and often his mother would have to pull him close when the siren song of country hood life became overbearing. In that world, he was an actor trying on deadly poses.
During his sophomore year, his best friend, Willie “Gene” Thomas, was shot and killed inside the trailer park next door to Glades Central, another bloody chapter in the long-standing feud between rival gangs. Months later, a car full of gang members pulled up on Robert and some friends. When the boys jumped out to fight, one of them bobbled and dropped a pistol. Robert’s younger brother later found the gun buried in Robert’s laundry hamper. Shawanna turned it over to the sheriff, explaining that her son had discovered it on the road.
Later, when Robert beat a kid in school and stole his iPod, the kid’s mother called the police and threatened to press charges. The school had Robert on a surveillance camera, they said. At her wits’ end, Shawannatried sending her son to live with his father in Georgia, who refused to take him. The only man who seemed to know how to speak to him was his coach. Having just pulled Robert onto the varsity squad, Hester staged an intervention, along with Shawanna and his coaching staff.
“The rest of your life can be decided today,” Hester told him. “You can either choose to be great, or become just another dead jitterbug on the street that nobody remembers.”
The confrontation broke Way down into tears; then he chose to be great. Within months, his GPA rose to 3.0. The next season, Way recorded 146 tackles, thirty-nine for negative yardage, and twenty-seven sacks. The last was a school record previously held by Ray McDonald Jr., now a defensive tackle with the San Francisco 49ers, who phoned Robert to congratulate him. As Way excelled on the field, the
Post
published a story about the great transformation of the Raiders’ young lineman. The scholarship offers came trickling in.
But certain fans—the most vocal ones anyway—did not register such victories. After the Raiders lost to Cocoa later that year under the lights of the Citrus Bowl, before God and the Glades, the relationship quickly soured. Hester, the hometown legend, became just another stupid coach. Within hours of Hester leaving Orlando, someone rang his phone, drunk, saying,
“Jet, if I ever see you on Fifth Street, I’m gon’ shoot yo ass.”
Other callers threatened to burn his cars, his home.
It was all money talking, lost and gone money. Gamblers had always frittered away their Friday paychecks in the bleachers, eyes dancing with gin, wagering on everything from point spreads to total receiving yards before the half. A bookie named Pie ran numbers on Raider games from a cinder-block social club across the street from the school. Hurricane Wilma had blown the roof off the club’s upper floor, which still sat gaping under the Florida sun. At home games, there could easily be hundreds of dollars on the line. For a championship, tens of thousands.
The Raider fans had always filled that symbolic “twelfth man” position, yet to great extremes. At Effie C. Grear Field, so went the joke, the bleacherswere merely a place to fit the fifteen hundred assistant coaches. But even that implied a kind of playfulness. The fans were more of a variable, ever-shifting force, like weather over the ocean. As Jenkins, Werneke, and Snead could attest, they were a force that could both carry you and bury you, one that could undermine your authority and render you powerless.
• • •
HESTER SAW DARK forces in every direction. On this soupy August afternoon, he sensed them along the fenceline where a group of fans gathered to watch the first week of practice. They were fathers and uncles and men from the club across the street, many of them former players or those whose circumstances had never allowed them such status.
A lineman named Gator had failed to produce sixty-five dollars for his equipment and physical, and now trotted out to where they
During his sophomore year, his best friend, Willie “Gene” Thomas, was shot and killed inside the trailer park next door to Glades Central, another bloody chapter in the long-standing feud between rival gangs. Months later, a car full of gang members pulled up on Robert and some friends. When the boys jumped out to fight, one of them bobbled and dropped a pistol. Robert’s younger brother later found the gun buried in Robert’s laundry hamper. Shawanna turned it over to the sheriff, explaining that her son had discovered it on the road.
Later, when Robert beat a kid in school and stole his iPod, the kid’s mother called the police and threatened to press charges. The school had Robert on a surveillance camera, they said. At her wits’ end, Shawannatried sending her son to live with his father in Georgia, who refused to take him. The only man who seemed to know how to speak to him was his coach. Having just pulled Robert onto the varsity squad, Hester staged an intervention, along with Shawanna and his coaching staff.
“The rest of your life can be decided today,” Hester told him. “You can either choose to be great, or become just another dead jitterbug on the street that nobody remembers.”
The confrontation broke Way down into tears; then he chose to be great. Within months, his GPA rose to 3.0. The next season, Way recorded 146 tackles, thirty-nine for negative yardage, and twenty-seven sacks. The last was a school record previously held by Ray McDonald Jr., now a defensive tackle with the San Francisco 49ers, who phoned Robert to congratulate him. As Way excelled on the field, the
Post
published a story about the great transformation of the Raiders’ young lineman. The scholarship offers came trickling in.
But certain fans—the most vocal ones anyway—did not register such victories. After the Raiders lost to Cocoa later that year under the lights of the Citrus Bowl, before God and the Glades, the relationship quickly soured. Hester, the hometown legend, became just another stupid coach. Within hours of Hester leaving Orlando, someone rang his phone, drunk, saying,
“Jet, if I ever see you on Fifth Street, I’m gon’ shoot yo ass.”
Other callers threatened to burn his cars, his home.
It was all money talking, lost and gone money. Gamblers had always frittered away their Friday paychecks in the bleachers, eyes dancing with gin, wagering on everything from point spreads to total receiving yards before the half. A bookie named Pie ran numbers on Raider games from a cinder-block social club across the street from the school. Hurricane Wilma had blown the roof off the club’s upper floor, which still sat gaping under the Florida sun. At home games, there could easily be hundreds of dollars on the line. For a championship, tens of thousands.
The Raider fans had always filled that symbolic “twelfth man” position, yet to great extremes. At Effie C. Grear Field, so went the joke, the bleacherswere merely a place to fit the fifteen hundred assistant coaches. But even that implied a kind of playfulness. The fans were more of a variable, ever-shifting force, like weather over the ocean. As Jenkins, Werneke, and Snead could attest, they were a force that could both carry you and bury you, one that could undermine your authority and render you powerless.
• • •
HESTER SAW DARK forces in every direction. On this soupy August afternoon, he sensed them along the fenceline where a group of fans gathered to watch the first week of practice. They were fathers and uncles and men from the club across the street, many of them former players or those whose circumstances had never allowed them such status.
A lineman named Gator had failed to produce sixty-five dollars for his equipment and physical, and now trotted out to where they
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