Reality Check (2010) (6 page)

The last Saturday before school, they took the bus up into the mountains to play Foothills High, their oldest rival and Thanksgiving Day opponent. Even though the starters were all out by the end of the third quarter, they still won 43-6. Hey! They were good. No one said it, of course: Saying anything like that meant laps, and lots of them. Cody had scored one touchdown on a ten-yard keeper, pitched to Jamal, a senior and star of the team--from Texas, but his father had been posted to the base in Little Bend the year before, maybe the happiest day in Coach Huff's whole life--for three more. College scouts came to watch Jamal play; even at this preseason scrimmage, there were at least three or four. One of them approached Cody at the end of the game, as the players walked off the field.

Penn State."
"Uh, hi," said Cody. They shook hands.
"Like the way you play football, son."
"Um," said Cody. "Uh."
"Ever been to Pennsylvania?"
"Uh-uh," said Cody. "No. Sir."
"Prettiest state in the whole union."
Cody hadn't known that, knew very little about the state

"Keep doin' what you're doin," said the scout. "Might be able to arrange a little meet-and-greet in the spring."
"Meet-and-greet?"
"A visit, like," said the scout. "To State College, all expenses paid."
"That would be . . . nice." Nice? Couldn't he have done better than that? A trip to State College, meaning he was being recruited by Penn State, would be awesome, fantastic, incredible. But too late: They were already shaking hands again. That night despite how tired he was, Cody lay awake for hours, thinking about Clea's college plan.

Foothills High was their oldest rival, but Bridger was the biggest school in the conference and had fielded the best teams for the past four or five seasons, even going to the state championship the year before. They had huge linemen, an all-state quarterback who could really throw, and a tailback and linebacker named Martinelli, bigger than Jamal and just as fast, who ranked number seventy-one on ESPN's list of the top one hundred high school players in the country.

The game was at Bridger, big crowd, first Friday night of the season, lights on but overwhelmed at the start by a wild western sunset, the sky all red and gold. The Rattlers, in their white road jerseys and blue pants, gathered around Coach Huff. "Team," he said. "Play as a team and you'll win." He held up his hand. The Rattlers all reached for it, coming together. "Run it down their fuckin' throats," said Coach Huff. The Rattlers roared.

Bridger won the toss and the Rattlers kicked off. Bridger marched right down the field, running Martinelli on sweeps, sometimes passing to number 80, a tall tight end, right over the middle. Cody played safety on defense, meaning right over the middle was his responsibility. Number 80 would slant in, taking three big strides, then turn and the ball would be there. All Cody could do was hit him right on the numbers as hard as he could, hoping to jar the ball loose. But the ball never came loose; number 80 didn't fight for extra yardage, was content to go down, both arms wrapped around the ball, reeling off six or seven yards a pop. The opening drive took half the first quarter: Bridger 7, Rattlers 0.

Dickie ran the kickoff back to midfield, and Jamal ran a sweep left, smothered by Martinelli for no gain; followed by an option right with a pitch to Jamal that went for three yards; and then an option right where Cody kept the ball, made what he thought was a nice move, and then got flattened by Martinelli, who'd somehow come all the way over from the other side, all his breath knocked clean out of him. No one had ever hit Cody harder, except for maybe Junior in practice. Cody fumbled the ball--was aware of it bouncing out of bounds, thank God--and then went a bit foggy. He tried to rise, failed, and was trying again when Junior reached down and helped him up. Cody staggered the slightest bit--surely not noticeable--and lined up for the punt, playing deep blocker. Jamal punted the ball away.

Cody remained foggy for most of the rest of the game, little of which stayed in his memory. On the next Bridger series, something happened in a pileup that pissed Junior off, pissed him off big-time. He went a bit crazy and there was no stopping him after that. Bridger double-teamed and triple-teamed him but none of it did any good. Junior mauled them all, doing his video-game sound effects at the same time:
"Bam! Crunch! Kapow!"
He put their center out of the game, and then the tight end, number 80, too, taking away that problem. Bridger's offense ground to a halt.

But Bridger's defense held. When they saw that the Rattlers weren't going to pass, they put everyone in the box and managed to stack up most of Jamal's runs despite Junior's blocking. At halftime, Cody, puking quietly in the toilet, heard Coach Huff from the locker room on the other side of the wall: "Got 'em right where we want 'em." But they were still down seven-zip. On the way back out to the field, Cody said something--he wasn't quite sure what--about maybe trying a pass. Coach Huff's face went all red. "Dint you get the message yet? We're gonna run it down their fuckin' throats."

The Rattlers went back out, resumed trying to run it down Bridger's fuckin' throats. They started moving the ball a bit better, getting some first downs. Junior put another kid on the sidelines. Jamal almost broke off a long run on a dive up the middle, Martinelli making a shoestring tackle. But every drive ended up stalling outside field goal territory, which in the Rattlers' case was about the twenty, although Dickie, their kicker, could easily miss from closer than that. And the whole time, through the third quarter and into the fourth, the fog in Cody's mind just wouldn't lift.

With less than a minute to go in the game, score still seven- zip, Rattlers' ball on their own thirty-two, and no time-outs remaining, Coach Huff called yet another option left. Cody took off, saw that Martinelli was shading toward Jamal, and cut inside, taking off for a fifteen-yard run that ended with another huge hit. Cody didn't have to look to see who it was; by now he knew Martinelli just by feel. But then a funny thing happened: His head cleared, just like that, as though Martinelli had descrambled what he'd originally scrambled.

