Free Call Me by My Name by John Ed Bradley Page A

house, I guess.”
    One night after practice I was pumping out reps on the bench press while he spotted me. It suddenly became impossible to do another one, and Tater started grunting like a hog to push me on. “It’s the fourth quarter,” he said. “Come on, Rodney. Do it for Regina.” Regina Perrault was a classmate, and I’d let Tater know what I thought about her. “Regina,” he said now. “Regina . . . Regina . . . Regina . . .”
    And somehow I was able to get the barbell off my chest, extend my arms, and complete a final rep.
    It was his turn next. He’d pressed a hundred and eighty-five pounds nine times, but he wanted more, and I was yelling him on: “It’s all on you, brother. You’ve got to get it done. Come on, Tater. Do it for Miss Nettie—for Miss Nettie , Tater.”
    He paused with the barbell fully extended, and his face went slack. A smile sputtered across his lips, and he gave his head a quick shake. “You get Regina and I get my auntie? Now that ain’t right.” Then he started to laugh.
    I went to grab the bar, but he quickly lowered the weight to his chest and pushed it out one last time.

    With the Jamboree scratched from the schedule, Coach Cadet filled the open date with an intrasquad scrimmage at school. We’d been banging on one another at practice for almost two weeks, and now we had a chance to bang on one another in a game setting. He and the other coaches divided the squad into two teams, the Orange and the Black, our school colors. They wanted a full-blown dress rehearsal under the lights, and they found a crew of referees to work it. The game was supposed to be a reward for the sacrifices we’d been making, and the coaches thought it would be good for morale to have our parents see us in uniform, so they had wooden bleachers installed along one side of the practice field with enough seating to accommodate a few hundred people. Coach gave us permission to invite immediate family only.
    â€œKeep it to a minimum,” he said. “Make sure it’s people you know who aren’t going to cause trouble.”
    All the black guys looked at one another. “Not to be racial about it,” Coach Cadet said, “but I just don’t feel like getting hauled in by the school board, you understand?”
    Tater and I were both on the Orange squad, and that Friday after classes the equipment manager issued game uniforms, which seemed little better than the ones we’d been wearing at practice. They dated back a few years, judging from the patches that covered holes and tears in the fabric and the tattered condition of the numbers and striping. We had three hours to burn before kickoff, and most of us whiled away the time in the gym watching the cheerleaders and pep squad rehearse their routines.
    â€œShe’s something, huh?” Tater said.
    I looked at where he was looking, and that was the cheerleaders. Angie had made the squad, and so had Patrice Jolivette, a junior with curves galore. One day I’d caught Tater staring at Patrice in the lunchroom, but everybody stared at her, including white boys like me. “Yeah, man, she does that to me too,” I said.
    The school had selected an equal number of black and white cheerleaders, and Patrice had been named cocaptain of the squad, an honor she shared with Beverly Charleville, the white senior chosen to assure racial parity. Today, Patrice was wearing a maroon sweatshirt over her uniform with the face of a snarling, floppy-eared bulldog on the front. She’d been a cheerleader last year for the town’s black school, J. S. Clark High, and the shirt was a faded souvenir of her time there.
    â€œJust think,” I said to Tater. “If we hadn’t been forced to desegregate, you’d be a Bulldog now instead of a Tiger. Whatever happened to that old school, anyway?”
    â€œWhat do you mean what happened to it? It’s gone.