Football Hero (2008) (12 page)

“WHAT KID?” TY ASKED.

“You know. The kid with the cheap shots every play.”

“It’s football. It’s rough, right?” Ty said. “You say that.”

“Don’t worry,” Thane said, glancing over at him.

“I’m not going to throttle some twelve-year-old, even though I’d like to, but I want to know what’s up.”

“Calvin West. We don’t like each other,” Ty said, biting into his lower lip and concentrating on the garbage truck ahead of them.

“That crap isn’t right,” Thane said, “and I’m going to fix it.”

“You never had that?” Ty asked. “You told me they were mean to you. Kids. Dumping your books and stuff.”

Thane clenched his teeth and nodded. “That’s different. That was me.”

“Who fixed it for you?” Ty asked.

“Myself.”

“So?” Ty said.

Thane stamped on the gas. The big Escalade roared and shot out around the garbage truck, passing it before Thane slowed back down and looked over at Ty.

“Then you stalk him.”

“What’s that?”

“A bully is a bully,” Thane said. “In middle school or the NFL. Sometimes a guy’s got it in for you, or he wants to make a name. You stalk him. He’ll stop.”

“But what’s
stalking
?”

A mean smile curled up the corners of Thane’s lips and his eyes narrowed. “Everywhere he goes? You get him. You don’t worry about the play. You hunt him down. You smash him. You chop block him. You leg whip him. If he goes down, you pound him. You never let up. From the snap of the ball to the whistle. It’s brutal and it’s relentless. That’s stalking.”

“What if I’m supposed to run a pattern?” Ty asked.

“I didn’t see you getting into the pattern out there just now,” Thane said. “You fix this first. If you don’t, Ty, I will. I’m not going to let that happen to you.”

“I’ll fix it,” Ty said.

“Good.”

“Will you show me some things?” Ty asked.

“Sure,” Thane said. “We’ll go by the facility and I can show you on the blocking dummies. It’s on the way to Barelli’s anyway.”

The Jets’ New Jersey training facility was so new that Ty could smell the paint on the walls as they walked down the hallway toward the locker room. Dark green carpet covered the floors. Each wide locker held dozens of pairs of shoes and the player’s assemblage of pads as well as his helmet. In front of each one rested a wooden stool. Thane wanted to change into some workout clothes to show Ty his tricks, so they stopped at his locker. Quiet filled the vast room, but on the far wall Ty could see through the glass partition into a room full of equipment where a handful of players rested on tables.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Training room,” Thane said, pulling on a pair of shorts and sitting down to lace up a pair of cleats he’d removed from the bottom of his locker.

“What are they training for?” Ty asked.

“No,” Thane said with a small laugh. “They’re hurt. Injured guys getting treatment from the team trainers. Trying to get better.”

The image of Lucy flashed into Ty’s mind, and he asked, “Is Jones in there?”

“I doubt it,” Thane said, craning his neck and peering into the room.

“I read he was hurt,” Ty said.

Thane snorted and waved his hand in the air. “He’s fine.”

“So, he’ll play?”

“For sure,” Thane said. “He’s a little bruised up, that’s all. He’ll take some aspirin.”

“Otherwise, he’d be in here now?” Ty asked.

“You got it. When you’re hurt, your only job is to get well,” Thane said, glancing into the room. “A couple of those guys are on Injured Reserve, out for the season. They got hurt in training camp. The others are trying to get ready for the Lions.”

“And they have to stay here?” Ty asked.

“The trainers will work with these guys almost twenty-four hours a day to get them back on the field,” Thane said. “There’s all kinds of things you can do. Ice. Ultrasound. Electronic stimulation. Stuff that helps speed up the healing process. It works, too. You want to see?”

“Sure,” Ty said.

Thane tied his shoes tight and led Ty across the locker room and into the training room. A dozen padded tables lined each wall. At one end, stainless steel tubs rested alongside a bubbling tile hot tub big enough for twenty people. At the other end, the trainers’ offices stood beside a doctor’s examination room that had its own X-ray machine. Some players sat on their tables loaded down with ice bags on their necks,
shoulders, knees, or ankles, their bare feet sticking out from under white towels. Others lay on their stomachs with rubber pads stuck to their limbs and wires running between the pads and small machines that looked like mini-microwaves on wheels.

