Fantasy League (15 page)

THE TWO OF THEM WALKED—SLOWLY—AROUND the field at Memorial.

Every so often, without warning, the old man would stop, put his head back, let the sun hit him full in the face. Almost like he was taking a drink of it.

Then they would start up again.

“You know how our defense has been the past month, Charlie?” he was saying now. “That's what you start to feel like when you're as old as I am.”

“You don't act old,” Charlie said. “You don't think old. The way I look at it, that means you
aren't
old.”

“But I am,” Joe Warren said. “And when you are, you feel like no matter what you do, you never have enough defense to stop it. Age, I mean. It's like a game you know you can't win, no matter how hard you try.”

They had made their way to the end zone, walking in front of the goalposts.

“You can try to come up with the best game plan,” Joe Warren continued. “Diet and exercise and getting the proper rest and drinking so much water you feel like you've got an ocean inside you. Taking all the damn pills they want you to take. But no matter how much you do, you still know that eventually you're going get hit and go down and stay down.”

“That better be some hit, Mr. Warren, to put you down.”

He put a hand on Charlie's shoulder then, Charlie not sure if he was trying to steady himself, or just make a point.

“That brings me to what you asked me right before we started our walk,” the old man said. “About being sick.”

“Okay,” Charlie said.

“You ever hear of a guy named Hodgkin, Charlie?”

Charlie said he hadn't, and the old man laughed.

“'Course you haven't,” he said. “Because this Hodgkin guy never played football. They did, however, name a disease after him. Hodgkin's disease. They've even got one that they call non-Hodgkin's, though I've often thought they should have given that one to some other fella. Anyway, Charlie, that's what I'm sick with. The fancy name is non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I didn't think I should keep it from a friend like you any longer.”

He didn't break stride, kept his slow normal pace as he added, “It's a form of cancer, Charlie.”

Charlie swallowed.

“Oh,” he said.

Looked over at Joe Warren, talking about cancer in the same way he'd been talking about the Cardinals beating Palos Verdes.

“Oh,” he said again, not knowing what else to say.

“I tell you all the time about telling the truth,” Joe Warren said. “So this is my big truth, Charlie. And stop looking like you're afraid I might go down and stay down before we make it to the other end of the field. Because my doctors—and I've got enough to fill out an NFL roster,
with
practice squad—tell me that if I'm lucky, I will live out my days with this Hodgkin's. Even if it does give me some bad days from time to time.”

He pointed at Charlie, no shake to his hand now, and said, “
This
day not being one of them.”

They were passing the Cardinals' bench, all of the players and parents and coaches gone, the whole area cleaned up after snack, because the last person to police the area was always Coach Dayley. Like it was a crime scene.

Charlie knew everybody called him Brain. But he didn't think he was smart enough—or old enough himself—to know what he was supposed to say, how he was supposed to be responding to the news Mr. Warren had just given him.

He did come up with a question.

“Does Anna know?”

“She does,” the old man said. “And has been as good at keeping it a secret from you as you were keeping the secret from her about Sack Sutton.”

“She didn't like that very much.”

“I heard,” Joe Warren said. “Oh, did I ever hear.”

“Her secret about you was bigger,” Charlie said.

“But I trusted her, the way I trust you.”

Then he said, “How about we sit and rest for just a minute?”

He sat down on the Cardinals' bench and Charlie sat next to him. The old man leaned back and took in more sun.

“Isn't this just the best day?” he said.

Charlie wasn't so sure about that, having heard what he'd just heard, but said, “Yes.”

“Do you think we should go for ice cream after this? I think we should skip lunch and go straight to ice cream.”

Charlie grinned. “Only if you keep one more secret, from my mom.”

The old man put out his hand. Charlie shook it. It felt cold on a warm day.

“All my days are great ones now, Charlie, maybe because I am a little sick,” the old man said. “Everybody always fusses over me when we lose a game, like if we don't start winning all the losing might kill me. And they don't understand that win or lose, I am having myself a wonderful time.”

“For real?”

“We were talking about trust before? Well, I trust this team, Charlie, whether it's in a slump right now or not. I love that your friend Tom Pinkett gives us a chance to win every single game. That's never happened before with the Bulldogs, not like this.”

