Gutless

by Carl Deuker

  Coach Lever clapped. “Good catch.”

  I stayed on the bench. Colton Sparks and Ty Erdman, our slot receiver, were on the field ninety percent of the time. Every once in a while, Coach Lever would send me out. Every time, I ran deep patterns or out patterns, pulling a safety and a cornerback with me. Each time, I hoped to see a pass spiraling toward me, but Hunter kept firing short bullets to Colton and Ty.

  As the game wore on, Coach Lever started calling running plays for Skeeter Washington, a muscular black kid who’d transferred from Texas. He was like a bowling ball, breaking tackles and piling up yardage.

  Then, right when I was sure I wouldn’t even get on the field again, Lever slapped me on the shoulder. “Eighty-eight vertical in,” he said.

  The down was second-and-six. The safeties had been pinching in to stop Skeeter. I relayed the call to Hunter, who had to have been sick of running plays and short passes. “You heard him,” Hunter said to the guys huddling around him. “On one.”

  I’d just reached my spot way out to the left when I heard “Rocket!” I exploded off the line, broke past the cornerback, and cut to the middle of the field. When I looked back, the ball was already in the air. It dropped from the sky like a soft Seattle rain. I hauled it in without breaking stride, and then I was gone.

  Touchdown!

  My teammates jumped up and down; Hunter high-fived me; Coach Lever did a Tiger Woods fist pump.

  That was it for me. Two catches: one for a first down and the other for a touchdown. I wanted to believe that I’d played a great football game, and in a way I had. But I hadn’t tackled anybody: I hadn’t even hit the ground. The guys around me were dirty and bruised, their pants ripped, their elbows bleeding. I was embarrassed by my spotless uniform.

  As I gathered my stuff, Colton came over to me, and I knew what was coming. “You wearing a bra yet?” he asked, his voice soft but his mean smile right up in my face.

  I felt my face flush.

  “You know why Lever has no plays for you over the middle? You know why you’re not on any special teams? It’s because you’re a girl, Ripley. Coach Lever knows it; every guy on the team knows it. Your gay lover over there”—he nodded toward Richie—“has bigger stones than you, and the whole school has seen how tiny his are.”

  Colton waited a beat, daring me to take a swing at him. When I didn’t, he snorted and walked away. My hands were shaking so much that I struggled to zip shut my duffle bag. Why hadn’t I taken a shot at him?

  “What was that about?” Richie asked when he came over.

  “Nothing. Just Colton being his normal jerk self.”

  When I opened my front door around two that afternoon, the house was empty. I could have eaten or showered or turned on ESPN or my laptop. Instead, I went to my room, flicked off the light, pulled down the shades, and lay on the bed in the near dark, still feeling the sting of Colton Sparks’s words.

  I stayed up there in the dark until my mother came home. Then I flicked on the light and pretended that I’d spent the afternoon playing video games.

  At dinner, my dad asked about the scrimmage. I described my two catches.

  “That’s great. Sounds like you were the star receiver.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Colton Sparks had at least six catches, and Ty Erdman caught a bunch too.”

  I skipped chess that evening. I told my dad I was too tired to give him a decent game but that I’d play him twice the next night. Upstairs, I wasted time reading everything on the CBS Sports website and then did the same on ESPN’s.

  When I’d exhausted the Internet, I shut the laptop and thought about the tryout. Only this time around, I thought about the team’s prospects and not my own game. I was sick of thinking about my own game.

  Richie would make the kicking game better. Skeeter Washington was a load; he’d do the same for the running game. Hunter was throwing the ball great—all his summer quarterback camps had paid off. I hated to admit it, but Colton Sparks was catching the ball better too. And then there was Coach Lever. He had been an assistant coach at some great football dynasty in Georgia. He was constantly making improvements in technique, in plays, in communication, in everything. He expected to win, and the team had sucked up confidence from him.

  Saturday afternoon, I headed over to Richie’s house. He was in the shed, as usual, making invisible improvements to the wing he’d added to his eco-school. As he worked, I tried to get him talking about the football team and about our chances in the upcoming season.

