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CHAPTER 7 - HOW MY DICK PICTURES ENDED UP ON JOHN ZIEGLERS BLOG

Mike McQueary had always been so confident. For a while he felt invincible. People used to ask him for autographs, he would remind himself. Circumstances had evolved rapidly, seemingly overnight. He wondered if he had developed agoraphobia. He rarely left his parents house anymore, and when he did so he went very late at night. A paranoid feeling that he would be recognized seemed to follow him everywhere he went, and inevitably lately he always was recognized no matter what time of day it was or where he went. With a look of misery he strolled through Wegman’s, throwing food impusively into the cart he pushed along slowly through the aisle, thinking bitterly back on his life and thinking with astonishment how everything had changed so rapidly.His pensively dark mood was interrupted suddenly, when he felt the painful sting of something hit him in the back of his head. He turned around in confusion and surprise and spotted it, a large pear bouncing and rolling in the grocery aisle. His eyes darted around to see who had thrown it, and they quickly settled on two teenagers. They looked to be around 18 or 19, and a overwhelming sense of outrage boiled up inside him. The two Penn State freshman began to cackle at his surprise.“Hey!” Mike McQueary screamed across the grocery store.“YEAH F**K YOU MIKE McQUEERY,” one of the Penn State freshmen responded.“F**k you, you f*****g little mother fuckers!” he screamed back, totally losing control for a moment. An older woman stared at him in horror, and then narrowed her eyes and disgust, clearly recognizing him. Embarrassed he lowered his eyes and slouched over the grocery cart and continued to shuffle along throwing food into the cart with a look of pure misery. He didn’t even care what he ate anymore. Everything had been wrecked. His life was ruined, he thought disdainfully. He was certain he would never be able to seperate himself from the scandal. Jerry Sandusky had totally destroyed his life. He had nothing. He couldn’t even get a job at Walgreens as a checkout clerk because of who he was.McQueary had begun to obsessively follow himself in the nose. Google searching his own name every day to read the horror stories they told about him in the press. It was getting worse and worse, not better. One night a google news alert popped up on his phone, and he rolled over in bed and tried to fall back asleep but moments later he turned over and impulsively read it. It was the worst one he had read yet. Graham Spanier had been fired weeks ago, but he had recently taken to the press.“Mike McQueary was not fired because of the Jerry Sandusky family,” Graham Spanier told John Ziegler in a smug little tone. “That’s a false narrative propogated by McQueary. The actual truth of the matter is McQueary was fired from Penn State because he has a flaming addiction to gambling. The second reason he was fired is because he used a Penn State issued cell phone to send pictures of his penis to a woman while he was still married to his wife.” Mike McQueary fumed with outrage and humiliation. His heart racing as he lay in bed. He turned his phone back on to look at the number of viewers in the video, and his heart sank further with a sense of seemingly perpetual dread. It was true he was addicted to fantasy football and gambled on the game. The second part was also true, but both had occurred years and years before the Sandusky scandal, and Penn State had overlooked both incidents without much thought. Had they wanted to firing him either over gambling or dick pictures, they would have done it five years ago. What Penn State was really doing was trashing him in the press. But McQueary was powerless to fire back under the instructions of the Attorney General’s office, as he was preparing to testify in the Sandusky trial that was looming ahead.McQueary remembered that incident very clearly and started thinking about it often after the interview with Graham Spanier. Penn State had called a meeting to investigate the alleged misconduct. He had heard about it months later. He heard that in the meeting the athletic administrators had come to his defense, asserting to upper leadership that McQueary’s identity could not be identified. He had discovered during that meeting that they had put the photos up on a large projector in front of the room so that they could be seen more clearly to assess whether McQueary’s identity could be positively affirmed. Did it really matter? This had occurred to him many years after. Did it matter if the dick pictures were of his dick or someone else’s? Somehow to Penn State that had mattered, because they were worried the photos might be leaked. So they debated whether it was indeed McQueary, studying his nude genitialia and face and torso that was blown up, and nebulously blurry on a large projector screen.“Well, it’s either Mike or Ronald McDonald,” Joe Paterno had said. He was alluding to McQueary’s flaming red hair.Paterno’s remark had shut the whole meeting down. Paterno was the authority on everything. His positive identity of McQueary was all they needed. Luckily Paterno liked to handle things internally, and he had always had a fondness for McQueary.“I’ll handle it,” Paterno had declared.A week later McQueary had been called in by Coach Paterno for a meeting. He hadn’t the faintest clue what it could possibly be about. Paterno discreetly slid an envelop across his desk with a serious expression.“What’s this?” McQueary asked, picking it up.“Open it,” replied Paterno. So McQueary opened it and looked up in mortification, recognizing the photos that he had sent on Penn State phone.Paterno stared sternly back at him, and said, “You’re going to embarrass yourself and your going to embarrass the team.” If Penn State were ever going to fire him over the photos, they would have done it right then.Bright red in the face with the photos folded back up in his hand, McQueary had been speechless.“What did you learn?” asked Paterno.“Don’t send lewd pictures from a Penn State phone,” he had said quickly.“No you knucklehead. Don’t send pictures of your penis ever.”“I promise I won’t,” Mcqueary had stammered back.