QB 1

by Mike Lupica

  “And why is that?”

  “Didn’t want to get into it again with Casey.”

  “Something new happen between you two?”

  Jake couldn’t help himself now, couldn’t keep the smile down.

  “Coach said I’m starting tomorrow.”

  His mom was across the room in a blink, wiping her hands on her apron, smiling herself now, putting her arms around him.

  “Well, look at you,” she said.

  “We’re still both gonna play,” he said.

  “Jacob,” his mom said, “John McCoy didn’t shuffle the deck this way because he thinks you’re not up to the task.”

  “I guess,” Jake said.

  “I know,” she said. “Now go take a shower.”

  He went upstairs, but before he got into the shower decided to do something he’d been thinking about doing since practice ended, really since Coach told him he was starting.

  He decided to private-message Sarah on Facebook. But then lost his nerve.

  Sometimes one victory a day was enough.

  20

  START OF THE FOURTH QUARTER AGAINST THE CHIRITA WILDCATS, Granger up a touchdown, 28–21, ball on the Cowboys’ forty after a Chirita punt, officials’ time-out because a kid on the Chirita punt return had to be helped off after twisting an ankle.

  Casey and Jake had each thrown a touchdown pass today and both had moved the ball. Both had felt pressure on every series, knowing that the next snap, next throw, next play, might be the one that either kept them out there or moved them to the sidelines. Maybe that was John McCoy’s plan all along, make them challenge themselves and each other at the same time.

  And Jake was okay with that. He was. Just kept reminding himself, even when he was watching Casey run the team, where he’d started out this season and where he was now.

  On this day, Casey had even run for some big gainers, the first time all season he’d pulled the ball down, almost like he was trying to show the coaches Jake wasn’t the only one who could scramble around when he had to.

  Casey’s biggest run was for twenty-five yards to the Wildcats’ three—but it had also been his last. He’d fallen awkwardly, rolling his ankle when he tried to slide to avoid getting hit. Even though he said he could stay in there, Coach McCoy told him to go sit down for a bit, told him Jake could hand the ball off from there, which Jake did, Spence finally diving in from the one, putting the Cowboys ahead by the touchdown that now separated the two teams.

  So here was a chance for the Cowboys to stretch their lead and maybe put this one away.

  As the punt return team headed back to the sideline, Coach McCoy went over and spoke to Casey, who’d been sitting on the bench with his leg up since he’d come out of the game, holding ice to his ankle. Jake could see Casey trying to make his case to go back out there, but Coach finally shook his head, came back over to Jake and said, “Lindell says he’s good to go, but Doc says we should let him sit.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jake said.

  “Wasn’t looking for your approval, son,” Coach McCoy said. “Now git.”

  Jake ran out, knelt down in the huddle, thinking it hadn’t been all that long ago he’d been in this huddle as a varsity QB for the first time. But somehow, even under the gun every time he was in here, it felt natural to him now. He hadn’t been great today, or even close—had even thrown an interception in the first half, his first turnover of the season. Still, he felt like he belonged. Like he was supposed to be here, even if the only reason he was here right this minute was because Coach was playing it safe with Casey.

  Business at hand? First-and-ten at the Granger forty, all that green in front of him and the Cowboys, a chance to finish off Chirita in front of the home fans, including—as usual—Jake’s mom, but not his dad.

  Three straight completions moved the ball to the Chirita thirty-two. A short run by Spence and an incompletion to Justice made it third-and-eight. The call was a ten-yard curl route to Calvin on the right sideline, a throw that had been there for both Jake and Casey all game long.

  The Wildcats, sensing a pass play coming and needing to force an incompletion, came on a blitz, the middle linebacker coming up the chute, the corner from Justice’s side knowing he had the safety behind him, the outside linebacker charging from Calvin’s side. Nate took care of the middle linebacker, and Mo Hanners, now the Cowboys’ starting right guard, moved over and cleaned out the outside linebacker, no problem. But the cornerback, who hadn’t been quick enough to cover the wideouts today, but was big enough to be a linebacker and could hit like one, made it through.

