At twenty-four, Bull Rawlins, a six-foot-three, 235-pounds of sculpted ebony muscle, lived for three things: football, more football, and his pit bull, Champ. He had appetites just like any virile twenty-four-year-old, but as his tastes went to young guys—really young guys, fresh and supple and just on the cusp of transitioning from boy to man—he rarely was able to take the risk. There had been one fourteen-year-old boy, Dan, in Richmond, but he hadn’t been in Tennessee long enough this summer to find a hookup.

Bull was a talented defensive lineman who had been headed to the NFL pros until one glitch cropped up, an important one. Bull wasn’t too swift and he couldn’t remember the plays. Other than that, he was good as gold, but being a top-notch blocker didn’t matter much if you weren’t blocking the designated player in the right direction.

Through the last season, Bull had been a defensive tackle for the Virginia Hornets, a Richmond, Virginia-based semipro team in the Big North East League. He’d done well enough there, with the help of his coaches providing camouflage of his weakness until they could unload his contract, to look pretty good on paper. At the beginning of the summer, his contract was sold to the Tennessee Titans, which would have been a step up in the professional ranks for Bull if the Titans hadn’t quickly discerned his weakness and made a deal with the Philadelphia Soul arena league team that, along with the AFL Arena League was gearing up to get back into business for the 2020 season and was forming a team. Bull didn’t have a commitment, but he had a tryout date two weeks hence at the beginning of August and a play book to study before he got there.

Bull was sure he’d get the position on the team. How hard could it be to learn the new team’s projected plays well enough to get on the team?

The third week in July, he started driving up I-81, headed for Philadelphia through Harrisburg via I-76. He was traveling light: A couple of suitcases; his pit bull, Champ; and the Soul play book, open on the passenger seat to a formation he couldn’t quite grasp. They got nearly to Winchester, Virginia, as they tooled north up I-81 along the line of the Shenandoah Valley before Bull was clued into needs Champ had. They’d just passed a rest area, so Bull knew there wouldn’t be another one for a while, so he took the Highway 17 exit into the town, pulled over, and used his GPS to find that he was at the Shenandoah University campus and there was a park, the Jim Barret Park, above the university with a dog park in it. He had food and water for Champ in the trunk, so he drove up to and into the park.

There was more than a dog park there. There were athletic fields too, and there were a couple of boy’s football teams out on a field, practicing, near where he and Champ plopped for Champ to eat and water himself. While Champ tanked up, Bull propped himself up on his elbows and watched the coaches put the boys through their paces.

This was the sort of activity Bull could always be counted on to focus on. His eyes went to the young guys out on the field practicing. His interest wasn’t just that they were going through football drills. They were too young to be from the adjacent Shenandoah University—too young even to be high school varsity players. They were younger than that. Something close to the fourteen-year-old zone that had Bull’s juices flowing.

One guy caught Bull’s attention in particular. Bull thought he looked about like he did when he was younger—the months after he was more released in exasperation from than graduated from junior high school and was moving straight into high school varsity sports because of his football talents. Graduated from high school more not to get into his way up the football standards than because he passed his courses, he gone from a university to a small college to smaller college on athletic scholarships that finally just dwindled to nothing because he couldn’t keep up with the studies and the school athletic departments stopped trying to pretend he could. And Bull could see the same frustration in the boy he was watching on the practice field that he’d felt before a good line coach took the time to work with his technique too.

Bull saw something else too. The boy had seen him and Champ stretched out beside each other on the grassy bank beside the practice field. He was giving Bull the eye now and again, clearly interested.

“You’re hittin’ too high. You need to come up from a crouch and get under the guy’s ribcage. Other than that, you look good,” Bull called across the field.

Champ snuffled and looked up into Bull’s face, wondering, no doubt what he was supposed to do with that information. Bull was yelling at the boy out on the field, but, of course, was too far away from him to be heard. The boy was young, but he was a chunk—and not a fat chunk either, probably about five-six and 140 pounds. The pounds were in muscle, though—in the thighs and biceps and under the chest pads. Not in the belly. The kid had narrow hips, deep hollows in them. Bull was breathing heavy.

Bull muttered, “Pull those pads off and let me see your chest development,” but of course the kid didn’t hear him.

