais bent over three strides from a trashcan. “Yo,” Jeremiah called, “cut that shit out!”

Latoilas retched and brown chunks splashed around his sneakers. Alarmed, Jeremiah ran to him. By the time he reached the Cajun, Latoilais had fallen on his shoulder, arms wrapped around his gut. “Aaaaah! Uhhhhh! Ohhhhhh!” His cheeks were pale, his lips blue, his breath a sickening rattle. Jeremiah backed against a locker, paralyzed with fear.

Jaelin knelt beside Latoilais. “Turn him over,” she told Jeremiah.

“What?”

“Before he chokes.” She struggled to lift the large man by his arm. Shocked into action, Jeremiah vaulted to her side to help turn Latoilais onto his belly. Jaelin took the left shoulder in his right hand, the left hip in her left. Jeremiah wrapped his right elbow around both of Latoilais’ ankles. Before she could count to three he lifted, clumsily hauling the Tracter’s bottom half in the air, and Jaelin, spitting profanities, spun around to the other side and lowered Latoilais’ face to the tiles. Then Donyelle arrived with the others.

“He just started puking,” Jeremiah blurted in a panic. “Get Coach.”

“I’m already here.” Coach Guidry eased in like the tide. In a low voice, he told everyone to back up and they obeyed. Jeremiah scooted to let him kneel and inspect the Tracter. Tensed up at every joint, Latoilais made pained noises through his foaming lips.

Jeremiah watched Coach’s placid veneer crack into one of barely repressed horror. In a voice so small it barely qualified as a whisper, yet loud enough Jeremiah could hear, Coach said, “Check his bag for pills. You find any get rid of ‘em.”

Coach kept his voice even-timbred but the air between them shivered with hysteria. He had to repeat the order before it penetrated the fog in Jeremiah’s skull.

“What are you telling him?” asked Jaelin.

Jeremiah had forgotten she was there. Coach Guidry regarded her as if one of the salamanders who infested Maddox had popped its scaly head from an air vent and spoken to him.

“Why is this girl here?” he asked Jeremiah, still looking at Jaelin.

“Stay,” Jeremiah whispered in her ear, and left to his task.

42

He had to be silent. Secretive. So stealthy he could sneak away from twenty men consumed in sorrow and fear. Three rows back, he found himself alone with their duffel bags. Every moment that passed was like a scalpel slicing him open. Palms slippery with sweat, he fumbled open the first bag but found nothing more than a change of clothes. The second belonged to Damarius, stuffed with books on dream theory. In the third he dug under a pair of jeans and flannel shirt to find a plastic Rx bottle.

“What are you doing?” he heard Jaelin say over his shoulder.

What the hell! She followed him? On inhale, he readjusted his brain to take advantage of the situation and showed her the bottle. “What’s the label say?”

“Tayo Njoku. Xanax. Why?”

He shoved Ty’s crazy pills under his clothes and zipped the bag. “Anybody follow you?” he asked, tearing into the next bag. Opened every zipper.

“No. Tell me what—”

“Shh!” In the side pocket were four plastic bottles, pills inside, Mandarin on the labels. Shark gut extract, bear gut extract—he’d heard of the disgusting things cheating Tracters put in their bodies but finding this poison had him swooning from the surreality.

“Jeremiah,” she said with dread, “don’t do it.”

He wanted to slap her for her ignorance. A doping scandal would end LSU Bio Sports. He could run out the door weeping crocodile tears over the horrors he’d seen and bury the dope outside Maddox. But what if someone caught him in the act?

The restroom, then.

He lay a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t follow me this time.” Her breath quivered. She shook her head no. “Please,” he said. “Trust me.”

Cries of fear echoed over the lockers on his way to the multi-man shower and restroom. As casually as he would place a food tray on top of the trashcan, he pried the label off each bottle with his fingernail and rolled them into a ball the size of a gum wrapper. He would leave it in his pocket and bury it after things calmed down. He emptied the pills into his hand, hid the bottles at the bottom of a receptacle stuffed to the brim with paper towels. Made a round through the showers to make certain he had no witnesses. His fear ratcheted at the powder-blue walls soaked in ribosomes, boogery white remains of soap, male stench in the air. Anyone looking for DNA evidence would find a treasure in this place.

