Chapter 51: A Messy Situation

A Messy Situation

Once Tim Murphy closed his bedroom door and turned on the bedroom lamp, he blew a quick kiss to his one-and-only Cindy, taped up on the wall, and collapsed on the bed with the biggest smile of his life. Tim was quietly reliving what had happened to him after the game. When he laughed to himself, he realized he didn’t even think about the game when the great time he had that night ran through his mind.

The quiet knock on the bedroom door alerted him to the here and now. The door opened part-way, and a cute set of eyeballs about waist-high told Tim who was at the door. “Hey sis, what are you doing awake at this hour?” Tim raised his arms for a hug from his sister, and she quickly came into the room and took her spot on his lap with a big hug.

“Where were you after the game? I thought we were going to go to get some McDonald’s, just like last week after you won the game,” Carmen’s doe eyes were still red from her rubbing the sleep out.

“Well, I had some friends ask me to go to a party to celebrate the win, and I wanted to go and see my friends somewhere besides just school and at practice.”

“Oh. Well, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Tim could tell she was playing around and not asking a serious question.

“What are you talking about, Carmen? I just wanted to go out with my friends. You don’t tell me when you’re going to a friend’s house. So, why do I have to tell you?” Tim playfully challenged while beginning to tickle his little sister? Her cries for him to stop were a little too loud.

“Hey, some of us want to sleep! Keep it down,” Juanita, the kids’ mother, said while entering her son’s bedroom. “Come on, little missy. You should be in your bed.”

“Well, Tim started tickling me, and I’m sorry for waking you.”

“Me too, mom.”

Juanita looked at her two kids and could see the love between the two, so she just looked down her nose at the antics of the two and growled under her breath. “Come on. Bedtime. Right now.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand and pulled her gently toward the door.

“Goodnight, big bro. You played great last night.”

Juanita pulled on her daughter’s arm again. When she made her way through the door, her mother swatted her lightly on her bottom, moving her a little bit quicker, but the laugh of surprise showed no harm done or feelings hurt.

“She is right about one thing. You did play great tonight, but it’s late, and you need some sleep, even if you don’t think you do.”

“Nah, you’re right. I need some sleep but, if you need me for anything, wake me up.”

His mother nodded and closed the door as she left her son’s bedroom. She walked down the hall, back toward her bedroom and, with a quick look into her daughter’s room, saw her already back in bed and quietly working toward sleep again. Carmen’s mother stole a quick moment to watch her youngest fall back to sleep, then continued back down the hall to her bed.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah. Everything’s fine. Your children are just acting up.”

“Ahh. Tim’s home, huh? I’ll bet he had some fun going to his first high school party. Imagine the stories!”

“No, thank you. I don’t want to hear about our big bag of hormones accosting coeds.”

“I do,” Raymond said while pulling his wife back into bed and snuggling as they did before kids. “I’ll bet I can think of a couple of things he might have done tonight.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, half laughing. Juanita gave her husband a full, deep kiss, and they both decided to go back to sleep.

A couple of hours later, the phone vibrating on Tim’s desk woke him up when it fell onto the floor. Tim grabbed the phone off the linoleum to see who was calling at this hour. The night was quickly burning away but not yet sunrise. The name on the small screen read Julie. Underneath his English teacher’s name, it also read 5:45 am. Tim spent a few seconds debating whether or not he should answer the call from his forbidden former flame.

It was something he had been working out in his mind for a couple of days. While sure it was a fantastic fantasy of any high schooler who lucked into being taught by a beautiful pedagogue, Tim never felt right and worried about toying with the woman’s emotions. While his nanites told him they had not allowed any pheromones to escape when they were in proximity, since their relationship started, Tim always wondered why would she risked her career, even her freedom, if word ever got out that their student/teacher relationship took a sexual twist.

“Maybe the thoughts I’m having now are my conscience trying to warn me before it’s too late,” Tim said to himself as he felt the phone vibrate once again in his hands. Tim looked at the phone, let out the breath he was unconsciously holding in, and put the phone back down on the blotter pad. It was made of rubber and would keep the phone from bouncing off the desk.

