Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (71 page)

“
Most gay people don’t.”

“
I know.”

There’s a short silence while we try to gauge which one of us won the “see, I’m not homophobic” battle. I think he has an edge on account of he’s here with his gay son. “So you don’t know what triggered it?”

“
Never talked to him about it.” Brenly flicks his ears toward Lee, then back to me. “I suppose you just know, don’t you?”

“
I don’t,” I say. “But that’s how I understand it. They were really sweet on the plane, weren’t they?”

A flicker of a smile, a short nod. He waits until he realizes that I’m expecting him to say something, either in agreement or disagreement or just acknowledgment. So he says, “I’m glad to see him happy.”

“
Is he a happy kind of guy?” I flick my own ears toward Lee, at the glass. He’s keeping still, but…I guess “quivering” is the right word. Tail twitching, ears flicking, barely restraining himself from jumping up and down. “In general, I mean.”

Brenly follows my gaze and watches his son thoughtfully. “I don’t know that I would say that. He was angry a lot of the time. But, well.” He taps the armrest between us. “He’s a fox. He turned that anger into action and he has ways of getting what he wants.”

“
Now that he knows what he wants.”

“
Exactly.”

On the TVs around the box, we see the coin flip. Hellentown wins, and Lee cheers with the rest of the box. “We get the ball first,” one of the cougars says, and of course Lee’s happy. His tiger will be on the field first with the defense. Brenly and I stand to get a better view of the first few plays rather than watching the screen.

I admit I haven’t been keeping up with the whole league like I did when I was full-time. But the Pilots haven’t changed much. Still got a top-five QB, a lion who can create plays when he needs to. Still got an effective running game, splitting time between a power back and a finesse back (elk and deer). And they’ve got a new tight end, a young rabbit, first time I’ve seen a rabbit play that position.

The Firebirds’ defense has stepped it up this season, though. I’m not ready to give Miski all the credit for it, whether or not he is the main difference between this year and last. The rookies on the D-line miss their assignments sometimes, but they make up for it with energy and enthusiasm, and if you ask any coach in the league, they’ll say they’d rather have that problem.

Not to downplay what Miski’s done. Since replacing Mitchell after that leg injury, he’s really grown into the starting linebacker role, to the point that some people say he’s one of the better outside linebackers in the league. Others want to wait and see. Pretty much everyone agrees that if he keeps up this level of play all year, he’s going to have some big contract negotiating to do in the off-season.

I watch him on the first two plays, where the Pilots try to establish the run; he joins the Firebirds’ star linebacker Gerrard Marvell in the pile that limits the running backs to two and three yards. Third down, the lion drops back to throw and lofts the ball halfway down the field. The Firebirds’ corner swats the ball away from the receiver, and the Pilots punt.

Chevali’s quarterback—Aston, the wolf—is not top-five. But he doesn’t turn the ball over a lot and he’s got a good arm. He’s not accurate, but his misses are usually low or out of bounds, not the kind of misses that turn into picks. The wolverine at running back gets compared unfairly to Gateway’s wolverine (Bixon, the one Lee was talking about), which is kind of like comparing me to the star of that new vampire movie because we’re both swift foxes. But Jaws is better than average, and when you factor in his durability, he’s probably top-five in the league. Maybe number six, depending on if you count Yerba’s tandem as one.

Aston marches them down the field and then the drive stalls. But they punt with good field position and pin the Pilots back inside their ten, and it’s on that series that Miski gets to make a play.

It’s second and four, and the quarterback zips the ball to the tight end. The rabbit grabs it cleanly and turns to run upfield—

—
and Miski is right there, wraps him up and drives him down to the ground. There’s a hiss from near the front; I look up and see Lee at the end of a fist-pump, and realize that the hiss was the end of him saying “Yes!”

He catches my eye and grins, and I can’t help but grin back. His eyes sparkle and he walks over. “If you want to make another easy twenty,” he says in a fox-whisper, “go lay some more money on the Firebirds. We’re gonna win.”