“Now get out,” said Paterno. “I’ll see you at practice.”After that meeting he almost never heard about it again, and likely he never would have, except the Jerry Sandusky scandal had happened. Paterno had died shortly after, and then everything had changed. The photos that he thought had been buried forever in an act of forgiveness were now being referenced by the fired Penn State president. And now the entire world knew about it. After the Spanier interview, McQueary decided in the back of his mind he was immune from embarrassment. He could not have been humiliated further.Long before the Paterno interview, shortly after McQueary had been fired from the coaching position, his wife had divorced him. McQueary had always been a trophy for women, and he had always had an easy time attracting them. That all had changed. No women in Happy Valley would look twice at him, let alone date him. Even the women he had dated in the past denied they were ever romantic with him. They were just that ashamed. McQueary had given up on even trying to date women in Happy Valley. It wasnn’t the case anymore that they were all lining up and vying to be the center of his attention. Now his name was associated irrevocably with that of Jerry Sandusky. He had become Happy Valley’s scapegoat, a punching bag used mercilessly to assert a collective frustration over the Sandusky scandal. McQueary was hopelessly lonely, he was desperately broke, and he was living like a loser in his old room at his parents house.Sometime in the winter after the Sandusky scandal had hit, but long before Sandusky’s criminal trial McQueary had been driving along a snowy highway around Christmas time when he spotted a twisted metal vehicle that was contorted and burning along side the highway. As other vehicles had whizzed by, McQueary pulled over and rushed to the side of the vehicle and spotted a married couple inside. He didn’t think twice about it. He smashed the windshield and rescued the wife first, unbuckling her seatbelt, McQueary had laboriously pulled her from the burning vehicle and gently set her by the side of the highway before returning to the car to rescue the husband. He didn’t really consider it a heroic act when he was doing it. It had been reactionary. He didn’t think anything would come of it, but the couple had called the newspaper and told the story. McQueary had been surprised, puzzled even that it was newsworthy. It was also the only positive press he had recieved in a very long time. He had felt a glimmer of hope start to flame in his heart. Nobody paid any attention to the article except McQueary, who had read it over and over again until he nearly had it memorized. It was ultimately lost among seas of news coverage about Sandusky. Hidden away on the 21st page of a Google search engine. Still McQueary had felt slightly better about himself, and when the press about Sandusky raged up in the media, he would go back and search for it and reread it. Slowly it disappeared futher and further into the Google search engine index as time wore on.One evening he got a Facebook notification from someone he didn’t recognize. He didn’t open it for several days. He had to be in the right mood to check his Facebook messages, as typically they contained death threats. Several days later he got the courage to open the article.“Finally you got some good press,” was all the message said, and then there was a link to the article about the car crash that he thought that nobody but he ever read. He smiled, which was something he hardly did anymore. He clicked on the profile, “Jess Stewart,” and was stunned to see an attractive woman. He got excited and thought for several days later of the perfect response to her. Finally coming up with something simple and obvious, he held his breath and pressed send. He doubted she would respond to him. And for another day she did not, but then another message popped on his phone from Jess Stewart. He let his guard down, relieved that a woman liked him. Perhaps this scandal would eventually blow over, he had thought then. Maybe it is getting better, he surmised as his heart warmed up steadily to the idea of it. Her messages made him smile. He didn’t know her at all, but it was the idea of progress that appealed to him. She quickly warmed up to him, sympathizing with his situation and even supporting him. McQueary began to confide in her, as she was one of the few friends in his life at that time.When she texted him nudes their texts became more intimate and sexual, McQueary had been lonely for a long time. This went on for several weeks, and she had asked him for photos as well. It wasn’t a Penn State phone he rationalized. This is what normal people do when they date, and one day he sent her pictures. He felt a sudden rush of hesitation, an instinct perhaps? But he sent them anyway. He had grown to trust his Facebook friend and he had rather even liked her. She was the first woman to even look at him twice since the Jerry Sandusky scandal. One day she didn’t respond to him. It bothered him but he didn’t want to scare her away by being too pushy. So he waited a few days and tried her again, only to discover she had blocked him. This threw him back into a spiral, and he descended rapidly back into a lonely miserable funk. She must have had second thoughts and frankly, he didn’t blame her at all for it. If he were a woman, he wouldn’t date Mike McQueary either. That s**t was embarrassing. He wouldn’t even want to be seen in public with the likes of someone like McQueary. So he understood entirely, and in time he even forgave her for it.It must have been several weeks later and his phone went off from an unrecognized number, indicating a photo text. He had opened it and been confused. It was a nude photograph he had sent Jess Stewart, but it hadn’t come from her number. His heart began to race with anxiety. He did not reply. He said nothing. He hoped that was the last he would hear of it. Then one morning he woke up and had 300 facebook notifications. He opened the app in horror figuring it was more press about Sandusky, more death threats and hate mail. Then he discovered a link to the blog post, “Framing Joe Paterno.” With an overwhelming sense of dread in his heart he opened it. And there it was, a 1000 word long article featuring all of the dick picture he had sent to Jess Stewart. His heart pounding rapidly he read the lengthy article about Jess Stewart and the nude photos. Of course the areticle hadn’t featured any photos of her.But it only got worse as he continued to read, as he then discovered Jess Stewart was married. Not only was she married, she was married to Joe Amendola, the criminal defense lawyer who represented Jerry Sandusky. His mind rushed as he tried to calculate all the implications of this. He thought with mortification and fear about his upcoming testimony planned in that trial. He thought about the Attorney General who had specifically instructed him to stay out of the media, an order which he had obeyed without question. He was contemplating how he would tell them. But before he could decide the Attorney General had personlly called him.