by Mike Lupica
“You’re more nervous about his test than you’ve ever been for one of your own.”
“Not even close,” Scott said.
She put her arms around him then. “Have I told you lately what a great kid you are?”
Scott said, “Well, not in months and months.”
“You are an unbelievably great kid.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“You are most welcome.”
Scott looked up at his mom and said, “He’s got to nail this sucker.”
THIRTEEN
Chris nailed it.
They didn’t know for sure he’d nailed it that day, because they weren’t getting their grades until the next morning. At lunch all Chris said was that he thought he’d done a solid job.
“I was going to stop a couple of times,” he said. “I’d get stuck on a word and get that bad feeling. But I made myself keep going, like we talked about.”
English, their last class before lunch, had just ended a few minutes before, and he was still all fired up, like he really had just played a big game. “The whole time, I pictured you standing over me, looking at that cheesy watch of yours.”
Scott said, “What do you mean, cheesy? Do you know how many tickets at the video arcade this watch cost me?”
The book Mr. Dykes had given them was called Hoot, about some cool kids in Florida trying to save baby owls. He’d had them read the first chapter, then told them to write an essay about what had happened and how they felt the author had made them want to read the rest of the book.
When Mr. Dykes handed them back their blue books on Friday, Scott could feel himself holding his breath the way he would during the best parts of a movie, could actually feel his heart beating inside his chest.
Chris stared at the grade on the front, not changing expression until Mr. Dykes was past him, then holding up the front of the book so that Scott could see the grade written in red Magic Marker on the front:
B.
Scott knew that the best Chris had done on the first three quizzes so far this semester was a C-minus.
Making sure Mr. Z couldn’t see, Chris pointed across at Scott and mouthed “you.”
Scott smiled, then shook his head.
When Mr. Dykes dropped the blue book on his desk, Scott saw the A at the top and “Excellent work!” underneath that.
He felt much better about the B across the room.
That night, after talking to Mr. Dykes on the telephone, Mr. and Mrs. Conlan made it official that Chris could stay on the team. The next day Chris scored two touchdowns as the Eagles beat the Jets, 12-6.
Scott didn’t play a single down, just watched from the sidelines, helmet on his head the whole time, standing about twenty yards from Mr. Dolan, trying not to cheer for Chris every single time he made a good play, because that made him feel more like a cheerleader than a teammate.
When the game was over, Chris ran straight for Scott, so he could bump him some fist.
“First the quiz, now the game,” Scott said. “You’re on a roll, dude.”
Chris shook his head slowly from side to side. “We’re on a roll,” he said. “You and me, we’re a team now.”
In the classroom, Scott wanted to say to him.
In the classroom we’re a team.
Never on the field.
They won the next Saturday, against the Bears, and then the Saturday after that, against the Rams, to make it 3-0 for the season.
Chris was great against the Bears, even throwing a touchdown pass to Jimmy Dolan. But it was Grant Dillon, their fullback, a guy usually only in there to block in the backfield for Chris or Jeremy Sharp, who saved them against the Rams. Jeremy had rolled his ankle early in the fourth quarter and had to sit out the rest of the game. After that, Chris was the one running with the ball—when he wasn’t trying an occasional pass, even though Mr. Dolan liked passing about as much as he liked referees.
The Rams were ahead, 6-0.
By the time the Eagles got the ball with two minutes left, the Ram defenders had figured out that if they sent everybody after Chris on every play and double-covered Jimmy when he went out for a pass, they were going to win the game.
But on third-and-four from the Eagles’ forty-yard line, Chris crossed them up.
Big-time.
He took the snap and started rolling to his right. If you had been watching the game, it looked like every sweep he had been running to that side all day. Suddenly, though, he stopped, turned and threw the ball back across the field to Grant, who was wide open on the left sideline, nothing but green grass stretched out ahead of him.
Grant wasn’t the fastest guy on their team. In fact, next to Scott, he was probably the slowest. But with most of the Rams chasing Chris, and Jimmy Dolan having taken his two defenders deep down the right side, he was in the clear.
The only two Rams with a chance were the ones down the field with Jimmy. But Jimmy blocked one of the guys somehow. Like he was a streak of light, Chris appeared out of nowhere, thirty yards from the spot where he’d released the ball, to take down the other.
Grant ended up running sixty yards for the touchdown that made it 6-6, and Chris threw a pass to Jimmy for the conversion. The Eagles had won again.
When Mr. Dolan gathered the team around him at midfield after the game, he said, “This game is the one I’ve been talking about since the start of practice.” He tapped the top of Grant’s helmet lightly with his knuckle, like he was knocking on a door. “And this guy right here is the player I’ve been saying I want you all to be. When it was his turn to make a play, he was ready.”
Mr. Dolan stood up then, putting his big right hand out in front of him, meaning it was time for the players to bring it in.
“I want the rest of you to go home today and think about the play Grant made for us and the game he won for us,” Mr. Dolan said. “And tell yourself that you’re going to be ready when your number’s called.”
Every number except mine, Scott thought as he put his hand in there with all the rest.
