The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 07

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.

This is the last chapter in this series.

CHAPTER SEVEN - As Long As We Both Shall Live

The moist, balmy Gulf of Mexico breeze blowing down Canal Street as twilight gripped the Vieux Carre gave the feel of late spring rather than late December as Rance Martin got out of the taxi at the intersection with Bourbon Street. Where Bourbon and Bienville intersect, he was to meet his parents, Ed and Lorrie Martin, in the lobby of the Royal Sonesta Hotel.

Rance and the Fulbright Generals had finished a walkthrough 1.5 miles away at Caesar's Superdome — the last practice before the Sugar Bowl game against Notre Dame — on New Year's night, just over 48 hours from now. Gia Jones would join them shortly after finishing work setting up the team's gear in the Superdome's visitors' locker room.

The French Quarter's most famous street was already clogged with Notre Dame and Fulbright revelers and impossible for a motor vehicle to navigate. Rance enjoyed the walk. It helped him clear his head. The coaches had thrown a lot at Fulbright's players ahead of their marquee bowl pairing against the most storied name in college football. Bowls in college football are supposed to be something of a holiday, a reward for an exceptional season, but this one took on the feel of a business trip.

Also on Rance's mind was what was next for himself and Gia.

She had cleared out of her room at the Honors College — a space open only to undergraduates — three days earlier and stored her belongings in the apartment Rance and Gene Hurley shared. They had discussed — and swiftly dismissed — the prospect of getting their own place together. Not only did it seem inappropriate for a pair of almost 20-year-olds who aren't engaged, one a grad student and the other a junior undergrad football player, there was also the fact that Rance was responsible for half of the cost of the one-year lease on their current apartment.

The dilemma the situation raised was when and whether Rance and Gia should get engaged. They loved each other without reservation, but both were aware that it was the first truly serious relationship of their lives and they were still so young. Neither could yet legally purchase alcohol or rent a car. Still, the question tugged on Rance. You don't have to be 21 to buy her a ring and you don't have to immediately set a date if she says yes, his conscience kept telling him. So if you love her, show her.

Maybe they should just discuss it. That would be the rational, businesslike and mature thing to do. But it's not the stuff of good romance, and Rance was something of a romantic.

New Orleans was new to Rance. His eye was continuously distracted by the bizarre street life that is the French Quarter. The deeper you go from Canal Street, the stranger it gets, the drunker people get, and the more expensive it gets. Before him, he saw the Royal Sonesta with its balconies surrounded by wrought iron railings. On one of them, a man was being fondled openly by an overserved woman of college age whose shoulder straps had slid down to her elbows exposing her ponderous breasts with their areolae the size of poker chips. Rance broke his gaze, shook his head and walked inside the grand, luxuriously appointed lobby. He had been there only seconds when he heard Renee calling to him, waving him to a table just off the bar.

"I don't know if this is the right place for an innocent young teen," Rance told his kid sister who, aware that Rance would turn 20 in a few weeks, smartly shot back, "Look who's talking."

"Just water," Rance told the waiter who stopped by the table where he had seen the largest man in the lobby — and clearly a football player — take a seat.

"Where's Gia," Lorrie Martin asked her son.

"She texted me in the cab over here. She'll be done in the Dome in about 30 minutes and said we could save her a seat and just text her our location," he said.

"You seem a little subdued. Anything on your mind ... other than Notre Dame, of course," Ed asked Rance.

"I guess that's most of it. We're treating this pretty much as a business trip, so we're really keeping our distance from all the nightlife. At first I was bummed that we were staying in a hotel out near Lake Ponchartrain, but after walking the few blocks down here, I'm kind of glad we are where we are. Just saw a couple about to do the deed right out on one of the balconies just now," he said. "We'd never be able to focus on the game."

Lorrie, silently and perceptively surveying her son's face, let him finish before adding in a tone of inquiry, "And ...?"

"Well, the next 48 or so hours are scripted for us. But after that, everything's in flux. There's all the gossip about Coach Hemp maybe going to Auburn or A&M, and he's not going to say anything til after the game. There's the two weeks before classes resume and where Gia's going to be living. There's the whole intrigue over where her mom is going to relocate and how this thing's developing with her new guy friend," Rance said, staring at the glass of water that had been put onto the table before him. "It's ... just a lot."

