The first was from Chelsie, sent just a few seconds before. Great game tonight sweetie! Call me when you get home? Clay considered answering for a moment, but decided against it and scrolled down to the next message.
It was from Natalie and had come in about forty-five minutes before. I was proud to be wearing your jersey tonight…and you were right. It is a lot more fun when I embrace it.
“I’ll be damned,” Clay muttered, a half smile forming across his face.
The final text was from his brother, sent just minutes after the game ended. You walked on the field with your family and you walked off a winner with your best friends. Can’t ask for any better than that. Storybook ending buddy.
Clay flipped the phone shut, put it back in his pocket and rested his elbows on his knees. He took a long pull from the Gatorade and looked out over the field. He looked down at his friends strewn across the bleachers around him and he thought about everything that had happened in the last week. He didn’t know if he would ever play football again, but for the time being that was okay.
A final smile spread across his face.
Colt was right.
It had been a storybook ending indeed.
Ten Months Later
Epilogue
The Sentinel game was the last time Clay ever played football. He received a fair bit of interest from various colleges in the area, mostly smaller schools and a few MAC teams, but decided against it. He was asked to play in several all-star games the next summer, but chose to refrain from them as well. It would have been too hard trying to fly back for them, and he couldn’t have gotten the time off anyway.
As it turned out, Coach Paulus wasn’t a coach looking to recruit him. He was a scout for the Cincinnati Reds. Three months after the Sentinel game, the Reds used their 8th round pick to draft Clay to pitch for them.
Three hours after his high school graduation Clay made the short drive to Dayton and began his baseball career by firing a five-hit shutout for the Class A Dayton Dragons. By August he was called up to the Class AA Carolina Mudcats and some buzz in the organization indicated that he might even get invited to spring training with the Reds when they opened in March.
He had a long way to go, but if he stayed healthy all indications were that he had a shot to be something special.
The baseball season ended the first week in September and the following week he and Chelsie packed up their belongings and moved to Bloomington. His work with Mrs. Elmner paid off and his test scores jumped, making his acceptance an easy decision for Indiana.
He and Colt moved in together into a two-bedroom apartment just off the edge of campus. Clay asked the Reds to speak with Indiana, who allowed him to workout with their baseball team and use the team facilities during his time on campus for the fall and winter quarters. In the spring he would report for training, which would delay his graduation some, but at least his class work was getting done.
Chelsie remained in Huntsville through the summer, traveling to Dayton to watch every game he played in before taking up permanent residence beside her computer every time the Mudcats played. She moved into a freshman dorm less than a block away from Clay and Colt and decided to pursue teaching so she’d have the summers free to watch baseball.
Natalie turned down interested schools to play volleyball in college and enrolled at the University of Kentucky. She and Clay talk constantly and she freely admits he is one of the few things she misses about small town life.
Goldie moved up the road to play football at Capital, but made it through three days before deciding that it wasn’t for him. He was just fine with the way his career had ended that night against Sentinel.
Matt and Marksy both applied to Cincinnati and moved down as roommates. Rich and Lyle went to work part time on the farm as soon as football ended and moved it to full time as soon as they graduated.
As for Huntsville, things continued as they normally do. People still go to Formaggio’s for pizza and farmers are still having trouble making ends meet. Pastor Waverly still offers up support to the Hornets from the pulpit each week and the Killer B’s still analyze every aspect of the upcoming game.
Folks are still a little nervous about the new quarterback, but are excited about the amount of experience everyone else got last year thanks to a thin senior class. Two weeks into the new season, people are already talking about the playoffs and a potential state championship run.
People who aren’t from a place like Huntsville don’t understand it. They don’t see how a town can live and die by the actions of a few young men. They don’t understand how a game can possibly mean so much to so many.
These people have never donned a jersey with pride and walked the halls. They have never run out to have a stadium full of people they’ve known their entire life cheering for them. They’ve never awoke before the sun to train with their teammates or suffered the pain of a heartbreaking loss.
Instead of accepting such facts though, they try to rationalize it away. They point and ridicule. They say that football means so much because Huntsville has so little. They say that the town and its people are fools for ever caring so much about something so trivial.
They say it’s just a game.
As for the people of Huntsville and the thousands of towns like it across the country...they’re okay with that. They’re okay knowing the real reasons behind their love of high school football and the young men that play it and they’re okay with outsiders not fully understanding it.
If people want to believe that it’s just a game, the folks of Huntsville are happy to go right ahead and let them.
About the Author
Dustin Stevens is the author of The Zoo Crew series, Scars and Stars, Be My Eyes, 21 Hours, Liberation Day, and Catastrophic. He is also the author of several short stories, appearing in various magazines and anthologies, and is an award-an award-winning screenwriter.
He currently resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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