Locking himself in the handicap stall, prepared to drop the infernal pills down the toilet, he hesitated. What if it stopped up? Thinking quickly, he unscrewed a loose drain in the middle of the grouty floor, then, on second thought, doused the pills in water from the sink to start them dissolving. One by one, he dropped them from his trembling hand down the drain, all the while casting furtive looks at the row of lockers across from him.

God had seen fit to put him there, knowing he would do the right thing. Right? He’d convinced Donyelle to give a locker room pep talk so Latoilais would OD away from the cameras. Right? The Lord put Jaelin on that Greyhound to stop the Tracter from choking to death. Right? Crisis averted, Jeremiah breathed. His willed his trembling hands to hold still long enough to thrust them under scalding hot water. Washed each finger clean before moving to the next. His face stared back from the mirror, guileless and beautiful.

“You a star,” he told himself.

He returned to find Donyelle delivering urgent CPR. Chest compressions, check breathing, chest compressions, check breathing, plea to God, check breathing. Yards away, a blond Follicler sat on a bench with his shaggy head bowed, palming a crucifix and praying. Ty wept into Ariel’s shoulder while the other man patted his back. In the midst of despair, Sam Guidry stood with a hand around his chin, contemplative. He met Jeremiah with the merest glance, a question, and Jeremiah answered with a nod only he would catch. Then Jeremiah faded into the scenery. To dissociate he pictured the insides of his teammates, their organs floating dejected in the murk. Moment by moment, cold rationality replaced the panic inside him.

Jaelin sidled next to him. He whispered to her, “I’ll tell you later.”

“I trust you,” she said, staring on the scene, her eyes rain-soaked windows through which he saw her stomach rupture and bacteria fill the cavity. She chose to smuggle her pain in a suitcase of smiles, but he knew the memory of dying stayed lodged in her stapled guts. He reached for her hand and her fingers slid through his.

A pair of burly medics hustled into the room. Quickly they assessed the situation, sprayed some substance up the Tracter’s nose and pressed an oxygen mask to his mouth.

I could have done more, Jeremiah thought, watching the machine push air into Latoilais. But you cheated, Dave. Maybe you deserve to die.

Then Coach guided him behind the lockers.

“Did you get rid of ‘em?” he whispered. Jeremiah nodded. “Good boy. Did your girlfriend see? I saw her run back there.”

A momentary confusion before he realized he meant Jaelin. “I don’t . . . No, she didn’t.”

Half a truth, bordering on lie. Either way he had to stick with it. Coach looked skeptical. “C’mon. Tell me.”

“I swear to God she didn’t. Coach,” he lowered his voice, “how we gone explain? We ain’t got no alternates in the six meter. They gone ask—”

“Leave that to me.”

“We gotta tell ‘em—”

“Did you give him the dope?”

At first he thought he’d misheard with the chaos around them and tumult in his brain, but Coach leveled him a stare that caused his heart to skip. “Wha— Coach, you know I never—”

“Yo!” Suddenly Jaelin appeared between them, square in Coach’s face. “You can’t talk to my brother like that.”

“Now is not the time, young lady.” Jeremiah heard the menace in those seven words, and Jaelin must have too because she doubled down on her challenge.

“I heard you say something and I don’t want to say it out loud. Do not get him involved in no shit. ‘Miah is a good, kind person. Leave him—Ow!”

Jeremiah was shocked to find himself squeezing her shoulder. A moan escaped her lips, and the shame of hurting her snapped him back to reality.

“I’m sorry,” he said before a rush of dioxide fell on his cheek like a warm blanket. Coach Guidry was facing Jaelin, kindliness beaming from his every crinkle.

“You’re his sister, huh?” He spoke the revelation with interest.

“Yeah,” she said, cradling her shoulder as she cast a cautious glance between them both.

He asked, “How much do you care about your brother’s team?”