Football Champ (6 page)

“
SO
,”
TATE ASKED
, “
HE
thinks you can play defense or he doesn’t?”

Troy and Tate sat together, dangling their feet off the iron railroad bridge that crossed the Chattahoochee River not too far down the tracks from the back of Troy’s house. A fat white moon glared down at them, its light buttering the slab-sided ripples in the water below. Above the river, black wings flickered, darted, and dove—bats searching for a meal.

“He said I got the basics down,” Troy said, “and I finally made a tackle he liked.”

“Sounds like he was pretty rough on you,” Tate said.

“Well, he’s our coach,” Troy said. “I
want
him to treat me like everybody else.”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Tate asked.

Troy felt something boiling up inside him he couldn’t really explain, an anger squeezed tight, making it fester. His hands gripped the cool, rusty metal girder above his head.

“You think they’re going to get married?” he asked.

“I don’t know, do you?” Tate asked quietly.

“They kiss each other a lot,” Troy said, swatting at one of the few mosquitoes still alive this late in the fall. “But that’s not it. It’s the way they sometimes
look
at each other.”

“That wouldn’t be a bad thing, right?” Tate asked. “Seth Halloway for your dad? I mean, Seth marrying your mom.”

Troy clenched his teeth and expelled hot blasts of air through his nose, shaking his head.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said to her. “
Your
father is sitting on the couch with your mother right now watching a movie.”

Tate put a hand on his leg. “You’re right, I don’t know, and I’m sorry, but Seth’s a great guy. Look how he helped you get the job with the team.”

“I’m helping him, too,” Troy said. “I’m helping the whole team. My mom says ten thousand a game is a great deal for the Falcons, but as soon as it looks like someone might find out, I’m the one who has to go into hiding, like I’m doing something wrong. But I’m not. I’ve got a gift; that’s what Gramp says it is. Why do
adults always have to pretend? That’s why you never know what they’re really thinking.”

Troy hopped up and started down the tracks for home. Tate scrambled after him.

“Don’t get mad at
me
,” Tate said, catching up to him and yanking on his arm to slow him down.

“I’m not,” Troy said, his shoulders sagging. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze. “I’m sorry, Tate. You’re the best friend anyone could want. I can’t talk like this to anyone else. Heck, I shouldn’t even be feeling like this. You’re right. Seth is nice to my mom, to me, to our whole team. So why do I feel like this?”

Tate sighed and turned, starting down the tracks at an easy pace before she said, “The thing with your dad, not knowing him, not ever meeting him, I’m sure that makes it hard.”

“My dad abandoned me,” Troy said.

“But you don’t want to abandon him,” Tate said. “That’s what I think this is. You really like Seth. Maybe you see him and your mom getting along and you can see Seth being a part of your family. That makes you happy on one side, but you kind of feel bad about it on the other side.”

“The
stupid
side,” Troy said, grabbing a stick from the edge of the bank and switching it back and forth between his hands.

“It’s not stupid,” Tate said. “It’s just complicated. But
liking Seth doesn’t have to mean anything bad about your father. If your father is anything like you, he’d want you to have Seth around.”

They walked for a while, passing the spot where the path led up through the pine trees to Troy’s house but not coming to a stop until they were even with the Pine Grove Apartments, where Tate lived.

“Okay,” Troy said, patting her shoulder, “see you in the morning.”

“You’re sure it’s okay that Nathan and I go with you?” Tate asked.

“My mom told me that Mr. Langan said he’d be happy to have you guys,” Troy said.

“The owner’s box,” Tate said, staring into the glow of the streetlights scattered throughout the apartment complex. “Wow.”

“I’d rather be on the field,” Troy said. “I see it clearer down there. I don’t know, I think it’s something to do with being up close, little things like the way a quarterback licks his fingers if it’s a pass, or how a running back will tighten his shoulder pads if he’s getting the ball.”

“But you’ve called the right plays from the stands before,” Tate said. “You can do it. I know you can.”

Tate started down the path and Troy stood there, watching her go.

“Tate,” he said.

She stopped and turned.

“If that guy catches me tomorrow, I’m not running, and I’m not hiding anymore,” Troy said.

“How’s he gonna catch you?” Tate asked. “You’ll be in the owner’s box.”

