QB 1

by Mike Lupica

  After they’d warmed up for about five minutes, soft tossing, Wyatt said, “You changed your motion.”

  “Didn’t think you’d notice.”

  “You kiddin’? Been watching you since you could barely see over the center in peewee ball.”

  Jake explained how it had been Coach J who’d done it, and how once he tried dropping down just a little, it felt more comfortable, and now he was sticking with it because it was working for him.

  Jake said, “Dad was none too pleased when he finally saw me throwing like this in a game.”

  They moved back a little now, putting more on their throws, Jake smiling to himself, thinking that it wasn’t just his brother out here with him, it was the quarterback of the Longhorns.

  “Shocker about Dad,” Wyatt said. “What’d he say, that you’d stopped throwing like me?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Course you know that’s just code for him telling you he wants you to throw like him.”

  “Yeah.” Jake threw his brother a tight spiral, putting some snap on it.

  “Looks good to me,” Wyatt said.

  Now Wyatt threw hard, the ball stinging Jake’s hands, like Wyatt showing off his arm. An unspoken contest that had been going on for as long as Jake could remember, even being four years younger. Never just a game of catch, not with him.

  More like a game of catch-up.

  Jake said, “You better move back. I can see you’re babying that college arm of yours, but I feel like I got my good heater going today.”

  “Babying?” Wyatt said, and threw one now like he was throwing into double coverage, like he wanted to knock his kid brother down if he could.

  “Oh,” Jake said, “so it’s gonna be like that?”

  Wyatt grinned. “Hasn’t it always, little brother?”

  Jake knowing that Wyatt was always going to call him that, even if Jake ended up being bigger than Big Ben Roethlisberger.

  They started running pass patterns for each other after a while, both of them starting to air the ball out big-time, Jake realizing—maybe for the first time in his life—that he had as much arm as his older brother did.

  When they finally took a break, both of them hitting the water bottles they’d brought out here with them, Wyatt said, “I forgot how much losing sucks.”

  “Dad’s right,” Jake said. “One game.”

  “You start to think that college is gonna go the way high school did, that you’re just gonna crush it,” Wyatt said. “Till you go and get crushed.”

  “Oklahoma better look out,” Jake said, “goin’ up against a highly motivated Cullen boy.”

  They both lay back in the grass, staring at the sky, sun on their faces, neither one of them saying anything until Wyatt broke the silence. “Daddy tries to change your throwing back, call me. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Aw, man, you know his deal. He’s been stuck my whole life on me doing it like you.”

  “Not as stuck as he is on me being him,” Wyatt said. “I know you think it’s been hard being you, having to follow me.”

  “Just part of it,” Jake said.

  “You ought to try being me sometimes, having to live out Dad’s dream about quarterbacking the by-God Texas Longhorns.”

  They’d never really had conversations like this, maybe because of the difference in their ages, brother-to-brother or heart-to-heart or whatever you wanted to call them. Wyatt wasn’t that kind of talker, never had been, letting you in on his feelings, what he was thinking. As popular as he’d always been, even becoming the kind of star he’d become at Granger High, as many friends as he always had in the pack around him, Wyatt had always hung back. Like he was always waiting for the world to make the first move.

  Holding back so much of himself, even from his own family. As Libby Cullen liked to say to Jake, “The difference between you and your brother is that you actually tell me things.”

  Lying in the grass next to Wyatt, neither one of them in much of a hurry to get back up and start throwing again, Jake said, “You’re telling me you’re the one feeling the pressure in this family? Heck, look at me right now. I’m feeling more pressure than I ever did in my life, just trying to hold on to my part of the job.”

  Wyatt really laughed now. “Are you serious? I think if I’d told Dad that I wanted to be a receiver or a running back he would’ve told me to go find another family in Granger, go live with them, have a nice life.”

  “Did you? Want to play another position?”

  “Don’t be stupid, I always wanted to be a quarterback, even if I didn’t have a choice. By the time I was ten I knew I was better than anybody else in town. I just didn’t realize until later, when I got to high school, that I was always going to have to be better than my best.”

  Jake turned, grinned. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “I had to be better than Dad had been,” Wyatt said. “Heck, I’m the quarterback of the ’Horns as a freshman, and I already know that’s just the start of it.”

  “You’ve only played college football for one month, only lost one game,” Jake said.

  “Big Troy’s already wondering—out loud of course, only way he knows—if I should come out after my junior year. Already got his eyes on the pros.”

  No wonder Dad can’t see me, Jake thought. Not only is he watching Wyatt this close, he’s already trying to see down the road with him.

  “By the time you’re a junior, they’ll be talking about you for the Heisman,” Jake said, “if you haven’t won one of those already.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Wyatt said. “Listen, I know Dad means well. It’s just he feels like he got cheated, all those hits to the head. I just wonder if he ever sees that he doesn’t want all this for me as much as he wants it for himself.”

  He wasn’t talking to Jake like Jake was just this annoying kid brother now, the kid brother who’d always been looking for attention as much from Wyatt as he had from his dad.

  He was talking to Jake, for the first time Jake could ever remember, like they were equals.

