by Mike Lupica
“Game’s starting to slow down now, that’s what I see happening,” Wyatt was saying.
“Wish I’d see it happening for me,” Jake said.
“Yeah, little brother,” Wyatt said, still calling Jake that even though Jake was taller now. “I forgot to ask, how you goin’ so far with the blue and white?”
Jake walked over to pour himself some iced tea, saying over his shoulder, “Gettin’ there, I guess. Coach Jessup’s been working with me a bit after practice, and that’s helped. Can’t get a read on Coach McCoy, though, except when I mess up and get that hundred-yard stare of his.”
When Jake turned back around, waiting for a response, he saw Wyatt staring down at his cell phone, sitting there next to him on the couch. Giving it that quick look down you gave your phone when you had it out like that, seeing if a new text had come in the last five seconds or so.
Wyatt held up the phone now to Jake. “Calvin,” Wyatt said. “Wants to meet up in town later, hear all about UT.”
Then: “You were saying something about Coach McCoy?”
“Nothing important.”
With that, Wyatt stood up and said, “Might as well head in to town now, meet up with some of my guys.”
Meaning his old teammates at Granger. Like he was still captain of the team. Didn’t ask Jake if he wanted to come along; Jake didn’t expect him to. Jake never took it as mean or took offense, just saw it as Wyatt being Wyatt.
Libby Cullen said, “You just make sure you’re home in time for dinner, college man.”
“Wouldn’t miss it, Mama, been thinking about your home cooking since I woke up this morning.”
Wyatt gave Jake a pat on the head as he went by him, said he’d text him later when he knew where he was going to be, probably at the new Amy’s Ice Cream that had opened in Granger during the summer, trying to give Spooner’s a run for its money.
“Have Dad show you this pass I threw when he was watching us Thursday night. Coach said it was the best deep sideline he’d seen, no lie, since your boy Eli hit Mario Manningham the Super Bowl before last.”
Then he was gone.
Troy Cullen was already pointing his remote at the big screen, saying, “Man, did he ever get ’er done with that throw. Just gimme a second till I find the right place on the DVD I burned.”
Jake said, “Love to.”
He felt his dad looking at him then, turned and saw the funny look on his face. Jake realized as soon as he spoke that Troy Cullen hadn’t heard him right.
“Well, hell, son, I love you, too,” he said.
Jake had to sit there and watch more than just the throw Wyatt was talking about, had to watch and listen—mostly listen—as his dad broke down the last twenty or so plays of practice like he really was one of Wyatt’s coaches.
“Good for you to see what it all looks like at the next level,” his dad said, staring intently at the screen, like he was going to pick up on something he’d missed the other times he’d watched these same plays.
Jake thought to himself, I can’t handle the level I’m at, and he’s already talking about the next one.
“You see,” Troy Cullen said now, freezing the picture, showing him where all the downfield receivers were, all covered, then hitting Play again as Wyatt checked down to his tight end for a ten-yard gain. “See the feel your brother has for this game at nineteen, ’fore he ever takes a for-real snap in college football?”
“He’s really something,” Jake said.
When the film session was finally over, Jake went up to his room, got on his computer for a while before he got a text from Barrett telling him that he and Nate were on their way over. They wanted to go into town and just hang out.
Barrett arrived about fifteen minutes later, and the three of them were on their way into Granger, Jake telling his buds that Wyatt was home.
“Whoa,” Barrett said. “Wyatt Cullen? You get to, like, talk to him?”
Barrett had never been Wyatt’s biggest fan; neither had Nate. Neither one of them went too far making a thing out of it, mostly keeping it light, sarcastic comments about Wyatt being Mr. Perfect, in Jake’s family and in Granger.
Jake said, “Let’s not start in on my brother.”
Barrett said, “Who thinks you’re just one more person in this town’s supposed to kiss the ground he walks on.”
“C’mon, Bear,” Jake said. “You grew up in our house almost as much as you did your own. You know Wyatt’s not really like that. He’s just got his own deal goin’, is all.”
“Whatever.” Dropping it like he’d taken it as far as he wanted to. Or as far as Jake did.
When they got into town, Barrett parked the truck in front of RadioShack, saying he needed a new phone charger. Then the three of them walked around a bit. Most of the stores were closed on Sunday afternoon. They ended up walking past the hardware store and the feed store and Jake’s Deli and Mo’s Coffee Stop and Artie’s Mobil Mart gas station and convenience store, which was always open, even on Thanksgiving and Christmas. They walked the four blocks of Granger’s main downtown area and then crossed the street and came back, none of them in any hurry or needing to be anyplace, enjoying their day off from practice, nobody mentioning that school would be starting in the morning, the official end of summer, even though their summer had really ended the day practice had started.
“How’s Wyatt doing with the ’Horns?” Nate said.
“You can ask him yourself, you want; he just texted me he’s at Amy’s already.”
“Man, now that is good news from your brother. I’ve been thinking about Amy’s since we got to town,” Barrett said. “Tryin’ to decide whether to get me a shake or a banana split.”
“Why’s it got to be either-or?” Nate asked.