  Maybe it was the pick Jake had thrown earlier. Maybe there was a part of him thinking he couldn’t scramble every single time he was under pressure, that he could stand in there until the last second and make the kind of throw Casey could when he held on to the ball as long as he could.

  So Jake stood in the pocket until the very last second before throwing the ball, the big cornerback just exploding on him. Jake took the hit from the side, flying through the air, feeling all the air come out of him at the same time.

  He’d see later on film that somehow the throw had been a dart, Calvin catching it in stride, two yards past the first-down marker, exactly where he was supposed to be, money. Jake had suspected the play was good from the reaction of the crowd, even though the cheer sounded as if it was coming from the other side of town.

  That was because the real noise, along with what his dad had always called brain hurt, was inside of Jake now, in the area of his ribs. Thinking to himself this was about the biggest lick he’d ever taken in football.

  Nate was there first, of course, Jake still on his back.

  “Talk to me, brother,” Nate said. “You all right?”

  “Compared to what?” Jake said.

  Nate grabbed Jake’s left hand without asking, not knowing that was his hurt side right now, Jake turning his head so Nate couldn’t see him wincing. He was pretty sure he hadn’t broken anything. He knew what a broken rib felt like—oh man, did he ever—from the time when he was twelve and had been thrown from one of his dad’s cutting horses.

  This hurt wasn’t that hurt.

  But would do.

  “I think you need to take a seat,” Nate said.

  “I’m good,” Jake said.

  Now it was Nate who said, “Compared to what?”

  Other players gathered around as Coach McCoy and Coach J came toward them, along with Doc Mallozzi.

  Coach McCoy said, “Where’s it hurt, son?”

  “He got me good, Coach,” Jake said. “But I think it looked worse than it was.” He forced a grin and said, “Once I got permission to land.”

  Doc Mallozzi said, “Let’s get you over to the sideline so I can check out your rib cage. That’s where he got you, right?”

  “Doc, I’m fine. If I was hurt bad, I’d say.”

  More sure than ever that he wasn’t. Hurt bad, that is. His breathing had started to come more easily.

  The lead ref came over and said, “Gotta game to play.”

  Coach McCoy studied him for what felt like a long time and then said, “I’m gonna trust you.”

  Doc Mallozzi looked Jake in the eye and then nodded his head.

  Jake’s breath came even easier.

  “Let’s go put this baby away,” Coach said before leaving the field.

  Jake knew it was going to take more than a hit to the ribs to send him to the bench.

  They ran the ball twice for eight yards, down to the twelve. Spence brought in the third-and-two call, what was supposed to be a quick slant to Justice on the left. Supposed to be. But the Wildcats blitzed from that side again, and this time Jake saw it coming and got out of there.

  He ran to his right, waving at Calvin as he did. Calvin let fly in the same direction and Jake led him perfectly on the run. Calvin caugh
t the ball at the two and continued into the end zone.

  Jake wanted to celebrate, but that scramble had brought back the pain. Much as he had wanted to, Jake couldn’t hide it.

  When he got to the sideline, Coach McCoy told him he was done for the day, that Casey was going back in. Jake saw Casey testing out his ankle behind the bench. He looked fine.

  “Sir, you don’t have to baby me,” Jake said.

  “Go sit,” Coach said. “You did good today. Specially after you took that hit. That’s when you showed ever’body somethin’ about yourself.”

  He went over and took a seat next to Nate, wishing his dad had been there to see it, too.

  21

  THE NEXT THURSDAY NIGHT, TEXAS FACED KANSAS IN LAWRENCEVILLE for a prime-time televised game. Troy and Libby Cullen flew up to Kansas to watch. Unfortunately, Wyatt Cullen, enjoying his own dream freshman season, finally played a nightmare of a game.

  Jake watched it in his dad’s den with Bear and Nate and couldn’t believe what he was seeing from his brother.