"Huddle up," Cody yelled. The team huddled around him. Cody was suddenly aware of all kinds of things: the noise of the crowd, the smell of sweat, Jamal bleeding from the nose, Junior growling. The guard came in with the play from Coach Huff.

Green 86 left? That was the exact same play they'd just run. Cody glanced at the scoreboard clock in the end zone, the end zone they needed to reach, so far away. Thirty-two seconds and ticking.

All eyes widened. Coach Huff sent in every play. He'd never actually said changing the play in the huddle was forbidden. He hadn't had to: It was unthinkable.

"Blue three," Cody said. Blue three, the play action post to Dickie. For a moment, no one moved.
Then Junior said, "Drop the ball, Dickie, and I'll fuckin' kill you."
"On two," said Cody, clapping his hands. They clapped their hands.
The Rattlers trotted up to the line of scrimmage, took their stances. Martinelli, crouched and waiting between the tackles, stared into Cody's eyes, then shaded to his right, instinctively anticipating the play that Coach Huff had called.
"Hut," Cody called. "HUT!"
The ball slapped up into his hands. He turned. Jamal came pounding up and Cody slammed the ball into his belly, then pulled it back out. Jamal, hunched over, hit the line full speed, just as though he were carrying the ball, and got swarmed, Martinelli leading the charge. Cody took three steps back, the ball hidden behind his right leg, and looked downfield. And there was Dickie, all alone at the forty-five, hands up, pleading for the ball. Cody zinged it to him--a rope, spiraling perfectly against the night sky. Dickie caught the ball, pulled it in, and scampered all the way down the field and into the end zone untouched, no one even near him. The Rattlers went racing after him, screaming and jumping. Time on the clock read zero zero, meaning that after the extra point they'd go into overtime.
"Huddle up," Cody shouted. The Rattlers were still celebrating, punching each other and smacking Dickie on the head. "Dickie!" Cody yelled; Dickie had to make this kick. "Huddle up." The ref blew his whistle, starting the play clock.
The Rattlers huddled up. Cody felt energy all around him, enough to fight gravity, lift the team right off the ground. The guard came running in. But instead of saying, "Kick the bastard," which was the way Coach Huff called for the PAT, he said, "Green, eighty-six, left." Coach Huff's favorite play: They were going for the two-point conversion, the outright win, no overtime! "On three," Cody said, and clapped his hands.
The Rattlers took their stance on the two-yard line, Cody lined up under center, no kicker, no holder. Too late, Bridger realized the Rattlers weren't kicking the single-pointer, started looking confused. Martinelli raised his hands to call for a timeout, then remembered that Bridger, too, had none left, and lowered them.
"Hut," said Cody. "Hut, HUT!"
The ball slapped into his hands. He took off to the left, Jamal on the outside. Martinelli came sprinting over. Cody faked a pitch and Martinelli bought it, angling toward Jamal. At the same instant, Junior pancaked the end and Cody cut right. Someone hit him from the side. Cody rammed him with a straight arm, came free, saw the safety cutting across, ran right over him--ran right over him and into the end zone, into the end zone for two points! Two points and the game! They'd beaten Bridger! He was just starting to turn, about to raise the ball high in triumph, when Martinelli hit him helmet first, square on the side of Cody's left knee. Cody heard a horrible popping sound, felt a jolt of pain, the worst in his life, and crumpled to the ground.

"This is called a pivot shift," said Dr. Pandit, orthopedic surgeon at Western Memorial.
"What do I do?" said Cody, lying on an examining table.
"Just relax," said Dr. Pandit. He placed one hand under Cody's left knee, the other under the top of his calf, pressing sideways a little. Then he slowly pushed up, bending Cody's leg at the knee. "Nice and easy." All at once, Cody felt a strange sliding that seemed to be happening inside his knee--as though it were coming apart--followed by a sudden sharp pain. It made him hiss; he couldn't stop himself. "All right, now, all right," said Dr. Pandit. He released the pressure, gently straightened Cody's leg. "Okay," he said. "All there is to it. You can put those trousers back on now."
Cody put his pants on, slid his feet into his sneakers.
"Well?" said Cody's father, hovering by the examining table.
Dr. Pandit directed his answer to Cody. "Torn ACL," he said.
Cody knew what that meant before Dr. Pandit spoke another word: He was done for the season.
"But junior year's the year that counts," his father said, voice rising. "He doesn't play this year, he falls right off the radar."
"Radar?" said Dr. Pandit.
"Fuckin' hell," said Cody's father.
"Dad!" Cody said.
"Scouts, college, getting out of this goddamn town, his whole future--and you're saying that's all up in smoke?"
"The boy," said Dr. Pandit, "is sixteen years old. Surely his whole future--"
"Time for a second opinion," Cody's father said.
"That's your ri--"
"Come on, Cody. We're out of here." His father grabbed Cody's hand, pulled him forward. Cody missed his step, and his knee came out on the spot. He cried out in pain, so sudden and surprising it caught him completely unprepared.
"Jesus Christ," said his father, still sounding pissed off, but a kind of realization was dawning in his eyes.