QB 1

by Mike Lupica

  Casey opened his mouth and closed it. Maybe starting to realize there was no way out of this now, not with his swag, anyway.

  “Now drop this right here and right now and move along,” Calvin said. “And one more thing? Between now and tomorrow night, you decide whether you want to be on this team or not.”

  Sarah still sat on the bench, not moving, watching the scene being played out right here in front of her. Jake hadn’t moved. He could see a few guys from the team, Spence and David, Dicky and Buddy, maybe halfway down the block. Nate and Bear had suddenly appeared, too. Melvin was right where he had been, behind Calvin.

  Somehow Calvin was between Jake and Casey now, Jake not even sure when it had happened.

  “You’ve done taken this as far as you’re gonna take it,” Calvin said to Casey. “We both know it, to the point where there isn’t nothin’ left to say and no reason for you to be here.”

  And in that moment, there wasn’t for Casey Lindell, who turned, shot one last glare toward Jake, like he had to get in a last word, and walked alone into the park.

  When he was gone, Calvin turned to Melvin and said, “Let’s bounce.”

  To Jake he said, “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, man,” Jake said.

  Calvin gave a little bow and said, “Night, Sarah.”

  “Night, Calvin.”

  Calvin looked back at Jake then, grinned, reached out, cool-like, put out his fist. Jake bumped it. Then Calvin and his cousin walked across Main Street, knowing all eyes were on him, strutting like he did when he wanted to put it on.

  The real mayor of Granger, Texas.

  26

  BEFORE SARAH LEFT, SHE SAID, “WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD’VE happened if Calvin hadn’t happened along?”

  “Probably something dumb.”

  “Casey’s not a bad guy,” Sarah said. “Not really.”

  “I know,” Jake said. “His ego gets in the way, for sure, on and off the field. But he’s like me, he just wants to play. And when I think about it, I can see how maybe he thinks the deck got stacked against him.”

  “I was just afraid that fight he was talking about was going to turn into a real one,” Sarah said.

  “I’m hoping he would’ve backed off,” Jake said. “But it was like I told him, I wasn’t gonna stand there and let him insult you.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said.

  Jake grinned and said, “I don’t doubt you can.”

  Then Sarah Rayburn smiled at Jake one last time tonight, before she said. “I’ve got an idea. Next time we want to come to town together, we should make an official plan. Maybe after we beat Niles.”

  “Do we have to invite Casey?” Jake said.

  “No,” Sarah said. “I don’t believe we should,” and then she ran off to find her friends.

  On the ride home, Nate and Bear had wanted to know exactly what had happened with Casey and Calvin.

  “Just a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with us winning the game tomorrow night,” Jake said.

  And it didn’t.

  The score was 21–0 for Granger after the first quarter, Jake having thrown three touchdown passes already, two to Calvin. By the start of the fourth quarter it was 35–7, a certified beatdown, and it was only then that Casey Lindell got into the game.

  And when he did, it was mostly to hand the ball off the rest of the way, because Coach McCoy was never going to let one of his teams run up the score.

  Casey hadn’t said a word to Jake about what had happened at the park from the time they’d both showed up in the locker room, didn’t say a word to him on the sideline even when Jake would come off from throwing for another score. But Jake didn’t have time to worry about the other quarterback because of the way he was playing himself, against a good team that nobody expected the Cowboys to blow out, but sure did.

  There wasn’t a defense the Broncos threw at him that surprised him, there wasn’t a read that he missed. It was as if all the time he’d spent watching film with Coach Jessup had paid off big-time. He knew it wasn’t like some final exam, he knew there was still more football to be played if they were going to have another shot at the state championship.

  But Jake knew it would sure do for now, standing on the sideline with Bear, watching the clock run down in the fourth quarter, baseball cap on his head, big old smile on his face that nothing or nobody was going to wipe off.

  His dad wasn’t there, as usual. Texas was playing on the road the next day against Notre Dame in South Bend. But Libby Cullen was in her seat and Sarah was down the sideline, waving to Jake a couple of times when the Granger defense was on the field.

  This was a big win over Niles, even bigger than the Cowboys knew. Because later on in the fourth quarter came the news that began on Twitter and had soon made its way from the stands to the Cowboys’ bench. The Shelby Mustangs had lost to Redding.

  The Cowboys were now in a three-way tie with them for first place.

  First place. For now, at least.

  Notre Dame upset Texas on national television the next afternoon. Wyatt threw two picks in the first half, one his fault, one the fault of his tight end, who bobbled a sure completion so badly, the ball finally bounced into the hands of one of the Notre Dame safeties, who ran it sixty yards for a score that put the Longhorns into an early hole from which they never did climb out.

  When Wyatt threw another interception halfway through the third quarter—this one all his fault—the coach benched him. Chris Bishop, the backup, almost brought the Longhorns back from three touchdowns behind, even had a Hail Mary in the end zone on the last play of the game that got knocked down.

  Fighting Irish 34, Longhorns 27.

  Jake watched the game at home with his mother. He found himself wondering what his dad was going through, sitting in the stands and watching it all happen to Wyatt this way, in front of the whole country, again.

