The Walk On

by John Feinstein

  Jonas noticed Alex staring.

  “Easy, big fella,” he said.

  “What?” Alex said, starting to put some wings on his plate.

  “You don’t like Bilney talking up your girl. I get it.”

  “She’s not my girl,” Alex said.

  “You’d like her to be your girl,” Jonas said. “And if you tell me that’s not true, I’ll tell you you’re a liar or crazy or both.”

  “Look—celery sticks,” Alex said, pointing at the bowl in front of them.

  “Yeah, right,” Jonas said. “That’s what you’re focused on right now.”

  They left shortly after midnight. Alex wished it could have been sooner. The food was good and they found a place to sit and eat, but other than the occasional hello or wave or “Nice game, Jonas,” no one came near them.

  They got up and mingled and, at Jonas’s urging, Alex finally went over to say hello to Christine. Jake had wandered off and Alex had breathed a sigh of relief. She was standing in the same spot, brushing her hair back with her hand, when he walked over.

  “Hey, do you need something to drink?” he asked.

  “Oh, no thanks,” she said. “Jake just went to get me another Coke.”

  Alex’s heart sank. Jake hadn’t left. He’d just gone back for more drinks.

  “I didn’t know you two were friends,” he said, realizing how dorky that sounded as soon as he said it.

  She smiled. “We’re not. I never met him before tonight. He seems like a nice guy.”

  “Great guy,” Alex said—too enthusiastically. “He just gets down on himself a lot for not being as good a player as he’d like to be.”

  That was a mean thing to say. If Christine thought so, she didn’t say anything.

  “I guess Matt got the talent and he got the looks,” she said.

  Ouch. Alex was still trying to think of a response to that remark when Jake walked up behind him.

  “Goldie, you made it,” he said.

  He handed Christine a Coke.

  “I was just telling Christine how tough it is to watch you unleash those rockets every day in practice.”

  “And I was telling Jake he should talk to Steve Garland,” she said, giving Jake what Alex knew was a flirty smile.

  “And I told Christine the only reporter I wanted to talk to was her,” Jake said, smiling back at her. “And the subject will not be the football team.”

  “I better go find Jonas,” Alex mumbled, wishing the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

  They both looked at him as if they’d just remembered he was there.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jake said. “See you at practice on Monday, Goldie.”

  “Bye, Alex,” Christine said. “I’m glad you’re feeling okay.”

  Alex walked away dazed. This made two Fridays in a row that he’d been blindsided.

  The last nonconference game of the season would be the team’s first road trip. The game was at Main Line Prep, which wasn’t that far from Villanova University. He remembered going to a basketball game at Villanova two years earlier with his dad and his uncle when the family had spent Thanksgiving in Philadelphia.

  Alex had great memories of that afternoon. It had been just the three of them and Villanova had played La Salle, one of its local rivals. Now it felt like a lot more than two years had passed. His dad still hadn’t found time to come and visit them, although he had promised to come “sometime in September.” The Main Line game was on September 19 so, Alex guessed, his dad still had two weeks left to make good on that promise.

  School was now in its fourth week and Alex was starting to feel more comfortable. At the very least, he now had a routine and a small handful of friends. He ate lunch every day with Jonas, Stephen, and Tim Matte, who was Stephen’s best friend and played on the basketball team. Occasionally Matt and Jake joined them. The subject of Christine Whitford had not come up since the party.

  Tim was the only person, as far as Alex knew, who was aware that Alex had enlisted Jonas and Stephen to talk to Steve Garland after the Cherry Hill game.

  “I’ll be very curious to read what the guy writes tomorrow,” Jonas said quietly during lunch on Tuesday. Matt and Jake were not there, so it was okay to talk. “Based on what happened and what he asked, I don’t think Coach is going to be too happy when he reads it.”

  Stephen laughed. “Ya think? If someone writes that the only coach on the planet who is better than Coach Gordon is Bill Belichick, Coach would be mad because he was ranked second. I promise you he’s gonna go nuts.”

  “You think we might get in trouble?” Jonas asked.

  “I don’t know how he’d know it was us—Garland promised he wouldn’t use my name.”

  “Me too,” Jonas said. “But I’m still nervous.”

  “You should be,” Tim said. “I think you’re both crazy to have talked to him.”

  All eyes turned to Alex.

  “Hey, I didn’t force you guys to do it,” he said defensively. “And anyway, nothing’s going to happen. Coach will be pissed but not at any of us. What’s he going to do, ban the guy again?”

  “I hope you’re right,” Jonas said.

  “Me too,” Stephen added.

  “I’m right,” Alex said. “Don’t worry. I’m right.”

  He was wrong.

  Alex first suspected trouble when he picked up the Weekly Roar the next morning. He went through the same routine as the previous week—arriving early and taking the newspaper to the bathroom for privacy.

  The headline on Steve Garland’s column was direct: BANNED.

  The column explained how he had been told by his editor, who also happened to be an assistant football coach, that he would not be allowed to sit in the press box or to talk to any players because he had accused Coach Gordon of running up the score against Mercer.