Tim laid his head back down on the pillows and watched the desk, where he saw the light from the ringing screen come on underneath the face-down screen. He slowly closed his eyes and fell back asleep, convinced he was doing the right thing.

“I don’t know why he isn’t answering!” Julianne Smith was barely able to keep from sliding off of her sofa after she had come up with the idea of having an orgy with the one guy she knew who could keep up with her friends.

After the game, Julie spent a few minutes hoping to get a word with him to see if they could get together sometime that weekend. With the massive group of press surrounding Tim and the rest of the team, she quickly walked away from the scrum and made her way to her car. There, she made a quick call to her friends to find out where they were going for the night. Julie sped home to shower the day off and glam up for a well-deserved night out on the town, club-hopping with her friends.

“Why the fuck isn’t he answering his phone? He always picks up whenever I call!”

“Well, maybe because it is like five in the morning. Your man did have to coach a big game last night, didn’t he?” asked Miko Bennett, roommate and photographer to Julianne’s best friend, Misty Anderson.

“Yeah, he was there, but he should have been home hours ago, and he should answer his phone. I mean, what if it was an emergency or something?” Julianne offered to her friends while she continued listening to the ringing.

“Well, it is an emergency. We have three skanks so horny they can smell each other from across the room. Do you think you have something that could help with our problem?” Misty said from the love seat while spoofing a phone with her thumb and pinky. Together, the three girls laughed out loud.

“Shit. I guess you’re asleep. I’ll talk to you later. Great game tonight. Bye.” Julianne tapped the phone to her chin after leaving the voicemail and ending the call.

Tim heard his mother calling through the fog of his dream. Once awake, the door opened, and it was his mother.

“Tim, oh good, you’re up. Do me a favor and hire a secretary. You are getting all kinds of phone calls from people either wanting to congratulate you or wanting to know where you are going for college.” She entered his room and placed a pile of post-it notes on his desk, next to his phone. “Do you want something for breakfast?” she asked but looked at the clock. “I guess it’s lunch now.”

“Please, mom. If it’s no bother, I will kill for a couple of sandwiches and potato chips.”

“Alright, then you take the house phone into your room and answer it. Nine and a half times out of ten, it’ll be for you anyways.” She gave him a big smile and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Tim got up, stretched, and did a quick fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups to get his body going for the day. No hardcore workout today or tomorrow. He had long ago listened to his dad’s advice about working out too much, so he decided, during football season, no workout over the weekend except for light exercise to keep the idea in his head. He knew he could skip working out for life, and the nanites in his body would keep him at higher-than-normal conditioning. Ever since he began working out, though, he found he truly enjoyed doing it.

He grabbed shorts, underwear, and a t-shirt from his dresser and jogged to the bathroom for another quick rinse of the night. In the shower, with the sunlight brightening the room, Tim finally noticed the lipstick marks going down his torso. “I thought I scrubbed all that off,” Tim thought to himself. By the time he finished removing the last of the red-colored graffiti from his torso, Tim not only had a big smile across his face while remembering his rendezvous with Riley Reid but now had a blue-steel hard-on – a byproduct of his perfect recall of everything she had done to him.

He decided to take care of his problem right there in the shower since it had the added convenience of being able to wash away the evidence. He immediately noticed the passage of time when the shower was running, him underneath, working his erection for all its worth. Once finished, he quickly washed away the collection from the wall and started drying up. Back in his room, Tim looked for some socks to wear around the house. The temperatures were beginning to change into the more seasonably cooler days of autumn.

“Your sandwiches are in the fridge. You can reheat the soup with them if you’d like, but I couldn’t keep it warm until you got out of the shower. I hope the hot water is okay by the time we all take showers tonight,” Juanita yelled from her recliner in the living room.

Tim heard his Dad fail to stifle a laugh at his mom’s announcement. That told Tim he had been a little loud in the bathroom.

