The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 06

Losing and watching championship dreams die will do that.

Intermingled in the thinning crowd of Fulbright students and alumni on the open expanse in the center of campus were stray bands of orange-clad Tennessee fans — many of them inebriated, all of them insufferable — taunting the home crowd on the Volunteers' victory and warbling the lyrics to "Rocky Top," a bluegrass tribute to some gravelly outcropping in Tennessee, that had become the university's sports teams' unofficial anthem. Three impressively drunken young women bellowed the words at the top of their lungs.

"Once I had a girl on Rocky Top,

Half bear, other half cat.

Wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop,

I still dream about that."

Rance Martin regarded them balefully with a disgusted scowl on his face as he sat beneath his parents' awning watching the trio, their jeans already smeared with mud, as they staggered and stumbled through the Reserve.

"Mom, dad, you went to Tennessee. What do those lyrics even mean? Are they admitting that they love bestiality on Rocky Top? Having a girl who's part bear, part cat, puts out like a mink ... " Rance said, sitting sullenly with a cup of Miller Lite he had barely sipped in his hand. "In-breeding's a thing there, I get it, but it includes wild animals now?"

Lorrie Martin shot her son a disapproving look.

"I know you're disappointed with the way the game turned out, son, but you did grow up in Tennessee, so ...," she said.

Gia said nothing, sitting beside Rance, but squeezed his hand tightly, intended as a silent message for him to hold his tongue. She looked at him sympathetically, and he got the message. Or seemed to.

He exhaled slowly, a protracted sigh.

"Sorry. I'm not very good company right now. Of all the games I hate to lose, dropping one the way we did today to that ... diploma mill ...," he said, shutting his mouth four syllables too late. Now Gia joined his mother in glaring at Rance.

"It's not even Tennessee I am maddest at right now," Rance continued, intent on venting his spleen until it was flushed of the bile that had accumulated since the game clock on the scoreboard hit 0:00. Gia, Lorrie and Ed resolved to just sit back and let him finish.

"I'm most pissed at Perry Hemphill for not playing to win. It's the first time this year he's done that, and this is what happened. We should have gone for it, and I guarantee you we would have gotten that one damn yard, we'd have gotten into the end zone and won. We could have won and should have won," Rance said.

"I don't know how he looks us in the eye or we look him in the eye tomorrow or Monday. It goes against everything he's taught us, all our combined experience, everything that made us winners this year. It feels like ... a betrayal," he said. He shrugged his shoulders, exhaled in exhaustion, shook his head and took a gulp of his watery beer.

Gia, eager to change the subject, asked where Renee had gone.

"She's across the way there visiting the Rutters, who are Tennessee alums and boosters from Chattanooga. Their daughter is one year behind Renee at school and they invited us to come over for a bit," Ed Martin said. "You can barely see it from here ... it's that orange tent right over their by that red brick building with the spire."

Gia nodded. "Is Renee any closer to making a college decision yet?"

"She doesn't have a list per se but the schools I hear her talk about the most are the University of Virginia and here ... Fulbright," Lorrie said. "She still has a few months to work it all out before she has to start seriously putting in applications in the spring."

Rance nodded. "You know, Gia, I think Renee would enjoy meeting with your friend Vangie. Renee would love her."

"Vangie?" Lorrie said.

"It's short for Evangeline - Evangeline Overshaw, wife of Fulbright's president, Art Oversaw. We went with your sister as her guests to a dinner they had at the president's residence when she was here for the Missouri game a week ago, and Vangie and I had a very lovely conversation," Gia said. "Seems Aunt Semmie's got some deep roots here."

"Oh yeah," Lorrie said with a bemused smile. "Semmie's got roots all right - all over this part of the South."

Lorrie continued, "Semmie tells me her firm's helping your mom look into possible relocation down here and that she's trying to convince her to come to Charleston with us next week for Thanksgiving. I hope she will. She'll make the whole affair a lot more fun."

Ed rolled his eyes.

"Are you implying your sister's a stick-in-the-mud?" he said.