  But also wondering, when it was over, if the only starting quarterback in the family now might be him.

  Jake was out behind the barn around noon on Sunday, practicing his throwing, a half-dozen balls in the bucket he brought out with him, dropping back sometimes, rolling sometimes, to his right and to his left, trying to hit as many fence posts as he could. Hitting a lot of them, like he was still as hot as he’d been on Friday night against Niles.

  He was picking up balls when he saw his dad coming around the barn, Jake knowing he’d driven up to Chicago from South Bend, stayed the night at an airport hotel, flown to Dallas in the morning, and driven home.

  Jake watched him come, in an old gray sweatshirt, a pair of his Wranglers, his Justin Boots, and tried to remember the last time it had been just the two of them out here.

  “How about you take a little rest and we sit for a spell?” Troy Cullen said.

  Jake put the balls in the bucket, went and sat in the grass next to his dad, who looked tired today. And maybe a little old.

  “Your mom and me just had a talk,” he said. “Well, she did most of the talkin’, to be honest, lit into me pretty good about how I got two sons playin’ football seasons, not just one. And how it ate you up a little bit the time I left your game early to head to the Red River.”

  Jake shrugged. “I got over it.”

  Jake waited. Not only couldn’t he remember the last time his dad had been out here with him, he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a real sit-down about anything other than the game they were watching.

  But he knew they were about to have one now.

  “You feel the same as she does?” Troy Cullen said. “About how she says I favor Wyatt sometimes?”

  Sometimes.

  Maybe it was the game Jake had just played or the season he was playing. Maybe it was the confidence he could feel growing in him with each game as the Cowboys’ quarterback and—yes sir—the confidence he�
��d gotten being with Sarah Rayburn. Maybe it was all that and the way, as Bear kept telling him, he’d gotten all growed up in front of the whole town’s eyes.

  Jake turned himself so he was facing his dad and said, “I’ve always felt that way, you want to know the plain truth.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  It was Jake’s call now. Drop this or keep going with it.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think I am.”

  In a voice that surprised Jake, as small as it was, Troy Cullen said, “I love you both.”

  “Never said you didn’t,” Jake said. “But you’ve got to know that Wyatt comes first.”

  He couldn’t believe they’d gotten here this fast; his dad hadn’t shown up but a couple of minutes before. But Jake wasn’t backing down now any more than he had with Casey the other night at the park. Hadn’t done it then, wasn’t going to do it now. There’d always been the joke in their family, when he and Wyatt were both a lot younger, his dad saying, “Don’t make me take you out behind the barn.”

  It had never happened. Until now. Here they were. Only question in Jake’s mind was which one of them was going to get taught a lesson.

  His dad smiled. “Well, technically he did come first.”

  “You know what I mean, Dad,” Jake said. “If there’s one thing I learned about you growing up was that you do what you want to do and nobody in this world, not even Mom, really makes you do something other than that. Or go someplace you don’t want to go. That night you left, being with Wyatt is where you wanted to be.”

  “You and your mom must have gotten your stories straight,” Troy Cullen said, “because that sounds a lot like the earful I just got from her.”

  In a quiet voice, Jake said, “I don’t need Mom explaining my life to me.”

  “Something wrong with your life now?” Troy Cullen said. “That what this is about?”

  Not in a mad way or mean way. Acting genuinely surprised.

  “That’s not what this is about, and you know it,” Jake said, keeping his voice nice and even. “And what you have to know is that things between you and Wyatt are different.”

  “I love you the same,” Troy Cullen said, like that was his story and he was by-God sticking to it.

  “No,” Jake said, “you don’t.”

  “All ’cause I left one game and then missed your best?” Troy Cullen said. “We’ve gone over this. He needed me.”

  “Almost as much,” Jake said, “as you wanted to be needed.”

  “I’d be there for you, you really needed me,” his dad said. “But up to now, you never have.”

  “And how would you know that, exactly?”

  Maybe five feet of grass between them. Still like they were going toe to toe. Like on this one Sunday afternoon this was the hottest place on the whole ranch, or maybe the whole town.

  “I just—”

  He stopped. Like he wanted to get this right. Maybe like he was changing a play at the line of scrimmage.

  “You surprised me this year,” he said. “Getting this good this fast. Wanting it as much as you did. I just . . . What I’m trying to say is that you were ready for it all before I was ready for you to turn into this kind of quarterback this fast. Does that make sense to you?”

  Now Jake was the one surprised. “Actually, Dad, it does.”

  Neither one of them spoke until Troy Cullen said, “So we good?”

  Jake could have let it go, could have let his dad put a smiley face on their talk, like you did with a text message sometimes. But he wasn’t out here to be a pleaser today, he’d come too far to just let him off as easy as that.

  “The good,” Jake said, “is that maybe you’re finally finding out who I am, even though you never tried very hard.”

  “I know who you are,” Troy Cullen said. “You’re my son.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “The other one.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Maybe what’s not fair is your own father thinking you’re not good enough.”

