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Andrew lies in bed, staring at his ceiling. His brother sits cross-legged, television on. His mother is in the living room, his father is in his office. Andrew looks above the houses and the trees.
He looks on the many figures, dark shapes and clothed outlines. He watches a car, following it on a familiar route and now he imagines his own car winding through the trees. Lights projected from it, but itself in darkness. He sees it reach well-lit streets, he sees himself park and walk. Beside new apartments, mostly empty still. Down one alley and another, rough houses now. No obvious poverty but a lacking still apparent. No cars on cinderblocks, none parked in weedy lawns. Gravel drives and weathered pavement, something ineffable here, underlining thrift. Maybe how little light shows from the houses, maybe the grime on windowpanes. Maybe the way the houses sit so close together but without the warmth of community. He can hear the air conditioners, see them hanging from windows. He sees their little draining runs of water, vinyl siding green with growth of mold. He sees one house, and a mother with her children.
Who did he inflict, who did he deprive? Who left a candle on the sidewalk? It’s a lonely bead of light. He sees the group again, feels them as they fall. Did someone call when they heard, or were police nearby already? He sees lights and hears sirens, he sees the neighbors gather. Did you see what happened? Did you hear the shots? I see a broken nose, I see a broken jaw. I hear labored breathing, and from one nothing at all.
He reads the headline. He thinks about his brother.
He leaves his room, walks slowly down the stairs, knocks and enters.
His father looks at him. Andrew knows he’s seen it.
“I didn’t want that.”
His father shakes his head. “You protected your brother. You did exactly what you were supposed to. Be proud, never ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed, I just wish I’d been thinking more. I wish I’d taken a different route or just pulled up or just taken his gun from the start. I could have, but I didn’t. Then I let Michael set them off. I ended it, but I could have ended it differently. If I took his gun and just beat them up,” he closes his eyes and shakes his head, “if I just took the gun.”
“It is tragic,” says his father. Andrew blinks quickly and looks at him.
“It is tragic how the events and choices in the life of that man brought him to that place, to make that decision. But you did nothing wrong. Not walking instead of driving straight there, not confronting them, not letting Michael ‘set them off,’ and not letting him keep his gun. The responsibility you view yourself as having there, he had it too, every one of those men had it, and still they made that decision. His tragic circumstances do not absolve him and they do not condemn you. Guilt is good, but it must be moderated by your knowledge and understanding. It is good you were not looking for a fight, but they were. If your brother were alone, if he were with his friends and not you, if it were anyone else, someone else might have died. He tried to kill you, Andrew. That he couldn’t changes nothing, because he tried. When he fired that gun, it wasn’t just your right to stop him, it was your obligation, whatever it took.”
Andrew says nothing.
His father asks “Did anyone see you?”
“No.”
His father presses, “Are you certain?”
One last secret.
“Yes. This has another part. I can see everything around me. Mom is in the hall, Mike’s watching his TV. I have a second sight of what I can use this on, and what I can’t is people. I know where they are by where they’re not, in this . . . field. I don’t need to see something to move it, I don’t need to be anywhere near it. I saw no one outside near us, I saw no one looking out a window at us. Some moved when they heard the shots, and that’s it.”
His mother is sitting on the little bench in the hall. She’s been crying; she’s still crying. Andrew sits beside her. When she stands she kisses his forehead and places her hand there and holds it. Then she goes to bed.
Andrew sits at his desk, hands at his sides, eyes locked on a corner of his laptop.
Michael stands and walks into the hall and knocks on his open door.
“That guy with the gun . . . ”
“I know.”
Michael is swaying. “They should have all died.”
Andrew looks at his brother, then gives him a half-hearted nod.
He feels blood on his hands. He’s out the door, running.
Farther than ever, mechanical responses to the officers who greet him. He lies in bed, watching the sunrise. He runs and reads and talks with his brother. His mother hugs him. Sunset, he runs and reads, sunrise. He talks and reads and runs, and runs, and runs. Night into day into night. He starts to feel better.
He packs little, his dorm is a furnished apartment in athlete housing. His bed is made, his closet half-empty. The pinboard beside his desk is still full, the posters on his wall remain, the room in stasis. He puts on his backpack and sends the tubs into a stack that follows him down the stairs, through the kitchen and into the mudroom. He lets the stack fall into his hands and carries it to the driveway where his father helps load them into his car. They talk over the route and then they leave, the brothers first.
