Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game Read online

  Juliette Akinyi Ochieng

  Tale of the Tigers

  Love is Not a Game

  Second Edition

  Published by

  Luo American, Inc. (2012)

  Cover Design by DaybyDayCartoon.com

  and

  Carmel Coast Publishing Enterprises – Graphics Division

  Published in the United States of America

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under code 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Author. Requests to the Author for permission should be addressed to [email protected].

  Tale of the Tigers: Love is not a Game is the second edition of the novel and it is borne of the many requests I’ve received. It was a joy to revisit the characters I created; I love them.

  The new cover, one more illustrative of the story, is also a blessing. It was conceived by Chris Muir's talent, vision, and generosity.

  And without the support and encouragement provided by my family, by Caren T. Handley and by my friend,Carmel Coast Publishing Enterprises CEO, C. Lamar Powell, I could never have done it.

  For Rob “Acidman” Smith

  Brown Penny

  I whispered, 'I am too young,'

  And then, 'I am old enough';

  Wherefore I threw a penny

  To find out if I might love.

  'Go and love, go and love, young man,

  If the lady be young and fair.'

  Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

  I am looped in the loops of her hair.

  O love is the crooked thing,

  There is nobody wise enough

  To find out all that is in it,

  For he would be thinking of love

  Till the stars had run away

  And the shadows eaten the moon.

  Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

  One cannot begin it too soon.

  --William Butler Yeats

  Where do I find it?

  It hides itself well

  Yet ‘tis my doom

  To be under its spell

  Prologue

  She had to pay. There was no getting around it. She had to pay for stepping in where she didn’t belong--to pay for inserting herself in Tau business, in man-business, in the Black Man’s business. It would be so easy to do. They wouldn’t even have to touch a hair on that nappy head of hers or do anything to that fine ass, and that ass was fine; he knew from close up. As a matter of fact, he was getting excited just thinking about it. Maybe, he should call her…

  No point in it. Besides, she had a new man; for now, that is. Daniel seemed like a straight-up brother. They would be doing him a favor.

  Trevor laughed as he picked up the phone to send out the call to his minions, his fraternity brothers. And after that, they would make Felice LeCroix pay for her insolence.

  Tale of the Tigers

  Chapter One

  It wasn’t the world that nineteen-year-old Felice LeCroix thought it was, the one that she had been told it was. And now, she was paying for that fantasy: her life was in ruins. Her grades were scraping the floor and her reputation preceded her on the campus of New Mexico University. Blame it on this place. You’ve always hated it.

  Without consulting her, Felice’s parents had decided to move their moderately successful restaurant business to

  Albuquerque from Los Angeles right after she graduated from high school. She was a California girl, born and raised, used to being close to an ocean and used to having the delights of a large city at her fingertips. New Mexico seemed to be a brown, barren, land-locked wasteland in comparison. “Land of Enchantment?” To Felice, “Land of Boredom” seemed like a more accurate motto for the state and its largest city. There was nothing like Venice Beach or the Universal City Walk here. There was no Melrose Avenue, nor a Hollywood Boulevard, where she and her girlfriends would innocently walk down the street on Saturdays at high noon and gawk at the freaks. The only two malls here closed at six o’clock on Saturdays in this tiny, boring desert town. Additionally, there were hardly any black people in the entire state.

  She had asked her parents if she could stay in L.A. with her grandma Anna, but they had refused, citing her frequent disobedience.

  “Your grandmother is retired and in her sixties,” Felice’s mother had told her. “She has raised her own children, and she should not have to put up with you. You are our responsibility.”

  Having been only sixteen when she had graduated from high school, she had to do what her parents said. She knew some girls who would have defied their parents under such conditions, but she wasn’t up to that particular task. A little minor defiance, maybe, but she knew how far to push her luck.

  So, she had moved with them and what a fiasco it had turned out to be. But, the voice of reason spoke to her. Mom and Dad didn’t do this, she thought. You have nobody to blame for this mess but yourself.

  She got up and threw herself onto her bed. How had things gotten to be so bad? She could continue to fantasize about the mess magically disappearing, but she knew that as soon as she set foot on campus at the beginning of the new semester, the pointing and sniping would begin anew—and that she deserved it.

  Shit.

  During high school, Felice had been an indifferent student, showing only occasional signs of interest in history and math classes. Having barely graduated with her class, the only reason she had been accepted to a four-year university like NMU was because of her high College Board scores; NMU had offered her a full academic scholarship. She had been barely seventeen years old at the beginning of her freshman year, having skipped one grade in elementary school. Fearing the worst after her dismal high school performance, her parents had been relieved and overjoyed at her acceptance to NMU.

