Goal-Line Stand (4 page)

It’s time to get up and clock this guy,
he thought.

Cody lifted his head from the field. It felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. Frustrated, he lowered it back down.

As soon as I can move again, you’re a dead man, number 53,
he vowed.
If I can move again.

Now one of the three referees was bent over him. “You okay, son?” he asked.

The next thing he knew, Cody was on his feet. Pork Chop’s hand was on his back, steering him toward the sideline. He wondered if he had answered the ref’s question.

Coach Smith was waiting for him, arms crossed, eyes blazing. “Martin!” he snarled. “For heaven’s sake, get your pickin’ head in the game! What’s wrong with you? I thought you were a man. But if you’re gonna play football like a little kid, I suggest you turn in your gear and go find a swing set!”

Cody stared at his coach for a moment. He was shocked by the possible responses that were echoing
in his head. Any one of them would get him kicked off the team for sure.

Dear God,
he prayed fervently,
please help me keep these words that are inside my head right now
inside
my head!

When Coach turned his attention from Cody to argue an offside call with one of the refs, Cody grabbed the opportunity and slipped away to the end of the line of Raiders who stood watching the game, standing side by side between the twenty-five yard lines.

As the static in his head dissipated, Cody looked across the field, trying to find number 53. As he blinked back tears, uninvited words flashed in his mind in large, capital, movie marquee letters: MAMA’S BOY. LITTLE KID. SWING SET. WEAK. BABY. SOFT. PUNK. He tried to force them out of his head, but they only loomed brighter and bigger, taunting him.

He unsnapped his chin guard and removed his helmet, hoping that would clear his mind. Suddenly, his eyes locked on number 53, who was pointing at him from across the field and laughing as he said something to a teammate.

Cody quickly put his helmet back on.
Just wait till I get back in the game, fifty-three,
he seethed.
I’m puttin’ a big hurt on you.

He felt tears slithering down his face. But that was okay. It was a blistering day. He hoped everyone would think they were drops of sweat.

Cody stood on the sidelines and watched Mill Creek methodically march downfield for a touchdown. The Marauders wisely avoided the middle of the Grant line—and Pork Chop—and stuck to running sweeps and short out-patterns.

On Grant’s next offensive possession, Bart Evans underthrew his twin brother on an out-pattern and suffered his first interception of the young season. Mill Creek took over on the Raiders’ forty-one yard line.

On first down, the Marauders ran a QB sweep to the left. Back in the game now, Cody felt his heart race as he chased the play. A Creek blocker took Brett Evans out along the left sideline, leaving Cody one-on-one with Mike Riley, the QB, who lowered his head and charged forward. Cody kept his head up and tried to square his shoulders, preparing for a mighty collision.

Then something flashed through his mind. It wasn’t an image, but the split-second memory of the hit he had taken against Central. Reflexively, Cody looked to his right, fearing another blocker ear-holing him from the blind side.

But the hit came head-on. He felt Riley’s face mask plunge into his gut and then he felt himself tumbling backward. He hoped the impact would at least trip up Riley, but he knew that wasn’t the case, even before he rolled from his back to his stomach and watched the QB scamper into the end zone.

This time, Coach Smith didn’t even speak to Cody as he reached the sideline. He merely folded his arms and turned his back.

Grant was able to answer with a long drive of its own. Halfback Marcus Berringer cut the Mill Creek lead to a touchdown with a one-yard plunge.

After Creek returned the kickoff to its own thirty-three, Cody buckled his chinstrap and headed onto the field to join the defense. But Coach Smith grabbed him from behind, by the shoulder pads, and spun him around.

“No, Martin! You stay here with me, where it’s safe. A baby like you could get hurt out there.”

Cody glared at his coach, who sneered at him and then turned away. “Betts,” he barked, “get in there and play monster for Martin.”

On the bus ride home, Cody sat alone in the rear seat. He barely moved for the forty-five-minute trip, his eyes boring into the seat ahead of him. No one attempted to talk to him, not even Pork Chop.

Grant had won the game, 21-17, but Cody felt no joy, no sense of accomplishment. He felt only anger at Coach Smith.

The next week, Grant bumped its record to 3-1 with a win at Maranatha Christian School. Cody played only on special teams and missed an open-field tackle on a punt return. He expected Coach Smith to scream at him when he went to the sideline, but the coach just shook his head disgustedly.