They’re out of the city, still on the 75. Andrew has a podcast on, Michael keeps to his phone, neither talking until they’re past Macon.
Michael asks “Do you ever worry? Like, thinking you’re cheating?”
“Not really. I’ve never used it in games, that would be cheating, and even if I didn’t care about that, the cameras would eventually catch something.”
“You ever fantasize about it?”
“All the time.”
Michael laughs, “Like what?”
“Golf. How I’d use it in golf.”
Michael scoffs, “Golf?”
“Yeah. Tiger Woods has made billions and the PGA doesn’t have the four-years-out rule, so I’d make the tour as soon as I qualified.”
“So why not play right now?”
“Every stroke would be a chance I get mad and use it wrong.”
Michael laughs again, “Yeah, you go on tilt and you mess up a putt and the ball takes a hard right.”
“Exactly. In football I just have to be fast, and I’m already fast. Get me the ball, that’s it.”
Michael now plays chess on his phone. “Do you think you would be slower without it?”
“I don’t know. Years ago, before it became, became this, I felt it when I was playing sports. But when I, ah, activated it, the feeling went away. I’m even faster now, so if it’s helping me, I can’t tell how.”
“What if it is?” asks Michael.
“I asked dad that and he said it doesn’t matter. He said something like, ‘You can’t just choose to be a world-class athlete, you’re born with the talent and you have to develop it. If you didn’t have your gift and you still ran that fast, it wouldn’t be any different than if you’re using it unknowingly.”
Michael snickers, “Oh yeah, dad would say that.”
“But he’s kinda right. I didn’t ask for this, so if I ever meet someone who can run faster than me and they don’t have this, what’s the difference? But, I do know I have it. But I don’t use it knowingly. So if it’s making me faster, I don’t know how, so I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted.”
The conversation slows and stops. They pass Valdosta and the state line. At a rest stop Andrew looks at an adboard reading THE PANHANDLE’S ONLY CAGED MEGAGATOR: ‘JURA’CKSONVILLE PARK’
Michael eventually asks “Do you think I have it? Like you, but I don’t know it?”
Andrew shrugs, “No idea. Have you always had some weird feeling at the back of your head you can’t explain?”
“I don’t know. If it’s always been there, would I notice?”
“I did. I always felt something. It was like — you remember when dad first taught us timing belts, and then suddenly you’re out and a car passes and you noticed by the sound it had a loose belt, and you realized all along you’d heard that sound, and that’s what it was? It was like that. One day this thing I’d always quietly felt became something I could actually use. But I don’t know, maybe that’s just how it was with me. Dad’s sure I’m not the only one and I am too, but it’s been six years and we still haven’t found any rumors of anything even close to this. Not that we’re searching with the exact words, but I know we’ve both spent a lot of time looking for anything weird like this and we’ve both found nothing.”
“You’ve never read anything, like what happened with that bear.”
“Nope.”
“What was that like?”
Andrew sees it again and hears it and smells it again. “It was running at me. I’d do it again.”
“So that’s what you meant on signing day. You want to be the best so everyone knows your name and you make a ton of money and if the government tries to mess with you, you have all this money and people to help.”
“Yeah, dad’s plan.”
“Good plan, I guess.”
They pass Lake City.
“I—” Andrew hums.
Michael looks at him, “What?”
“I’m worried about this. Whatever this is, this power.”
“Why?”
“I’m, well, bullets don’t work, but that wasn’t the first ‘protective’ quality I found. Last summer I was outside with no shoes on and I stepped on a nail, but it just bent over flat. And then, just before we left for Don’s for Christmas, I was helping mom with dinner and I grabbed a skillet that had just come out of the oven. I didn’t know, I just took it and moved it. I should have burned the hell out of my hand, and I remember thinking that as I held it. ‘This is obviously dangerously hot,’ but my hand was fine. And you know that fight in the game against Parkview? A guy tried to punch me and it was all weird, I didn’t feel anything, and the way he jerked, it was like he pushed into himself, and then he was holding his wrist, like he’d strained it. Now dad thinks explosives might not work.”
