by Tim Green
Coach Hewitt called them all in to listen to the referee’s talk about sportsmanship. Coach Hewitt stood like a boulder, his hat floppy and dripping. The ref looked up at the sky before giving his speech and asking for the team captains to meet in the mud for a coin toss. Except for the devoted parents hunched over in bright red, yellow, and blue rain gear, the stands were mostly empty. Mak had that crazed look he got whenever he was getting ready to smack people.
Brock grabbed his arm to make one final plea. “Do not let Subich through.”
“What’s the matter? Too wet for you today? Don’t you want to get in there and get your hands cold?” Mak screwed up his face.
“I want it.” Brock gritted his teeth. “I just don’t want it the wrong way.”
“Relax.” Mak hawked up some snot from his throat and spit it through his mask into the mud. “I’m not letting that goober off the line of scrimmage. He’ll be lucky if he walks out of here.”
“Good.” Brock felt like junk. He wanted Subich to knock Wally out of the game so he’d have a chance to play; he just didn’t want to be the one who caused it to happen.
“Okay already!” Mak snapped then turned away, snarling to himself.
Brock watched the coin toss—which they lost—and held his hand up for their three wins cheer before wiping water from a spot on the bench with his hand and plunking himself down. The kickoff went sideways in the rain, and Bradley West recovered it on the fifty. Their offense jogged out and began to thrash Calhoun’s defense, grinding away with their running back picking up five or six yards a play until they put it into the end zone.
Coach Hewitt barked and snarled and howled at his defense as they jogged to the sideline. Calenzo fielded the kickoff and ran it twenty yards before being pounded into the mud. Brock stood and slipped up alongside Coach Van Kuffler to hear what was going on. The offense jogged out, Wally Van Kuffler leading the pack. Brock’s eyes were on Mak. The Bradley West player opposite him—wearing number 77—stood taller than Mak and nearly as thick, but without the stomach. It was Isaac Subich.
Brock knew from listening that the first play was a sweep away from Subich. On the snap, Mak fired into the big defensive lineman and the two of them smashed each other back and forth. Neither of them appeared to care about the rest of the play going on around them. Calenzo got stuffed at the line.
The next play was a run up the middle. Mak and Subich went at it again, but this time Subich slipped free toward the middle of the line, grabbed hold of Calenzo, and stuffed him into the mud.
“Koletsky!” Coach Delaney screamed. “You gotta stay on your block!”
Mak slapped his own helmet repeatedly as he returned to the huddle.
The next play was a pass, no secret on third down with nine yards to go. Brock tensed up as Mak jogged to the line and set up in a two-point stance. Wally took the snap on a quick count. Subich fired out for Mak. Mak braced his feet for the impact and punched his arms out to deliver a blow of his own.
All he hit was air.
Subich tilted his body sideways and swam his arm over Mak’s left shoulder pad. With fury, Subich launched himself at Wally—who stood like a statue, ready to throw, with his back to the big defensive lineman. Everyone on the Calhoun sideline winced. The crack of helmet on helmet sounded like a gunshot. Subich jumped up out of the mud and pumped his fist in the air with a war cry. The thin crowd jumped to its feet, home team cheering, visitors gasping.
Wally Van Kuffler lay planted in the mud . . . and he didn’t move.
71
The ref tossed a yellow flag in the general direction of Subich for unsportsmanlike conduct. The Bradley West star player stopped what he was doing to give the flag a sad look, while his own coach screamed at him from the sideline. The penalty would give Calhoun a first down, but the damage was done.
The Calhoun trainer and a doctor from Bradley West helped Wally stagger off the field along with his uncle, Coach Van Kuffler. They got him to the bench where his eyes rolled in his head. His mother came out of the stands to fuss. Calhoun’s three coaches conferred near the sideline. Brock broke into the coaches’ huddle, buckling up his chin strap.
“What’s the play, Coach?”
Van Kuffler’s eyes narrowed and he grabbed Brock’s face mask, pulling him close. “You think I don’t know you two planned this?”