In the car on the way home, Scott’s dad said, “I’m thinking about having a talk with your coach.”
Scott was still in his uniform, helmet on his lap. “Dad, no.”
“You don’t even know what I want to talk to him about,” his dad said.
“Yeah, I do. You want to get him to play me. But you always said you were never going to be one of those dads.”
“And I’m not going to be one now. I’d just sort of like him to explain why he won’t play you.”
“Not just me,” Scott said. “Eric Dodds, also. And Nik Solo.”
“There’s three of you? Good, then I’m not just talking about my own kid.”
“We’re not playing because we’re not good enough,” Scott said.
“To do what? Make it to the Pro Bowl this season?” Dialing up his voice just a little.
“Dad, you don’t see our practices.”
“I’ve seen enough to get a pretty good handle on things.”
“If you saw us every day,” Scott said, “I’m pretty sure you’d see what Mr. Dolan sees. Which is that I stink.”
“You put in the time,” his dad said. “You go to every practice. It seems to me he could reward you with a couple of downs here and there.”
“He says he doesn’t coach that way,” Scott said. “He says it doesn’t teach us anything about sports and it doesn’t teach us anything about the real world.”
“Which I’m sure he is a huge expert on,” Hank Parry said. “He must have learned it all at the Ohio State-Michigan game.”
They were in a line of traffic, waiting as a train went through town. Scott turned so his dad could see him smiling, not wanting him to make a big deal out of this. “This isn’t like school,” he said. “Coach isn’t going to give me a gold star for perfect attendance.”
“You’re aware that you’ve already played half the season, right?”
“I can still do math,” Scott said.
“You
should get into a game.”
“Dad, listen,” Scott said when the car was moving again. “I’ve thought about this. I don’t just want to be out there. I want to be more than Rudy. If Mr. Dolan ever puts me in the game, I want it to be because he thinks I can help us win.”
“What if that doesn’t happen this season?” his dad said. “You’ll really be okay with that?”
“If I wasn’t, I’d quit,” Scott said. “And I’m not quitting.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to anybody,” his dad said. “Especially me.”
“Maybe I’ve just got a hard head,” he said.
He didn’t change out of his uniform when they got home. He ran up the stairs and tossed his helmet on the bed and got his football and took Casey out to Parry Field.
He started by just throwing the ball around, throwing it to an imaginary Jeremy Sharp or even an imaginary Jimmy Dolan. Casey happily—and loudly—chased down the ball, no matter how far it went, and brought it back. Then Scott kicked for a while, first off the tee, then dropkicks after that, stubbornly staying with the dropkicks—that hard head of his again—even though today he couldn’t make more than two in a row.
It was still a perfect day for football, sunny and cold, but not too cold, the wind at his back when he faced the goalposts. The field looked perfect, too. The men had just been there the day before to mow it, and Scott had used his roller to chalk the lines when they were through.
When he finally made three dropkicks in a row, he went to the end of the thirty-yard field and tried to pace off another thirty yards.
The length of Grant’s run against the Rams.
Now he crouched down behind an imaginary center, started calling out signals.
Not an announcer today, a football player in a football uniform, even if there wasn’t a speck of dirt on it.
Casey watched from the sidelines, waiting to see what was going to happen next. As if even Casey the dog wanted to see what play Scott had called.
As soon as Scott pulled back with the ball, he ran to his right. Like Chris on a sweep.
Then he stopped the way Chris had, threw the ball high up in the air, high enough that Scott had time to run under it, throwing the ball to himself the way Chris had thrown it to Grant.
As soon as Scott caught it, he ran for the end zone at Parry Field, Casey falling into place alongside him, Scott really feeling the wind at his back now.
He ran like he was running to win the game, veering a little toward the left sideline the way Grant had on the day when his number finally got called.
Scott ran, feeling his legs pumping hard, feeling the ball tucked securely under his arm, hearing his own breath.
Ran like he was the fastest one on the field.
FOURTEEN
It all started about ten minutes before practice ended, and the funny thing was, it started with Scott finally making a play.
At least he thought he had.
They had gone a little longer than usual Monday night, Mr. Dolan having told them that their next opponent, the Lions, was the best team—besides their own—he had seen in the league.
“I scouted them Saturday afternoon,” he said. “And I’m here to tell you boys that we’re going to have our work cut out for us.”
Scott barely heard the part about them having their work cut out for them. He was stuck on what Mr. Dolan had said right before that, just like how Chris got stuck on words he couldn’t sound out.
Thinking to himself: You scouted them?
A bunch of sixth-graders?
He felt himself starting to giggle, the way you’d start to giggle in class sometimes without being able to stop yourself, and had to make it sound like he was coughing.
“You okay there, Parry?” Mr. Dolan said.
“Think I might have swallowed a bug, Coach,” Scott said.
Then Mr. Dolan was telling them that in addition to the Lions having good players on both offense and defense, and being well-coached, they had also returned two punts for touchdowns in their game against the Giants.
“Let me give you boys a heads-up,” he said. “Punt returns like that are not happening on Saturday.”
