Fantasy League (18 page)

MR. WARREN'S SUITE, BULLDOGS AGAINST the Cowboys, Seattle having already won its game the night before and taking its record to 9–6, Bulldogs needing a win to match.

If the Bulldogs lost to the Cowboys they would be out of the playoffs. Even if they beat the Seahawks next week to split the season series, the Seahawks still had the tiebreaker on the Bulldogs because of a better record in their division.

It was really win or go home for the Bulldogs as far as the playoffs were concerned.

As the Bulldogs tried to get Joe Warren into the playoffs for the first time.

Charlie wanted this for himself, wanted it as much as he'd ever wanted anything in sports. This was his team, the only team he'd ever rooted for, his team now more than it had ever been. And he wanted this for Anna, too. And for Tom Pinkett, having had this kind of season when most people in football thought he wasn't going to have any season at all.

Charlie wanted it for Jack Sutton, not only having made a comeback out of retirement, but now making a comeback from the way his first comeback had started.

But Charlie knew in his heart he wanted it for the old man most of all.

He
was
Brain when it came to football, whether he liked people calling him that or not. But not a brain about everything, certainly not about doctors or medicine or illness. He also wasn't an idiot about those things. So he knew that just because Mr. Warren said the cancer wasn't going to kill him anytime soon, that didn't mean that it wouldn't.

• • •

Less than two minutes left in the half, the Bulldogs were losing to the Dallas Cowboys, 24–7.

They weren't playing all that badly. It wasn't lousy play that had put them in this kind of hole. More like lousy luck. There had been a punt return for a touchdown. There had been what looked to be a sure interception by one of the Bulldogs' cornerbacks that ricocheted off the corner's hands directly into the hands of the Cowboys' tight end, who spun around and found himself with nothing but green field between him and the end zone thanks to one of the Bulldogs' safeties, who had slipped on the turf as he changed direction on the run.

“
This
,” Anna said, “is not the way the story is supposed to go.”

Before her grandfather could say anything, she turned and pointed a finger at him and said, “And please don't tell me there's a long way to go.”

Joe Warren hadn't moved much since he'd taken his usual seat between Charlie and Anna, his “lucky” seat not very lucky so far, the old man looking every bit as exhausted as he had been every time Charlie had seen him lately.

All he did now was wink at Charlie. As if that was all he had in him, other than a weak smile.

Somehow Charlie knew what he wanted him to say.

“There
is
a long way to go,” he said to Anna.

“Very funny,” Anna said.

But her gramps said, “You didn't say anything about Charlie saying it.”

“If we can manage a touchdown here,” Charlie said, “we can close out the half with some momentum. And then we'll get the ball to start the second half with a chance to get right back in the game.”

“And what makes you think that's going to happen the way things have been going for us today?”

Now Charlie was the one giving Joe Warren a wink. “Trust.”

That word again.

Three plays later, after an interference call against the Cowboys at their five-yard line, Tom Pinkett threw to Mo Bettencourt, the tight end who'd become his favorite receiver, and the Bulldogs were down only ten.

“Game on,” Charlie said as the first half clock expired.

Then Isaac Powell nearly took the opening kick of the second half back all the way, before being knocked out of bounds on the Dallas thirty-eight by their kicker. Tom didn't waste much time from there—throwing immediately into the end zone, where Harrison Mays outjumped what looked like the entire Dallas secondary to make it 24–21.

“Game
so
on,” Charlie said as the crowd erupted. Even Anna jumped and whooped with excitement.

Charlie looked at Mr. Warren, but he was quiet. Not even a joke or a wink. Instead he just coughed into his hand, a weak-sounding noise that frightened Charlie.

When Charlie and Anna made a popcorn trip early in the third quarter he said to her, “I'm worried about your gramps.”

“I know, me too. But when I asked my mom, she said it's just more about him acting his age finally than being sick. Mom calls it the same old same old, emphasis on the
old
.” She smiled, but Charlie could tell it was forced.

They went back to their seats without saying another word. The Bulldogs stopped scoring now, but so did the Cowboys, the third quarter all defense. The fourth quarter began the same way, neither team able to push the ball past midfield.

Until Jake Kincaid, the Cowboys' second-year quarterback out of Baylor, made a great play getting out of what should have been a Sack Sutton sack, ran to his right, and threw one as far as he could to Zak Connolly for the touchdown that made it 31–21 Cowboys, five minutes left.

The stadium grew quiet again, as quiet as it had been at 24–7, like somebody had hit the mute button.

