The Education of Giacomo Jones

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.

The Education of Giacomo Jones

By Royce F. Houton

CHAPTER ONE - The Grind

This time of day was miserable for Rance Martin. These were the hours that made him wonder if his childhood obsession to play major college football was worth it.

The temperature was already 87 degrees, and the early August South Carolina sun had just begun to angle down on the heavy dew that gave the manicured grass of Fulbright University's upper practice field a silvery sheen. The air was already saturated with the stifling humidity that is part of life in the Carolina Piedmont every summer, and it would become markedly worse in the minutes and hours ahead as an unforgiving, incandescent sun baked the dew into a low-hanging vapor.

Rance and his Fulbright Generals teammates were doing their 10 minutes of pre-practice stretching, lying their still-sleepy bodies, sore from three days of exhausting practices each morning and afternoon, on the cool, thick dew that would cause them to itch for the next hour or two and would soak their practice uniforms, combining with sweat to make them even heavier and hotter as the sun climbed into the cloudless sky.

But if you want the pomp and glory of game days on Saturdays, mornings like this during two-a-days were the price you paid, even if you weren't on anyone's Heisman Trophy watchlists or even a starter. Rance had spent his freshman year redshirted, meaning he was on the practice squad and never suited up with the varsity for games but preserved a year of eligibility if he wanted it. Now, he was a sophomore battling for a slot as a second-team guard or tackle, a spot on the travel roster and a chance to earn playing time and, Lord willing, earn his first varsity letter.

Rance was doing a hurdler's stretch, one leg stretched in front of him as he strained to touch his toes with the other folded to one side and his foot tucked to his rear, when he farted loud enough for most of the team to hear. It didn't matter that these were all men - all over 18 and some old enough to legally buy liquor and cigarettes. A fart still makes them laugh.

"Martin, you shit yourself or you trying to sweet-talk Jock Jones over there out'cho ass?" said Wintell "Mojo" Hale, the starting tight end. "Hey, Jock! You need to bring this nasty-ass muh'fucka over here a change of drawers cuz I think he done shitted his!"

Jock was Giacomo Jones, a student equipment manager who was working around the periphery of the practice field as she usually did, prepping it for the next set of drills per the position coaches' precisely timed, fast-paced practice plan. At the moment, she was about 10 yards from Hale setting up five small, blaze orange cones in a nearby corner of the upper practice field where Rance and the other hulking offensive linemen would do a series of footwork and agility drills as soon as the air horn sounded, signaling the end of stretching and opening calisthenics.

She had heard Hale because he referenced Rance Martin but she did not acknowledge that she heard him. Rance was one of the few players who had shown her any regard for her dignity. Most players' outsized egos and the arrogant culture of Power Five intercollegiate football accorded little to no respect for the training or equipment staffs.

The athletes considered them faceless robots, good only for catering to their whims on the field, training facilities or dressing rooms. The indignities were even worse if they were women. Players would wantonly flaunt their nakedness in front of them and assail them with lewd, profane and demeaning comments and indecent propositions - none of which the coaching or administrative officials seemed much interested in addressing if it didn't rise to the level of a reportable assault. If documented, every practice could yield a handful of violations of Title IX of the U.S. Code, which outlaws educational discrimination against women. Those are taken very seriously by the federal government and would swiftly land any program in an unflattering light all over ESPN for days and likely lead to protracted, high-profile and reputationally destructive litigation and massive settlement payouts and attorneys' fees.

But Jones and the other support staff sucked it up, soldiered on and remained on-board with the long-odds dream of a championship - or at least the first bowl game in 17 years for one of Southeastern Conference's two private schools.

Giacomo, a tall, slender and unassuming senior from New Jersey, respected Rance because he was among a handful of players who actually seemed interested in getting a real degree. Jones, with genius-level intelligence, made it a point to read up on all the players - considered it part of her job, even though she got no pay for it - all the while keeping herself essentially anonymous to them.

