by Gregg Stutts
But champions were different, he told them. Champions didn’t care if anyone was watching. They didn’t care how hot or cold or lonely it was. They showed up and gave a hundred percent everyday. It was what made the difference between a champion and the guy who amounted to nothing...and blamed everyone else for his lack of success.
It was the “give your all when no one is watching” mentality that allowed Max to succeed in high school and college. He may have had average ability, but he’d always had above average effort. He pushed himself to the point of exhaustion when other guys were hanging out with their girlfriends. He showed up at the gym on the Fourth of July when everyone else was at the lake. He ran sprints in the rain on Thanksgiving Day, because that’s what you do on Thursdays.
How was today any different? If he’d been willing to do all that for football, how could he do any less when it really mattered? When his marriage was at stake? When actual lives were at stake?
Don’t give up.
Chapter 42
Friday, September 27
At exactly three-thirty, the buses pulled out of the parking lot for the thirty-minute drive down to Rogers. Max arranged for the pre-game meal to be delivered from Charlie’s Chicken in Fayetteville. It was owned by a close friend of his. The food was great and so was the service. Mostly though, he liked helping out a friend who was battling cancer.
It felt like his team was ready, but he wasn’t sure he was. It was a rough week with no further contact from Michelle. Not that he hadn’t tried. His calls and texts had gone unanswered. He tried to not think about his wife with someone else, but that was a battle he’d been losing more than winning.
As hard as he tried to convince himself that Dante’s accident wasn’t any of his business, he didn’t actually believe it. The whole situation stunk like his garbage can in the middle of summer. What to do about it was another question. Ms. Jones wasn’t any more interested in talking to him than Michelle was.
And Jack Murphy was in the middle of it all. He couldn’t risk accusing him of anything without real evidence. Jack was still a pillar of the community. He’d done a lot for the high school and the university. A lot of important people thought very highly of Jack.
It wasn’t easy, but by kick-off, Max was able to push aside the distractions and focus on the matter at hand—beating Rogers. They were coming into the game with the same record as Lakeside, one win and two losses. It was too early in the season to say that everything was riding on one game, but it sure felt like everything was riding on one game. At least for Lakeside. They couldn’t afford another loss. He had no doubt Jack would be the first one in Bill Jackson’s office on Monday morning if Lakeside lost another game.
As the Rogers kicker teed up the ball to kick-off, Max understood a loss could easily cost him his job. And he knew the chances of Michelle coming back home to Arkansas to work things out with an unemployed football coach were slim.
The referee blew the whistle and signaled for the game to start. Max looked right, then left, at his team and assistant coaches. He’d done the best he could to get his players ready to play. He looked again at Dave Turner and wondered how much of his job, his life and his marriage depended on a defensive coordinator whom he no longer trusted.
Chapter 43
After dinner, Chris dropped Michelle off at her parents’ house. They were still awake, so she made an excuse about feeling tired and said she was going to bed. It was awkward, but it was hard to know the rules of etiquette when dating your old boyfriend while your husband was a thousand miles away asking for a second chance.
She’d become involved with Chris before she realized what was happening. Involved? Is that what she was? Involved? What did that even mean? It had happened so fast. She’d been vulnerable. Chris was available. And now they were inseparable.
Max wasn’t making it easy though. She looked again at the text he’d sent. I’m trying. They’d been through so much. Did she owe him a second chance? Or was it a third chance? Or fourth?
He abandoned her for three years. There was no other way to put it. He let her grieve the loss of their daughter completely on her own. He was the one who pushed her into the arms of someone who cared. Someone who wanted her. Someone who loved her. And someone she had once loved. And maybe loved again.
And now Max wanted to know what made her feel loved. Shouldn’t he know? Why was it her responsibility to tell him? After fourteen years of marriage, he should know all things. He said he was trying. Well, she’d been trying for years, not just weeks. She’d been trying through the pain of losing a daughter, through the pain of watching a husband slip away.
There was a knock at the door.
“Can I come in?” her mom asked.
“Sure, mom, come in.”
Her mom sat on the bed. “How are you, sweetie?”
Immediately, her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know, mom.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m really confused.” She laid her head on her mother’s lap and was glad she didn’t press for details. They were quiet for several minutes while her mom stroked her hair.
“I know I’m going to hurt one of them,” Michelle said. “Or both.”
Chapter 44
The sun seemed to hang in the sky a few extra minutes to finish painting the clouds brilliant shades of orange and red. The entire stadium seemed to be enveloped in a Martian atmosphere of reddish pink. And as the referee signalled for the game to start, the last glimpse of the sun disappeared behind the home bleachers.