“Mike,” the Deputy District Attoreny Frank Fina had inquired with an accute sense of urgency and a dramatic sounding tone: “Did you text Joe Amendola’s wife pictures of your dick?”“Well,” he said sounding perfectly stupid to himself when he said it. “I didn’t know she was Joe Amendola’s wife at the time.”“Why the f**k are you texting people pictures of your penis at a time like this? What are you thinking? Are you trying to destroy this trial?”“I just wasn’t thinking,” he flushed with embarrassment, as the prosecutors anger came boiling and barreling at him through the cell phone.“Have you seen John Ziegler’s blog post?”“Yes,” he reluctantly admitted.“You realize we’ll likely have to address this in litigation. We’ll have to file some sort of protective motion or something to keep this from being an exhibit at trial.”His heart starts to pound at the thought of his dick being an exhibit in a pedophelia trial, “Well file the motion,” he said urgently, suddenly envisioning a solution.But he had been quickly disappointed, as the prosecutor had declared with exasperation: “There is no garuantee any protective will get approved.”“Well what kind of success rate do you have?” McQueary asked, desperation seeping into his voice.“I don’t know. Nobody witness has ever before sent a picture of their penis to the wife of opposing counsel. I have no precedent for this. But I’m glad you are worried. You should be. You should be worried and embarrassed. Hell, I’m embarrassed and that’s not even my penis.”“Oh my god,” he said, feeling hopeless.“Yes, I’m going to have to talk to Attorney General Tom Corbett about this, and see what we can do to fix this clusterfuck. In the mean time don’t talk to anyone. In fact don’t leave your house unless you text me first. And it goes without saying to stop texting pictures of your penis.”Fina hung up then. I’m an agoraphobic, Mike thought suddenly. He decided he wouldn’t leave the house till trial. He opened the horrifying blog and reread it.“Michael,” his mother called up the stairs.“Not now,” he yelled back enraged.“You’re father needs to talk to you,” and he heard it in his tone. They had seen it too.He hangs up. I decide I’m not going to leave the house again till trial. I think about leaving the house never again. I believe I am agoraphobic, I think.“Michael,” my mother calls up the stairs.“I can’t talk right now,” I scream back.“You’re father needs to talk to you,” and I can hear it in her tone. She’s seen the article too.“No way,” he roared down the stairs.That s**t spread like wild fire all across the valley. He turned scarlet red everytime he thought about it. He almost died from anxiety waiting to see if his dick would be an exhibit in a pedophelia trial. He walked around the Valley with the unsettling knowledge that 95% of people had seen his dick.John Ziegler had set him up, and now he was flaunting the dick picks all over the internet in his usual flamboyant fashion. It didn’t prove a goddamn thing. It proved that Mike was a straight man into adult women. But he can’t stop thinking about.This was his low point. This was before his civil lawsuit against Penn State. This is when he was hopeless and embarrassed. There was an angry mob with flaming pitchforks running after him like I was the devil himself. I became the valley’s public punching bag. It was ruthless. I quit social media for a while. I felt like I could trust nobody. Once I saw John Ziegler and I thought about beating the s**t out of him. He was like a wack-a-mole. He was everywhere I looked. And every time I saw him, I thought about the dick picture. Even when I was testifying. I was sitting there looking out over a packed court room and the thought crossed my mind. How many people in this room have seen my dick?But why is that even the story? Why isn’t the story that Joe Amendola is a pedophile lawyer representing another pedophile? Because that’s not as interesting as Mike’s dick. These people are f*****g stupid in Happy Valley. That’s really the first time he thought about leaving State College seriously. He was a laughing stock. But you know what? Happy Valley is a place that sort of indoctrinates you. Its hard to leave the fold. That’s why locals tend to stay. Still in his head he held onto the Joe Paterno narrative. This idea of being a good man and a great athlete. This idea of work ethic, drive, pride and morality. He never second questioned Joe Paterno. What the f**k would Joe have said? He was dead by then. He could hear his voice in his head. Never in those months did Mike ever stop and think that his dick picture was nothing in comparison into the immorality of what he did. That thought doesn’t cross his mind. He was in the Penn State cult. You don’t question the pope. He’s unscrutable.Then he felt it again. Another object bounced off his head as he was pushing his cart through wegmans. He lost his s**t then. He started chasing the fuckheads through the grocery store, sprinting untill he caught up with one and tackled him.Mike saw a cop in the corner of his eye as he was about to throw the first punch. By this time a crowd had gathered and they were taking pictures with their phones. She looked at the tossle on the floor and back at the box of dented fruit rollups that had hit Mike in the head.It was the same cop who got fired after she outed Christopher Lee for molesting kids in the Boal Mansion. Mike got up and put his hands behind his back, lowering his huge torso so the short cop could snap the handcuffs on him. He made it easier for her. He marched steadily and resolutely through the parking lot towards her patrol car. He didn’t give a f**k anymore he thought.“Stop,” she said.He turned around, “Did I say turn around? I said stop.”She snapped the handcuffs right off of him.“What did you do that for?” he asks her.“I don’t think your a bad guy. I think you did the best you could. I think your just misunderstood. In fact, Mr. McQueery, I feel bad for you. It’s horrifying what Happy Valley is doing to you.”“Is that sarcasm?”“You can’t be doing this s**t. You have to keep it together. Things are bad enough for you as it is. What do you have a death wish? Can you imagine if this got out? Can you imagine if you got arrested for beating up teenagers in the grocery store?”“I have no words. I don’t know what I was thinking.”“Just go home Mike McQueary and lay low. Maybe one day this will all blow over, you never know,” she says.My life is over whether she arrests me or not, he thought bitterly. Right now Joe Paterno is dead. Right now Gary Shultz and Tim Curly are fire. Right now Penn State as we knew it is dead. The dream is simply gone. And right now Ray Gricar is painted as a hero. Right now people think he is some sort of victim. If you think about it Gricar had a confession. Yet he didn’t prosecute. As yourself again about Ray Gricar, Centre County’s batman. Go back and think about all of this.Think hard: He could have stopped all of it. Ray Gricar could have put an end to this whole thins years ago. Well before 1998, he knew about Jerry Sandusky. So at the end of the day Mike thinks about that too. Why the f**k is no one pointing their finger at Ray Gricar? Ask yourself that.A rage burned in his heart every time he thought of it.