And I remember the fierceness with which the tiger said good-bye to Lee, the hug, the touch of the muzzles that was more intimate than a kiss. I heard Lee tell him, “Win that game,” and Miski’s determined smile in return.

“
Thanks,” I think about the two twenties left in my wallet. Wouldn’t mind leaving here with four. And hey, I’ve still got eighteen bucks if I lose the bet.

So I walk up behind that weasel and I say, “Hey, if twenty’s not rich enough, you want to lay another forty on your losing team down there?”

He bristles and then laughs, puffing himself up for the guys around him who look his way. “Hate to take your money,” he says. “Looks like you need it.”

“
Hey,” I say, standing up, “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t put a dime on those bums. They can’t do shit.”

“
They’re feeling each other out,” he says.

“
Whatever.” I start to back away.

He bites. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take your money. Just said I hate to.” He fishes around in his billfold and takes out two twenties, hands them out to me.

The owner turns around as I’m getting my own wallet out. “Boys, no betting in my box, right?”

The weasel’s already shoved his bills in his pocket. I do the same. We look at each other, and then he sticks out his paw. I shake it. “Pleasure doing business,” he says, and goes back to his friends. They all laugh and look at me over their shoulder. I smile amiably and sit back next to Brenly, following the game on the screen.

Whether it’s Miski or just the whole improved defense, the Firebirds are letting nothing through. They get the ball with good field position on their first three drives; on the third, Coach Samuelson realizes that the Pilots don’t have a great run defense and calls five rushing plays in a row. On the fifth, Jaws breaks through the line and makes it down to the four. Two plays later, he walks pretty much untouched into the end zone.

Lee pumps his fist again. Brenly and I fistbump. Quietly, of course. The weasel doesn’t look too worried about his money.

I figure Lee will sit down now, but he stays next to the glass, staring down. During a commercial for Cialis, I talk to Brenly again. The couple times I mentioned his wife on the trip down, he got pretty tense. I don’t know if Lee noticed, but I did. So I’m thinking that Lee didn’t learn about healthy, happy relationships from his folks. But I’m also curious, because Brenly seems like a pretty good guy. So I say, “Lee’s lucky to have supportive parents.”

The tension comes back, just for a moment. He forces himself to relax and says, “We do what we can.”

“
Flying to Hellentown on a moment’s notice is pretty supportive. Your wife doesn’t mind you being gone? I know when I went on trips, Cim had to know where I would be, when I’d be there, when I’d be back.” I laugh. “She used to call me to make sure I was on schedule. I told her, ‘Nobody worth cheating on you with would look twice at me.’ But she had that bug in her head.”

Brenly doesn’t laugh with me. “Eileen’s fine with me traveling. She just wants to know whether she can go out to dinner or if she’s staying home.”

“
That’s great, that kind of trust.” Maybe I’m laying it on a little thick. “See, I never really had that. I can see where Lee gets his ideas of a relationship from.”

Brenly watches his son, rubbing his chin with his paw. But the game’s back on by then and the Pilots are driving, so the box gets a little loud and we get distracted and he never does respond.

Hellentown gets close enough for a field goal, after two incomplete passes. “Hey,” I say, loudly enough for the weasel to hear, “you guys really miss that cheetah at wideout, huh?”

“
Fuck that guy,” the weasel mutters.

I grin and sit back. Brenly raises an eyebrow. “You just like to rile people,” he says in what is almost a fox-whisper, soft enough for only sensitive ears to catch.

“
I’m a reporter,” I say. “You get the truth when people are upset and don’t have time to think.”

He leans back. “You picked the right topic. I’m glad that guy didn’t play for the Dragons.”

“
Strike? He’s on the Devils now. Almost as bad.”

Brenly shakes his head. “Nothing’s as bad.”

I chuckle and wave down to the field. “C’mon,” I say. “If you’d told me last season that the Firebirds would be playing for the division lead a week before Thanksgiving, I’d have told you to take your Prozac and call me in the morning. A club can turn around just like that.”