Most of the players wore headsets and bobbed their heads to music. One had a book, and Ty asked Thane his name.

“Conrad Rommel,” Thane said. “Meanest offensive lineman in the game. He likes Charles Dickens.
A Tale of Two Cities
and stuff.”

“The guys don’t give him crap?” Ty asked, staring across the locker room at the enormous player.

Rommel had a nose like a small lightbulb and a soft round face with a little smile. His tufted brown hair was nearly gone, and except for the barrel chest and arms that looked like gallon jugs of milk, he might have been an English teacher or an accountant.

“He’s pretty mean,” Thane said.

“He looks nice.”

“Oh, he’s nice off the field,” Thane said, and as if to prove it he waved. “Hey, Conrad.”

Conrad looked up from a frayed paperback book, adjusted his towel, and grinned at Thane, waving back before he returned to his book.

“The best players are,” Thane said. “But when they play, they flip the switch.”

“Flip the switch?”

“Mad-dog mean,” Thane said. “That’s how you’ve got to play. Everyone gets mad—it’s just what you do with it. The meanest players store it up. Someone cuts them off in traffic, they smile. Neighbor’s dog craps on his lawn? No big deal. Hubcaps get stolen? You get some more.

“Yeah, but then they get out onto the field and it all comes out. They flip the switch and, man, are they mean.”

“Are you?” Ty asked.

Thane smiled at him and angled his head toward the door. “Some people say that. Come on, I’ll show you some tricks and then you can flip the switch on that goofball Calvin Weasel.”

“It’s Calvin West.”

“Calvin the Weasel to me.”

“You really have tricks?” Ty asked.

“And they never fail. Come on. You’ll see.”

A BAND OF ORANGE
glowed beneath the dark clouds over the far end of the practice fields. The scent of grass floated on a small breeze. The blue blocking dummies stood rigid and waiting like a row of perfect soldiers beneath one of the goalposts. Thane ambled up to the middle one and crouched down into his stance.

“The most important thing? Stay low,” he said, then fired out, smacking the dummy with both hands, driving it so far back that the metal arm holding it disappeared into its piston and clanged like a bell.

“Wow,” Ty said.

“You always have to have your pads lower than his,” Thane said, softly karate-chopping the dummy to show Ty where to hit. “Low man wins. Your helmet, under his. Your shoulder pads, under his. The aim
point for your hands is right here, in his chest. Try it.”

“I don’t have cleats or anything,” Ty said.

“Don’t worry. Just get a feel for it. Keep your head up and try to have your forehead hit him in the neck at the same time you strike with your hands.”

“I thought you block with your shoulder,” Ty said.

“That’s the trick,” Thane said. “Most receivers, they block with their shoulders. But if you watch the good linemen in the NFL, at a big college program? It’s hat and hands.”

“Hat?”

“Your helmet. The old-school coaches, they call it a hat.”

“You hit with your helmet?” Ty asked.

“And keep your head up. Bull your neck.”

Ty got into a stance and fired out, striking the bag with his hands and bumping his forehead on the pad. He saw stars, and the dummy rattled but barely moved.

“Not bad. Now, the other trick,” Thane said, standing beside the next dummy in line and jabbing his finger into its chest. “You don’t aim for here with your hands. You aim for here.”

Thane waved his hand behind the dummy and patted the connection bar in the middle of its back.

“You don’t explode
into
the man,” he said. “You explode
through
him. Like he’s made of Jell-O and you want your hands to make contact with his spine.”

“Kind of gross.”

“Mad-dog mean,” Thane said, “that’s what you’ve got to be.”

Ty worked at it until the orange in the sky faded to deep purple, banging away at the dummy, staying low, firing through, hat and hands. Thane coached him on little details like taking a shorter first step, popping his hips, and grabbing his opponent’s jersey after the initial hit.

“They’ll never call holding if you keep your hands inside,” Thane said, gripping Ty’s T-shirt at the seam just in front of his armpits. “All this stuff is legal. You explode into the Weasel, get a grip on his jersey, and drive him all over the field. If he goes down, you get up quick and go at him again.”