Michael says “If bombs don’t work what are you worried about?”
“You, mom, dad, everybody else. What happens if someone comes along with this who wants to do bad things? What if they’re criminals, or terrorists? What if they can’t be stopped?”
“Electricity? Poison?” offers Michael.
“What if those don’t work? There’s more, I told you how I’ve tried to use this to fly and it didn’t work, but it’s not that I think I can’t ever, just not yet. If a guy can do all that, and he can fly, how do we stop him?”
“What if you tried?”
“What if I try to fight and he wins? Or what it doesn’t work like that? This doesn’t work on anyone else, so what if it doesn’t work on anyone like me? What if we’re both equally unstoppable forces and immovable objects? I either can’t tell if someone has this or I’ve never been near someone who does. If someone has it and there’s no way for me to recognize them, then they could use it in a way no one would ever know. They could sit in their living room and rob a bank. It would be obvious what happened, but that’s all. Perfect getaway.”
Michael says “Damn.”
They reach Gainesville and stop at a Publix. Andrew calls his mother, the conversation is brief. When he pockets his phone Michael asks “How far?”
“Maybe thirty minutes.”
They walk toward the supermarket. The sun is high and the air is stifling, few cars are parked. The smell of fresh asphalt hits them, the lot a pristine black, the newly painted markings satisfyingly solid lines of yellow, red, white, and blue. Andrew sees heat rippling in the field, the bright surface of the asphalt and the pleasing gradients above it in the currents of heating and cooling air. The store is comparatively freezing and almost empty but for the employees.
Michael examines a rack of Gator apparel. “I get this stuff for free, right?”
“Right.”
They take prepackaged sandwiches and Gatorade to the checkout where the cashier smiles at them and says “You’re a couple of tall ones. I know it’s move-in week at the school, are you both freshmen?”
Michael grins, Andrew says “Just me, but yeah, my first year.”
“That’s nice, what’s your name?”
“Andrew Black.”
She says “Well it’s good to meet you, Andrew. I’ll be keeping an eye out for you on TV!”
They pay and thank her, then eat at tables outside the store.
“They’re all going to know you soon,” says Michael.
“Yeah.”
“I like it here,” Michael adds.
“What, the Publix?”
“Shut up.”
They finish the sandwiches as Andrew sees his parents pull in beside his car. They walk out to them. James only rolls down his truck window to say “We’ll follow you to campus.” His car feels better in the final stretch, Michael’s facing the window, looking at the trees.
Andrew enters and exits the administration with his mother, now carrying a thin folder with two envelopes. The athlete dorms are nine identical orange terracotta four-floored squarish buildings, a public university-appropriate exterior design philosophy where aesthetic paid for efficiency. They surround a tenth building, the complex office, just one floor in the same orange with many tall and wide windows.
Andrew opens the glass door that reads COMPLEX OFFICE and RESIDENT LOUNGE & CAFÉ in two lines of small white text and enters a lobby that fills out into stubby wings. The lounge has pool and foosball tables, couches, desks and a television. The café has tables and a closed-for-the-season Starbucks. Michael wanders into the lounge.
“Hello!” says a woman in a Gators shirt, then she recognizes him. “Oh, Andrew! Welcome!” She stands behind an orange desk with a white counter, the front face of the desk has large, white-stroked blue letters reading THIS IS GATORS COUNTRY. Behind her is a doorway on a small office where a figure sits at a desk.
“Hi, yeah, thanks,” he walks to the counter and passes her the folder, “I’ve got these letters from the school and Coach Miller on my housing, the administrative office said this is already in the system.”
Her hands are fast on the keyboard at the computer, and she says “Yes it is!” Then she picks up a clipboard, “I’m Susan, I’m the area clerk for this complex. Any questions you have moving forward, feel free to come see me or e-mail me, and I’ll get you my card in a moment but first I need you to fill this out.”
Clearly routine, she gives Andrew the clipboard and a pen. He takes them to the lounge to fill it out, when he returns, Susan thanks him, then calls, “Emilia, I need you, please.”
The figure at the desk rises and walks to the doorway, Andrew looks at her as she says “What’s up?”