  “You’ve always been plenty good, son. You’ve got a brain on you could power a football stadium at night. You don’t think I can see that?”

  “You’re right,” Jake said. “I figure you can see that. But what you’ve never done is act like it’s all that important to you. At least not as important as having an arm could power a football stadium at night.”

  “Maybe it’s the only kind of power I can understand.”

  His voice sounded a little sad as he said it, looking away as he did.

  “And maybe you just made my point for me,” Jake said.

  He got up then, picked up his bucket, told his dad he had to go, that Bear and Nate were going to be coming for him. They were going to watch the games over at Bear’s this afternoon, maybe all the way through the Sunday night game.

  Truth was, Bear wasn’t coming for another hour. But Jake knew there was nothing left to say, not now. Jake knew his dad well enough to know he wasn’t going to back up, either. Or admit Jake was right.

  Because that would have meant Troy Cullen was wrong.

  Jake started walking in the direction of the barn.

  His dad, though, wasn’t quite done yet. He never wanted to let anybody have the last word, except Libby Cullen sometimes.

  “Well, you’re right about one thing,” Troy Cullen said, calling out after him, trying to keep his tone light. “Sometimes I don’t know you.”

  “Sure you do,” Jake said. “I’m a Cullen.”

  27

  FINAL REGULAR SEASON GAME. GRANGER COWBOYS VS. THE Redding Bulldogs. A win combined with a Shelby win would leave the two teams tied for first. But since Shelby won the head-to-head matchup, the tiebreaker would fall Shelby’s way. If the Cowboys had any shot at going to the playoffs, they would need a win combined with a Shelby loss.

  The second part, Coach McCoy reminded them, was out of their control. First things first, and that meant taking care of their own business. What Shelby did wouldn’t matter if the Cowboys couldn’t come away with a win.

  For Jake, that meant not getting ahead of himself. Even knowing that Wyatt hadn’t been able to lead Granger to the sectional finals as a freshman, that he was chasing something even the great Wyatt Cullen hadn’t done.

  He looked over in the stands, saw his mom there. His dad was supposed to be there, too; the Longhorns weren’t playing until Saturday night, home game against Texas Tech, so there was supposed to be no conflict for Troy Cullen tonight.

  Maybe he’d decided there was another Wyatt emergency and had driven down to Austin.

  Is what it is, Jake told himself. If it was one more game his dad missed, nothing he could do about it. Nothing he’d ever been able to do about it. Neither Jake nor his dad had mentioned the conversation they’d had behind the barn since it happened, not one time. Things seemed pretty much the same with the two of them, as though nothing had changed.

  Maybe because nothing ever really would.

  The rest of the stands were full, the crowd already loud. As calm as Jake always felt in the heat of the game, he had to admit that even his heart was trying to come right out of him tonight.

  Jake wasn’t thinking about his brother or his dad now, just about Redding, about this chance at first place, the chance to keep playing, telling himself that the only thing that could spoil a game like this and a night like this and a chance like this was a loss.

  Coach McCoy, as always, had kept his pregame talk brief, Jake by now knowing brief was all his old coach had; if this was his last season, he wasn’t going to suddenly turn as chatty as a TV man. He told them stuff he’d told them before, about how the other team was gonna want it as much as they did, how he’d had other teams that had come this close to winning a title before but they couldn’t stay on the horse.

  “This game we’re about to p
lay out here,” he said, “has got nothin’ to do with the season we thought we were gonna have back in September. Got even less to do with the season we might still have if we win tonight. It’s about the one thing sports is always about: ever’body in this room reaching down and finding the best in himself, so we can find out about the best in ourselves.”

  Then he just walked out of the room, like he always did when he had nothing more to say. The Granger Cowboys had followed him, waiting until they got into the tunnel before they started yelling their heads off, the tunnel loud and excited, but not nearly as loud and electric and excited as Cullen Field was when they ran out of that tunnel and into a sound and feeling that was just purebred Texas high school football.

  The Redding Bulldogs were a little bit like the Cowboys: Their starting quarterback had gotten hurt in their second game, but his replacement, a senior named Brett Conroy, had become a surprise star for them, same as Jake had been for Granger. Brett had a good arm and had proven to be a solid leader.

  The Bulldogs also had a fullback as big as a tackle or guard named Jarryd “Moose” Mosedale, who could get them short yards when they needed them, and sometimes a lot more than that.

  But the most important thing about Redding was this: They had just one loss, same as the Cowboys. And they were the team that had beaten Shelby last week. So now they had the same chance to steal the whole league on this last Friday night of the regular season. A win against Granger and the league title was theirs since they would own the tiebreaker over Shelby.

  The Cowboys won the toss, Jake finished with his warm-up throws, happy they were getting the ball to start the game. As he waited in front of the bench, standing next to Nate, nervously shifting his weight from one leg to the other, Coach Jessup came over, got in front of him, put his hands on both sides of Jake’s helmet.

  “As much as you’ve given me so far,” Coach J said, “I know you got more in you.”

  “Thank you for believing in me,” Jake said.

  “We ain’t done yet.”

  “No, sir.”