  He should have been pumped. He’d done the punting for both the Red and the Black teams, probably booting half a dozen punts in all. His worst punt went at least thirty-five yards in the air; the best probably went fifty. He hadn’t fumbled a snap; he hadn’t shanked a kick off the side of his foot. And he was solid as a placekicker, too. He made four extra points, and though he missed a field goal from thirty-five he made a field goal from twenty-five on the last play of the scrimmage. “You should read up on the game,” I told him. “I bet if you read about all the great kickers, you’d like football more.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he answered, his head down. His model had his full attention; my football talk was background noise.

  Finally, he stretched his arms above his head, groaned a little, and then turned and took something off a shelf behind him. “Look at this,” he said unrolling a poster. It was for the Pittsburgh contest. In the center was a photo of a scale model of a skyscraper. “That’s last year’s winning project.”

  I looked it over, taking my time. “It’s cool, but yours is just as good.”

  He nodded. “I think so too. Actually, I think mine’s better. There’s more to mine, with the daylighted creek, the water system, the solar panels, the natural light, and the new wing. I just wish the contest were this week.”

  “What’s the hurry? December’s better. By then, you’ll probably have won some violin competition, a math contest, and a chess tournament and kicked a bunch of game-winning field goals. You’ll need some new excitement.”

  He laughed, but then the smile disappeared. “I want my mom to see me win. She wanted to be an architect, but her parents pushed her into science. This is for her.”

  “Is it true?”

  Those were Anya’s first words to me on the opening day of school. We’d run into each other on the way to Mr. Gupta’s room at lunch. I’d said hello, but instead of answering she’d grabbed me by the arm and pulled me over to a semiquiet spot.

  “Is what true?” I asked.

  “That you’ve got Richie playing on the football team?”

  I nodded. “What’s so bad about that?”

  “Are you out of your mind? Hunter Gates. Colton Sparks. And that’s just for starters.”

  “No, Anya, you don’t get it. They’ve backed off. They’ll leave Richie alone now. He’s part of the team.”

  “Oh, right, Brock. Hunter Gates is going to be looking out for Richie, his Asian bro. He’ll be looking out for him all right—so that he can throw him in a dumpster.”

  My face reddened. She couldn’t have known what had happened to Richie on the last day of school. He wouldn’t have told anyone, and I was the only one who’d seen.

  I pulled myself together. “Anya, Richie is not just on the football team. He’s a big part of the football team. He’s better at kicking than anybody on the team, and the kicking game matters. Hunter needs to make a name for himself, and the only way to do that is to win. Richie can help win games, so Hunter has to leave Richie alone.”

  She didn’t answer, and as the seconds passed her face softened. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said at last.

  “Trust me. I do.”

  We walked down the hallway together. Twenty feet from Gupta’s room, we heard Richie’s voice, full of life. And when we stepped inside, we saw him at the center table, sitting across a chessboard from Mr. Gupta. He gave me a wave, and he gave Anya his best smile.

  “I’ve got a joke for you, Anya,” h
e shouted, tipping his chair back. “You listening?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “An old guy was in the park playing chess with his dog, a Jack Russell terrier. A woman came by and said, ‘I’d heard those were smart dogs, but I had no idea they were smart enough to play chess.’

  “‘Ah, he’s not so smart,’ the old guy answered as he put the chess pieces away. ‘I beat him two out of three.’”

  We opened the football season against the Franklin Quakers. I’d read up on them in the Seattle Times . They’d lost every single game the year before, and their head coach had quit once the season ended. The new coach said that he was building for the future. That was code for This year’s team sucks.

  Still, everybody was nervous before the opening kickoff. First games are like that. The band is playing, and most of the school is there. The weather is still warm; the sky is light.