CHAPTER - THE OTHER PEDOPHILES LIVING AROUND PENN STATE
Mike loved Happy Valley. He did so ever since he was a little kid. He had big blue and white dreams under a big blue and white sky and lived a big blue and white life. He grew up in a blue and white world living a picture-perfect life. He succeeded effortlessly seemingly, a high school quarterback and homecoming king. He checked all the right boxes and did all the right things. He didn’t fit the type. With a mop of red hair, frecks and crooked teeth, he was the type to get picked on and beat up at school, but Mike McQueary was lucky because Mike never did. In high school, he had a nice flashy car and the girls chased him endlessly. He was bound and determined to do very big blue and white things. Penn State was his dream. It was his identity. It was his religion. Ever since he was just a little kid the world was a blue and white thing. He lived a blue-and-white daydream, until one day he ended and he wished he never did. Somehow he had gone from loving the big blue and white valley to deciding that it was a fucked up place to live.One day Penn State ate him alive, sucking on his bones and eating his insides out, spitting out blood and shards of bone and then stomping all over him. All of it happened overnight. Before that, he had been groomed, polished, refined, and finely engineered to be a blue-and-white success. Hell, some thought he’d be the next Joe. People used to ask him for autographs. He came very close to the big blue and white dream. He was going to be Joe. He might just make it. He got everything he ever wanted. Life just came easy to him. He had the big job, the perfect wife, and even the perfect little kid.Then one day the big blue and white sky in the sheltered little valley suddenly turned black. Happy Valley became a shadowy place. It was a misery. The blue and white daydream had assimilated into a black nightmare. All of it just ended very abruptly. He lost his big job. He lost his flashy car. He lost his perfect wife. He lost his dream house. He even had lost his little kid. The world that had accepted him so easily at every corner had now turned against him.The door of Walgreens sounded loudly interrupting Happy Valley Beaver 101’s Christmas special radio music, and Mike walked through the electronic doors. He wore a pair of navy sweat pants tucked into his boots and a navy wool pea coat dusted with pure white snow. He politely removed his hat and made a beeline for the register. He wasn’t there to shop.A line of people stood there waiting impatiently at the register. So what he attracted stares, he thought to himself. What of it? He smiled pleasantly, ignoring all of it. His mind still swirled like a blue and white snow globe, just thinking of all of it. Finally, he reached the register, where a morose-looking woman with blue and white fake nails and tattoos on her neck stared intently. No way, she thought. No? Maybe. Nah, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t dare. Anyways she heard he had left Happy Valley.“Can I help you?” she asked tapping her nails on the counter.“I need -” he stammered, his big blue and white paycheck flashing before his mind, and then he swallowed hard, sucking up his pride, and began again firmly, “I need a job application,” he said assertively and with a wry smile.“Sure honey, we are desperate with the holiday season coming up,” she replied, handing him a paper application. Mike smiled. See today was going to be a good day, he told himself.“I appreciate your help, Miss,” he said to her with a warm smile.He took the application and the blue ballpoint pen, 11 dollars an hour he read at the top, and then he winced. That’s alright, it’s a good start, he thought. This is another place to begin. He wrote PSU as his last employer and he wrote the abbreviation all lower case, in tiny little letters hoping nobody noticed it. He sucked in his breath nervously and took it back to the clerk, smiling nervously.“I can start right away,” he said in his most charming voice, smiling flirtatiously. She read the application as she snapped her bright blue Bubbelicious gum. “Alright,” she finally told him. “Let me get the manager from the back.”See life isn’t that bad, he thought, tapping the toe of his boot on the ground to the rhythm of the Christmas music. Two women approached the register taking their time, as a long line began to form behind him. The manager took her glasses off the top of her head where they were perched under a blue and white scrunchie, and she read his application studiously as if she were considering it. Finally, she looked up and he smiled at her warmly, a glimmer of hope appeared for a second under the fluorescent lights of Walgreens. Mariah Carey sang in the background as she surveyed him closely as if thinking hard about it.“I’m available to start right away,” he said, “I am local so I can work the holidays,” he continued, “oh and I’m happy to work overtime, as well as nights and weekends.” See I’m ideal he thought, I’m exactly what she needs. But then he started to look more closely at her face and took a step back when he saw the expression in her eyes.“You’ve got some f*****g nerve,” she finally said angrily.Mike considered what to say to this. He had a counter-argument, somewhere. He had already pictured this scene in his mind. Suddenly he was at a loss for words.“You think I am going to hire you? Do you think anyone is going to hire you? I don’t know how you even dare show your face in public. Nobody can believe what you did.”He took out the ripped advertisement from his coat pocket.