The Big Game

by Tim Green

  When Ms. Rait turned back to face her class, excitement glowed in her eyes. “And while we will learn the elements of stories and writing and work to shore up your mechanics—spelling, punctuation, grammar—my focus will be for you to read, read, read, and read some more. It should be fun. It should be exciting. It should be life changing.”

  She looked around like a woman waking from a dream.

  Danny forgot about his troubles and actually felt bad for her because she was pretty and nice and she had that crutch thing going.

  From the middle of the classroom, Pete Goff raised his hand. Pete had also made the team as a seventh grader, not as a starter like Cupcake and Danny, though. He was a second-string offensive tackle. While he didn’t have Cupcake’s size, Pete was also a farm kid and had all the toughness and strength that went with that.

  “Yes, Mr. . . . Goff, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Ma’am, do you like football?”

  A small wave of tittering rolled through the classroom.

  “Why would you ask me that, Mr. Goff?”

  Pete scratched at the red stubble on his scalp. “Well, you said fun and exciting and life changing. Sounds like you’re talkin’ football. These parts that’s how it goes anyways.”

  Ms. Rait was obviously disappointed that Pete wasn’t drinking her Kool-Aid, but she forced a smile. “I understand the attraction to football, and all sports, but this is something vastly more important. Reading is the cornerstone of education, and education is how we better ourselves as individuals and a society.”

  She looked around at them to show she was serious, and the bell rang.

  Ms. Rait raised her voice above the scramble. “There are copies of Bud, Not Buddy on the desk by the door! Take one and read chapter one for tomorrow! There may be a quiz!”

  As the groans subsided, Ms. Rait spoke in a lower but clear voice. “Mr. Owens, I need to see you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Janey turned toward him and bit her lip. Her eyes filled with panic, maybe for him, but maybe for her too. Janey was always at the top of their class, and trouble was something she avoided like it was a raccoon with rabies. He knew she didn’t like when he looked at her answers, but they both knew English killed him and without her he’d likely not have made it past third grade. To calm her, Danny held his chin high and gave his head a slight shake to signal that he’d never take her down too.

  When Janey turned and disappeared into the hall, Danny turned to face the music.

  “Close that door,” his teacher said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Danny did as told and approached the desk where she now sat with one arm still connected to the crutch. He noticed now a little fuzzy purple koala bear clipped to the aluminum support and wondered where it came from.

  “I’m sorry we have to start out this way, but cheating is a very serious thing with me.” Her eyes flashed with anger.

  “I—”

  She held up a hand. “Lying is even worse, so think about what you want to say to me before you say it.”

  Danny smiled nervously and forced a laugh. “Number fifty was just so hard, and I saw Janey’s paper and I did look, but I didn’t even use her answer. I swear. You can check.”

  Danny pointed to the stack of tests.

  Ms. Rait stretched her lips with doubt. Then she breathed in through her nose before letting it out in a huff. She reached for the tests, rifled through the pile, and removed his and Janey’s. She put them down and flipped to the last page.

  Danny bit back a smile, well pleased with his own cleverness, until she frowned and began working backwards to compare the other answers.

  “These are all the same,” she said without looking up. “The rest of them.”

  “Really?” Danny craned his neck, wearing a mask of incredible surprise.

  She snapped the papers down and glared up at him. “Very clever. You saw me see you and you changed it.”

  “No, ma’am.” Danny swapped his smiling face for a look of horror. “Ms. Rait, why don’t you like me? Is this just cuz I was late? My math teacher kept me and that class is on the other side of the school.”

  She studied him and crimped her lips. “You’re very charming, Danny, with your ‘yes, ma’am,’ ‘no, ma’am,’ but I see through charm.”

  She raised her crutch just off the floor. “Outward appearances don’t mean as much to me. I’m interested about the inside.”

  “Ma’am . . .” Danny sighed. “I’s just being polite.”

  “I was just being polite,” she said, correcting him.

  “Was.”

  Someone for her next class knocked gently on the door and peered through the window.

