QB 1

by Mike Lupica

  “Wait a second,” Jake said, “you’re telling me that I might not even get to play in the state finals if we get there?”

  Doc said, “We’re gonna examine you every other day, which means the next time I see you is Monday after school. Put you through what we call protocols, which is a fancy word for testing, things like balance, and keep doing neurological assessments. But no contact, obviously. Maybe some light running as we get near the end of the week. This is your brain we’re talking about, son. It’s the only one you got.”

  “The only thing hurting my brain is what you’re telling me,” Jake said.

  “Not only do doctors get to tell you things, you have to listen to them when they do,” Jake’s mom said. “It’s a rule that got passed a while back.”

  He knew the voice. Her game-ender.

  “Can I at least go to the game?” Jake said.

  “Of course,” Doc said. “Root your boys home.”

  “I’m not cut out to be a cheerleader,” Jake said.

  His mom smiled. “Sarah can teach you.”

  He wasn’t just cheering on his team now, he was cheering on Casey Lindell.

  Jake and Wyatt had grown up hearing their dad say that people could talk about running the ball and defense all they wanted, but football was a quarterback’s game, even in high school. So Casey had to play well against Sierra and their fancy offense, the highest-scoring team in the state this year, or the Cowboys wouldn’t win the sectionals, wouldn’t make it back to the state finals.

  So the quarterback Jake had finally beaten out this season was the guy Jake needed to save his season.

  Go figger, as Bear liked to say.

  Of course it wouldn’t just be Casey. Maybe in the end it would come down to Calvin making a play or a catch. Jake knew enough about sports to know that most of the time when a game looked even to you, it was best to put your money on the best player on the field.

  That would be Calvin Morton Friday night, the way it was most Friday nights.

  Still, Calvin needed Casey to throw him the ball. Which meant that Jake needed Casey. The guy who’d gone out of his way to make himself Jake’s nemesis.

  Amazing.

  A lot had changed for Jake across this season, so many things on and off the field, they could have made Jake dizzy before he’d landed on his head. Now, at the end of this week, he was going to have to watch somebody else quarterback Granger in the big game.

  “Just pretend that he’s Wyatt,” Bear said at Tuesday afternoon’s practice, “and you’re rooting for your brother.”

  Jake turned and looked at him. “Which one of us got the concussion, me or you?”

  “Now listen up,” Bear said. “You wouldn’t even root against Casey when him and you were competing for the same job. So nothin’ has changed, you ask me; you’re just being the same kind of teammate with your pads off you were with your pads on.”

  In a voice only Bear could hear, Jake said, “I want to play.”

  “Next Friday night,” Bear said. “Not this one.”

  “If Doc lets me.”

  “He will.”

  “Don’t be so sure. I passed all the tests, flying colors yesterday, and all he said when we were done was, ‘See you in two days. And no running till I do.’”

  But Bear wasn’t listening now; he was staring at Casey, shaking his head, saying, “Are we sure Casey is still right-handed?”

  This was the second day in a row that Casey was wild throwing the ball. And today was worse than yesterday. His arm was still as strong as ever, and every few minutes he’d manage to make a throw that reminded everybody that arm strength was never a problem for him.

  At the moment, accuracy was.

  Big-time.

  When he wasn’t missing high, he was missing wide. Or the ball would be too far out front when he was trying to lead somebody. One time he threw it a yard behind Justice, and when Justice reached back, he got popped good by Melvin. And when Justice got up he said to Casey, “Man, you tryin’ to get me killed?”

  “Sorry, man,” Casey said. “Working out the rust.”

  All season long Casey had let everybody, starting with Jake, know how much he wanted to be the man on this team. Now, for this one game, he was officially the man. Had the job to himself. Only he seemed to be pressing more than he ever had. Like moving to the bench had shaken his confidence.

  On the field now, Calvin broke open on a deep post, having just dusted Melvin with a filthy fake to the inside. Casey overthrew him by ten yards, easy.

  Bear said, “Well, it’s still early in the week.”

  Bear was right, it didn’t matter how you looked on Tuesday afternoon long as you brought it Friday night.

  “Tomorrow will be better,” Jake said.

  “Damn straight.”

  Only it wasn’t. It was just more of the same; Jake could see that as soon as he got to practice after his latest appointment with Doc Mallozzi, having gone through all his tests again, Doc saying to come back the next day and maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to do some light running on the weekend.

  Today he decided to watch practice from the top of Cullen Field, thinking that might take some pressure off Casey, not make him feel as if Jake was standing right there looking over his shoulder.

  But the view wasn’t any better from up there, because Casey was still acting like a baseball pitcher who’d completely lost the strike zone. Or an outside shooter in basketball firing up one brick after another.

  The Cowboys were maybe half an hour or so from finishing when Jake saw Sarah waving at him, heading up the steps.

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said, “this seat is taken.”

  “Oh,” she said, “like the seat next to me was taken that night at Sal’s?” She tossed her backpack in the aisle, sat down next to Jake, and said, “How’s it going?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Oh, does your head still hurt?”

  Jake pointed at the field. “It doesn’t, but it’s going to start hurting all over again if Casey doesn’t start throwing better.”

