Cody's Varsity Rush

by Todd Hafer

  Clark paused. Cody wondered if he had forgotten what he wanted to say next, but when he began to speak again, his voice was trembling. “And let’s make our parents proud too. Some of you might know that my mom and dad separated over the summer. But they’re both here tonight, and they’ll both be there tomorrow. I can’t help but think that if I have a special game, it will, you know, help them somehow.”

  Coach Morgan moved to Clark’s side, put his arm around him, and led him to the back of the garage. Cody could see the linebacker’s massive shoulders heaving. Cody swallowed hard. “And some people say this is just a game,” he whispered.

  A few high gray clouds dotted the sky above Grant Field. Cody stood on the sideline with his varsity teammates and watched the seemingly endless stream of headlights approach the stadium. The home bleachers were already almost full; the latecomers would have to stand along the chain-link fence around the field, sit behind the end zones, or view the game from their cars.

  Presently, Cody heard the voice of the public address announcer: “Welcome to Senior Night at Grant Field, for the final regular-season contest of the year. Please direct your attention to the center of the field, as we honor our Grant Eagle seniors and their parents.”

  Cody felt the back of his neck tingle as Brendan Clark’s name was announced. The linebacker took a rose from a cheerleader, then jogged to midfield, where his mother and father waited, the former wearing a number 51 game jersey just like her son’s. She used one of the too-long sleeves to dab at her eyes while Clark gave his father a fierce hug. Then he kissed his mother on the forehead, hugged her carefully, and stood proudly beside his parents.

  Cody noticed that a few of the seniors, including ATV, exchanged awkward handshakes rather than hugs with their dads. He wondered which it would be when he was a senior. And he wondered if Beth would be there at midfield. Then he remembered something he had read in his giant study Bible only two days ago. “Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

  Yeah, he thought grimly, ain’t that the truth?

  ATV smacked the opening kick off the left upright of the opposing end zone. Coach Morgan began the game with three defensive backs, but it became clear that Claxton Hills planned to fill the late-October air with flying footballs. Eric Faust guided the Lancers to the Grant twenty-eight before a sack by Tucker moved them out of field-goal range.

  Grant went nowhere on its first possession, and Morgan gambled one more time with his three-DB scheme. Faust made him pay, completing seven of nine passes for fifty-eight yards as Claxton Hills hushed the home field with an effective TD drive.

  “Martin,” Coach Alvin snapped, after a turnover gave the Lancers the ball again. “over here, pronto!”

  Cody knew what was coming. “Look,” the coach said, his eyes wide, “you’re going in. Faust is killing us out there. It’s time for you to earn your spurs. You hear?”

  Cody nodded.

  Coach Alvin grabbed his face mask and pulled him close. “Don’t get nervous out there. You play the game. Play smart. Don’t let ’em intimidate you.”

  Cody nodded again. He wasn’t sure if he could speak, so he deemed it best not to risk it.

  Cody could swear that Butler, rather stocky for a wideout, was sneering at him as they faced off on first down. Butler ran a down-and-out, with Cody shadowing him. As Butler made his cut, he used his left hand to push Cody in the chest, creating space between them. Faust’s throw hit the turf or the Lancers would have picked up a first down.

  “You’re lucky, boy,” Butler snarled as they jogged back to the line of scrimmage.

  Faust threw to the other side of the field on their next two plays, both incompletions.

  Cody jogged to the sideline, almost limp from relief. What I could use now, he thought, is a nice long drive from our offense, preferably one that takes us right up to halftime.

  Grant did move the ball well on its next possession. The Lancers five down-linemen stood almost shoe to shoe, with their three linebackers tucked in right behind them—daring ATV to try to gain ground up the middle.

  Unfortunately for the visitors, they had apparently forgotten about ATV’s 4.7 speed. On first down, he took a pitch from Hammond and romped around the right end for twenty-eight yards. Next, Hammond faked a handoff to ATV, then scooted around the left end for another twenty-four.

  Despite their larger size, the Lancers were back on their heels. Pork Chop and the rest of the offensive linemen fired off the ball in unison, moving like a blue-and-silver wave. And once they made contact with the defense, they held their blocks, allowing the Eagle backs to make cuts toward the open portions of the field.

