Out of Position (30 page)

He shrugs. “Not a bad idea. Just don’t get so good that you’re better than the stars.”

My phone rings. My first thought is it’s Lee, so I grab it and have it half-open before I see that the area code is east coast. By that time, it’s too late to ignore it.

Ogleby starts talking before I can even say anything. “How’s it going?” he squeaks. “You going to make the cut? Listen, I got some interest from a couple teams who say they could use a backup corner. You could be a third string somewhere easy. Maybe second. You want me to go talk to them?”

I gesture to Fisher, who’s backing out of the room, to stay. “No, I’m gonna be good here,” I tell him. “Thanks.”

“You sure? Hey, listen, the press isn’t picking up my press releases on you. Can you get out more?”

“I need to study to make the cut,” I say. “What are you writing about?”

“Just stuff,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. You want to meet some celebrities? You could pal around with them, date a starlet or something. I got a friend who knows the guy who represents Caroll Chavon. You know who she is, right?”

It doesn’t really matter what I say, so I just say, “Sure.” My finger traces the linebacker’s responsibilities for 45 Banana Split in the playbook diagram.

Fisher’s apparently cooled down enough that he can do some stretches. He braces himself against the doorframe.

“She played the sister for two episodes on ‘Panther House,’ Sony has her signed to play a supporting role in ‘Bad Medicine 3,’ she’s on the way up, just like you. What do you say?”

I turn the page. All the plays in this book are named after desserts, and it’s making me hungry. I don’t know what Lee would think of me fake-dating a starlet. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“No thanks? Are you kidding me? She’s going to be in ‘Bad Medicine 3’! Do you know what ‘Bad Medicine 2’ made?” It wouldn’t matter if I’d wanted to answer. “Two hundred million!”

This play is 48 Hot Fudge. The numbers are some sort of key to the principal players, but I haven’t figured out what yet. “That’s great,” I say.

“So you’ll meet her? Look, if you don’t get together with some starlet, then could you get arrested? Anything to get your name in the paper?”

The hard thing about these formations is that while they show me where I start, they’re not good at telling me where I need to go. That all depends on what the other side is doing. “Don’t you have any other starlets?” This makes Fisher look up from his stretching at me.

“None as hot as this one. I’d do her myself if I were a foot taller.” He giggles. “Okay, I’ll set it up for Tuesday night. You’re free Tuesday, right?”

“No.”

“Good. Love ya, kid, get back to studying. Knock ’em dead.”

This is a lot more complicated than cornerback or safety, which involved lining up in one of two or three positions and either dropping back to wait for action or shadowing a particular player. I say, absently, “Bye” to the dead phone line.

“Agent?” Fisher says.

I watch him stretch his paws, and listen to the joints pop. It sounds painful. “You’re gonna make the team, aren’t you?”

“Hell, yeah,” he says, “I’m a survivor.”

“Am I?”

He comes over and sits next to me. “Best case for you at corner is you get called back to sit on the bench if someone goes down. At linebacker, you’re a solid shot to make the team as a backup. We got nobody else at the Will”

“You know any of these plays?” I point to the book in my lap. He turns a couple of the pages. “Some. Let’s go through ’em.” I stare at my knees after he takes the playbook. “You think I can beat out Killer?”

He leafs through the book, reading quickly. “You can beat out anyone who don’t have his whole mind in the game.”

I want to ask, what about someone who does, but my cell rings just then. This time it is Lee.

“I’m so tired of film,” he says. “When do I fly down this weekend?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Um, y’know… they announce cuts on Monday and I really need to study.”

“Oh,” he says. “Fine.”

“Don’t be like that,” I say. “I need the time and you know I do.” Fisher’s watching me. When he sees me looking at him, he gets up and starts to leave again. I wave for him to stay.

“So do I,” Lee says.

“What do you want me to do?” I say.

“Just forget it,” he says. “Call me when you’re going to have time again. I guess I’ll go hang out with Brian this weekend.”

“Wait, what?” He’s already hung up. I stare at the phone until I realize I’m squeezing it so hard it’s in danger of breaking. I stuff it back into my pocket and look at Fisher, who’s staring at me. I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. “Girls.”