He offered his fist to Charlie, grinning as he did. Charlie bumped him some.

“And I loved making the play for Sack Sutton, rolling the dice that way and shocking the world. And even when he screws up, I love how much he loves being back in football. Did you see when he caused that fumble at the end of the Houston game? He was jumping around on the sidelines like a little kid.”

“He knew he'd screwed up earlier,” Charlie said. “You could just see how much he wanted to make up for it, even if it was too late in that game.”

“He's not where he's going to be, I believe that,” Joe Warren said. Grinned and said, “He's better than what we had, but not as good as we'd hoped. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” Charlie said.

“Two bad plays, three good ones,” the old man said. “An awful play followed by a great play. And those great plays, they've got to give you hope.”

That word again.

Charlie said, “Do you and Matt really think he's going to play better the rest of the way?”

“I do!” Joe Warren said. “I think his preseason is officially over. I think his legs are all the way underneath him now. I think he's figuring out middle linebacker a little more every week. And I think he's going to help lead us into the playoffs for the first time.”

“I want you to be right about that, Mr. Warren. You have no idea how much.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “These doctors of mine are always telling me that having a good attitude is half the battle. I think it's actually way more than half. And if I can have a good attitude about things, so can you.”

Then he told Charlie to put his arm out one more time, help him up, he wanted to go have a look at that Cold Stone his granddaughter was always telling him about.

“Trust me on this, Charlie,” the old man said. “Things are going to get better.”

THE LAST THING JOE WARREN said to Charlie, after ice cream at Cold Stone and right before Charlie got out of the car in front of his house:

“I need you to at least try to make up with my hardheaded granddaughter.” Grinning as he added, “Just because it will make my life a lot easier.”

“Been trying, Mr. Warren.”

“Try harder,” he said. “Just to bring a little extra peace to an old man's life.”

“She thinks I was big-timing her with Jack Sutton,” Charlie said. “She said my ego got in the way.”

“You think maybe it did, at least a little bit?”

“
You
think I suggested Jack to you because I wanted to get more attention than I was already getting?” Charlie said. “Because that
is
what Anna thinks.”

“No, I think you did it because you thought it was the right thing for our team,” Mr. Warren said. “But if you weren't a little cocky about this stuff, you wouldn't have brought him to me in the first place.”

“Is cocky a good thing or bad?”

The old man grinned again and said, “Generally it's a little bit of both.”

Charlie took his hand off the door. “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything,” Mr. Warren said, “except where I left my slippers when I can't find them.”

“Do you think I've changed?” Charlie said. “I mean, since we became friends?”

“You mean since we became boys?”

Charlie smiled. “Yes, sir. Since then.”

“The answer, Charlie boy, is that you
have
changed. But not in the way my Anna—
our
Anna—seems to think. And maybe not even the way you think, if you're asking the question. But, yes, I think you have not only changed, but for the better.”

“How?”

“You're more confident,” Mr. Warren said. “You're more than just the boy other kids call ‘Brain.'”

Charlie guessed maybe he was right. So he nodded.

Joe Warren said, “Being in the spotlight, the way you have been, that was part of it, of course. And getting knocked down a couple of pegs lately, that actually wasn't such a bad thing, either, no matter how much it hurt sometimes.”

He put out his fist for the last time on this day, so Charlie could gently pound it, and said, “And maybe making yourself a new friend was part of it, too.”

“The best part.”

“Now go inside and call your
best
friend,” the old man said. “And once you've got her on the line, do something that will never ever hurt you in your dealings with the women in your life.”

“What's that?” Charlie said.

“Tell her she was right.”

• • •

When he did call Anna she was on her way to a sleepover at her friend Caroline's, in the car with Caroline and her mom, saying she couldn't really talk right now.

But said, “What's up?”

“Nothing.”

“You called about nothing?”

“Like I haven't done that before?”

“Good point.”

“I can call you tomorrow, if you want.”

Anna said, “Listen, maybe I'll call you later.”

“Try not to sound so excited about it,” he joked.