“It says no experience necessary,” he pointed out. “You have my word I’ll work hard. I’ll be the most reliable employee you ever had,” he assured her.She shredded the application slowly in front of him with a look of pure hatred in her eyes and threw it on the ground, tiny pieces of paper scattered about on the navy carpeting like big white snowflakes.Mike put his palms in the air in surrender, “I perfectly understand,” he began, taking another step back. “Don’t you worry about it.”Mike McQueary put his hands in the air and backed away slowly. A line had begin to form behind him and he bumped roughly into a little kid. She looked at him and began to cry. She was about the age of his daughter, and he reacted instinctively, bending over to see if she was alright, “My god sweetie, I’m so sorry, was that your big toe?”The kid shrieked and her mother suddenly appeared right behind her, “Hey you f*****g b*****d, get away from my kid!”“Yeah f**k you Mike McQueary, stay away from the kids,” chimed in another customer.“Get the f**k out of my store chimed Linda,” looking at him hatefully.“Okay, okay, I’m going” and he began to walk towards the door.The people in the store began a slow sarcastic clap behind him.Mike did not want to go home. He should not have announced his plans to work at Walgreens. He also did not want to be in public. For a while, he just drove all over the valley. The entire place seemed cold and miserable. Snowflakes had begun to swirl about him. He drove up Easterly to his old high school football stadium downtown. He stared at it for a while. He noticed the historic structure was crumbling in some areas. Sunken down in the ground it had walls of stone, which were exposed behind the endzones, where the bleachers did not cover them up. It was the holiday season. Crowds of people passed his car with shopping bags and bright smiles. The streetlights were decorated with little wreaths and red bows. He put his car into drive and drove down Atherton Street to see the Corner Room decorations. The windowsills were lined with opulent bows and garland. The lights inside were bright and he could see that it was crowded and joyful-looking people sat inside. The gates of Penn State were also dripping with Everest green and red decorations.I need to get out of here for a moment, he thought. Mike had initially believed that the little main streets of Happy Valley would warm his heart. Somehow they had made the holidays even harder. Where? He thought. Far away. He turned onto Atherton and headed up to Rothrock driving the 20 minutes in silence as the city faded into the countryside. His SUV turned onto the gravel road edging the game lands and began to angle up the mountainside. The snow flurries began to thin as the truck climbed in altitude. He turned on the radio. This is Happy Valley Beaver station 103.1 bringing you the most iconic Christmas tunes - He quickly shut the radio off. Still, it was hell to be with his thoughts. Life had kept him so busy, he hadn’t been up here forever. The gravel roads meandered back and forth as the mountain got steep and the road could not continue straight vertically. At last, he reached the lookout point, a place where you could look down and see the entire Valley. It was so beautiful to look down on it, he recalled. He got out, slamming the door of his car. The wind blew and snow flurries stung the exposed skin of his face. Beaver Stadium twinkled in the farthest corner opposite him. The busy city full of shoppers glowed with a neon excitement. The wind continued to blow and he looked up. The sky was impossibly white with the storm, clouds obscured any clear view of the sun. But it was setting.Suddenly he noticed that Beaver Stadium glowed red and green with seasonal lights. He had never seen those before. That’s festive, he thought. That’s a classy little touch. When did they install those? He had never seen those before. As high as he was he could not see from that altitude anything except down into the valley. Mountains on all four sides obstructed any view of the landscape beyond it. He used to bring girls up here so they wouldn’t get caught by their parents. He used to show them the view, and say “Look, how beautiful it is.” He used to tell them, “You can see everything from here.” The wind blew harder chilling him through and through. Mike then realized what he was feeling. He didn’t remember ever feeling it profoundly before. It was a profound sense of loneliness, he began to think pensively. He shut his eyes. If he squinted them hard enough the sound of the wind rushing in his ears sounded like the roaring crowds of Beaver Stadium. He would miss those bright lights and the chaos of it all.“Hi Tommy,” he said into his phone.“I’m at Sharkies. It’s loud in here. I can barely hear anything,” yelled Tommy over a cover band in the background.“Merry Christmas,” Mike replied smiling.“How are you doing dude?”“All things considered, I guess I’m alright,” Mike replied. The cover band played noisily on in the background.“I’m meeting up with some guys from State High in an hour,” yelled Tommy. “You want to come down or does your wife got you chained up?”“I’m living back at my parents,” Mike explained. “Sure I can come down. Who are you meeting up with.”“I don’t know where we’ll be,” Tommy said vaguely. “I don’t know whose coming.”Mike understood where this was going, “Ah Tommy, that’s okay. I think I have tentative plans anyway. I was just calling to say Merry Christmas.”“Well Merry f*****g Christmas to you Big Red,” Tommy screamed into the phone.Mike paused for a moment, “Hey I’m going to pass by town probably in an hour or so, I was wondering if you had any pot.”Tommy went quiet, and then said, “Hey man, I’m dry right now.”“Can you call me this week when you re-up?”Tommy went quiet again, and then he said, “Mike I love you buddy. But you’re on the front page every other day dude,” he rambled off, “I don’t know if it’s a good idea I sell you weed right now. You’re a little hot.”“Hot?”“You haven’t smoked weed in years buddy anyway,” Tommy reasoned. “Man I haven’t seen you in at least a few years.”“We can catch up,” Mike replied. “I would actually love to catch up.”“Man, I don’t know dude. You got a ton of s**t going on right now. Maybe we wait till this blows over,” Tommy said.“I understand,” Mike was beginning to get the picture.“Nah you know I love you dude, its just with all thats going down, you know your gonna be watched,” Tommy said and Mike could hear a tone of pity in his voice that made Mike want to suddenly get off the phone. “Let’s catch up when all you got going down blows over.”Mike went quiet.“You cool buddy? You alright Big Red.”“I’m alright,” Mike answered shortly, wanting to get off the phone.