What mattered, she had concluded, was exceeding the coaches' and her equipment administration supervisors' expectations day in and day out while drawing the least amount of attention to herself. She hid her femininity under a binding sports bra, an oversized t-shirt, unisex shorts with outsized pockets, sunglasses and a baseball cap beneath which she concealed most of her silky black hair. Her striking face with its high cheekbones and flawless dark-olive complexion inherited from her Italian mother and Jamaican dad were lost on nearly everyone in the football facility.

What few knew about Giacomo was that she was attending Fulbright on a full ride, at least the equal to the athletic scholarships most of the football team held. Jones finished twelve years of primary and secondary education at a highly regarded Catholic school in Bergen County, New Jersey, in just nine, earning her high school diploma at the midpoint of what should have been her freshman year. She took a gap year after that to travel with her mother, Calvita Jones, on a Catholic mission trip to El Salvador before choosing Fulbright over Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Michigan and Princeton - all of them offering her full scholarships to enroll in their honors programs and pursue her degree in microbiology. Having just turned 19 over the summer, she would graduate in December and return to Fulbright to begin work on her master's degree in January.

Rance Martin was majoring in history, not an easy course of study in Fulbright's notoriously rigorous College of Liberal Arts. At six feet, four inches and 295 pounds, Rance stood out among the generally slight, bookish student body physically, but more than held his own academically by pulling a consistent 3.9 grade point average despite the demands of the college game, which chewed up at least six hours daily between practice, film study, team meetings and pre- and post-practice physical therapy. After graduation, he planned to go to law school and possibly join his father at Blassingame-Martin, the prominent Chattanooga, Tennessee, law firm his great-grandfather founded. He had made the SEC's academic all-conference list each semester since he arrived at Fulbright, and that was something the university leaned hard on its sports information department to spin like crazy. Fulbright treasured its lofty global academic standing and the premium tuitions it could command from those lucky enough to gain admission. The acceptance rate was one out of every 110 applications.

On this hot August morning, practice dragged, and the position coaches stayed on the players' asses right up to the end.

"You think they're moping around like this at Ala-goddamn-bama or Georgia? Hell no! And it's hotter'n shit there, too!" screamed offensive line coach Stark Middleton. Head coach Perry Hemphill added wind sprints at the end of the sluggish morning practice to make a point about the consequences of not having crisp, energetic practices. Some players who had slugged down too much water or Gatorade too quickly were bent over puking it right back up after the sprints.

Rance took a knee and caught his breath, then went to a corner of the practice field, removed his helmet and worked an additional five minutes with a graduate assistant offensive line coach on refining the intricate footwork necessary for pass blocking in the new offensive scheme the coaches were installing after the previous season's 4-8 finish. When he was done, the rest of the team was already inside showering or heading for the lunch line. He jogged toward Jones, who was hoisting a dummy as large as she was onto a cart pulled by a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle. His voice startled her.

"Jock! Hi. I'm Rance. I Just wanted to say sorry about those crude remarks from Mojo this morning, but I'm also sorry about what I did to give him the opportunity," he said, grinning weakly.

She had stopped what she was doing and turned to face Rance, his friendly, boyish face framed by its curly, close-cropped blond hair pouring sweat in the unrelenting late morning sun.

"No problem, Rance. Part of the job and being a team. 'One heartbeat,' right?" she said. She smiled nervously, and it was the first time Rance could ever recall seeing her smile. In fact, he couldn't recall her ever addressing him by his first name. "But thank you for saying so."

"Well, if we're going to be on a first-name basis, can I call you something kinder than 'Jock,'" he said. "I'm not sure I know your real first name."

"It's Giacomo," she said, spelling it out but acknowledging that the first syllable is pronounced exactly like - and was the origin of - her nickname, Jock. "It's Italian. My parents thought I was going to be a boy and were set on that name to honor mom's father. He died in Rome just before I was born, so they stuck with Giacomo even though I wasn't a boy. They called me Gia or GiGi."

"Either of those beats Jock. Which do you prefer, Gia or GiGi?" Rance said.

"Gia. GiGi sounds like a small dog ... or a Parisian hooker," she said.