As soon as they walked into the front room, they could see the big crowd in back, past the counter, bunch of tables pulled together, Wyatt right in the middle of it all, his back against the wall, holding court the way he used to at Stone’s after another big win for Granger High.
A bunch of players were there, Jake saw, Calvin and Melvin and Casey Lindell and some guys from the defense. Wyatt was doing all of the talking, everybody laughing now at something he’d just said. Almost like high school still hadn’t ended for Jake’s big brother.
Or might never end, at least in all the good ways.
Barrett said, “You sure you want to do this?”
“You feel like we’ll be joining the crowd,” Nate said, “or the audience?”
“We’ll just order our stuff and pull up a table of our own,” Jake said. “We don’t have to stay long.”
Just as he said that, he took a better look at the table that had been pulled up to Wyatt’s left, saw Sarah sitting there with two other cheerleaders, Sarah’s hair pulled back into a ponytail.
Sarah looking at Wyatt the way Jake wanted her to look at him, just once.
She didn’t see Jake at the counter because she wasn’t seeing anything at Amy’s except Jake’s brother.
Jake turned around and started heading toward the door, saying, “You’re right, Bear. Let’s get out of here.”
Nate said, “But we haven’t even ordered yet.”
Barrett said, “We can order when we get out to Spooner’s.” Then he leaned close to Jake and said, “I saw her, too.”
Before the door closed behind them, they all heard one more burst of laughter from the back room, everybody happy as they could be that Wyatt was back in town, if only for a day.
Nobody looking happier about it than Sarah Rayburn.
08
JAKE TRIED EVERY WAY HE COULD THINK OF TO GET HIS MOM TO go to Austin with his dad for Texas’s opener. But once she made up her mind, you had a better chance of turning around the Pecos River. So that was that, her decision final: She’d go to the Granger game at one at Cullen Field, and Troy Cull
en would be in Austin watching Wyatt at three thirty, the big national TV game on ABC.
“Mom, you’re not being logical, and you’re usually the most logical person I know,” Jake said the last time he went at her. “Wyatt is starting for the Longhorns. As a freshman. You don’t want to miss his first college game.”
“You make it sound like I’m missing Sunday services, Jacob.”
It was Friday, just the two of them at breakfast, Troy Cullen not due back until that night from quarter-horse sales run by one of the most famous ranches in Texas, the 6666, known to everyone as the Four Sixes. Buying and selling horses for him was just another form of competition, one more thing he used to fill up the hole in his life that once held playing football.
“Mom,” Jake said. “It would be one thing if I were going to play tomorrow. But I’m not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve got a better chance of being hit by lightning,” he said. “Go to Austin with Dad in the morning.”
She smiled, what somebody else might have seen as a sweet mom smile, across the breakfast table. But Jake knew better, knew it was a game-ender.
“I can’t imagine why we’re still even talking about this,” she said. “Now finish up your eggs before Barrett gets here.”
“Did I ever have a chance?”
“Better chance of being hit by lightning, dear,” she said, and started reading one of the morning newspapers on her iPad.
Friday’s practice was just a walk-through, no pads, the way Coach John McCoy had always done it the day before a game, whether it was being played on Friday night or Saturday afternoon, this decade or the ones before it.
When they were finished, Coach Jessup came jogging over to Jake, told him to stick around for a few more minutes, there was some this-and-that he thought they could work on.
“Coach,” Jake said, “you know I appreciate all the extra work y’all have been doing with me . . . but it’s Friday night.”
“Not yet, it’s not,” Coach said.
Jake realized he wasn’t changing anybody’s mind about anything today.
Every time Jake stayed after, it was something different. They’d moved on from Jake’s throwing mechanics, which Coach J thought were getting better, looking more natural all the time. Sometimes they wouldn’t even work on the field, they’d go inside Coach J’s tiny office, and he’d start drawing up plays on an old-timey black chalkboard. But then he’d stop about halfway through the play, have Jake go up to the board and finish it, showing what his progression was supposed to be if his primary guys were covered.
Coach J’s big thing was that a quarterback’s brain was as important as his arm.
“It’s all about reactions,” he’d said the day before. “Sometimes you got no choice, you got to react to what the defense is showin’ you. But more often than that, you got to make them react to you.” He’d nodded and said, “You know what the difference is between a win and a loss sometimes? Just freezing a ’backer or safety for one beat of their heart. Or yours.”
Jake actually knew what he’d meant.
“I read somewhere where one of Peyton Manning’s old coaches said the only language Peyton wanted to speak was quarterback. Like a musician thinking in theory or something.”
Coach Jessup had slapped him on his back and said, “That’s gonna be you, boy. You just don’t know it yet.” Grinned and said, “One of the many things you ain’t figured out yet, and not just about football.”
Today Coach promised they wouldn’t be out here long. But he still had Jake help him bring out some of the super-sized orange traffic cones they’d use, ones that Coach J had written numbers on in Magic Markers, one through five—the usual number of available receivers Jake might have on a given play in Coach McCoy’s spread offense.
