The Boy Who Couldn’t Miss

by Laurence Dahners

  As Johnny Argo trotted back out onto the field, he saw that the Benson defense was suddenly bigger than it had been. They’ve sent in their first team again, he thought with a spike of worry. He tamped it down.

  Joining the huddle, he looked around at the second-string group Johnny’d come to think of as Hax’s team. Hax surveyed the huddle as well. He said, “We’ve scared ‘em and they’ve sent in their first team again. These guys look a lot bigger than the ones we’ve been playing against so far. You guys worried?”

  There’d already been some worried looks. When Buchry brought it up, the guys who hadn’t already been glancing across the scrimmage line looked over at Benson’s defense. But a moment later they’d all turned back to their quarterback and calmed their expressions. Johnny looked at Hax who appeared completely cool. Johnny felt his own emotions settle. How’s Hax do that?

  Then Johnny thought, the football team shouldn’t be too calm… “Hell no!” Johnny heard himself say. “If they’re big, they gotta be slow. We’ll just run circles around ‘em.”

  “All right,” Hax said, “On this next pass play Coach’s got our receivers flooding the left side of the field and I think it’s a great strategy. But… there’s gonna be a lot of coverage over there too.” Hax looked at Johnny, “You’re supposed to be providing extra blocking on the right side of the pocket, but unless there’s a lot of pressure, after a three count, I want you to roll off onto the right flat. If no one else’s open, I’m betting I’ll be able to shovel the ball to you and you’ll have a clear run down field.”

  Johnny stared—this definitely wasn’t part of Coach Hayes’ playbook—but then he narrowed his eyes and growled, “You get me the ball, we’ll make those bastards sorry!”

  When the snap came, the Benson defensive line crashed onto Lareta’s guys like an avalanche. Johnny threw himself into helping the right tackle for a moment, then rolled off and looked back at Hax expecting to see his friend going down under a couple of those big slabs of beef. They had, in fact, broken through the line, but Johnny saw Hax do one of his little dances, holding Benson’s tackle off momentarily with a straight arm, then arching like a matador as he twirled out of the way. Johnny was so busy admiring Hax’s move that he almost failed to notice Hax had already tossed the ball and it was sailing toward him. At the last moment he realized what’d happened, grabbed the ball, and turned down field.

  There was no one in front of him!

  Johnny managed 78 of the 80 yards to the goal line before Benson’s safety made it across from the left side of the field to shove him out of bounds on the right.

  With first and goal at the 2-yard line, they tried sending the fullback up the middle, but Benson’s goal line defense stopped them cold. They tried having Johnny dive off tackle, but Benson stopped Johnny short of the line this time. Now it was third down with 2 ½ yards to go. Johnny’s exuberance had faded markedly after he’d run into what felt like a brick wall on the last play. At least we should get a field-goal, he thought, already disappointed.

  Coach Hayes sent in a pass play, which Johnny thought was only sensible considering how their running game was going. Hax calmly gave the play to everyone in the huddle as if they hadn’t just gotten crushed on the last two plays. Once again, though he could hardly believe it, Johnny felt his own nerves settling and could see everyone else regaining their composure. At the snap though, he started to wonder how he could have felt calm. He bolted into the end zone. Lareta was attempting to flood the zone with receivers, but a glance back showed Benson’s defense forcing their way past Lareta’s offensive line. Johnny found himself tightly covered. Everywhere he looked, Lareta’s other receivers were covered as well. He glanced back at Buchry and saw the young quarterback ducking a tackle, then another one, then actually jumping over a third who’d taken a shot at his ankles. In the process of dodging tackles, he’d dropped back 10 or 15 yards! That’s not good! Johnny thought, Coach’s gonna be pissed if he goes back far enough we can’t even make a field goal.

  Johnny ran past Hollis in an attempt to rub off his defender. To Johnny’s astonishment the guy covering him crashed headlong into Hollis and the guy covering Hollis taking them all down.