  “Dad loves you more than anything,” Jake said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Wyatt rolled over now, put his elbow in the grass, propped his head in his hand. “You havin’ fun? Even with all that terrible pressure you were just crying about?”

  Jake couldn’t help it. He grinned. “Mad fun.”

  “You know why? Because this wasn’t expected of you. Wasn’t supposed to happen for you, at least not this soon, even if you end up sharing the job the rest of the way. Coach McCoy told me one time, one of his chatty moods, ‘There ain’t no timetable for sports that anybody can see.’ Said that sports has this big clock only it can see. And somehow this season, all the stuff happened on the team, it just decided it was your time.”

  “Never thought of it like that,” Jake said.

  Wyatt said, “Maybe even Sarah will give you a second look one of these days.”

  “Whoa, who told you about Sarah?” Jake said. “Not that there’s anything to tell.”

  “Mom.”

  “Nothing going on there,” Jake said. “Less than nothing.”

  “Make your move, little brother.”

  “Probably all she sees,” Jake said. “Your little brother.”

  Wyatt jumped up suddenly, like changing the subject, ball in his right hand. “Okay, you’ve been showing off your fancy new motion; let’s see who can chuck it the farthest.” Wyatt tossed the ball to Jake, saying, “You first.”

  “Running start?”

  “Whatever edge you think you need, high school boy.”

  Jake windmilled his arm for show, gave himself five yards to gain some momentum, threw the ball with everything he had in the direction of an old spruce that was at least sixty yards away. Gave Wyatt a stare, not saying a word, ran and got t
he ball, brought it back, tossed it to his older brother.

  Flexed his arm, like he was showing Wyatt his muscle.

  “Like it,” Wyatt said. “Chirping on me without saying a word. That was a good throw, to that old tree,” he said. “Excellent.”

  Then took a few running steps himself, let the ball go.

  Flew it past the old spruce by ten yards, at least.

  Turned to Jake, smiling, and said, “See what proper mechanics will do for you?”

  Jake put a shoulder down, put an easy tackle on him, both of them rolling around in the grass the way they always had, laughing, trying to pin each other.

  When they stopped, they got up, headed back to the house. As they passed the barn, Jake said to Wyatt, “I know you think it’s hard, Dad fixed on every little thing you do. But sometimes I feel like he’s not seeing me at all.”

  Opening up to his brother now the way his brother had opened up to him.

  “I feel you,” Wyatt said. “Like I joke with dad: Neither one of us pulled ol’ Archie Manning in the dad draft.”

  Jake said, “From what I’ve read, on Eli especially, doesn’t seem like he ever felt like he got overlooked by his dad.”

  “You were always the smart one with all the A’s. Not like me. I think you might’ve surprised our daddy the way you surprised yourself a little bit this season. Comin’ on as quick as you did. Almost like he wasn’t ready for you.”

  “Think he ever will be?” Jake said.

  “Yeah, I do,” Wyatt said to Jake. “Just keep on keepin’ on, little brother. You’ll make him see eventually.” Gave Jake a little shove and said, “Whether he’s ready for you or not.”

  Jake wasn’t sure if he was right about that. But they’d done enough talking for one day.

  “Race you,” Jake said now, and they both took off for the house, Jake starting to ease up so Wyatt could pass him, then laughing as he pulled away at the end.

  22

  JAKE KEPT LOOKING FOR SIGNS THAT THINGS HAD CHANGED between him and Sarah, just because of the way she’d run out to the parking lot that night at Stone’s. But, man, if there were signs, he was missing them; more than ever he wished that he could read girls the way he could read defenses.

  She was nice enough to him when they’d see each other at school, and he didn’t feel nearly as tongue-tied with her as he had at the start of the year. There were even a couple of times when he and Nate and Bear sat with Sarah and her friends at lunch.

  The only good news? She wasn’t with Casey anymore that Jake could see, in the cafeteria or anyplace else. Maybe Jake had read that wrong, too; maybe they’d never been hanging out at all, maybe Casey just wanted it to look that way.

  But one thing hadn’t changed, far as Jake could tell, and never would: Sarah was a sophomore and Jake was a freshman, and even if he was a freshman playing quarterback for the Granger Cowboys, that was never going to change, the way it was never going to change that sophomore girls might be nice to a freshman every so often, the way Sarah was at Stone’s, but that’s as far as it was ever going to go.

  Jake kept thinking of it in terms of sports: Her being one year older took him out of her league.

  So he concentrated on the only league he could do anything about, the Lone Star League, Division 1AA, Texas high school football. As the Cowboys got ready to play Morgan Creek on Friday night at Cullen Field, they were nearly halfway through their regular season.

  They’d beaten Bancroft the previous Friday night on the road, an easy win for them. The Cowboys had been up 28–3 by halftime. Casey had been the better quarterback on this night, throwing two touchdown passes while Jake had none—even though Casey had also thrown an interception on a pass he never should’ve attempted. Jake, meanwhile, had struggled most of the night, forcing a couple of throws, one of which should have been picked at the goal line.

