The crowd erupted with frenzied screams. Their band danced and played wildly. The team, in blue uniforms with gold trim, burst through a massive paper hoop held by their cheerleaders. Then a cannon exploded from the top of the stands. Jericho and the rest of the team jumped, then stared at one another.
“What the hell was that?” Roscoe asked.
As if the announcer had heard, he said then, “Ladies and gentlemen. For those of you who are not familiar with our traditions, every time Excelsior scores a touchdown, our Wildcat cannon will be set off in jubilation! Keep it ready, Willie!”
The crowd cheered again and the Excelsior players continued to file onto the field. It seemed as if they’d never stop coming. They filled up the players’ benches on the field, plus several other blue-and-gold-painted benches behind them.
“Who are all those guys, Coach? They can’t have that many boys on a team, can they?” Jericho asked.
“They dress their ninth-grade team, and, I suspect, their junior high boys as well. Those kids don’t play—they just sit there in all that blue and gold, trying to impress us with volume. It’s simply more intimidation. Ignore it.”
But their sheer numbers were hard to ignore. Jericho knew that Todd and Rory were out there somewhere, cheering and stomping like crazy, and his dad and Geneva, too. He hoped that Kofi and Dana and November were out there as well, but it was amazing how focused he had become. After a while, the band, the crowd, the cheers—everything began to fade as game time approached.
“Captains to the middle for the coin toss,” the coach commanded. He swatted Luis on the butt as he ran out.
“We got the ball, Coach,” Luis cried out after the flip of the coin gave them the advantage.
“Okay, here we go. Receiving team on the field,” ordered the coach. “Roscoe, when you get out there, back up. This boy can really kick. Don’t do anything fancy—just catch the ball. Got it?”
Roscoe nodded and hurried to the backfield, his face tense with expectation. Jericho and the others trotted onto the grass and got into position, facing their Excelsior opponents, waiting for the kickoff.
There was a brief flurry of activity from the other side, and suddenly the ball soared in a high arc, a swirling disk heading directly toward Roscoe. As it spiraled through the air, Excelsior thundered on the ground, heading directly for the Douglass team and that ball.
“I got it! Fair catch!” Roscoe yelled, as he signaled that he had the ball. Jericho knew Roscoe was somewhere behind the twenty-yard line, and the ball was now out of play.
But suddenly, someone from the other team cried, “Fumble! He fumbled the ball!” The football had slipped from Roscoe’s grasp, and it was back in play.
That Roscoe! Jericho thought as he ran toward the ball. Always acting silly, and now he’s dropped the ball on the very first play of the game. Coach is gonna kill him!
Everyone converged in that direction, trying to get their hands on the free ball. Whoever picked it up would have possession. Coach Barnes was yelling at Roscoe, “Pick up the ball, Roscoe! Pick up the ball and run with it! Run, boy, run!”
Out of the corner of his eye, almost as if in slow motion, Jericho saw Roscoe scoop up the ball, tuck it in the crook of his elbow, and take off with it. Roscoe glanced around and saw that the field was thick with Excelsior boys to his right, so he pivoted and headed toward the left side of the field, where, incredibly, no Excelsior players waited.
He streaked down the left side line, no one between him and the far goal line except for one Excelsior lineman wearing the number 88. Jericho saw what was happening and leaped into action. He sprinted across the field as fast as he could to cut off the other guy’s angle of pursuit. Breathing heavily, but running as if he were made of sound instead of substance, Jericho flanked and shielded Roscoe from the lineman who was desperately trying to stop him.
The crowd, at first stunned into silence by Roscoe’s unbelievable run, began to cheer for him. “Go! Go! Go!” Jericho kept up with him the entire length of the field.
When Roscoe reached the end zone and scored the touchdown, the small crowd from Douglass went wild. No cannon exploded for them, but they didn’t need it. “Roscoe! Jericho! Roscoe! Jericho!” Finally even some of the Excelsior fans joined in the cheers.
The announcer reported, in a voice thick with disbelief and disappointment, “And the first touchdown of the game is scored by Cincinnati’s Frederick Douglass High School!”
