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Gately’s cognomen growing up and moving through public grades had been Bim or Bimmy, or The Simulator, etc., from the acronymic B.I.M., ‘Big Indestructible Moron.’ This was on Boston’s North Shore, mostly Beverly and Salem. His head had been huge, even as a kid. By the time he hit puberty at twelve the head seemed a yard wide. A regulation football helmet was like a beanie on him. His coaches had to order special helmets. Gately was worth the cost. Every coach past 6th grade told him he was a lock for a Division 1 college team if he bore down and kept his eye on the prize. Memories of half a dozen different neckless, buzz-cut, and pre-infarcted coaches all condense around a raspy emphasis on bearing down and predictions of a limitless future for Don G., Bimmy G., right up until he dropped out in high school’s junior year.

Gately went both ways — fullback on offense, outside linebacker on D. He was big enough for the line, but his speed would have been wasted there. Already carrying 230 pounds and bench-pressing well over that, Gately clocked a 4.4 40 in 7th grade, and the legend is that the Beverly Middle School coach ran even faster than that into the locker room to jack off over the stopwatch. And his biggest asset was his outsized head. Gately’s. The head was indestructible. When they needed yards, they’d shift to isolate Gately on one defender and get him the ball and he’d lower his head and charge, eyes on the turf. The top of his special helmet was like a train’s cowcatcher coming at you. Defenders, pads, helmets, and cleats bounced off the head, often in different directions. And the head was fearless. It was like it had no nerve endings or pain receptors or whatever. Gately amused teammates by letting them open and close elevator doors on the head. He let people break things over the head — lunchboxes, cafeteria trays, bespectacled wienies’ violin cases, lacrosse sticks. By age thirteen he never had to buy beers: he’d bet some kid a six he could take a shot with this or that object to the head. His left ear is permanently kind of gnarled from elevator-door impacts, and Gately favors a kind of long-sided Prince Valiantish bowl-cut to help cover the misshapen ear. One cheekbone still has a dented violet cast from 10th grade when a North Reading kid at a party bet him a twelve-pack on a shot with a sock full of nickels and then clocked him under the eye with it instead of the skull. It took Beverly’s whole offensive line to pull Gately off what was left of the kid. The juvenile line on Gately was that he was totally jolly and laid-back and easygoing up to a certain point but that if you crossed that point with him you better be able to beat a 4.4 40.

He was always kind of a boys’ boy. He had a jolly ferocity about him that scared girls. And he had no idea how to deal with girls except to try and impress them by letting them watch somebody do something to his head. He was never what you’d call a ladies’ man. At parties he was always at the center of the crowd that drank instead of dancing.