The boy’s frustration increased, and he eventually exploded into an illegal tackle and was sent off to the side of the field, near where Bull and Champ were laid out, by one of the coaches to cool off and think about what he’d done wrong, while the coach went back to watching what the other football linesmen were doing. Now, though, the kid did pull his pads and the athletic shirt under them off and Bull did an intake of ragged breath, indicating his interest. He hadn’t had any of that since Danny in Richmond.

“Ya gotta tell him somethin’,” Bull muttered in the coach’s direction. “Don’t just stand there and watch him do it wrong again and again and curse him for something you ain’t tellin’ him about.”

This time, even though Bull was talking to the wind again, the young player who had been sent off to the side and was slouching on the ground in disgust not far from where Bull and Champ stood, heard him.

“Eh, what? You talkin’ to me, mister?”

“No. To your coach out there. I don’t mean to get into it, but he could have told you what you were doin’ wrong. It wasn’t much. Your form is pretty much good to go.”

“Oh? You a football coach or somethin’? Scouting us out for Warren County High or somethin’?” The question was a mix of belligerence, curiosity, and boredom with a life not going quite as planned.

“You on a high school team?” Bull asked. “Is that what’s out here practicing.”

“John Handley High,” the kid answered. “I’m tryin’ out for the freshman team there.”

“You got the build and some of the technique to be on a better team than the freshman.”

“Thanks, man,” the boy said, clearly pleased.

“So, you’re about fourteen?” Bull tried to quell his excitement at that.

“Yeah. I just turned fourteen in June.”

“No, to answer your question, I’m not scouting for anyone. I’m a player. Pro.”

“A player? What team? What position?” The interest and curiosity were winning the battle for dominance in the tone of the young guy’s voice, and he was turned toward Bull. “A tackle like me, aren’t you? Built like that.”

Bull took the opportunity to pull his T-shirt off to show his magnificent ebony build. “You mean like this?”

“Yeah, I mean exactly like that,” the boy said, nearly swallowing his words. The way his eyes bugged out told Bull the kid might want a piece of him. It was more than just one athlete eyeing the development of another one. “How’d you get so ripped?”

“A lot of gym work, boy. And yep. I’m a defensive tackle. I’m just coming from the Tennessee Titans. I played for the Virginia Hornets in Richmond last season.” Bull leaned back on his elbows, flexing his biceps and jutting his bulging chest out. Let the kid get a good look at a black bull, he thought.

“Wow. The Hornets. Coach took us to see a game at the end of last season. Bet you played in it.” The voice took on an edge of awe now, and the boy’s stance opened up to an obvious invitation for Bull to come over and plop down beside him—which is what Bull did. Champ came between them and snuffled happily at the hand the boy was proffering to him and gave the hand a good lick of approval and acceptance.

“Yep, I was still goin’ OK at the end of the season. It was a good year for me. No injuries, at least not ones that stopped me. Then the Titans bought my contract.” He could have gone on to admit that he washed out there, but he didn’t. This kid turned him on. He didn’t want to come up at a disadvantage here.

“Wow,” the young guy said. “My name’s Nathan. Nathan Roberts. I’m in tryouts here to get in the football program at John Handley, where I start in September. High School. Go, Judges, he added.” Bull presumed that was the mascot name for the school, but it sounded silly, and he didn’t pursue it.

“Bull Rawlins.”

“Bull Rawlins. Wow,” Nathan exclaimed, “wow” pretty much being the extent of his “I’m impressed” vocabulary. “I remember you. We did see you play and I looked you up in the program. Coach Nolan kept pointin’ to you and sayin’ you had the technique. He said he didn’t understand why ... well you were getting a few penalties that game.” Nathan got more quiet and slowed down toward the end of what he was saying as he realized what he was saying could be taken badly. But Bull didn’t seem to focus on that part of what he said.

“Yep, pretty good games toward the end of the year. We should’ve won more of them too. The refs were killing us with penalty calls. Coach Nolan?” he said, doubling back to what might be an opportunity here. “You had a coach in junior high who took you all the way to Richmond to see football games?”

“He was a gym teacher, but he liked me calling him Coach. And, yeah, he knew I liked football and took me to games.”

“Just you?”

