Read Online Rough Trade by Gini Hartzmark - Free Book Online

encouragement.
    Coach Bennato, no stranger to Beau’s kitchen, immediately made for the liquor cabinet. As he opened the doors it was pretty clear that Beau Rendell would have never died from thirst. Bennato selected a bottle of Balvenie single malt Scotch from among the dozens of bottles and helped himself to a generous dose. Although legendary for his nerves of steel, as he poured his drink his hands shook badly, like an alcoholic in need of a drink or a temperate man suffering from shock. He knocked it back in a single shot and quickly poured himself another.
    Now that we were alone I found it strange to see Coach Bennato in person. He was much bigger than I’d imagined from all the shots of him pacing up and down the sidelines. He also seemed older and, if anything, less genial. In person you could see that the wrinkles in his face were as deep as channels and that his knuckles, like his nose, bore the signs of having been broken more than once during his career as a player.
    The man himself was a mass of contradictions. One local sportswriter who described him best said that Bennato had the face of a parish priest, the vocabulary of a sailor, and the temperament of Attila the Hun. Mercurial, methodical, and prone to sweeping fits of both rage and generosity, he had at some point in his long career been the winningest and losingest coach in the league. He’d been hated, loved, reviled, and carried off the field in triumph.
    He was a cagey and complicated man. Born in Palermo, in either a tenement or a manger depending on who was telling the story, he immigrated to America with his parents when he was three. His father found work in the oilfields and he spent his childhood moving from one dusty wildcatting site to another along the Texas panhandle, proving himself with his fists in every new town.
    Legend has it that it was a judge who ordered him to play football. Bennato was fourteen and had been hauled before him after one scrape or another and he’d been given the choice of working his aggression out on the gridiron or in juvenile hall. I had no idea whether the story was true. He played second string in college, spent an undistinguished season in the pros, and immediately went into coaching, landing a spot as an assistant to Joe Patemo in his first year at Penn State.
    After three years at Penn State, Bennato returned to Texas and landed his first head coaching job. Apparently his fiery temper served him well, and after ten years as a head coach he had two national championships under his belt and a reputation for fashioning winning teams out of losers. Celebrated for his ability to turn green young men into effective gladiators as well as for giving rich boosters something to open up their wallets for, by all accounts he was on top of the world.
    Then a second-string quarterback said something Bennato didn’t like, and Bennato grabbed him by the throat, an action that was only remarkable for the fact that it was captured on national TV. The very same people who stood up and cheered when the players knocked each other down and ground their opponents’ faces into the mud recoiled in horror at this display of violence. The boy’s family sued. The university, eager to avoid the publicity of a trial, pressured Bennato to avoid the courtroom at any cost. The ensuing settlement forced him into bankruptcy while the scandal sent him into obscurity—which is where he remained until four years later when Beau Rendell offered him a coaching job.
    “Who are you?” demanded Bennato, setting down his glass and apparently realizing for the first time that he was not alone in Beau Rendell’s kitchen.
    “Kate Millholland,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m a friend of Chrissy and Jeff’s.”
    “Tony Bennato,” he said, taking my hand and giving it a rough tug. “If you’re a friend of Chrissy’s, then maybe you should be the one to go upstairs and give her this,” he continued, pulling out a business envelope