“I know,” Troy said. “He probably won’t, but if he does, it makes me feel better to know what I’m going to do.”

Tate stood for a moment, then shrugged, letting her arms flop to her sides, and said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Probably not,” Troy said, “but that’s what I’m going to do.”

THE NEXT DAY, TROY,
Tate, and Nathan rode to the Georgia Dome with Troy’s mom and Seth. Troy couldn’t help comparing the Tigers’ upcoming championship game with the Falcons’ position in their own league. A win today could put the Falcons in first place in their division, and they would begin to think realistically about a championship of their own. Before Seth left them for the team locker room, he pulled Troy aside.

“Hey,” Seth said, “about yesterday.”

“I know, you do what you have to,” Troy said.

“Within limits, yes,” Seth said, nodding his head. “But I got a little carried away yesterday. I’m sorry I pushed you so hard. Defense is different, you know. You’ve always been a quarterback, but I know you’ve got that mean streak under the surface, that thing you
need to play defense. I was just trying to bring it out. I only want to help you, Troy. You know that, right?”

Troy looked up into the big player’s eyes and saw real concern. Troy was afraid his own eyes might start to water, so he looked away and nodded and said, “Sure, I do. Thanks, Seth.”

Seth mussed Troy’s hair and they wished each other good luck. Troy’s mom took Troy and his friends up the elevator and let the three of them off at the door of the Falcons owner’s box before she hurried off to her job. Bob McDonough, Mr. Langan’s security guard, a tall, silent former Secret Service agent, stood just inside the suite. When McDonough saw the three of them, he held out a hand and Troy, Tate, and Nathan all slapped him five on their way in. The sitting area was decked out in dark granite and wood, with couches, chairs, a bar, and a huge plasma TV screen. About a dozen adults dressed in blazers and pants or dresses milled about, along with a handful of kids, all eating, talking, or watching the pregame show on the big TV.

Nathan headed right for the buffet table, where he loaded a plate with four hot dogs, heaping them with mustard and sauerkraut and biting into one before he even sat down. Behind the bar, two servers dressed in white shirts and black pants busied themselves preparing food, pouring drinks, and refreshing the buffet. Kneeling on the floor with his back to the suite, a third server loaded bottles of soda into a refrigerator. Behind
them, another door led into a kitchen with its own entrance for the workers out in the hall.

Mr. Langan appeared and shook hands with all of them, raising his eyebrows when his fingers came away from Nathan’s mitt with a smear of mustard.

“Sorry,” Nathan said through a mouthful of food.

“No, I’m…glad to see you kids eating,” Mr. Langan said. “Get some sodas, too.”

“I’m on that,” Nathan said, hopping up from his spot on the couch, attacking the silver tub of iced drinks, and scooping up a handful of peanut butter cookies on the way back to his seat.

“Troy? Tate?” Mr. Langan said. “Hungry? There’s more than just hot dogs.”

Tate blushed and shook her head, and Troy said, “Thanks. I ate lunch before I came.”

“Okay,” Mr. Langan said to Troy, his face turning serious, “we win this one and Carolina loses and we’re in first place. Just like that, last to first in four weeks. You feeling good?”

Troy gave him a thumbs-up.

“Great. Let me show you what we’ve got set up.”

The suite was split into two separate sections connected to the lounge area. Nathan and Tate would sit in the bigger section of plush seats with Mr. Langan, his son Sam, who was the same age as they were, and the rest of the owner’s family, business associates, and friends. Troy was shown through another door off to
the side, a glassed-in area that looked like a small split-level office. Stairs led to the lower level, where three of the team’s top executives sat at a long countertop covered with papers and telephones, looking down on the field.

Above them, in the darkest corner of the space, was a single desk with a high-backed leather chair that swiveled side to side.

“Right here,” the owner said, pointing to the seat. “It’s where I sometimes sit. You can use this headset to talk with the coaches.”

Troy nodded, and Mr. Langan let himself out through the door, disappearing into the lounge. Troy sat down and put on the headset. He could see the entire field. In front of him was also a computer, a pair of binoculars, and a gray box with a control for the headset’s volume and a mute button. Another plasma TV hung from the ceiling for watching replays. Troy wouldn’t, though, because he’d need to look carefully for which players the Seahawks sent on and off the field.