“When he’s down?” Ty asked.

“If the whistle hasn’t blown?” Thane said with a crooked grin. “Bam. Right down on him. Full force. You drive him into the dirt.”

Ty took a deep breath and nodded.

“It’s all legal,” Thane said. “The real tough guys? They don’t have to cheat. They get it done before the whistle.”

“I’ve blocked him, you know.”

“I saw. Listen, you might not get him the first time,” Thane said. “You might not get him the second time. But football’s about—”

“Getting up,” Ty said. “Keep going.”

“He’ll stop his crap,” Thane said.

“What about after the whistle? What if he cheap shots me then?” Ty asked.

Thane shrugged and said, “Then you fight him. You hit him openhanded, right in the ear hole. That’ll send a shock wave through him. Don’t use a closed fist or you’ll break your hand. But that’s only if he starts it. If he does, then finish it. It’s part of practice, not like punching someone in a game. You never do that.”

Ty frowned but nodded his head that he understood.

Thane smiled at him and messed up his hair. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Let’s go get some veal chops.”

“And apple crisp,” Ty said, following his big brother, bouncing on his toes from excitement over his new football tricks and the thought of the delicious meal to come.

“With ice cream,” Thane said.

“Two scoops,” Ty said.

“Three.”

They both laughed and went inside to the locker room so Thane could change back into his clothes. While he did that, Ty eyed the players in the training room, searching without success for even a hint of meanness in Conrad Rommel’s face.

When their apple crisps were reduced to a sprinkling of crumbs in shallow puddles of melted ice cream, Ty
took Uncle Gus’s injury list from his pocket and smoothed it out on the tablecloth.

“What you got?” Thane asked, wiping his mouth on a napkin and leaning back in his chair.

“I’m in this fantasy league,” Ty said, concentrating on the paper, afraid that if he looked his brother in the eye that Thane would see right through the scam.

“With the guys on my team. What I wanted to ask was if you’d give me the deal on these guys. My whole team is mostly Jets players, and those are the guys I want to put on my roster.”

“’Cause we love the Jets.”

“Yeah,” Ty said, “but if these guys aren’t going to play against the Lions, I’d hate to put them in my fantasy lineup. And if, like, Kerry Rhodes isn’t playing, I don’t want to use the Jets’ defense. They’re not that good on D without him.”

Thane scowled and leaned forward, scooping up the paper.

“Hey,” he said. “Where’d you get this?”

“NEWSPAPER,” TY SAID.

Thane’s frown grew into a smile as he looked at it. He leaned back.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I’d go with our defense all the way. Rhodes? He’ll play. He was the guy in there getting the electronic stim on his lower back.”

“How come it says ‘doubtful’ for him then?” Ty said, eyeing the scrap of paper. “That’s, like, a seventy-five percent chance he
won’t
play.”

“A lot of guys wouldn’t,” Thane said. “A back like that? Spasms? That’s bad stuff, but he’ll medicate it and go.”

“Medicate? What do you mean?” Ty asked, thinking of the cough syrup his mom used to give him.

Thane gave him a crooked smile and said, “A shot.
Novocain. Medicine. They’ll numb it up.”

“A shot in his back?” Ty said, shuddering.

“Rough way to make a living, huh?” Thane said.

“That’s why you make sure you study hard. Be a doctor or something. Here, let me see that thing.”

Thane went through the rest of the list, giving Ty exactly what he knew his uncle and Lucy wanted; then Thane paid the check and took him to the mall, where they caught a horror flick. Thane bought two big buckets of popcorn and sodas the size of small lampshades. When Ty got home, he hugged his brother and kissed him good night on the cheek.

“Fun, huh?” Thane said, patting Ty’s leg.

“Awesome,” Ty said. “Hey, good luck out in Detroit.”

“Next week we’re home and you’re coming to the game, right?”

“Absolutely,” Ty said. “And I’ll see you Friday night again, too?”

“It’s our night, my man,” Thane said. “I’ll see you then.”

“Did you get it?”

