Free Jane Two by Sean Patrick Flanery Page A

the eyes of them little shits in them red jerseys ’cross from you. Know it. Today they only grab eight. You squeeze yer nine tight and you go out and you destroy them pussies!! You do this today with your nine, and someday when you finally earned and grew into yer ten, you gonna be able grab it anytime you need it…and ain’t nobody gonna stand a good goddamn chance.”
    “Sing it, Charlie!!” chorused Lew, swigging his Miller.
    “Hear it now, ’cause Charlie know!” James’s deep, rich baritone reverberated.
    “Now there ain’t a doubt in my mind that if y’all want to put seven up there on the scoreboard, there ain’t one of them corn-fed tub o’ shits in them red jerseys gonna stop you! You’ll finish the season eight and two, which ain’t bad, but you’ll be the only little shits that put seven on them pussies! You let them shut you out, and they’ll take a piece of you home with them that you ain’t never gonna get back. This is a fork-in-the-road moment for all of you tinies. What you do here’ll change your path moving forward for better or worse. Up ta each ’n’ every one’a you. This is the moment that you got a lot more to lose than any of them fuckers. The crisis of them little shits taking home a piece’a you gonna give you access to the best parts of each one’a you, should you be willing to grab it. They fat right now with thirty-five on the board. This is y’all moment to make them think for a whole fuckin’ year about seein’ my Bears next season, and wonderin’ if y’all gon’ play next year like you played the last few seconds of this game. You make them afraid of the Bears they about to see next year, and put seven on those cocksuckers…or you get shut out, and spend the off-season missing a pretty important part of each one of you. You either want it, or you don’t. But if you WANT IT, well I know that you all capable of sticking seven on those cocksuckers right here…and RIGHT NOW!!”
    Every team member and Coach Gasconade had long since gone silent at Grandaddy’s profanity, uncertain if it was okay to appreciate this tactic.
    Then from the back of the huddle I heard a rumble, “Seven!”
    I glanced back.
    “Seven! On the cocksuckers!” Clatterbuck the freckled Bolshevik, with snot running out of his nose and mud everywhere, was yelling at the top of his lungs.
    “Don’t you never let me hear y’all yellin’ like that when they’s ladies in earshot, y’hear.” Grandaddy glowered. “Not ya momma, not ya sister, not ya girlfriend, ’cause you, Clatterbuck, you gon’ have lotsa them, and one’s gon’ matter to you, so watch ya goddamn tongue.” Grandaddy looked long and hard at Clatterbuck.
    Clatterbuck’s eyes welled and his jaw dropped under the scalding reprimand of Grandaddy’s Law. Then with a steely-eyed smirk, my Grandaddy roused the chorus of boys’ voices. “Now, ’tween us men, Clatterbuck, and don’t you fergit all them women waitin’ fer ya in ya future, you tinies say all the cocksuckers you want, but only ’tween us men—’cause that some man talk right there. You ain’t failures till you either quit, or you start blamin’ somebody else. Now, you tell me right here and right now. Y’all gonna put seven on them cocksuckers?”
    Bewildered, Clatterbuck’s tears turned to joy, and slowly we all started chiming in, one by one, timid at first, with seven and cocksuckers , till we had going there a ripping chant. “SEVEN ON THE COCKSUCKERS!”
    While the parents were getting over the shock of it, Trent, the quarterback, entered the huddle and issued the play.
    “Okay, Mickey, it’s you.…Thirty-eight pitchout on two, ready…break!”
    “Wait,” I said.
    “You don’t wait me, shit head.” Trent was pissed, but I continued.
    “Well…it’s fourth down. If this is gonna be our last play of the year, let’s do it like we do it in our backyards.”
    “What the hell are you talking about, dork?” Firefly burst in.
    “Shut