I did not set out to become a ghostwriter for sports personalities, but when the publisher has you in purgatory, there’s almost nothing you won’t write in order to get out. You would be surprised to see which towering literary figures of the twentieth century produced worked in the ghostwriting mines; consider You Are Not Loyal, Or A Man by Pat Riley with Marv Grobott (long rumored to be a pseudonym for Don DeLillo) or I Pity the Drool: The Dog Training Secrets of Mr. T (an open secret that it was written and tested by Joyce Carol Oates, who was bitten dozens of times during research). I found myself in the crosshairs of the publisher after my novel I Bet You Philistines Won’t Even Read This and its followup I Guess You Didn’t were both released to deafening silence in the book press. I was crushed and fell into a months-long drugs-bender where I repeatedly claimed that I had written the book Dubliners and spent weeks affixing my name to every copy I could find with stickers. They banned me from 24 New York book stores and thirteen branches of the library. I genuinely thought I had produced the 1914 Irish masterpiece. “Jaysus,” I screamed as the city’s burliest galoots from Library Security worked me over in an alley.
I was told I would have to pay back my advance on my newest essay collection War Crimes and Cigarettes, but I had already spent it on a really cool jacket that had a picture of my face on the back, so I was in no position to fight my editor when he demanded that I write Roar From the Valley: How Leaders Win the Winner’s Way, for James Franklin, the coach of the Penn State football team. “Wait, isn’t that the…” I said, and my publisher said “Don’t bring it up.”
I met Franklin at his spacious office in State College after a long and frustrating interpretative study of various parking restrictions.
“Three minutes late,” Franklin said to me before I could even introduce myself. “We don’t lollygag here at Penn State. We run. You owe me three laps.”
I laughed. I thought he was joking. He was not. “Three laps!” he said. “Of the office?” I replied. That’s when the whistle came out. He tooted at me as I took three halfhearted laps around his spacious office, coughing and sputtering since I had just finished about four cigarettes on the ride over and make it a point to refuse to exercise because of Art.
Franklin told me now that I’ve earned his time, and it was time to talk about his book.
“You know, I don’t want to just crap out another coach book about lessons for leadership and winning,” he said. Well, I did. I figured that I’d write a few thousand words about being in shorts and yelling at people and how it applied to The Boardroom and I’d be free to finish my essay about how I was sick of seeing this Pynchon guy everywhere, so when Franklin told me he wanted to get away from that idea, I started to get a little worried.
“I think it would be better not to focus on me at all. Or at least not James Franklin, the man, the visionary, the leader, etc. Have you ever heard of myths and legends?"
I told him I had.
“I want to create something beyond myself. James Franklin is a bag of bones, blood, and flesh. But what if I could forge something larger than myself? What if I, if we, made something that could transcend time and space and would be a way to impart the things I have learned as a Coach, as a Leader and as a Man in a way that would go beyond football and live for eternity?”
He got up from the desk and flipped over a whiteboard. On it, he had written the words “Frank Jackman.”
“Frank Jackman. FBI. CIA. An elite unit that no one has ever heard of. A man of action, thought, philosophy. A fighter. A lover.”
He flipped over another whiteboard. It said Roar From the Valley: How Leaders Win the Winner’s Way: A Frank Jackman Novel.
“I need to know right now if you can do this or if you’re wasting my time.”
“Ok,” I said.
Franklin was a busy man, so I fit into his schedule. I spent late nights in his office listening to him tell me Frank Jackman stories or in the film room as he shadowboxed against his imaginary antagonists, uually organized rings of thieves or street gangs that talked like they were in the 1950s. In the end, after several months, the book fell by the wayside. The publisher wanted the standard football coach book that could move units. He was not in the eternal myths business. I was almost relieved. I was already planning to work under the pseudonym Tad Craddler, which I had used previously to send abusive letters to the Paris Review, but I could tell Franklin was disappointed. So, with his permission, here are some selections from Roar from the Valley: How Leaders Win The Winners Way: A Frank Jackman Novel.
I.
Frank Jackman was not usually the biggest man in the fight, but he was always the last man. Jackman had studied every martial art you have ever heard of and several that you haven’t, but he didn’t often need them. First he would talk to the suspect. “There are 27 bones in the hand and wrist,” Jackman would say in a menacing growl-whisper, and then he would patiently explain how he would break each and every one of them. That was enough for all but the most determined henchman to lay down their wrenches and bo staffs and give themselves up. For the most obstinate, Jackman had to give a demonstration, a little presentation that he put together made up of punches and sometimes kicks.