"You left out the most important part — you and Gia," his mother said.

"What's to say?" Rance shrugged. But he couldn't make eye contact with his mother when he said it and she took note.

"Well, you each went your separate ways for Christmas even though it was less than three days: her to New Jersey with Callie and you home with us. Seemed odd as close as you've gotten that you'd let each other out of your sight that long," she said. "Since you two became exclusive, the most you'd been apart was an overnight for a road game."

"Eh. That's not a thing for us. Might have been for y'all. Those holiday plans pretty much follow their long routines and you just don't take Christmas on the road like that. Hopefully, we'll have a lot more holidays together, but she needed to get home to see her big extended family and I didn't feel I could bail on ours, either," he said.

It was true as far as it went, but Lorrie knew there was something else beneath all of that, something she might have to excavate another time.

"I'm starved. Where are we going and when?" Renee said.

"I've got us reservations for five in about 45 minutes at Pascal's Manale in the Garden District. Best Creole food I know of. Barbecued shrimp worth fighting a war over," Ed said. "We can Uber or walk down to Canal and take the streetcar."

"Streetcar," everyone said, nearly simultaneously.

●●●

Gia had hurriedly changed from her green-and-gold Fulbright staff gear into a loose, ankle-length, floral-print cotton dress that would have seen garishly out of place in late December were this not New Orleans. Her hair slightly askew and the first hint of perspiration on her brow seemed to glow.

"Sorry I'm late," she said as Rance held her chair out for her to be seated — etiquette befitting the properly raised son of Chattanooga's elite and a veteran of more cotillions and debutante balls in his high school years than he cared to remember.

"You're not, dear. Perfect timing. We were seated not three minutes ago," Lorrie said.

Rance couldn't peel his eyes off her. Gia's fresh, breezy beauty radiated into the fragrant steaminess of the Creole eatery. Heads turned when she entered Pascal's and the maître d' escorted her to the table.

This is why I couldn't resist her in the swelter of August in Fallstrom, his inner voice told him. This is why I couldn't tear myself away in October. This is what attaches me to her at the most fundamental, spiritual level — this whatever is within her. This is what I want more than anything, what I can't live without. I know that now.

Then like a thunderbolt, the answer, almost in the form of a commandment.

Do it!

He was startled by the stentorian certainty of the command arcing through him from his heart to his brain and back, spoken by his soul/spirit/guardian angel ... whatever the voice was. He swallowed hard and blinked, as though breaking free of a reverie, realizing that what had seemed an uncertain roadmap ahead was now a well-defined journey. For two.

Gia, noticing Rance's uncharacteristic silence, turned her head and caught him as his internal reckoning drew to a close. "Earth to Rance," she said with a curious smile and eyes that looked into his for reconnection.

"Sorry, honey. Zoned out for a moment," he said, then smiled and planted a peck of a kiss on her lips. Gia beamed. Lorrie, Ed and Renee sat there wide-eyed: no one in the strait-laced Martin family could ever recall such a PDA at dinner, especially in a restaurant. To those who knew how to read such body language, it signaled an important turning point. And the universe of people who could decipher what just happened was Lorrie Martin.

After a sumptuous repast of barbecued shrimp, shrimp andouille and a special seasonal jambalaya (a steak for Rance for whom shellfish caused headaches), Ed Martin paid the check and they strolled the three blocks down Napoleon Avenue back to Canal to catch the next streetcar to Bourbon Street and the Royal Sonesta.

"Maybe it's bad form to ask about anything beyond Notre Dame 48 hours from now, but what are you kids going to do with the longest stretch of downtime you've had since you began dating until the start of the spring semester?" Ed inquired.

That peaked Lorrie's interest after what she had just witnessed in the restaurant between her son and Gia — Rance's trance-like 1,000-yard stare at Gia followed by his sweet, unprovoked kiss in front of everyone, utterly unconcerned what anyone may think.

