Million-Dollar Throw

by Mike Lupica

  “Nope. You know the deal with Miss Buchanan: The rest of us weren’t even peeking at your desk. We have a hard enough time just getting it right at our own.”

  “It was either the monitor or wearing the glasses in class,” Abby said.

  “Which you hate.”

  “More than spinach,” she said.

  They were the last two in the room now, Miss Buchanan and everybody else having cleared out, Nate waiting for her out of force of habit. Abby was standing next to her desk and Nate was all the way in back, where he had always been in math.

  It was when Abby started to walk back to him that she tripped over the leg of a chair that was sticking out in the aisle and went down.

  Nate shoved his own desk out of the way to get to her, then hopped over a chair. But when he tried to help her up, she shook her head, no, and pulled herself up, like a fighter trying to bounce right back up after a knockdown.

  It was when she was standing again that Nate saw the panic on Abby McCall’s face, like the girl who couldn’t even see the chair she’d tripped over had managed to see something else that scared her to death.

  “You okay, Abs?” he said.

  She didn’t say anything right away, wasn’t looking at him now, was looking over her shoulder, as if checking to see if it was still just the two of them in Miss Buchanan’s classroom.

  When she turned back around, she said, “Don’t tell anybody, Brady. Please.”

  “Tell anybody what? That you tripped?”

  “Just promise you won’t,” she said, the scared look still on her face. “Because if any of the teachers find out, they’re supposed to tell my parents.”

  “Abs,” he said, “you’ve fallen before, even at school. Then you do what you just did, which is get back up.”

  “I know. But I’ve been falling a lot.” Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper now. “Even at Perkins. That’s why they started teaching me to use a cane.”

  Nate knew what kind of cane she meant. Right away he pictured the blind people he would see in the street, cane out in front of them, tapping the sidewalk.

  “They told me I should start using one at school, just to get used to it,” she said.

  Nate said, “But just a couple of weeks ago, we were at Coppo playing catch . . .”

  He knew she had fallen that day, too, but in his mind he saw her before that, running on her long legs, running the way she used to.

  Laughing her head off.

  Being the Abby he still wanted her to be.

  “It’s been getting worse,” she said. “I’ve been able to fake you out about how bad it’s getting because I know you don’t want to see it. Like you’re the one with the bad eyes. You just see the stuff you want to. It’s just . . . I can’t fake myself out anymore.”

  “A cane,” he said.

  “They told me it was better for me to learn with it while I can still see. It will make it easier when I can’t.”

  Nate thought she might cry then. The girl who never let him see her cry.

  “I don’t want to use a cane at school,” she said. “It would make me feel like I was officially leading the freak parade.”

  “You know that isn’t true.”

  “It would be worse than the glasses,” she said. “Worse than that monitor, or the extra time they give me on tests now.” She looked at Nate, somehow managed a small smile. “Worse than falling down.”

  “But when you got back from Perkins the other day,” he said, “you acted like you were getting used to . . .” He put his hands out, like he was defenseless suddenly. “Getting used to the deal,” he said.

  “Getting used to going blind, Brady,” she said. “It’s okay, you can say it.”

  “You said you learned stuff there, how to be better at it.”

  “But I was there,” she said. “Not here. There everybody was like me, or worse off than me, people who have been blind since they were born. Here they’re not. Here I don’t fit in anymore.”

  They just stood there now, a desk apart, Nate feeling as if that space were a canyon, knowing he had to say what they both were thinking before he lost his nerve.

  “Maybe you need to be there,” he said.

  Abby didn’t say anything. He thought she was about to, but she didn’t, and she didn’t cry.

  She just closed her eyes and nodded.

  CHAPTER 22

  Game day.

  Valley Patriots versus the Whitesboro Panthers.

  The opening drive for the Patriots took seven minutes off the clock, an eighty-yard drive that resulted in a 7-0 lead. They mixed short passes and runs, most of the passes coming on first down, Coach Rivers and Coach Hanratty having decided they were going to use their passing game to set up their running game today, the way the pros did with the West Coast offense.

  Nate had told them he was so down with that.

  It was one of the best things about playing on this team, every game plan being different, no Saturday being anything like the one before it.

  And it had worked. Nate had managed to complete all five of his passes on the drive, even though those five completions had gone for a total of only thirty yards.

  Coming off the field Malcolm said, “You brought your good mojo today.”

  Nate said, “You could have completed those passes.”

  Malcolm gave him a playful shove and said, “Dude, what is it with you these days? I want to talk about mojo, you want to go looking for a dark dang cloud.”

  “I’m good,” Nate said, and from behind him he heard LaDell say, “We gonna move those chains all day long, baby.”

  “All day,” Nate said, wishing he believed it as much as his tailback did.

  The Panthers didn’t take long to respond, scoring on their second play from scrimmage, a sixty-yard pass-and-run play to their tight end. Just like that, the game was tied.

  For some reason the Panthers doing it that easily, and that quickly, rocked Nate. He didn’t want to get into a scoring contest and it showed. He threw his next pass over Ben’s head and right into the hands of the Panthers’ free safety.

  Four running plays later, it was 14-7, Whitesboro.