"Semmie's not but her kids and her niece and nephew on Frank's side get real tiresome real fast," Lorrie said. "Long story, but the Gartlan kids all went to Ivy League schools and they sort of treat the rest of us, including Semmie, like we're slow-witted children and not part of their little club."

"Oh great. Imagine what they'll think of mom, a daughter of Italian immigrants who grew up in Queens, married a Jamaican, lives in New Jersey and never got beyond community college," Gia said.

Lorrie clasped her hand. "Sweetheart, Calvita Jones will not only put them in their place, she'll make them think it's funny. Believe me, Gia, your mom will more than hold her own. And if she needs help, she's got you, Rance and me — with a diploma mill degree from good ol' inbred Rocky Top — flying air cover ... right Rance?"

Rance smiled weakly and nodded toward Lorrie. "Touché, Mom. Touché."

●●●

A manila-colored internal memo envelope waited on the desk in the Honors College dorm reception area for "Jock Jones." The sender was listed only as "MG-FAA." Gia picked it up as she was returning to her room after a morning class on Monday, the unofficial final day before Thanksgiving break. It had been called to her attention by Sarah, who works the desk occasionally to pick up a little extra cash.

"Did you see who left this? Was it anyone you know?" Gia asked Sarah, a music major who shunned makeup and the other trappings of privilege and had always been in her uniform of jeans and a sweatshirt every time Gia can recall seeing her, including the Sunday afternoon weeks earlier when she and Rance had returned to the residence hall for the first time since the Geno Millions violence.

Sarah shrugged. "Just the usual internal mail courier who drops off envelopes like these. I see him occasionally but have no idea who he is."

Gia pulled her iPhone from her purse, took a photo of the envelope and then zoomed in on the addressee/sender line. She texted the images to Rance with the message, Any idea who MG/FAA is? Federal Aviaition Administration? Not inclined to open something I'm not expecting from a mystery sender.

Rance texted back about a minute later. Hmmm. Don't know. It's internal so gotta be somebody @ Fulbright. Can u get a sense of what's inside? Package? Document? Envelope?

Gia felt along the coarse, thick paper and could make out the contours of something relatively thin, long and rectangular. An envelope? she texted back to Rance.

I bet FAA is Fulbright Athletics Association, Rance replied, remembering the gray T-shirts that were issued to players of pretty much every intercollegiate sport that said, in green block letters, "PROPERTY OF FAA." And if I am right about that, then my guess is that MG is Mitch Glazer. Am @ practice facility, want me to ask around?

Gia texted back a thumbs-up emoji. She left the envelope on the reception area desk and went to her room to microwave a bowl of Ramen noodles. About 10 minutes later, Rance replied: It's Glazer. He said he was forwarding you a snail-mail envelope addressed to you in care of Fulbright sports info that had a CBS News logo on the return address.

She returned to the desk and got the manila mailer from Sarah, unwound the red string that served to keep the top closed and pulled out the letter, exactly as described. Handwritten in blue ink beside the return address were the letters CA. She began reading:

Dear Miss Jones,

My name is Caroline Agostinelli. I am a producer on a tryout for correspondent for 60 Minutes.

My understanding is that Bill Whitaker was planning to report the story about the horrific series of events that led up to the incident in your dormitory on Oct. 11. As you may by now know, CBS has put Bill on a lengthy, major special assignment that has taken him overseas. That's as much as I've been told about the project that forced him to give up your story.

I asked to be allowed to report this story - your story. Actually, it was more like I begged CBS to let me do it. Part of my reason is selfish. I am very determined to get ahead in serious journalism and I need to do a great job on an important story to get that chance. The bigger reason is this isn't just a great story, it's an issue that desperately needs to be exposed: New Jersey is failing to vet juvenile offenders and freeing extremely dangerous people without ever notifying either law enforcement or the victims of their brutality. Yours is the best known but one of many such lapses.

Miss Jones, I have never done the on-air reporting for a 60 Minutes segment before, but as a producer, I have researched, done interviews, scheduled shoots, managed logistics and done story editing for dozens of them in my 10 years here, including three that have won Emmy Awards. Bill has been a hero and mentor of mine and recommended me to replace him on this assignment.

