They walked shoulder-to-shoulder to midfield. Ted Wafford, the Elmwood head coach, waited alongside Booker and four other team captains. The Badger coach looked like a redneck version of Nikita Khrushchev—balding crew cut of white hair, eyes too close together, teeth too far apart, and bowed legs a kid could ride a tricycle through. A chewed cigar butt ran a continuous circuit from one side of his mouth to the other.

Neither coach offered a handshake.

“Hey, shithead!” Booker called to Cole across the mingling officiating crew that separated them. “You ready for a skull fucking?”

Cole had been too preoccupied at the jail to truly note what had become of Booker’s appearance over the past two days. Whatever poison coursed through his system had turned him into something no more human than the men he was about to meet across the line of scrimmage. His eyes watered with rage, pink and alert. His infected cheek was a puss-filled tumor ready to pop. His breath came in blue clouds, shooting from a seething grin.

The stare down between the sides was silent and taut. It was Coach Wafford who finally spoke, yelling to be heard over the crowd and the opposing bands competing for decibels.

“All right, Hickham, here it is! I don’t know what rock you crawled out from under, but around here it’s goddamn kill or be killed. So don’t think that just because your boys took a little plunge into that river that my boys are gonna go soft on ’em. You asked for this, so now you’re gonna get it. You understanding me clear?”

“We gonna talk or we gonna toss the coin?” Hickham’s cold eyes shifted to the head referee.

The heavyset official blinked to attention, then dug into his pocket for a coin. Before he could present one, Coach Wafford stopped him with his laughter. “You know what, Hickham? Fuck the toss.” He pulled a football from Tommy Larkin’s hands. “It’s your field. Let’s just say you won the sumbitch.” He flipped the ball into Hickham’s hands with more zip than was necessary. “I figure you ought to at least win something tonight.”

Booker and his fellow captains laughed at their coach’s gesture.

Hickham turned to Cole.

Cole told the referee they would kick.