  On Valley’s next drive, Nate hung a short out pass to Pete like a pitcher hanging a breaking ball. This time a Panthers cornerback stepped in, said thank you very much, went down the sideline so fast it was as if he had IM’ed himself into the end zone. Now it was 21-7, Whitesboro.

  The next drive for the Patriots started off well enough. They went back to their version of the West Coast, strung together some first downs, got across midfield. But on the next play, a big pass rush in his face, Nate tried to force a pass to Bradley over the middle. The ball was way behind Bradley, bounced off the hands of the linebacker closest to him, and ended up in the hands of the free safety again. If Nate hadn’t managed to catch the guy from behind, it would have been 28-7 at halftime, game over.

  When he got to the sidelines, Coach Rivers put an arm around his shoulders and said, “We maybe could have thought about eating that one.”

  Nate pulled away, slapped the sides of his helmet, hard, with both hands and said, “I know, Coach. Believe me, I know.”

  “Sometimes the best throw,” Coach said, “is the one you don’t make,” sounding like his dad telling him in a nice way that he should always know when to shut up.

  Nate got one more chance to move the chains before halftime. Staying on the ground now, the Patriots drove down to the Whitesboro 20-yard line and were facing a second-and-five, half minute left. Nate looked over to Coach Hanratty’s play board and picked up his hot read, a crossing pattern to Pete that was drawn up to have him open as he cut in front of the goalposts.

  It was Pete’s favorite route, and one of Nate’s favorite throws to make, to his favorite receiver.

  He went to a quick count, dropped back into the pocket, looked off the free safety by giving a long look at Eric, who’d run a quick little buttonhook move in the left flat. When he looked back to the
middle, he saw that Pete had gotten his inside shoulder on the cornerback and had him by two strides, easy.

  Had him cold.

  Yet Nate couldn’t pull the trigger.

  He was afraid he might get picked off again.

  It was the worst kind of fear there was in sports, the kind where you didn’t give yourself a chance to do something right—even something great—because you were terrified you might do something wrong. So Nate didn’t do anything. This time he ate the ball, for all the wrong reasons, got himself righteously sacked. Then got sacked again on third down when there was nobody open and nowhere for him to run. Coach Hanratty didn’t even have him try a throw on the last play of the half, just had him hand the ball off to LaDell and run out the last few seconds.

  When he got to the sideline this time, Nate knew what was coming, just by the look on Coach Rivers’ face.

  “We’re better than those other guys,” Coach said to him, taking off his Patriots cap, running a hand through his short hair. “And I owe it to the guys on our team to give us our best chance.”

  “Eric,” Nate said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Coach said. “Sorry.”

  “I’d do the same,” Nate said. “Really, I would.”

  “Be ready if I need you to go back in,” Coach Rivers said before he walked away.

  “You won’t,” Nate said, not sure whether Coach heard him or not.

  He didn’t stand next to Coach Rivers or Coach Hanratty the second half, just found himself a patch of grass about twenty yards away from them and stayed right there. Watched from there as Eric brought the Patriots back again, Nate knowing he was going to bring them back, knowing at the same time that Eric winning the Whitesboro game this way—which he finally did, 28-21—was the beginning of Nate officially losing his job.

  When he got home an hour later, he found out his job wasn’t the only one that had been lost that day. His dad had been laid off from Big Bill’s.

  CHAPTER 23

  They were at the kitchen table. As soon as Nate walked in, he knew it was bad, the way you always did with your parents. Not how bad. Just bad. Just by the way they were looking at each other.

  It wasn’t just his mom’s face, eyes red, obviously from crying. It wasn’t just the look on his dad’s face, the way he seemed to be staring past Nate’s mom at some point over on the other side of the street. Or the other side of town. Or the world. It was the air in the room, thick and heavy, the way the air outside felt right before a storm was about to hit.

  “What happened?” Nate asked.

  It was his mom who said the words, his dad still just sitting there, staring off into space.

  When his dad finally spoke, he said, “They told me they hated to do it. Said it had nothing to do with my job performance, said I was one of the best managers they’d ever had. But they had to cut costs. And I was obviously overqualified for the job in the first place.”

  Nate didn’t move, stayed right where he was in the doorway, uniform still on, helmet in his right hand. He looked at his mom now, thinking, You never cry. You never cry the way Abby never cries.

  His blue-sky, glass-half-full mom, staring at him with red, sad eyes. “No warning,” she said, “none,” as if she were talking to herself.

  Nate noticed that his dad was still in his Big Bill’s shirt, the shirt Nate knew he hated, the one he usually couldn’t wait to take off as soon as he got home from work. Only now maybe he didn’t want to take it off because as soon as he did, then it became final, official, that he was out of a job. Again.

  “What does this mean?” Nate said, knowing the question came out sounding stupid, but not knowing a better way to ask it.

  Now his parents really were back to looking at each other, like they were waiting to see who’d make the first move. For a moment neither one of them spoke.

  Finally his dad said, “It means, son, that I have to find another job.”

  “What kind of job?”

  His dad blew out some air and said, “Any kind of job.”