They had spent the last half hour of practice covering punt returns as if their lives depended on it, trying to contain Jeremy Sharp. There were a bunch of guys missing that night, because it turned out to be the night when the sixth-graders from Bloomfield South were helping pass out food at a local soup kitchen. So Scott had been in on every play for once, even though his job was the same every time:
Line up opposite Jimmy on the outside and try to slow him down before he went downfield and tried to tackle Jeremy. And, unfortunately for Scott, Jimmy had been taking the job seriously for a change, maybe because he saw how serious his dad was about covering these returns.
It basically meant he wasn’t going out of his way to dough-pop Scott every chance he got.
Dave Kepp was their punter. He couldn’t placekick to save his life, but somehow that didn’t prevent him from being a really good punter. And tonight it seemed like he was getting even more hang time than usual, giving Jimmy a chance to make one tackle after another.
One time when they were lined up, waiting for Dave to kick again, Jimmy said to Scott, “You know you’re catching a break tonight, right, brain? When my old man gets locked in on something like this, even I’m smart enough not to horse around.”
“Am I supposed to, like, thank you?” Scott said.
“Don’t push it,” Jimmy said, then gave Scott another head fake, as if he needed one, and went right around him again. Only this time, Jeremy ran for about twenty yards before Dave Kepp had to run him out of bounds. When the play was over, Mr. Dolan announced that he’d been ready to call it a night, but since Jeremy had nearly broken one, they were going to do it one more time.
“And maybe just this once,” Mr. Dolan said, “the outside guys on the return team could be something more than speed bumps for the guys on the kicking team.”
He was looking right at Scott when he said it.
“Don’t even think about trying to block me, brain,” Jimmy said just loud enough for Scott to hear. “Just get out of my way like you always do, or it will not be pretty.”
Scott didn’t say anything back to him, just decided this wasn’t going to be a play when he tried to slow Jimmy down, it was going to be a play when he put him down.
Sometimes Jimmy would fake to Scott’s right, toward the sideline, and then cut inside. Sometimes he would fake Scott to the right and go that way anyway. Waiting for the snap, Scott remembered something his dad said one time when they were playing tennis and Scott was up at the net.
“You might as well guess one way or the other,” his dad said. “Because if you just stand there in the middle, the other guy’s going to pass you every time.”
Scott was tired of getting passed.
He decided to guess.
The brain was finally using his on a football field.
As soon as Jimmy made his head fake this time, Scott moved in the same direction, setting himself good and low for his block, elbows out wide, not caring if Jimmy tried to run right through him, ready to finish his block—something Mr. Dolan talked about all the time—no matter what.
This time Scott was the one initiating the contact.
Just not very well.
Scott dropped his shoulder and tried to drive it into Jimmy’s midsection. But the moment he did get low, Jimmy grabbed Scott by his left shoulder pad, like he wanted to just toss him out of the way.
Even as he started to fall, Scott was determined to finish the block, no matter what.
Somehow he rolled forward as Jimmy tried to step over him, only managing to catch him with his legs.
Instead of being in the clear, Jimmy stepped on Scott’s foot. His leg collapsed underneath him, and down he went.
Hard.
As soon as he hit the ground, he was grabbing for his right ankle and yelling at Scott, “You tripped
me, you stinking cheater.”
Scott said, “No—”
Mr. Dolan was there now, standing over both of them.
“Dad, you saw it,” Jimmy said. “He leg-whipped me when I started to go by him.”
Mr. Dolan was kneeling next to Jimmy by now.
Mr. Hartung, their assistant coach, had gone to get an ice pack out of their first aid kit.
Mr. Dolan turned, looked up at Scott and said, “We don’t block with our legs, Parry. It’s against the rules, and it’s how people get hurt.”
“I was just trying to stay with the block,” Scott said.
“Sure you were.”
Scott didn’t just feel Mr. Dolan’s eyes on him. He felt everyone’s.
“Our legs got tangled up,” Scott said.
“He’s lying!”
Jimmy.
Mr. Dolan, in a low voice, not anything like his coach voice, said to Scott, “You haven’t stayed with one block all night.”
“I tried to block him, not trip him,” Scott said.
“Mr. Dolan,” Chris said, stepping forward, “Scott doesn’t lie.”
Mr. Dolan turned, and now he gave Chris Conlan a long look.
“Did you see the play, Conlan?”
“No, sir. I’m just sayin’—”
“My advice would be to not say anything,” Mr. Dolan said.
“He’s not good enough to play, so he plays dirty,” Jimmy said.
Mr. Dolan was the one holding the ice to his ankle, still staring at Scott. Scott looked around. Everybody was staring at him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody,” he said, knowing he was sounding lamer by the second.
“Right,” Jimmy said. “I tripped myself.”
Mr. Dolan helped him to his feet, telling him not to put any weight on his ankle, then saying, “Let’s get you home and hope that thing doesn’t swell up on you.”
Then he looked right at Scott and shook his head, saying, “Your first real contribution of the whole season is getting one of our best players injured.”
Then he and Jimmy left without another word and walked toward the parking lot, leaving Scott feeling alone, even with the rest of the team standing there with him.