  ATV finished the clock-devouring drive with a one-yard plunge right into the teeth of the Claxton Hills defense.

  On the next defensive series, Cody absorbed three vicious blocks from Butler, but no passes came his way.

  On Claxton Hills’ final drive of the first half, Butler beat Cody on a shallow slant route, but Clark was there to mop up. He hit Butler so hard that at first Cody thought he had injured himself.

  Cody felt panic wash over him as he watched Clark jog to the sideline pointing at his chest.

  The linebacker joined the defensive huddle two plays later. “Are you okay?” Cody asked him.

  Clark exchanged a knowing smile with Tucker. “Of course I am. Just hit Butler so hard I snapped the laces on my shoulder pads.”

  “Oh, no, not again, Brendan,” Tucker mock-scolded him. “You know how expensive those laces are.”

  The Lancers missed a forty-two-yard field goal to end the half, and the teams trotted to their respective locker rooms with the game knotted at seven-all.

  Coach Morgan outlined some defensive adjustments. Then he gave his players a few minutes to gather themselves.

  Cody sat between Pork Chop and Marcus Berringer on a narrow wooden bench. He looked around the locker room. Grass and chunks of mud, dropped from players’ cleats, littered the floor. Cody stared at his battered locker. Several dents and dings framed it, as if someone had attacked it with a hammer. Then, near the center, it was marked by a serious crater—it had to be the result of a helmet. All season he wondered if the helmet had a head in it at the time.

  He looked across the locker room. ATV was lying on his back on a bench, bloody knuckles folded across his chest. He was listening to his MP3 player, no doubt some pounding hard rock, in an effort to psych himself up for the second half. Sweat pooled on the floor beneath him. Cody knew ATV had to be close to one hundred yards rushing already—against a defense custom-designed to stop him.

  Pork Chop rose wearily from the bench next to Cody and walked to the entrance, where Vance, the trainer, not the coach, was summoning him.

  He returned a few moments later, eyes grim. “Dawg,” he said. “I have bad news for you.”

  Cody let out a moan. “What now?”

  “I just heard—you’re the pain pool target this game.”

  Cody shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t get it. Me? I play defense. I’m the smallest guy on the team.”

  Pork Chop nodded. “There you go. A little freshman playing varsity. The perfect target.”

  Cody felt fear rising in him like smoke. “What do I do, Chop?” he asked, hoping his friend couldn’t hear the terror in his voice.

  “You watch your back, my brother. I’ll be watching it too. And I’ll tell Coach M and the guys. One more thing—if I were you, I’d pray.”

  Cody smiled a sad smile. “Already did that.”

  Pork Chop patted him on the shoulder blade. “I should have known.”

  “Hey, Chop,” Cody asked, cocking his head. “how did you find this out?”

  Chop smiled. “Robyn heard it in line at the concession stand. She went to Vance right away. By the way, she has two messages for you: First, she says she’s praying for you. Second, she said to tell you she really likes your Bible.”

  Well, thought Cody as he slid his shoulder pads back on, sounds like I’m off Robyn’s h
it list. Too bad I’m still on Claxton Hills’. But at least now I know why Butler has been charging at me like a rhino all night.

  Grant received the second-half kickoff and mounted an ugly but effective drive. It was ATV up the middle, ATV off left tackle, ATV off right tackle, and ATV on screen passes. Hammond threw in a couple of QB keepers just to keep the defense honest, but 99 percent of the time, they knew what was coming.

  Coach Alvin paced the sideline like a guard dog, sometimes losing control and marching ten yards onto the field to protest a call or scream at a blocker. But most of the time he was intent on keeping ATV motivated. “Just keep running at ’em, big man—they can’t stop you!” he shouted, his voice ragged. “All you gotta do is pick up 3.3 yards a carry, and the first-down chains keep movin’!”

  “Amen to that,” Cody whispered.

  ATV’s workhorse efforts eventually brought the Eagles a first down at the Lancer fourteen. That’s when Hammond decided to change things up and put the ball in the air—right to Hayden Owens-Tharpe, an all-conference cornerback and wide receiver. OwensTharpe made the pick in the left corner of the end zone and ran it out to the twelve.

