The Clutch

by Paul Hoblin

  We were tossing the football around in my backyard after Lance’s first couple of practices as he complained about the team. “This Curt kid,” he told me, “is a joke. When I first saw him I was pretty impressed. Short but stocky. Sturdy. I thought he would be a good replacement for the QB that graduated last year. Then I saw him throw. At first I thought he was kidding. A guy that bulky’s gotta be able to put more on the ball than that, right? Nope. That’s when I found out his last name and put two and two together. Coach Cole is his old man. Seriously, dude, we need you to join.”

  “I’m not even that good, Lance. Besides,” I said, “there’s no point in me joining the team if this Curt kid is the coach’s son. Even if my dad would ever let me.” I tossed the football back to Lance. “Why would the coach bench his own son?”

  “Are you kidding me, you’ve dominated in our flag league this summer. You clearly have a better arm than Curt. Besides, Coach Cole wants to win, doesn’t he?” Lance winked. “Plus, he doesn’t want his star player unhappy.” Based on the way he was pointing at his own flexed bicep, it was pretty clear he was talking about himself.

  He was cocky, but he wasn’t wrong. He’d been all-conference last year as a freshman, and had only gotten bigger and faster since then. Division I schools had already sent him recruitment letters. All a quarterback had to do was throw the ball in his general direction and good things usually happened. (This is one of the reasons people listen to him, I think. For some reason people care more about what good athletes have to say than regular people.)

  I snorted at his muscle-man pose. “Sometimes you really are too much to take in. Besides, like I said, you don’t have to convince me to join the team. You have to convince my dad.”

  I’d been trying to get my dad to let me play in the tackle leagues since fifth grade, but nothing I said changed what he called the “medical realities of the situation.” Sometimes it seems like my dad can’t quite shut down the doctor part of his brain. “The cranial science is devastating and undeniable,” he liked to say. This was his fancy way of saying he was worried I’d get a concussion.

  “Easy,” Lance said, tossing the ball back. “I’ll explain that life is fleeting. That we have to take hold of the moment and not let go.”

  “And you think that’ll work?” I asked. My dad didn’t usually fall for greeting-card sentiments.

  “Of course it’ll work, dude. Adults are total suckers for sob stories. Especially when you’re literally sobbing.”

  “You’re going to cry?”

  “Sure,” Lance said.

  Right then and there, in the middle of our game of catch, Lance started weeping. His breathing became shallow and thick. Actual tears trickled and then gushed down his cheeks.

  “Wow,” I said. I’d heard of people who could cry on command, but this was next-level acting. It was the first time I realized how incredible Lance was at playing on people’s emotions.

  He winked at me again, the tears instantly stopping. “But more importantly, you’re going to cry,” he told me.

  I stood there stunned for a minute as Lance walked over. Finally, I mustered up a response to Lance’s performance. “I don’t know how to do that, Lance. Cry just ’cause.”

  Without any warning, Lance pinched my forearm and yanked out several hairs. My eyes became watery from both pain and surprise.

  “Perfect,” Lance said. “Now you’re ready to help me talk to your dad.”

  I nodded, my sight still blurry.

  “This fall, dude,” he said. “You and me. Nothing’s gonna stop us.”

  ***

  It turned out Lance was right about my dad. He caved when he saw the waterworks.

  Coach Cole, on the other hand?

  Not even the loss of his star player was going to change his mind.

  Chapter 5

  When I started playing for the high school team, Lance had big dreams for us.

  It’s safe to say the season didn’t go as planned.

  The first thing Lance did was bring me into Coach Cole’s office.

  “Hey, Coach,” Lance said. “Thought you should meet our new quarterback. The two of us have been tearing up the summer league together and I don’t see any reason to stop now.”

  Coach Cole’s back was to us. We waited for him to swivel in his chair, but he didn’t. He didn’t even take his eyes away from the game footage he was watching on his TV screen.

  “Coach,” Lance tried again, this time talking louder. “This is—”

  “Jason’s the equipment manager,” Coach Cole interrupted. “He can get you suited up. Do me a favor and tell any other new guys the same thing. I’m busy.”

  We stood there a few moments longer, waiting for him to turn around and look at us.

  He didn’t.

  ***

  “Don’t sweat it,” Lance said after that first meeting.

  Still, I could tell he was shaken. And angry. He’d made a couple of spectacular plays in his freshman season, including a one-handed, sprawling, above-the-helmet grab that was featured on ESPN.

  A lot of people were impressed with him, and I think he assumed our new coach would be one of them. Instead, Coach had barely acknowledged his presence.

  “Once he sees you sling a few passes,” Lance reassured me, “he’ll have to take notice.”

  One problem. There was no reason for Coach Cole to see me throw any passes. Despite what Lance had said about me in his office, Coach didn’t treat me as an up-and-coming star. He treated me as a nobody.

  I’d assumed there would be a competition for the quarterback job. But as far as Coach was concerned, the decision had already been made.

  Curt, his son, was also his QB.

  That’s the way it was for the first game of the season, and the second, and the third.