A moment later, Lakeside took the opening kick-off and returned the ball to their own forty-five-yard line. It was a great way to start, better than their first three games. And four plays later, they were in the end zone. The extra point put them up by touchdown early in the first quarter.
The rest of the first quarter was scoreless until Rogers tied the game with no time remaining after a seven play, eighty-three yard drive that took just over eight minutes off the clock. In the second quarter, the teams again traded touchdowns, making the halftime score, 14-14.
Often a football game comes down to halftime adjustments. Max had seen it dozens of times. It’s great to start with a strong game plan, but as Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight boxer, once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get hit.”
On this night, both teams got hit. Rogers made adjustments and scored on all three third quarter possessions. Fayetteville didn’t have an answer for them. By the end of the third quarter, Rogers was up 35-14.
Max hoped for a couple drives in the fourth quarter like they had near the end of the Siloam Springs game. He called some of the plays that worked for them in that game, but Rogers was ready. They’d watched film. They’d seen what worked against Siloam Springs. And they were ready.
With just over six minutes left in the game, Lakeside was on the Rogers twenty-eight yard line. A touchdown would bring them within two scores. Still a long shot, but they were still in it.
Lakeside’s quarterback dropped back to pass. A blitzing linebacker just barely got a hand on the ball as it was released. The pass was picked off at the one-yard line and returned ninety-nine yards for a touchdown. Max dropped to a knee as he watched the Rogers safety cross the goal line. He wanted to throw up. The game, the season and his job were slipping away right in front of him.
On the ensuing kick-off, Lakeside fumbled at their own eight-yard. A dozen players dove for the football. Rogers recovered the ball at the Lakeside eight-yard line with 3:49 left in the game. The remaining Lakeside fans were mostly parents and girlfriends and even some of them were booing. He wanted to hop the fence, run up into the bleachers and take out the first person he saw. Maybe he deserved to be booed, but a bunch of high school kids didn’t.
Rogers ran the ball up the middle on first down for a gain of two yards. They ran the same play on second down and gained three yards. On third down at the Lakeside three-yard line, Rogers ran the same play again. This time, no one on the Lakeside defense even got a hand on the ball carr
ier. With the extra point, the score was 49-14.
In Arkansas high school football, when a team is up by thirty-five points in the second-half, the “mercy rule” is invoked to keep the clock running and just get the game over with. Of course, Rogers had already shown them mercy by running the same play three downs in a row, which Lakeside still couldn’t stop. Max knew what it was like to be ahead by thirty-five, but he’d never been on the receiving end of the mercy rule. It was humiliating.
With less than two minutes remaining, Rogers put their sophomore defense on the field. Lakeside’s starting offensive was still in the game and scored on a seventy-nine-yard run with no time left on the clock. It was their first points since the second quarter. They missed the extra point, which was only fitting, to make the final score 49-20.
The final score wasn’t as close as it indicated. The second-half had been the worst exhibition of football he’d ever seen. He couldn’t get on the bus back to Lakeside soon enough.
After shaking hands with the Rogers head coach at midfield, Max turned to head to the visitor’s locker room. The first person he saw was Jack Murphy making his way onto the field and heading right toward him. He put his head down and altered his course to avoid Jack, but it didn’t work. Jack was on a mission.
When he was within ten feet of him, Jack started to speak, but Max pushed past him and yelled, “If you know what’s good for you, Jack, you’ll keep your mouth shut and stay out of my way.”
He looked over his shoulder and caught the look of surprise on Jack’s face. Maybe no one had ever stood up to him before. Well, someone needed to and Max was glad he’d done it. He was sorry some of the parents and players had to hear it, but Jack had it coming.
As he passed through the gate leaving the stadium, he looked back to see if Jack was following him. He wasn’t. He was standing at the twenty-yard line talking to Dave Turner.
Chapter 45
It was eleven-thirty when Max sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out his legal pad, for whatever good it would do. What were his game plans accomplishing? His team had just fallen to one win and three losses. It might have cost him his job. He’d probably be fired on Monday. Maybe Jack had already talked to Bill and was letting Dave know he’d put in a good word for him.
He turned the page. The marriage game plan was next. Well, he’d tried. As far as he knew, he was now an unemployed football coach who was on a fast-track to losing his wife as well. Whatever he did now was probably too little too late. He’d come up with some ways to make Michelle feel loved, but he’d never have a chance to try them out.
He flipped to the next page—the Lakeside game plan. Despite his best efforts, that had backfired too. He was no closer to knowing what happened to Dante. And by “sticking his nose where it didn’t belong”, as Jack had put it, Dante’s mother was…what? What was she? Missing? On vacation? Dead?