"Spend some time together doing ... nothing," Gia said. "That sounds so delicious."

"Same here," Rance said, equally tight-lipped. "Together."

Lorrie was about to follow up and ask them where they planned to kill time together, but she wisely realized that it skated awfully close to prying. Just then, a New Orleans cabbie, intuitively guessing that someone in this obvious crowd of tourists at the Napoleon and Canal streetcar stop was going somewhere that streetcars did not.

"I'll call you tomorrow," Rance said ducking into the cab with Gia. "Free time is going to be pretty scarce."

Rance directed the cabbie to the team hotel where the players and staff — including Gia — were billeted during Sugar Bowl week.

"Rance, what were you thinking about back there when you zoned out in the restaurant? Ordinarily, I'd think it was the game, but you were gazing right at me. It was odd but it was so sweet," Gia said, snuggling against his massive frame as the evening bayou chill got to her.

"Oh, it was just pleasant thoughts - thoughts about you, angel. I was realizing how lucky the last few months have made me," he said just above a whisper, his arm pulling her lithe form against him. "I may have looked zoned out but I was seeing things more clearly than I ever have."

"Really? Like what?"

He kissed the top of her head softly.

"I'll save that for another day. But soon, honey. Soon."

●●●

Perry Hemphill worried that the bright light of one of the biggest stages in collegiate sports might overwhelm his team, traditionally an afterthought among the nation's most powerful athletic conferences. There were many who, as recently as three years ago before Art Overshaw hired Hemphill as head coach of the perennially woebegone program, believed the university should move to a lower level of intercollegiate competition, perhaps abandon football altogether and focus on its academic reputation and its more successful basketball program.

During warmups, the players were looking all over the Superdome at the crowds, the bands, the celebrities. Just the venue, which had been home to so many Super Bowls and college national championship games and seemed to drip with history, seemed intimidating. The distraction seemed to be at odds with the all-business mindset the team had carried throughout preparation for the bowl.

"What do you think, Stark?" Hemphill asked his top assistant.

"I like it," he said. "They're taking it all in, and they should because they worked like hell to get here. They look loose but they seem confident and sharp," he said. "Rather have it this way than to have their assholes so tight that they make sounds only dogs can hear every time they fart."

That loosened Hemphill up, allowing him to briefly break his stony façade to chuckle and shake his head at Stark Middleton.

The team got quieter when it finished warmups and retreated back into the locker room. When the players returned to the field for the national anthem, coin toss and the opening kickoff, they were quiet, within themselves, mentally ready for the game of their lives.

And that's how it started out.

The Fighting Irish took the opening kickoff and the Generals' defense throttled them, forcing them to punt after three snaps on a fourth-and-17. Fulbright's offense, conversely, needed only five plays to score the game's first touchdown — a 50-yard Mason Gerow bomb to Philando Fernandez on the first pass play by either team after the Generals' offensive line had gouged Notre Dame for 32 yards on the previous four running plays.

Another three-and-out possession by Notre Dame and a second Fulbright touchdown, this one requiring all of seven plays and all but one of them on the ground. With less than six minutes elapsed, the Generals led 14-0.

A fumble early in the second quarter gave Notre Dame the football at the Fulbright 28, but that's as close as the Irish got, settling for a field goal. And as soon as Fulbright got the ensuing kickoff, it commenced a 12-play ground attack behind the machine-like offensive line and the punishing running of Bookie Riemers to extend the halftime lead to 21-3.

"Y'all, I been in this situation before and came out losing. Just cause a snake look dead, he can still bite. We get the ball to start the second half and we gotta go out there and chop this muh-fucka's head off," Mojo Hale told his offensive teammates during the break. "We can't go out there and fuck around with this team. They been there and they ain't scared of being just 18 down with 30 minutes to play."

Other than a few minor blocking and strategy changes, the coaches had little to add to Mojo's wisdom. It was the defense that Perry Hemphill worried about. While the nearly four-week break since the regular season finale at Florida had given the undersized, battered and thin defense some time to heal, long games against large offensive lines were especially draining for the defensive front. With Notre Dame likely to pass often, Hemp wanted to rely on more quickness and stunts in the second half to get to the quarterback, wagering that it would more than make up for the yardage they might surrender on the ground.