He had been trying to be nice, as hard as he could. There hadn't been any blowups since the big one about Jack Sutton and ego and her being a know-it-all. They'd managed to get through another
Charlie Show
. And they were having lunches together.

But things still weren't great, weren't the way they were supposed to be between them. And Charlie wanted them to be the way they used to be. Badly.

“I'll keep that advice in mind.”

“I'll be up watching college football if you want to call,” he said.

“I know.”

“Your gramps came to my game today.”

“Know that, too.”

“Call me later.”

“Maybe.”

But sounding like for the first time in a while, she wanted things to be un-different between them herself.

His mom was at the grocery store when he walked in the house, having left a note on the counter. When she got home he told her about Mr. Warren and cancer, first thing, and they were still talking about it at dinner.

His mom telling him that one of her bosses at Sony, old but not as old as Mr. Warren, had been living with non-Hodgkin's for a long time and showed every sign of going right on living with it.

“Sometimes,” she said, “diseases that sound like the worst thing in the world, because they involve cancer, move more slowly inside old people than the old people themselves move.”

“For real?”

“For real. I wouldn't lie to you any more than he would.”

“I still can't believe he came to the game.”

“Maybe,” his mom said, “Joe Warren needs somebody like you in his life as much as you need somebody like him.”

Then he told her something he never had, about that day in Mr. Warren's garden when he'd told the old man about his dad and how he'd left and was never coming back; how good Mr. Warren had it with Matt even when things weren't so great.

“You said that?”

“I did,” Charlie said, and told her that was the day Mr. Warren had said that he was more than just a football friend.

“Sounds like he was right.”

He went into the den to watch the Alabama-Arkansas game, switching back and forth between that and Ohio State-Wisconsin. It wasn't the pros, but it was football, and it was on. There was a quarterback from Wisconsin, a junior, flying under the radar so far this season, whom Charlie thought might be able to help the Bulldogs in a couple of years.

If Mr. Warren was still listening to him about football players in a couple of years.

If Mr. Warren was still around.

Charlie thinking about that now that he was alone watching football, even if Mr. Warren acted like his illness was no biggie, making his form of cancer sound like the flu. Maybe that's what he'd really been getting at today, talking about enjoying things the way they were, enjoying what you had and not worrying about what you didn't.

One time today, when they were walking around the field, Joe Warren had said, “If the football season you were watching is the only one you were ever going to have, how much would each of the games be worth?”

If you looked at things that way, maybe the season the Bulldogs were having wasn't so terrible after all.

Anna called at halftime of the Alabama-Arkansas game. She probably knew it was halftime, being Anna, and had found a way to watch football even at Caroline's house with a bunch of other girls.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said. “Where's the rest of the sleepover squad?”

“Attempting to make brownies. I am staying out of it.”

Charlie heard her take the phone away and say, “Talking to Charlie, be there in a minute.” Then: “Shut
up
!”

“What's happening?”

“Lots of Instagramming and Facebooking with the girls.
Lot
of video chatting.”

“Maybe I should call you tomorrow.”

“Why were you calling me before?”

“To tell you that you were right,” he said. “And that I'm sorry.”

“You'll have to be more specific. If you called me every time I was right about something, you'd need more minutes on your phone plan.”

“You were right that I'd started getting too full of myself,” Charlie said.

“That's not why I was mad and you know it,” she said. “I was mad because you didn't tell me about Jack Sutton
before
Gramps told you not to tell me.”

“I was wrong about that, too.”

“Did Gramps tell you to call me?”

“He did,” Charlie said. “But I was going to anyway.”

“So this is all it's supposed to take, one phone call, after all the mean stuff you said to me?”

“I was a jerk that day,” he said. “Hundred percent.”

“You don't have to tell me, I was there, remember?”

“I did say I was sorry.”

She paused and said, “My dad likes to say that sorry doesn't fix the lamp.”

There was another pause and then she said, “Listen, I gotta go eat the stupid brownies now, call me tomorrow.”

“Maybe we can hang around or something?”

“I'll check my schedule.”

He was starting to think of a clever comeback to that when he realized that she'd already ended the call. But then Charlie knew the deal by now.

She even had to win phone calls.