Finally Making the Score

       Wanted high school football coach to lead championship-caliber team.

       The ad immediately caught the eye of the former high school football star as he paged through the Bonn Bugle in the rundown kitchen of a fleabag motel. He had returned to the Maryland suburb after completing a six-month rehab and recovery program in the Shoreline Medical Complex.

      Contrary to the beliefs of many of the tongue-wagging upper class gossips in Bonn, the final chapter of the story of Jim Pierce’s run for the goal line had contained a patchwork of lies.

      Sure Barbie-brained former cheerleader Stacy Stonington had turned the tables on Jim’s revenge plot against her and boyfriend Sam Jones, Jr., and she had grabbed the toradol syringe he meant for her and injected Pierce with what she thought was a fatal overdose. 

       The police never found Jim’s body, and the cheerleader, thanks to flimsy circumstantial evidence and some fancy footwork by the high-priced legal talent hired by Sam Jones, Sr., her wealthy father-in-law, had gotten away with a plea of self-defense.

        Because Stacy believed she and Jim had been the only ones present in the darkened pickup the night of the fateful struggle she figured no one would ever learn the true story.

        The cheerleader failed to realize that Pierce’s obsession with getting even for his years of finishing in second place to Sam, Jr. on the Bulldog gridiron had not clouded his judgment and intellect.

        Tired of playing second fiddle on the football field, Pierce also had seethed with anger when Stacy threw him aside for the pimple-faced rich boy whose construction company owner father had used his influence to win him the glory which Jim felt rightly belonged to him.

      The disgruntled second-stringer had gone to the cocktail party at Sam Sr. ’s mansion with the intention of luring Stacy away and adding her body to the turf under the midfield stripe at the old athletic complex.

      While mapping out his revenge the also-ran had carefully documented his every move in a journal that he kept hidden under the floorboards of his pickup.

       Jim later had decided to reverse course and began transcribing in his journal his hesitation about revenge when his emotions took over.  He had hesitated while  attempting to stab Stacy and she injected him with his own painkiller.

        The cheerleader had put the pickup in gear and let it roll over a cliff in an abandoned quarry two miles out of the center of Bonn. She took Jim for dead but did not realize that he only lay unconscious in the wrecked truck.

         A local banker and hiking enthusiast had found Jim and dropped him off at the Shoreline emergency room before driving off anonymously into the night. 

         After a long and painful series of operations to repair his broken body, Jim had awakened to find all his hospital bills paid in full.

        He began rebuilding his scarred body and worked out with some members of the Baltimore Ravens who lived in the small town.  He also did some part-time coaching for a number of junior high schools surrounding the Bonn area. 

       All the while, though, he felt a void in his life. In the back of his mind there remained a burning ambition to somehow pay back the town that had failed to bring the fulfillment on the varsity football field that felt he so richly deserved in his youth.

        With a great measure of optimism, mixed in with a great deal of angst over recent events, he decided to once again aim for the end zone.

        After carefully reviewing the want ad, he read every inch of the Bugel sports pages and discovered that his beloved Bulldogs sought new leadership after five second place seasons.

        Turns out his alma mater, just like it had during his high school years, could not quite put together the momentum it needed to win the last game and take home the state trophy.

        Coach Sam Jones, Jr. said in his resignation statement, “This program has groomed some of the finest players I have seen since my days as the Bulldog quarterback.  I believe the potential exists here to take the crown, but, perhaps a fresh approach is needed. In addition, my father’s death has left a void in the leadership of his construction firm that requires my full time attention.” 

        Jones had not included in his resignation statement that his marriage to super model Stacy Stonington had broken up after she mysteriously left their newly-constructed home in the nearby suburb of Liston, Md. three years before.  Many in Bonn felt she had gone into hiding to avoid charges of attempted murder that could be issued with the reopening of the probe into the incident at the old athletic complex.

         While Pierce welcomed the investigation, he now began to focus on a new career move that could help him gain for the newest crop of Bonn High School grid stars, the fame that had eluded him when the Joneses had forced him to warm the bench when the Bulldogs needed him the most.

          He climbed into his new pickup, threw the paper onto the seat and headed for the new Bulldog Athletic Complex. 

          Principal Larry Jackson couldn’t believe his eyes when Jim knocked on his office door. “This is like a resurrection. My dad, during his 10 years as principal, often said you had gotten a raw deal because the Joneses bought their way into the football program.  He was one of the few people in town who suspected there was much more to the Stacy Stonington story than what came out at her trial. I am sure you are what we need to put our football program on the track where it rightly has belonged all these years and finally bring you the justice you deserve.”

        Perhaps the game was nearing the last quarter, but no one really knew how it would end, because Jim Pierce had determined that the town that wronged him would not forget him.