Fulbright indeed marched smartly down the field with the first kickoff after halftime, but the drive mired down inside the Irish 10 and Gene Hurley kicked a field goal to push the Generals' lead to 21 points.

True to Hemp's prediction, Notre Dame opened up passing, and it proved hard to shut down. It was an up-tempo, quick-hit, intermediate yardage run-pass option attack that the Irish had shown little of during the regular season. Stunts were often useless against it because the quarterback got the ball out of his hands so quickly, sometimes on shovel passes between the two guards that were essentially running plays. Two of those produced first downs on a nine-play drive that took the Irish to the Fulbright 12 on third down and three yards to go. Hemphill, sensing a play that could be the turning point in the game, called the timeout.

From the pressbox, the defensive coordinator informed Hemphill that twice in the game, the Irish had run something of a quarterback draw option out of a shotgun formation. In other words, the quarterback, five yards behind center, took the ball, quickly set up as if to pass, then tucked the ball and ran upfield. If he had a clear lane, he kept it. If he didn't, he'd flip the ball a back who had posed as a blocker. Both times, it resulted in a first down. "Keep the D-line and 'backers home, Perry."

Hemphill advised his defensive line not to sell out on the pass rush or stunts, to stay in position, and for the linebackers to stay close to the line of scrimmage.

When the ball was blown ready for play, Notre Dame's quarterback lined up exactly as was predicted. Also, as predicted, he quickly hinted at a pass before tucking the ball and attempting to run. He found a mob of green jerseys around the line of scrimmage ready to devour him and the linebackers close behind them. But out of the corner of his eye, he also spotted his tight end breaking free on a flag route toward the right goal line pylon and heaved the ball blindly before he was inundated by those green jerseys. The wobbly pass got close enough to his receiver to catch it and extend it forward enough to overturn the pylon before he rolled out of bounds, good for a touchdown.

Mojo Hale's admonition about the undead viper resonated loudly now in the minds of the Fulbright offense. A three-touchdown lead looms large and works on the trailing team's psyche. Much different proposition when it's just a 14-point margin and more than a quarter and a half to achieve it. As Mojo put it, the snake was still very much alive, had a fresh infusion of confidence and ... well, mojo.

Mindful of how the last drive of the first half had bogged down, Hemp decided to open his offense up, using the whole playbook if necessary. The first three plays the coach had scripted after the ensuing kickoff were all passes, and only one of them — for just seven yards — was complete. On fourth and three, with Fulbright fans screaming for their Generals to go for it, Hemphill opted to punt rather than risk giving Notre Dame the ball less than 35 yards from paydirt.

The Irish offense returned with the same mix of up-tempo runs and short run-option passes that had resulted in the first Notre Dame touchdown. Four plays later, the Irish had crossed midfield. Three plays after that, they were in Fulbright's "red zone," which is sportscaster jargon for being within the opponent's 20 yard line. And on the 10th play, the giddy Notre Dame band was again playing the famous fight song about "sending a volley cheer on high" and shaking down the thunder from the sky — stuff you'd expect from a school that considers God himself to be on the roster.

The mood for Hemphill and the Generals was tense to say the least as the fourth quarter began. The offense was having trouble moving the ball consistently, though it had notched a few decent gainers before having to punt. And Gene Hurley had parlayed the most successful second half drive into a 42-yard field goal during to stretch the lead back to 10 points.

It was during the break between the third and fourth quarters that Matt Gerow approached his coach and made his case.

"Coach, we can win this if you let Fulbright be Fulbright. Let us do what we do and that's run the ball. We started passing when we didn't need to. This offense can go out there and take over this fourth quarter if you let us play the game that got us here," Gerow said as Stark Middleton looked on. "Coach, we're playing not to lose. That's no way to win."

"He's right, Perry," Middleton told his boss. "The line is executing. Notre Dame put in a couple of stunts that slowed our running attack a little, but I talked to Martin and Crews and we figured out how to stop it."