#1 Out of the Tunnel

by Patrick Jones

  I took my position on the line and listened intently. Shane told me that during the scrimmage he’d call very few audibles. That way, the coaches would think they were running the offense, but once the season started, Shane said he intended to run and gun.

  Shane counted off and took the snap. Twenty-three red dog was our bread-and-butter play, a play as old as football itself: the Lombardi power-option sweep. With me and Dylan providing full-speed-ahead blocking, Devon took the toss and exploded quickly into empty space. If Shane didn’t make the toss, he could fake it and run to the other end or fire a flare to Orlando or Terry. It used everybody’s strengths, involved both skill and strategy, and made for pure excitement.

  My block was still pulling grass out of his helmet once Devon began celebrating in the end zone. With a touchdown on the first play, the fans in the stands came unhinged just like the screen door on Stan’s trailer. Which, with the cash I gave him, he could afford to have fixed. But I wondered if any amount of cash would fix what I’d done to Amber.

  I joined Devon, Shane, and the rest of the team near the end zone for the post-score swarm.

  Devon patted me and Dylan on our backs. “Great block, guys.”

  “It’s what we do,” Dylan said. We. I liked the sound of that. Dylan kept his word. We were the Big Five, not six, but he hadn’t snitched. Nor had Mike, when I asked him to tell me who’d sent him the photo of Amber. I guess what happened in Big Five didn’t always stay in Big Five. Was it just Mike with the photo? Everybody on the team? Everybody at school?

  “Twelve blue moon on one.”

  Shane announced in the huddle without enthusiasm as we lined up for the point after. Rather than a quarterback sneak, Coach Whitson called for Dylan to carry the ball. I hit my block perfect, and Dylan knocked down the Dunbar Ducks defensive linemen like he was a bowling ball and they were so many pins. That image made me smile; it helped me remember bowling with Dylan when we were kids. (Although even then, we talked about football, not bowling.)

  More congratulations reigned down as the offense left the field. “Good luck,” I told Mike as he passed by. He was starting on special teams. He grunted something and ran hard.

  Coach Whitson called the backs and ends together on the sideline. “First play and a fifty-yard touchdown. Not bad. Not bad at all.” He banged his hand against the clipboard.

  “Coach, with this group, we can do it anytime,” Shane said. We all laughed until Dylan left the sideline huddle to fix his shoulder pads. “He’s not getting the ball again if I can help it.”

  “But, Shane, he’s really good,” I said. Devon agreed.

  “Look, Oscar’s a faster runner,” Shane said, “and Ian maybe blocks just as good, so—”

  “I need daylight out there,” Devon argued. “Oscar can’t create that like Dylan can. Not Ian, either.”

  “Well, I need somebody I can trust to hand the ball to,” Shane shot back.

  “Just throw it to me,” Orlando said.

  In fifty seconds, a fifty-yard touchdown had turned into a five-way non-shouting match. It might have gone on for who knows how long had Coach Whitson not interrupted. “Heads up, ladies. Dunbar just fumbled. We got the ball. What do you think? Two touchdowns in less than two minutes!” Coach Whitson shouted. “Time for the Big Six!”

  Dylan grabbed his helmet along with the rest of us and started toward the field.

  “Wait a second, Dylan,” Coach Whitson said sharply. He put his hand on Dylan’s arm. “Let’s give Ian a chance to run the ball next. It might be his lucky day.”

  13 / FRIDAY, AUGUST 24—AWAY SCRIMMAGE

  “That had better be a playbook,” Coach Z snapped as he walked past me on the bus. I’m not sure why he picked on me. I was probably the only player who had his phone off on the two-hour ride to Xenia. “A scrimmage victory over a weak team like Dunbar don’t mean nothing.”

  I agreed, as I always did with Coach Z, except about one thing. “Coach, this game— can you let Dylan play?”

  Coach Z furrowed his thick brow. “Son, the coaches pick the players, not the team.”

  “I know that. I’m not telling you who to play. It’s just—Dylan really wants it.”

