by Tim Green
“I’ve been hit in the head too many times,” he said, running a hand through his long hair as he got up. “I knew where you meant when you said the dirt road off Route 141 where the old-timer sells peanuts, so I figured I’d meet you.”
Seth took the groceries from her. She thanked him and said to just set them on the kitchen table.
Troy’s mom looked at the ball in his hands and he set it down on the coffee table.
“I gave it back to him,” Seth said, coming back into the living room.
“Please,” his mom said, “he needs to learn you can’t do things like that.”
“I traded him,” Seth said. “Do you know what he can do?”
Troy’s mom looked at the TV, then at Troy. She puckered her lips and slowly nodded.
“He’s like the weatherman,” she said. “Not always right.”
“He was right for me,” Seth said. “He was right about T.O., and if Bryan Scott listened to him we’d have beat Dallas.”
“He’s a sixth grader,” his mom said.
“I know you just started with the team,” Seth said. “But I gotta tell you, I’ve only got a couple years left in this game and I want a ring, a Super Bowl championship ring. You gotta have a great team, but it’s more than that. You need an edge, an angle, something special.
“He could be our edge. It’s not like black magic or something. Every team uses computers to analyze tendencies and formations. He’s just like a supercomputer or something.”
Troy’s mom winced.
“A computer?” she said.
“A genius,” Seth said. “Not like a genius genius. A football genius. Normal in every other way—average.”
“I threw a touchdown pass the other night thirty-eight yards in the air,” Troy said, proud of his throwing arm and not liking the sound of “average.”
Seth looked from Troy back to his mom and said, “He doesn’t even know how—he just does it, like one of those people who can look at a spilled box of toothpicks and tell you how many there are in two seconds. They just count them. They don’t even know how.”
“Well,” his mom said, “it’s all nice.”
“Tessa,” Seth said, stepping toward her, “I know you don’t know me that well, but if you ask people they’ll tell you I’m a pretty good guy.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she said.
“She saw when you went to that homeless shelter on TV,” Troy said, nodding his head and noticing that for some reason his mom’s face went redder still.
“I’ve got to show the coaches,” Seth said. “I mean, he could help the team.”
“Oh no,” his mom said. “I just got my job back. He can’t have anything to do with the team. He can’t go near that place. Cecilia Fetters sees him and it doesn’t matter how nice Mr. Langan is. She made that clear.”
“Tessa,” Seth said, opening his arms, “he’ll be with me. I’ve been here for twelve years. I’m like Mr. Falcon. When the time comes, they’ll probably retire my jersey. He’ll be fine. Please.”
“Please, Mom,” Troy said, gripping the cushion underneath him.
“I need this job,” she said to Seth, throwing her hands up in the air. “I just can’t take a chance. I’m sorry.”
“You can’t take a chance!” Troy shouted, jumping up. “A chance on me!”
“I believe you’re still grounded, mister,” his mom said, pointing her finger in the direction of his room.
Troy clenched his hands and said, “You want me to own up? You own up. This is something I can do. Maybe it’s the one thing he gave me, and you want to stop it!”
“You’re twelve years old,” his mom said, pressing her lips tight.
“Seth doesn’t care,” Troy said, pointing at the player. “He says I can do it.”
He saw his mother’s expression soften, her eyes tugging down at their outside corners.
“It could be an incredible thing,” Seth said in a quiet voice. “I’m not trying to make trouble.”
His mom put her hands on her hips. She took a deep breath and let it out through her nose.
“Okay,” she said, turning to Seth and jabbing her finger in the air, “but you have to tell them I had nothing to do with this.”
“Come on, Troy,” Seth said, stepping past Troy’s mom and swinging open the door, “before she changes her mind.”
They almost bowled Tate over as she came up the steps with her own football in hand.
“Hi, Troy,” she said stiffly, her wide eyes glued to Seth Halloway. “Do. You. Want. To. Play. Some. Football?”