A phone call to the police wouldn’t accomplish anything. What could he say that wouldn’t make him look like a paranoid fool? The one thing he knew for sure was that the police were wrong about the accident. There had been rear end damage to Dante’s car. And there had been skid marks. There was no way his brakes had failed. And Max had evidence to prove it.
He laid his head down on the table. No matter what he tried, he wasn’t fixing anything. He was actually making things worse. He should have learned by now there were some things you just couldn’t fix. Sarah’s illness taught him that. Or should have.
He took her to every specialist he could find. He took her to Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He took her to MD Anderson in Houston. He took her to Sloan-Kettering in New York. He researched alternative treatments and therapies and supplements and diets. He had a game plan for defeating leukemia, but it didn’t matter. Leukemia had won. It had beaten Sarah. It had beaten him. And it had beaten his marriage.
He’d never thought of himself as a quitter, but this was different. What were you supposed to do when everything you’ve tried has failed? Sometimes it’s just merciful to let the clock run so everyone can go home with at least a little bit of dignity left.
He pulled himself out of the chair, went to the living room and flipped the television on to SportsCenter. The top story was Hurricane Paul, which was making a turn to the north. The exact path was still unclear, but some models had it hitting the New Jersey coast, which would create issues for the Monday Night Football game between the Giants and the Cowboys in three days.
He reached for his phone to call Michelle, but stopped. It was after midnight in New Jersey. He didn’t want to wake her or be disappointed again if he talked to her.
You let me down, Lord, you let me down.
He turned the television off.
You let me down...again.
Chapter 46
Saturday, September 28
“I’m sorry, Max,” was the first thing Willy said after they sat down on the deck.
“Thank you,” he said, knowing Willy meant the football game, but could just as easily have meant his marriage or his life.
“Tell me how are you doing.” Before he could answer, Willy added, “The truth.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. The familiar lump in his throat materialized on cue. Fortunately, the door opened and Rose brought coffee and homemade biscuits and gravy to the table.
The whisps of steam coming off his plate signaled fall had arrived. He cut a piece of biscuit and dragged it through the sausage gravy. He wouldn’t have believed anything could taste better than the cinnamon rolls, but he would have been wrong.
Willy was busy with his own plate, but Max knew he was also waiting for an answer to his question.
And he wanted the truth. “Willy, I’m trying. I’m doing all I know to do.”
Willy nodded and took another bite of a biscuit dripping with gravy.
“We got whipped last night,” Max said. “It was bad.” He finished a bite and took a sip of steaming coffee. “I was embarrassed. I’m hoping I still have a job.” He looked beyond Willy to the lake. “I doubt I do though.”
“Can you come back from one and three?” Willy asked. “Is there enough time to still make the playoffs?”
“We’ve got six games left. If we go five and one the rest of the way, then we’ll make it in for sure. We might get in if we win four more games and finish five and five. Either way, we’ll be a low seed, but we’d be in.”
“Can you do it?” Willy asked.
If he’d been asked that question a month ago, it would have been easy to answer. Like everyone else, Max had believed they had a good chance at a state championship. But then Dante was killed. And they lost three out of their first four games. “We’ve got the talent to win all of our remaining games,” Max said.
“But?” Willy said.
Max finished off a biscuit, then said, “I feel like every time I turn around there’s something broken, something that needs major attention. On the team and in my own life.”
Willy’s eyes were closed. Max wasn’t sure if he was praying, listening carefully or fully enjoying the mouthful of food he was still chewing.
“And I know there’s something going on with Jack Murphy,” Max said. “Something bad. I know it in my gut.”
Rose brought out a carafe of fresh coffee and topped off their mugs. “I’ll be inside if you need me,” she said and went back in the house.
“I’d let the stuff with Jack go, but I get a bad feeling when he’s around,” Max said. “I wouldn’t want this to go any further than you and me, but one of my players is dead and his mother is missing. And Jack is somehow involved.”
“What makes you so sure?” Willy asked, eyes open again, leaning on the table.
“He’s threatened me at least twice,” Max said.
“Hmmm.” Willy stroked his chin. “Let me encourage you to not ignore those feelings. But be careful.”
“I will be,” Max said. “I just feel like if I let it drop, then he’s going to get away with something that he shouldn�
��t.” Max took another bite and sipped some coffee.
Willy finished his last bite and took a sip of coffee. “Changing the subject, how did you do on your list of ten ways Michelle feels loved by you?”
Max pulled the list from his pocket and started to hand it to Willy. “I don’t need to see it,” Willy said. “That’s for you and Michelle to talk through.”
“That’s easier said than done,” Max said. “I asked her for feedback, but she never responded. And I get the feeling it’s a long shot for her to even come home.”
Willy was quiet for a moment while he looked out over the lake. Then he turned to Max and said, “Then go to her.”
