Short story: "The Coach and the Hippie Trooper" Chapter 1
Chapter 1 — The coach vs. the hippie trooper
October 1985
The narrow stairway curved in a circuitous way as if setting the stage for a decrepit, gothic Halloween haunt in rural Pennsylvania. The young coach’s insides were churning like a diesel locomotive as it chugged its way up Crescent Mountain in the beautiful Alleghenies.
He trudged his way up the stairs begrudgingly, laboriously, angrily.
Coach Ryan was livid, very upset at being forced into what he perceived to be an altercation with law-enforcement over a situation that had nothing to do with him. As he gazed at the walls that hadn’t been painted since the days of FDR, he realized that this frightful area of the county courthouse into which he was moving had probably been used to interrogate nefarious criminals like moonshiners and KKK members and Mafia members and corrupt politicians like the judges who sat in the courtrooms below and who called Crescent County home.
And how many innocent people had been forced to sit down with interrogators like he was being forced to do, making them feel like criminals themselves?
The musty smell was also somewhat rank, illustrating that no Clorox or any cleaning fluid had been used in this area of the building for years. The cobwebs that spiders had woven as part of their life processes reinforced that misery.
As Coach Ryan reached the top steps, he heard some intense haranguing between people who were in the cave, a minuscule, dark room that was at the top of the courthouse, appearing to be like the widow’s nests near the Chesapeake Bay in a neighboring state.
Flashback
His mind quickly shifted back to the event that had precipitated this situation.
The phone rang just as he settled into his office, and it was just what he needed at the end of a frightful football season. Within five minutes, he had slammed down the receiver just as his assistant coaches were walking into his office.
They took one look at Coach Ryan’s crimson face, which was the color of the team’s home jerseys, and it showed them that rage was the prevailing emotion of the day. They believed that this day was to end like the detonation of the atomic bomb in August of 1945.
Not quite, but still a tough one.
When Coach Ryan picked up the call a few minutes earlier, he was told by the secretary that it was from one of former players at the college who then was an investigator for the district attorney’s office — a political gig.
No preliminaries.
Lucas Laredo went right to the point, “Roland Ropario, who is leading an investigation for the Pennsylvania State Police White Collar Crime Force, needs to talk to you tomorrow morning at 9 at the courthouse.”
Silence — or shock — or anger — or a plethora of other emotions coursed through his body, which at that point felt like swimming in the sulphur streams in the county that poisoned every inch of the coal areas of the state.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Coach yelled into the receiver.
“Sorry. I cannot tell you anything other than it has nothing to do with you.”
“Well, if it has nothing to do with me, I will not be there. In case you forgot, I have a job, and I am contractually obligated to be there, teaching some classes tomorrow morning, and the only way I can leave for something like this is with a subpoena. So, sorry, dude. Go back into your cave.”
Blood pressure: 260 over 195.
“Well, in case you forgot, you are obliged to answer questions put forth by law enforcement. You had better be here or we will issue a contempt order.”
Lucas was not the brightest light on the planet, and those at the college realized that he had struggled through college, finally receiving a degree after six or seven years.
Consequently, he was not very adept at intimidating people who were obviously brighter than he was.
Outraged, Ryan yelled, loud enough for everyone in the building to hear, “I know the law. You cannot be charged with contempt until you have a paper that forces you to talk to law enforcement. Better read the Pa. legal code. I will not be there — period!”
Today, as he climbed the steps to inexorably confront a jerk for whom he had no respect, albeit one he had never met, this conversation continued to race through his mind.
Coach had refused to talk further with this Lucas guy as he slammed down the receiver.
His heart was racing as if he was a thoroughbred preparing for the Derby.
The Hippie Trooper
Still, all of these preliminaries never prepared Coach Ryan for the vision that would soon raise his blood pressure to the boiling point.
A Hippie Trooper.
Once he stepped into the doorway and looked into the demonic eyes of a trooper whose dress and persona made him look like he should have been working in the 1960s.
He also conjectured what he was facing: a consummate liar.
And he was right.
The trooper looked at him, and callously and abruptly said to him, “Have a seat, Ryan.”
“My name is Mr. Ryan to you. Have a little respect.”
Troopers do not like being reprimanded by “civilians,” ones whom they are — ironically — supposed to serve.
“And I will stand.”
“You might be here for a while,” the hippie warned.
“I doubt it.”
The man whom he now regarded as truly demonic was not very tall, about 5-feet, 7-inches, Coach noted. He was probably about 35 years old, and what was immediately noticeable was the long black pony tail that went halfway down his back. It was tied together with what appeared to be a rubber band.
Classy dude — obviously undercover.
Which made no sense to the coach. Ryan had never used marijuana or any illicit drugs, and he knew no one on his team who dealt in them — though like most of that era, many had probably dabbled in it.
Just from the hippie appearance, Coach Ryan figured this had something to do with drugs. He realized that some of his players had experimented with MJ, but most football players were more interested in Budweiser than in MJ.
Another guy was there, too, looking like he might be undercover, but not in the hippie mode.
In reality, Coach was right about this interrogation not being about him or any of his players. He had no clue that the tie to this went back about four months — and the action of his incompetent was now going to explode in the coach’s face.
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