  “Maybe, you can finally show a little initiative,” Vetra LeCroix had told her. “I know you were bored in high school, but NMU is a demanding school. I know you’ll do well. Just put forth some real effort.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Felice answered obediently in the time-honored way she had of answering her parents. Whether she’d do what they asked was another matter, however.

  “Could you please try to talk Daddy into letting me stay in the dorm?”

  “Now, you know there’s no way he’s going to agree to that, and he’s right.”

  “But if I had gone to Spelman, I would have had to do that anyway.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think that your father was going to let you go back east to school at any rate,” Vetra LeCroix had sighed. “Even, if it was Spelman. You haven’t shown us yet that you can be trusted.”

  It was again time for the patented answer. “Okay.”

  Felice chafed under her parents’ strictness; she had been seventeen, not thirteen. She should at least be allowed to go to one of the campus parties that often occurred on weekends during a given semester. But Joseph LeCroix would have none of it.

  “I went to that school. I know what goes on at those parties and that was twenty-five years ago! I don’t want to even imagine what your ‘friends’ do for entertainment in 1991! The answer is no.”

  “Dad, come on. I can’t just go to school, come home, study, and sit up under you and Mom all the time. I got to have some fun.”

  Joseph thought for a minute. “Fine, I tell you what. You can go to the party and I will come and pick you up at eleven thirty. Okay?”

  That was the end of that particular round of negotiations. There would be no party going fo
r her, probably not until she was thirty. Felice was not about to endure the humiliation of having her imposing father pick her up from a party at eleven-thirty, especially when she knew that they generally lasted until about three. So, during her freshman year of college, her life had consisted of going to school, coming home, and even on occasion, studying.

  Now, it seemed that her attempt to liven up her life had blown up in her face. She was the campus pariah. What had she been thinking? Answer: she hadn’t. She knew that now. Or if she had been, it had been wishful thinking. She thought that she lived in the “modern” age, where a woman could do what she liked and with whom she liked. Liberation...what a joke that word was.

  She could track the course of her slide into disrepute so clearly, in hindsight. Adrienne Anderson, her only remaining friend, had warned her.

  In the summer session after her first year, Felice had begun to do volunteer clerical work at the African American Cultural Center on campus. The racial make-up of NMU’s student enrollment reflected Albuquerque’s population--only 4 percent of NMU’s students were black. But when one walked into the center, one would understandably think that one were at a historically black university. It was the hub of all activity, specifically involving black students and the base of the campus African American Student Union.

  Working for the AACC was a great way to meet people—or so Felice had thought. However, she had made only two friends--Adrienne, and a girl named Vonetta Hall. Being in a place where there was a constant influx of

  activity, Felice figured that friendship would come to her, though that had not been her prior experience. Solitude had been her constant companion growing up. But, now it was time to fully grow up and out of her self-imposed shell—or so she had thought. Others seemed to make friends as naturally as breathing and so could Felice, if she simply put her mind to it. However, when she had expressed her interest in becoming more active in black community activities, Adrienne had warned her to be cautious.

  “Get involved, but don’t let any of them into your actual life,” she had advised.

  “What?”

  “Don’t get too involved with them and don’t let them know your business.”

  Adrienne, a varsity basketball player, was an active participant in many of the activities involving the African American Student Union. However, she was not a member of the union, nor was she a member of one of the two traditionally black sororities that had chapters at NMU.

  “Groups can be useful,” she had told Felice. “But they also have the tendency to breed assholes. Take the ‘Greeks’ for example. They survive on divisiveness and problems, which is not surprising, considering their background.”

  Before Felice had gone to college, she had known nothing of fraternities and sororities. Her interest was piqued. “What’s the deal with them anyway?”

  “You know about the Greeks, right? I mean the real ones. Ever heard of the book, Stolen Legacy, by George

  G.M. James?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not surprising, since it was published in the

  fifties. My mom bought it for me when I was about twelve. It seems that the ancient Greeks stole most of their culture from the ancient Egyptians, according to George James.”

  “So what?”

  “Felice, the Egyptians were ‘black.’”

  “Wait a minute. No, they’re not. They’re Arabs. I’ve seen a lot of them on TV.”

  Then Felice remembered something she had thought upon first seeing the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He had looked just like her Uncle Richard.

  Adrienne looked at her friend with impatience.

  “The media puts out the ideas that it wants us to have. I’ve been there, Felice. I’ve seen the ruins. Those people were mostly black people. Funny how TV always manages to focus on the white-looking artifacts whenever they’re filming in Egypt.”

  “Oh yeah, and sure most of the Egyptians are Arab now, but we’re talking about thousands of years ago. Is the racial make-up of this continent the same as it was a thousand years ago, or even three hundred years ago?”

  “Okay, you have a point. So, what does this have to do with the black Greeks?”

