“You don’t have to do anything. It was several years ago and it was hard and awful, but I’ve been dealing with it,” I said.
“You lived alone during your senior year, because your dad moved onto another job. So that happened to you, he sent you away, and then you were by yourself? What kind of logic is that?”
“I was better on my own than with him,” I defended myself.
“I’m not criticizing you! What the hell are parents thinking?” he asked me.
“From what you’ve said, your brother won’t be the same way,” I pointed out.
“No, he won’t. And if I ever have kids, I won’t be, either. I would never leave my daughter when she needed me, never.”
“I know. You’re not like that,” I agreed. “You’d be a great father, if you’re considering it. You don’t even need a practice dog.”
We were quiet for another few moments. “I’m glad you’re staying over. I’m glad you’re coming to live here,” Ronan said. “It’s not just safety, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m glad to have you with me.”
Me too. Things weren’t solved, but life didn’t usually come with easy solutions. It didn’t matter right now.
Chapter 16
About halfway through, I got the feeling that this might have been working. We could have been pulling it off. But we had to remember the most important thing: Beau Gowan needed to keep his mouth shut.
“Mostly shut,” Ronan had recommended. “It might look weird if he’s sitting there with his lips clamped closed for the entire meeting.”
But if Mr. Gowan spoke, I was afraid that he was likely to give everything away, so I had coached him before we’d come into this conference room. “You could talk about…uh…” I had drawn a blank.
“I could say how much I love football,” he’d suggested.
“Do you?” I’d had no idea.
He had nodded vigorously, indicating that he really did. “I could also mention my former embrace of a vagabond existence, buthow I’m giving that up because I’ll have a son or daughter in a few months.”
“Are you really giving it up? Wait, no. Don’t mention that,” I’d hurriedly ordered. “Save it for another time and stick to your love of the Woodsmen.”
“I’m actually a Rustlers fan—I won’t say that, either,” he’d assured me.
Somehow, during the lead-up to this meeting, we’d switched positions a little bit. He was supposed to be my boss but I’d been the one bossing more. That had developed after he’d gotten back from Madagascar, or wherever he had been, and I’d admitted what I’d done for the Junior team.
I had started at the beginning and told him every detail. “I’m very, very sorry that I was leaving you out of the loop,” I’d concluded.
At first, he had been stunned. “Maybe I should have looked at those papers I was signing,” he mentioned, and I had nodded. I had prepared a presentation that explained all the improvements that he had okayed (without knowing he was doing it), and he’d stared at the charts on his expensive monitor. “That’s a lot of money,” he had commented next. “I didn’t know painting jobs cost so much. What color did you choose for the interior?”
“It’s the same one as in the stadium here, a nice neutral. But I did spend a lot and I’m afraid that at one point, the Woodsmen will want to check in on this. They’ll ask you about approving everything.”
“I didn’t. But you went ahead with it anyway,” he said. “That would be a problem for both of us.”
He was cannier than I’d given him credit for but luckily, he was also unfazed by the sneakiness and unprofessionalism of my prior behavior. “This is exactly how I got through college,” he had said several times. “I faked it. I never looked at a syllabus and I never saw the inside of a classroom.”
That had been shocking to me, as a person who had never missed one minute of anything school-related. But his way of moving through life made him ready to accept that others also cut corners. He wasn’t exactly pleased, though, because he claimed that he would have happily approved everything and that I hadn’t needed to hide all this. When I thought about it, I realized that he was probably correct. After all, it wouldn’t have made any additional work for him (in addition to nothing, since his output was zero). I hadn’t needed to trick him or try to do everything in secret, like how I’d behaved with my dad. Despite his faults, Beau wasn’t a mean person who would have stood in the way of me doing something good (as long as he hadn’t needed to do anything himself).
Ronan and I had developed a strategy to deal with the situation and I had introduced it to my boss. “We can turn this around and make it a win for you,” I’d explained. “We can make it look like it was all your idea. They’ll think you took initiative.”
“I’ve never taken that,” he’d told me.
“Yes, but now’s your chance. We’ll ask for a meeting to explain what you’ve done and your plan for the future of the Junior Woodsmen.”
“Can you tell me what that plan is?” he’d requested, and I had. I had also set up this meeting with several top-level Woodsmen officials by dropping his name and “Whitaker” a lot. I had shoved as much knowledge into Mr. Gowan as I could and now, here we were, seated around a large oval table on a much higher floor than our office.
His supposed output had impressed the other people in this big conference room. We (I) had first presented the comprehensive survey of the practice facility, the old list of all the problems with the building, the equipment, the field, et cetera, along with pictures I had taken of the execrable conditions. The next slides showed how many of those problems had been resolved and how economical we (I) had been in our choices. We talked about the marketing plan to promote the Junior team and how to fill those cold, uncovered metal bleachers with fans. We discussed merchandizing possibilities and community outreach. We covered a lot.
