“I’m all in.”
“What do you mean? ‘All in’ to what?”
Bret hadn’t thought about why he was still in Lexington until Heather asked him the question moments before. He had no answer for her, and she didn’t follow up on his attempt to change the subject. “Bret. Why are you here? Why aren’t you back home with your loved ones?”
“Uh…basketball. My team needs me.”
“Bollocks. A foolish game—“
“You’ve spent how much time in Kentucky and you think basketball is foo—“
“You’re avoiding my question, Bret Bearup,” Heather interjected, her hands on her hips, looking him eye-to-eye despite being her 5-foot-6 height and the 13-inch height differential between them. “You need to ask yourself what you’re doing here and why. I’m stuck here, Bret. I can’t go home. I’m trying to change what I fear is inevitable. What about you?”
Only then did Bret notice the dozens of people around them listening in on the conversation. He didn’t notice the Reporter’s car speed into the stadium parking lot, nor the Reporter jump out of the vehicle after it screeched to a stop.
He didn’t answer her question.
“Now or never, everyone, let’s go!” yelled one of the organizers somewhere behind Bret. He turned and saw people begin walking in his direction, and in moments he found himself in a mass of people walking, away from Commonwealth Stadium. He turned to Heather, and she wasn’t there, and kept walking while trying to find her.
“Cool, man.” Bret turned to his left and saw a pudgy, half-disheveled student wearing a University of Kentucky toboggan and sweatshirt, star-struck from being in the presence of a Bluegrass celebrity.
“Excuse me?” Bret said as he continued to look for Heather.
“I mean, that’s cool, man, that a basketball player’s doing this. Marching with us,” the young man said. “I’m Paul. I’m from Louisville. Big-time Cats fan all my life.”
“Bret…you probably already know that.”
“Uh, yeah. Saw you guys play Florida. Hope it wasn’t The Last Game.”
“Not as far as I know,” Bret replied, remembering he had just intentionally skipped practice and that he was likely in deep trouble with coach Hall as a result. “We play at Vandy on Sunday.”
“I hope,” Paul replied. “I got friends in Nebraska. Some of them are marching for peace in Omaha. Talking to them helped inspire me to get off my butt and try to do something, to tell Reagan and Ogarkov to stop, you know?”
“Yeah. I get it.”
“That why you’re here?”
“You know…I guess so. I guess I want peace, too.”
“I’m scared to death.”
“What?”
“I’m scared, man. Last night, I had a nightmare. The mushroom cloud from that movie last fall, in Kansas after a nuclear war. Dozens of it, all over the freakin’ place. I was somewhere near here, trying to get out of town when they went off. I woke up screaming, man, freaked out my roommate. I was alone.”
“Alone? You said your roommate was there.”
“The dream. In the dream. Everyone I knew was killed by one of those bombs. That’s what got me to commit to this. Not my buddies in Nebraska, not my family back home. That dream. I tell ya, man, I’m scared to death. I got a bad feeling about all of this, we’re not gonna make it—“
“Come on. They won’t go that far.”
“Nobody thought they’d go as far as they have. I want to see my family, man. I want to live. Don’t you?”
Bret pondered that, as the group continued its brisk walk from campus towards downtown.
—again, a group of two- to three-hundred people marching from the UK campus into downtown, towards Mayor Scotty Baesler’s office. The crowd appears calm, so far. I’ve been told there have been no incidents involving this moving crowd of people apparently inspired by peace marches across the country, and I’ve also just been passed a note which says ‘police are shutting down roads along the route’. No word as to what that means for local traffic, but if you’re downtown or headed downtown, you might want to change your route, and stay tuned to 59 WVLK for updates as the station gets them—
—we go now to WKYT sports anchor Rob Bromley with a bit of related news on the march.
Barbara, I’m told that there are several UK student-athletes who are marching with the crowd, including basketball player Bret Bearup—
Cliff Hagan’s secretary heard her boss curse, quite loudly, from behind the locked door of his office. He’d later apologize to her for the outburst, but he currently had other things on his mind.
He picked up his phone and placed a call. “Get me Joe,” he barked to the student manager on the line.
Four minutes later, head coach Joe B. Hall picked up the receiver on his desk. “Cliff, we got a situation here—“
“You’re looking for Bearup?”
Hall paused. “Well, in fact, yeah, we’re looking for him. He’s supposed to be HERE. Is he there?”
“No, but I know where you can find him. Turn on Channel 27.”
“Channel 27…why in hell would he be there?”
“Not there, Joe. In that damn march.”
“What march?”
“Turn on the TV in your office, dammit! Bromley’s still talking…he knows more than WE do. Get him back here, I want to talk to him!”
Hearing the click on the other end, Hall turned his TV to channel 27, watching Bromley discuss Bearup being in the crowd and speculating on the other players. Hall groaned, then saw two of his assistant coaches, Leonard Hamilton and Dick Parsons, standing outside in the hallway. He waved them into his office and explained the situation.
“You two make sure the other players are where they’re supposed to be and run things until I get back — and before you ask, I don’t know when that’ll be,” Hall said. “I’m driving down there to try to get to him before that crowd reaches the Mayor’s office—“
“They’ll think you’re a part of it too, Joe,” Parsons said. “Send a manager there.”
“Bret won’t listen to a manager, but he’ll listen to me. He’d better. Cliff Hagan’s pissed over this, and I don’t blame him. I want to wring his damn neck over not being here and telling somebody where he went. Cliff wants to talk to him, too.”
“Yell at him, more like it,” Hamilton said. “I’d like to know what the hell Bearup was thinking, too.”
Hall got up from his chair and stepped from behind his desk. “I think I can head them off before they get to where they’re going.” Hall’s phone rang and he picked it up. Hagan was on the other line.
“Joe. I just spoke with Mr. Singletary,” Hagan said of Otis Singletary, the university’s president. “He wants everyone to stay put.”
“Stay put?”
“Singletary says it’s some kind of First Amendment thing. He wants to talk about this thing, whatever it is, so I’m headed to his office. He did tell me he was told there’d be legal issues if we tried to punish him for going on the march.”
“Hell, we don’t even know why he’s there!”
“No, but we can’t punish him for it. Maybe for skipping practice without permission. He also told me he’s got friends watching the crowd along the route, and guess who’s in the back trying to catch up to Mr. Bearup?”
“Better not be anyone else on my team.” Hall looked up and saw only Hamilton, who mouthed ‘no as far as I know’. Parsons stepped out of the room to talk with the team’s longtime equipment manager, Bill Keightley, in the hallway.
“Tipton,” Hagan replied. Jerry Tipton, the beat writer from the Lexington Herald-Leader assigned to cover the team. “Somehow he found out about this march and sped down here. Got his car towed from the stadium parking lot for illegal parking.”
“Good Lord,” Hall groaned. “That’s a good enough reason for me to try to get to Bearup first before that bastard—“
“All the more reason to stay where you’re at,” Hagan said. “The whole damn media’s gonna be down there. Wait ‘till they get back.
Then we talk with him.”
—ESPN has learned from multiple sources that the Southeastern Conference presidents were involved in a conference call earlier today and unanimously voted to play through the weekend. One source said the decision was the presidents, quote, ‘telling the Russians as a group we won’t stop playing on account of them’. Another source said the decision was made independently from the Big Eight Conference, that ‘the league respects the decision made by the Big Eight was best for its membership, and the SEC presidents think their decision is best for the SEC and its fans’.—