  “Well, it’s your word against mine. I can’t prove you cheated.” She smiled at him in a way that suggested she’d won a contest. “But I’ve got a better idea. I’ll have you retake the test after school.

  “See you then, Danny.”

  After health class, Danny found Cupcake and Janey in the cafeteria. Cupcake had his four sandwiches laid out in the order he planned to eat them. Today, he was starting with ham and ending with a PB&J. Janey munched on a carrot stick.

  Cupcake took a huge bite and spoke through his food. “Well, beef or barley?”

  Cupcake liked to break everything down into beef—something valuable and delicious—or barley—something mushy and inedible unless you were a cow.

  “Barley.” Danny slumped down in the chair next to Janey and removed a leftover chicken leg from his paper sack. “She’s making me take the test again, after school.”

  “Hm.” Cupcake raised his eyebrows. “I thought she was pretty beefy.”

  “She’s not beefy.” Janey scowled at him. “She’s pretty.”

  “That’s what I said.” Cupcake gave her an annoyed look. “Beef is good. She looks good—pretty to you, beefy to me.” Janey shook her head, then looked at Danny. “Ms. Rait didn’t think I was in on it, did she?”

  “If she did, she didn’t say.” Danny saw that wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear, so he added, “She would have said if she did. I told her I looked at your paper but put down my own answer.”

  “But she’ll just check.”

  “Yeah. She did, and she saw I did have a different answer, so she can’t prove anything.” Danny gave her a knowing look.

  She high-fived him. “Genius.”

  “Except now she wants me to take the test on my own after school.” Danny lowered his head and gently bumped it against the lunch table. “I’m dead.”

  Cupcake said, “Bro, you’re a C student. What’s the worry?”

  “I pray for Cs in English,” Danny said.

  Cupcake nodded. “Okay, but you score Bs in math. You can handle it. My brother always says, ‘C is for degree.’ Get it? You get Cs, you graduate. You’re gonna be a five-star recruit. You don’t have to get all As like Miss Fancy Pants here.”

  “D is for degree,” Janey said rolling her eyes. “And why do straight As make me fancy?”

  “Not the letter ‘C,’” Cupcake said impatiently, filling his mouth again. “The grade. So much for straight As being a smart marker.”

  “Forget it.” Janey gave her carrot a final crunch and sighed. “Danny, I wish you hadn’t poked me.”

  He shrugged. “I panicked. I don’t want her thinking I’m stupid.”

  Janey frowned. “What about Coach Kinen? Can’t he help you get out of it? I mean, you didn’t have all the same answers as me—she told you herself she couldn’t prove it—and isn’t that what football coaches do?”

  “I heard Coach Oglethorpe was the one who kept those three varsity linemen out of jail last year after they spray-painted all those cars in East Mormont,” Cupcake said.

  “I’m not going to jail.” Danny waved his hand like he was swatting away trouble. “We’re talking about an English test.”

  “Yeah, but we’re also talking about the magical powers of football coaches in Texas, right?” A bit of cr
ust escaped Cupcake’s jaws.

  “Shouldn’t you try?” Janey asked. “They all know you’ve had a rough summer. Maybe she’ll cut you a break if Coach Kinen asks her to.”

  “Naw.” Danny poked his oatmeal cookie, leaving a dimple. “I’ll save it for when I really need it. You’re right. It’s a pretest. So I flop. What can she do to me, right?”

  Cupcake’s lower lip slipped under his teeth and his eyebrows jumped. “With teachers, bro? That is one question you never want to ask, cuz they can always do something. Trust me on that.”

  At three o’clock, Danny pushed through the hallways filled with students running to catch buses home. He walked into Ms. Rait’s classroom with his head high. He was ready to take whatever medicine she dished out. He’d flop on this test, choke it down, and move on.

  She was reading a book, and he wondered if that was for real or if she was just doing it for his benefit.

  “Ah, Mr. Owens.” She thumped the book shut and set it down before getting up and pointing to the desk closest to hers. “Sit right down.”

