A chapter from the novel Jack Sprat’s Wife

In the weeks after Hank Hardesty was revealed as a fraud, his colleagues and other journalists tried tracing his lies back to their genesis, but it had vanished into a far horizon. Hank knew they were calling upon his friends, his former lovers, every figure from his last ten years, but one lie still stood intact: they believed he came from the city. Never would they know to shift their gaze south to the red-dirt countryside of Moultrie, Georgia, its farms of soybeans where, fiercely curious, he’d wanted to be driven down every road in the county. No one had been willing. One day he rode his bike clear to I-75, where the sheriff spotted him and called his grandfather. That evening at home he was asked what his punishment should be. “Fifty licks with a switch,” he said, full of hope, but he was only grounded for a day.

In high school his mother enrolled him in a private academy founded within a week of the federal order to integrate. Only at the games did he see kids of color. In October of his sophomore year, Moultrie Academy played Worth County, the other undefeated team. Like most schools they’d gone up against, Worth County was black, so there was a confidence in the air. His family along with the families of his teammates watched from the bleachers, and there was to be a party and it would be a good night not least because the halfback, Brian Townsend, had a liter bottle of rum.

Like many gay boys, he had developed an odd relationship with the idea of humiliation. Straight kids seemed to think humiliation should be feared, but Hank knew the day would come when he’d divulge the news. To be humiliated, you had to worry how your audience perceived you. If they cared for you—which Justice Hardesty couldn’t help doing, since Hank would carry his name into the next century—they shared in the shame. So humiliating himself would be pleasurable: the old man would feel disgraced while Hank felt fine. He practiced in the eighth grade by smoking dope with the first boy he kissed, but his teachers learned only about the pot. Nevertheless his strategy caused the judge strife, even affecting his sentencing patterns, so that he grew tougher on drug dealers lest their product trickle down again into the vicinity of his family.

The pre-game sentiment was that Moultrie would win sixty to three. There was an argument about the three, unfolding as he watched his teammates change out of their clothes: Doug Hart thought it bad luck not to predict at least a field goal, but the quarterback, Chip Gillespie, said Worth County wouldn’t make it to midfield. The pace of their suiting up grew more languorous as the debate picked up steam; despite this distraction, Hank got an idea. “Let’s whip those coons!” shouted Coach Williamson in a huddle after a prayer; then the band played and they took the field on a warm, starlit night. Hank, in a stroke of luck the likes of which he would keep having throughout his youth, found himself lining up across from a defensive back who wore number seventy, a kid with shiny coffee-colored skin. Hank stared into seventy’s eyes, and seventy stared back: there was always something deep in the eyes that gave it away.

The ball snapped. They ran forward, their helmets crashing as they gripped each other, pushing and heaving in what Hank fancied was like the intercourse of two spiders; then they were on the ground, the boy atop him. Hank didn’t let go. “What’s your problem?” he heard, then he removed his hands so they could do it over again. On the ground he breathed hard, making sure this boy was aware of his smile. He fixed his gaze on him the whole first half, and the score came to be tied. Off the field he consulted with the assistant coach: “What’s number seventy’s name?”

“Giving you trouble?” He consulted a clipboard. “Tyrone Willis.”

“Naw, Coach, I’m the one giving the trouble.”

During the speech in the locker room, which, coincidentally, dealt with shame—specifically the notion that they should be ashamed if a bunch of cottonpicking you-know-whats held them to a draw—Hank imagined how he might recount it to a multiracial group of Ivy League students. He would describe crashing against another boy, the physical force equal to that of his pent-up desire. Back on the field the whistle blew and special teams went on; then, with twelve minutes left, he lined up across from Tyrone. “Tyrone,” he said, as all around them boys crouched frozen in place. The ball snapped and he was hurtling backward. There was the sound of one clear bell ringing and a curse he heard only after he’d said, as close as he could get to Tyrone’s ear through their helmets, “I’ll tell you our playbook.”

As they lined up behind the line of scrimmage, Tyrone sneered. “You’re crazy.”