Except for Anna Bretton, who leaned past her grandfather and said in a loud voice to Charlie, “Two-score game. Remind me again: I was supposed to trust you about
what
, exactly?”

“We need a quick score” was all Charlie had. “Score and a stop.”

They got the score, Tom Pinkett going into his two-minute offense a few minutes early working the sidelines with short passes, needing to use only one of the time-outs he had left, and finally taking the ball in himself on a sneak with two minutes and twenty seconds left to make it 31–28 Cowboys at Bulldogs Stadium.

Charlie looked over and saw Anna squeezing her grandfather's hand. It was going to be one of those wild finishes that every football fan loves, win or lose.

After the kickoff, the Cowboys ran it on first down, trying to run off some clock. Coach Fiore called the Bulldogs' final time-out, using it before the two-minute warning. The Cowboys ran it again on second down. Four more yards.

Third-and-four, clock running, no way for the Bulldogs to stop it. Just needing a stop to get the ball back. A first down would mean the game was over.

“He's gonna throw for it,” Charlie said.

“Oh, great, Gramps,” Anna said. “He's having another one of his visions.”

“Nope,” Charlie said. “Not seeing the future, just the season Tom Pinkett has had. The Cowboys have seen it, too. They know that even without time-outs, even a minute is too much time for him. They can't take the chance on another run.”

“Any other brilliant observations?” Anna said.

It was then that Joe Warren spoke, in a soft voice.

“This young quarterback Jake Kincaid, who's lit up the scoreboard for them all season, he never plays it safe, no matter what the score,” the old man said. “He doesn't want to ask his defense to end the game. He wants to end it right here.”

Mr. Warren and Charlie were both right.

It was a pass play.

A safe one, to Connolly, two yards past the first-down marker—a neat, simple curl.

That was the way it was drawn up, anyway, the way it was supposed to go, until Jack Sutton came flying in from Jake Kincaid's back side, got to him even though the Cowboys' fullback tried to put a good block on him.

Jack Sutton ran right through that block and hit Kincaid the way Charlie had hit Graham Yost at Memorial Field.

And knocked the ball loose just as Kincaid's arm came forward, the ball going straight up into the air before landing in the arms of Chuck Stoner, the Bulldogs' outside linebacker. Stoner made sure to wrap his arms around the ball before most of the Cowboys' offensive line fell on him.

Chuck had gotten the interception.

But Jack had made it happen.

The next thing everybody at Bulldogs Stadium saw was Jack Sutton pointing up at Joe Warren's suite, like he was pointing right at the old man.

Like that play was for him alone.

• • •

There was some drama right after that, a holding call on first down that pushed the Bulldogs back to the Cowboys' thirty-five and put them in a first-and-twenty situation. Then Tom nearly threw an interception on second down that tried to end the game and stop Charlie's heart at the same time.

But then Tom threw a couple of perfect balls to get the Bulldogs inside the Cowboys' ten-yard line with twenty seconds left, time running out. The players ran to the line of scrimmage as fast as they could. Everyone on both teams—every person watching in the stadium and on TV—knew what was coming next. Tom Pinkett had to spike the ball to stop the clock and prepare for one shot at the end zone.

Only, that's not what he did.

Instead, he faked the spike, pulling the ball back up like it was a yo-yo on a string before turning and faking a throw to Mo Bettencourt on his right, only to whip around and fire a strike to a wide-open Harrison Mays in the left corner of the end zone.

Touchdown. The defense never knew what hit them.

But the game was over. Along with the Cowboys' season.

It took a while, but Joe Warren finally got himself up and out of his chair with a little help from Charlie and Anna, hugged his granddaughter, then turned to Charlie and hugged him, too. For the first time. Pulling him in and saying, “I told you great things can still happen.”

Then he said, “C'mon, you two, it's a special occasion, let's all of us go downstairs to the locker room.”

Carlos was waiting for them at Joe Warren's private elevator, a security guard with him. Another security guard was waiting for them when the doors opened at the basement level of Bulldogs Stadium. They all walked at the old man's pace down a long hallway to the door that led to the home team's locker room.

“Be back for you in a bit,” Joe Warren said as Carlos held the door open for him and he disappeared through it.

“Got a little pep in his step now,” Charlie said.

“I think pep might be a bit strong,” Anna said. “But I'll take it.”

About ten minutes later the same door opened and Joe Warren came back through it.

He wasn't alone.

No security flanking him this time, just Tom Pinkett and Jack Sutton.

Jack with a football in his hands.