Rance chuckled at her elevated, self-deprecating humor. "So, Gia it is," he said and turned to jog toward the practice field gate and the showers.

●●●

It was the sixth day of preseason camp with two practices each of the first five days, but finally it was Saturday, meaning just one afternoon practice - the first intrasquad scrimmage. First-team offense vs. first-team defense for the most part. Best-on-best. But with no tackling the quarterbacks, who were designated by orange jerseys for the day rather than the team colors green or gold.

It was a closed practice - no alumni, press or fans in the stadium for the first near-game-conditions test of the offense and defense with the opening game of the season still two full weeks in the future. The synthetic turf was enclosed by the horseshoe-shaped stadium on three sides except for the sloping hillside beyond the north end zone where the jumbotron was perched. The sunken field and the stands blocked the breeze and trapped the heat, making for a dangerously hot and muggy afternoon.

Rance got into the scrimmage on the third offensive possession at left guard. He did respectably but gave up what would have been a sack (had quarterbacks been fair game) when he didn't recognize a weak-side linebacker blitz. Later, he came in at right tackle. He had a much better day there, deftly recognizing stunts by the defensive tackle, linebacker and defensive end, and ably picking them up. But what caught Stark Middleton's eye was the way Rance was able to get leverage on the starting defensive tackle, stalemating him and forming creases for the lightning-fast tailback, Bookie Riemer, an off-season transfer from Florida, to gain significant yards. Rance capped his day by demolishing a safety on a downfield block after he had already sealed off a defensive lineman and freed Riemer for a 45-yard touchdown sprint.

It was a landmark day for Rance and getting a shout-out from the head coach as the team gathered around him after the scrimmage was the icing on the cake. But what meant the most to him was a pat on his sweaty back after he removed his shoulder pads on the field and the words, "way to dominate, Rance," from a feminine voice.

He turned to see Giacomo Jones, smiling at him without her shades hiding her eyes. "Thanks, Gia," he said as he fell in alongside her walking to the tunnel leading to the sparkling, new indoor practice facility and the team's lavish training and dressing space.

"I think you found yourself a position at tackle and at least made the travel squad today," she said. "You've got No. 2 right tackle nailed and maybe a starting gig later on. I could hear the coaches chattering about it. They seemed excited."

"Nice to hear. I have to stay focused. It's a long season," he said.

Gia started to walk in a separate direction toward a corridor that led to the equipment room when she heard Rance's cleats on the rubberized surface still tracking alongside her.

"Hey, Gia - what time do you get done here? I'm hungry for some real food and not that training table mystery meat. Hurley and I are going to Pizza Don's and I wondered if you'd like to join us there," Rance said, referring to Gene Hurley, his roommate and the second-team punter who was also pulling exceptional grades in a demanding field of study - engineering.

She said the equipment staff is usually there an hour to 90 minutes after the players leave, feeding sweat-soaked practice uniforms into the commercial-grade washers and driers and then, after they're cleaned and dried, taking them out of their individual mesh bags and returning them, folded and on hangers, to each player's designated locker.

"I can meet you there if the offer still stands," she said.

"Sure it does. We'll save you a seat."

●●●

Normally, Pizza Don's would be packed on a Saturday night, but this was the doldrums of August - a week after summer school finals ended and still a week before students returned for the start of the fall semester, and the college town of Fallstrom, South Carolina, was more somnolent than usual. Gia spotted Rance and Hurley in a booth before she opened the door and entered the cool semi-darkness, relishing the rich scent of oregano, pepperoni, mozzarella melting on a crispy, unleavened crust - the smells of pizza goodness that evoked her own mom's kitchen. She had shed her baggy, androgynous equipment-staff uniform, quickly showered and shampooed in the staff changing room (something she seldom did) and wore a pair of Daisy Duke cutoffs and an unbuttoned bowling shirt over a form-fitting tank top with her still-moist, shoulder-length hair tied into a pigtail.