Ty woke up to the smell of beer and pickled eggs and cigarettes. Like a dark cloud, Uncle Gus blocked out the thin yellow light that normally leaked into the laundry room from the kitchen. His stubby hands gripped Ty by the shirtsleeves, lifting him off the battered mattress on the floor.

The words stuck in Ty’s throat, and Uncle Gus shook him.

“Did you get it? Jones? Is he hurt? What about the others? What about Rhodes?”

“I’ll tell you,” Ty said, coughing. “Can I get a drink?”

Uncle Gus squinted at him, then cursed under his breath, dropping Ty to the mattress and stumbling into the kitchen. Ty got out of bed and felt the cold linoleum beneath his feet. He tottered into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Uncle Gus shoved a glass of water at him, sloshing it all over Ty’s pajamas. Ty took a drink, and Uncle Gus slapped another copy of the injury report down on the kitchen table, rattling the top to the sugar bowl.

“Tell me,” he said.

Ty bent over the piece of paper and went down through the list, telling Uncle Gus everything that Thane had given him. When he finished, he looked up and saw Uncle Gus’s yellow teeth glowing at him in the weak light from above the stove.

“That’s good,” he said, punching a number into his cell phone. “Lucy? It’s me, Gus. Yeah, I got it. Yeah it’s good. Really good.”

Uncle Gus threw open the refrigerator door and snatched a can of beer from the top shelf, popping it open with a hiss. Ty backed into the laundry room. He lay down on his mattress in the narrow space between the washing machine and the wall, pulling the thin
covers all the way up over his head and holding them tight over his ears so he didn’t have to listen.

When they returned home from church on Sunday, Ty chopped wood until Aunt Virginia called him in for Sunday dinner at noon. He and Charlotte—who also wanted to see Thane—cleaned the dishes as fast as they could while Aunt Virginia went shopping and Uncle Gus settled down in his chair with a can of beer. Ty darted into the living room still drying his hands on a dish towel as the Lions kicked off to the Jets.

After two running plays, Thane caught a seventeen-yard pass across the middle and took a massive hit from a Lions defender. He held on to the ball, though, and the Jets drove down the field with Thomas Jones running strong and Thane catching another ten-yard pass to set up a field goal.

Uncle Gus scooped his cell phone off the little stand beside his chair. “Lucy? How about that?”

Uncle Gus listened, then furrowed his brow and said, “I know it’s only three nothing, but the spread’s two so we’re already in the catbird seat, right?”

Uncle Gus listened some more, then frowned and closed his phone before looking up at Ty and asking, “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Ty said.

“That’s right,” Uncle Gus said. “Let’s see how Rhodes plays before we get excited.”

“Okay,” Ty said.

Rhodes played well, leading the Jets’ defense in shutting down the Lions almost completely. Thane caught a forty-two-yard touchdown pass on the next series, and Uncle Gus jumped up and hugged Ty, who jumped up and down with him.

“We’re gonna be
rich
,” Uncle Gus said. “This is so good.”

It didn’t stop there. The Jets continued to dominate the game. Thane had 172 yards receiving and added two more touchdowns. Thomas Jones ran for more than a hundred yards, and Rhodes and the defense only gave up two field goals.

One TV shot showed Thane on the sideline celebrating with Chad Pennington and Laveranues Coles. Thane had his helmet off and was wearing a green Jets cap backward on his head. He hugged Pennington, the quarterback, and pointed at him, shouting, “The man,” and then they all laughed. The TV announcers talked on and on about Thane—they called him Tiger—and how he’d made as big an opening debut as they could remember for a rookie in his first NFL game.

Uncle Gus’s cell phone rang late in the fourth quarter. He knocked over the six empty beer cans on his stand but grinned nevertheless when he put the phone to his ear. He nodded, stroked his big, thick mustache over and over, and said, “I know” almost a
dozen times, then hung up and looked at Ty and Charlotte with glassy eyes.

“Five thousand dollars. You hear that? Charlotte, go get me another beer. We keep going like this and I’ll show that rat agent of your brother’s. I’ll open that bar on my own!”

It sounded like a lot of money just to help someone win a couple fantasy games, but nothing surprised Ty anymore when it came to Uncle Gus.