Million-Dollar Throw

by Mike Lupica

  Sue Brodie looked over to them now and said, “The dynamic duo rides again.”

  “Kind of a bumpy ride today,” Abby said.

  “For both of us,” Nate said.

  Nate’s mom said, “The mothers should be as resilient as the children.”

  “Half,” Abby’s mom said.

  “Everybody doing okay for the time being?” Nate’s mom asked.

  “Sort of,” Nate said. “I was just thinking that I kind of did to my team what happened to Abs. Threw ’em right down a flight of stairs.”

  “Everybody has a bad day once in a while,” Mrs. McCall said. “Even the best eighth-grade quarterback in the state.”

  “The only state I was in today was the state of I-stink,” Nate said.

  “The state of I-stink.” Abby laughed. “Now that was funny.”

  “You see what it’s like for me?” Nate said. “It’s good that I didn’t come here looking for any sympathy.”

  “Never,” Abby said. “You know my deal: If you’re looking for sympathy, buy yourself a Hallmark card. Now let’s bounce.”

  She led him up the back stairs to her room. Two rooms, actually. There was her bedroom, and then attached to the bedroom was what had been her playroom when she was little, but now had become her art studio, where she came to draw and paint. It was the one place—or at least Nate thought so—where the world she saw was still bright and full of colors. Colors he had never seen anywhere else.

  No two paintings were the same. There was one of a forest, but not like any Nate had ever seen. It looked to him like the most brightly colored rain forest in the world. There was one of a big city, Nate guessing it was Boston, but the way a city would look if you saw it through a kaleidoscope.

  There was one that showed a beach and an ocean beyond it, the water a shade of blue like none Nate had ever seen, making him think that Abby was like some mad scientist with colors, mixing them to come up with something brand new.

  Scattered all over the floor were open sketchbooks, most showing pencil sketches, all of faces. There was Malcolm captured perfectly, Pete, even Mr. Doherty, their English teacher at school.

  In the corner, set up on an easel, there was one of Nate.

  When Abby saw him looking in that direction, she made a quick move over there, nearly knocking down an easel on the way as though it wasn’t there.

  “Not done yet,” she said.

  “You make it sound like something you’re baking,” Nate said.

  She smiled right through her bumps and bruises and the bandage on her head. “Half-baked,” she said, “just like you.”

  “I would have settled for half-baked today,” he said. “Because if I’d played even half as good as I usually do, we would’ve won.”

  Abby could tell the time for joking about the game was over. In a quiet voice she said, “I’m sorry you lost.”

  “Not as sorry as I am that you fell.”

  “So we both fell today, Brady. But who’s better at bouncing right back up than us?”

  He sat down in one of those canvas chairs that was supposed to look like the kind Hollywood directors sat in on movie sets, one with “Nate” written on the back. Abby had given it to him on his last birthday, but then told him he wasn’t allowed to keep it at home; it was going in her studio.

  “I still can’t believe I have my very own reserved seat,” he said.

  “It’s like I explained to you,” she said. “Since you’re the only one allowed in here on a regular basis, you might as well have your own viewing chair.”

  “It’s a great view,” he said.

  “While it lasts,” Abby answered, a little too quickly.

  “You’re gonna be fine, Abs,” Nate said.

  “That’s my line,” she said. And she smiled again, only this one was different. “Or maybe I should say that’s my lie.”

  The room was quiet now, except for some music coming from her bedroom. Abby was on the floor, legs crossed, jeans still dirty from where she must have hit the ground, her hand moving all over the page on the sketch pad she’d grabbed, a blur like it always was. Not looking up at him, concentrating.

  Nate asked, “What really happened today?”

  “It’s like I heard your mom telling you,” she said. “You know how sometimes I’m at one of your games and I mind-meld you and get you to look over?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Well, it wasn’t working well enough today from where I was sitting.” She gave a quick look up. “You know this isn’t crazy, right?”

  “Never,” he said.

  “So I thought I needed to get closer to you today, so I could just give you a look that said, Chill, dopeface.” Abby went back to her drawing now, shaking her head as she did. “I’ve never seen you that uptight over anything except maybe a Spanish test.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So here’s what I’m wondering,” she said. “Why?”

  “I thought we were talking about the bleachers reaching out and tripping you.”

  Nate didn’t want to answer the question about the Blair game because he didn’t have an answer. He didn’t know why he’d been pressing so much lately.

  “Yes, we were talking about that.” She sighed and said, “It was just another time, like when we were playing catch the other day, that I was dumb enough to think I can do things like I used to. So now I’m dumb and blind. Thinking I could take the bleachers two at a time, because I was in such a rush to get down to you. I missed the second-to-last one and fell sideways, like I was the lead of the dork parade.”

  The pad was still in her lap, one of her special drawing pencils from the art store in her right hand. Her hand was still for a change. The music had stopped in her bedroom.

  “I’m glad you tried,” he said. “I needed you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  They were silent for a minute.

