Michael Koryta: The Prophet

Penny Gootee, Rachel’s mother, told any news outlet that asked that she was pleased with the results and that Adam Austin had promised her the very killings he had delivered. That story went national fast. International, even. Kent received calls from reporters in France and England. That Sunday he met with his coaching staff and told them he’d step back for the remainder of the season, because his team didn’t need that kind of media scrutiny, and he wanted to be with his family. He named Byers the acting head coach. He left them to the work that needed to be done then, closed the door of the conference room behind him, and left the locker room, pausing for one look at the picture of the 1989 championship team, the two Austin brothers standing together.

They buried his brother on Tuesday morning, just after dawn, in a private ceremony that was to be attended only by Kent’s family and Chelsea Salinas. Stan Salter asked Kent if he could be there as well. Kent agreed. It was a swift, simple ceremony. The goal was to avoid media attention, and they managed that. When they left, Kent sent Beth on with the kids and asked Chelsea if he could have a minute with her.

She was wearing an elegant black dress and heels, but when they reached her battered old Corvette, she slipped the shoes off and then slid herself onto the dirty hood of the car. Kent stood before her in his suit and asked her what it had been like for his brother at the end.

She told him all that she could. Her voice wavered sometimes but never broke. Adam had known he was dying, she said, but she thought that he was glad to see her. He did not seem afraid, he seemed sorry. She wanted to remove that from him, to give him some peace as he went, and she was not sure if she’d succeeded.

“I’m glad you made it to him,” Kent said, and he meant that. “But I wish I had, too.”

“He would not have wanted to see you,” she said, and on that point her voice was firm. “He did not want you to have to go near it.”

“It was mine to deal with.”

She pushed her hair back over her ears, stared at the cemetery grounds, and said, “He never could stop trying to make up for Marie. It’s sad as hell, but it’s also one of the reasons I loved him.”

“I could have helped,” Kent said, “and I did not. If I’d made some different decisions, or involved him more in those, then—”

“You know what he told me the other day, Kent? He told me that he wished he’d been able to coach with you. He wouldn’t have wanted to be the head coach. I believe he wanted the defense only. And you know what that tells me? He was proud of your decisions. Maybe not all of them, that’s impossible. But as a rule, he trusted them.”

Kent worked on an answer and couldn’t get to one.

“Should he have done what he did?” Chelsea said. “No. But he didn’t do it for himself.”

She looked away from the cemetery grounds and back to him and said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“The place he sent you. The address he gave you. Was it outside of town? Amherst Road?”

He nodded. “How did you know that? What’s the significance?”

For the first time, tears pooled in her eyes. She wiped them away and shook her head. “I just had a feeling,” she said, and though he wanted to know more, he sensed that he should not ask. This one stood between his brother and Chelsea, and should remain there.

“I’ve been told he has no will,” Kent said. “But I want you to be involved, because he would have wanted that.”

She shook her head. “Trust fund for his niece and his nephew. All of it. That’s what he would have wanted. And a few other things. A few priorities. I can handle one. That’s clearing Rodney Bova. I’ll take care of that. The other one I think should come from you.”

“Which is?”

“You can tell your sister what happened.”

“Talk to my sister.”

“It’s what Adam did,” she told him. “He’d like her to know, I think. I believe that would matter a lot to him.”

Once this would have struck Kent as madness, but no longer.

“You know I could have gotten her home,” he said.

Chelsea regarded him silently.

“Adam was supposed to drive her,” he said. “But he’d told me he wasn’t going to. He’d decided to let her walk. And all I was doing was watching game film. I could have walked her home myself, run back, it would have taken ten minutes. It all fell on Adam, but I knew the situation, and I made the same call he did. I said it was five blocks, what could go wrong. He wasn’t the only one who failed to look out for her.”

Chelsea said, “You ever tell him that?”

“No,” he said, and his voice was unsteady. “No, I never did. But I wanted to tell you.”

Chelsea’s palm was cool when she touched his arm. “Tell your sister,” she said. “Tell her that, and all the rest. It would have mattered to Adam.”

“I’ll do it,” he said. “Will you be around, Chelsea? If we could talk at some point… I think we should. Please.”

She looked away. “We can talk, Kent. But I don’t think I’ll be around for long.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “But it’s time for me to leave. I know that much. He was ready to, and so was I, and now… well, now I’m what’s left, right? But we weren’t wrong about its being time to leave.”

She slid off the hood of her car, and they said good-bye then, all that could be said, but she paused with her hand on the driver’s door.

“I read in the paper that you’re done coaching for the year.”

“That’s right. I don’t belong on a football field right now, Chelsea.”

“Your brother,” she said, “would have kicked your ass over your shoulders for that.”

Those were the last words she said to him before she got into the old Corvette and drove away. Kent took his wife and children home, and then he went to Adam’s house, alone, to tell his sister that her brother was dead, and explain how he had gone, and why.

Matt Byers coached the team through the week. Kent did not make any appearances at practice. He wanted the news crews to go away, to leave his boys alone, and his presence there would not help. He stayed in a hotel with Beth and the kids until Thursday, when they finally ventured home. The cameras were gone. Some neighbors came by, but most people kept their distance, gave the family some space.

“You’ve got to be at the game,” Beth told him. “You know that.”

He knew it. They went together and sat in the stands, the first time he’d been in the stands for a Chambers game since he was a child, and watched as Byers used a run-heavy offense and a blitz-heavy defense to guide the Cardinals to a 14–10 halftime lead over the Center Point Saxons, a program known more for its marching band than its football team until this season. Lorell tried to connect with Colin Mears on two plays, both unsuccessful. He did not go back to him in the second half, and though the offense couldn’t generate anything, the defense played brilliantly, giving up only a field goal to preserve a 14–13 win and earn a berth in the state championship game in Massillon.

The next week was supposed to be the same. He met with his coaching staff on Sunday and said that they’d done great work, and that he offered nothing but a distraction and that he needed to be with his family and not his football team. They told him they understood, and he told them that he knew they would get a win, and that was supposed to be the end of it. He’d sit in the stands in Massillon, that hallowed ground he’d dreamed of all year, and he’d watch from a distance.

On Monday evening, though, the doorbell rang and Kent went to answer it expecting a reporter and found Colin Mears instead.