Blake tried to think. He lifted his hand and rubbed his right palm on the back of his neck, trying to relieve some tightness, some tension. His fingers found some small bumps, a rash or something on the back of his neck. Blake figured it was a reaction to the stress, so he continued to try and figure a way out of his mess. He cranked the truck and put it in gear, feeling that he was in enough control of his senses, his emotions, to drive home. But his mind kept racing with fears, with ideas...ways out that only led to dead ends.
I wish I had someone I could talk to, Blake thought. I’m sick and tired of being so alone, of having to figure out everything for myself. But he knew full well he had created this mess. He had made these choices for himself. He would have to figure a way out. How did I even get to this point? Blake shook his head furiously.
He drove northwest on 441 and tried to find a radio station to free his mind from thoughts that haunted him. A salesman on the classic rock station shouted that he should “come on down!” and buy a Toyota from him. Blake switched instead to the NPR station in Athens at 91.7 and caught the announcer finishing the news at the top of the hour. “Widespread flooding can be expected throughout Puerto Rico as Hurricane Isabel, now at Category 1 strength, races toward the gulf. Forecasters say there’s a slight chance the storm could turn in a more northerly direction and impact the Bahamas. This is NPR news.”
Classical baroque music blasted through the speakers. Blake reached his arm to turn off the radio as he drove from Athens toward Commerce, the only sounds coming from his inner voice asking him questions, admonishing him and replaying his life for him, as if he were watching a game film on the Monday after a game.
The reel turned and played his life film on the windshield as he drove. There he was in high school, setting records in his red jersey and leading the Wildcats to their first and only state championship. Then he was in yet another red jersey, but with the same number seven as he led the Georgia Bulldogs toward a BCS bowl bid. And then...the hit. The safety, out of nowhere. He remembered watching it on ESPN while lying in the hospital, the blindside shot that his running back, his friend, his bodyguard, didn’t even attempt to block. Blake collapsed with the hit, twisted like an empty tin can crushed underfoot, face first into the turf. His brightly lit flame snuffed out in that moment. Blake told doctors, fans, and friends that he’d be back, but he knew he wouldn’t. He just tried to hang on to the fame, to the hope for as long as he could. With bad grades and an alcoholic father that had taught him nothing but hate and anger, he knew he was lost without football.
The reel fast-forwarded and stopped at the car accident, as a driver who had just left a bar crashed into the driver’s side of Blake’s car at an Athens intersection. When the accident was picked up in the Athens Banner Herald, Blake promptly received a call from a lawyer at Peacock and Associates who sympathized and suggested that Blake should be compensated for what had happened to him. “You’re entitled,” the man had claimed. Blake was furious at the world for the turn of bad luck that had come his way. He agreed even though he knew that, maybe...the accident wasn’t the other driver’s fault.
Blake knew that he had run that red light at night. That’s why the car hit him. But he was furious with anything and everything then, and told the driver it was his fault. By the time the police arrived the two men were in a heated argument, but only one of them had been drinking, and it wasn’t Blake. Police charged the other driver for causing an accident while drinking even though he had only registered a .06 on the Breathalyzer, paving the way for Blake to receive almost a one hundred twenty thousand dollar settlement after the lawyer took his share. It was easy money, something Blake did feel he was entitled to given his misfortune on the gridiron. He liked the taste of making so much money, so quickly. He returned to Clayton on crutches, with a load of money in his pocket, but not with what he really wanted and needed. Fame. Fans. The feeling that he had made it, that he was somebody. That he was important and that he was nothing like his old man.
Angelica had waited for him as she said she would, but Blake didn’t really believe he would ever go back to Clayton. After the car accident he wanted to get back to her, to “close the deal” on Angelica if he could, to at least have that. She was there for him and she thought he was important. And she was exotic and naturally beautiful, like Pocahontas, he imagined. They married in Clayton and Blake put his money with Angelica’s, spending virtually all the money on the home and a new truck since he knew getting a mortgage would be tough with no job and no prospects. Paying cash for an entire house made him feel successful, important, but once they moved in he had little cash left to spend. For years he laid low and did little other than feel sorry for himself. The pain in his back and legs was too great to exert himself too much, he told others. In truth, the pain subsided after the first year, but Blake had become addicted to the sympathy. He refused to do most “real” jobs like working at lumber stores––not because his body would give out, but because he felt it was beneath him.
Beneath you? Who do you think you are? Blake felt shame wash over him as he watched the film play on.
When the winery contacted Blake, it played right into his needs. It massaged his ego, letting him cling to his dwindling local fame by contacting successful people, pressing some flesh and getting back into the game. If not the game of football, then at least the hobnobbing game of knowing celebrity chefs and restaurant owners. After a few weeks of hustling farmers and wineries and delivering to chefs, he made a number of friends and earned, precisely, four hundred and fifty bucks the first month. Three thousand dollars of sales for farmers and wineries that he delivered netted him, at fifteen percent, four hundred fifty bucks.
That’s bullshit, he remembered thinking. Chump change. Even if I busted my hump and tripled sales, I’d earn about sixteen grand a year. I would have been earning more than that per WEEK in the NFL!
Congratulations, Blake admonished himself, you’ve made it right to the poverty level. Right where you left off. Dad would be so proud.
Angelica had told him that they didn’t need much money, that everything was paid for except daily living expenses, but he didn’t hear it. Didn’t want to hear it. Now he realized how right she had been.
The highlight reel sped forward and stopped in the parking lot of The Federal when Blake made his first delivery to Nick. Getting in to see Nick was easy since Blake had known him at UGA. Only now, looking back on the film, did Blake realize that Nick had manipulated him all along. Nick had brought him into the kitchen when Blake first called on him. Of course he would buy the wines, the fruits and vegetables. Whatever Blake had. “But you want more than that out of life, don’t you Blake?” Nick had asked. “You’re better than that.”
That was it, Blake remembered. That’s where it began, this winding road that led him to where he now found himself. Nick had sat him down and told him the story of his father in Spain, how he came from generations of men who raised the famed black-legged Iberian hogs and slowly cured them in mountain air for two years. How it was an honored profession. How the Spaniards, and even the Italians and French had a food culture that was to be revered, unlike the fast food culture in America.
“Help me bring this here, Blake,” Nick had said as he shaved thin slices of Jamón Ibérico de Bellota ham for Blake, almost spoon feeding the delicacy to him. “Join me and let’s create a real slow-food culture here in Georgia.” Whether he was seduced by the ham or the idea of being a part of Nick’s team, of working hand in hand with Nick to create something really special, Blake couldn’t recall. But he bought in, hook, line, and sinker. He swallowed hard as Nick laid out the plan, the simple steps that Blake had to take to set up.