Please tell us what you think of Page 9 in the comment section.
Some of it is obvious — comics have pictures. If you can show something, you don’t need to write about it also.
But much of it is simply to move the story along. If we were trying to put in EVERY word of The Rookie novel, we would be up to MAYBE the first touchdown by now.
However – sometimes what gets cut is SO good that it’s a shame not to enjoy it.
It is way too juicy to leave completely off. The way Stedmar tells it and Greedok’s wonderfully dry remarks are just so perfect. You really get a glimpse into the characters of both men — uhhh, creatures. And – it includes my favorite line of the whole story — see if you can guess which one it is.
Stedmar shrugged and smiled. “He’s an orphan, like about a million other Nationalite kids his age. Pogroms, coups, fundamentalist revolutions, power struggles – thousands of people die or just disappear every year in the Purist Nation. Quentin never even knew his parents, from what I understand. They probably disappeared when Reverend Abdul Smith’s took over the church and started manipulating the Creterakian garrison to carry out his ‘ideological cleansing’ campaigns.
“This place isn’t very kind to orphans. Here it’s all about the church and family connections. Orphans are wards of the state only until the age of 12, then they’re on their own. I found him playing a pickup football game when he was fifteen. Before I signed him, he was working in the mines just like everyone else.”
“How did you discover him.”
Stedmar laughed. “It was the craziest thing. I was driving out to the mines to conduct some business. A mine owner was more than a little late on his loan payments. So I’m driving by in my limo when the workers are on break. There’s a crowd built up like it’s a fight. Well, I love to watch a good fight, especially on this planet – did you know if you kill a man in a fair fight here, you don’t go to jail?”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Anyway, so people really go at it. So I pull up to see what’s going on, only there’s not a fight, everyone is laughing and clapping, looking at each other in amazement. There’s this giant-sized fucker, must have been 425 pounds, built like an air-tank with legs, you know? Anyway, this guy looks pissed. He heaves back and chucks a rock, maybe the rock is a pound or two, chucks it about sixty yards. And I’m thinking, ‘wow, that guy’s got quite an arm.’ Some guy picks up the rock and runs it back, another guy stands right where the rock landed. So that’s when the workers start flashing money back and forth – they’re making and taking bets. Then this scrawny kid, he’s about six feet tall, but you can tell he’s young, probably hasn’t even shaved yet, he steps up. And he’s laughing, too. The big guy has a look on his face like he could eat a Cretarakian whole, entropic rifle and all, you know? He’s looking at this kid like he wants to kill him. And the kid is just laughing. The kid takes the rock, then takes a smooth five-step drop. Swear to High One, he takes a fucking five-step drop like he’s quarterbacking the Rodina Astronauts or something, and he heaves that rock. I mean the thing flew eighty-five, maybe ninety yards. I just about shit myself.”
Grekod nodded. He was always amazed by Human’s fascination with fecal euphemisms. “And that’s why you signed him?”
Stedmar shook his yead. “Partially. So this kid won the bet, obviously, the big guy hands him a wad of bills, and the kid starts doing this dance, really rubbing it in, you know? Well, the big guy, he just loses his shit. He takes a swing at this kid, blasts him one, knocks him on his ass. And I’m thinking, well, I get to see a fight anyway. But the kid pops up like nothing happened, except he’s not laughing now, now he’s pissed.”
Gredok nodded again. Feces and urine were always part of Stedmar’s stories.
“So the big guy comes after this kid, and this kid lays into him. I mean he took this big guy apart. Three straight jabs and then a big left hook, and the guy goes down. But the kid isn’t finished. He jumps on the guy and starts blasting him with big shit-kicker lefts, over and over again. There’s blood all over the dirt, in a couple of seconds the guy’s face looks like hamburger. The workers are laughing and having a grand time, but you know what I’m thinking to myself, shamakath?”
“No.”
“I’m thinking, ‘what if that kid hurts his hands.’ Swear to High One that’s what I’m thinking. So I send my Sammy and Dean and Frankie over there and pull the kid off. But he’s like a wildcat – doesn’t know who my boys are or what they want, so he lays Sammy of them out with that same left hook.”
Stedmar turned to look at one of his bodyguards, a thick Human with a nose that looked as if it had been broken a dozen times.
“You remember that punch, Sammy?”
“Yeah, boss,” Sammy said, laughing. “And he weight a hundred pounds less back then.”
“Well, anyway, Frank and Dean are going at it with this kid. I don’t want the kid hurt, but you can’t expect the boys to take shit like that, you know? But the more they hit him, the madder he gets, and he just won’t stay down. Finally, Sammy gets up and he’s obviously had enough of this bullshit, so he whips out a stun stick and puts the kid out. They drag him over to me. I swear, shamkath, at this point if that kid had been a woman I’d have married him, that’s how in love I was with this guy. He comes to and I ask him if he knows who I am. You know what he says to me?”
“No,” Gredok said, patiently waiting for the end of the story. Humans always took so long to get to the point.
“Through a split lip he says to me, ‘you’re the owner of the Raiders.’ Not ‘you’re Stedmar Osborne, notorious gangster,’ or ‘you’re that guy that shakes down the mine owners’ or anything like that. Just ‘the owner of the Raiders.’ That was it for me, I knew the kid lived and breathed football. So I ask him, ‘how old are you?’ And he tells me ‘fifteen.’ Fifteen. You know what I almost did?”
“Shit yourself?” Gredok said.
“Yah! I almost shit myself! I was so fired up I took the kid back to town and forgot all about the mine owner. For that day, anyway. I signed the kid and put him on the team. He’d never played organized ball before, and the next goddamn year, at sixteen years old, he’s the backup quarterback.”
At this, Hokor looked away from the field. Now very interested in the story. Gredok knew why – this quarterback already had four years of professional experience, albeit in the lowly PNFL.
“At seventeen he started for me,” Stedmar said. “We went 5-4 that year, he won his last three games. The next year, this eighteen-year-old kid wins it all for me, 9-0, and two more wins in the playoffs to give me my first championship. This year, we’re 9-0 again, we’ll obviously win today, and that’s 21 games in a row for him. Next week the championship game should be a cakewalk.”
“All because you were driving by and happened to see him throw a rock.”
Stedmar laughed, he obviously relished telling this story. “Yah! Crazy, isn’t it?”
Hey all, I just got back from the last two stops of the 13-city Sigler Stank II book tour to promote my hardcover horror novel CONTAGIOUS.
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