  Adrienne sighed. “The very basis of their existence is deception, girl. Black Greeks-what an oxymoron!”

  “It’s pronounced ‘oximeryn,’ with the accent on the second syllable.”

  “Whatever. I think my pronunciation applies better. You get the point anyway, right?”

  “I guess. But how do you steal somebody else’s culture? Do you snatch it out of their pocket and run?”

  Adrienne looked at Felice as if she had sprouted a second head.

  Felice grinned and decided to let it go. She thought Adrienne might be a little paranoid about groups, and she saw no harm in associating with the black people who were “Greeks.” How wrong she had been. Did these “Greeks” have the older Greeks to blame for their behavior? And she really didn’t care about all of that “history” anyway. All she knew now was that she was paying the price for not having

  listened to Adrienne about the here and the now in the first place.

  As always, the shower felt good after practice. Kevin Hart opened his eyes and looked down at the drain as soap, sweat, dirt—and a little blood--drained away. Saturday’s game would be a tough one, against UCLA, number one in the Pacific Athletic Conference and number three in the nation. His own school was number one in its conference, but number fifteen in the nation. During its thirty-year history, the Western Athletic Conference had rarely had a football team in the top twenty.

  The practice had been a good one. His passing average had dropped a bit in his senior year, but he was still the number five-rated quarterback in the NCAA. He felt the now-familiar nervousness he usually felt before a big game. Not nervousness per se, but of the standard anticipation-caution emotional mix. At six feet five inches, he was a large enough man to withstand most of the hits that came with the quarterback position. However, he had a tendency towards slimness, so, unlike many of his positional counterparts, he had a strenuous workout regimen that bulked him up to a powerful two hundred thirty pounds, from the wispy one hundred seventy that he had weighed as a freshman.

  So, Kevin could take a pounding with the best of them. This quality, along with his height, speed, and accurate passing arm, made him a formidable and feared presence on the football field. It also made him a big target. Defenders made it a point to try to take him down, sometimes viciously. During his junior year, he had suffered a late-season fracture of his right leg after one such hit. NMU had still been conference champion that year, but his injury had effectively ended his school’s hopes for a national championship.

  So, unlike most young men, Kevin had a healthy sense of his own vulnerability. I’ll be careful, he thought as he towel-dried his brown, straight hair. But we’ll still beat the Bruins down!

  I hope.

  As they stepped through the front of NMU’s practice facility, Kevin and Malik Hayes, Kevin’s main receiver and best friend, had an immediate entourage. The two had met three years ago, upon Malik’s first road game as an NMU Tiger, after he had become Kevin’s road roommate. Room assignments had been given alphabetically, by last name.

  After that game, the two had instantly become inseparable. However, the friendship was not without its bumps. Kevin, who had grown up in Albuquerque, had not had much contact with an inner-city. Conversely, the Detroit-born Malik, in spite of his intrinsic good nature, came with all the preconceptions and defenses that young men required for survival in an inner-city. Additionally, Kevin was white and Malik was black, which could have created its own minefields. At the beginning of their relationship, it nearly did.

  Like all college athletes, Kevin and Malik were big fish in a small pond. However, they were more than the average “big men on campus.” Due to their exceptional abilities, they were nationally known, a separate breed even from the average athlete. Consequently, they received speci
al perks and privileges nearly everywhere they went--not only on campus, but all over town: free meals, free cab rides, free everything, if they wanted it. However, Kevin had been taught by his father that the word “free” usually came with some kind of price, even if the price wasn’t money. As a result, his father provided him with a generous allowance. So, often, Kevin would refuse the constant gratis goods and

  services that he and Malik were offered, and would insist on paying both of their tabs. Malik didn’t like it at first.

  “What? You think you gotta hand out crumbs to the poor black boy from the ghetto? My daddy may not be some crooked lawyer, but he makes an honest living.”

  Kevin didn’t understand. “What’s your problem? When I pay for a meal for a poor white boy from Chicago, like Strazinski, he doesn’t say shit but ‘thank you.’”

  “Oh, so now I’m supposed to be grateful for crumbs from the Massa’s table?”

  “Wait! So buying dinner for somebody is a racial issue now? I need to take notes. Got notes for the test?”

  Malik paused. “So, you told me you don’t have any brothers and sisters, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I do. I had an older brother. He’s dead now. I have another older brother, who, basically, should be dead. He’s a crack-head. I have an older sister who’s in the Army. She’s, like, the star of the family. For the moment, that is. But I am the entire hope of my family. You? You do what’s expected of you. Your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfather before him graduated from NMU. I am going to be the first person in my family to graduate from

  college. I was one of the very damn few to graduate from high school. My father gave me something called pride.”