Even before CBS gave me the chance to report this story and hopefully prove myself worthy of promotion to correspondent, I had already devoted three weeks, 16 hours a day, seven days a week to reading and cross checking every media report, police document, New Jersey law enforcement and juvenile justice correspondence I could get my hands on.

I have memorized Gennaro Millientello's life chronology from the time you and he were students in Catholic School. I have uncovered evidence of rampant, systemic lapses systemwide in New Jersey's juvenile correctional system and of whistleblowers who could have implicated people as high as the governor's office but were intimidated into silence or fired.

Like you, I grew up in New Jersey, so this hits home for me. Like you, I am a woman who has to work and fight harder to achieve the same success as men. That's why I humbly ask that you consider my request to allow me and my crew to interview you and your boyfriend, Rance, as part of the piece I am doing for 60 Minutes - hopefully the first of many pieces of powerful reporting in a growing journalism career.

Sorry to ramble, but thank you for hearing me out. Hope to hear from you. The attached card contains my desk and cell numbers and my email address.

Warmest regards,

Caroline B. Agostinelli

●●●

Gia had never walked up to Rance and initiated a conversation at the start of football practice. It just wasn't something equipment staff should be doing, and it seemed particularly wrong since they were in a romantic relationship.

"Hey, come by after practice this evening. Something I need to show you and talk about," she said. That was it. She turned and went back to her tasks elsewhere on the practice fields.

The team's entire vibe was badly off for a Monday. There was no energy. Things seemed broken. In remarks to the team during film review Sunday and again before practice today, Perry Hemphill didn't address the elephant in the room. And if this team was to get its swagger back on a short week with a road game in Florida, he needed to get things on the table, settle accounts, explain his rationale and listen to what some enormously disappointed players had to say.

The players were doing all the right things. But there was no zip in their movements, no pop in their contact. They weren't loafing, but they weren't inspired, either. And unlike the self-satisfied lethargy before the Vanderbilt game when Hemphill made his team run sprints to the point of collapse, this wasn't a torpor from which there was an easy coach's fix.

Pre-practice stretching had ended and the team had lined up for some quick calisthenics when the malaise and discontent became all too apparent to Stark Middleton and he pulled Hemphill aside.

"Perry, I think that rather than to allow this to color the whole practice today, we need to see if we can clear the air. If nothing else, let these guys talk and listen to them. I know they're upset about the decision not to go for it at the end of the game Saturday, but I don't know if there's anything more than that," Middleton said. "If we let this keep going, we've wasted a whole practice day and maybe the week. You can feel it."

Hemphill looked at the ground and breathed heavily.

"You're probably right, Stark. What do you think. You think they're right, that I should have gone for it?"

"Yeah, I do," Middleton said, his eyes blazing into those of his boss.

Hemphill nodded, swallowed hard, blew his whistle and called to his team. "OK, everybody up!"

The players paused for a minute, confused, looking at one another.

"Come on, everybody up. Hustle," Hemphill said.

Soon, nearly 80 young men in their shoulder pads, helmets and practice shorts took a knee encircling him.

"All right, fellows, we need to clear the air so we can get ourselves back on track starting with this practice. I know we're heartbroken — all of us — about Saturday. It took a lot of opportunities away from us. But before I go any farther, I think it's time I listened to what y'all have to say," the head coach said. "I promise, I'll listen and not judge."

There was an uncomfortably long period of silence before, finally, it was Rance who spoke.

"Coach, I know you did what you thought was best at the moment. Maybe it was the pressure. I don't know. But if you'd let us, we would have gotten that yard for you and we'd have won that game. That's a fact. We've done it all year when everything depended on just one play, and we'd have done it again. No doubt in my heart or in my mind," Rance said.

"We were built for times like that. You yourself said it that night of the parade, that where adversity breaks weak teams, it build us up and we win ... or something very much like that. We had a moment to define ourselves as heroes and champions, and we were denied that chance," he said.

All around him, his teammates backed him up. "Tell it!" "You damn right!" "Mmm hmm." "Preach!"

Now, Mason Gerow spoke up.