“Dad gummit, son! Where in the world is your head? You do something that stupid during a live game, and you get your neck broken!” Coach O’Shaughnessy yelled at Tim after he was run over by the double-team of a pulling offensive tackle and a blocking back who both quickly sent Tim sprawling to the ground and rolling over from his head down to his behind. The other players were still in the throes of not believing their eyes when Tim was blocked right out of the hole, allowing the running back to shoot downfield and gain yards. This season, the defense hadn’t given up any yards since Tim began playing.

“A can guaran-damn-tee ya that every offensive lineman across the country is salivating at the chance to play against you and be the first one to knock ‘Mayhem’ square on his ass!” Coach O’Shaughnessy stared first at his star defensive end then continued with each of the rest of the defense, right in their faces and taking a few moments for his words to be understood.

“Sorry, coach. Can we rerun it?” Tim requested while adjusting the helmet on his head.

“Line it up and go again!”

On the whistle, Tim plugged the opening hole created by the offense and took on the rampaging guard, standing him straight up, knocking him to the floor, and finishing the play by wrapping the running back up in his arms and driving him back toward the quarterback. Now satisfied, Coach O’Shaughnessy blew his whistle twice, marking the end of the drill and the start of a water break for the teams.

Johnnie Boynes jogged up to Tim, anxious to find out what was going on with his friend. “Dude, what the fuck? I’ve never heard coach go at you like that before, and I was on the other field with the offense. You okay?” he asked between gulps of water.

“Ah, nothing, man. Just floated somewhere else in my mind. I’m straight now.”

Tim was lost in thought, worrying about his relationship with his English teacher. She had not said anything to him, either before or after class, and Tim was too afraid to find out what was going on. He was going through the motions of the practice before he decided to call his teacher tonight, from home, to find out what was going on. Why didn’t she at least give him a quick smile, which had been a customary greeting between the two on school grounds? At the same time Tim made his decision, he got knocked out of position, and the defensive coordinator chewed his ass out.

“Okay. That’s all I need.” Johnnie and Tim both shared a few moments of quiet as they wolfed down more water to counteract their thirst from the higher intensity the coaches seemed to be forcing from all the players through each drill.

The shrill of Coach Fontana’s whistle cut through all the chatter, ending the all-too-brief respite from their maniacal coaches in the afternoon heat of South Texas. “Okay, ladies, B-team for the rest of the day. Move it to your B-team assignments! Murphy, on me for a minute,” Coach Fontana boomed from the field.

B-team is a second position for each player, in case of injury and no available JV backup the coaches feel is ready to play in a varsity football game. Defensive players learned a second position on the offense and offensive players, vice-versa. B-teams were something the coaches typically drilled during Tuesday after-school practices.

“You wanted to see me, coach?” Tim had put his helmet back on his head before jogging up to Coach Fontana. The coaches took one of Big John’s pet peeves to heart and drilled into each player to keep their helmets on at all times. The only reasons not to have it on were if there is something physically wrong with it or you are injured and checked by the training staff — no taking off helmets after plays and no standing on the sidelines at a game without your helmet on your head.

“Yeah, Tim. The coaches and I want to try something different today. Rather than going off with the tight ends for B-team, we want you to work out with the wide receivers. We think your size could help us move the ball against Judson.” Coach Fontana pointed to the wide receivers running as a group off the football practice field toward the main gym. “Do you have tennis shoes that won’t scrape up the gym floor too badly?” Tim nodded. “Then go catch up with them, and they will teach you a few moves to help you if we decide to use you this way during a game but, Tim, don’t forget to go over your tight end positions tonight as well. We might need you there also. Now get going!” Tim was dismissed with a firm slap on the back as he jogged after the wide receivers.

Nearly an hour later, Tim had never felt so tired after practice, but he loved every second of it. Tim was a little surprised when Rob Newsome, the senior starting wide receiver and the player who started a confrontation with Tim on the day the players received their helmets and pads, had pulled him aside after practice.

“Say, Tim, can we talk before you go in for your shower?”

On the jog from the practice fields after being dismissed by Coach Fontana, Tim worried about the reaction of the team’s best receiver and biggest instigator of smack talk against the other teams.