He said to Charlie, “Tom and I were talking inside after the rest of the team gave me this game ball. Mostly talking about how the two of us ended up here. And how
neither
one of us would have ended up here if it hadn't been for you.”

He handed the ball to Charlie.

“I thanked you one time for believing in me,” Tom Pinkett said. “Thanks for believing in both of us.”

“I don't know what to say,” Charlie said. In that moment, all he could muster was a simple thank-you.

“No,” Jack said. “Thank
you
.”

“I can really keep this?”

“You better, kid,” Jack Sutton said. “Told you I owed you one.

THREE HOURS LATER, AFTER DINNER, Charlie got out of his mom's car, and promised her he wouldn't be long. He ran up the walkway, pretending he was a star running back, rang the doorbell.

When Anna Bretton opened her front door, Charlie handed her the game ball.

He had rehearsed what he was going to say on the way over, knowing he better keep it short, hoping he wouldn't choke it down when he started talking.

Choke it down being one of her expressions.

“None of this would have happened without you,” Charlie said. “Without you believing in me.”

Anna just stared at him with big eyes. The biggest.

“The thing is,” he said, “I might have been Brain to everybody else. But I knew I was always more than that to you.”

Then he said, “I know sorry doesn't always fix the lamp. But I hope this ball does.”

“Now,” Anna said, “I'm the one who doesn't know what to say.”

Charlie smiled then. “Finally.”

• • •

It was when he got home that she called and told him her grandfather had been rushed to the hospital.

ANNA'S MOM SPOKE WITH CHARLIE'S mom from the hospital, explaining what had happened.

Charlie listening on the extension.

Hearing Mrs. Bretton talk about the chest pains Mr. Warren got when he came home from the game, the shortness of breath, Carlos seeing the blood he'd coughed up in the sink when he found Joe Warren on the bathroom floor and called 911.

Mrs. Bretton saying how fast the emergency people from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center had gotten to the house, as if they somehow knew how much money her father had given to the hospital in his life.

“They're doing more tests,” she said, “but they're fairly certain it was a clot in his lung that caused everything. The official language is pulmonary embolism, which is fairly common in people in his age with non-Hodgkin's.”

Neither one of them said anything until Mrs. Bretton said in a soft voice, “It's not good.”

“He's a fighter,” Charlie's mom said.

“Say a prayer,” Anna's mom said. “Tell Charlie to say one, too. They gave him a shot of heavy-hitter blood thinners, which act as clot busters. Getting him to the hospital as fast as they did helped a lot. Carlos was right there with him the whole way.”

Finally: “I'll be here through the night, if anything changes is it all right to call?”

“Of course.”

“The next few hours . . .” Mrs. Bretton said, and that's as far as she got before she ended the call.

Charlie came into the kitchen.

“He can't die, Mom,” he said. “He can't.”

She walked over and put her arms around him. “You heard her. They're doing everything they can.”

“This was the best day he ever had in football,” Charlie said. “Now it's turned into the worst.”

“She said she'd call with any news.”

“Bad news, you mean,” Charlie said.

“We don't know that. And can't assume the worst.”

“He can't die,” Charlie said.

They stood there, neither one of them moving, until she said, “I know nothing can take your mind off this. But isn't there a game on you were going to watch, so you don't sit here the rest of the night waiting for the phone to ring?”

“I don't care about football tonight,” he said.

“Didn't say you had to care, honey. Just use it for company.” She kissed the top of his head.

He went into the den and tried to watch the rest of the Ravens-Colts game, trying to get involved. Another one of Anna's favorite expressions.
Get involved, Gaines
, she'd say when she was excited about something and wanted him to be excited, about a TV show or movie or song or even a new flavor at Cold Stone.

All these images from the game on TV and the only image he had was Mr. Warren in some hospital bed, a bunch of tubes attached to him. Waiting for a call from Anna. A text. Something.

Then thinking that maybe he didn't want any of those things, because the next news would be bad.

Or even the worst.

Sitting there with this game on in front of him and thinking of the game at Bulldogs Stadium this afternoon, Mr. Warren hugging him and telling him, one more time, that great things could still happen.

Now all Charlie wanted to happen was for his friend to make it through the night.

He wasn't sure if he'd fallen asleep or was about to fall asleep, as if everything that had happened today and tonight had finally caught up with him, when he felt his phone buzzing next to his pillow.

Anna.

He's doing a little better.

Charlie texted her right back.

For real?

Anna, right back at him.

For real. Woke up. Talking.

Charlie again.

Awesome!

Anna, one last time.

Said for me to give you a message:

Said for you to trust him this time.