  Then Abby said, “You know how you couldn’t play the way you wanted to today, no matter how hard you tried?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Well, sometimes I can’t do this.”

  “Draw, you mean?”

  She looked up at him, looked at him with big eyes that would look perfect to anybody who didn’t know what was happening behind them, eyes that were as blue to Nate as the blue water in her painting.

  “No, I can still draw.”

  “Then I don’t understand, Abs.”

  Not the first time he’d said that to her.

  “I mean, sometimes I’m no good at going blind.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Nate’s favorite place to throw a football, at least when he wanted to go off and do it alone, was at a corner of Coppo Field that most kids had forgotten, on the far side of the new dog park.

  That’s where the tire was.

  It hung from this low, thick branch on what Nate thought had to be the oldest oak tree on the whole property and had been there from the time Nate first started coming to the park. This was where the playground had been at Coppo before they had given the place a big expensive makeover, putting in the dog park, building a newer and better and more expensive playground over on the other side of the soccer fields. Nate’s mom used to take him there when he was little, both of them knowing he would get tired of the swings and slides and monkey bars pretty quickly. That’s why he always brought a football with him, whatever one he could grip at the time, and entertained himself throwing the ball—or trying to, anyway—through the big old tire that looked as old as the tree.

  After dinner that night, his dad still not home because he was working an extra shift, Nate rode his bike over to Coppo to throw.

  Just because he didn’t want to go to bed that night and have his last football thing of the day, of the week, be the ball he’d sailed over LaDell’s head when a good throw would’ve beat the Blair Bears.

  He could still hear Willie Clifton burning on him after his first bad throw of the day, Willie saying, “Who wants to be a millionaire, yo
?”

  Like the Million-Dollar Throw had anything to do with what had happened on the field today.

  “Even Brady has had bad games, Brady,” is the way Abby put it before he left her studio.

  His mom had told him the same thing over dinner, in about ten different ways.

  “If your father were here,” she’d finally said, “he could take care of this with a single sentence.”

  But he wasn’t there and he hadn’t been at the game and he’d called when they got home from Abby’s to tell them not to hold dinner. Which was actually fine with Nate. He didn’t want any more words of wisdom or consolation tonight, didn’t want another person trying to draw a smiley face on a sludge day.

  He just wanted to throw.

  For just a few minutes before dark, Nate wanted to go someplace—be someplace—where the only problem in his life was trying to put a ball through the hole in a tire that was so old now that you could only see the two O’s from “Goodyear” written on it. He didn’t want to worry about the Million-Dollar Throw or money or his dad’s job or the way he’d stunk it up today.

  Didn’t even want to worry about Abby, just for a little while.

  He just wanted to grip it and rip it.

  He brought one of his favorite balls with him, an old regulation NFL ball that had the name of the previous commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, on it. The ball had some miles on it, and Nate didn’t think the laces were going to last much longer, but it still fit his hand like a batting glove.

  There were a bunch of other balls in the old milk crate in the garage, but when Nate was really serious about throwing, he brought only one ball with him. If you brought only one, every throw meant something as you tried to put it through the tire and hit the trunk of the tree squarely, which meant no chasing after it in the woods. Miss the tire, miss the tree. When his dad was still playing golf at Valley Country Club, Nate would watch him on the putting green sometimes, and his dad would be using only one ball while everybody else was using two or three.

  Nate asked him why one time and his dad had said, “Because you only get to use one when the putt matters.”

  Nate warmed up, throwing easy ten-yard passes, putting just about every one through the hole. Then, slowly, he began to move back until he was thirty yards away, knowing that was the distance for the Million-Dollar Throw, knowing he had been fooling himself on the way over, that with everything he told himself he wanted to get out of his head tonight, that throw was never out of his head these days. Not for very long, at least.

  Same distance at Coppo he’d have at Gillette Stadium, just with a much bigger target.

  Nate took a deep breath now, imagining this was the big night. The biggest throw of his life. Of any thirteen-year-old’s life, with the whole world watching and a fortune on the line.

  Nate imagined Gillette Stadium being as quiet as Coppo Field was right now in the twilight.

  He took another deep breath, closed his eyes, remembering as he did so another thing his dad had told him once when he was still golfing, about Jack Nicklaus, whom Nate knew was Tiger Woods before Tiger Woods. His dad said that Nicklaus never stroked a putt until he had already pictured himself making it.

  Nate relaxed his shoulders, gave them a little shake like he did over center sometimes, the ball in his right hand, then took one step forward, striding into the throw, and put the ball through the tire.

  Nothing but air.

  “Arm looks fine to me.”

  His dad.

  He had changed out of his Big Bill shirt and khaki pants, put on the kind of hooded gray sweatshirt that Coach Belichick wore during Patriots games. He was wearing old jeans with paint on them and his old gray New Balance running shoes, which he sometimes said he should be using to run from one job to the next.

  Nate said, “Now it looks fine.”

  He jogged over to retrieve the ball at the base of the tree and came back to where his dad was standing.

  “Dad,” Nate said, “I couldn’t do anything right today. I’m glad you couldn’t come.”

