Last Man Out

by Mike Lupica

  That was what his dad’s grandfather, born in Ireland, had always called him: boyo.

  Tommy had always loved the sound of it.

  “What’s the bright side?” Tommy said.

  “We’ve got a whole lifetime of nights like this ahead of us.”

  EIGHT

  HIS MOM OFFERED TO STAY and watch him practice, even though Tommy couldn’t remember her watching practice since his first year of organized football.

  She always came to his games. She said she loved watching him play just like she used to love watching his dad play when they were both students at Brighton High School. He knew she still worried about him getting hurt, especially the serious risk of getting a concussion. But his dad had convinced her that everything was being done to make the sport as safe as it could possibly be for guys Tommy’s age, and that there were always risks in any sport. Above all else, though, she knew how much Tommy loved football and how important it was to the two of them, sharing that passion.

  “You said that we’ve got to try to make our routine as normal as possible,” Tommy said. “But you sticking around tonight? Totally not normal.”

  “I know,” she said. “I really do know. I just thought—” That was as far as she got.

  “I won’t be alone, Mom. When I’m on the field, he’ll be there. He’ll always be there.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Robert’s mom said she’d give you a ride home.”

  She never called him “Greck.” She told Tommy it reminded her too much of “Shrek.”

  She looked like she wanted to say more, but couldn’t find the words.

  So he kept it short and sweet himself. “I love you, Mom.”

  It got a smile out of her. “I loved you first.”

  She leaned across the front seat, trying to sneak in a quick kiss on his cheek. But Tommy was quicker, doing a lean-back as he opened the car door on the passenger side.

  “Mom,” he said, smiling himself now, “I know your moves better than I know most quarterbacks’.” Then he was jogging toward the field behind Brighton Junior High.

  He’d wondered all day what it was going to be like, being back on the field with the rest of the guys, hoping they wouldn’t treat him any differently and act as if he were sick or like he’d turned into a different person because his dad had died. It had been that way at school today, even with his boys, Nick and Greck, until he’d finally said to both of them at lunch, “I’m okay, okay?”

  “What’re you talking about?” Nick said.

  “You don’t have to be afraid to act like yourselves around me,” Tommy said. “Which means like your usual dumb selves.”

  “Hey,” Nick said, “I’m an A student.”

  “Maybe in gym class,” Tommy said.

  Nick and Greck laughed. It felt good to see them acting like themselves around him again.

  “If I can still make fun of you guys,” Tommy said, “you can make fun of me.”

  Greck grinned. “Too easy!”

  Tommy’s life felt a lot more normal for the rest of the school day. But Tommy knew that the real normal, the way life used to be, was gone and never coming back. There was the old world with his dad still in it. And now there was this new world without him.

  At least for now, even though Tommy knew it wouldn’t last, standing back on the football field, his second home, things felt normal.

  After the team was done stretching, Coach Fisher addressed the guys. He usually didn’t say a lot, even once practice started. But everybody on the team knew that he had a way of making his words count.

  “Listen up,” he said, standing at midfield. “We’re going to talk about something now, and then we’re not going to talk about it again.”

  He had Tommy’s attention. Something in the tone of his voice made Tommy pretty sure he had everybody else’s attention as well. When Coach Fisher talked, you listened.

  “If there’s a death in one of our families, there’s a death in this family. You understand that, right?”

  Tommy looked around, and saw his teammates nodding.

  “So starting tonight with Tommy Gallagher, we take care of our own. We have his back. We’re all here for him. You’re not just his teammates—you’re his brothers. And you treat him the same way you always have.” Coach smiled. “Especially you guys on offense. You get the chance, you put him on that skinny Irish butt of his. And that’s an order.”

  Coach looked around, as if he were trying to lock eyes with as many of his players as he could, before saying, “Basically, we’re going to be as strong for Tommy as he always is for us.”

  Then he clapped his hands and said, “Now let’s go play some football.”

  After everything he’d lost this week, at least he still had the game he loved so much. The game his father had loved.

  Tommy jumped to his feet, ready to put some guys on the ground.

  NINE

  NICK PETTY’S DAD, WHO’D BEEN a quarterback at Boston College, was Coach Fisher’s only assistant coach. He’d volunteered to be the Bears’ offensive coordinator this season. Coach handled the defense. That was his preference. He was a defensive-minded guy. It was one more reason why Tommy liked him so much. Coach loved defense the way Tommy did, and his dad had.

  Before they scrimmaged, Coach worked with the defense on some of their pass coverage formations, and a couple of new blitzes he wanted them to try out. The offense was at the other end of the field, so Coach was just walking them through his new schemes.

  Tommy paid close attention to what Coach was saying, and where he was supposed to be if he wasn’t one of the guys blitzing—though he usually was—but he wanted this part of practice to be over. He wanted to be running around. He wanted to be fighting off blocks and making tackles. He felt like he was counting down the minutes until this part of practice was over and the real part began. The part when football was played like it was meant to be—a contact sport.

  He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, that’s how much he wanted to scrimmage tonight. There were times when he felt like he might explode if they didn’t get started soon. But you didn’t rush Coach Fisher.