Betts, who missed half of his attempted tackles because he closed his eyes on impact, seemed well on his way to becoming the team’s new monster back, despite his shortcomings.

In the following Wednesday’s scrimmage, Cody got no repetitions on defense, not even with the second team. As he trudged home from practice, he decided to tell his father about what was happening.

Maybe Dad will talk to Coach Smith,
he thought.
Maybe it takes an adult to talk sense into another adult. Betts is killing us at monster, and Coach doesn’t even seem to care. Besides, is Coach forgetting what happened to me this summer? Doesn’t he have any sympathy at all?

He was surprised to see his dad’s car in the driveway at 5:30. Luke Martin had been putting in heavy overtime lately. It wasn’t like when his wife was alive and family dinner was at six o’clock sharp every
night—unless Cody had a game or a meet. In those cases, they would stop for a burger afterwards. Often, a few of Cody’s fellow athletes and their parents would join them.

Cody entered the front door. The television was tuned to CNN. Dad sat in his large black recliner, head buried in his slender hands. Cody couldn’t hear much over the din of a correspondent giving a report from “war-torn” someplace or other, but from the way his father’s head and torso trembled, he was probably crying.

Cody slipped quietly upstairs to his room. He hadn’t seen his dad cry since the day of the funeral.

O
n the first Friday afternoon in October, Grant traveled to Lincoln. The team was smarting after a one-point loss to Cook—in which Cody played only on the kickoff and extra-point teams.

By the end of the first half of the Lincoln game, Cody had seen action on a grand total of three plays. One kickoff and two punts. The second half wasn’t much better. Coach Smith let him play monster on the Raiders’ final defensive effort, but Lincoln, up 23-3, ran two lackluster off-tackle plays, then had Locke, their QB, kneel in the backfield to run out the clock. Cody didn’t even bother to shower after the game.

I worked up a better sweat during the history test last week,
he thought as he changed out of his uniform.

Before he left the locker room to head for the bus, Cody found Pork Chop, who was muttering something about “complete and total disgrace” as he unwound tattered white athletic tape from his left wrist.

“Chop?” he asked tentatively, “I need to talk to you on the bus, okay? It’s important.”

Pork Chop looked up, studying his friend’s face. “Okay, Code.” He sighed. “All the cheerleaders are fighting over who should sit by me, but I guess I might as well break all their hearts.”

“This is about playing time, isn’t it,” Pork Chop said, as he shucked the wrapper off a Snickers bar.

Cody wearily punched the seat in front of him. “More like a
lack
of playing time. Chop, I’m thinking of quitting the team.”

Cody thought Pork Chop was going to spit peanuts, caramel, and chocolate all over himself.

“Are you trippin’?” Chop said. “This is four years we’ve been playing together. We’ve been the heart of every defense we’ve been on—even back in Bantams. Dude, you love football!”

“I know, Chop. But I love
playing
football, not watching it from the sidelines. If I just want to be a spectator, I’ve got the Broncos, or your brother and
the high school team. It just hurts too much to stand around.”

Pork Chop crumpled his candy bar wrapper and stuffed it into the pocket of his blue jeans. “You’ll get some PT soon. You’re just in Coach Smith’s doghouse right now. It’s happened to everybody. He even benched Berringer in the second half today for not hitting the holes fast enough.”

“Yeah, but Coach usually lightens up once he’s made his point. But with me, it’s like he’s going for a world-record grudge or something. Has he forgotten about all the good stuff I did earlier in the season? Is he senile or what? I think he hates me now. I don’t know if I’ll ever get any real playing time. It’s like I’m trapped in his doghouse. And I don’t need this kinda stuff in my life right now, know what I’m sayin’?” He buried his head in his hands and admitted quietly, “I miss her. I miss her every single day.”

Pork Chop sat back in his seat, studying the back of Coach Smith’s head seven rows in front of them. “I feel what you’re sayin’. Want me to say something to Coach?”

Cody shook his head furiously. “No way, Chop. That just seems all wrong to me. Besides, it would probably just make things worse.”

“It’s your choice, man. But just don’t quit, okay? I know that you don’t roll like that. Besides, if you quit
football, how are we going to play for the Broncos someday? Now
that
would make your mom proud.”