“That’s right.” And again they ran against each other like colliding plates of the earth itself, struggling, Hank finally breaking free as the ball spiraled over his head to land in the arms of Doug Hart, in whose zigzag line Hank saw his plan die. After the touchdown Worth County failed to score twice, and Moultrie won and the boys had a beer bust; but next week was a bye, and the teammates of Hank’s who had girls at Tifton were driving up to watch Worth County play that school. He joined them for a tailgate party where they drank bourbon and sang,

We laid rubber on the Georgia asphalt
Got a little crazy but we never got caught.

It wasn’t just his grandfather he wanted to humiliate; it was his whole region of the world, from the tailgate of Brian’s Ram clear to the ocean. He happened to spot Tyrone smoking by the bleachers. Tyrone watched him approach, his expression unchanging even when Hank said, “Thought you might wanna meet afterward.”

All depended on Tyrone’s not retorting “What for?” If he said “What for,” Hank would have to tell the truth or reply “No reason.” If the former, Tyrone would punch him, but if he said “No reason,” Tyrone would decline on the grounds that there was no reason.

“I’ll be at the Dairy Queen. Pull through and I’ll walk next door.” Tyrone dropped his cigarette and stomped out its embers. “What kind of car you drive?”

“Trans Am,” he finally answered, and Hank recalled his grandfather’s acronym for that make of automobile: Poor Old Nigger Thinks It’s A Cadillac. He watched Tyrone go into the stands, then rejoined his buddies, who climbed into the bleachers and paid more attention to Chip’s troubles than to the game.

“Dump her, dude.”

“But I love her.”

“She go down on you?”

“Gags.”

“Dude.”

He drank three shots to keep the guys from seeing how antsy he was. Finally Worth County won 61-16 and then there was the slow milling about, the saying goodbye. “Screw it, let’s go to Cotton-Eyed Joe’s and find Chip a girl to replace Bitchface.”

No, thought Hank as the enthusiasm spread among them; they always went to Dairy Queen. “How would we get in?”

“We’re the team, Assmunch.”

“But Chip’s got the only fake ID.”

They considered this. “Here’s what we’ll do,” Hank said. “You’ll run to the bouncer and yell at him to hurry cause it’s a matter of life and death, and he’ll follow to where Chip’s lying in the car going into shock. From eating peanuts. You guys sneak in while they’re outside, then Chip recovers and gets in too with his ID.”

This conviction that he mustered, along with his newfound ability to tell spontaneous, intricate lies, which weren’t lies but rather statements of possibility, helped convince Hank that night that he was coming into his own. “Fuck it, let’s go to Dairy Queen.” Where they sat in a booth eating Blizzards, surrounded by girls. At 10:32 a red Trans Am pulled in and went straight for the car wash, where it stopped next to a coin-fed vacuum. Tyrone got out and put a quarter in, and Hank walked over. He followed Tyrone’s gaze toward the restaurant, which was lit like a stage. In it sat all the friends he had in the world. “You cool with me getting in?” he asked, and Tyrone nodded. It was a ten-minute drive to the highway rest area. They parked near the pine grove. When Hank reached across, Tyrone hardened instantly. This emboldened Hank, so he took out Tyrone’s penis and saw that it stretched from his wrist to the top of his middle finger.

“You think you can fit that in that mouth of yours?”

He positioned himself over the parking brake and went down on Tyrone, tasting dirty salt and feeling coarse hairs. He had been anticipating this for a long time. “No teeth,” said Tyrone, turning on the radio. “Tonight at our midnight madness sale,” shouted a man. Hank gagged as the station changed to jazz, a gentle sax, and again to Whitney Houston, and then, as he reached down to begin touching himself too, Tyrone exploded in his mouth.

Hank didn’t move until Tyrone pushed him away and said, “How much you gonna give me?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, sitting up. “I haven’t got any money.”

Tyrone’s chuckle sent chills through him. “Get out, then.”

“Wait, there’s a little.”

“I don’t give charity to rich boys.”

He pulled out his wallet and counted twenty-two dollars. “Guess that’ll get you back to Tifton,” Tyrone said. When Hank handed it over, Tyrone drove them back onto the highway, commenting at one point, “We’ll still beat you.”

Hank felt the stuff sticking to his throat. “It’s too late,” he said.

“Betcha twenty-two dollars,” said Tyrone, and then he laughed at his own joke for nearly a mile.