Once they started, Coach J would have Jake turn his back, then he’d move the cones around to different points in the red zone. Jake would walk up to an imaginary line of scrimmage, call out a play, roll to his left or right, like he’d been flushed from the pocket, then Coach would yell out a number, his way of telling Jake to find a secondary receiver. Jake would do his best to find the cone and hit it with the ball, knowing Coach would blow his whistle if he took more than a second or two.
Now, Coach yelled, “Roy’s covered . . . locate number one!”
Even here, with cones, number 1 was Calvin.
Jake rolled to his left, stopped, and threw a perfect spiral, clipping the tip of the cone in the right corner of the end zone.
“Look at you, Cullen! You’re better with cones than with humans.”
Not Coach J. It came from Calvin himself, standing there with Casey Lindell.
Coach Jessup heard him, too. Couldn’t help it.
“Hey, Coach J?” Casey said. “How come I never get any tutoring?”
“On account of your already knowin’ everything,” Coach J said, grinning at him. “Or so you say.”
“You bustin’ on me?” Casey said.
“Never,” Coach J said. “Care to join us?” When Casey didn’t move, Coach J smiled and said to Jake, “Last one.”
Coach J moved the cones around one last time, then Calvin and Casey watched as Jake dropped back, rolled to his left again, kept rolling, waiting for Coach Jessup to call out a number. Finally he yelled “One!” again, and Jake didn’t hesitate, didn’t come to a complete stop, didn’t even square his shoulders, just flung the ball across his body to where the cone he wanted was, still in the right corner. Hit it square, knocking it over.
This time Calvin didn’t say anything, just looked at Jake and nodded and pointed. Was still nodding as he and Casey walked off the field and into the tunnel.
Like maybe Jake had finally showed him what Nate Collins liked to call a little somethin’-somethin’.
Coach John McCoy, who never said much, didn’t say much in the locker room before the opener against Shelby the next day.
“Just remember,” he said, “you’re lining up against the Shelby Mustangs today, not last year’s Granger Cowboys.”
They all nodded, some standing, some sitting on benches, Coach in the middle of them.
“So you boys go out there and make some memories for your own selves today,” he said, then turned and walked out the door. Then this season’s Granger Cowboys followed him, the way Cowboys players had been following John McCoy for the past thirty-five years.
They followed him out of the tunnel and into the sun, into the sound and force of high school football in their small Texas town, like the New Year in Granger, Texas, didn’t start until they came out of that tunnel for their first game.
They were yelling as they came into the sun, but you couldn’t hear them above the shouting from the stands, the first loud roar of the season for Cowboys football, as they ran past the cheerleaders—Jake saw Sarah at the end, on the left—and across the field. The PA announcer’s booming voice rose above the roar, welcoming “your Granger High School . . . Cowboys!”
Taking the last part of Cowboys and making it sound as if he was running all the way down the field with it.
Jake knew, from growing up in this town, from being related to the two greatest quarterbacks in Granger history, that this was the time of the year when the town was most alive. All the waiting for the opener, the waiting for football to be back on this field, was over.
So was all the wondering, at Stone’s and Amy’s and the filling stations and coffee shops and street corners, all the talk on the one radio station Granger had, about what this year’s team would be like, how the ’Boys were gonna do this time. Whether they had a chance to get ’er done the way last year’s team had.
They would start finding out today how the ’Boys would do without Wyatt Cullen standing back there in the pocket flinging the ball around, with Tim Mathers being the one throwing it to Calvin, with Nate anchorin
g the offensive line. All that, in what people had been speculating might be the great Coach John McCoy’s final season.
Liza George, the girl with the prettiest voice in the church choir, sang the national anthem. Then the mayor officially presented Coach McCoy with the league championship trophy that would go in the case in the front hall of the school with all the others John McCoy had won.
Granger won the coin toss, elected to receive, and the ball was kicked off. It was football season again in Granger, the one played on the field from September through November, not the one talked about the rest of the year, as if the main business in town wasn’t ranching or horses or cows, it was high school football.
Casey Lindell took his place next to Coach McCoy, and Jake was next to Coach Jessup, the coaches wanting both their quarterbacks right there, hearing what they were saying, understanding why they were sending in this play or that, even why they’d be making their substitutions.
So that was where Jake was standing when he saw Tim Mathers scramble to his right on the Cowboys’ fourth play from scrimmage, saw him try to plant and make a cut when some field opened up past the linebacker right in front of him, saw Tim’s cleats catch in the grass, saw the terrible angle of his left leg.
Saw him go down without being touched, grabbing his left knee with his free hand, and start screaming in pain in the sudden quiet of Cullen Field.
09
JAKE DIDN’T KNOW THEN THAT TIM’S ACL HAD EXPLODED ON him, nobody did. But he did know was that it was always real bad in sports when it wasn’t a hit that put you down like that, put you in that kind of pain.
Dr. Mallozzi wasn’t out there too long before he signaled for a stretcher. But Jake could see Tim shaking his head, saw Tim reach up to the teammates in a half circle around him for a little help, saw Nate pull Tim up all by himself. Then Tim put one arm around Nate’s shoulders and his other around Dana Padgett, who played right guard next to Nate.