II.
Frank Jackman was the greatest quarterback in the history of Pennsylvania high school football. He was also had three masters degrees in physics, forensics, and classics, and was the first person to own a street-legal ATV. By age 29, he headed up the FBI’s Motorcycle and Ninja Heists Division. His division head, Agent Lou Ryers, wanted to promote him to a desk job, but he refused. He had offers to join the CIA, where they would let him create his own elite unit and also the NSA, DIA, and ZIA, an organization so secret that no one knew it even existed. But Jackman stayed put. He had his team here, in the FBI, and he had a really cool apartment that was also a dojo and it would be an enormous hassle to move all of his swords.
III.
“Only seven, Jackman? Must be getting old and slow,” Moose said after throwing a masked jewel thief into a trash compactor. Moose Pfuncher blocked for Jackman in high school and college and had joined the FBI with Jackman after graduation. That was a challenge. Moose was not built for books, and it took Jackman months of preparation to get him through his entrance exams. In the end, they rigged up an elaborate mirror and semafor system to get him through his final multiple choice test, but no one in the FBI would complain at the results. No one other than Jackman had ever beaten him in a fight, and Moose was also great at intimidating suspects into confession by biting things that absolutely should not be bitten into. Jackman also knew that Moose would take a bullet for him– in fact, he had, three times. Once in the leg, once the elbow, and once in the buttocks. Moose loved to guilt Jackman into doing things by wistfully pointing at his damaged butt, which is how the two of them briefly owned a karate-themed bar and grill until they got shut down by the city because troublemakers kept getting thrown through a jukebox.
A thief popped out behind Moose and prepared to hit him with a priceless antique hat rack, but Jackman threw an enormous diamond and hit him in the forehead, knocking him into a pile of subdued criminals. “That’s eight,” Jackman said.
IV.
Frank Jackman arrived at the scene. Everything was neat and clean. The glass cases were intact and undisturbed, yet he immediately ascertained that they were empty. The prize Jewels of Happy Valley seemed to have vanished. “Eddie what have you got?” he said. Eddie was straight from the academy, constantly writing in his notebook. You have to look up from that book and take a look with your eyes, is what Jackman always told him, but the kid was all right. “Clean as a whistle, Agent J,” Eddie said. The thieves had left not as much as a hair or clothing fiber at the scene. Jackman assessed the room, looking for marks. Anything subtle could be a tell. Once, he determined that a gang of thieves had used fake tracks to make it look like they had driven through the Louvre on motorcycles when they had simply descended from the ceiling, but Jackman had utilized his extensive knowledge of motocross to instantly tell they were not the type of tires that a real thief would use for a museum. The French government had wanted to hire him to to lead their entire art heist department at a time when thieves were hauling off Monets and Manets at a rate of dozens per week. “Non,” Jackman said.
Jackman analyzed the surroundings. “It doesn’t make sense, Agent J,” Eddie said. “It’s like they were never here.”
“Funny you say that, Eddie,” Jackman said, staring at an empty jewel case with a loup. “What I’m thinking is that it’s the jewels that were never here.” He took out his phone and called Walleye Baxton back at HQ. “Get me a list of every train carrying a jewel shipment to the Happy Valley Jewel Museum in the last six months,” he said. These weren’t art thieves, he determined. These were train robbers.
V.
Jackman clung to the side of the train as it careened around a mountain curve going far too fast. He had managed to detach dozens of cars containing shale gas and now only the car with a crate carrying the Lion’s Fang jewel was attached to the engine. He steadied himself and climbed the ladder to the roof. And there they were: the perpetrators. One of the thieves one the roof was crawling toward the engine hoping to slow it down but kept getting knocked back by the wind. Jackman laughed as he got into a tactical crouch. This gang may have been made up of courageous and brilliant master thieves not afraid of committing cold-blooded murders, but they clearly were not versed in Train Combat. But Frank Jackman was. He was certified to fight on thirteen different types of train and one of those carts that you push up and down.
He quickly advanced on the fleeing thief and grabbed him. “Time to complete your training,” he said. That’s when the throwing star flew up and knocked the tiny sunglasses off of Jackman’s face. He immediately ascertained that there was another hostile on the train, directly in front of him, based on the trajectory and motion of the throwing star. He let the thief he was holding go and he yelped as he rolled across the roof of the train desperately looking for something to grab onto. Then he heard the throwing star thief yell over the roar of the wind and train engine. “It’s a pity you came all this way to die, Agent Frank Jackman.”
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