Neely: A Life Of Eddy Rake

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Neely is a man of confusion. He is a bottle of mixed feelings for a man he loves, or hates… When Neely was in high school he was known all throughout the town as the Messina Spartans quarterback. Nothing in Messina mattered more than their precious football game. Grades came easy for every football player, because the teachers loved them for the sport. This didn’t help them prepare for the real life ahead in the academic level. From the football aspect the sport taught them many things: How to fight for something they love, how to work together to achieve a common goal, and when to band together when everything falls apart. The man who made all this possible was a man whom everybody loved, respected, or downright hated. His name was Eddy Rake.…show more content…
East Pike, and the Spartans were getting it handed to them. The boys waited in the locker room to hear Coach Rakes ter, for what seemed like an eternity. Finally Rake and the fellow coaches came in, Rake walked right up to Neely and said, “You miserable excuse for a football player”(156). Then a sudden, unexpected backhand from Rake connected so hard with Neely it broke his nose. Neely said “With instinct, I swung”(156) knocking him out cold. While the other coaches frantically tried to get a handle on the situation, the players stepped in and kicked the coaches out. With this incident, Rake had left a permanent bruise on all of his…show more content…
He was not an ordinary Spartan football player, he was one of those kids who barely made the requirements to become a Spartan. He always stood out…and not in a good way. He was so bad at kicking and punting, the team just decided to go for it on fourth down. But Rake saw something in Nat that nobody else did, determination. After Nat was done with his football career he went to college and discovered his true self. When he moved back to Messina Nat worried what people would think of him when he came home, and whether they would treat him differently, or embrace him for who he is. He opened a coffee shop that welcomed people like himself, gay. For the first few years he struggled to keep the lights on, but Coach Rake would always stop in to buy one of Nat’s coffees and talk about books. “We’d sit in the corner over there and talk about books; never football or politics, never gossip. Just books”(92). Coach Rake was the first person in Messina to accept him. Once the town saw that the most important man in town accepted Nat, the rest slowly followed. Rake showed Nat one thing, Pride. “He had enormous pride, something he taught us
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