  Garland wrote:

  Gee, I wonder how anyone could possibly think someone was running up the score in a game that ended 77–0. It’s a good thing none of the Mercer players or coaches wanted to sit in the press box last Friday, because they would have been banned too, based on the fact that they tried to kill poor Alex Myers on the last play of the game.

  Ouch, Alex thought—remembering the play and thinking how Coach Gordon would react to reading that sentence.

  Then came the quotes. From one player: “We all knew we were running up the score, but we also know Coach has very high expectations for this team. We all do. The fact that we need to pay attention all the time should be obvious to all of us after the first quarter against Cherry Hill.”

  That was clearly Jonas: honest, but careful. And, Alex thought, not too bad.

  The next quote wasn’t as careful. “If I’d been from Mercer, I’d have been mad too. I think Coach knew he almost got Myers hurt by running up the score, and that’s why we backed off on Cherry Hill late in the game. I know I felt better about it.”

  That was Stephen. He had expressed similar sentiments to Alex. He had talked about how much he loved to watch college football and about seeing Notre Dame throw a late touchdown pass the year before against Navy to make the final score 50–6 and how much that bothered him. To him, this was even worse.

  Garland closed his column with one final shot:

  This is clearly a very talented and deep team. No one questions Coach Gordon’s knowledge of the game or his ability to get the most from a team. If they stay healthy, the Lions should go deep into the state playoffs come November.

  But that’s still not an excuse for lacking compassion for an overmatched opponent. That’s what I was saying last week, and even if I’m banned from the entire state of Pennsylvania, I’m not going to apologize. It was true then and it’s true now.

  Whoo boy, Alex thought, he might be banned from the entire state of Pennsylvania.

  By lunchtime, everyone had read the column.

  “You still think no one’s going to get in trouble for this?” Stephen asked as he munched on a grilled-cheese sandwich.

>   “Steve Garland,” Alex said. “Who else is he going to get mad at? He didn’t use your names, just like he promised.”

  Alex looked up to see Christine Whitford walking toward their table. She did not look happy.

  “Did you guys hear what happened?” she asked.

  Jonas’s head was on a swivel, clearly afraid someone would notice her talking to them.

  “What?” Alex asked. “Did Garland get banned again?”

  She was shaking her head even before he finished the question.

  “No, that’s not it. I mean, probably he is. Coach Gordon fired Mr. Hillier as an assistant coach.”

  “WHAT?” they all said at once.

  Instinctively, they looked around—Christine included—to make sure no one was paying any attention to them. It was late in lunch hour and the room was half empty. Alex noted with some relief that the table where Matt Gordon and Jake Bilney and most of the football team’s upperclassmen often sat was already empty.

  “He just told us,” she said. “We always meet in the newspaper office at lunch on Wednesday to plan the next edition of the paper. He told us that, as of this morning, he is no longer a football coach. He said Coach Gordon gave him a choice: the paper or the team, and he chose the paper.”

  “So he didn’t actually get fired as a coach, then,” Jonas said.

  “Technically no, I guess,” Christine said. “But he did say Coach Gordon accused him of being disloyal for letting Steve’s column run.”

  Remembering his conversation with Coach Hillier about Garland’s first column, Alex understood. Coach Gordon had, for all intents and purposes, ordered Coach Hillier to control Garland a week earlier. Coach Hillier had stuck to his principle of letting the students run the newspaper as long as they weren’t inaccurate or unfair. It had cost him his job.

  Alex couldn’t help but feel partly responsible. Maybe if he hadn’t convinced Jonas and Stephen to talk to Garland, this wouldn’t have happened. Then again, Garland was going to rip Coach Gordon for banning him, with or without quotes from the team.

  “I should go talk to Coach Hillier,” Alex said.

  “He’s still in the newspaper office right now,” Christine said.

  “Does he know who talked to Garland?” Stephen asked.

  He didn’t sound scared so much as curious. Alex was convinced that very few things scared Harvey. He had a linebacker’s mentality: kill or be killed.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Christine said. “I don’t know if he asked Steve or if Steve told him. He didn’t ask me, I know that.”

  “We should all go talk to him,” Jonas said. “There’s still fifteen minutes until fifth period starts.

  “Where’s the newspaper office?” Stephen asked.

  “Basement. It’s at the very end of the hall on the right, across from the yearbook office.”

  They all stood up and, without another word to Christine, headed for the door.

  Coach Hillier—now Mr. Hillier, apparently—was sitting behind the one desk in the small office that said THE WEEKLY ROAR on the door.

  If he was surprised to see Alex, Jonas, and Stephen, he didn’t show it.

  “What can I do for you guys?” he asked when they walked in.

  “We just heard,” Stephen said, taking the lead as the oldest in the group. “We can’t believe it.”

  “Have a seat,” Mr. Hillier said, indicating chairs scattered around the room. They each grabbed one and sat in front of his desk.

  “Look, fellas, here’s the deal,” he said. “I think Coach Gordon is right about this. I know none of the three of you are interested in journalism, at least not at the moment, but one thing you learn—and one thing I try to teach—is that journalists and the people they cover shouldn’t be friends. They can like one another and respect one another, but there are times when they are on opposite sides.