  “I’m not,” his dad said in a quiet voice.

  “I’m just saying,” Nate said.

  “Heard the whole story from your mom.” His dad managed a smile. “In great detail.”

  “Sorry,” Nate said.

  His dad said, “You ever think Mom is harboring some secret dream to be a play-by-play announcer?”

  “But not just in football,” Nate said. “I think she’d be happy doing play-by-play for, like, the whole planet.”

  “She told me about the game,” his dad said. “And about Abby.”

  “Not a great day.”

  “Happens.”

  “Not like it happened to me in the game today,” Nate said. “Dad, I’ve lost games before, but I’ve never felt as much like I’d let everybody down.”

  “You’ll get up, though. You always do.”

  “What are you doing here, by the way?”

  “Your mom informed me that you needed company even though she said you didn’t think you needed company.”

  “Maybe she was right.”

  “Oh no, big boy. Not maybe. Our story is going to be that she was definitely right, that you were thrilled to see your old man, and that she still knows you better than anybody. It’ll make her whole week.”

  He put out his fist and Nate gave him some back. “I’m totally down with that,” he said.

  “Trouble is, you still look down.”

  Maybe it was everything that had happened, because of the game and Abby. Or maybe it was just because it was him and his dad on a field alone and it never seemed to happen that way anymore, at least not as much as Nate wanted it to happen.

  But it just came out of him, like a genie jumping out of a bottle.

  “Why’d they have to pick me to make this stupid throw?”

  His dad didn’t act surprised, or startled, just made a casual motion for Nate to toss him the ball. Nate did. And then, barely looking at the target, his dad whipped a throw at the tire from the Million-Dollar Throw distance, nearly putting it through on the first try, hitting the side of the tire so hard it spun the thing around.

  “Is that what all this moping is about?” his dad asked.

  “I didn’t think I was moping.”

  “Looks like it to me.”

  Nate didn’t know what to say to that, so he ran after the ball and brought it back. “I mean, I’m excited about doing it, at least some of the time, when I’m not geeked out of my head about it,” Nate said. “But most of the time, it’s like it’s one more thing I don’t need right now. Like one more guy piling on when I’m already down.”

  In a voice that wasn’t much louder than the wind at the tops of the trees, his dad said, “When you’re down.”

  “Yeah,” Nate said.

  “So the thing that’s bringing you down,” his dad said, “is the chance to do something you’d rather do than eat: throw a football. Live out every kid’s dream and maybe win a million dollars doing it. You’re telling me that’s what has your insides tied up in a sailor’s knot?”

  “No,” Nate said, not liking his dad’s tone now, not liking the way this was going, wondering how things could get sideways between them this quickly. “No,” Nate said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that it’s like more pressure than I need right now, that’s all.”

  “Pressure?” his dad said.

  And in that moment, it sounded like Iverson talking about “practice.” As if Nate had not just said a bad word, he’d let one slip out in front of a parent.

  “You’re under too much pressure?” his dad said.

  His voice sounding completely different from when he’d first shown up at Coppo.

  Like it belonged to somebody else.

  Nate just stood there, not knowing how to talk to this dad.

  “You know what pressure is?” Chris Brodie said. “Pressure is not even getting the chance to do anything you love anymore. Or even like.”

&
nbsp; “Dad, I get that, I really do.”

  Nate felt like he was standing there against a blitz he hadn’t seen coming.

  “Do you get it?” his dad said. “Because I’m not sure you do. I’m not sure anybody does. Pressure?” he said again. “Pressure is doing a job you hate, that even makes you hate sports sometimes, so you can hold on to what’s supposed to be your real job, except you can’t make a living at that job anymore.”

  Nate looked down and saw him clenching his fists now, unclenching them, over and over, those big hands of his, ones Nate always thought could grip a football as easily as if it were a baseball.

  “Dad, I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Nate said. “I don’t even know how we got to talking about this.” Just wanting the conversation to be over, just wanting to go home so that what was now officially an all-time, historically bad, epically bad Saturday could finally be over. “I know you’ve had a bad day, way worse than mine . . .”

  His dad, shaking his head, like he was locked in now, said, “Pressure is never having enough money and starting to think you’re never going to have enough again.”

  Then, as quickly as he had started, he was finished. He said he’d see Nate at home and started walking across the soccer fields toward the parking lot, Nate watching him until it was as if he had just walked off into the night.

  Nate stood there, not moving, feeling the same way he had after the ball had gone over LaDell’s head. No. Feeling even worse now.

  And Nate knew the real reason he was feeling this lousy was how sorry he was feeling for himself. Because of the way he’d complained about pressure. Whined about it, really. Because of the way his dad had called him out on it.

  He wondered what Abby would think of him right now. Abby who never complained, even facing the worst kind of pressure in the world.

  She came close sometimes. How could she not? She had come close today when she had admitted to Nate that she just plain stank at going blind.

  But Abby McCall, who was going blind, never felt as sorry for herself as Nate did right now at Coppo.