Left Out

by Tim Green

  Landon tried, but it was hard.

  “Move your hand out a little. You don’t want to be too far forward, but get a little bit longer. That’ll help with your back.” Jonathan moved Landon’s hand and ran a finger down his spine. “That’s much better. See? Everything starts with the stance, Landon. You keep flat and you turn that big body into a battering ram that can destroy people. Now you’re ready to fire out and hit that dummy.”

  Landon fired out and struck the dummy.

  “Hey, good work with your hands, thumbs up and everything. I like that placement. See? You got this, Landon,” Jonathan’s voice rumbled. “Okay, again.”

  On and on it went. For half an hour Jonathan Wagner tutored Landon on blocking before he stood tall and said, “Okay, you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready?” Landon blinked at him.

  Jonathan laughed. “Oh, yeah. You come out of that stance like I have you doing? Keep your head tilted up but low? Deliver a blow with your hands and chop your feet the way you’ve been doing on this dummy? You’ll be a beast. You gotta do it with heart, though. Get a little mad about it. Punish people.”

  Landon thought. “Brett always seems like he’s mad when he’s blocking. He knocked me over and was like . . . snarling.”

  “Brett is mad when he’s blocking. That’s a good thing if you’ve got it.”

  “I don’t think I have it like him,” Landon said.

  “But you really don’t know, do you?” Jonathan said. “You can’t know until you’ve got the right technique. You’ve been flopping around like a fish in the bottom of a boat. Now you’re gonna swim, and we’ll see what happens. I know one thing. . . .”

  “What?” Landon asked.

  “You’re determined.”

  “I am?” Landon thought about all those YouTube videos he studied. Maybe that counted?

  “I watched you in that cannonball contest. You held your form even when you tilted too far and smacked your bare back on the water. That had to hurt, but you held it anyway. Because why?” Jonathan looked at Landon, waiting for the answer.

  “Because I wanted to win?” Landon wasn’t sure it was the right answer, but it was the truth.

  “Yup. That’s determination. Bring it to your game on the line. With your size, it’ll be enough to dominate these guys. Well, everyone but my nephew.” Jonathan put his big hands on his hips. “And if you’ve got any nasty in you at all, you’ll be in the starting lineup.”

  “Nasty?” Confusion washed over Landon.

  “There’s this part of you where, like, you see red or you hear the whoosh of a train in your brain and you just lose it.” Jonathan twirled his finger beside his head. “You go batty and . . . people better watch out.”

  Landon snorted at the joke.

  “I’m serious, Landon,” the NFL player said. “Not a lot of people walking around as big as you who can tuck and hold a cannonball. You learn how to use what you got? You bring a little nasty to the dance?” Jonathan shook his head and broke into a small smile. “My man, I’ll be your agent.”

  The big lineman turned and marched toward the rest of the team and Landon followed. When they reached Coach Furster, he signaled a play to Skip and then turned to face the Giants player.

  “Well, Coach,” Jonathan said, putting a hand on Landon’s shoulder pad, “he’s ready.”

  Coach Furster laughed, but his grin faded when he saw that Jonathan meant it. “You want me to put him in there?”

  “Why not?” Jonathan shrugged and looked at Brett’s dad, who also shrugged.

  “Uh, well. He has no idea what the plays are,” Coach Furster said. “He really won’t know what to do.”

  “What’s the next play on your script?” Jonathan pointed to Coach Furster’s clipboard.

  Coach Furster glanced down. “Uh, pro right forty-four veer.”

  “Great!” Jonathan clapped his hands once. “A run play. Landon, you know what to do on the forty-four veer, or do you need me to tell you?”

  “I know.” Landon nodded his head. He’d seen that play so many times he could run it in his sleep. He knew the blocking assignments. He knew what the running backs did, and the quarterback too. It was no big deal to Landon, but judging by the look on the coaches’ faces, it was a surprise that he had any idea at all what was going on.

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. “No more left out. Get him in there at right tackle and let’s see how good of a job I did.”