“Hey,” Seth said, “a girl. Cool.”
Tate grinned at him and held out the ball and a Sharpie pen. Seth looked at Troy and half his mouth curled up into a smile.
“You play with a Sharpie?” Seth asked, whipping off his signature.
“She’s the kicker on my team,” Troy said.
Tate puffed out her chest and said, “Eighty percent on extra points. Fifty-four on field goals, with a twenty-six yarder last season.”
“Twenty-six?” Seth said, letting out a low whistle and handing her back the ball. “We should sign you.”
Troy winked at Tate and climbed up into the shiny H2. Tate stood with his mom on the porch and waved to him. He waved back, and off they went down the dusty red clay drive.
At the team complex, Seth waved to the guard and they pulled into the players’ empty parking lot. Seth led him through the locker room. Troy drank in the smell of leather gloves and shoes and the plastic smell from shoulder pads and helmets and the nylon of practice jerseys. It was a clean, sharp smell, nothing like the sweaty smell in the gym lockers at school. Over each locker was a nameplate. Lock–8. Brooking–56. Kerney–97. Crumpler–83.
Small stools stood in front of the lockers; each locker was the size of Troy’s clothes closet at home. On the locker shelves were bottles of pills, ointments, and cologne. Uniforms hung limp from hooks and hangers over piles of turf shoes. Each player must have had a dozen pairs.
Troy touched his face, trying to bring back the feeling.
“Here, look,” Seth said, stopping at his own locker and taking out a three-ring binder. He opened it and pointed to a sheet of paper covered with numbers. “It’s a spreadsheet. You read it like a graph. All the different formations across the top and then the different field positions down the side. You see where they intersect and it gives you the percentage of the time they pass in that situation.”
“Why are some of the numbers circled?” Troy asked, pointing at one of the numbers circled in red ink.
“I circle everything over seventy-five percent and everything under twenty-five percent. That way I know I’ve a three-in-four chance of being right. If I think it’s a pass, I play back a little. If it’s a run, I move up to the line.”
“What happens when it’s the one time in four you’re wrong?” Troy asked.
“Trouble,” Seth said. “But you play the odds when they’re that good.”
“But you have to memorize all these situations,” Troy said.
“I know,” Seth said. “Look at this.”
He flipped the pages of the notebook, showing Troy dozens of charts and graphs with hundreds of red circles.
“Some chart run or pass,” Seth said, turning the pages. “Some are for which way they run, right or left or up the middle. Some show when they throw deep or short, when they like to run screen passes, or fake the pass and run a draw, or make it look like they’re going one way and run it back the other on a reverse.”
“It’s a lot,” Troy said.
“That’s why what you can do is incredible,” Seth said, snapping the book shut and replacing it in his locker. “Come on.”
Troy followed Seth out into a hall, past the weight room, and up a set of stairs. He was still thinking about all those numbers, wondering how much of it Seth could really remember, when they walked into a dark office. The man behind the desk was watching a big screen on the wall, clicking the action in a f
ootball game back and forth in slow motion.
“Coach,” Seth said, “you gotta see this.”
When the lights went on, Troy was staring into the dark, close-set eyes of Coach Krock.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KROCK HEAVED HIMSELF AROUND in his chair to face them, lifting the plastic leg with both hands and letting it clump down on the floor. On his head was the small white cowboy hat turned up at the sides. He tilted it back up off his forehead.
The eyes narrowed, and in that thick southern drawl, Krock said, “What in hellfire is this kid doin’ here?”
Troy eased partway behind Seth Halloway’s broad back and looked out from behind him at the angry-faced coach. The shelf behind the desk was lined with pictures, trophies, and footballs, all apparently belonging to Krock. Troy studied a younger-looking Krock in an Arkansas Razorbacks uniform and another wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform. The coach’s hair had always been long, but thicker, and dirty blond compared to the thin faded brown that now hung limp from under the brim of his hat. As far back as college, though, Krock’s face was lined with hatred.