"Coach, I told you what I thought right there Saturday afternoon. Rance is 100 percent right. We'd have gotten that yard. Every one of us had gotten close enough to being in the SEC championship to taste it. I think it was a mistake — a mistake we'll all live with the rest of our lives, but just a mistake. I don't think it's a mistake you'll ever make again if you're faced with the same circumstance, but for this team, all of us in this circle right here right now, that exact chance won't ever come again," Gerow said.

"The question is, and this is a question for you, coach — what's left to play for now? We missed our chance we worked so hard for to make Fulbright a champion," he said.

Perry Hemphill's jaw muscle clenched. He took off his Fulbright visor and looked around at the faces staring expectantly back at him. The pressure he felt Saturday was nothing compared to this moment of accountability to his team.

"Well, ... I wish I could reverse time by 48 hours, go back and have it all to do over again. I've thought about nothing else since then, and I've concluded on my own that I was wrong, that you are right," he said. "I didn't listen to you. I did not listen to my own, more courageous self. I played it safe, or what I thought was safe."

He cleared his throat. He looked down at the dirt of the practice field again. His eyes had gotten watery. Hemphill clenched his lips tight in an effort to force composure onto his face.

"As for what to play for? Play for you. Play for what you were playing for when you started this season — before anybody was talking about the conference title game or a playoff berth, back when we were just another Fulbright team looking to do better than the experts thought we could, a brotherhood looking out for each other," he said, the emotion now clutching at his words as he spoke them.

"You played those games and won those games for the love of your team and your teammates. Bookie, you played for Mojo and Crews and Dorey and Rance. Hal Donovan, you played for Quigley and your teammates on defense - and offense and special teams. You played for the most important reason that a team can: for yourselves. Your excellence was a gift to your teammates and from your teammates, every game, every practice, every session in the weight room, every muscle cramp in spring practice and summer two-a-days, every film study."

"Guys, I've been in this business a lot of years. I have never been around a team that was this beautifully close and complete. And let me tell you something: 10, 20, 30 years from now when you come back to watch kids who maybe aren't even born yet wear the uniforms you're wearing now, it's your teammates you will remember. Oh, y'all will talk about beating Georgia, South Carolina, LSU ... you'll talk about what happened Saturday. But it's one another that you will treasure most, these friendships that are unlike anything you'll experience going forward. You'll hug one another as tightly as you would a brother. You'll spend hours together that will fly by like they're seconds. You'll remember funny and special moments from this year, you'll spend time with one another's families and your kids and you'll call each other by the nicknames you use now but that no one will have used for many years ... ever since you left here," Hemphill said.

He had been on a roll and now he fell silent for a moment, maybe to catch his breath, maybe to figure out something new to say because while his team had listened, it had not fully bought in to what he was saying. That's when Elmer Adcock, a drawling sophomore scout team tight end who grew up poor in south Georgia, raised his hand as if with a question.

"Uh ... coach?" Adcock said. "What if your nickname's like mine?"

"Can't say I am familiar with your nickname, Adcock. What is it?" Hemphill said. Already a smattering of snickers was audible within the circle of players.

"Uh ... it's Possum Dick, sir," Adcock said.

In an effort to respect the gravity and solemnity of the moment, the players and the coaches fought to hold it together and not laugh. But it wasn't going well. Several players had their heads bowed attempting to conceal their laughter. Members of the training and equipment staff, standing on the periphery outside the circle of players, turned the other direction when they found it impossible not to laugh.

It was when Stark Middleton doubled over laughing that the huddle disintegrated into hysterical howls. Eventually, Hemphill himself gave up his stoic façade and laughed.

Just like that, the crisis was defused by a cornpone question from a bumbling country boy. Was it kismet — pure chance? — that Adcock's question about his crude moniker had been the ideal antidote to the toxic funk that had infected the team? Or was this lanky, stringy-haired business major from the same peanut-farming county that produced the nation's 39th president, Jimmy Carter, really a genius posing as a yokel?

That it broke the tension of the moment is almost aside from the point. His question was a real-time validation of all that Perry Hemphill had just said about the close, working fraternity with all its unique and unforgettable experiences that will become the memories that cement them together emotionally for a lifetime.