“Ahhh buddy don’t be like that. You know I care about you,” Tommy hollered into the phone over the cover band. “Man its just some crazy f*****g s**t. I just got married. My wife works down at city hall.”“I know,” Mike was getting short, “I was there at your wedding, Tommy.”“I just feel f*****g bad right now. Am I being an a*****e?”“Nah man, I get it,” Mike said. “I got to run.”“Are we good Big Red? Are we cool? You ain’t mad at me are you?”“We’re cool Tommy. We’ve always been cool bro.”“Yo Merry F*****g Christmas friend,” Tommy said. “Ricky and Chris just showed up and I got to hop. I just want to make sure your good.”“Get on with them,” Mike said, “I have plans remember. I’m cool, don’t you worry about me. Tell the guys I said hi.”The phone went dead and Mike stood there in the dark, with the snow swirling around him. He looked out across the lights at the valley. I need a f*****g drink, he thought. But he didn’t want to go out. He also didn’t want to go home. He didn’t know where he would go. He’d drop by Champ’s on North Atherton and get a six pack. The highest alcohol content possible, he strategist. He wanted to black out that night. If everyone else was downtown getting wrecked, he might as well do it to. This was just one year on the benches, he told himself. Next year when this is over, he’d be right back there with them tearing it up.Mike drove for 20 minutes, speeding down the hillside. He had never really felt loneliness before. I always had too many plans, he rationalized. Maybe I should enjoy having no plans. He smiled at that. His mother had told him that too. She said that he had never seemed to relax.Mike went into Champs. It was a low key place with a beer cellar in the front of it. He stood there on the slate floor reading the bottles closely. He didn’t really give a f**k about the taste right now. Cheap and low alcohol content was the idea.Scott walked by, and seemed to pause and look twice. Then he turned around on his heel and looked at Mike, “Dude this is a sport’s bar. What the f**k McQueary? You’re going to drive people out of here.”“I’m buying beer and I’ll get out,” McQueary was annoyed just then.“Well hurry the f**k up,” Scott says.“I’m done. I got this, don’t worry about it.”“Well don’t go out front,” Scott objected. “There is a State High reunion. Don’t go walking through the middle of the bar and be starting a bunch of bullshit.”“You want me to pay for this beer?”“You got cash on you?”Mike handed him a a $20 bill, “You got change?”“I don’t carry cash,” said Scott taking the twenty. “Dude if your just buying beer just go across the street to the liquor store. I’m having a hard enough time keeping this place open as it is.”“Merry Christmas.”“You too,” Scott answered walking away.He opened the door and got in his car, and for a while he sat with his hands on the steering wheel. Then he looked over at the six pack. 9.6% alcohol content. He could get wrecked if he drank them all. Good. He pulled one from the case and chugged it. The alcohol slid down his throat and warmed his whole body, and for a second his heart ached a little less. He rolled down the window and threw the bottle hard in Scott’s flower bed that was covered and snow, but he missed. The bottle shattered all over the place. Mike found something satisfying in that move. He opened another bottle and took a sip and put it in his cup holder. He could give a f**k if he got arrested, he thought. It’d be the f*****g cherry on top. Still he drove very carefully away.I had my bachelor party at f*****g Champs Grill, he thought angrily as he drove through town. Scott Lacazzi is a f*****g blown out a*****e. He’s a worthless coke head and everyone knows it. Mike could give flying f**k about him. Mike wasn’t sure where he was driving. Someplace quiet he could drink alone. Someplace where there were no cops. Somehow he ended up in Boalsburg and he parallel parked on a quiet residential street and drank alone, shutting off his car.After two more beers he felt better. He turned on the radio and Blink 182 was playing. That s**t reminded him of the good old days. High school. He turned it up loudly. F**k yes, he thought. F*****g yes, yes. F*****g iconic. Blink 182 made records. He had bought like ten of there CDs. He laughed outloud. They always got stolen or broken. Same with Sublime. They don’t make albums anymore, he smiled. They just make singles. Now he was feeling better. The tension had left him. Thank you for listening to Beaver 103.1, home to Happy Valley’s Nittany Lions and playing you the best -Mike shut it off quickly. His car had grown cold. He started it up and put the seat warmer on. He still didn’t want to go home. Everyone but me is out tonight having a good time, he thought miserably. He drove up Main Street in Bellefonte. It was decorated to perfection. The Tavern in the center of the State College suburb was alive with people. He felt so alone, he thought darkly. He continued to drive up the picturesque little road, lined with victorian mansions. Then he got to the end of it. A darkened mansion, the largest one in town, rose up before him. He stared at it for a long while.Hatred filled his heart. This town was full of rumors, he reasoned, looking angrily at the house. But Jerry had also been “a rumor.” The thing about rumors in the Valley is that they turn out to be fact many times. Murder suddenly crossed his mind. It wasn’t like he wanted to prove something. He didn’t want vindication or redemption. He had felt more like he had been living a lie. And now that he was beginning to see things clearly, he wanted revenge. Afterall he was the scapegoat for Dandusky, so maybe it was time someone be his.What if the rumors about Chris Lee weren’t true, he backpedaled. No. That’s what everyone thought about Jerry. If rumors are repeated for years there is normally a truth to them. As he watched drinking a beer, he saw the front door of the Boal Mansion open. He saw Chris Lee walk out and a lighter flick. Chris Lee stood on the massive wrap around porch of the sprawling old Victorian mansion smoking. Mike watched him with an intensity.As he watched, Chris Lee spotted the headlihgts to Mike’s vehicle down a long drive and walked to the edge of the mansions steps. That’s right you f****r, thought Mike. I’m f*****g watching you. Then he back pedaled. My God, he reflected. I am losing my goddamn mind. He put his car into drive and as he was pulling away he saw another figure open the door and step out onto the porch, a teenage boy. Mike slowed his car and watched curiously, taking a long drink of beer. Anger seethed up within him. No, he told himself. That doesn’t prove anything. Chris Lee in the boy stood on the porch of the mansion staring at McQueary’s headlights.The traffic was terrible. He had finally gotten out of Harrisburg an hour later. What a f*****g s**t hole, he thought. He turned on the radio. The University has not reached out for comment. Students rioted in the street- Mike turned the radio back off and drove in silence. What a f*****g Christmas it was? Harrisburg had made him excited to get back into the valley. He wanted none of this s**t. The meeting with Tom Corbett had been a horror show. He saw what they wanted from him. He could give them part of it but not all of it.