Susan holds her hand toward Andrew. “Emilia, as I’m sure you recognize, this is Andrew Black. Andrew, Emilia is a student here and she’s my office assistant, and while she wouldn’t normally do this, well, you’re not a normal student, and—” she looks behind him, where another pair of figures approach, “several students have come through already and I see more coming. So, Emilia, if you would please guide Mr. Black to his dorm, and Andrew, I am just thrilled you chose UF. I can’t wait to see you on the field!”
“Thanks,” he says, then he smiles at the girl, Emilia. “Hey, she said it, but I’m Andrew.”
She smiles back warmly, their eyes meeting for just a moment, “Hi, yeah, I’m Emilia. You can just follow me.”
Michael rejoins them (“This is my brother,”) as they exit out the back of the building, through another glass door and onto a covered path. The office is like a hub, covered paths spreading to each building like spokes.
Emilia is talkative, Andrew is quiet. “Everybody usually walks across the grass, but the walkways are nice when it rains.”
Andrew notices her calves and her shoes and waits for her to pause to ask “Do you know good places here to run?”
She says “There are the walking paths that go through the trees, but they’re all short. Do you run a lot?”
“Yeah, I do, outside practice. Depends on how I’m feeling.”
“Some people go to Pressly, that’s the track and field stadium.” Then she adds “I go to the student fitness center.”
“That’s by the stadium?”
She says “Yeah, right beside it, on Fletcher. But you’ll have the athlete gym, won’t you?”
“For weights, but I wouldn’t go there just to run. I guess I’ll find some routes myself, around campus.”
“It’s nice for that,” she says, adding “it does rain a lot.”
“I’ll remember to wear a jacket.”
She laughs a little.
James and Anna join them, and the brothers and their father each take tubs from the car. Emilia holds the door open, then leads the family up the stairs. There’s a concrete floor and steps that seem at odds with the enclosure, Andrew looks through the rails to the ceiling, four floors up.
As if knowing his question, Emilia says “These used to be open-air, but something with how they were built let too much water get in, so they closed them up last year.”
“I was about to ask,” says Andrew.
Emilia opens the dorm, “Oh yeah, the one bedroom. You can see everything, then.”
The dorm opens into a living room with a navy blue carpet, there’s a couch and table and four simple chairs, opposite the door are open curtains and closed sliding doors to a balcony. The dorm is at the back corner of the building relative to the rest of the complex, Andrew can see through to a campus thicket, branches and leaves almost directly in front of the balcony rails. A television is mounted to the wall and a narrow table is beneath it. To the right of the living room is a small kitchen, which Emilia points around, “Everything you need.” Past this is the bedroom, a wall shared with the living room, and the bathroom, a wall shared with the kitchen.
Emilia gives Andrew the keys, he thanks her and smiles, she smiles back again and says “See you around,” and he nods.
Michael’s had a grin since they entered. He says “Solo. Nice.”
“It was the only way I’d come, because of . . . ”
“Oh, yeah. Man, what’s that like?”
“Thought I’d go crazy. Haven’t yet. I don’t miss it.”
Michael says “Bet you could pitch every day.”
“Nah. You know how great it feels to get the ball and know nobody’s catching me? I like baseball, but I’m not meant for it.”
Michael rolls his eyes. “You aren’t meant for football, either.”
“That’s the truth.”
Michael looks at his shoes. “I wish I had it.”
“Me too.”
James takes the bag of toiletries to the bathroom, Michael turns on the TV.
His mother says “Let’s get your clothes put away.”
As he fits his shirts to hangers, she says “I wanted it so just you and I could talk.”
“Yeah?”
She says “You’ve come so far. Since that day, with your dad, I’ve been so afraid that—” she shakes her head, “that things weren’t going to end well. I think sometimes I didn’t even get to properly enjoy watching you play.”
For everything Andrew has considered, never did it include his mother’s fear. “I’m sorry, mom.”
She smiles. “No, don’t be. This is who you are, and after that night, with Michael. I knew, everything was leading to that. Whether it was God or just good luck, you saved him. I don’t feel worried about your gift anymore. When I thought football could be your escape I couldn’t be happier, but—” she stops.
“But?”
“Now I wonder if you should leave this, sports, at least after you’re done here.”
“I wonder that too. Like that I should be helping people. I said that to dad last week.”
“What did he say?”