Brenly smiles and looks up at the screen. The Firebirds are on defense again. “We had Miski,” he says, and then, changing the subject, “They play the Devils next week.”

“
Yeah, but Miski won’t have to cover Strike. They’ll put one of the corners on him.”

“
Wonder what color he’ll dye his fur for that game. What is it this week?”

“
Dunno, I haven’t seen.”

The weasel cranes his head back. “Silver,” he says.

“
Aw, that’s what it was last week,” I say. “He’s getting stale.”

“
Not scoring as much, either,” one of the weasel’s friends says, laughing. “Serves him right. Hope he’s throwing lots of boat parties up there in last place.”

“
That whole club’s a mess.” The weasel isn’t too upset about that, and can’t say as I am either. Devils fans are insufferable when they win, about as bad as the baseball fans up there when the Demons win, which thank God they haven’t for almost a decade now.

“
Yeah, but—” My commentary that Strike isn’t helping by loudly pointing out the club’s problems in the media is interrupted by a yelp from Lee and a smack as his paw pads hit the glass. A moment later, one of the cougars yells, “Get him! No! God
damn
it!”

I snap my attention to the screen, where a tiger in Firebirds red and gold-trimmed white shirt is falling to the ground amid a pile of bodies in brown and gold. When you’ve seen more than a half-dozen football games, you recognize the signs of a fumble or interception, and in this case, watching Lee’s tail sweep from side to side, his body bounce on his feet, I don’t have to ask who made the play.

Brenly and I watch the offense take advantage of the turnover. On the first play, Aston fires a pass to the corner of the end zone. It sails inches past the paws of Ford, the fox who wears number 81.

“
Nice throw,” Brenly says.

“
Okay throw.” I shrug. “They should’ve run it.”

On the next play, they do, and they make me look smart when Jaws bulls through the Pilots defense for twenty-three yards. They stall him at the five, but on second down, the tight end runs a nice crossing pattern to the back of the end zone, and Aston finds him for an easy six. They get aggressive on the extra point, tipping it just enough to knock it to the side, and it stays 13-3.

Hellentown adds another field goal before the half, but the owner’s box is quiet all through halftime. The owner and his family leave, probably off to some place with nicer food or to meet up with friends. The weasel and his friends stick together, and Lee finally comes back from the glass to sit with his dad and me.

“
It’s going great.” His tail is still wagging, and he can barely sit still. His eyes—and keep in mind, I’m straight—sparkle. I feel the need to play devil’s advocate.

“
Coach Morales is great at halftime adjustments.”

He waves that off. “Dev’s hitting all his assignments. Gerrard’s playing like his tail’s on fire. Carson’s got two sacks. And the line is holding up great. We might end up giving up a passing score, but I’d bet they end with sixteen, and we’ll definitely get at least one more field goal.” He pumps his fist. “Seven and three, all alone on top of the division.”

I have to laugh. “You’re so young. You still don’t believe anything can go wrong.”

He holds up his left paw, the one that was in a cast until a few days ago. “Don’t I?”

His father shakes his head. “Just don’t go down to the sidelines and insult the Pilots. Or stay up here and insult the owner, for that matter.”

Lee scoffs, without losing his wide grin. “I’d put money on them not going over…well, let’s say twenty to be safe. You want to bet?”

He asks me, not his dad. I shake my head. “One of the first things they teach you in journalism is never wager with the people you’re writing about. Because they probably know more than you, or else you wouldn’t be writing about them.”

Not strictly true; the first thing they taught you in journalism school was “always double-check the things you write.” They didn’t really cover betting. But it sounds good, and anyway, I would never bet against this kid where football is concerned. I know he won’t be right all the time, but he lives the game as much as you can without playing it.

He grins at me and then turns to his father. “Are you staying for dinner? Can you?”

Brenly looks my way. “I haven’t figured out how I’m getting back yet. But I’ll stay for a while if I can.”