  Danny sat and accepted the test she handed him. He counted each thump her crutch made against the floor as she returned to her seat, eight in all.

  “Okay,” she said, taking out her phone and bringing up a screen he assumed was a timer. “Ready? Go.”

  Danny bent his head over the test, all business, but it was playacting for him. He put on the face of a general studying his battlefield map. He knew how to get by. You “yes, ma’amed” and “no, ma’amed” till you were blue in the face. You turned on that toothy smile. You spoke softly and asked for a little extra help and with it came that little extra consideration so that an F might become a D or even a C and you’d get by.

  Janey helped with the homework, and she’d never hide her test paper from his sight like some kids did.

  Seeing that Ms. Rait had her nose back in her book, Danny’s eyes drifted toward the tall narrow glass of the old window. The hardware had been painted over and the paint was dusty and cracked. A thick beam of sunlight muscled its way into the classroom. Dust danced in a wild swirl. Danny heard the shouts of kids somewhere outside, sounds of freedom.

  He sighed and looked at the test and began to circle random answers, forcing himself to go slow in case she snuck a peek at him. It took forever, but finally she called out, “Time.”

  Danny made a show of quickly circling the last answer, and to save her the effort, he popped up from his chair and delivered the test to her desk. Smiling—but not too much—he said, “Okay, ma’am. See you tomorrow.”

  “Mr. Owens, what about me don’t you understand?”

  “Ma’am?”

  She pointed toward the desk he’d just left. “I say what I mean and I mean what I say. Detention. You need to sit for twenty more minutes before you’re off to football. You play football, correct?”

  Danny sat back down and, just as he’d been doing since kindergarten, politely folded his hands, because he needed to get on this teacher’s good side. “Yes, ma’am. I’m the halfback.”

  “Ah, half of a fullback but two times a quarterback.”

  Danny laughed just the right amount at her joke. “Well, a halfback runs the ball downfield about half of all the plays. And I try to run it into the end zone each and every time.”

  “I can’t say I knew that,” she said thoughtfully, “but I have the feeling I’m going to learn around here.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Football is king in Texas. Everybody goes to the games. Even the junior high ones.” Danny paused, then said, “Ma’am? What made you come to Crooked Creek?”

  “A job,” she said, and he could feel her softening toward him. “Oh, I have an aunt in Jericho, but we’re not all that close. Also, I grew up in Chicago and I always told myself I’d live in a small town.”

  “Small towns are like family, you know?” This was going better than expected. “Everyone kinda watching out for each other.”

  “Like sharing test answers?” she said, ruining his smile. “Let’s see how you did on your own, shall we?”

  He watched her eyes as she began to grade his test. He watched the color deepen in her face and her mouth become a slit so tight it might have been a paper cut.

  She looked up. “Is this some kind of a joke, Mr. Owens?”

  “No, ma’am.” He studied his hands.

  “Stop with the ‘ma’am.’ I’m not your ma’am. I want to know what this is about.” She picked his test up off her desk like it was someone’s used Kleenex. “You scored a twenty-eight.”

  He glanced up, then put his head back down. “I’m not very good at English, M-Ms. Rait.”

  “Did you do this intentionally?” She waved the test.

  “Last year, Mrs. Morgan—my sixth-grade English teacher—she’d let me do corrections on my tests and then take the average of the two. That way I could really learn it all, and pass, too.” Danny looked up, hopeful that they could come to a similar arrangement.

  “And you’d take these tests home to redo them?” Ms. Rait asked.

  “Yes,” he said, excited that she was getting this.

  “And someone would help you? Like tutor you, a kind of coach? Maybe that girl, Janey?”

  “She’s my best friend and the smartest person in the world, so, yeah, she works with me some.” He studied his teacher’s eyes, but he couldn’t read them.

  She watched him and he knew she was turning things over in her mind. Finally, she got up and thumped over to the board. She steadied herself and, after a great deal of squeaking, produced a word.

  She spun her head around at him. “What is this word?”