In vibrant colors the scoreboard displayed what most of the crowd thought would be impossible: Excelsior: 0. Visitors: 6.
Jericho and Roscoe, covered in sweat and trying to catch their breath, jogged back to the sidelines, where the rest of the team raced toward them, slapping them on their helmets and cheering.
“I didn’t know you could run that fast, Jericho!” Luis exclaimed. “You kept up with Roscoe step for step, and he’s a little squirrel!”
“You’re the man, Roscoe!” said Coach Barnes. “An eighty-five-yard touchdown run! I knew you could do it.”
“I think I’m starting to believe in your magic, Coach,” Roscoe replied with a grin.
The coach turned to Jericho, his face a huge grin. “Way to go, man! Roscoe’s personal escort the whole run. Dynamite!”
“We bad! We bad!” Roscoe said, jumping up on the bench.
The coach brought him back to reality. “No time to kiss yourself, Roscoe. Extra point team—listen up. They think we’re going to kick for the one point, but let’s go for the two-point conversion instead.”
“You mean we’re gonna run it?” Jericho said in disbelief.
“Why not? They won’t expect it because they think we’re weak. But we’ve got power, men. Power and speed. Let’s do it—man for man. Our best against their best.”
Jericho, Roscoe, and the others ran back out onto the field. The Excelsior players looked angry. They lined up in tight formation. Number 88, who probably outweighed Jericho by fifty pounds, placed himself directly in front of him. His face was a snarl.
The ball was snapped, and the quarterback grabbed it, faked a move to his left, then deftly handed off the ball to Roscoe. Jericho, lunging straight ahead, put the force of his whole body into the meatball who was number 88 and bulldozed him straight back. Roscoe darted through the opening and into the end zone, scoring the two extra points.
The crowd went wild.
“Impossible!”
“Incredible!”
“Unbelievable!”
The Douglass cheerleaders screamed and screamed. Jericho heard his name and Roscoe’s coming from their area, where the small Douglass crowd was in a frenzy. He thought he might have heard Arielle screaming his name, but he couldn’t be sure—and surely had no time to think about it as his team exulted for the moment in their success.
But Coach Barnes wouldn’t let them gloat, because every play required focus and concentration, and the game continued relentlessly.
After a while it all became a blur to Jericho. The grass, which grew muddier as the game progressed. The white lines on the field—indicators of first downs and progress—which gradually smeared. The distant sound of the bands and roar of the crowd in the bleachers. The distinct smell of impending rain, then the cool relief of heavy raindrops on sweaty bodies. Tackles. Hits. Runs. Blocks. But no more scores. Jericho could barely believe it when he glanced up at the scoreboard—still, amazingly, reading Excelsior: 0, Visitors: 8. It was almost halftime, and the supposedly magnificent Excelsior team had been unable to score against Douglass. Their cannon had remained silent.
The rain, which had begun like a pleasant shower, quickly turned into a storm. No thunder or lightning, but it was as if the heavens had decided to open the clouds and simply drown the football field with a flood of water. Jericho was dimly aware of umbrellas and blankets being raised in the stands as fans huddled to stay dry, but no one seemed to want to leave as this incredible game rushed to halftime.
On the field, both sides, dripping with sweat
as well as rain, moved into position for the very last play. Three seconds remained on the clock. The grass, muddy and slippery, squished under Jericho’s feet as he took his place on the line.
Excelsior was in scoring position, and Jericho could tell from the looks he got as they lined up that they wanted this bad. How dare this lowly little poor school from nowhere dare to challenge the mighty ones? he imagined them thinking. Number 88, directly in front of Jericho once more, mouthed a curse at him. Jericho narrowed his eyes and stared him down.
The ball was snapped, their quarterback caught it, but it was wet and slick with mud. He dropped the ball. The entire Excelsior cheering section—almost twenty thousand of them—gasped. The clock ran out, the buzzer sounded, and the first half was complete.
CHAPTER 42
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
AS THEY RAN OFF THE FIELD, THE DOUGLASS team couldn’t contain their joy. They started cheering even as they ran, echoing the cries of the cheerleaders on the sidelines, “Panthers! Panthers! Panthers!”
