Divisions (Dev and Lee) (3 page)

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.”

Lee’s grin just gets wider. “Did you think when you woke up yesterday that you’d be in the owner’s box in Hellentown?”

His father flicks his ears around. “When I woke up yesterday, there were a whole lot of things I wasn’t thinking.”

Because I’m watching Lee, I see the twitch of his whiskers, but he keeps the smile. “Glad I could help broaden your horizons.”

I excuse myself to find a bathroom and leave the two of them to their conversation and go out into the hall. After finding the restroom, I slouch against the wall nearby and call up the Firebirds’ owner, Corcoran. Yeah, I have his number in my phone. I never get rid of a number, because, well, you never know.

It goes to voicemail, of course; he probably doesn’t recognize my number, and he’s watching the game with family. So I just say, “Hi, John, it’s Hal. Just wanted to let you know that your rising star tiger is doing great, which you know,” stupid, of course he knows that, “and his boyfriend and father are here with me in Hellentown watching the game. Thanks for calling Ponaxos and getting us into his box, by the way. The reason I called is I almost got this story ready on Miski and just wanted to know if I can mention that you flew the boyfriend and father to this game. Thanks.”

No matter how well you plan out what you’re going to say, you always end up going off on some stupid tangent. At least, I do.

I stare at my phone and then put it back in my pocket. Lee and Brenly can use a couple more minutes alone to chat, so I wander around the hallway. Nice soft carpeting in the Pilots brown and gold colors, abstract triangle patterns that catch my eyes, losing me in the pattern for a moment. A gold stripe runs along the white walls, with the Pilots logo every couple yards or so. The whole corridor smells of cougar, with a flair of sterilizer, as though it was brushed casually but isn’t so important in this part of the stadium as it is down where thousands of people walk around every week. That’s what it means to be rich: you don’t have to clean up after yourself.

I think about that for a while, about all those kids down on the field, most of them making more in a year than I made in the last ten. But when you cover sports, you can’t dwell on that because it’ll get into everything you do, everything you write. You’ll find bitterness tinging your articles about athletes’ lives, you’ll snap when talking to them. It’s just a bad idea.

My phone rings. I pull it up and it’s Corcoran. Well, I’ll be.

Over voices and party noise in the background, he tells me he appreciates the thought, but he doesn’t want people to think he traded the use of his private jet for control of the story. Which is what I knew he’d do, but I had to ask. I thank him and let him go. Nice, I think, putting the phone away. Made time for a two-bit reporter and a player’s extended family. But Corky’s always been like that, even as he was building up his empire of furniture stores: family first. He grew up poor and never believes he has enough to provide for his kids: that’s what drives him.

And those kids down there are pushed by something too. It’s easy to dismiss them, to say that they were just born with speed, with strength, with hand-eye coordination, but the country’s full of people as strong as these kids, as fast as these kids, who flame out of sports if they ever pick it up. The country’s full of businessfolk who started in the same or better circumstances as Ponaxos in there, who never made enough to buy this box, let alone a football team.

I pace up and down outside the corridor, thinking back to something Cim used to say, about how I wasn’t gonna go anywhere because I didn’t have that fire in me. I told her I didn’t need her making excuses for me, but maybe it isn’t about that; maybe it was never about that. Maybe she was right. I said it was ethics holding me back; she said it was lack of passion. She cited other cases of lack of passion too.

The crowd roars, and the door of the owner’s box opens again. Brenly pokes his narrow red muzzle out, scans the corridor until he finds me. “Hal,” he says. “Coming?”

“Yeah.” I scuff at the carpet and join them back in the box.

Lee’s already back up at the glass. The third quarter gets under way with the Firebirds on a good offensive drive. The box stays quiet as they get into the red zone, and then Aston tosses a screen pass to the cheetah wideout, Zaïd, number 83. He turns upfield and is drilled by one of the safeties, a grey fox, immediately.

And the ball comes loose. Hellentown recovers.

The box goes nuts. The weasel and his friends jump around, the owner’s family are standing, pumping their fists. Lee stands dejected by the window. Hell, I’m not feeling too good myself.