  Danny’s face burned. He forced a laugh. “I’m not good at this, Ms. Rait. I get nervous. I don’t know why.”

  She screeched out another word with her marker, this time shorter, just four letters. Danny’s mouth opened and closed like a fish in the bottom of a boat. She wrote two letters.

  “Toe!” he said.

  She frowned and pointed at the letters on the whiteboard with her marker, leaving little smudges beside them. “T-O. It spells ‘to,’ Danny. Very close. Do you have any idea what this one is?”

  She made a smudge beneath the letters H-O-M-E.

  He tried to decipher it, but he knew he’d be wrong. He crossed his arms to hold himself in and said nothing.

  “Danny?” Ms. Rait spoke in a voice soft as a cloud. “Danny, you can’t read, can you?”

  Danny burst out of his seat and made for the door. No way was she stopping him.

  “I can read!” He spit his words before slamming the door behind him and heading for football practice.

  The locker room was in mayhem. Hoots, hollers, and laughter zinged back and forth through the air, ricocheting off the metal lockers like bullets. It was the perfect place to get lost in. Danny opened his locker and angrily dug into the stuffing of equipment and clothes.

  He layered on the pads and wiggled into his jersey. When his head popped through, there was Cupcake.

  “How was it, bro? Detention?”

  Danny pushed past him and mumbled, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  His cleats clapped the floor. He slammed open the metal exit door, escaping into the afternoon sun. Sweat jumped from his skin. He breathed in the heat and kept going. The green grass of the practice field was an oasis—not a shady place to escape the heat, but to escape the crazy burning in his brain. It was like his entire life was coming unwound, but out there, between the lines, he’d be free from all that.

  He went right to the single blocking sled, got in a stance, and fired out, striking it with all his might and launching it over the hot grass. Cupcake came and stood and watched until it became clear that Danny wasn’t talking, and he walked away.

  Danny was still working the sled when Coach Kinen blew the whistle.

  The team stretched and warmed up, doing agility drills before breaking down into smaller groups based on positions. Coach Kinen took the skill positions—quarterbacks,
running backs, and wide receivers. Coach Willard, a big, crusty old lineman himself, took the linemen.

  Danny had no issues—in fact, Coach Kinen praised him several times for his intensity—until the last part of practice. Coach called a forty-eight toss sweep. Jace took the snap, turned, and tossed the ball on an easy curve out into the space in front of Danny. Danny caught the ball and took off.

  The play-side wide receiver, Duval Carmody, blocked his defender in, giving Danny the corner and a free run up the sideline. From the inside of the defense, the middle linebacker was heading his way, unblocked. All Danny had to do was outrun him, but he didn’t.

  Danny planted a foot in the ground and cut back so he could meet the middle linebacker with a full head of steam. Their pads cracked. Danny plowed up through the defender, knocking him flat on his back, while the churn of Danny’s own feet kept him going forward. He ran over the linebacker, but the linebacker held on to his jersey, slowing Danny so that two lumbering linemen could get there and bring him down after a nine-yard gain.

  Danny sprang to his feet, growling and pumping a fist in the air. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Cupcake arrived at the scene and roared. “Pancake run! Yes! You flattened him.”

  They bumped chests and slapped high fives all the way back to the huddle.

  Coach Kinen stood with his eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses beneath the bill of his cap. “Danny? What the heck was that?”

  Danny laughed. “I pancaked him, Coach.”

  Coach Kinen wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even smiling. “You had the outside. Carmody had the cornerback pinned. That was a touchdown that you just turned into a nine-yard run.”

  Danny scowled and sunk his teeth into the rubber mouth guard that slurred his speech.

  “Let’s go!” Coach Kinen shouted at his offense. “Get in the huddle!”

  The next play, Danny was supposed to go in motion and run a corner route, but he ran a post and laid out the free safety. After that, he missed his blocking assignment on a pass play, allowing the inside linebacker a free shot at Jace, even though he did punish the outside linebacker with a smashing block.