Once they got back into the locker room, the coach let them jump on the benches for a few minutes, scream and yell, and beat on the lockers in exultation.
“Hoo-ha! Hoo-ha!”
“Sweet success!”
“I need me a cheerleader to kiss! Ooh, them girls looked fine in them little bitty skirts!” Roscoe yelled.
“You still talkin’ to Arielle, Jericho? That girl knows how to shake it!”
“I thought you’re s’posed to be watching the game, not my girl!” Jericho said with a laugh.
“I know how to multitask, my man!” replied Roscoe. Strains of music from the half-time show filtered into the locker room, adding to the feeling of celebration. Jericho thought briefly of the band, which was marching in tight lines on the muddy grass, of the trumpet player who had taken his position, of Olivia and her giant sousaphone, then turned his attention back to his teammates.
“We held ’em, Coach!” Roscoe cried as he ripped off his helmet. “You were right! You were right! We’re gonna beat these suckers!”
The whole backfield stood on a bench then, arms around one another’s shoulders, yelling, “We bad! We bad! We bad!”
“All right. Settle down, men,” the coach said. The team, wet, muddy, and clammy, gathered around in a circle. “I am so proud of you I want to pop. You did so well—truly an extraordinary job out there, but we have another half to play. Don’t plan the celebration party yet.”
A little more subdued, the players, gulping now from water bottles, looked at the coach expectantly. But Jericho’s heart was still beating fast as he thought about what they had just accomplished. He couldn’t wait to face number 88 again. He began wiping the mud off the front of his uniform so his own number would show. He glanced down at his uniform then and frowned.
“Hey, Coach!” he called out. “What’s up with this?” The huge satin 75 on the front of Jericho’s uniform was dripping with bright red dye. The same thing was happening to the numbers on the fronts and backs, the names, even the decorative stripes on the uniform of every guy in the locker room.
Red ink stained the hands of every player. Red ink blended with the water that had puddled on the floor, making the whole scene look as though a massacre had taken place.
The rest of the team looked around in horror. Their uniforms were turning a messy, wet, bubble-gum pink.
“We look like we’re bleeding, man!” shouted Cleveland. “Oh, no! What are we gonna do?”
Even the ever-calm Luis looked alarmed. “Coach, we’re pink!” he said, his face aghast.
“We can’t go out there lookin’ like this, man! They’ll laugh at us!” Roscoe cried. “Where’d you get these cheap things?”
“Did we bring the old uniforms?” asked Jericho, although he knew the answer.
Coach Barnes shook his head and looked more distraught than Jericho had ever seen him. “I know we got the uniforms cheap—now I understand why. Heads will roll when I call the distributor who sold them to us. But first we have to deal with right now. Let’s not let this get us rattled, men.”
“Too late! We look like a commercial for Pepto-Bismol!” Cleveland groaned with dismay.
The coach squared his shoulders. “Stop this! It is not what a man looks like on the outside that counts. It’s the strength of the man on the inside!”
“But we’re pink, Coach. We look like a bunch of girls!” Roscoe shook his head. The other boys refused to look the coach in the face.
Coach Barnes slammed a locker. “We are the same powerful team that kicked their butts in the first half, and we are going to go out there, heads held high, and do it again the second half. Are you with me, men? Where is your power? Where is your Panther Pride?”
“It melted,” mumbled Roscoe.
“I refuse to let this stop us. And I won’t let you go out there thinking like losers. I want you to look at that chart of all the past state championships on the wall. What does it tell you?”
“That Excelsior won the state title eight of the last ten years,” Jericho said glumly.
“What it tells me is that Excelsior lost that game twice. Two of those years they were defeated by a team that was tougher, stronger, hungrier. A team like us!”
“Didn’t we stomp them the first half?” Luis said, trying to rally the team along with the coach.
“Yeah, we did. We made ’em cry!” Jericho agreed.
“It’s almost time to go back out there, men. We can’t afford to lose our concentration,” the coach began. “Do not let this little problem become a distraction.”
“But Coach—,” Roscoe began.