  “Well, we’re running the first team right now.” Coach Furster looked like someone had told him the stock market crashed.

  “Yeah, that’s okay. He can do it.” Jonathan Wagner gave Coach Furster a stone-cold stare he probably saved for the Philadelphia Eagles.

  Coach Furster bit into his lower lip, but then he wagged his head and shouted, “Miller, go to left end on defense!”

  “Coach?” Gunner Miller gave Coach Furster a puzzled look.

  “Just do what I say!” Coach Furster barked at the dejected-looking player before he turned to Landon and forced a smile.

  “Go ahead, Landon. Get in there.”

  78

  Landon marched to the line of scrimmage.

  As he lined up in his spot at right tackle, Landon looked at the defender across from him. Gunner Miller was no Brett Bell, but he was the team’s starting left defensive end and the starting right tackle on offense and a hitter for sure. Gunner did not look happy about Landon taking his spot. Landon turned to look behind him. Jonathan Wagner stood next to Coach Bell with his arms folded across his chest and his biceps bulging like water balloons. He wore the face of a lion on a high rock, separated from other life forms, but he offered Landon a thumbs-up.

  Landon turned back to the line and realized Skip had already begun his cadence. Landon got down into his stance a second behind the other linemen. The defense was ready too, with Gunner hunkered down and trembling with rage right in front of Landon. He could barely hear Skip’s voice, and in that instant he was struck by the thought that Skip was being quieter on purpose, because Landon couldn’t hear as well as the others by a long shot. Landon pushed the thought away. He checked himself quickly to make sure his stance was correct, looking down through his face mask at his feet.

  Just as he glanced up, action exploded all around him and Gunner fired out, cracking Landon’s pads. Landon winced, but he took his power step. His hands blasted up into Gunner’s chest and Landon stayed low like he’d been told. They were neutral for a moment, and then Landon began to chug his feet, up and down, up and down, plowing forward, and almost in slow motion Gunner began to go backward. Landon kept chugging. Layne Guerrero flashed past in a blur with the football tucked under his arm.

  Landon kept blocking, driving Gunner down the field. Gunner tried to separate, but Landon had his hands clamped up under the breastplate edges of his shoulder pads. Gunner turned and squirmed and desperately began swatting Landon’s helmet. Landon heard the distant sound of what might have been the whistle, but he wasn’t sure, so he kept doing what Jonathan had told him to do, and he did feel a little mad at Gunner for swatting him in the earhole.

  Finally, Landon saw that he was alone with Gunner in the middle of the field. No one was around, and he figured it was time to stop because the whistle was really shrieking now.

  Landon turned to see Coach Furster’s boiling face, teeth clamped tight on the whistle, marching straight for him.

  The coach whipped Landon around by the shoulder pad and gave him a shove. “Are you . . . just . . . stupid?”

  Landon saw that everyone had stopped to stare. He shook his head. “No.”

  “Well, you just got us a fifteen-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness, did you know that?”

  “No.” Landon felt his insides quiver, but he also felt . . . mad.

  There was a flash of movement as Jonathan Wagner dashed up and put a friendly hand on Coach Furster’s shoulder. “My bad, Coach. This is on me totally.” Jonathan laughed. “I told him to keep driving his man until he
heard the whistle. Landon asked me what to do if he didn’t hear it, and I told him I’d rather see him get a penalty than not finish his block. It’s a lineman’s code of conduct type of thing. My bad. I’m sorry.”

  Coach Furster’s face softened, but not entirely.

  “Did you see that block my man made, though?” Jonathan’s eyebrows jumped. “Wow, my grandmother could’ve run through that hole.”

  “Yes, it was a . . .” Coach Furster seemed to be choking on a fish bone. “It was a good one. A good block. True, but we can’t have a fifteen-yard penalty on every play. You can’t have that.”

  Landon knew what was happening. It had happened to him all his life. Just when someone gave him a chance, just when things looked like they were going his way, someone like Coach Furster stepped on him like a bug.