“That it’s my decision, but I don’t owe this to anybody, so whatever I choose is my right. But he also said if I really want to help people there’s no better way than money. I can’t be everywhere, so the best way to help the most people is investing like Uncle Don, and then starting a charity.”
His mother laughs, “Your father’s a very smart man.”
“Is he right?”
She says “Philosophically, I’m sure, but philosophy has a bad record against real life. You could start a charity right now, people would donate to you if they knew what you can do. But I don’t think it’s the right time for that, for all sorts of reasons.”
Andrew nods, “I know whatever I choose, it has to be after I graduate. I made a promise, I have to see it through. Maybe I’ll figure something out along the way, or maybe more people like me will show up and I won’t have to think so much about it.”
She says “That’s good, you did promise. But don’t feel guilty, even if no one else appears. Sports are meaningful, people will love watching you play and that does make the world a better place, even if it’s just football.”
“Thanks, mom.”
She rubs his shoulder then says “Okay, game plan? Camp’s in August, what are you doing between now and then?”
“Aside from class, working out every day. Devaris has been texting me, I’m sure he’ll have advice. Then camp, blow everyone away, start winning.”
She hugs him. “Good. I am as proud a mother as there is, Andrew, and I’m not saying that because there’s no one like you, even if it’s true.”
Andrew stops by the complex office again to talk to Emilia. He leaves with a restaurant recommendation and her phone number.
The family passes the tennis complex and Heavener, then the arena. They turn at the football stadium, “Good planning,” remarks James. Andrew looks above, at the top of the massive concrete bowl. From the lighting pylons, down the great incline of bleachers to the turf. To the tunnels, through closed doors into hallways, home lockers and offices, figures suffuse even with games months out. More halls, more tunnels. Staircases and elevator shafts, warehouses’ worth of floorspace for rooms with equipment supporting HVAC and electrical and plumbing. To long ramps with parked and charging golf carts and trolleys, to the fan concourses, the small hollows of bathrooms and concessions between pillars and beams and great walls of concrete, covered over in brick. Level to level, from artificial caverns to private suites and press boxes.
“I really like it here,” says Michael.
“It’s nice.”
Michael shakes his head, “No, I mean, I’m going here. For sure.”
“It would be cool to have you on campus. A lot of schools want you, though. You have a lot of choices.”
“Yeah but if I’m here I can convince you to play baseball.”
“If you play here, I’ll think about trying out.”
Michael says “They’d let you walk on!”
At the restaurant, the man behind the counter recognizes Andrew.
They eat and talk some, two sets of eyes varyingly on a TV with day baseball, Tampa at Chicago.
They walk back and say their goodbyes.
His father says “So we’ll get to St. Augustine tonight, spend the day there tomorrow, and then tomorrow night we’ll drive to Tybee Island. I’ll keep you updated.”
“Yeah, dad, have fun.”
He hugs his parents and waves at them as they leave.
In the morning he joins a group for a tour of campus.
Andrew sits in his dorm. The lights are off, laptop screen dimmed on a finished YouTube video. The breeze comes through the open balcony door, screen shut. A text from Emilia is left on read. He wants to run, he ignores the clock. He’s on the spartan little couch, legs kicked out, head against painted concrete blocks. His eyes are closed, he roams the city.
A blind spirit.
He sees the life in the trees. He finds a tree frog crawling along a high branch, he sees the dart of its tongue as it eats a moth. He looks at the roads that cross between, at the cars and their passengers. A car with a man moves from thoroughfare to neighborhood. It turns down one street, then another. A garage door opens, a woman rouses, a dog sits in front of a door.
The blind spirit returns to the sky. Below, two figures embrace.
The door locks behind him. He’s down the stairs, out of the building, jogging across the grass. It is humid, dark and cool, and as it begins to rain he hears birds and insects and the wind in the trees. He’s in no rush, on the other side of the track, the tennis courts, the arena. He laps the stadium, twice by the student fitness center, then on to Heavener, the great glass and brick façade. He swipes through a side-door into the conditioning wing. There’s a single occupied treadmill, a few people at desks in the offices. Andrew goes to work. Farmer walks, deadlift holds, chin-ups. The treadmill stops, the figure walks across the floor, headed straight for him.
Devaris Walker says “Andrew Black, already getting at it.”