  Johnny looked desperately towards Hax, hoping he was still on his feet.

  Hoping he’d see Johnny was open.

  The ball was already on its way.

  It hit him right in the chest!

  The score was 38-33!

  They made the extra point to make the score 38-34.

  We could do this! Johnny thought. One more touchdown and we could win!

  Although Lareta’s stands were erupting with excitement and everyone felt like the momentum was on their side, reality suddenly struck. Benson recovered Lareta’s onside kick without difficulty. They marched efficiently down the field to make another touchdown with 16 seconds left on the clock.

  With the score now 45-34, Lareta no longer had a chance for anything but a moral victory.

  Still… it was the best loss Johnny’d ever be a part of.

  The locker room after the game was a strange place. Of course, Hax’d never been in the football locker room after a game, so he wasn’t sure what it was normally like. He imagined that after a loss everybody was pretty down like they were on the baseball team. And, in fact, the team certainly wasn’t celebrating. However, the second-string players were grinning and nudging one another, obviously quite proud of their near come back. Hax felt a lot of almost surreptitious slaps on his back that felt congratulatory, even if they weren’t accompanied by such words.

  He also noticed Jurgens, the first team quarterback, glancing at him, not looking happy at all. Some of the other players from the first team eyed him uncertainly. They have to be wondering whether we only did so well because we were playing against Benson’s scrubs and whether they would have done even better. After all, we only made two out of four successful plays against Benson’s first team.

  Coach Hayes came in and congratulated the team on doing well against Benson. He mentioned how Benson had almost made the state championship game last year and the fact that Lareta had done well against them was something to be proud of. He picked out a few plays and players from both the first and second teams for special praise. This included—but didn’t particularly single out—Hax because of one of his pass completions that had been pretty long.

  Hax admired the way Hayes managed to get through the entire speech without saying anything about how the second team scored more points than the first team. Hax might be excited about how he’d played and be hoping to play more in the future, but he didn’t want to put down or dishearten the first team either. Hax thought Hayes walked the fine line of praise, criticism, and encouragement very nicely, leaving them all looking forward to the game next week.

  When Hax finally left the locker room, his heart leapt to see Hallie waiting for him. As he approached, she leaned up away from the wall, then took two steps to throw her arms enthusiastically around him. They spun around once while hugging. As they did, Hax saw Darren Elias watching them with an expression that looked… longing. As he and Hallie walked out of the building, he thought, Hallie might not know it, but Elias has a thing for her. I’ll have to… his thoughts broke off as he realized that he had absolutely no idea what he might need to do to keep Hallie for himself. Hax’d started admiring Elias for the way he played football and thinking he’d like to be his friend. But he didn’t want Elias’s friendship enough to give up Hallie.

  Hax desperately wanted to go somewhere with Hallie, but they only had learners’ permit and no access to a vehicle. Hax’s parents were waiting outside to give him a ride home in their car, so Hax and Hallie were limited to merely holding hands as they walked toward the waiting vehicles, then waving to one another as they separated.

  As Hax got in the family car, his father crowed, “You played better than the first-string quarterback! They’ll move you up to first team next week!”

  Hax tried to tone down his fath
er’s expectations. “I was playing against Benson’s second string. When their first team came back in, we only had two of four plays go well.”

  Ravinder’s eyes widened, “Yes, but one of those was for 78 yards!”

  Hax shrugged, “It wasn’t the play as designed. None of the receivers were open, so, in desperation, I tossed it to one of the running backs who’d been blocking.”

  “Really?” Ravinder threw Hax a glance and a grin, “It looked to me like that running back quit blocking on purpose, took a couple of steps, and looked back at you.” He raised an eyebrow, “Almost as if you guys had talked about it before the play started.”