  Franklin won the coin toss and took the ball first. They made a couple of first downs, but then a holding penalty forced them to punt. I stayed along the sideline and watched Hunter lead the team downfield, mixing handoffs to Skeeter Washington with passes to Colton and Ty. We drove to the seven-yard line, but then came a penalty and a botched handoff. On third down from the sixteen, I got my first action. I ran a deep post, but Franklin double-teamed me with a strong safety, so Hunter hit Colton with a short pass over the middle good for nine yards. On fourth down, Coach Lever sent Richie out for a field goal.

  It was the first quarter of the first game, but it was an important moment. If your kicker can’t hit a short field goal against a team that sucks, then there’s no way a coach will trust him in the fourth quarter of a big game. Richie—cool as ice—split the uprights. A siren went off; the band played the fight song; the cheer team ran up and down the sidelines.

  As Richie came off the field, the special team guys slapped his helmet and whacked his shoulder pads. On the sidelines, Coach Lever gave him a high-five. Richie pulled his helmet off, grinned at me, and then realized he needed to pull it right back on again for the kickoff.

  The score was still 3–0 when we got the ball back. The second drive was also a steady diet of short passes and runs. Eight yards, six yards, seven yards. I got on the field for a couple of plays, both times running deep patterns that cleared the underneath for Colton. Then with third-and-inches at their twenty-five, Coach Lever called another play for me.

  The route was double eighty-eight in. Hunter’s voice was tense as he called it. A bunch of short passes weren’t going to be enough to catch the eye of a bigtime college coach—he needed some highlight-reel completions.

  As I split out wide, the safety crept in, anticipating a run. That meant single coverage. The play called for me to drive forward about five yards, pretend to curl back, but then break long down the sideline. Since I had to make two moves, the play would take time to develop. The blocking had to be great.

  And it was. The cornerback bit on my first move, so on the second move I streaked down the sideline, open by five yards. Hunter laid the ball out for me. It should have been an easy catch, but I lost it in the low sky for a second. When I picked it up again, the ball was right on me. I didn’t catch it with my hands; instead, the ball bounced between my hands and my shoulder pads. Somehow I clutched it to my chest with my forearms, and then I ran like crazy for the goal line.

  The strong safety had an angle, but I crossed into the end zone just before he reached me, so he pulled up. Seconds later, my teammates were surrounding me, including Hunter. They leaped on me, knocking me down, and then they pulled me up and slapped my helmet. We ran back to the bench while the siren blared, the band played, and our fans roared. Richie kicked the extra point, making the score 10–0. Two minutes later, I was still breathing fast from the excitement.

  I didn’t do anything else that game, but the rest of the offense rolled. Hunter and Skeeter ran the read-option in the second half, biting off huge chunks of yardage on nearly every play. Hunter mixed in underneath passes to Colton and the tight ends, piling up yards and keeping his completion rate high. The score was 38–0 starting the fourth quarter; the mercy rule kicked in, and that was the score when the game ended.

  In the locker room afterward, Coach Lever told us how great the offense and defense had played. When he finished, one of the linemen jumped onto a bench and waved a flag around. “All the way to the T-Dome!” he screamed, and a roar went up.

  When the team bus was a mile from school, Richie gave me a little poke in the ribs. “What was that stuff about the T-Dome?” he asked.

  “That’s where the state semifinals and finals are played.”

  “Do we have a chance to get there?”

  I lowered my voice so that only he could hear. “I don’t think so. But sixteen teams make the playoffs, and we could do that. We’ve got an easy schedule early on, but our last three games are really tough. Bellevue, Blanchet, and O’Dea are all powerhouse teams.”

  Richie thought for a second. “I bet the title game is on TV. If I kicked the winning field goal, everybody in the state would see it, wouldn’t they?”

  That was pure Richie—he’d played one football game in his life, and he already had his eyes on the biggest stage.

  The rap music that next week was louder, and the work was harder. Agility drills, strength drills, gassers, playbook study, route tightening, tackling form, gassers, more drills, more plays, more gassers. Mr. Gates supervised the receivers and the quarterbacks, but Coach Lever came around more and more. “Make that cut sharper.” “Sell your move.” “You can run faster than that.” And, his favorite: “You win the game at practice.”