“I was a little pissed off when Coach Conley told us they were going to try you out at wide receiver. I thought there was no way you could keep up with us because of your size but, fuck, man, you kept up and then some. What the fuck are you?” Rob asked with a smile on his face.

“I’m pretty freakin’ tired is what I am.” They both started laughing, and Rob gave Tim a slight shove toward the locker room door, signaling the end of their brief conversation. Coach Conley and Coach Fontana were watching the discussion from the coaches office, behind a one-way mirror. The coaches used it to keep an eye on kids in the gym during the physical education, or P.E., classes throughout the school day.

“So, how did the Murphy kid do with the wideouts, Carl?” Coach Fontana asked the receivers coach from the quiet of the head coach’s office.

“Big John, I have never had the privilege of coaching an athlete quite like that. He picked up everything after one explanation. I tell him something, and he does it perfectly. He is like a machine. I’m telling you, there is something beautiful about watching a three-hundred-pound raw athlete like that keep up running with kids just over half his size. It’s almost unfair.”

“So, do you think the idea of using him in goal-line situations or must-have first downs is good?” Big John inquired of his long-time receivers coach.

“John, I want the kid to start on offense. I figure we can put him up against that short kid Judson is playing on the right-side defense,” Coach Conley answered.

“That kid may be short, but he is a pretty good DB. Are you sure about the Murphy kid as a wideout rather than a tight end?” Big John asked.

“I’d say keep him as both. He is a weapon on both sides of the ball. Only thing I’d be a little worried about is his ability to keep up with the physical needs of each position.”

“Well, I don’t think I’ll start him on offense, but having him available would be great.” Big John smiled and took a swig of Gatorade.

“Sounds like a plan, Coach. Sounds like a plan.” The two coaches toasted each other with their bottles of Gatorade, and neither was able to remove the smiles from their faces for several minutes after their conversation.

Tim was sitting on one of the logs placed side-by-side on the ground in his backyard. He was staring at his phone and wondering if it somehow broke. He had just tried calling his English teacher for the third time, and the call was going straight to voice mail. Tim did not leave a message out of caution. Now he was wondering if not picking up the phone when she called was a much bigger mistake than he previously thought.

After the fourth call to his teacher and lover, Tim put his phone away and began contemplating the meaning of her not answering his calls. Was she still mad about his not answering her call? Was Julie trying to get back at him for ignoring her? Why didn’t she acknowledge his subtle smiles whenever they were in eye contact with each other when no one else could see? Are things like this routine in a relationship?

Finding no answer to any of his questions, Tim rubbed the light sheen of sweat off his face and went back to his room. A quick kiss was blown to Cindy’s portrait on the wall, then Tim sat down at his computer and turned on his main laptop since it was on the desk already. He checked up on his fan websites, mainly searching the forums to see if there was anyone who knew about his trip to Onyx or if anyone was wondering about this absence from the big parties celebrating the team’s victory. The majority of posts were wondering where Tim would go to celebrate the inevitable victory over Judson.

A few minutes after searching his fan blogs, Tim’s phone rang. It wasn’t his English teacher, but he did recall the number. It was the reporter from the website a few weeks earlier.

“Hello, Tim, this is Kevin Thomas from Dave Campbell’s Texas Football Magazine. How are you this weekend?”

“Doing well, sir, and how are you?”

“Fine. Just fine, Tim. I was wondering if you had a few minutes to talk for the podcast tomorrow morning?”

“Um, actually, at this moment, I have the time. I just finished a workout and was going to take a shower. I’ll get on the stationary bike and have a quick talk with you,” Tim divulged as he sat down on the seat and began peddling softly.

“Wow, great game, and you don’t take the weekend off to relax a bit?”

“No. I find myself relaxing while I work out. Now, I don’t go all crazy with weights and whatnot after a game, but I do go for a little bike work and maybe some light weights – nothing crazy. I don’t want to overdo it.”

“What’s lightweight for you on the weekend after a game?”

“Nothing over 275 pounds. I’ll go for more quantity than quality; just enough to get a good sweat.”