“No more negativity! We have to fight this battle on several levels. We must be fierce and dominant, and we have to believe we can win. If we focus on what we have to do, and eliminate the mental mistakes, we will be victorious! Are you with me, men?”
“Yeah!” the boys cried, but without their earlier enthusiasm.
“Let’s go out there and win this!” cried Luis, trying to sound positive.
“Panther Pride!” several of the boys yelled out.
“Let me hear it!” the coach implored his team.
“Panther Pride!” they called back.
Finally Luis began to chant softly, and the rest of the team joined him, getting increasingly louder as they repeated it several times. But regardless, the feeling of power seemed to be gone.
We are the Panthers—the mighty, mighty Panthers
Everywhere we go-oh, people want to know-oh
Who we are-r, so we tell them—
We are the Panthers—the mighty, mighty Panthers
Everywhere we go-oh, people want to know-oh
Who we are-r, so we tell them…
Jericho jogged out with the team for the second half, wondering what would happen when everyone saw their unfortunate transformation. The rain had stopped and the huge mercury vapor lights, which had earlier made their uniforms glow, shone harshly on the wet and muddy field. The Douglass boys ran over to their bench. This time the glaring reflection of the overly bright lights made the ruined uniforms look a dazzling rosy pink.
The crowd, who at first clapped and yelled politely for the team who had been victorious in the first half of the game, stopped, almost in mid-cheer.
“Look at that!” someone called out.
“What happened to their uniforms?” another voice said.
“They’re pink!”
“That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”
“Pink, man! Pink! Pink punks!”
Then the laughter began, slowly at first, then swelling as every single eye focused on the mottled pink uniforms. It was deep, rippling, contagious laughter, which grew loud and uncontrollable as the Excelsior crowd pointed and hooted at the hapless Douglass team.
“And they call themselves the mighty Panthers!”
“They look more like the pink Panthers to me!”
That started another wave of laughter. “The pi
nk Panthers! Ha! The pink Panthers,” the crowd roared.
To add to the insult, the Excelsior band began to play the unmistakable theme from the movie The Pink Panther. Quietly at first, then louder. “Dah-DUM, dah-DUM, dah-DUM-dee-Dum-da-Dum, dah-dum-de-DUM, de-diddledum.” The people in the crowd joined in, laughing and humming along with the song, over and over again, as the Douglass boys waited, stone-faced.
Finally the Excelsior team returned to the field, their uniforms still blue and impressive-looking, to the cheers of their adoring fans. The second half began, but the magic was gone. Excelsior turned on their power and scored twice in the first ten minutes. The smell of gunpowder filled the air as their cannon exploded victoriously—not once, but twice, then twice more before it was all over. The Douglass team, although they tried to rally, merely survived to the end of the game—pink, muddy, and defeated. The final score was 28–8.
CHAPTER 43
NOVEMBER
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
NOVEMBER SAT CURLED UP IN THE BACKSEAT of Dana’s car as they rolled down I-71, heading home from the game, and tried to make herself more comfortable. She had balled up a sweatshirt and stuffed it behind her head as a pillow, but the car, a small Ford, just wasn’t very roomy, and she couldn’t lie down like she wanted to.
Kofi drove, while Dana popped in a new CD every fifteen minutes or so. At least November had the backseat to herself, and she stretched her legs out as much as she could. She was really glad she hadn’t decided to ride on the yellow school bus with the rest of the Douglass fans. Five hours on a cramped, poorly cushioned school bus seat was not her idea of luxury transportation. Besides, she’d been feeling pretty rotten most of the day.
“You okay back there, November?” Dana asked, looking behind her. They were a little more than halfway home.
“I’m just so tired, and my back is killing me, but I’ll be okay.” November placed her hands on her belly and grimaced as the whole lower half of her body seemed to tense up and tighten, just as it had been doing, off and on, all day. It’s my own fault, she thought. I got up early this morning to leave for the game, sat in this backseat for way too long, endured a rain-soaked football game, and now I’m back in this car. It’s no wonder I’m pooped! Even though they had already made two stops, November felt like she might have to go to the bathroom again soon.
November Blues Page 19