Sidelined by Mercy Celeste Page B

the cooler and food inside. “Get in.”
    “After all this, I don’t even get to stay to see the fireworks? Figures. We’re always in the locker room and never get to see the celebration. Just perfect.” He complained, but it seemed to be good-natured as he climbed into the passenger seat.
    “I didn’t say I was taking you home.” Tracy slid into his seat and started the engine. “We’re getting the best seats and the best view. Unless you want me to take you home?”
    He looked over to Levi in the dark of the cab, his face unguarded for a moment. The almost childlike look in his eyes made Tracy’s stomach flip-flop. The smile that followed disconnected it from his body, and it plummeted to the floor. In love? With him? Oh hell no!
    “No. I’m not going to turn into a pumpkin or anything any time soon…unless you have other plans…I could get a ride, or call Jude or…”
    “Shut up, Brody.” Tracy let the smile that spread across the man’s face infect his own. “And while you’re at it, buckle up. You’re in for a bumpy ride.”
    *
    Tracy maneuvered around the truck that blocked a narrow two trail lane leading, Levi guessed, out into the vast acreage that surrounded the Wright farm. “What do y’all grow?” He was curious, never having been on an actual working farm before, despite where he grew up.
    “Big crops are corn and peanuts. But we grow vegetables and watermelon too. Since I signed on as assistant coach a few years ago at Hillsborough, I’ve had the team out chucking melons each summer. It’s a good workout. Keeps them off the streets and puts money in their pockets. Since Alabama passed its illegal resident law, it’s been a farm saver.” Tracy rambled on as they drove over rutted roads, going from flat farm to dense underbrush.
    “It sounds like something that worked out for everyone. But I take it you took some shit for it?”
    “We were accused of using the boys as slave labor. We paid better than they would have made at Wal-mart or McDonalds. Some of the parents were upset. Yeah, I took some shit. And then the boys working part-time jobs over in Summerville quit and came to work for us, and the other farms started calling up looking for help. They learned about work and made good money. And football and the heat didn’t kick their asses when we started practice again.” He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel, his eyes straight ahead. “Even some of the dads started coming out to help. After the plastic factory closed down, well, there’s not much left around here. Service industry or commute down to Mobile is about all that’s left. We lost the sewing factory years ago. We’re dying.”
    Levi let that comment sink in. Bitter regret seemed to be about the only emotion he could dredge up. “I hated living here. Going down to Mobile was a dream. Anything to get the hell out of the trailer park. Watching my mom deteriorate before my eyes. Raising Jude on my own. Fucking sucked to be from here.”
    “You got a football scholarship out of your time here. And that let you go on to the NFL. You’re the only one ever to do that. You’re the reason no one can wear the number five now. So don’t give me the bullshit poor boy been wronged story.”
    “Yeah, sorry if I didn’t have the perfect life, two parents who didn’t try to beat the hell out of each other. Food on the table. I worked my ass off. Morning practice, afternoon practice, then I worked as overnight stock boy at the grocery store. They paid me under the table so that my mother wouldn’t lose her welfare, because God only knew she couldn’t lose that. My dad came to town when it suited him and took whatever he wanted and left again.”
    “And you drove a classic car and paraded yourself like the king of the freakin' town.”
    “I drove my grandfather’s car. He left it to me, and I did the work to keep it going. Until my old man decided he needed that too. And then I walked. Some king of whatever… You