“Yeah, just me.”

“He good in the sack?”

Nathan blushed up, and being a redhead, that was clearly noticeable. He looked away. But he didn’t get up and walk away. He redirected the discussion, but that didn’t fool Bull. Bull had laid down the gauntlet and the kid hadn’t walked away.

“What are you doin’ out here in the sticks?” Nathan said to slide off that subject. Champ had now moved over into his lap and they were playing a mild set of tug-of-war with Nathan’s helmet. “Nice dog, by the way. Yours?”

“Yep, he’s mine—or I’m his. You can’t really tell with a dog. His name is Champ. It’s just us and the world.”

“Good name. And a good dog. A real man’s dog.”

“Yep. We get along just fine. And I’m a real man for the right boy.” Nathan still didn’t get up and walk off. Bull ratcheted the conversation down again, confident that he was headed in the right direction overall. “I’m here because I’m on the road, headed for Philadelphia. Tryouts for an arena league team that’s reforming. Their scout told me to come; said I’d be a shoo-in for the team. All I had to do was get to the tryouts. Piece of cake.”

“Wow,” Nathan said, his eyes full of admiration. And when Bull looked at him, he saw that there was something else in Nathan’s eyes too. Bull knew that look. This look was from his world. He didn’t have to be a bouncer at a gay bar, which was what he’d been in Richmond to be able to make a go of it, to know that look. He’d said all that needed to be established and the boy was giving him “that look.” He could cover this boy if he wanted to. The way the boy talked about the gym teacher who gave him such special attention told Bull the boy had been there before. Something inside him began to stir and he began looking at Nathan a whole new way. Great bod for a boy on the cusp of turning into a man. Narrow hips; pert butt. Bull started thinking of splitting the difference between those butt cheeks. Bull was young and healthy and he had his needs. And it had been a few months.

It was like Nathan saw the look being returned by Bull, and they both moved imperceptively closer to each other as they sat on the ground, pointed toward the practice still going on on the field in the late-afternoon waning light.

“You said I had good form but that there was somethin’ I was doing wrong that the coach wasn’t pointin’ out to me,” Nathan said after the moment of silence that had conveyed so much between the two.

“Yeah. You just got one problem that I can see. You are comin’ in too high for the block. You need to come up into their chest from below. Get your weight under their rib cage. You got a deep chest for a boy your age and good shoulders. You could do it, even on a varsity dude. Don’t lead with the helmet, though. That would be a penalty. You manage to do that and they’ll fall out of line every time.”

“Wow. I can work on that. Thanks, man.”

There was another pause, while both pretended to be playing with Champ, who was flopping around between them, still tugging at the helmet and making happy little snuffling noises.

“You said I’d done real good in the game you saw if it wasn’t for the penalties called on me.” Bull said. His turn to get some advice maybe before going in for the pick.

“Uh, sorry. It’s like you said. Bad reffing.”

“Coaches and the boy I was doing...” Bull looked directly at Nathan to see if he’d pick up on the reference, and he did “ ... said it’s ‘cause I can’t remember the plays. I do have trouble with that.”

“Oh, I’ve had trouble with that too.” Nathan had blushed again. He’d gotten the reference. “Not much, but we don’t have as thick a playbook at John Handley as the Hornets must have. I used to go over and over ours with my guy, Coach Nolan, after we’d done it...” Nathan paused here to make sure Bull caught that reference “ ... without it sinking in good, so I don’t guess your problem is any worse than mine was.”

“This gym teacher, Nolan, he’s your guy?”

“Yeah, he is. He’s black, like you, but not black, black like you are. He’s more a chocolate black.”

“And you don’t have trouble going with a black guy—a cute little redheaded white boy like you? Blacks don’t intimidate you?”

“No, just the opposite. I think of them as being big, you know ... where it counts.”

There it was. The kid liked big cock.

“This Coach Nolan is big, is he?”

“Yes.”

“And you like that?”

“Yes.”

“Black, really black guys, like me ... I trace back to the Congo, where they’re really black. Thing about that is that Congo guys measure out at the top of the scale. That would be me. Bull’s not my real name, you know. My boy in Richmond gave me that name.” He paused there a long minute to let that sink in before getting back to their other conversation.