  He squinted at me. “Does he really, Norwood? Does he really?”

  Coach walked off before I could answer.

  As the bus rolled on, I felt more like I was on a train. From the first jumping jack of conditioning until the last down of the season, football would be a locomotive that pushed everything else aside. I closed my eyes and wondered if the train I rode on—the Big Six Express—had run off the tracks. I’d already ruined Amber’s reputation and maybe lost a friend. Could I still jump off safely?

  “By the time we leave tonight, these people will think another tornado tore through their town,” Coach Z explained. Xenia, Ohio, was known for two things: a tornado that wiped out most of it, back in the day, and a football program run by a certain former defensive coordinator and assistant at Troy: Coach Ken Zachary, our Coach Z’s younger brother. We played in different divisions, so we wouldn’t meet during the regular season, only in the playoffs. Playoffs we’d failed to make in the last two years, when Xenia lost in the first round to Athens.

  Xenia’s stadium was pretty old. There was no bursting out of the tunnel to the cheers of Troy fans who bused over to support their team. Last year’s scrimmage with Xenia, at Troy, had been a wild one, with more penalties earned than points. But Coach Z said this year would be different. We’d be disciplined and determined. We’d win, not just because we had the better team with superior coaches and players but because we were better men.

  Really, Coach?

  Orlando returned the opening kickoff for thirty-five yards, which gave us great field position. Field position we got to know very well as, down after down, Xenia stuffed us. Their D-linemen burst through untouched, so Devon, Ian, and Shane couldn’t get going. Shane rarely got time to throw. We had a three-and-out offense. Our effort was there, but our execution suffered.

  By halftime we were down by fourteen. Unlike our fearless leader, who insisted on going for two, the other Coach Z believed in kicking for the extra point. During the half, Shane threw a tantrum, yelling at his line but mostly at Ian.

  “That’s enough!” Coach Z shouted. Shane looked as if he’d been slapped. All preseason he’d been getting away with murder, so maybe it was time for punishment. He deserved it; all of us did. We might have been the team’s best athletes, but the Big Five were not better men. No way.

  “He’s got to put Dylan in,” Devon whispered to me between gritted teeth.

  Coach Z fumed. “Vince Lombardi said, ‘It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.’ And right now, you are not playing like winners. You’re losers.”

  “We’ve got to win!” Orlando shouted. “Losing is not an option.”

  Orlando didn’t use the word we often, so everybody, myself included, seemed stunned. Pretty soon, Terry and Devon were leading cheers, and the locker room came alive. As we started out toward the field, I pulled Orlando aside. “What’s with the newfound spirit?”

  Orlando laughed. “Man, if we lose, then we lose it all. Get me? As long as we win and make the coaches look good, we can do anything. Do you want to lose all of that?”

  We had two minutes left. We needed eighty yards and six points to win. After Ian fumbled twice after the half, Dylan got back in the game. Everything clicked—we marched downfield on a ten-play drive. I did my part not only by throwing vicious blocks but by hauling in a pass on a critical third and five.

  “Five seven playmaker split right on three,” Shane called and then clapped his hands.

  At football camp, I had learned that the hardest thing about being a receiver was not doing anything to tip off your coverage that the play was coming to you. Like any other down where I’d block, I dug my knuckles into the dirt and waite
d for the count. I pushed by the defensive end, took two hard steps to the left, and then spun like a wheel to get open in the flats. Wide open, so I had plenty of time to watch Shane decide to run the ball, up in the middle, into a Xenia brick wall.

  With no time for a huddle, we lined up quickly. Shane called another pass play, one where I provided pass protection. I hit my block while Shane hit Devon in the letters for ten, then fifteen, and finally twenty yards. Xenia scrambled back on defense, and we lined up again.

  Shane called a variation of the same play, except the pass went to Dylan, on my side. I raced through my first block and turned it up full blast, knocking them down like a wrecking ball. The months of practices, lifting, skills, and drills matter the most in a game’s final minute.