  On Thursday, a guy wearing a Sacramento State Hornets sweatshirt was standing along the sidelines, his eyes on Hunter. When practice ended, Coach Lever asked both Colton and me to stick around. With the Sacramento State guy watching, the two of us took turns running patterns for Hunter: Colton taking the short routes, me going long. Hunter was so nervous that his first four passes sailed high, but then his nerves settled, and ball after ball came right on the numbers.

  I caught six balls, each throw about twenty yards downfield. By then I was sucking wind, so I didn’t reach the seventh even though it was actually a perfect pass. “That’s it, Brock,” Coach Lever called out. “You can go home now.” When I left, Hunter was still throwing short stuff to Colton.

  That night, I logged on to Recruits.com. Hunter was back on the list at number ninety-three. The comment next to his name read Solid opener, accurate long and short, no INTs, a sleeper.

  I got to school early the next morning, so I headed to the library, hoping to run into Anya. She was there, her math book open and her fingers punching data into her graphing calculator. Richie was at a circular table on the other side of the library, playing video games with some guys. I was going to leave Anya alone and join them, but she smiled when she saw me.

  “You don’t have to study?” I asked.

  She put down her calculator. “This isn’t due until Friday.”

  I dropped my backpack on the floor and sat next to her. Just then, Richie and his entire group broke into loud laugher and started pounding on the table. Mr. Tracy, the librarian, rushed over, motioning with his hands that they needed to quiet down. Richie put a finger to his lips and shushed everybody, but his shush was as loud as the laughter.

  Anya motioned with her head toward him. “My dad called his dad. His mother is going into hospice care.”

  “He told me she might,” I said.

  She paused. “Has he told you about moving back to China?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’ll hate that. I speak better Mandarin than he does, and I’m just okay. I don’t think he can read or write very much at all. The whole thing makes me sad. Even him acting so happy makes me sad.”

  I glanced at Richie again. His hands were pounding on the keyboard, and he was almost jumping up and down in his seat. In a way, it seemed strange that he could be so hyper, but maybe that’s how he kep
t himself from thinking about his mom.

  As Anya started to gather up her stuff for her class, an idea came to me. “Why don’t you come to the Ingraham game? Richie would like it. Afterward, we could all go to El Camion to eat. I think they’ve got karaoke there. Richie told me he’s really good at the ‘Monster Mash.’”

  The Ingraham game was at Seattle Center under the lights. As we ran onto the field, I spotted Anya and a bunch of other chess club kids up in the stands. She waved. I didn’t wave back, but Richie did—waving both hands above his head like one of the workers on an airport tarmac. “Don’t do that,” I whispered to him. “Coach Lever won’t like you to look into the stands.”

  “Why?

  “He just won’t.”

  Ingraham was better than Franklin. We didn’t rip off huge chunks of yardage on the running plays, but we did move the ball down the field. On our second drive, with third and goal from the six, Hunter made such a good fake to Skeeter that I didn’t know he still had the ball until he was running into the end zone, hands raised above his head.

  Ingraham moved the ball to midfield on their next possession, but then our defense forced a punt. The ball took a good bounce for them, pinning us way back on our own five-yard line.

  Coach Lever slapped me on the helmet. “Vertical out eighty-eight,” he yelled. When I relayed the play call to Hunter, he kneeled and gave the play to the team. “On one,” he said.

  A few seconds later, I was off. Hunter rolled to his right and then launched a long pass down the sideline.

  The Ingraham cornerback was a couple of steps behind me. The ball was mine to catch, but the wind was playing tricks with the ball. I made a little slant to the outside, trying to judge the point where the ball and my hands would meet.

  Then another gust of wind came. The ball fluttered, changed trajectory. I tried to adjust my speed, but I ended up having to reach back and over, only getting one hand on the ball and then watching it bounce wildly down the sideline and out of bounds. I came off the field, dejected. “Next time,” Coach Lever said to me, clapping his hands. “Next time.”