He sits back down, staring at the playbook. “You tell the agent about having a girl?”

It’s an odd question. “He wouldn’t care. Why?”

“Sounded like he was trying to set you up. Mine used to do that before I got married.”

“How do you manage with the family?”

It’s a couple seconds before he answers. “Oh, Gena takes care of the kids during the season. I get home when I can.”

“You miss ’em?”

“Course.” He traces a claw along the play. “Caramel Sundae 91. What’s your responsibility?”

“Does Gena ever get upset that you’re gone so much during the season?”

“She wanted someone who’s around all the time, she shouldn’ta started dating a football player.” He pauses, still looking down at his book. “You know? Now, you’re in a nickel formation on this play. What’s your responsibility here?”

I chalk his abruptness up to concern over getting me past the first round of cuts. It’s hard to shift my mind back to thinking about football, but I force it. Pretty soon I’m submerged in it, plays and formations and names swirling around in my head.

Last year, I didn’t know enough to be scared of the first cut. This year, I’m kind of a wreck. It doesn’t help when my dad calls, telling me he’s holding an accounting job for me at the auto shop “just in case.” I tell him about the new position and he says it’s great that I’m not just giving up, and that the office in the auto shop has a window.

There’s enough uncertainty about my new position that I’m not fully reassured until I see Steez and he tells me to be at practice half an hour early tomorrow. Nobody I know, in fact, is gone the next day, which I take as a good sign. I get voicemail when I call Lee to tell him the news, but he calls back half an hour later and congratulates me. It’s the first time we’ve talked since that evening I was studying with Fisher. I don’t ask him what he meant about hanging out with Brian, and he doesn’t mention Brian again. He does say he should be able to make it down for my first pre-season game against Pelagia. I log in and buy him the tickets while we talk, and hang up feeling pretty good about where things stand, which is good because it leaves my mind clear to prep for the game.

Pre-season games are weird things. It’s almost like a practice with another team, but you’re keeping score, and oh by the way if you don’t perform well, you could be off the team in another week. Like a midterm in your college classes. It’s not the final, it’s not a real job, but it sure as hell is a test. And like a test, you pretty much know how well you do.

Technically, as the new guy, I should be with the third team, but after a couple series watching the second team play, Steez says to Coach Samuelson, “Let’s put Miski in.”

Coach chews on a rawhide stick, like a lot of the wolves who play football. When he takes the stick out of his muzzle and measures me with clear yellow eyes, I feel a bit of what opposing players must have felt, lining up across from him in his playing days.

“Do it,” he says, and goes back to his clipboard.

Steez waves a paw at me. “Get your helmet on, Miski,” he says. “Go out there next series and call Kintar in.”

I get set and look up into the stands, toward where Lee’s seats are. He’s up there all right—in the blue blouse, wearing a large white hat with a wide brim. For a moment, I’m back at Forester, jogging out onto the field with my “vixen” watching and cheering me on. I almost jog to the cornerback position because of that, which would be a big mistake. I make sure that’s the last mistake I come close to making.

I keep an eye on Lee now and then, and feel his encouragement. The plays all look routine, but only on one do I see any action, a run to my side where the opposing RB gets through our line. I tackle him at the knees and bring him down. It’d be nice to have a game-saving tackle or interception, but I’ll settle for not making any big mistakes. The position still feels weird to me; I should be further down the field, I should be shadowing the wideouts. But I’m keeping the practices in my head, all the plays and studying I’ve done, and I don’t screw up. When I run past Gerrard, coming off the field as Steez calls for the third-team defense, the coyote flashes me a grin and a nod.

I look for Lee, to give him a thumbs-up. He’s watching me, waves as I gesture to him, and then turns—not that I can tell at this distance, but he looks annoyed—to the person next to him. They have a brief, animated discussion, which is all I see before I have to pay attention to my teammates again. But I saw enough to hazard a guess that the person next to him is a spotted skunk.

After that, I can’t help looking up at the stands again several times. Lee’s watching the game, and me, and not talking to Brian, if that is who’s sitting next to him. By the time the final whistle sounds, I’m feeling better, if not great, about Brian’s presence.