“Coach!” Coach Hewitt slapped Van Kuffler’s hand away.
“That flathead Koletsky!” Van Kuffler glared at Coach Hewitt and his arms flew wildly through the air and spit spewed from his mouth. “You heard Coach Delaney. Koletsky wasn’t holding his block the last play! He did this! He whiffed on purpose so his Flatty friend could get in the game and now my neph—my starting quarterback’s seeing stars!”
“Subich hit him, Coach, not Koletsky. Stop this! Brock’s our backup quarterback. Give him the play and let’s get some points on the board.” Coach Hewitt folded his arms and stared hard at Coach Van Kuffler.
Brock watched the rage worm its way across the surface of Coach Van Kuffler’s face. Van Kuffler looked at Brock and spoke through his teeth. “One mistake . . . just one, and your little game is over. Trips Right 27 Counter-trap.”
Brock nodded and took off for the huddle, his heart jackhammering in his chest.
72
Brock called the play.
The offense jogged to the line. He saw Subich, hunkering down in his stance across from Mak, and knew the counterplay would allow Subich to run free upfield so that Calhoun’s pulling guard from the right could blindside Subich, sending him into a daze of his own. The fifteen-yard penalty put the ball right up into the middle of the mucky part of the field. It was pure mud and Brock’s feet sloshed in his shoes, their laces bubbling in the slop.
He barked out the cadence, took the snap, and did a reverse pivot, faking a toss to Calenzo. Calenzo took a jab step right, then cut back left. Brock ran toward him and stuck the ball right in his gut. Calenzo grabbed it, slipped in the mud, and fumbled the ball. Subich came free upfield, saw the ball, scooped it up, and ran into the end zone as Mak chased hopelessly after him.
All Brock could do was stand and stare, frozen in shock by the sudden change of events.
His ears rang with Van Kuffler’s screaming.
Brock turned and jogged toward the sideline. Coach Hewitt had his head in his hands as if trying to keep it from flying off his neck. Coach Delaney threw his clipboard into the mud. His teammates’ shoulders sagged under the weight of dripping pads and spirits.
“That’s it!” Van Kuffler kept screaming. “That’s it! He’s done!”
Coach Hewitt finally secured his head. He looked at Brock sadly. “Wentzel!”
Wentzel appeared, chin strap already buckled. He leaned close to Brock. “You’re pathetic. You know that?”
Brock couldn’t respond, even though he didn’t believe it was true. He knew he’d gotten the ball into Calenzo’s hands. After that, it was up to Calenzo, but that’s not how it was playing out, and he knew any explanation would be viewed as an excuse. He made his way toward the bench without even trying. Now, more than ever, he knew he needed Laurel’s mom—or someone like her—to fight on his behalf. He needed someone who mattered to get into the coaches’ faces and keep them from blaming Brock for something that clearly wasn’t his fault.
When he felt a hand turn him around, he braced himself for more screaming.
It was Mak, with a drop of blood seeping from his nose. Wet strings of hair hung limp from beneath the helmet’s padding. Sadness swam in his droopy eyes through the metal grill of his mask. “Hey, buddy. That wasn’t your fault. I don’t care what they say.”
“You didn’t let Subich crush Wally on purpose, did you, Mak?”
Mak shook his head. “No, I told you I wouldn’t. I missed, and I am gonna smash Subich now.”
The Bradley West fans cheered as their team kicked the extra point.
Brock sighed. “Well, no one will listen to you, either, I guess. But you’re sti
ll first team.”
“Yeah. Well.” Mak looked down at his feet and Brock could see a blurry and distorted reflection of himself in the glossy wet helmet. “I better go.”
Brock sat down, and he watched Mak push his way through the gang of players toward the field where he joined the other Calhoun first teamers, which now included Wentzel.
Wentzel didn’t do much better than Brock. Although there were no fumbles or interceptions until the fourth quarter, the offense didn’t move the ball either. When Mak finally started to contain Subich, the Bradley West coaches simply flipped him to the other side where he continued to terrorize Calhoun’s offense. Subich had a couple of clean shots on Wentzel, but nothing that sent him into la-la land quite like Wally Van Kuffler, who’d been hustled away by his mom to go get X-rays.