  “Coach Gordon said I was trying to work for opposing sides, and he was right.”

  “Even on a high school paper?” Alex asked. “I mean, Steve Garland is a student at Chester Heights High School, just like we are.”

  “True,” Mr. Hillier said. “And I’m a teacher at Chester Heights High School, so we’d all like to see our teams do well. But Steve wants to be a real reporter someday and I think he’s got the talent to do that. There are others on the paper like him. My job, as the faculty advisor to the paper, is to ask them to do what a real reporter—one who gets paid to do it for a living—would do in any given situation.

  “Steve’s criticism of Coach Gordon was, in my mind, fair. He talked to people about it and formed an opinion. He didn’t write that Coach Gordon was a despicable human being for doing it; he wrote that he thought Coach Gordon made a mistake and that mistake almost led to a serious injury to one of his players.

  “I told Coach Gordon I thought Steve had a valid point and that trying to ban him because he disagreed was petty. In fact, I told him I admired Steve for figuring out a way to get players”—he nodded at Stephen and Jonas—“to talk to him. That was good reporting on his part.”

  “So you knew it was us?” Jonas said.

  “Sure. Steve told me, and he told me exactly how it happened, how Christine talked to you, Alex, and you talked to these guys. That is how a newspaper works.”

  Seeing the looks on the boys’ faces, he laughed. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell Coach Gordon any of you were involved. That’s another thing journalists do—protect their sources. Coach Gordon didn’t even ask me who it was because he knew I wouldn’t tell him.”

  “Won’t you miss coaching?” Alex said.

  “Sure I will. Of course! But I’d miss working with the newspaper kids too.

  “Coach Gordon gave me a choice this morning, but really I made my choice when I ran Steve’s column this week.

  “Don’t worry, guys.” He smiled. “You’ll be in good hands with Coach Brotman running the offense. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Alex still felt queasy about the whole thing. He liked Coach Brotman, who coached the offensive line, but he felt a special bond with Coach Hillier … Mr. Hillier.

  “Coach, do you think Coach Gordon will try to find out who talked?” Alex asked.

  “Absolutely,” Mr. Hillier said, just as the five-minute warning bell prior to fifth period rang. “Absolutely.”

  Mr. Hillier was absolutely correct.

  The locker room was buzzing as everyone got dressed for practice. Everyone knew that Coach Hillier was gone and why. Clearly, Coach Gordon was angry. No one knew what awaited them when they got on the practice field.

  When the whistle blew and they all gathered at midfield, Coach Gordon was wearing sunglasses under his cap, so it was hard to read his face as they all took a knee. They found out what he was thinking quickly enough.

  “A football team is a family,” he said, his voice measured and even. “Families are loyal to one another. Families know there is us and there is them and no one outside the family can possibly be us.”

  His voice was rising. “There are at least two members of this team who forgot that over the last few days. Coach Hillier also forgot that, which is why he’s not here.” He paused. “He’s not here, you should all know, by choice. I told him he could be part of this family or he could supervise the student newspaper but he couldn’t do both.

  “He understood. He made a choice. We’ll miss him because he’s a fine football coach, but we have all we need to be successful this season right here on this field right now.”

  Another pause. He looked around at his players. Most, Alex noticed, were not looking at him. They were staring at the ground.

  “Now, for those of us who are still here, who still want to win a state championship, I think we all understand that this sort of thing can’t go on. So we’re going to do two things. First, no one is to speak to anyone in the media—not just the student paper, anyone—without my approval or the approval of Mr. Hardy.”

  Frank Hardy was the athletic director. The joke around
the team was that the most important thing he did every day was to make sure Coach Gordon always had hot coffee waiting for him.

  “Someone from the staff—either Mr. Hardy or one of the coaches—will be present for all interviews,” Coach Gordon continued. “If someone asks to talk to you after a game, you tell them they have to check with Mr. Hardy or with me. If they say they’ve done that, tell them to find a coach who can supervise the interview.

  “No exceptions. No saying, ‘Coach, I didn’t know.’ You’ve been told very clearly.”

  Alex wondered if this meant he could no longer talk to Christine Whitford after French class. The answer was probably that he couldn’t.

  “One other thing. I expect those of you who spoke to this reporter, Garland or whatever his name is, to come and tell me. I’d also like to know why. Your confession will remain private and you won’t be punished beyond me telling you that you made a mistake and that you had better not make it again.

  “Today and tomorrow are amnesty days. No discipline of any kind, because we’ve got a game to play on Friday and that is priority one. But if no one has come forward by the time we get off the bus back here after the game Friday night, everyone on the team will be in here to run on Saturday morning. And every morning after that, until whoever did it comes forward.

  “I want you to understand I’m not upset with what you said. I’m upset that you said anything at all to someone who you knew had been banned from talking to members of this team. Family. Loyalty. Us versus them. Remember that—all of you.

  “Okay, let’s report to the position coaches and get started.”

  As they all stood up, Alex felt as if Stephen and Jonas were boring holes through his head with their eyes. He wondered if any of the other players could sense the tension coming off him.

  Someone was calling his name—specifically, his nickname.