The hulking Rance and the leaner, shorter Hurley had arrived about 15 minutes earlier after resting for a while at their apartment just off campus. Rance wanted to chug a couple of bottles of Gatorade, hoping the heavy dose of electrolytes and fluids would help him ward off the leg cramps that were the bane of preseason camp, particularly for big, heavy brutes like him. When Gia realized that they had waited on her before ordering, she was touched. She was not accustomed to being afforded such courtesies by varsity football players.

Gia scooted into the booth beside Rance because, after all, he invited her. Michelle, a Fulbright student Gene had known from their high school days in a town just a 30-minute drive from Fallstrom, had already joined Rance and Gene. Together, they sat there for nearly three hours, laughing at stories about teammates and at Gene's spot-on impersonations of Perry Hemphill's Arkansas twang, Stark Middleton's amped-up Texas-isms, Mojo Hale's inarticulate crudities, the fastidious and clipped diction of the team's effete, Ivy League academic advisor. He even did solid impressions of Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. It was easy to imagine the foursome being on about their third pitcher of draft beer except for the fact that none were yet 21 years old and Don Albers, "Pizza Don" himself, has scrupulously checked IDs before serving alcohol since he opened the place 22 years earlier.

It almost went unnoticed that Rance's right arm extended itself along the top of the booth and his hand hung down lazily, grazing Gia's right shoulder. But Gia noticed it. She relished it. It sent a tingle through her. She dared imagine delightful possibilities.

It was nearly 10 when they divvied up the check and rose to go their separate ways. Gene, who drove Rance to Pizza Don's, had decided to take his hometown friend up on her offer to go bowl a game at Wonderland Lanes before the team's midnight curfew. Rance, still sapped from the scrimmage, took Gia up on her offer to give him a lift home rather than cover the half mile on foot..

She pulled her eight-year-old Toyota Camry to the curb on the street outside Rance's apartment complex, and he started to unfold himself from the car when a cramp seized his right hamstring. He tumbled out the passenger side door and writhed on the grass by the curb as his clenched muscles, now as painfully tight as steel bands, agonized him. Gia turned off the car and rushed around it, kneeling to help him assuage the cramp, kneading the back of his thigh.

Gia was deceptively strong despite her tall, willowy build. She was no stranger to athletics or cramps, having lettered on her New Jersey middle and high school soccer teams in the three short years it took her to blitz through what should have been six or seven years of schooling. Rance stayed on his side in the grass for nearly five minutes, surrendering his efforts to Gia, who balled her right hand into a tight fist that she pressed deeply into his cramping muscle and pushed in upward motions, helping disperse the lactic acid buildup deep in the muscle tissue that caused the cramp.

After the cramp passed, she helped him stand and, instinctively, looped his right arm around her shoulder to help him balance and avoid a sudden or undue exertion on the leg that might trigger another cramp.

"Here, let's walk this off before you try to climb those stairs to your apartment," she said, surehandedly looping her left arm around his waist to help him with his balance.

They walked gingerly back and forth across the parking lot beside his apartment cluster and into a park-like area beside the pool where tenants could picnic or grill out. He finally rested himself on a wooden picnic table beneath a pin oak tree, and Gia sat next to him.

"I guess those two bottles of Gatorade didn't get it done," Rance said.

"Sometimes nothing is going to work. You lose a lot of fluids and electrolytes on a sick-hot day like this, and cramps are going to happen, especially with muscle mass like yours," she said. "Trainers pour all these potassium drinks down you, but nobody tells you that the body can only process so much of it over a given period of time, so you can take in excessive amounts of it but what your liver can't handle, your kidneys throw off the excess and you risk kidney stones and driving up your heartrate to crazy levels."

"You ought to be on the medical staff, not equipment," Rance said. "I knew you were smart, but I didn't know you were a doctor."

She smiled and he encouraged her to tell him her story. Rance was astounded to learn that she would begin her master's degree work in just a few months at an age where most college students are just starting their freshman year. He learned that she was in Fulbright's Honors College on a full academic ride - had been since she enrolled - and that her graduate work would be covered by two grants, including one from a major global biomedical research company and one by the organization that matches transplant patients with donor organs, the United Network for Organ Sharing.