“Alright, Tim, lemme go ahead and get the recorder set and I’ll take a few minutes of your time, and again, thanks!”

“No problem. I’m a fan of the show, and I listen to it at lunch. I sit in the cafeteria with a bunch of my friends, and we listen to the podcast during lunch. It’s one of the few sanctioned shows we can listen to without headphones.” Both gave polite laughs.

“Now, Tim, you have the make-up game against your rival, the Judson Rockets, this weekend. How are you getting ready for that game?”

“Nothing different. Of course, we are paying a lot of attention, and they are far and away the best team we have played or will play this season. I am personally looking forward to testing myself against them on Friday night.” Tim took a drink of water from the bottle he had on the bike.

“Any trick plays coming from your coaches?”

Tim laughed and countered the question, “Not that I’m aware of, no. Then again, if we did have some plans for trick plays, wouldn’t we tell you we aren’t working on some plays? So, maybe we are, and maybe we aren’t.”

“We had a report that you left d-line practice early and went inside to work with a few other positions. What did you do for the second half of practice this afternoon.”

The question threw Tim for a loop. Their practices were being paid attention by others not on the team. “Wow. That is some Deep Throat kind of information there. Well, I probably shouldn’t answer that question since it is something I was scheduled to be working on as a part of what we call B-team assignments. You learn a secondary position, normally on the other side of the ball that you have to learn as well as your primary, or A-team, position. The second half of practice was for B-team assignments.”

Tim was quiet for a few seconds. “Hey, Kevin, I’d appreciate it if you would not use that part about our B-team practices. Wherever you got your information about where I was practicing is watching the team closely, and that kind of information could hurt us for when we play Judson. I’d consider it a personal favor if you skip all of that.”

Kevin Thomas took a moment and weighed the importance of reporting Mayhem Murphy practicing a new offensive position versus honoring the professional trust between journalist and a subject just beginning his career on the ladder to football fame. Twice he has called and, each time, Tim willingly answered questions for his podcast and not any others. The decision was simple. “Sure thing, Tim. I’ll cut that part out. Besides, if we start encouraging details like that, it would probably be a slippery slope to what kind of information we would begin getting about different teams.”

“Thanks. I mean, I probably should not have said anything about it in the first place.”

“No problem. I know you play on the defensive side of the football, but can you tell us a little bit about the team’s move from the old school option football that ruled from the Roosevelt of the last couple of decades to the new spread attack?”

After the brief hiccup with the B-team practice topic, the interview continued for another ten minutes and ended with Tim answering a little bit about his private life.

“I’ll bet being a big-time, up-and-coming football hero has made you popular with the girls at your school now, hasn’t it?”

Tim had an awkward chuckle that made Kevin return an even louder laugh. “Um, while I would never have been confused with a Casanova, I have had a few of the more forward girls make known to me that they want to become my girlfriend. To be honest, though, I’m a shy guy and, right now, I’d like to concentrate on my classwork and my work on the football field, in that order.”

“Great answer, Tim. Great answer. That should get a little bit more attention from the girls for ya. Especially after lunch when they hear it on the podcast.”

“Oh, wonderful. Thank you very much, Kevin.” Tim and Kevin shared the laugh and ended the interview. Tim was still laughing to himself when he thought about what might happen in the cafeteria after everyone hears that answer.

“What’s so funny?” Tim’s mother asked from the sliding glass door between the dining room and the back patio where Tim kept his weights and workout supplies.

“Oh, um, I just had an interview with a Texas Football podcast, and he asked me if I had a girlfriend.”

“Good question. How did you answer it?”

“I told him I was just concentrating on my schoolwork and my football work, in that order.”

Juanita smiled and shook her head. “Come on, it’s time for dinner. I need you to set the table.”

“Yes, ma’am. Can I grab a quick shower first? I was going to get one then he called for the interview.”

“Alright, hurry it up. I can stretch it for about five minutes.” She lightly smacked Tim on his arm as he jogged past her into the dining room and toward his room.