  The only difference here was that Landon’s savior was a six-foot-six, three-hundred-and thirty-pound All-Pro lineman for the New York Giants.

  If the cruel cycle of Landon’s life was ever going to be broken, it was now.

  79

  “So, Landon.” Jonathan turned to face him. “Forget what I said before. You block for five seconds and then stop. That’s the length of an average play. Can you count that in your mind? Just one, two, three, four, five; then you get off the block. That’ll fix it. Can you?”

  “Sure,” Landon said.

  Coach Furster opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out except, “He . . . uh . . . uh . . .”

  “Coach, you line my man and Brett up next to each other?” Jonathan shook his head with the slow wag of a dog. It looked—and kind of sounded to Landon—like he whistled. “Man oh man. You got yourself a juggernaut. Yes sir, one of them unstoppable, rolling battering ram things that just crushes everything in its way. You tuck your runner up behind ’em? My man!”

  “It’s an idea.” Coach Furster seemed to slowly be regaining his control of the situation. “Let’s see how he does, though. Let’s see about this five-second thing.”

  Jonathan clapped his meaty hands. “I like it, Coach. That’s just what Coach McAdoo would’ve said.”

  Coach Furster lost his fight not to smile at the comparison, and the toot of his whistle was a little less strong than usual before he barked, “Okay, let’s get it back in the huddle. Forty-eight sweep! Let me see it!”

  Jonathan winked at Landon and shooed him toward the huddle.

  It all happened so fast. Skip called the play in a mutter. Brett pointed at him and smiled from the other side of the huddle. They stepped to the line. Gunner Miller hunkered down in his stance with trembling legs, ready to explode, ready to take revenge. Part of Landon was scared. Part of him wanted to explain to Gunner that he only wanted a true place on the team, not to actually take his job. But part of Landon got mad, and he asked himself, why should he go through life being picked on and being left out? Why shouldn’t he win the day? Win the battle? Win the war? Landon saw the other linemen drop, so he did too, more ready this time for action.

  And in that instant, he felt it.

  He went batty with anger.

  Nasty.

  Even though he couldn’t really hear the cadence, Landon exploded at the first sign of movement, low and hard. This time there was no neutral, momentary stand-off. This time Landon plowed through Gunner so fast and hard he fell down. Landon went over him like a lawnmower, let go, and pitilessly grabbed the next body he came upon, Timmy Nichols. Landon manhandled him, driving him three yards back before tossing him to the dirt.

  He was huffing and puffing and he stopped and stood up straight, fearful that he might have gone over a five-second count. In truth, he hadn’t counted at all. All he knew was that Layne Guerrero was wiggling his butt in the end zone. Landon turned.

  Coach Furster looked amazed, but when Landon detected the small smile in the left corner of Jonathan Wagner’s mouth, it filled him with joy and pride. Brett was slapping him on the back. Landon turned.

  “Dude! You crushed them. Two pancakes in the same play? Ha-ha! I never had two pancakes!” Landon’s cheeks burned. He shrugged and headed back toward where he knew the huddle would be, unable to keep a huge grin from blooming around his mouthpiece.

  Practice went on just like that.

  Get the play. Line up. Five seconds of nastiness. Do it again.

  Landon kept expecting something bad to happen, some problem to pop up and ruin everything, but by the end of the evening Jonathan Wagner had taught them all four new running plays from an unbalanced line that put Landon and Brett right next to each other to open massive holes in the defense to run through. Landon could see that Coach Furster didn’t really like the whole thing, until Jonathan showed them a counter-play that had the quarterback handing the ball off to the wide receiver on an end around to the weak side.

  That was a play where Mike would shine.

  “See?” Jonathan explained excitedly. “The defense is going to have to shift to this unbalanced line, and when they start getting chewed up by your two monster hogs, they’ll overshift. Then you come back at them with this wide receiver end around, and they may just lay down on you and quit.”

  They ran the play, and the grin on Coach Furster’s face when his son scampered into the end zone could have lit a Christmas tree.