  “Twelve dog red three twenty!”

  A power sweep, with me and Dylan leading the way, got us twenty-one more yards. First and ten with forty left on the clock. An ill-advised off-tackle run by Devon gained two yards but ate up seconds that we needed. With no time-outs left, Shane called the play that Xenia wouldn’t expect. The book said to throw to the wide receivers in the corner of the end zone: make it and it’s a TD, miss it and it’s a clock stop with time to huddle.

  It was a risk, but as I cut into space, turned, and looked up, I knew it would pay off.

  “Nice catch, 75.” a Xenia guy said as I stood in the middle of the end zone with the ball cradled against me like a mom with a newborn.

  14 / FRIDAY, AUGUST 31—HOME GAME AND SEASON OPENER

  “Brian, everything okay?” Dylan asked. “You hung over or whatever?”

  My head hung down, but not for that reason. Shane had limited the parties to Saturday nights since we didn’t practice on Sundays. Despite Dylan’s fixed role as starting fullback, he’d been clear he wasn’t going to be part of the Big Six. Which I respected, but the tone in his voice clearly indicated that he’d lost his respect for me. I always thought he was the toughest guy on the team, but obviously that toughness extended beyond the field. Saying no was so hard and yes was so very easy.

  “Party too hard? Too many girls?” Dylan said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m fine, Dylan, fine,” I lied.

  “I don’t believe you,” he countered and sipped his pregame Dairy Queen milk shake. Everybody needed rituals.

  “You’re right, it’s not fine.” I tossed my shake in the trash and went on my way. On the long walk home, I felt like throwing up. I had since the bus ride home from the Xenia game. After hearing the whispers from person to person as the picture moved from phone to phone. “Psst,” somebody would say. “I sent you an Amber alert.”

  As I looked at my phone, I didn’t see the picture. Just the missed calls from Amber.

  “Son, is everything good?” Dad said as I climbed into the car. Normally, I’d go right from school to a home game, but school had yet to start. The first day brought me a sense of dread I’d not felt in a long time, probably since elementary school, when I didn’t know anybody. Now, I’d been to school with some of these people, including Amber, going on eleven years. If I added up everything I’d done wrong in those other years, it wouldn’t equal the last two months.

  “I’m just a little nervous. You know first game,” I answered as I stared out the window.

  “Well, you had us all worried in that Xenia game, but that’s what happens I guess when . . .” Dad stopped talking and clicked on the radio.

  “That’s what happens I guess when what,” I repeated and turned off the radio.

  He stayed silent for almost a mile, but then said, “Well, when you break traditions.”

  “I gave you your money back. I told you we called it off.” Five yards for offside truth.

  “There are lots of traditions in Troy football, Son. Like the player dinner that Friends of Troy Football hosts before each game,” Dad started. By the time we reached the stadium, he’d recounted all of them, even though he understood that I knew these traditions as well as he did.

  “Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it. For some stupid game . . . ,” I mumbled.

  “Brian, what has gotten into you?” Dad asked. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or concerned. Maybe both. “I know it’s a lot of pressure, but trust me, it’s all worth it. All of it.”

  You don’t know all of it, I thought, and you never can.

  “Before I played varsity football, Brian, I was just a stupid kid. I did dumb things and hung around the wrong people. But football, being part of a winning team? That changed everything for me. You just wait. You’ll feel the same way soon enough, so have a great game tonight.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Another father and son might have hugged, but not Big Bill Norwood. Especially since I’d wanted to say, “Dad, you’re wrong. I had to join a football team to do dumb things and hang with the wrong people, and no amount of winning will make that better.”

  “You think something is wrong with Coach Z?” Terry asked as we crowded into the tunnel. I shrugged. “He only quoted Lombardi twice,” Terry added. “Maybe he’s losing it.”

  I laughed and gave Terry a high five. But it was me who was losing it, not Coach Z.