“You see this Mike?” asked Fina, sliding a piece of paper across the desk.“I’m not a lawyer,” Mike replied after reading it.“You know what that means.”“No Frank, I don’t know what it means. It’s a one page document from the 1970’s.”“That’s called an Order of Settlement,” Fina replied.“Yeah?”Fina slid it back over the table, “What does the caption read?”“What is a caption?”“My God Mike,” he said. “You are a smart young man. I know you are playing stupid. Who are the Defendants.”Mike looked at the paper. “Penn State, Jerry and Joe.”“And what does it say underneath?”“It says, Mike looked closely at it. “It says they settled a lawsuit in 1976.”“And?”“The terms are confidential,” Mike read, then, “so what? This doesn’t prove anything. Maybe it was a slip and fall. This is a leap. I know where you are going and I don’t get what this has to do with me.”“A slip and fall? They sued for a slip and fall. Why name the coach if someone slipped on a f*****g hot dog bun and pulled their lumbar back out.”“I’m giving you what you want,” Mike was heated. “I’m literally ruining my life to give you what you want. I am testifying in your trial. What else do you want from me?” Tears burned in his eyes, but it was involuntary reaction and he hadn’t known where that was coming from.“Enough,” said Corbett turning back around from the window he was staring out of, “Enough is enough, Frank. This is the Penn State mentality. This is what they are. It’s like confronting a bible thumping babtist and telling them there is no such thing as god. It’s like two people arguing over abortion and one person is pro life and the other person is pro rights. Don’t you get it? You can’t reason with these people. They are drunk on the f*****g coolaid.”“Hey!” interjected McQueary. “I told you I would testify. I am giving you what you want.”“Look you piece of s**t,” hissed Fina. “We don’t just need you to testify. We need you to testify right.”“No, Frank. What you are trying to do is get me to tie the coach into the f*****g disgusting s**t that Jerry did. And I’m not f*****g testifying to that.”“Watch your mouth,” Fina replied.“Just f*****g stop!” Corbett said.“It’s like he’s been f*****g brainwashed. They fucked him left and right and he still walks in here defending them.Corbett shrugged. “Welcome to the fucked up world of Penn State. This guy is no different from the rest of the witnesses. It’s like the goddamn catholic church or a cult. You are arguing with someone raised on Penn State. You won’t change him.”“If you don’t,” Fina was seething with rage. “If you don’t testify right, we can charge you too. You want to go down with your friends?” Fina put his hands in the air, “By all means, we’ll dig your grave for you and put you in it. Do you hear me?”Corbett sat down at the table then, “Stop it Frank. Just stop it. You are threatening the main witness. Mike listen to me. Right now you are the biggest a*****e in America. You are the most hated man in sports. You got that? Do you watch the news?”“You told me not to watch the news,” retorted Mike.“I know you still watch the news,” Corbett said. “Don’t you lie to me. Don’t you try to bullshit a litigator. Litigators are the biggest bullshitters you will ever meet. So we can smell it a mile away. You have a second chance in history to redeem yourself. Right now you are drowning. I’m throwing you a lifeboat. You get that?”Mike nodded but his expression was hardened with anger and defiance.“You’d think we were trying to prosecute the mother f*****g queen of England Tom. He will sabotage this. He doesn’t care what they did to him. Somehow he is still loyal. It’s like they ate his goddamn brain. All of these witneeses are f*****g going to shamelessly defend Penn State.”Mike McQueary was driving and thinking the entire way home. He saw what they were doing. His father had told him Corbett wanted to make a governor’s run. Why take everybody down? Because you want to be famous you f*****g f**k? Why, he thought. What’s the goddamn point of ruining Paterno in all of this? Penn State was already broken. That’s what they didn’t get. It was a culture that lived and breathed by their pride. Penn State had learned. You don’t need to f*****g pummel them into the dust. It was a fame seeking mission, he seethed as he drove.Then he saw it happen right in front of him. A car flipped two times, it rolled off to the shoulder and he had nearly wrecked trying to stop behind the cars that were trying to avoid it. “My God,” Mike said outloud. “I don’t have time for this,” he said pulling over his car. He hadn’t thought twice. He just did it, though very angrily. “I don’t have any f*****g time for this!” he said full of a burning rage. Then he was dashing through the snow. Cars whizzed around him, and then a small flame began to burn from the bottom of the flipped-over car. Mike began to jog in his Penn State sweatshirt, running down the side of the highway cursing at the inconveniance in rage.When he got to the car, he circled it. But there had been no exit point. He could see the flames on top of it. “Why is this f*****g happening today?” he screamed at the sky. He kneeled down to peer through the crushed window shield. “You f*****g people need to be more careful. Jesus f*****g christ.” He looked again back up at the car. “Shut your eyes. Did you hear me? Both of you, shut your eyes or you’re going to get glass in them. Nod and tell me you hear me,” he asked impatiently. They both sat their wide eyed. “Why are you makiing this so difficult? Shut your eyes like f*****g this,” Mike shut his eyes. He opened them and miraculously their eyes had been shut. “Good,” he yelled over the traffic. “Now do that till I tell you to stop.”Mike began to kick hard at the windowshield, till finally one foot had managed to impact the glass hard enough and he had broken through. He reached down and started to peel the glass away. It seemed to be all stuck together. His hands started to bleed. He bent over and shoved his torso through the glass.