In the end, Calhoun lost 27–0, an embarrassment of historical proportions. Still, as much as the offense—and Wentzel—struggled, they never again looked Brock’s way. He had no idea what would happen next, and he sat silently like the rest of the team on their long, wet, bumpy bus ride home.
73
Brock’s father waited for him in their car outside the school. Brock could see his father’s shape through the rain-smeared windows. The car spewed smoke from its tailpipe, which rose up in the face of the steady rain. The wipers squeaked as Brock opened the passenger door and slipped in. His father offered a silent smile, then put the car into gear and took off.
They stopped for the light in the center of town. When it turned green, his father got underway again before he spoke. “Tough deal.”
Brock shook his head and gently pounded a fist against the window.
“That Wentzel kid looked really bad,” his father said.
Brock snorted. “Not that it matters.”
“It might. You never know.”
“I know, Dad. That rat Van Kuffler wouldn’t put me in if I was the last person on earth.”
“They might have an open competition,” his father said. “Coach Hewitt’s not going to want to lose the rest of the games like that.”
The car tires hummed across the bridge.
“Maybe Wally will get better.”
“I think with all the worry about concussions, he’ll be out for at least a week, maybe more. Hey, this could be when you make your move.” His father looked over at him. “What? Why are you shaking your head?”
“We’re on the outside, Dad. If I grew up on this side of the river and you were a lawyer, I’d get a chance. Or if you were still with Laurel’s mom . . .”
“Oh, right, then you’d be football royalty and they’d put you in and everyone would live happily ever after. All I had to do was pretend to love someone, and that’s easy, right?” His father twisted his lips in doubt. “Sometimes in life things don’t just slide into place, you have to fight for them. And sometimes that lets you know how much you really wanted something. You persevere, never quit.”
Brock didn’t even bother responding. At home, he took a hot shower, then went downstairs and sat on the couch as far away from his father as he could to read. Rain pattered against the window and Brock—like his father—got lost in his book. Later, they ate a quiet dinner and watched a movie before turning in.
“Maybe we’ll take a drive tomorrow and a hike.” His father stood in the doorway to Brock’s tiny bedroom. “Guy at work said Burr Oak State Park is supposed to be pretty nice. Take a swim? Pack a couple sandwiches.”
Brock sat propped up in his bed, and he didn’t raise his eyes from the book. “Maybe.”
“Suit yourself.” His father sighed and turned out the light.
Brock heard the sounds of his father getting ready for bed before the house went silent. His eyes lost their focus on the page in front of him and he thought about everything that had happened, all his ruined plans.
“Couldn’t get much worse.” He spoke quietly to himself as he reached up and turned off the lamp on his nightstand.
The steady rasp of rain on the roof and exhaustion carried him off to sleep.
Time passed before the squeak of the narrow stairs outside his bedroom pulled him back. Frozen, he listened and heard it again, softly, almost too soft to hear through the rain. He blinked and tried to clear his head of sleep, wondering if he’d heard anything at all. Without moving his body, Brock slowly raised his head.
A shadow yawned across the opening between his bedroom door and its frame. He felt a jolt of panic, blinked, and the shadow was gone. His eyes stayed wide and his ears strained for a sound while his mind raced around the image of Boudantsev. A tiny groan escaped his throat.
His legs and arms felt like water balloons, heavy and sloshing and lifeless.
Then he heard another creak, and the hinge on his father’s bedroom door opening. He recalled in that split second all the times his father had told him that it was him they wanted, not Brock, and that they would kill him.
Brock slipped out of bed, still hoping his mind was playing tricks. He peeked out his doorway into the little hall. His father’s bedroom door was open. Brock fished through his mind, trying to remember the sounds of his father getting ready for bed. He was almost certain he’d heard the final click of the knob as his father had closed the door.