Cody sighed. “Well, maybe it’ll be just you playing for them. Me, I’ll probably be the water boy or something. That’s about what I am now. When I think about what I hoped this season would be—and how it really is—I just want to put my fist through a wall!”

A sly smile crept across Pork Chop’s face. “You’re mad, huh? Sometimes I play my best when I’m mad.”

Cody walked home from school. Pork Chop’s brother, Doug, had offered him a ride, but he declined, saying, “I might as well get some exercise today.”

He saw his Dad through the front window, rooted to his recliner and parked in front of the TV as usual. Cody didn’t feel like talking to him about the game—or anything—so he quietly raised the garage door and slipped inside. He sat on the weight-lifting bench that occupied one side of the two-car garage. The garage smelled of gasoline and stale grass clippings. He flopped onto his back, staring at the rough-hewn beams that crisscrossed the ceiling. He closed his eyes and remembered the last time he had spent any quality time in the garage.

It was late summer, two weeks after his mother’s funeral. He had sat on the concrete floor, plucking
chunks of mud, and brittle, yellowed, year-old grass from between the rubber cleats of his football shoes. They had felt loose during the seventh grade season, even with two pairs of thick socks, so he hoped they would fit his eighth grade feet perfectly. He had heard his dad complaining on the phone about the cost of the funeral. He didn’t want to add new football cleats to the equation.

Cody sighed. He remembered holding one of the shoes up to his face. The smell reminded him of the hay on Pork Chop’s farm. That, in turn, brought images of games of H-O-R-S-E in the Porter family driveway, sprint races down the long dirt road that led to their farm, and he and Chop spotting Doug as he bench-pressed extraordinary amounts of weight in the basement-turned-workout room.

Cody swung his legs off the bench and rose wearily to his feet. He wagged his head sadly. That day seemed so long ago. And so much had changed. Even with the burden of his mother’s death weighing down his soul, he had felt hope that day as he thought of the upcoming football season.

He had reason to be hopeful then. He was hurting, but football was the sport that let you wear armor. There was a pad or support for almost every body part. And the helmet, that was the best of all. It let you crash
into ball carriers or take head slaps from opposing blockers without getting your brains scrambled.

Putting on a football uniform was like a superhero changing into his costume and assuming a new identity. It transformed you—made you bigger and more powerful than you were in civilian clothes. Once in the crimson and white colors of Grant Middle School, he was no longer Cody Martin, skinny kid with a Santa Claus-size bag of insecurities and fears. He was Cody Martin, Monster Back.

Most importantly, during the hours of drills, scrimmages, and games—especially the games—he could often shake himself free from the pain of his mother’s death.

He thought about what Chop had said on the bus, “I play best when I’m mad.” That made sense. Maybe that’s where he had gone wrong. He’d lost the fire. He thought about what Coach Smith had called him.

“Little kid,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “I’ll show you little kid.” He picked up a ten-pound weight-lifting plate from the floor, cupped it in his right hand like a discus. Then, with a war cry that he was sure his dad would hear, even over the bluster of CNN, he hurled the weight into the garage drywall. The plate clunked to the floor, and Cody smiled as he saw the deep gouge it made in the wall. He felt the adrenaline coursing through his body.

“I wish it were game time right now,” he said, “because I am through being hurt. It’s time to make someone else hurt!”

He stood in the center of the garage, waiting for his dad to come charging in from the kitchen.
If he asks what happened
, Cody thought,
I’ll tell him exactly what happened. I’ll say, “I got mad and chucked a dime into the wall. So what?”

But his dad never showed up.

After several minutes of stalking back and forth across the length of the garage, Cody went to the door that connected the garage to the kitchen and quietly slipped inside. He made his way to the living room, taking slow, deliberate steps.

Dad’s
Wall Street Journal
lay across his lap. CNN was showing baseball highlights, but his dad would never know that the Yankees beat the Red Sox in extra innings. His head was tilted back to the ceiling, and he was snoring loudly. He sounded like one of the tractors on the Porter farm.

Man,
Cody thought,
he must be tired if he could sleep through that racket.

Monday’s practice was easy. Several Raiders were nursing injuries, so Coach Smith focused on drills and
formations, with a few “live” extra-point and field-goal attempts thrown in at the end.

Tuesday brought another scrimmage. Cody prepared for a long afternoon of spectating. He roamed the sideline, the desire for contact—for football—eating at him like a physical hunger. The frustration was so great that he thought he might bite through his rubber mouth guard, which he had taken to chewing to ease the stress.