  Coach blew his whistle after running the blitz drill once more and said to Tommy, “If we send the other safety and he doesn’t get to the quarterback, and that quarterback is able to go deep, what is your responsibility?”

  “Be where the ball is,” Tommy said.

  “Good boy.”

  For a moment, one just there and gone, Tommy thought Coach Fisher had called him “boyo.”

  Coach showed them one last blitz where Greck was supposed come around from the outside, with Tommy blowing straight up the middle as if he were the middle linebacker.

  After trying that one out, Coach blew his whistle again. “All right, time to scrimmage.”

  “Yes!” Tommy said before he could stop himself.

  Coach turned around. “What was that?”

  “Just saying I’m good to go, Coach.”

  “Good,” Coach said.

  He had no idea.

  Usually, during the last scrimmage before a game they didn’t have any real contact. The offense would still run plays, but it was more like flag football. Coach had already told them after they’d finished stretching that tonight was different, saying that because they hadn’t practiced the night before—he didn’t mention it was because of the funeral—they were going to “get after it” before they all went home.

  “I am so ready,” Greck said to Tommy. “I feel like I haven’t hit anybody since the Allston game.”

  Not as ready as I am, Tommy thought.

  Sometimes the offense would start at the defense’s twenty-five- yard line when they scrimmaged. Sometimes it would be a two-minute drill, from almost anywhere on the field. Tonight Coach gave Nick and the guys on offense the ball at midfield, telling the
m to pretend there was a minute left in the game, three time-outs remaining, and they needed a touchdown to win.

  “And remember something,” he said right before they started. “On this team, we practice like we play.”

  Tommy’s dad had told him that a hundred times in his life or more. Coach was the one saying it now but somehow Tommy heard the words in his dad’s voice.

  Tommy turned and faced Greck. “Let’s win this.”

  Greck looked back at him. “You realize this is just a scrimmage, right?”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re not scoring tonight. I don’t even want them to get a first down.”

  The offense got cute right away, running a reverse to Danny Martinez, the Bears’ best wide receiver, on first down. Nick ran to his left with the ball, Danny cut behind him, and then Nick pitched it to him. By the time Danny had the ball in his hands, he already seemed to be at full speed. But Tommy was running right along with him, having read the play the whole way, even when Danny briefly tried to act like a blocker. As soon as Danny started to turn upfield, Tommy hit him so hard Danny went flying five yards back, landed on his butt in the grass.

  When Danny stayed down Tommy was worried that he might have hurt him, but all he’d done was knock the wind out of him. Danny was just trying to catch his breath.

  Tommy went over to help him up, relieved that he was okay.

  Danny said, “Dude, what was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “You crushing me like that.”

  “I was just making a play,” Tommy said.

  “Nobody hits like that in practice.”

  “Coach said practice like you play.”

  “He meant play football,” Danny said. “Not Call of Duty.”

  He walked back to the huddle. Nick had already called their first time-out. Tommy started to apologize but then stopped himself. Apologize for what? Making a play?

  Tommy and just about everybody else on defense got faked out completely on second down. Coach had them run one of his new blitzes, but Nick handed it to Amare McCoy on a draw play and Amare ran right past Tommy for a ten-yard gain. Then Amare got six more on third and five, getting to the outside on a quick pitch, Greck pushing him out of bounds.

  First down.

  “Come on!” Tommy said to Greck. “We can’t let them beat us running the ball.”

  “They had two guys on me,” Greck said.

  “I’m not blaming you,” Tommy said. “I’m the one Amare made look bad on the play before. We just gotta do better.”

  “Tommy?” Greck said. “It’s one first down. Relax.”

  “I’ll relax when practice is over.”

  “You sure?” Greck said. Then he walked away.

  The offense got another first down and Tommy was starting to get really frustrated.

  On the next set of downs, the offense ended up with a third and eight from the seventeen-yard line. They had to throw here, and not just because they only had one time-out left. Tommy knew that even in scrimmages, the guys on offense wanted to win as much as the defense did, and didn’t want it to come down to an all-or-nothing fourth-down play.

  He thought Nick might come out of the huddle in a shotgun formation. But instead Nick got under center and dropped back. The whole time, Tommy studied his motions, exactly the way he’d been taught. Like it was him and his dad at Rogers Park. And what Tommy’s eyes told him now, as Nick rolled to his right, was that he wasn’t throwing, he was running, pulling the ball down on what had become a glorified quarterback sweep, with plenty of blocking in front of him.

  Amare picked off Greck with a perfect block, pushing him toward the sideline and out of the play. Elliott Kalb, their offensive right tackle, cleaned out Liam Cobb, the outside linebacker on Tommy’s side of the field. Suddenly, with Danny Martinez leading the way, there was a lot of open field in front of Nick, who Tommy knew wasn’t just thinking first down now, he was thinking touchdown.

  With the end zone in sight, there was just one guy to beat. But that guy was Tommy Gallagher.

  Danny was the one who was supposed to block Tommy. Probably wanted to block Tommy the way Tommy had tried to send him into outer space on first down. But just as Danny lowered his shoulder, Tommy managed to stop himself, spinning around like he was making a reverse pivot in basketball. Danny was so surprised he stumbled and went down.