He took a step and his feet immediately felt the chill of water. He realized that whoever it was, they’d tracked in the rain. Brock moved to the open door of his father’s bedroom and gasped. Only the faintest light bled in through the curtains from the pole light down on the street.
Standing over the bed, an inky shadow extended its hands toward his father’s face.
74
Something deep within Brock—a groan, maybe a roar—gurgled in his throat, then he leaped across the bedroom. He knocked the intruder sideways. The lamp beside the bed crashed. Brock was flipped through the air. He thumped his head against the floor, saw stars, and heard ringing in his ears.
He sensed, more than saw, his father fly out of the bed, snatch the intruder in midair, and whip him to the floor with a bang. Brock scrambled away, backing like a crab into the corner by the window and pulling his feet free from the fallen intruder. As the intruder rose from the floor, Brock’s dad struck him in the side of the head and spun around behind him like a spider, arms and legs wrapping up the intruder like a caught fly.
With one arm around the intruder’s neck and the other pinning both arms to his side, Brock’s dad shook him, then clamped down on the choke hold even tighter. “Stop! Don’t move.”
The intruder went limp. “Let me go.”
Brock gasped at the sound of the voice. There was no heavy Russian accent. It sounded like . . .
His father backed against the light switch and flipped it up and on with his elbow. “Brock, take off the mask. Brock!”
Brock jumped up, broken from his trance. He reached carefully for the edge of the mask, peeled it off the intruder’s head, and found himself frozen in place by two dark eyes.
Brock’s stomach plunged. “Oh my God.”
75
Brock knew the face, not from real life, but from a picture.
In the box Brock’s father took with him wherever it was they had moved—the one he kept hidden in his sweater drawer—just beneath the newspaper article about the death of his mother, was a photo. Ocean, grassy dunes, and wind in that picture surrounded his parents, a younger-looking father and a woman with the same liquid-brown eyes as Brock and the nose he used to have—long, narrow, and upturned. She was a beautiful woman with a tangle of dark hair swept from a forehead lined with worry.
Brock had seen her face many times in his sleep. His mother would come to him in his dreams. It wasn’t unusual. Still, he realized that those images were more of a feeling, like a picture out of focus.
This, the face of the person whose neck was wrapped in his father’s strong arm, wasn’t fuzzy at all. It wasn’t the face from the photo. But the eyes . . .
“Dad, stop. It’s her.” Words spilled from his mouth like a broken bag of
jelly beans.
“It’s Mom.”
76
“Audrey.” Brock’s father choked on the name.
At first Brock thought his father had hurt her, but he realized as she reached for both their faces at the same time that she was softly crying because of them. She pulled them both to her so that Brock could feel his father’s skull against the side of his head and his mother’s collarbone in his face. She held them both and they wrapped their arms around her too. They were a bundle of limbs and elbows and fingers hooked like claws holding tight.
Finally, they broke their hold and sat down on the edge of his father’s bed, his mother between them, explaining.
“I wanted to wake you gently,” she said to his father. “I came as soon as I could. I didn’t know our son was a guard dog.”
Brock let her laugh wash over him. Part of him wanted to close his eyes and just listen to the sound of her. The sight of her was almost too overwhelming, a yellow bulldozer in your living room, big and permanent and impossible all at once.
“I’m sorry,” Brock said.
“Me too.” She smiled though, and rubbed the back of her head.
“I can’t . . . I can’t believe this . . . You’re . . . You’re here.” When Brock’s father finally stopped sighing and smiling and holding her by the cheeks, he asked her, “What happened?”
She hunched her shoulders and bowed her head, hands clasped. “They took me . . . to Cuba, to a cell in a police station in the middle of nowhere. After a few years I got very sick, a fever. The police chief’s wife took care of me. I almost died, but I didn’t, and we became friends. She was the one who helped me get away.”
She sighed. “That was five years ago. I snuck back in on a boat to Miami, but I never even tried to find you. I was afraid they let me go, so they could follow me to you. I knew they wanted those bank accounts—people will do a lot for a hundred million dollars.”