  “Before . . .” Nate stopped himself, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Even before this,” he said, “I heard you and Mom saying we might lose our house before we even got to sell it.”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, son,” his dad said. “That’s a possibility. Has been for a while. The way it is with a lot of other people right now. It’s why I have to go back into the want ads tomorrow and see if I can find a job as soon as possible.” He smiled, almost like he was making fun of himself, before he said, “Another dream job.”

  “But what if you don’t, Dad? What happens to us if you don’t find something right away?”

  Nate’s dad gave him a long look, then his eyes shifted back to Nate’s mom. Then back to Nate. His dad shrugged. “Then we will lose this house,” he said.

  He slammed his hands on the table, stood up, said, “We’ll lose everything,” and walked out of the room.

  Then Nate and his mom heard the front door open and close, heard the Taurus backing out of their driveway, followed by a brief screech of tires before the sound of the car disappeared up the street. The street Nate had grown up on, the only one he’d ever known.

  Nate told his mom what had happened as quickly as he could, then went upstairs, got out of his uniform even more quickly, took a shower, and went into his room and closed the door.

  Before he’d left the kitchen, his mom had told him she’d call him when it was time for dinner, that she had a feeling it was going to be just the two of them. Again.

  “I’m glad I’m not working tonight at the restaurant,” she’d said.

  “Me too,” Nate had said.

  When he plopped down on his bed, he realized he was more tired from watching Eric win the game than if he’d won the game himself, as if he’d been the one making the passes and the plays, scrambling for first downs, throwing on the run, getting hit and getting back up. Nate realized as he replayed the game in his head—Eric’s game—that he didn’t just miss having the ball and the game in his hands, he even missed getting hit.

  Nate missed the feeling that he would have after he’d played the whole game, not just a good kind of tired but a good kind of soreness, the normal aches and pains that were another way of knowing that you’d played your heart out.

  Today he hurt in a different way.

  He got up off the bed now, took the Brady ball out of its case, got back on the bed, stretched out, and began flipping the ball toward the ceiling and catching it. Loving that the ball still had that shiny, new-ball feel to it, even the smell of a new ball when you took it out of the box. Like a new baseball glove.

  Nate thought about Tom Brady now, knowing he hadn’t exactly had an easy time of it before he became—in Nate’s opinion at least—the best quarterback in football and maybe the greatest of all time. Brady hadn’t been a big star coming out of college. The Patriots hadn’t even drafted him until the sixth round. And there had been that time, between college and his getting the starting job with the Patriots after Drew Bledsoe got hurt, when he really was nothing more than a practice quarterback pretty much everybody except his own teammates had forgotten, when he had to wonder if he’d ever get the chance to show the world how good he really was.

  If he even knew how good he really was.

  Even after he got the job and won three Super Bowls in four years, it wasn’t as if Brady was bulletproof, not by a long shot. There was the year when the Patriots were going for a perfect season, when they were 19-0 going into the Super Bowl, and Brady had thrown fifty—five-oh—touchdown passes during the regular season. He was having the best season any quarterback in history had ever had and the Patriots were on their way to being called the greatest team of all time.

  Until the Giants upset them in the Super Bowl, beat them in the last minute when the other quarterback in the game, Eli Manning, threw a touchdown pass. Good-bye, perfect season.

  The very next year, in the first game of the season, only eight
minutes of game time into the new season, a guy from the Kansas City Chiefs rolled into Tom Brady’s left knee and ripped it up about every way you could, and just like that, Brady’s season was over and his career was in jeopardy.

  So it wasn’t as if his hero hadn’t been knocked down. Anybody could get knocked down. Anybody and everybody. It was like Bill Parcells had talked about: It wasn’t how you got knocked down, it was how you got back up.

  Corny-sounding, but true.

  He kept thinking about Brady as he flipped the ball at the ceiling, thinking about how much he must have wanted to show the world all over again after losing the Super Bowl to the Giants, only to have to wait longer to try than he ever thought he would when he went down against the Chiefs.

  Nate told himself: I don’t have to wait.

  I can do this now.

  So he did. He put the Brady ball back in its case, pulled out Abby’s SportStuff target from behind his reading chair, yelled down to his mom and asked her if she had time to help him with something.

  “Always,” she said from the bottom of the stairs. “What’s our project?”

  Nate opened his door, carrying the target.

  “Hanging a dream catcher,” he said.

  Nate knew there had been at least one other who had made the kind of throw he was going to attempt on Thanksgiving night, because he had looked it up on the Internet and found the clip on YouTube where an Army veteran named Chris Bostic had won a million dollars at halftime of a Clemson-Florida State college football game.

  Chris Bostic’s throw had been sponsored by a company called Bi-Lo Healthy Choice, and the contest was called the Pigskin Challenge. This was in November 2005, and Bostic had to put the football through a twenty-inch hole from twenty-five yards away.

  Nate knew how it came out because he had watched it enough by now, but he showed it to his mom, both of them watching on Nate’s laptop as Bostic—whom the announcers described as not just a veteran and a former high school football player, but a “ten-dollar-an-hour landscaper” as well—stepped up as calmly as if he were ringing a doorbell and threw a perfect spiral through the target.