Troy looked at the plastic ankle and the lifeless sneaker peeking out from under the desk and wondered what had happened between Krock’s playing days and now.
“He’s okay, Coach,” Seth said, drawing the small, dark eyes away from Troy.
Seth told Krock the story, starting with the Cowboys game and the post pattern Terrell Owens ran for the winning touchdown, then ending with the plays Troy had predicted watching the Georgia Tech game on TV.
“You get a concussion, Halloway?” Krock said. “’Cause you are talking hellfire hogwash.”
“Coach, is it gonna hurt to see?” Seth said. “Run the tape. Let him watch. He can tell you the next play. I’m telling you, the kid’s a genius.”
“The kid’s a pain in my britches,” Krock said. “Trouble and noise.”
“Coach, you know I put more study time into game tape than any player you’ve got,” Seth said. “It takes me all week to figure out what this kid can do in two seconds, and I’m lucky if I’m right half the time whether it’s a run play or a pass play. He knows.”
“This game is about bein’ physical,” Krock said, glaring at Seth. “You’re like every player who gets old. You want to turn it into a little schoolboy chess match, but it’s a street fight. That’s all this game is.”
“Coach, can you imagine a street fighter who knows if his opponent is going to throw an uppercut instead of a jab?”
Krock looked sideways at Troy, scooped up his remote control, and spun back toward the screen. The lights went out, and Seth pulled the two chairs away from the front of the desk so he and Troy could sit down. Krock started running the film.
“He needs a few plays to get the rhythm,” Seth said.
“Now he needs a few plays,” Krock said, snorting. “Sure he does.”
Troy’s palms began to sweat. He tried to focus on the film, the plays being run. He tried to see it all.
“Well?” Krock said after three plays.
“Coach, let him watch,” Seth said. “He sees what’s coming from the patterns. It’s like ESP.”
“Christmas,” Krock said under his breath, shaking his head.
Troy said nothing; he took deep breaths and let them out slow. He focused his eyes on the figures moving across the screen. He saw the patterns of each play as it happened, but together, as a series, they didn’t mesh.
“That’s six,” Krock said in a bored tone. “They’re getting ready to score. What’s he think they’re gonna do? I think I know. Want me to tell you? Come on. Game’s on the line.”
Krock started snapping his fingers, his hand held out in front of Troy’s face.
“Troy?” Seth said, putting a hand on Troy’s shoulder. “What do you think?”
Troy felt his eyes welling up. His brain grew hot. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
He shook his head.
“Bootleg play coming, I guess,” Krock said with one final snap, looking back at the screen.
Seth nudged him, but Troy didn’t see it. The pattern just wasn’t there.
Krock ran two more plays and the offense scored on a bootleg. Troy felt his ears burning up.
“There!” Krock cried. “Got it. You don’t need the kid—you got a coach with ESP, Halloway.”
Seth stood, looking down at Troy in the glow of the screen. “You sure?”
Troy couldn’t look at the linebacker. He could only shake his head and look down at his feet.
Krock chuckled to himself, still clicking the film back and forth. “Go on, Seth. That kid pulled the wool on you. Give him an autograph and say good-bye. Kid is like a bad penny.”
Seth angled his head toward the door and Troy followed him out. They went down the same stairs and marched through the locker room.
“Can I use the bathroom?” Troy asked.
Seth pulled up, rolled his eyes, and pointed toward a tiled opening in the middle of the locker room. When Troy came out, Seth was tapping his foot and looking at his watch. He gave Troy a curt nod and they left the building.
As they rumbled down the dirt drive off Route 141, Seth blew a small stream of air through his puckered lips.
“I’m sorry, kid,” he said. “It’s not your fault. I was being stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” Troy said.
Seth glanced at him before turning his eyes back to the curve.