  Sarah said she’d heard some of the guys on the team talking about that in study hall. “What’s that thing our parents are always telling us? Be careful what you wish for? Maybe that’s Casey.”

  “That,” Jake said, “is exactly what I’m afraid of. That maybe he just wants this so much, it’s eating him up.”

  On Thursday, after Jake aced all Doc’s tests again, Doc Mallozzi told Jake he could start running again.

  “But if you feel yourself getting tired, stop,” Doc said.

  “No chance of that happening,” Jake said. “After not doing anything all week, I’ve got enough energy to run all the way to Highland Junction.”

  “You can run, and you can throw, and that’s it, young man. Are we clear?”

  “I feel good enough to play tomorrow night,” Jake said.

  “Not happening,” Doc said. “Go.”

  Libby Cullen dropped Jake off at school. He went straight to the locker room, put on his football pants, spikes, and a T-shirt. Happy to be just doing that, knowing this was a step closer to him being back in full football clothes.

  But only if the Cowboys won on Friday night.

  Only if Casey could do the job against Sierra. Do his job, Jake thought, so I can get mine back.

  When he got out on the field, he threw behind the bench with Justice, who’d taken a hit yesterday on an already-sore knee, Coach giving him the day off to rest it. Both of them would stop every few minutes to watch today’s seven-on-seven drills, every play call a pass, like Coach McCoy and Coach Jessup were giving Casey as many throws as possible for him to find his form before they all got on the bus tomorrow for the ninety-minute ride to Highland Junction.

  But Casey seemed to be pressing even more today than he had been all week, paci
ng after every missed throw, talking to himself, hanging his head when he wasn’t slapping the sides of his helmet with his palms.

  Justice came over and stood next to Jake and said, “I better stop watching now, before I get too overconfident.”

  “My dad has an expression that covers this,” Jake said, not adding that Troy Cullen thought he had expressions that covered pretty much everything under the sun.

  “Is it gonna make me feel better about what I’m watching out there?” Justice said.

  “Probably not.”

  “Give it to me anyway.”

  “Casey Lindell,” Jake said, “is tighter than new boots.”

  Justice finally asked if Jake wanted to throw a little more, saying that at least one quarterback on the team was accurate this afternoon. The two of them tossed the ball around until they could see that Coach McCoy was about to wrap things up for the day.

  It was then that Jake had one of those good ideas his mom talked about, the kind that refused to get out of your head once they got in there.

  Even knowing that Doc had said only light running today, Jake sprinted toward the locker room.

  30

  JAKE, BEAR, AND NATE WERE IN THE PASTURE BEHIND THE BARN a little after five o’clock.

  Bear said, “I’m not a receiver. The only thing I catch on a regular basis is grief, from the two of you.”

  “Seems to me,” Jake said, “you were enough of a receiver to make your first—wait for it—career interception not so long ago.”

  “It was one catch!” Bear said. “And forget about whether I can catch a ball or not. I still can’t believe you dragged me over here, dragged both of us over here, after we already practiced once today.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Nate said. “I like catching passes.” He was wearing high-top basketball sneakers, cargo shorts, a T-shirt that read “Not Lucky. Just Lucky To Be This Good.” Nate said, “You both know if I wanted to, I could be the best tight end on our team.”

  “You keep tellin’ yourself that, big man,” Jake said.

  “You told me yourself once,” Nate said.

  “I must’ve wanted something.”

  “You mean like you want something now?”

  Jake said, “This is a good thing we’re doing.”

  “I sure hope so,” Bear said. “We got nothing to lose, ’cept the game, of course.”

  Jake looked past Bear to the corner of the barn. “I knew he’d come.”

  Casey Lindell, wearing baggy shorts and his football spikes. As he got closer to them, Jake saw he was wearing an old black Spurs cap and a gray T-shirt that had “Granger Football” stenciled in white letters across the front.

  “Got your note,” Casey said. “Didn’t even know people left actual notes anymore.”

  “The personal touch,” Jake said.

  Casey shrugged. “Don’t see as how things could get any more personal between us than they already are.”

  “But you came,” Jake said.

  “Yeah, I did,” Casey said. “I thought you were crazy at first, the part about me maybe needing to get away from practice to practice. But the more I thought on it, the more sense it started to make, maybe because I got no clue right now.”

  “We noticed,” Nate said.

  The way he said it, so much feeling in his voice, made them all laugh. Casey included.

  “And you think you can help me?” Casey said, looking right at Jake.

  “I do. But not just me.”

  “And you want to help me?” Casey said.

  “Only if you want to be,” Jake said. “Helped out, I mean. Start throwing strikes again, like we all know you can. Get your mojo back.”

  “These days I don’t feel like I ever had it,” Casey said.

  “That’s why we’re here,” Jake said. “Me and your two receivers here.”

  “What, all the good ones in town were busy?” Casey said, grinning, at least showing some of the old Casey, not the whupped dog he’d been all week at practice.

  Then he looked back at Jake and said, “Might as well put this on the table right now. After all the stuff I said to you this season, you want to be my quarterback coach?”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Jake said. “But I went and found you one who thinks he’s the best quarterback coach in the world.”