  I was disappointed, but Lance? The kid was furious.

  So furious that he stopped running his routes. “I’m not just a decoy. Besides,” he said, “It’s not like the other team really believes Curt can throw the ball to me. What’s the point of me running hard? Everyone knows the dude’s just going to tuck the ball under his armpit and run for a couple yards. That’s all he can do, so that’s all he will do.”

  He’d complain to me, loudly, as I stood on the sideline. We were required to keep our helmets on, but Lance ignored that rule.

  His helmetless yelling made me uncomfortable even then. It definitely didn’t seem like the best way to get on the coach’s good side. More than once I was pretty sure I saw Coach look our way and glare at him—or maybe at both of us.

  But I also felt sorry for Lance. And for me.

  Because what he was saying wasn’t wrong. As far as I could tell, Curt really did have a rag arm. And Lance really was suffering the consequences. We rarely threw the ball anymore. When we did, it was a screen or something in the flats. Nothing downfield. Lance never got to run or catch the ball like he had done the previous season. He really was just a decoy.

  ***

  It wasn’t until an away game against St. Augustine when we were way up that Coach called me over.

  “Bailey!” he barked. “You know how to take a snap?”

  I was insulted, even though it was a totally valid question. After all, the only football I’d ever played was flag, so I’d only gotten the ball from the shotgun. Then again, the reason he didn’t know whether I could stand under center was because he’d never given me a chance during practice.

  The honest answer was that I wasn’t sure whether I knew how to take a snap or not. But I wasn’t about to admit that. I wanted to get in the game, so there was only one answer to his question.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Load right, forty-four dive left on two,” Coach barked in the earhole of my helmet. Then he pushed me onto the field.

  Anyway, that’s what I think he said.

  In retrospect.

  At the time, my adrenaline was out of control. My heart was pounding in my ears. And the truth is that
I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what he said.

  Not that it would have mattered, because I hadn’t memorized the playbook yet.

  As I trotted out to the huddle, I tried to recall his words. But my brain had gone numb. So had my legs. I couldn’t feel my cleats digging into the grass, or my knee drop to the ground as I joined the huddle. It was too loud. Was it the noise from the crowd or was it from my thoughts scrambling every which way at a million miles an hour? My tongue, too, had become heavy and numb. Even if I could have thought of a play to call, I don’t think I could have pronounced the words.

  “Streak?”

  The voice cut through the noise. I knew who it belonged to.

  I nodded to Lance, who was grinning wildly. The others must have felt I was nodding at them, too, because they left the huddle to get in their positions.

  And just like that I was crouched under center, taking the first and only snap of my high school career.

  Chapter 6

  What happened next, according to Lance, was the play of his dreams.

  He watched the center snap the ball and took off like a sprinter after a gun shot.

  He raced down the field, his legs a blur.

  It wasn’t until he’d left both the cornerback and the free safety in his dust that he turned his head.

  He looked over his shoulder into the black sky

  There was the football, spiraling perfectly. Just beginning its descent.

  He’d been running for thirty, forty, fifty yards, and he wasn’t done yet.

  He didn’t catch up to the ball until he was in the back of the end zone.

  It was a thing of beauty, according to Lance.

  Poetry in motion, he said.

  Chapter 7

  Here’s what happened after the snap, according to me.

  I bobbled the ball.

  Stumbling backward, I looked down. The football wobbled as I trapped it against my hip.

  Finally, I got a better grip and lifted my eyes.

  I wanted to find Lance, see if he was open.

  But I didn’t find him.

  It wasn’t just his legs that were a blur. It was everything.

  For one thing, I wasn’t used to looking at the field through a helmet and facemask. All I could make out were bodies and limbs lunging and lurching at me.

  For a sophomore I was already fairly tall—a shade over six feet—but the players around me seemed taller.

  Adrenaline gushed through me, swamping my brain.

  I couldn’t think straight, so my body took over decision-making duties.

  It sensed the proximity of violence. It knew that this violence was closing in.

  I was in fight-or-flight mode.

  Except this was football, so there was no actual fight. And there was nowhere to run.

  The only thing I could do, my body decided, was throw.

  No, not throw. Heave.

  It sounds like the pass itself was indeed a beauty. That I’d somehow managed to perfectly calculate Lance’s speed and the exact yardage of the field. That my throw was a testament to our chemistry, his speed, and my throwing talent. But that’s not how it felt.

  It felt like pure luck.

  And then it felt painful.

  The truth is that I never saw the football in the air. While Lance and almost everyone else in the stadium watched the ball soar through the night, someone’s shoulder pad rammed into my stomach, snapping my head back. Somebody else’s helmet speared me in the back. As my throw made a poetic arc that cut through the glare of the stadium’s lights, I fell hard and then lie on the field trying to get my breath back.

  A teammate eventually reached out a hand to help me up. By then, though, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to get up again. All my life I’d played video game football, and watched real football on TV and YouTube videos of body-crunching tackles. I rooted for these collisions on the field, the bigger the better. But I’d never experienced one myself. I’d never experienced what it was like to listen to people celebrate while you’re having trouble breathing. If no one was concerned about me, this play must have been common. It seemed like somebody should be running for the stretcher. Calling the ambulance. Instead, no one seemed to care about me at all. This pain, I realized, must be something I should expect on every play.