While he couldn’t exactly explain how he knew what the other team was going to do, he did know that different kinds of players meant certain formations and plays. Two tight ends and one wide receiver, for example, made it more likely a team would run the ball than if they had no tight ends and three wide receivers instead.

Troy heard the voice of Jim Mora, the Falcons’
defensive coordinator, on the other end of the headset.

“Troy? These guys are pretty darn good,” Coach Mora said. “We’re going to need you today. You all set, buddy? You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Troy said, locating the coach down on the sideline and returning his wave. “You?”

“One hundred percent,” the coach said, giving a thumbs-up.

From where Troy sat, he couldn’t see his friends or Mr. Langan on the other side of the partition. With the executives busy talking on their phones, taking notes, and conferring with each other in low tones, Troy felt completely isolated—a good thing. He turned the volume knob on the headset all the way down and let his eyes scan the field, floating over the space where the Seahawks sent players in and out from the sideline and huddled on the field. He needed to absorb the entirety of what the Seahawks did. It would take a couple of series—two or three, depending on how many plays they ran—before the patterns would emerge, just like the holograms on the comics page in the Sunday paper. When they did, Troy would see clearly what the Seahawks’ next step would be. He’d know the play.

The first two times he’d done this, Jim Mora had pestered him, asking when it would happen. Then, two weeks ago, before their game against Tampa Bay, Troy explained that the best thing was to just let him be, and he was right. Tampa Bay had run just eight plays
and hadn’t even completed their second series when it hit him. He knew the coach wouldn’t pester him today.

The Seahawks won the toss, received the kickoff, and drove down to the Falcons’ seventeen-yard line on a ten-play drive before kicking a field goal on fourth and six. Troy watched, keeping his mind blank, just letting the information sink in, but for some reason—maybe because he was so far from the field—things seemed fuzzy, like talking on a cell phone with a weak signal. Seth shuffled off the field with the rest of the defense. Several times during the series, he’d been knocked flat by the Seahawks’ offensive line. Twice he got to the hole a split second too late to make a tackle, and another time his pass drop was too shallow to keep the tight end from making a twenty-yard reception.

The Falcons took the ball, sputtering after just five plays, ten yards short of the fifty-yard line, and punted to the Seahawks. Three plays later, Shaun Alexander, the Seahawks’ star runner, blasted through a hole up the middle. Seth threw himself in front of the runner, but Alexander lowered his shoulder and plowed right through Seth, all the way to the Falcons’ forty-four before being brought down by DeAngelo Hall. Seth got up slowly, barely making it back to the defensive huddle, and was late calling the play that Coach Mora signaled in. The Seahawks snapped the ball and Matt Hasselbeck completed a touchdown pass to an uncovered receiver. The Georgia Dome erupted in boos.

Jim Mora didn’t say anything, but Troy noticed him conferring with Seth as he came off the field and both of them looking up at the owner’s box, obviously wondering if Troy’s genius was close to kicking in. Troy swallowed and wondered if the whole thing with Peele, and worrying and watching the game from the owner’s box, had stifled his gift. The Falcons’ offense sputtered again, racking up only thirteen yards before fumbling and leaving the field under more boos. Two plays later, the Seahawks scored again on a thirty-seven-yard run by Alexander.

With the score now 17–0, one of the executives beneath Troy turned around holding up a red telephone and saying Troy’s name until he came out of his trance.

“Troy,” he said. “Mora is asking if something’s wrong with your headset. He’s talking to you and you’re not answering.”

“Oh,” Troy said, “sorry. I’ve got the volume down. Thanks. I’ll get with him.”

Troy turned the volume up and heard Jim Mora’s heavy breathing.

“You got anything?” Mora asked.

“I’m sorry, Coach,” Troy said. “I’m trying.”

“I know you said not to push you, buddy,” the coach said, “but we’re taking a beating down here. If we wait much longer, this thing might be too far gone to save. Is something wrong?”

Troy clenched his fists. His palms were slick with sweat. He shook his head to try to clear the cobwebs.

Just then one of the servers pushed into the small space carrying a tray of drinks.

Big pale eyes locked onto Troy from behind their thick round lenses. A small smile crept onto the face of Brent Peele.

“Troy,” Coach Mora said, his voice urgent, “I said, ‘Is anything wrong?’”

“Yeah,” Troy said. “A lot.”