  “We really are a passing team, though.” Coach Furster scratched his head.

  Jonathan shook his head and frowned. “There’s no such thing, Coach. You can ask Coach McAdoo or Eli Manning. You can ask Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady. Even the so-called ‘passing’ teams know you gotta run the ball to set up the pass. No one ever won a championship any other way.”

  Landon looked back to Coach Furster to see his reaction.

  What he saw, he never expected.

  80

  Surrender.

  That was the best word Landon could think of, and he never thought he’d see it on Coach Furster’s face. He never imagined Coach Furster was even capable of it, but in the presence of a man as big and powerful and immovable as Jonathan Wagner, Coach Furster was reduced to a regular dad, chewing on his knuckle.

  As the team gathered around, no one could hear them talking, but Landon read the NFL player’s and his coach’s lips.

  Coach Furster said, “I was thinking to myself that we needed to get back to basics. I mean, losing to Scarsdale?”

  “It’s a funny-shaped ball,” Jonathan said. “It doesn’t always bounce your way, but you’re right about basics. I think you’ve got something here, Coach. Something that could really give people headaches.”

  Coach Furster held out a hand. “This has been an honor.”

  “And a pleasure for me.” Jonathan shook the coach’s hand.

  “Hey, would you mind saying a few words to the team?” Coach Furster asked.

  “Sure.” Jonathan Wagner turned to the team. He didn’t speak until everyone was standing totally still. Only then did he look around like that ferocious lion again. “Guys, you’ve heard it before. There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ And that means if you want to be a champion, you have to realize it’s about everyone around you. Look around.”

  He waited until they really did look before he continued. “From the best player to the worst, you’re a team, so act like one. Treat each other well and you won’t just win, you’ll be winners.”

  Coach Furster waited to make sure Jonathan Wagner was finished before he turned to the players, who now stood waiting in anticipation for wind sprints, and shouted, “All right, men. It’s not every day you get an NFL player showing up at your practice, so I’m gonna let Jonathan Wagner decide just how many sprints you guys will run. Let’s go! On the line!”

  Coach Furster blasted his whistle and everyone lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on the sideline.

  Jonathan stepped forward and raised his voice. “I like what you guys are doing. I like the way you worked, and when the New York Giants work really hard and have a really good practice, sometimes, sometimes, Coach McAdoo says, ‘You did your r
unning during practice men, see you tomorrow!’”

  Everyone around Landon cheered. He looked to make sure that’s what it was before joining in.

  “You heard him!” Coach Furster shouted, waving them off the field. “See you tomorrow!”

  More cheering, and the team moved in a wave up the hill toward the parking lot. Landon saw Mike Furster and Skip Dreyfus without their helmets, each with a hand on the shoulder pads of a crestfallen Gunner Miller. Xander West walked backward, talking to them all. Landon was breathless at the sight, and he hesitated. He wanted to thank Jonathan Wagner, but he didn’t want to be a pest and Coach Furster was now having his picture taken with the Giants player, so Landon turned and slogged up the hill.

  When he got into the car, his father looked at him from his hunched-over position and asked, “What’s everyone so excited about, buddy?”

  Landon carefully removed his helmet and the skullcap and adjusted the hearing apparatus clinging to his head. He dumped the helmet into the backseat and sat looking down at his hands. Tears rushed into his eyes. He couldn’t speak, but only shake his head.

  “Hey, hey.” Landon’s dad gave him a gentle shake until he looked up. “What’s wrong, buddy? Hey, what happened? You can tell me.”

  Landon sniffed and spoke in a choking voice. “I happened, Dad. I did it. I did it.”

  Landon looked through the kaleidoscope of tears. “I’m a football player.”

  81

  That night at home and the next morning before school, Landon didn’t boast about it. He didn’t even tell Genevieve, not because she didn’t deserve to know but because Landon wanted to caress the idea of who he now was in the privacy of his own thoughts.

  As Landon dug into his oatmeal, Genevieve pounded her hand on the table between them to get his attention. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, great.” Landon did his best to look normal.