  Jake ended up sitting most of the second half, watching Casey run the team, wondering if they’d go back to having votes on the radio this week, which quarterback the fans of Granger liked best.

  Wondering if he’d already had the best chance he was going to get to establish himself as the starter, and if maybe Casey had passed him now.

  But even with all that, Jake couldn’t help but see where this team was, how far it had come. If they somehow beat Morgan Creek tonight, they’d still have just one loss for the season, still be a game out of first place, no matter which of his quarterbacks Coach John McCoy liked best this week.

  “Turns out what was supposed to be our rebuildin’ year might just involve us buildin’ ourselves another title,” Coach Jessup was saying.

  “I need to play better,” Jake said, “or I’ll end up watching us do it.”

  “You were gonna throw in a stinker, that’s inevitable for even the great ones,” Coach J said. “Don’t start doubting yourself now.”

  “You act as if I ever stopped doubting myself,” Jake said.

  “You got more belief in yourself than you let on,” Coach J said. “I saw that in you from the start. So did Coach McCoy; it’s why he brought you along fast as he did.”

  “I know why you got behind me,” Jake said. “But why did he?”

  “Because your old coach is the one who taught me that a quarterback’s brain really is as great a weapon as his arm,” Coach Jessup said. “That some have gotten by on talent alone, but not many he ever coached. He saw that kind of brain in you, son, and heart to go with it.”

  “I didn’t know he was watching me that close.”

  Coach J said, “Now that’s a dumb comment from somebody with the kind of brain we’re talking about. Because the thing you got to be able to see about John McCoy is that he sees everything. And what he saw from the git-go with you was a guy could be a game manager for him, whether he was a freshman or not.”

  “Good quarterbacks hate being called game managers,” Jake said.

  “Well,” Coach J said, “football coaches just flat love ’em to death.”

  “Usually means you don’t have the arm,” Jake said.

  “Or maybe it means that you’ve figured out that there’s ten other guys out there with you, that not everybody in the world loves your arm as much as you do.”

  “Now we’re talking about the other quarterback on the team,” Jake said.

  “No,” Coach said. “We’re just making an observation.”

  They were in Coach J’s cramped office, two hours before the game, looking at more film on the Morgan Creek Lions.

  Jake and Coach J were spending more and more time in this office, usually after practice when everybody else was gone, Jake wanting to know as much as he could about how the Cowboys’ offense needed to attack whatever defense they were going up against. This was Texas high school football, after all, so teams scouted one another the way the real Cowboys scouted the Giants and Eagles and Redskins.

  Right now they were looking at blitzes. The Lions loved to blitz, Jake constantly asking Coach J to freeze the picture on the old-fashioned pull-down screen he had. They could have done it on a laptop, but Jake just thought he saw things better like this.

  Coach J finally said to him, “Can see why you’re an A student. You must study this hard in school, too.”

  “I read up on Peyton and Eli,” Jake said. “Tom Brady, too. And Aaron Rodgers. Sounds to me like they all spend more time in the film room than they do on the field.”

  “Smart quarterbacks get smarter as they go.”

  On the pull-down screen, the Lions were coming with an all-out blitz, from the Shelby quarterback’s blind side.

  “Run that again, please?” Jake said. “You see how the middle linebacker moves a step to his right before they come all-out from my left? I got to give Spence and David a heads-up on that, so they can pick it up, too.”

  “Yes, coach,” Coach J said.

  They went ba
ck to studying the Morgan Creek blitz packages in the small dark room that was the real beginning of all the noise, the bright lights, that were waiting for them later at Cullen Field.

  Jake couldn’t wait. As much as he’d thought he loved football coming into this season, turned out he loved it even more. Even when he messed up. Even when Casey was better.

  Even in here.

  “Run that again,” he said to Coach Jessup.

  Jake and Bear were on the field stretching before the Morgan Creek game, Bear pointing down to where the Morgan Creek Lions were stretching at the other end of the field, having just shown up in a huge bus that Bear thought might be bigger than his house.

  “They’re big,” Bear said.

  “Been seeing that on film,” Jake said.

  “And they’re good,” Bear said. “They were about to beat Redding until one of their guys dropped a punt in the last two minutes.”

  “They are good,” Jake said. “But I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re better.”

  Casey got the start tonight, played all of the first quarter and then into the second, the longest Jake had sat since the first game of the season. But then Casey, always in love with his arm, stared at Calvin all the way throughout the second series of the second quarter, gunslinging a throw even though a linebacker and safety had read his eyes and drifted over to blanket Calvin. The ball was intercepted and returned almost twenty yards, setting up a Morgan Creek field goal that gave them a 10–0 lead.

  Coach McCoy told Jake he’d be going in when the Cowboys got the ball back.

  When he got out there, he wanted to make something good happen right away, wipe away the memory of the way he’d played last weekend, the way he’d opened the door back up for Casey.

  But on his fourth play, he didn’t pick up one of the blitzes he’d been studying with Coach J, flat missed it and got hit just as he threw. He was on his back when the ball was intercepted, Calvin having to save a touchdown by catching one of the Morgan Creek corners from behind.