“It’s a game of pressure,” Seth said. “Having fun, goofing around in your living room, it’s a good trick. You could probably do a little stunt for the local news or something.”
“It’s not a stunt,” Troy said.
“If you can’t do it under pressure, I’m sorry, it’s a stunt,” Seth said. “It’s like playing. People are always making fun of kickers, but you try putting it through the goalposts with seventy thousand people screaming at you and the game on the line.”
“It wasn’t pressure,” Troy said.
“Yeah?” Seth said. “You should have seen your face, with him snapping at you.”
“It didn’t make sense,” Troy said.
“Well, things usually don’t.”
Seth pulled up in front of Troy’s house. Troy saw things about it he hadn’t noticed before. The tear in the screen door. The blistered, peeling paint on the trim. The spare tire his mom kept under the porch. His home was a dump. The guard shack in Seth’s neighborhood was bigger.
Troy opened the truck door and asked Seth to wait just a minute. He ran into the house, past his questioning mom, and into his room for the football. When he set it on the passenger seat of the H2, Seth leaned over, tossed it back out, and told him to keep it.
As the yellow H2 drove off in a cloud of dust, Troy let out a crazy scream.
“Take your stupid ball!”
He heaved the football at the truck, but it bounced back off the tire and he was sure that Seth Halloway never even knew.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED to his leg?” Nathan asked, looking at Troy and Tate with raised eyebrows.
The three of them were sitting on the rail, chucking stones at a line of bottles they’d set up in the weeds below. It was early Sunday morning, and even though it was late September, it felt like the middle of August. The sun had only just risen up over the tops of the pines, and the air was already hazy and hot. The tar smell of railroad ties filled their noses.
“Car accident?” Tate said, throwing and missing.
Nathan shook his head and said, “C’mon, you didn’t hear about it? My dad said it made national news.”
“Your dad’s like fifty years old,” Troy said, shattering one of the bottles. “We probably weren’t even born.”
“Well,” Nathan said, taking a throw of his own and missing, “the Steelers were playing in the NFC championship game. Krock was their middle linebacker.”
“Did middle linebackers call the defensive plays back then too?” Tate asked. “Was Kro
ck smart, like Seth Halloway?”
“Halloway’s not so smart,” Troy said, shattering another bottle. “If he was smart, he’d have stuck up for me and I’d be telling him the plays Baltimore’s gonna run at him today.”
Tate glanced at him and said, “I just meant because he calls the plays.”
“They were playing the Chiefs,” Nathan said, “and everyone knew the Steelers needed Krock if they were going to have a chance to win, because the Chiefs’ offense had Len Dawson.”
“Who?” Tate asked.
“Did they even have face masks on their helmets back then?” Troy said.
Nathan ignored him, broke a bottle of his own, and pumped his fist. “So Krock broke his leg in the last game of the regular season. The doctors told him there was no way he could play on it. Something about the break right next to a nerve or something. But Krock played. They shot him with Novocain and he goes out there and the Steelers win the game and go to the Super Bowl.”
Nathan pressed his lips together and shook his head. “That was it for him. He didn’t even get to play in the Super Bowl. He had a bunch of operations, but finally, whop, they had to cut it off. Right at the knee.”
“Gross,” Tate said.
“He looked like he was mean before he lost the leg in the pictures I saw,” Troy said.
“Oh, he was,” Nathan said, throwing a stone. “My dad said the other players were afraid of him, he was so mean.”
“NFL players aren’t afraid,” Tate said.
“What would you know?” Nathan said.
Tate stuck out her tongue.
“See?” Nathan said. “There you go.”
“She knows as much as you or me,” Troy said.
Nathan rolled his eyes and whipped another stone. It landed in the weeds. “She’s a kicker.”
“You think it’s easy to kick when you’ve got seventy thousand people screaming at you and the game’s on the line?” Troy asked.
“I would have frozen in front of that maniac too,” Tate said.
“I didn’t freeze,” Troy said.