  I shuffled off the field, back to the sidelines.

  Chapter 8

  Lance has been telling his version of that play every chance he gets. He explains, over and over, how Coach yelled at me for not doing the boring play he told me to do. He says, to whoever will listen, that I was benched for proving how talented I was.

  “That’s why I quit,” he repeats all the time. “To support Jordan. What Coach did to him was unfair, and I wasn’t about to stand for it.”

  Meanwhile, I haven’t told anyone my version of events.

  I haven’t admitted that after that play I was terrified to ever step on a football field again.

  I haven’t confessed that I still am terrified.

  I don’t know why, exactly, I’ve kept my feelings to myself. At first I think I liked all the praise. Random students were suddenly noticing me. Guys would clap me on the shoulder. Girls would tell me how sorry they were that the coach wouldn’t let me play.

  Besides, how was I supposed to tell the people who truly cared about me?

  If I told my mom that it was a lucky play, that I was relieved I didn’t have to play, she’d be crushed.

  If I told my dad how sore my ribs and back were, he’d say he was right all along that football was too dangerous. He might even insist I quit the team. Back then, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to quit. I thought I might just be in shock. After all, I’d never been hit so hard before. Maybe I’d get over it and want to keep playing.

  I never even told Lance. That’s what I feel worst about. The guy quit the team for me. It didn’t take me long to feel guilty about that, but it was already too late. He’d already burned every possible bridge with Coach. He’d begun chanting my name in the crowd. He’d ripped on Coach’s kid for all to hear. There was no way Coach Cole was ever going to let him back onto the team. And even if he did, there was no way Lance could accept. He had way too much pride for that.

  So Lance kept telling his version. And I kept not telling mine.

  And now Lance was going to tell his version in front of cameras.

  All this time I’ve known what I should say to others, if I wasn’t such a coward. I’ve known that my story would make all this nonsense go away.

  But now the nonsense has gotten too big. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can say or do to stop it.

  Chapter 9

  When I arrive at practice, I see a news truck parked on the street. The camera guy and reporter are standing next to the fence too.

  My best guess? They already got permission from the school to film, but Coach won’t allow them on the field. This is as close as they’re going to get.

  But it’s close enough. Especially since Lance is standing with them. The reporter holds the microphone to his face. Lance is pointing right at me. So is the camera.

  I put on my helmet and pretend not to notice them.

  ***

  When I get home after practice, there’s Lance again. Or his face, anyway.

  He’s on TV.

  “All I’m saying is Jordan can throw the ball sixty, seventy yards,” he says. “But Coach doesn’t even let him throw passes in practice. He is a huge asset to the team, but he is being completely ignored.”

  The news program goes back to the studio, where the reporter I saw at practice sits with two news anchors. “I couldn’t get any video evidence of Jordan’s throwing ability,” she says, “because the young man I talked to was right. Coach Able Cole didn’t let him pass. Most of the students I talked to were in agreement, though. This Jordan Bailey has quite the arm.”

  The news anchors show one last shot of me standing at practice then turn to a story about gluten.

  The TV turns off.<
br />
  “Is that true?”

  It’s my mom’s voice, and it’s coming from the kitchen.

  I take a whiff of whatever’s baking in the oven. Smells like Mom’s specialty: frozen meals. Beef with gravy this time, I’m guessing.

  “The coach won’t even let you throw during practice?” she asks. She has a pot holder in one hand and the remote in the other.

  “Sort of,” I tell her.

  The truth is that it’s more complicated than that. For one thing, I am the backup quarterback, so it seems logical to me that I don’t get as many snaps as Curt does. And even Curt doesn’t throw on Mondays. Our team spends Mondays focusing on defense and our running game. It’s been this way since I joined the team. Lance knows this; he was on the team too, after all. It’s no doubt why he wanted the reporters to come to practice today. He knew it would play right into my story. He set it up to make it look like Coach wouldn’t let me throw.

  I’m going to tell Mom all of this, but she interrupts me.

  “I’d be happy to run some routes for you after dinner,” she says.

  She stands there in her regular getup: a hooded sweatshirt, warm-up pants, and sneakers.

  “Sure, Mom,” I tell her. “That’d be great.”

  She smiles. “First, though, we’ll feast on meat that tastes like cardboard.”

  She turns to the oven, then looks back.

  “Hey, Jordan,” she says.

  “Yes, Jordan?” I respond.

  She smiles again, but she falters and the smile fades. “I’m really sorry you have to go through this nonsense. Maybe tomorrow things will get better. You know, after this news report.”

  I seriously doubt it. I’m not even sure I know what better would look like.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  Chapter 10

  The next afternoon I lace up my cleats in the locker room.

  “Bailey!” a voice booms through the locker bank.

  “Yes, sir?” I say.

  “My office,” Coach shouts.

  “Yes, sir.”