  Four picks, just one touchdown pass, not even two hundred passing yards, finally getting benched in the fourth quarter, the Longhorns losing 31–7, the TV announcers wondering if the ’Horns might go from number four in the country all the way out of the top ten.

  When it was over, Bear and Nate fixing to leave, Nate said, “Looked like one of those identify-theft deals to me.”

  “No, it was my brother,” Jake said.

  “Holy crap,” Bear said, “you mean he’s . . . human?”

  On the phone afterward, calling from his hotel, Troy Cullen said to Jake, “You watch?”

  “Course I watched,” Jake said.

  “The whole darn country watched,” Troy Cullen said. “Tell me again who you got tomorrow night?”

  “Kersey.”

  “Well, can you at least get the family one win this weekend?” Jake’s dad said.

  Jake said he was sure going to try.

  The Cowboys did get another win the next night against Kersey, Casey throwing for two touchdowns, Jake running for one on a sweet bootleg. It ended up 28–13, Granger. They were starting to roll now. Jake felt he’d come back from playing the way he had against the Chirita ’Cats and the hit to the ribs he’d taken, felt like he was about to get on a roll himself.

  But when Jake was riding around with Bear late Saturday morning, the callers to the radio weren’t talking about the Cowboys in Granger, how good the Cowboys were going, even whether or not they liked Jake better or Casey.

  Most of them were still talking about how bad Wyatt had looked against Kansas.

  Amazing, Jake thought.

  It was still all about his big brother, even when the other team did everything except throw him down a flight of stairs. When Jake and Bear finally showed up at Stone’s Throw for lunch, first thing Bobby Ray said when they walked through the door was, “Some game.”

  “Sure was,” Jake said.

  Only Bobby Ray Stone didn’t mean Granger vs. Kersey.

  Bobby Ray said, “Never saw your brother throw that bad in his life.”

  Amazing.

  The ’Horns came home and had a hard practice on Friday—Wyatt saying on his Facebook page that “Coach made us practice soon as the plane landed”—but then their coach gave them Saturday off. So Wyatt drove home in the morning, showed up in time for lunch, Jake thinking that his brother hadn’t lost a football game since his junior year at Granger, wanting to see how he’d react, getting knocked down on national television.

  Right away he saw that this wasn’t Wyatt the cocky college boy he’d seen the first time he’d come home from Austin, everybody gathered around him at Amy’s.

  “Just needed to get away from Longhorns football for a day,” he said when they were all at the table. “Man, I forgot what it was like to get thrown down a flight of stairs like that.”

  “That’s exactly what it feels like, a spit-storm like that,” Troy Cullen said, “like you’re just fallin’ all over yourself and can’t do a thing to stop it.”

  “I knew everything wasn’t going to go right all season,” Wyatt said. “I just didn’t think it would go that wrong.”

  “Just one game,” his dad said. “Good wake-up call, that’s the way I look at it. Now you got time to regroup before the Red River game. Just one game.”

  Texas-Oklahoma, as big a regular-season rivalry game as there was in college football.

  Wyatt said, “You listen to the callers on the radio, they already think that Chris Bishop ought to be back in there by then.” So he’d been listening, too, maybe all the way home.

  Chris Bishop had briefly started for Texas the season before as a sophomore, but Wyatt had flat beat him out in the preseason, the way he’d ended up beating out all the other quarterbacks on the roster. Chris hadn’t done anything except mop up in Texas victories until the Kansas game.

  “Oh, don’t listen to that bull,” his dad said, everybody at the table knowing he wanted to say more, and worse. “Don’t be listening to those people. Most of ’em don’t know whether a football is blown up or stuffed with horsefeathers,” Troy Cullen said.

  Finally Wyatt grinned.

  “Gee, Dad, none of us ever heard that one before,” he said, and they all laughed.

  Jake said, “Though I do believe that when Mom’s not around it’s not feathers.”

  “By the way,” Wyatt said, “how’s little brother doing? I heard you got flattened by a sixteen-wheeler against Chirita.”

  “Wasn’t so bad.”