Moultrie kept winning, and Hank was profiled in the paper along with his teammates. He drove alone down all the roads in three counties. His grandfather was in session; his mother was in Miami. He put a thousand miles on the car, deciding to apply to every Ivy League college and go to none, but instead to Deep Springs Academy where there were no women, where he could learn to shoe horses and forge the shoes in smithies of old.

Worth County was winning too. They were 7-1 and Moultrie was 8-0 the day of the penultimate game, when Hank woke up with a fever of 103. When he called in sick, they told him he was one of twelve players with the flu. For the first time in a year, he was alone with his father, who shared his view of humiliation. He pulled a chair up to Hank’s bed and told Hank that his head hurt; there were bruises on his face from where he’d fallen down the stairs.

“Take Advil.”

“You don’t mix painkillers with liquor,” Henry said, because he was careful about these things; every morning he ate a banana to replenish his potassium.

“Dad, I’m gay.”

His father blinked his eyes. “Don’t tell your mom.”

“Let’s go somewhere.”

“You have a fever.”

“Let’s just leave.”

“There’s a trip I want to go on,” Henry said calmly, as if his son’s revelation had occurred decades ago. “They make Bombay Sapphire with ingredients from all over. Cinnamon from Indochina, lemon from Spain. Water from Wales. I thought it would be nice to go see all those places.”

“It does sound nice,” Hank said, rolling over on his side to hide his expression.

“Grains of paradise,” his father added wistfully. Hank pretended to sleep, then slept, dreaming he was running downfield in his underwear, using his hands to cover himself, so that he dropped the ball. They lost. This happened too in the waking world, so that while he and his teammates recovered in time for another win, Tyrone’s prediction of a playoff was borne out on the Friday before Thanksgiving. The stands were full, and the guys had rented a house on Tybee Island. Hank rooted in the locker room until he found a clipboard and several sheets of paper. He took them to the counselor’s office, photocopied them, and went to find Tyrone smoking.

“Remember what I told you?” he said.

“That you’re a faggot?”

“About the plays.”

“Price is up to fifty.”

“You’d do it for free.”

“I’ll mess you up.”

“Take a look.”

He handed the copies to Tyrone, who unfolded them and glanced down at a diagram of X’s and O’s on a grid that represented the field. There was a list of coded signals and the number ten underlined twice. “What are you trying to do?” Tyrone asked, and Hank heard a squeak of fear: fear that this was what queers did, this was the kind of man you were if you were a queer.

“Help you.”

“But there’s scouts in the stands.”

It was true: his friends were thrilled that men were rumored to be in attendance from Vanderbilt and Clemson. Still, they’d never have been his friends if they really knew him, and anyway they were racists. “Then you should be happy,” he said before walking away, not scared. It seemed clear, as he would articulate later in a feature for Rolling Stone, that the sort of fag-bashing he might fall victim to was based on the notion that gays didn’t exist. If you were a teenaged boy, you might make fag jokes and play Smear the Queer, but the idea that real gay people were around was outrageous. If you encountered any, you got as scared as them. It was their running away that caused you to give chase. In the locker room his heart beat wildly as his teammates stood buck naked listening to Nirvana. Chip stopped the tape, rewound it, hit play. “See, life is stupid and contagious.”

“No, I feel stupid and contagious.”

Both interpretations felt right to Hank, for the song and for their own lives. At one point Brian saw Hank staring and said, “Whatcha looking at?”

“The little blond hairs on your ass that match your eyebrows.”

The guys laughed, and the coach arrived and spoke. The part about honor. The part about God. The part about winning. On the field it was thirty-six degrees, and over the din of the marching band Hank heard blackbirds screech from floodlights overhead. His team won the toss and he took position across from number forty-nine. A swarm of bodies madly rearranged itself. Behind him he heard a thud: Chip had been sacked. They set up again and it happened again: three of the Raiders charged through the center and Chip was down in a flash for third and twenty-six. And when they tried to pass to Doug, the defense predicted that play too, which left Moultrie to punt from its own one-yard line. The shock of this probably contributed to the ease with which Worth County scored off a rushing drive during which they never lost momentum. Hank and the offense came back on field, intending a play in which they faked up the middle and threw to Brian: the third formation on the diagram sheet.