Dinner was terrific, and the family talked about healthy everyday happenings in each other’s lives. Raymond talked about hiring a new crew of nurses for another department in the hospital that wanted an overhaul the same way he had done for the burn unit at the Brooke Army Medical Center.

Juanita was excited because she had lunch with Mary Ann Johnson. She’s the wife of Dr. Kevin Johnson, the podiatrist, who is also the president of the Rough Rider Sports Booster Club. Everyone was genuinely interested to learn that Mary Ann was also a podiatrist and partners with her husband at their clinic but had decided to become a stay-at-home mom. She was considering going back to work once their youngest child matriculated to Roosevelt high from his current seventh grade in two years.

Carmen was excited because, after every win, she was becoming one of the more popular kids in school. Her friends all wanted to hear about what it was like to watch a high school football game and then meet the players as they left the locker room. The other fourth-graders just wanted to hear what it was like to be hanging out with cool high school kids. Her classmates all thought it was cool to be there for each game.

The meal was interrupted by a loud screech of tires on the street outside, and then a loud something slammed into the metal screened door of the house. The accompanying splat on the metal screened door was also apparent. Luckily, the screen and metal doors were both already closed and locked for the night. Carmen and Juanita made their way to the kitchen at Raymond’s direction, since it was separated from the front door by a wall, and Raymond cautiously approached a window to the left of the door. The screeching tires of a car speeding away from the house were the last of the unusual sounds.

It took nearly a minute for Raymond to approach the door from the window he spied through while Tim was at the other window. There was no way to tell what had just happened from the windows. Once the door opened, the foul smell of something burning was the first smell to hit the senses, followed by the fecal odor. The smell of feces quickly overpowered the burning smell.

The remnants of brown refuse hung in the grating of the metal screen door, and a rounded impact circle could be made out on the inside metal door. It was becoming clear someone had just thrown a bag of flaming excrement at the front door of the Murphy residence.

It exploded and stuck in the screen, and the lighting of the bag did not work as intended. It extinguished itself upon impact. Perhaps it was lit and thrown too soon.

Raymond quickly opened the door and jumped over the remains of the bag of feces sitting on the porch. He was followed closely behind by Tim, and both were looking down the street to see if they could identify the guilty car.

“Oh, my God! What in the world is that smell?!” Tim’s mother was yelling from the front door and holding a rag up to her face.

Raymond gave up on looking for the culprit and returned to the door. “Someone just threw a flaming bag of shit at our house.”

The absurdity took a moment to filter through the intelligence of each member of the Murphy family. Raymond pulled the welcome mat from the porch, covered in excreta and a partially burned bag of some kind, out to the middle of the front lawn. Several of the neighbors heard the disruption of screeching tires in the normally tranquil neighborhood. The fire was quickly extinguished and luckily did not have a chance to burn the house. The explosive spread of dung on the front door was easy to see.

“Raymond, here.” Juanita was offering her husband the telephone. “I called the police non-emergency line. Tell them what just happened.”

Visibly annoyed at having to explain what had just happened to his house, he began a verbal report of the last few minutes.

Tim was looking at the gray-colored bag. He broke off a small twig from a nearby, low-hanging tree limb and used the stick to turn the bag over while it still sat on the welcome mat. Tim could not believe what his eyes were seeing. He pulled out his phone and began taping the front door, the welcome mat and the partially torn and burned bag of manure with the Judson Rocket logo emblazoned on the underside. Tim then turned the camera around to film himself. “Someone just threw a bag of burning shit at my house, and it is in a Judson Rocket bag. Someone just threw a flaming bag of shit at my house.”

He realized he was beginning to breathe deeply out of anger and was becoming so mad he felt himself shaking. The veins in his arms, neck, and a particularly persistent vein in his forehead all bulged prominently, and each vein filled with anger pulsing through them like molten lava. He looked to the sky and twisted his head intentionally cracking his neck all while on camera. Looking at the camera once again, “Someone threw a Judson Rockets covered bag of shit at my house.” He ended the video, and he quickly realized to himself it was taking nearly every ounce of will power to not crush the phone in his hand.