  “Man, the only thing scares me more than a blind-side hit like that is snakes.”

  “The kind that used to make you squeal like a pig when you saw one?” Jake said.

  Wyatt said, “Were you this funny when you were younger?”

  “I was,” Jake said, grinning at him. “Leastways when I was allowed to talk at the dinner table.”

  Then they were all back to talking about the Kansas game, Troy Cullen mostly, acting like it was his job to make Wyatt feel better about it, somehow convince him it wasn’t as bad as he thought it was. But Wyatt, to his credit, wasn’t having any of it, finally quoting his dad about how game film never lied and neither did the stat sheet.

  “Still only counts as one loss in the standings,” Troy Cullen said.

  “Am I allowed to change the subject to a game that our other son won last night?” Libby Cullen said.

  “Not only allowed,” Wyatt said, “but encouraged.”

  “Boy’s lookin’ more comfortable back there all the time,” Troy Cullen said, then turned to Wyatt and said, “Which is the way you’re gonna feel when you get back at it against Oklahoma.”

  Jake shot a quick look over at his mom, saw her smile and shake her head, as if in that moment she and Jake weren’t even there.

  Or as if she was just giving up for now.

  Whether she wanted to accept it or not, at this table, in this family, there was no quarterback controversy, because Wyatt came first.

  Win or lose.

  The best Jake had ever figured, his whole life, from the first time he started thinking about these things, was that his dad loved him differently than he did Wyatt. Who had come first, no way around that. Who was the real QB-1 in the family, least in all the ways that mattered. Who’d been the best player in town from the time he was seven years old. Who’d become the star at Granger High. Who now had the job that their dad had always dreamed about having, quarterback of the Texas Longhorns, all the way up to number four in the country. It was big-time, Jake had to admit.

  When lunch was cleared, Wyatt and Jake went into their dad’s study to watch the Notre Dame game with him while Libby Cullen went off to play doubles with some of her friends at the tennis club, a rare day off for her from football.

  It was at halftime that Wyatt said to Jake, �
�You want to go out behind the barn and throw the ball around, see if I can remember how to do that proper?”

  Jake said, “Been waitin’ for you to ask, brother.”

  On their way through the door, they each tried to hip check the other into the door frame, same way they had been trying to do that to each other their whole lives, Troy Cullen calling after them not to screw around when they got outside and get themselves hurt.

  “If something does happen to me,” Wyatt said to Jake in the hall, “you think Dad could step in against Oklahoma?”

  “I heard that,” Troy Cullen said from the study.

  “You were supposed to,” Wyatt said back to him.

  “You think Archie Manning takes this much lip from his boys?” Troy Cullen yelled as his boys headed through the kitchen.

  Wyatt said, “I think we established a long time ago that we aren’t Peyton or Eli. And you sure aren’t Archie.”

  Then Wyatt laughed again, like he was starting to feel better. The sound of his brother’s laughter made Jake feel better, too. Maybe this was what his mom meant when she called him a pleaser, Jake wanting to help his brother let go of the Kansas game, same as their dad did.

  This was a corner of the pasture that had always belonged to Wyatt and Jake, one their dad made sure was mowed nice for them. It wasn’t as long as a real football field, maybe seventy-five yards. And as football-crazed as their dad was, he’d never painted yard lines out here or put up goalposts.

  Still, you could have a solid touch football game out here, and run solid pass routes. It was here, Jake knew, that he’d first learned about being a quarterback, just watching his dad work with Wyatt.

  Troy Cullen would work with Jake when he was bigger and older, teach him the same fundamentals, telling him that this was the way he’d done things when he’d played. Or just flat telling him to do them the way Wyatt did. Like they were supposed to be the same player. It wasn’t until Jake had started working with Coach Jessup that he really heard somebody telling him to be himself.

  Jake wore Granger blue shorts and an Ole Miss T-shirt he’d bought online, in honor of Eli. Wyatt had changed out of his jeans after lunch and wore an old pair of khaki shorts, an orange Texas T-shirt with the famous horns on the front.