Hank crouched forward. He could feel the eyes of scouts on him from schools his opponents would be lucky to go to, as well as the eyes of his grandfather and mother. His wasn’t the wealthiest family; some of his friends belonged to moneyed lines extending back to when the Cherokees had traded slaves in the hope that Georgia’s whites would deem them citizens. That was how Hank saw it, anyway. There was a gene for patriotism, and his tribe existed to combat that gene. He felt the scrutiny of two thousand folks who trusted him to play his heart out, and sure enough, when the ball snapped, he ran hard against the boy he’d been matched with. He brought this level of vigor to every play, as did his team. And after they were down twenty-one to nothing, they changed their playbook and achieved something of a balance from then on, but the halftime score was 28-10, and Moultrie never came closer than that eighteen-point deficit. When the horn blew, the whole lot of those sons of bitches ran onto the field whooping and the scouts went to meet them and the Moultrie Yeomen trudged to their lockers, their season over.

“Screw Tybee Island.”

“Goddamn pieces of shit.”

“Who was it?” It was Doug, Aaron, Chip, everyone until the coach, near tears, told them they were making excuses for bad play. Meanwhile Hank wasn’t feeling as he’d meant to. He changed clothes and drove to the rest area, where he sat in a toilet stall for an hour waiting for someone, anyone, breathing in the septic smell and knowing he wouldn’t get into Deep Springs. They valued loyalty. He touched himself and imagined the whole offensive line tackling him, beating him to a pulp, until midnight when he drove home to find his parents and grandfather waiting up for him.

“Hank, this may be the last time I talk to you,” said the judge, “so think hard about what you want to say.”

“Why; are you dying?”

“That must be your hope.” Then, quieter but in a timbre that scared him, his grandfather said, “I’m a man of reason and I intend to know the reason.”

In his father’s frozen stance he saw his news had been revealed. Still, he was tempted to ask “for what,” so that the old man would need to state bluntly what Hank suddenly knew, with a sponge-wringing gut twist, must have happened: in the Xerox machine someone had found a note reading, “Yours if you’ll let me go down on you again,” and his signature below three exes. Instead, he stood proudly above the couch and said, “We’re in love.”

“You liar. You did it because of me.” And Hank’s mouth fell open, because he’d been waiting to hear “you’ll burn in hell,” or “get out of my house,” or any of the old standbys that he could retort was as big a cliché as the judge himself.

“You’ve got a bigger ego than I thought.”

“You think I’m like you!”

He stepped back and bumped into the armoire, rattling the snifters lined up behind the brandy. He hadn’t thought any such thing, but his grandfather must have been waiting all his life to imply this. Probably, having said it, he’d keel over. The secret the very thing that had kept him alive. But then, more characteristically, he scrunched up his nose and said, “Maureen, tell your son to please get out of my house.”

Hank’s mother, looking like she’d shat her pants, seemed to struggle silently between the right thing and the expected one. When she finally asked, “Do you use protection?” it was only the unexpectedness of the question that caused Hank to giggle, but that must not have been clear to her, because she stepped forward and slapped him.

“If you love black people so much,” she said, “why would you go ruining their lives?”

He felt a ripple in his experience, as if the past had just altered itself. He’d only awarded reparations for past wrongs. It had served his own purposes, too, but you had to have motivation to work. That was why the Coach said in history class that Communism had failed: the Soviets had had no motivation to work.

But after the swirl of emotions died and he lay in bed waiting for morning, when he would go live out the semester with an aunt until boarding school began, he admitted to himself that something bad might befall Tyrone. Not at the hands of his teammates—to them he was a hero. Not at the hands of the black community. All Tyrone had done, after all, was get his dick sucked. The fag who’d done it had paid him for the chance, in currency his whole county could benefit from. No, the people Tyrone had to worry about were Hank’s own friends. They wouldn’t hurt Hank—to do so would be beneath them—but they could damn well hurt Tyrone. He saw it happen months before it occurred. Only in this respect had he screwed up. He’d reinforced the idea of the black kids’ inferiority by showing that they had to cheat to win. It didn’t even matter that Moultrie families like his own had been cheating in every way possible for centuries, and getting away with it too: it was called cheating only when somebody besides yourself was the perpetrator.