  Hax snorted when he realized how quickly his father had seen through their ploy. “Well, we did talk about the possibility. But I’d rather the coach didn’t know we were inventing plays out there on the field. We’re supposed to run the plays he sends in to us. So, if you could avoid mentioning it to anyone else…?” Although, Hax thought, if an amateur sports fan like my dad saw through what we did out there, I’ll bet coach Hayes’s already figured it out too. And if he hasn’t, I’ll bet coach Dotson points it out to him.

  I hope they aren’t pissed…

  Chapter 5

  The dorm room door opened and Madison came in. Looking up, Roni asked, “How’re you doing?”

  Madison shrugged, “Okay, I think. My thoughts on the whole thing vary from hour to hour. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been horribly violated, other times I think you guys kept him from doing anything significant. Lately it’s been mostly along the lines of you guys getting there in time.” She paused for a second, then continued, “You remember I have class with Indigo? The tall girl who wants to send all the roofie dealers to prison?”

  Roni snorted, “Yeah, she’s kinda hard to forget.”

  “We had our class together today and afterwards she told me she sent this doper friend of hers out to find roofies. He’s given her some contact information.” Madison pulled out a sheet of paper, “She wrote it down because she doesn’t want a record of it on any of our texts or emails.” Madison held it out to Roni, “Indigo thinks you’ll know what to do next.”

  Me?! Roni thought. Out loud, she said, “I thought Indigo said she was going to turn the information over to the police.”

  “Yeah, but you told her it should be done anonymously so that they couldn’t track it back to us. She figured you knew how to do that.”

  Roni felt a little cross-eyed, “I suppose I could email it from one of the computers in the university library.”

  “Oh, that’s a great idea.”

  Madison wiggled the piece of paper and Roni took it, “Okay…”

  ***

  Hax sat in his English classroom keeping his eye on the door and anxiously waiting for Hallie to arrive. She sat in the seat next to him during second period and he hadn’t been able to talk to her before their first class. Distractingly, someone tapped his shoulder from behind. A girl’s voice said, “You’re Hax Buchry, right?”

  Yes Allison, Hax thought at her, and I was Hax Buchry last week, and last year. In fact, I was Hax Buchry the entire last decade that you’ve been ignoring me.

  Allison Inglis was very pretty and, until now, had never even seemed to notice Hax was alive. This despite all the years they’d been attending the same schools. So, it probably wasn’t surprising that she wasn’t sure of his name. Nonetheless, he turned his head a little and nodded while still trying to keep his eye on the door.

  “And you play quarterback? You’re number eleven?”

  Ah, that’s why she’s noticing me, he thought, but he did nod politely.

  “My brother said you played really well Friday night,” Allison said.

  Hax didn’t roll his eyes, but he wanted to. Instead, staying polite, he said, “Thanks.” Then he saw Hallie in the door—with Elias! Elias was talking to her and she was turned toward the jerk. A sick feeling rushed through Hax.

  Hax turned to face Allison and forced a smile, “Your brother’s a freshman right? Warren?”

  Allison nodded, “He’s crazy about football. He went out, but didn’t make the team. He’s still kinda small.” She lifted an eyebrow at Hax, “He thinks you’re going to play pro ball someday though, is that right?”

  Hax felt a little bit startled, “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I am kind of hoping that I might be good enough to get a scholarship to college. My family’s not rich, so I could use the help.”

  Allison leaned toward Hax and touched his elbow gently. She arched a delicate eyebrow, “Warren thinks a football scholarship’s a foregone conclusion. Are you really that good?”

  Embarrassed, but pleased, Hax shook his head and tried to look unhappy, “Probably not.”

  The teacher called the class to order. As Hax turned to face the front, his eyes passed over Hallie. She’d taken her seat and obviously been watching and listening to his conversation with Allison. Maybe now she’ll see what I feel like when she’s hanging out with Darren Elias. Still feeling hurt, he didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t even try to catch Hallie’s eye.