He glared at Coach Smith.
He’s never gonna give me another chance,
Cody fumed.
We’re supposed to forgive each other seventy times seven. I’d be happy for just once from him. But it’s not gonna happen. Maybe I’ll go out for cross-country next fall instead of football.

He stopped thinking for a moment to watch Coach Smith, who had grabbed Terrance Dylan by the face mask, screaming at him, “If you don’t learn the difference between a flag pattern and a post pattern, you’re done playing wide receiver!”

Cody shook his head. Dylan was brand new to Grant this year. And he was a great player. He didn’t deserve the treatment he was getting. Cody thought of one of his favorite Old Testament words—
smite
.

Smite Smith,
he thought, smiling to himself.
That’s what Dylan ought to do. I’d smite Smith if I were Dylan right now—especially if I had his biceps.

The sound of Coach Smith’s voice unsnapped Cody from his thoughts.

“Martin!” he spat. “Get over here!”

Cody felt his heart accelerate as he obeyed.

“Martin,” Coach Smith said, without looking at him, “I’m gonna give you another chance to be a monster. But I mean just one more chance. You play tentatively out there, like your head’s in the clouds—or somewhere else—and I’ll bench you for the rest of the season. That is, if you don’t get your head handed to you first. Football is a violent game, played by violent athletes, not philosophers and dreamers. Understand?”

Cody nodded as he saw his coach turn to him. “Good. Now, get in there for Betts. He’s missed three straight tackles. At least I know you’ll try to put a hit on somebody, not grope around like an old man looking for his glasses!”

Wow,
Cody thought as he sprinted to the defensive huddle,
the way you’ve been treating me, Coach, that’s almost a compliment!

“Welcome back to the defense!” Pork Chop said, smiling, as Cody joined the huddle. “Let’s show Coach Smith somethin’!”

Cody nodded. He thought of the damage he had done to the garage wall—the sense of power and relief it brought him. He couldn’t smite Smith, but he vowed that someone was going to get rocked. As Bart
Evans called out his snap count, Cody’s muscles tingled, as if electrically charged. Brett Evans went in motion, eventually coming set in the left slot between Paul Getman, the tight end, and Dylan, the other wide receiver.

“Slot left!” Cody barked, sliding into position in front of Brett. On the snap, Brett rocketed forward. Cody backpedaled, maintaining a two-yard cushion between himself and the lanky receiver. Ten yards into his pattern, Brett planted his left foot and cut toward the sideline.

A down-and-out,
Cody thought.
Pretty crisp pattern, Brett, but I’m on it.

Cody shot a glance into the backfield as he closed in on Brett. Bart cocked his arm and fired the pass, a near-perfect spiral. Brett was running out of field as he stretched for the pass, trying to reel in the ball and keep his feet in bounds at the same time.

As he prepared to slam into Brett, Cody saw that the ball was going to be off target. There was no way Brett could catch it unless he stepped out of bounds.

Cody didn’t care. The pain of his mother’s death, the humiliation of Coach Smith’s taunts, the embarrassment of half a season on the bench—he loaded it all into one furious hit, which he unleashed on Brett Evans with a Neanderthal grunt.

He crashed into Brett’s exposed left flank. The force of the impact drove the receiver into the bench along the sideline. He tumbled over the bench, a sprawling mess of arms and legs, before landing with a thud on his back. Bart Evans was the first one to his motionless brother’s side. “He’s out!” Cody heard him screaming, his voice quivering. “He’s out cold! Somebody call 911!”

Panic flooded Cody’s system. After making the hit, he had headed back to the field to collect praise from Pork Chop. But Chop sprinted right by him, toward the downed wideout.

Cody stood in the middle of the field, both hands clutching his face mask. “God, please forgive me,” he whispered. “What have I done?”

“You stink, Martin!” Bart said, ripping off his helmet and marching toward midfield. “That was a cheap shot and you know it! This is just a scrimmage—what’s wrong with you? If he’s hurt bad, I’ll see you after practice!”

“I’m sorry,” Cody said quietly as he felt his head droop.

Cody watched as Bart returned to his brother’s side. Half the team was crowded around the fallen receiver. Periodically, one of the Raiders would steal a glance over his shoulder at Cody, who stood frozen at midfield, alone like a leper.