  In the steel tunnel, the sound of the Troy Central High School marching band seemed deafening. Add onto that all the guys, mostly special teamers like Mike or bench players like Ian, making noise and I’m surprised my eardrums didn’t pop. The noise had started earlier with yet another Trojan tradition: cheering parents lining the parking lot, players leaving the lockers for the field.

  “Troy, Ohio, are you ready for your hometown heroes?” the PA announcer boomed.

  The tunnel shook with the vibrations of a thousand-plus feet stomping and hands clapping. Despite the light at both ends, in the middle of the tunnel, where I stood, it was nearly dark.

  “And now your starting offensive squad.”

  The PA announcer would start with the line; then the ends and backs; and then, finally, he’d end up with Shane.

  Near the entrance to the field, my knees buckled from nervousness. Not nervousness at playing in front of my friends, family, and almost every one at school. Not with starting and maybe making a mistake, though I didn’t make one in either scrimmage game and very few mistakes in practices. No, my legs would get me on the field and carry me through the battle. I wasn’t worried about the field or the game but the faces in the stands.

  One face in particular. Amber Murphy. Would she be up there, looking down at me?

  I tapped my cleats against the side of the tunnel and the metallic echo shot through my heart. “Starting at tight end, number 75, junior Brian Norwood!”

  I burst out of the tunnel. Under my cleats, the perfectly landscaped football field felt like quicksand pulling me down.

  15 / MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3—GAME FILMS

  “Norwood, I was impressed. You did double duty. That’s very old school.”

  Coach Colby stood in front of everyone gathered in the school library to watch the game film.

  “Like his dad, like Coach Z, and like me,” Coach Whitson said. “Everybody used to go both ways back when we played.” Coach Whitson seemed clueless as to why everybody was laughing, but I couldn’t care less. Nothing was funny, and nothing I did, not even playing the last quarter of our first game in my old linebacker position due to others’ injuries, was impressive.

  Coach Z’s speech half chewed us out and half patted our backs. We’d won by twenty points but scored only eight of those in the second half. “You can’t coast, not in this division.”

  “You’re lazy because you’re not in the right condition,” Coach Colby said. “That’s why people got injured. Or should I say, asked to come out of the game. Prepared players are healthy players.”

  All of us nodded our heads and grunted. Shane had to be the healthiest of all—I’d never seen anybody drink as much orange juice as he did last Saturday night.

  “Now, since watching game films is new for a few of you, we’re going to break it up. We’ll watch
the first half, then the Friends are bringing in pizza, and then we’ll watch the second half. If you played, take notes. If you didn’t play, take even more notes.”

  More nods, more grunts as the lights went down and Coach Z started his narration of the game, picking apart each play and player. Last year, the films didn’t get this detailed treatment, so I wondered what changed. Last year, did Coach Z think we couldn’t win? Had he not wanted to waste our time? Or this year, did he think we could win it all and want us over-prepared?

  While Shane and the rest of my crew could be heard goofing off when Coach Colby had the floor and the defense was on the field, I paid even closer attention. As great as it was catching the TD pass in the Xenia game and picking up fifty yards receiving in our first game, there was something about tackling. Playing offense was hard work, but after playing both in one game, if only for a short time, I decided D was way harder. It was harder to say no.

  “Dylan, you’ve got to make that block!” Coach Whitson shouted. Dylan had become his whipping boy. If Dylan were on the bench, I bet Whitson would still blame him for a fumble.

  “I know, Coach, I know,” Dylan said with an enthusiastic headshake to show he meant it.

  “This is a team sport, and if your teammates can’t depend on you to do what’s best for the team, well, that’s a problem,” Coach Z said. “Nobody is bigger than the team. Nobody.”

  “Did you all hear that?” Coach Whitson said. “There is no I in the words team, football, Troy, or Trojan!”

  Somehow watching twenty-four minutes of playing time took almost two hours. At one point, Coach Z hurled the DVD remote across the room. It hit the wall near Mike’s head; he had drawn a penalty on a kick return. By the time the film was over, everybody was hungry, tired, and bored. A bad formula.