  But Tommy’s spin move had taken time, enough time for Nick to get to the sideline, running free, a stride or two ahead of Tommy as Tommy scrambled to catch up.

  Now or never, Tommy told himself.

  If he waited a second longer, Nick would be out of his tackling range.

  So he made up the distance between them by launching himself forward, like he was turning himself into some kind of guided missile, believing that was the only chance he had—his last chance—to make a play.

  Nick was the one who got launched then, Tommy catching him perfectly and cleanly, hitting him high but not too high, right below his left shoulder pad. The hit was so powerful, even on Nick’s left side, that Tommy knocked the football out of his right hand.

  Nick had no chance to break his fall after the ball was gone, landing hard on his throwing shoulder. Like Danny Martinez a few minutes ago, Nick stayed down, too, just longer, until he rolled into a sitting position.

  Tommy ran over to him, and put his hand out.

  Nick slapped it away, and jumped up so that his face mask and Tommy’s were no more than an inch apart.

  “Are you insane?” Nick said, breathing hard, but not because he was out of breath.

  “I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t think I could put that big a hit on you,” Tommy said.

  “You weren’t thinking at all!” Nick said. “That was messed up, man. This is practice, not a game. Seriously, dude? You could have knocked me out of Saturday’s game.”

  Then Coach Fisher was between them. Tommy waited for him to tell Nick to calm down, that it’d been a clean hit, but he turned to Tommy instead.

  “Take the rest of practice off,” he said.

  “No!” Tommy knew it sounded like he was the one in pain now. “Scrimmage isn’t over, Coach.”

  “For you it is,” Coach Fisher said. “Please go take a seat on the bench and calm down.”

  “I am calm, I promise.”

  “No, Tommy,” Coach said. “You’re out of control.”

  In a voice that wasn’t much more than a whisper, only loud enough for Coach to hear, Tommy said, “Please let me keep playing.”

  “Go sit down until it’s time to go home, son,” Coach said. “You not only could have hurt Nick doing that, you could have hurt yourself.”

  But Tommy didn’t want to stop playing. He wasn’t ready to call it a day. He wanted to stay on the field, even if it was only for one more play.

  As Tommy took the long walk back to the bench, feeling the eyes of all his teammates on him, he wondered if normal was really a thing of the past now.

  TEN

  GRECK’S MOM DROVE TOMMY HOME. Greck tried to make conversation in the backseat, but finally gave up. Tommy didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to stare out the window, mostly thinking about the last thing Coach Fisher had said to him before he left practice:

  “Football can help you through this, son. Football can, I can and your teammates can. But I don’t want anybody to get hurt in the process, starting with you. Because you’re hurting enough already.”

  Tommy just stood there, not knowing what he should say, just knowing he had come to this field to feel better, even for a couple of hours. Only now he was going home feeling worse.

  Finally he said, “I’ll try harder on Saturday.”

  “It’s not about trying,” Coach said. “It never has been about that with you and I doubt it ever will be. But if this game isn’t fun, there’s no point in being here. It wa
sn’t fun tonight, for you or your teammates. I understand why you’re mad at the world right now. Lord knows you have a right. You just can’t take it out on everybody else.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.”

  “Guys rarely do in this sport.”

  Tommy walked through the front door of his house, feeling like it was the saddest place in the world. He smelled food from the kitchen, and then heard his mom call out to him.

  “How was practice?” she said.

  “Okay,” he said, starting to walk up the stairs.

  “Just okay?”

  He thought about telling her what had happened, but then he knew she’d want to talk it out with him. But he didn’t want to talk about it with her any more than he’d wanted to talk about it with Greck. Or Coach Fisher. What he really wanted to do was forget what had happened at practice, the way he wanted to forget the past few days.

  He tried to make a joke. “It was just a lot of what you hate about football.”

  “You mean the tackling?”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Tommy said. “We’ve got to eliminate that someday.”

  “Very funny,” she said. “Now go change for dinner, it’s getting late. And step on it. Pretend you’re chasing the guy with the ball.”

  When he got to his room, he took off his practice jersey and pants and put them in his laundry basket, knowing his mom would wash them first thing in the morning. He put his helmet and spikes and pads in his closet, took a two-minute shower, then changed into a T-shirt and jeans. When he sat down on his bed, tired all of a sudden, knowing his mom was waiting for him downstairs, he didn’t feel like leaving his room. Almost like he was waiting for his dad to come in and give him some advice about what had happened at practice.

  When his door opened suddenly, he thought it would be his mom, telling him his food was getting cold. But his mom usually knocked before she came in.

  It wasn’t her. It was his sister.

  She didn’t come into his room. She just stood there in the doorway, still in her soccer uniform and cleats, staring at him with her big eyes, more blue than anybody else’s in the family. Emily Gallagher was the best travel player her age in Brighton, by a long shot. Tommy still didn’t know a lot about soccer, mostly because he never played the sport, but he was trying to learn. He knew enough, though, to appreciate how fast and talented Emily was. When she was in the open field, she could handle the ball in ways the other girls couldn’t dream of.