We win the game, so the post-game speech from Coach is an upbeat one. It’s interesting to hear Coach Samuelson’s take on victory speeches as opposed to Coach Gallick (Hilltown), who was a real rah-rah kind of guy, or Coach Kimble (Chevali, last year), who wouldn’t let us enjoy a single moment of any kind of triumph without reminding us how much work we had to do.

Samuelson falls somewhere in between. “This game doesn’t mean anything,” he starts, and then he grins with that long-muzzled grin that only canids can manage. “Except it does. A win is a win, and I want us to get used to the feel of winning. I’m gonna spend a lot of time reviewing film with my staff to see who gives us the best chance of keeping that winning feeling going. Those of you with an interest in being part of that should be doing the same.” He looks around the room at all of us. “Nice job, men. Let’s get ready for the next one.”

Gerrard grabs me as I’m pulling on my shirt. “Nice work out there,” he says. “Come on, a couple of us are going down to Mick’s.”

I have a couple hours before I’m scheduled to meet Lee. I’d been looking forward to it because it’ll be the first time I’ve seen him since camp started that I won’t be completely wiped out by practice. “Is that where the starters hang out?”

He laughs and punches my arm. “I can’t invite ya to where the starters go yet,” he says. “But keep it up. Maybe in a few weeks. Come on, the defense is all going.”

I throw on the rest of my clothes and head off to the parking lot, where we all pile into four cars and head off to a local Irish pub I hadn’t known about. We’ve only been back home for three days since camp ended, so I’m still getting reacquainted with downtown Chevali. This pub is at the north end, in a whole section I never bothered to explore. There’s a big room in the back that they show the guys to, where we all sit down and grab beers and talk about the game. I never see who puts up his credit card for the tab, and in fact at the end of the evening when I offer to pay, I get waved off and laughed at and called ‘rook.’

Before that, though, the evening gets interesting and a little scary. It’s about an hour, hour and a half after we get there. The biggest worry on my mind is that Killer, down at the other end of the table, keeps talking to a couple of the young guys on the third team and squinting in my direction. I try to ignore him, because Gerrard and Carson are chatting with me, and not with him. But it’s at that moment that Fisher comes in.

He sits next to me, unsheathing his claws and tapping them on the pitted wood of the table. “Where you been?” I ask.

“I was on my way out,” he says, his voice low. “There was a vixen trying to get into the locker room.”

“You’re married,” I say, but already my fur’s prickling.

“Shut up and listen. There were a few rooks hanging around. They started hitting on her, and she started kinda flirting back. I wasn’t gonna say anything. It looked harmless.”

“Why would you have said anything?” I say, but I already know the answer.

The other guys have moved on to their own conversation. Fisher checks them before going on. “They got the falsies out of “her” dress. Turns out it was a guy in drag.”

“Takes all kinds,” I force myself to say.

He looks at me steady on. “Sure does,” he says. “They were gonna… I dunno what they were gonna do.”

“Was it Colin?” I am trying to stop my voice from shaking. I can’t tell how successful I am.

Fisher gets a beer slid over to him and snags it with a large, soft paw. “I escorted the young, uh, gentleman out and warned him to be careful what he tries in the future.”

Pubs are loud places. I can still hear the pounding of my heart. “Takes all kinds,” is all I can think of to say, feebly, again.

“Ain’t arguing with that,” he says, and now he looks right at me. “Just sayin’ that some people oughta think hard about what they got goin’ on before they bring it to the locker room.”

I want, badly, to ask if he recognized the fox. I actually claw a mark in the table thinking about it. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I tell myself. What a suspicious, stupid question it would be to ask, what a mountain of trouble it would open me up to.

“You hadn’t ever seen him around before, had you?” I say.

He looks at me again, takes a drink, and doesn’t answer.

I get up. “Gotta take a piss,” I say. I walk fast past the bathrooms to the back door and stand just outside it, fumbling with my cell phone. Image after image flashes through my mind: Lee getting pushed around by a bunch of football players, Lee with his dress torn, Colin and the gang of rooks he hangs out with waiting to confront me when I come in tomorrow. And, too, the photo of Brian in the school paper after he was beaten up. It takes me three tries to hit the right speed dial.