“Take off your seatbelt,” he demanded.He looked at the woman in the passengerside. She was awake but appeared to be in some sort of shock. “Why are you making this hard?” he asked. “You are going to get us all f*****g killed.” She continued to stare at him her teeth chattering. “Christ,” Mike said angrily shoving his torso deeper into the crunched up car. “Why did you have to do this today?” He asked fumbling around stretching his arm into the car as far it would go. He seemed to fumble for a while, his body sticking half out onto the roadway. “We are going to get f*****g hit any second. I saw that whole thing. How could you drive like that in this weather?” He chastized the driver. “I got it., I got it, I got it.” He finaly said feeling the seatbelt click open. He started to pull the woman out, tugging with all his might. She was like a limp rag in his arms. “Grab me and pull,” he yelled at her. “Do you want to live?” he asked angrily. A car screeched to avoid them, and cars continued to speed by. Mike pulled as hard as he could and finally she came loose with a sudden jerk. “Can you walk?” She didn’t answer, but lay shaking on the ground. “F**k why can’t you f*****g walk right now? Of course not. Everything in life has to be so f*****g hard for me. I never get f*****g lucky with anything.” He picked her up and carried her too his car, trying not to slip in the snow. Cars roared past him as he carried her. “This is the worst f*****g day for you to do this.” He told her angrily. He set her on the front seat of his car. “I’m going for your husband. Do you have a phone?” She didn’t say anything, she just looked at him with her teeth chattering. He threw his phone on her lap. “F*****g pull it together right now. I’m going for your husbend. Call 911.” He started to job back to the overturned vehicle in the roadway, cursing angrily and swearing the whole time.“Grab onto me,” he commanded when he was at the vehicle. He had slid one arm through the busted up glass of the windshield. “Take off your seatbelt and grab on,” he said angrily. “You too? You can’t get your seatbelt either? F*****g s**t.” Mike shoved his body through the windshield, fumbling around blindly to release the seatbelt. Finally he had found it. He started to pull at the driver, yanking hard and the driver screamed out in pain. “You can’t stay in this car unless you want to die.” Mike said without sympathy. “Work with me,” he demanded, the stress apparent in his tone. “For Christ’s sake work with me.” The driver began to scream as he pulled. “Okay. Okay.” Mike stood up and circled the car. There was definitively no other way out. He put his torso back through the windsheld, “It’s just going to hurt for a minute.” The driver screamed when he began to pull at him again. “We have no choice, it’s just going to hurt for a second.” He pulled harder and harder and then finally the driver had come loose. He crashed on top of Mike on the snowy highway. “I bet you can’t walk either, can you?” Mike asked. “Of course you can’t.”Mike picked the man up and threw him over his shoulder. When he got to the car he was pleased to see the wife on the phone, but she had been hysterical and unable to give the dispatch details. She started crying at the sight of her husband and collapsed into his arms, handing Mike the phone. Mike walked off pacing and giving their location, and then in moments came back to the car.He got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. “Close the door,” he said to the driver of the wrecked vehicle. “Her teeth are chattering. Close the door. They are on their way.” Mike turned the heat up to full blast and put his bleeding hands up to it. They were full of splinters of glass and they were freezing cold. He winced at the pain. The woman weeping in the passenger seat looked up at his hands, and then looked at him. “Thank you. Thank you so very much. God bless you. I don’t know what to say.” Mike looked over at her, “what was I supposed to do?” He asked her. “You need to drive slower in the snow next time,” he said angrily, looking in the back seat. “Did you hear me? Slow down next time. You just can’t drive like that in the snow,” he said raising his voice. He looked back at the woman in the front seat. “I’m sorry I am angry,” he said to them both. “That was scary as s**t. I’m sorry to yell at you.” She just nodded, “you’re an angel. You are a hero.” Mike looked at her again, this time perplexed. “I did what anyone would have did. You left me no choice. You need to slow down in the snow. I’m no hero.” She stared him directly in the eye. “But you did have a choice,” she told him, pointing at the other cars running by. “You are a hero. Nobody else stopped.” Mike looked at her incredulously, “Do you know who I am? Trust me lady, I’m no f*****g hero. I’m the most hated man in America. You left me no choice. I just did the normal thing.” But she was still looking at him with an awe that confused him. “You don’t know who I am do you?” She shook her head. “You don’t watch football do you?” he asked her.She shook her head, “A hero,” she whispered, she had begun to cry. She reached out to hug him and he looked at her uncertainly. “Alright, alright,” he finally said, reaching back. She clung onto him like she was holding on for dear life. “See your okay. You’re alright,” he said softening. “You’re the hero. My God that must have been terrifying. Are you alright?” Mike asked looking at the husband. He wasn’t. “Okay, okay,”he said as he held the woman and looked at her husband. “You both are okay. We have people coming any minute.” He peeled her off of him. “Shhhhh, you’re alright,” he told her.Nobody had ever called him a hero before.“Nobody is stopping,” said the woman pointing at the burning car. “Nobody except you.”“Stop that already. You are the hero,” Mike said to her. “You survived. That makes you the hero.” But a little flame had begun to burn in his heart. He hadn’t felt heroic or intended to be heroic doing it. He hadn’t even thought he had a choice. Mike looked at the other cars whizzing by them, and thought about it some more. He watched the cars, probably 100 or more went by. Nobody was stopping, he thought. Then his thoughts grew dark again. Why was nobody stopping? Why was he the only one? The world was a bad place, he reflected. “You guys are going to be okay,” he said suddenly. “We got lucky. Nobody got hit.” He added. “Don’t think to hard about it, because its all over now,” he said. But he didn’t know if he was talking to them anymore, or if he was trying to comfort himself.