  Cody ran onto the field with the defense. He stood facing Butler, the wind whistling through his ear holes. He wondered if he could stay out of the pain pool.

  Claxton Hills ran a QB sweep on first down, trying to take advantage of Faust’s size and decent speed. The run went to the opposite side of the field from Cody, but he pursued the play, just in case Faust got around the end or cut back to the middle. Tucker contained the play, turning Faust right into Goddard, who wrapped the QB up. Faust kept his legs pumping, but all that did was give time for Clark to come flying in. He knocked both Faust and Goddard to the ground.

  While Cody stood marveling at the double tackle, Owens-Tharpe blindsided him with a helmet-to-helmet hit that knocked him sideways. He fought to keep his feet, but the momentum was too great. He tumbled to the turf, pain exploding like a cherry bomb in his head. So much for staying out of the pain pool, he thought.

  From his prone position, he saw Coach Alvin burst onto the field, screaming at the closest officials. Coaches Morgan and Curtis each had him by an arm trying to hold him back.

  Tentatively, Cody rose to his feet, taking a personal inventory. Head seems to still be attached to body, he reassured himself. And it appears to be pointing in the right direction.

  He saw Owens-Tharpe striding toward him, no doubt to talk smack to him. I won’t have to turn the other cheek when he harasses me, Cody thought. He already turned it for me. I wonder what he’s gonna do, what he’s gonna say to me.

  Cody would never find out. Clark stepped between them, feet planted defiantly, so close to Owens-Tharpe that their face masks banged together. Clark’s back was to Cody, so he couldn’t see his teammate’s face, but it sounded like he was talking through gritted teeth. “One more cheap shot like that, and I’ll knock the hyphen right out of your name. You got that?”

  “Whatever,” Owens-Tharpe said, but he said it while backing away.

  Coach Morgan pulled Cody out of the game. He worried that Faust and company would exploit the threeDB set, but the cheap shot had angered the Eagles. On second down, Tucker hurdled a blocker to sack Faust for an eight-yard loss.

  On third down, Faust hit a wide-open OwensTharpe over the middle, but the receiver saw Clark streaking toward him and the ball bounced off his chest.

  The teams traded three-and-outs and, with 3:48 left on the clock, Claxton Hills took over at its own thirteen, hoping to sustain a long, game-winning drive. “Martin,” Coach Morgan said evenly, as the punt team trotted off the field. “What do you think?”

  Cody took a deep breath. “I think I better go in, Coach.”

  Coach Morgan looked at Coach Alvin and said, “Not just yet. They’re deep in their own territory. Let’s see what happens.”

  Cody did his best not to appear relieved.

  The Lancers kept the ball on the ground hoping to milk the clock. They managed to convert three consecutive third-downs, bailed out on two of them by well-timed Faust scrambles.

  With 1:32 left in the game, Claxton Hills had driven to the Grant thirty-four, where the Lancers faced a third and eight.

  “Okay, Martin,” Coach Morgan called, “you still want back in there?”

  Cody was standing next to Pork Chop, several players down the line from the coaches. “What do you think, Chop?”

  His friend nodded. “I think we need a fourth DB. And besides, if you go back in the game, Owens-Jerk—I mean Tharpe—doesn’t get the pain-pool money.”

  Cody exchanged fist pounds with Chop, then snapped his chin strap. He ran to Coach Morgan. “Put me in,” he said.

  Cody never thought he had the spiritual gift of prophecy, but as he stood in the defensive backfield, paired against Butler again, he knew the play was coming his way. He also knew Butler would need to catch a pass along the sideline. The Lancers had only one time-out remaining, and they would want to save that to get their field goal team on the field if they had the chance.

  As Faust barked out the snap count, Cody edged a bit toward the sideline, hoping to tempt Butler to take the inside leverage. He eyed the first-down marker. The pass pattern, whatever it was, would have to get to that point.

  Butler exploded off the line on the snap of the ball. He chugged toward Cody, giving a fake to the inside of the field, a fake Cody ignored.

  Yeah, right, he thought as he raced Butler to the sideline.

  Faust must have seen that Cody had the outside position on Butler because he threw the ball low and slightly behind his receiver, hoping that he could come back for it and make a diving catch.