  ***

  After they’d finished their warm-ups at the beginning of practice, Coach Hayes called the whole team over to one area of the field and talked to them using a bullhorn. He congratulated the team on doing well against Benson, and managed to do so without saying anything about how Lareta’s first team had struggled. He did say, however, that he’d felt like they’d struggled because they’d gotten tired. He proposed that they needed to be more prepared to sub players in and out so they could stay fresh. “Therefore,” he said, “rather than practicing as we have been, mostly as separate first, second, third, and fourth teams, we coaches have decided we should have you subbing in and out of the various teams here in practice so you’ll be ready to do it during games.”

  Hax found himself leading a second team that was suddenly leavened with unhappy first teamers and peppered with a few excited third-string players. To add to the confusion, the coaches frequently swapped the different players in and out. It was certainly different than playing with the guys he’d gotten used to playing with almost every day. He quickly learned to use the huddle to remind the third team players of their special roles in a play. Unfortunately, he found that a couple of the first-team guys also needed some help knowing their assignments but, of course, didn’t like it when the sophomore quarterback gave it to them. Nonetheless, he kept calmly reminding the guys who had special tasks in a particular play what their roles were.

  At first Hax wondered if he’d get a chance to lead the first-team, but soon got so deeply involved in trying to lead his hodgepodge of first, second and third teamers that he forgot all about it. He’d expected that the confusion they were experiencing would render them ineffective; however, the defense seemed to be even more affected by playing with people they hadn’t worked with before. On pass plays, Hax found it a fascinating mental challenge to recognize where the defense had screwed up coverage of his receivers and throw the ball to someone who was completely uncovered rather than to whoever his assigned primary or secondary receivers were.

  The offense was making big plays and Dotson spent a lot of time yelling at the defense. After one such episode, Dotson stalked his way over and Hax was afraid he was about to get shredded as well. Instead, the coach spoke quietly, though somehow managing to make it look as if he was raining criticism on Hax as well. He said, “You’re throwing to whoever the defense is failing to cover instead of your assigned receiver, right?”

  Hax nodded, wondering if he should try to defend himself.

  He didn’t need to explain anything though. Still speaking quietly, Dotson said, “Way to go! Our defense’s gotten lazy. They’ve learned to recognize what play the offense is running and defend against that one because none of the other quarterbacks ever go to their third or fourth receivers. You’re teaching them some valuable lessons.”

  Toward the end of practice, the coaches had them sort themselves back ou
t into their original first and second teams. Dotson came to the second team huddle with a sheaf of papers and said, “Okay, this coming Friday we’re going to be playing against Wilson. Last Friday one of our alumni scouted Wilson’s game against York and charted their plays for us. We’re going to practice a few of Wilson’s somewhat exotic plays, then you’re going to run them against the first-string defense so they can get used to what they’re going to be seeing.”

  Hax could see his guys felt somewhat disappointed to be relegated to the role of practice dummies for the first-team, but he found it kind of exciting to be learning about another team’s special plays. Dotson showed them a diagram of a “reverse,” something not in Lareta’s play book. They’d start a sweep to the right, but then the right wide receiver would take a handoff while running in the opposite direction toward the left side of the field. Though Hax would soon learn that this was a fairly common trick play, since Lareta didn’t run it, he hadn’t heard of it. He thought it looked really exciting. Unfortunately, the first two times they tried to run it, Johnny fumbled the handoff to Wayne Johnson. Dotson stopped play to have the two of them try the high-speed handoff a couple of times without the rest of the team. Eventually they were able to run a reverse that came off smoothly.

  Then they practiced a fake punt, something Lareta hadn’t worked on much, but that Hax thought they should’ve. They ran a couple of plays that were relatively simple modifications of plays Lareta normally ran, then it was off to try them against the first-string defense.

  Because of all the swapping around the teams had been doing, it wasn’t until they got over to run Wilson’s plays against the first team that Hax realized Elias had been fully moved up to the first-string defense. It felt like a blow to find out that his nemesis had been moved up to first-team but he hadn’t. He worried whether Hallie’d prefer going with someone on the first-team.