  He turned Casey around and pointed him toward the barn, because here came Troy Cullen.

  He got right to it, saying to Jake and Casey, “The two of you good?”

  It was Casey who said, “Good as we’re gonna be, Mr. Cullen.”

  “Good enough for me; I ain’t out here to be your guidance counselor,” he said. “You ready to work?” Nodding at Casey.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what’s happened to me.”

  “Hell’s bells,” Jake’s dad said. “Football happened to you, son, the way it happens to all of us sooner or later. The big game happened to you, and even that happens to the best of ’em. You think it hasn’t? Go back and take a look at that last Super Bowl ol’ Tom Brady lost to the Giants. He missed a big throw to that little Welker, one that would have changed everything. A throw he could have made with his eyes closed.”

  Then Jake’s dad grinned and said, “But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now all you have to understand is that somethin’ don’t have to be broke to need fixin’.”

  Jake was a little bit behind his dad, so Troy Cullen couldn’t see him smiling. But then maybe this was just funny to Jake, him having brought his dad out here to work with a guy who’d spent the whole season trying to beat him out of a job.

  His dad out here, at Jake’s request, after all the times in Jake’s life when he would’ve given anything to see him come walking out from the barn toward him.

  Troy Cullen and Casey began to warm up now, soft-tossing to each other, his dad’s motion as clean and classic as it had always been, same as it was with Wyatt.

  When Casey announced that he was ready, Troy Cullen brought Bear and Nate into it, telling them to go stand about twenty-five yards down the pasture, a little bit apart.

  Jake said, “And what do I get to do?”

  His dad grinned. “Watch and learn.”

  At first Troy Cullen kept things simple, just having Casey drop back, quick three-step drop, and yell either Bear’s name or Nate’s, just asking Casey to hit stationary targets, Casey doing that with no problem.

  “So far, so good,” Jake’s dad said.

  “With receivers not running around,” Casey said, “and nobody running at me. It’s not just that I feel like I’ve lost my location, Mr. Cullen. I feel like I lost all my timing.”

  “Nah,” Troy Cullen said. “It’s like I told my other boy, Wyatt, before the Red River game: You’ve just misplaced it, is all, like I do all the time with my reading glasses.”

  Eventually Bear and Nate ran patterns, simple ones, outs and slants and hooks, nothing deep. Sometimes Casey would take a snap from Jake, acting as his center, sometimes Jake—a pretty good snapper—would give it to him in the shotgun.

  And Casey started to miss now.

  Not by a lot, but by enough. Jake could see him, even out here, start to squeeze the ball like he did when things started to get sideways in practice, reminding him of a Little League pitcher who couldn’t throw a strike if his life depended on it.

  Same old, same old, Jake thought. Harder he tried, worse it got. After one overthrow to Nate, Casey looked at Troy Cullen and said, “What do I do?”

  Troy Cullen said, “Close your eyes.”

  Troy Cullen told Jake and Bear they could—his words—sit and take a load off, all’s he needed were Casey and Nate for the time being. Sending Nate ten yards down the pasture and explaining that the idea for what they were about to do came from his dad, a golfer whose putting always
drove him crazy.

  “Not a thing in the world he was afraid of, ’cept that little putter in his bag,” Jake’s dad said. “Couldn’t putt under pressure to save this ranch. Finally the pro at his club took him to the putting green one day and made him start making short putts with his eyes closed. Two-footers, then five-footers, then back to ten, even. Told him to see the hole, see the ball, close his eyes, let ’er go. Told him not to worry about the result, just the process. And before long, damned if it didn’t work.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Casey said. “You want me to throw with my eyes closed?”

  “Yes, son, I do,” Jake’s dad said. “It may sound crazy, but I’m here to tell you it works. Worked for me in college one time I got scatter-armed. And it will work for you, I promise.”

  Jake said, “How come you never did this drill with me?”

  “Because the one thing you always did was hit what you were throwin’ for,” his dad said, then smiled at Jake and said, “No matter what motion you used.”

  At first, Casey was as off throwing to Nate with his eyes closed as he had been when they were wide open. He’d miss short, bouncing the ball in the grass, or wide, or high.

  Troy Cullen just told him to stay patient, it would come.

  And eventually, to Casey’s amazement—and Jake’s—it finally did.

  Casey started to get it, suddenly throwing one spiral after another, Nate going five minutes sometimes without having to move a single step. Every few throws, Jake would watch Casey’s eyes to make sure he wasn’t cheating. But he wasn’t.

  “Yeah,” Casey would say when he’d open his eyes and see another ball in Nate’s hands. “Yeah, man!”

  Troy Cullen started to move Nate back, five yards, then ten.

  “You’re seein’ him now,” Troy Cullen said, “like your eyes were open instead of closed.” He’d had Nate running simple patterns, telling Casey that Nate was going to run ten steps, or fifteen, then cut left or right, telling him to close his eyes on the cut, see in his mind’s eye where he wanted the ball to end up.

  “Trust it,” Troy Cullen kept saying, and then Casey Lindell would complete another pass.