  Butler, seemingly reading his QB’s mind, dug his cleats into the turf, turned, and lunged for the ball.

  The pass was too low and too hard. It hit the turf before Butler could pull it in. Cody felt someone fly by him on his outside shoulder. It was Berringer, coming up from his safety position to make the play. Seeing that Butler was already down, he tried to hurdle him.

  Unfortunately for the Lancer wideout, Berringer didn’t have much hurdling experience. His left cleat landed squarely on Butler’s right hand. Cody heard his opponent cry out in pain.

  The incompletion brought up fourth down. Claxton Hills would have to go for it. They weren’t in field goal range, and if they punted the ball back to Grant, the Eagles could run out the clock. Cody paused a moment before joining the defensive huddle. He watched Butler, holding his right hand in his left, head for the offensive huddle.

  “Okay, guys,” Clark told his teammates. “Listen up. This could be the season right here. It’s gonna be a pass. Be ready. I’m blitzin’ like a mad dog.”

  “Me too,” Cody said, surprised by his own words. Clark looked at him. “Code—you sure?”

  Cody nodded. “Butler’s hand is messed up. There’s no way they’ll throw to him. He’s just a decoy. If you blitz, they’ll all pay attention to you. I’ll have a clean shot.”

  Clark looked at him and nodded. Tucker rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Hit him hard, man!” he urged. “Hit him real hard!”

  Butler rested his injured hand on his thigh pad as he waited on the snap count. Cody thought about what Clark had said the night before, about wanting to win for his parents. He thought of all the seniors and how they wanted this to be a game they would remember. Then he launched himself at Faust.

  The Lancer QB was looking for Owens-Tharpe over the middle. The fullback, the only protection in the backfield, was helping the center and left guard triple-team a snarling, charging Brendan Clark.

  Faust cocked the ball behind his ear just as Cody closed in on him. Cody lunged at the passing arm; he knew he would probably just bounce off if he tried to hit the QB in his torso. He leaped on the arm as if it were a low-hanging tree branch, his weight pulling Faust off balance. Cody saw the ball squirt free.

  As soon as he hit the turf, he bounced right back up and scrambled for the
ball. Slowing only slightly, he scooped the pigskin into his arms at the Grant forty-five. The goal line was fifty-five yards away.

  Cody exploded across midfield, eyes cast slightly downward. Under his feet, the field was a blur of green grass and white hash marks.

  He felt he was running from not just the Lancers he felt pursuing him from behind, but from the ghost of Gabe Weitz, the pain of losing his mom, and the fear of his dad having a new wife. He vowed that he was going to outrun them all. He crossed the thirty, then the twenty. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Owens-Tharpe angling toward him. It was going to be close.

  At the ten, Cody knew there was going to be contact. The Lancer receiver hurled himself with an animal growl.

  The growl told Cody that his would-be tackler was desperate—and probably angry about losing out on the pain pool. It told him that Owens-Tharpe would be head-hunting. It told him to duck.

  Cody dipped his head and torso as if he were running through a tunnel. Owens-Tharpe flew over the top of him—delivering only a glancing blow to his helmet—and landed on the orange pylon in the near corner of the end zone.

  Cody absorbed the hit, placing his hand on the turf to keep his balance. He saw the goal line and dove across it. He stood and looked to the home bleachers. The Grant fans were screaming, jumping up and down, and banging ThunderStix. He saw his dad and Beth jumping up and down in near-perfect unison. Presently, Brendan Clark sprinted toward him and hoisted him in the air. “What a rush!” he screamed at Cody. “What a rush!”

  When Clark deposited him back on the field, Cody handed him the football. “This is for you, Brendan. And for your mom and dad too. God bless.”

  Clark took off his helmet. And then, for the first time in his football career, he kneeled in the end zone and prayed. Cody hesitated for a moment, then joined him.

  Epilogue

  After Cody’s game-breaking play, he knew the Lancers were still clinging to the hope of a last-ditch miracle of their own. Once ATV booted the ball into the stratosphere, they would have over a minute to move the ball eighty yards, with one time-out still on the clock. It was a formidable challenge but not impossible.