I pulled that much in nearly every day.
That final confrontation with my father kept replaying in my mind as I sat in the rental car. He had been so angry that I wanted to play football. So disappointed that I wanted to go off to college. He expected me to work in the factories with him so he could show off his big old boy to all his big old friends. In his mind, raising me right meant me following in his footsteps, and when he didn’t like what I had to say, he tried to beat me into submission.
Over, and over, and over again.
That next morning was the best morning of my childhood. I woke up to Anton fixing a Russian breakfast. He told me of his childhood in Russia. About how finding bread involved creative interpretations of ownership. Stories of women selling themselves for food for their children and men exchanging manual labor for weeks of their time just to secure three loaves of bread and a bag of fucking rice.
Anton was the first adult to ever earn my trust. So much so that his house became home to me. It was the first place that ever felt like one. But even Anton had his faults. The idea of my playing professional football was beyond him. Just like it had been beyond my father. And though it didn’t spark abusive sparring matches, we did argue about it. He told me he expected me to go to college. To make something of myself so I could stick it to my father. Yet again, I was slapped with the expectations of another.
With no regard for the expectations I had of myself.
Now I looked at Anton’s house and sighed, saddened at how dead and empty it looked. My safe haven—my beacon of hope—had slowly crumbled with the rest of the town around it. Even though it was kept up more than most of the homes, with a mowed lawn, tailored landscape and a power-washed exterior, I could still see the age on it. The inability of the house to grow with the times. I walked up to the front porch and pushed open the front door.
That old man never did lock his damn front door.
I respected Anton enough to follow his wishes. Though I fused my own into it. I ended up with a scholarship to play football in college. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offered me a full fucking ride to play football and I took it. And Anton was proud, which was more than I could say for my father, who fucking followed me from town all the way to the damn college before campus security stopped him from getting out of his car to talk with me.
Playing all through college, I racked up enough points on the field to get professional scouts looking at me. I even signed a professional contract to play five years with the NFL. I fucking did that. On my own. With no help whatsoever.
Then I fucking blew it with that damn injury.
I walked through the only place I’d really called home as a kid. The house looked pristine. Not like it had been virtually abandoned for over three years. It made me wonder how often Anton had the place cleaned. Or if he’d had someone renting it out or something while he was in the nursing home. Seeing it kept up gave me some hope that maybe someone had come into the old man’s life before he died. But the cleanliness only served as a contrast to the dead town around it, and my anger flourished again. Did no one care for their shit around this fucking place? Anton cared for his shit. Obviously. Could no one take a cue from one of the pillars of the community?
Because that’s what Anton was.
A strong pillar in our town, even when he moved in as an outsider.
I wandered around the house, taking it all in. Before I knew it, I was standing in front of a familiar door. The door to the room Anton had showed me to on that first night. I pushed it open and took a look around. Such a small room. With nothing but a bed that still had the same damn sheets on it I used to sleep on. Small specks of dust floated around, but I could still smell the cleanliness. That lemon smell that came with every clean small town home, tainted with the faintest odor of bleach. Even now, I felt comfortable within the walls of this room. Safe and protected from the big, bad world outside. I couldn’t help comparing it to my new life.
This room was smaller than my bathrooms.
Certainly smaller than my closets.
I sat on the edge of the bed and closed my eyes. I remembered telling Anton the day I bought the vineyard. He was absolutely stunned. The concussion I’d suffered on the football field during my last year of playing professionally took me out for good. The doctor said that another hard whack could make me a vegetable for the rest of my fucking life. So I took half of my saved millions and invested it into a rundown, beat-up vineyard in Napa Valley. I got that place for a steal, too. I sold off all their product for half price to raise some capital up front to breathe life back into the place, and now I was making a solid two billion a year from it.
Billions more than I ever could’ve made playing professional football.
So much had changed in my life since I left Anton’s house over a decade ago. College. Football. The injury. The money. All of it, bringing me to this exact point in time. Staring at the four walls that took me in when I had nowhere else to go.
Being there without him felt wrong.
“What the fuck,” I said with a groan.
I put my head in my hands as the headache overtook my vision.
Headaches. I got them sometimes. Courtesy of my concussion. We won that game, thanks to the moves I pulled on that field. But they were moves that ended my career. Sometimes I missed it. I’d get into the gym and work out my frustrations until I was pouring buckets of sweat off my body. I loved the physical activity. I loved the hitting. It helped with my anger. My aggression. The
hatred I still had for my father. I made working out and practicing my life when I played professionally, but now sometimes it felt like my damn headaches ruled my world.
Laying on the dusty bed, I shielded my eyes from the light.
So much had changed, and I didn’t know if I liked it. My changes had been in a positive direction, but I’d hoped my small town would’ve changed at least a little bit, too. At least kept up with the times enough to aid in its own survival. But on the contrary, it seemed everyone in the damn place was content to drown in their traditions rather than rising above their comfort level and keeping the place afloat.
It made me angry.
It angered me that they talked about tradition without upholding any sort of standard to it. It angered me how they preached about family, but were willing to watch the other drown. It pissed me off that people talked about hard work, but that same work was only hard if you never made any money for it. People looked at my bank accounts and thought I was getting a free ride. Like my billions had been bestowed upon me from some damn tree in my backyard. They had no idea the hours I sunk into that vineyard. The hours I sunk into the gym. Into training. The injuries I dealt with and the migraines I suffered through out of passion for the sport of football. They didn’t know the risky business deals I made and the countless nights I spent learning about wine, crafting flavors, planting and growing grapes, and harvesting them at just the right time.
Countless hours of sleep lost to bring myself to this point.