“I know, I know,” I sighed. “But this is a big decision, Gus. If I screw this up, there will be consequences. Do you think I’m crazy?”
Gus chuckled softly as he laced his fingers together across his abdomen and rocked a little in his chair. He silently stared down at the cluttered surface of his desk, full of papers detailing every training regimen and physical therapy routine of every single Bears player on the roster. I waited for him to speak, and after a long silence, he did.
“When I was growing up, there was little expectation that anyone in my South Side neighborhood would do anything that would enable us to get out,” he said softly. “We were young and black and the expectations were low, but my parents told me and my brother that if we worked hard and got good grades, we could do anything we wanted to do in life. And I believed them.”
I sat perched on the edge of my chair knowing that whatever Gus was sharing with me was going to help me make my decision, but, as usual, I felt impatient and wanted him to get to the point. And if I was honest, I also wanted to know that he wasn’t going to judge me for the choices I was making.
“I know you want me to get to the point, child,” he said, watching my eyes widen in surprise. “But some things just can’t be rushed.”
I nodded and ducked my head to hide the color in my cheeks.
“I worked hard and got good grades, but when it came time to go to college, I wasn’t able to get enough scholarship money to pay my tuition, so I took a job as the equipment manager for the football team and took a side job with one of the neighborhood hustlers my father had warned me about,” he said with a look in his eye that told me he was remembering exactly what it felt like to take the job. “During the day, I worked for the team and I did my absolute best to do everything exactly right, but there was one coach who simply didn’t like me. I don’t know why he didn’t other than I was black, and he tried to make my life a living hell because of it. Do you know what I did, Sweetness?”
“Fought back and got justice?” I offered in a tentative voice.
“Hardly,” he laughed. “I worked 10 times harder to prove I was equally capable of doing the job that the white equipment managers were doing. Do you know what he did in response?”
“Came around and saw that you were a hard worker and a good person?” I tried again.
“Child, you’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies,” Gus laughed as he shook his head. “He hated me even more is what he did, and he redoubled his efforts to make my life miserable. But I stayed. I stayed because I had my eye on the finish line and I picked my battles. And I stayed because I worked nights for the hustler delivering packages and working security in one of his clubs. I knew that if the football coach hated me enough to actually get rid of me, I wasn’t going to lose my shot at education. Did I like the fact that I was knowingly doing things that were either illegal or counter to the values that my parents had taught me? No, I did not. But did I see the benefit of doing them? Yes, I did. I finished my degree and found a job working as an athletic trainer for one of the farm teams for the Cubs. It was hard work and I was on the road all the time, but I got a lot of good experience treating injuries and helping players through rehab.”
“So how did you wind up here?” I asked.
“Patience, child, I’m getting to that part,” Gus smiled. “I’d been out of college a year when I got married. My wife had insisted that I give up the hustling
job and had begged me to give up the farm league job for one a steady position at Chicago County Hospital. I agreed not to hustle, but I really didn’t want to leave the farm team, but I knew that if I didn’t, my wife was going to leave me!”
“I think that’s kind of unfair,” I said as I thought about my mother’s ultimatum. “She was forcing you to give up your dream!”
“Those are the kinds of sacrifices you make when you love someone, Sweetness,” he smiled. “When it happens to you, you’ll do the exact same thing.”
“But if someone loves me, they won’t ask me to give up the thing I love!” I stubbornly protested.
“Young folks are always so sure about defending their right to do what they want,” he sighed. “But that’s not the point of the story, either.”
“Then what is it, Gus?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air in exasperation.
“I’m getting to it,” he said waving me back to the chair across the desk. “The day after I put in my notice with the farm team, I went over to County to sign all the employment papers and who should I run into in the lobby, but the assistant coach from the college team. He asked what I was doing and when I told him how I’d traded in the traveling sports life for a job at County, he asked if I’d be interested in a sports job that didn’t require as much travel. I told him that any sports job would appeal to me more than a boring hospital job, but I wanted to make sure that my wife didn’t leave me.”
“What did he do?” I asked excitedly leaning forward.
“He took my number and told me he’d call me that night,” he said as he reached out across his desk and grabbed the cup sitting on the edge and took a sip. He grimaced slightly and then resumed speaking. “I didn’t say anything to my wife. I didn’t want to get her hopes up, and I wasn’t sure if the man was going to follow through. And honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t talk me out of it. The hospital job was a good, solid job with benefits and a pension, you know?”
“Gus, what happened?” I asked breathlessly.
“That night after dinner, the phone rang and the man on the other end asked if I’d be interested in working in the Bears training room,” he said. “I said I would and then hung up the phone. Five minutes later, the phone rang again and I answered it. It was the man asking if I didn’t want a little time to talk it over with my wife. I told him I didn’t need to, and when he asked why, I said that she was a Bears fan and that’s all she’d need to hear. He laughed and then told me where to report the next day.”
“That’s amazing, Gus!” I exclaimed. “What a luck you had!”
“Oh, it wasn’t luck, child,” he said with a knowing look on his wide brown face.
“But you were in the right place at the right time,” I said confused by his statement.
“No, that coach had been trying to track me down for months,” he said. “He’d finally caught up with me at the hospital thanks to one of the farm team trainers.”
“Did he say why he was looking for you?” I asked. “You said your life was hell in the college training room.”
“That’s why he wanted to hire me, Sweetness,” Gus said, savoring the moment and the lesson. “He said that anyone who could rise above the abuses of that training room and still want to stay in the field, was someone he wanted in the Bears locker room. So, you see, Sweetness, sometimes you have to endure the hard stuff and hustle until you can get to the good stuff.”