Gym Candy (8 page)

A minute or two later, the Rogers players rushed onto the field. The noise that the Pasco fans had let loose worked like a challenge to the Rogers side. They stood and hollered louder and longer.

Pasco's warm-up routine was good, but Rogers's was amazing. Their coach blew his whistle and immediately the players rushed toward the goal line, formed a perfect circle with the captains in the middle, and started doing jumping jacks, sit-ups, pushups. Next came another whistle, and within seconds they had broken up into different subgroups, and each subgroup had a coach directing it. At the ten-yard line, two sets of linemen charged each other as a running back practiced hitting the holes. At the thirty, the quarterbacks took turns throwing to receivers. Along the sidelines, the punter kicked to the return men. By the end zone, the placekicker practiced field goals.

A horn sounded and both teams lined up at midfield. As the stadium announcer called out the name of each player, people cheered, but when the stars were announced, the roar would go up a dozen decibels. After the introductions came "The Star-Spangled Banner," and then finally the kickoff.

All through the first half, I wasn't quite sure what I was watching. It was supposed to be a game between the two best teams in the state, but Rogers seemed mediocre. They had only a handful of plays, and they ran them from the same formation: two backs, a wide out, and a receiver in the slot. Sometimes they'd send
their fullback right up the middle; sometimes they'd run off tackle with the halfback; sometimes the slot receiver, coming in motion just before the ball was snapped, would take a handoff from the quarterback and go wide. They were incredibly crisp, just as you'd expect after watching their warm-ups, but the whole offense was simple.

On most of their possessions, Rogers made a first down or two, and then Pasco would stop them and they'd punt. They did have great special teams—time after time their punter would pound the ball down the field, and the cover team would pin Pasco deep in their own territory. But it didn't look as though Rogers could ever score.

When Pasco had the ball, the game kicked into high gear. Leander was like the Cheshire cat—now you see him, now you don't. Their quarterback didn't throw much, but when he did, he rifled the ball to his two wide receivers, both of whom had great hands. Pasco pushed Rogers around as if they were a JV team. Or at least, Pasco pushed them around until they got inside the twenty-yard line. But once they reached the red zone, something always seemed to go wrong. On the first drive it was a penalty for a block in the back, on the next drive Leander was hit so hard he coughed up
the ball, on another there was an interception in the end zone. Pasco outgained Rogers four to one, but it wasn't until just before halftime that they finally pushed the ball into the end zone on a fourth and inches play, and even then no one was really sure Leander made it.

Throughout the game, Carlson sat with one group of guys or another. He'd talk to them for a few minutes and then leave. At halftime, he came down and sat with us. I tensed up, and I could tell DeShawn and Drew did, too. "Tell me your names again," he said, "and your positions." When I told him my name, his eyebrows went up. "You're the freshman who got stopped a yard short on the last play against Foothill. I was at that game. Very exciting."

"A foot short," Drew said. "He was only a foot short."

He smiled wryly at Drew. "Okay. A foot." Then he paused before saying: "Short."

None of us spoke for a while. Carlson scratched the side of his face and then looked back to me. "So, who's going to win?" he said.

It was a no-brainer.

"Pasco," I answered.

"You boys think so, too?"

Drew and DeShawn nodded in agreement.

"You sure?"

"Pretty sure," DeShawn said. "They're ahead by six, and they could be ahead by twenty-six. I think they'll blow Rogers out."

Carlson nodded, then looked at Drew. "You're a quarterback, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, Mr. Quarterback. Tell me this. It's fourth and one. You've got the ball. Which defense scares you more: Pasco's or Rogers's?"

Drew laughed. "Fourth and one? Those Rogers guys are tough, that's for sure. I guess I'd rather go against Pasco."

Carlson stood. "Enjoy the second half, gentlemen." With that, he walked over to another group of guys.

"He actually thinks Rogers is going to win," DeShawn said. Then he shook his head. "What's he been smoking?"

I kept quiet. If I'd had to bet, I'd have picked Pasco. But something my dad said kept running through my mind:
Let a team hang around, and they'll end up beat
ing you.
Pasco had definitely let Rogers hang around.

The third quarter seemed no different than the first two. Pasco kept piling up the yardage but would then self-destruct in the red zone. Rogers would squeeze out a first down or two, and out would come their incredible kicker. After the punt, Pasco would drive down the field again but never push it all the way into the end zone.

Near the end of the third quarter, Carlson came our way again. "Notice anything?" he said. We looked onto the field. None of us saw anything. "Check out the Pasco guys. They're all leaning forward; they've all got their hands on their knees, sucking air. Those guys are gassed." He paused while we looked. "Now look at the Rogers players. Standing tall, every last one of them."

Halfway into the fourth quarter, with the score still 6–0, Pasco had the ball near the fifty. On first down, the quarterback dropped back to pass. Rogers blitzed a safety; the Pasco fullback who was supposed to block him never saw him. The safety blind-sided the quarterback just as he started to pass. The ball floated like a party balloon toward the middle of the field. Rogers's cornerback cut in front of the intended receiver, plucked the ball out of the air, and took off. Fifty ... forty ... thirty ... twenty ... somebody dived at his feet
but came up short ... fifteen ... ten ... five ...

Touchdown Rogers!

It was so unexpected that it took the Rogers fans a few seconds to start roaring, but once they started, you'd have sworn fifty thousand people were screaming. The placekicker split the uprights with the extra point, putting Rogers ahead 7–6.

With the lead, the Rogers guys were supercharged. They held Pasco on downs on the next possession, blowing through the line on each play. The Pasco punter got off a high spiraling punt that pinned Rogers back on their own twenty-yard line. A couple of running plays got Rogers nine yards, leaving them with a third down and one yard to go for a first down.

In similar spots all game long, Rogers had run the fullback on a dive into the line. This time the quarterback faked the handoff and dropped back to pass. From high above we could see the tight end come wide open in the middle of the field. The pass was perfectly thrown; the tight end caught the ball in stride at the forty-five yard line, and he was off to the races—no Pasco player came within ten yards of him.

Pasco had one final possession, but they had no life at all. On fourth and ten, their quarterback tossed the ball about five yards behind his intended receiver.
Rogers took over and ran out the clock. When the final horn sounded, DeShawn stood up. "You know something? Our new coach knows football."

A bunch of things happened over the Christmas break, most of them good, one of them strange, and the last one great.

I turned sixteen the day after school broke for the holidays. My mom took me to the department of licensing off Greenwood. During football season, I hadn't had much time to practice driving. Guys on the team had talked about how they'd flunked on their first try, so I was nervous, but I did okay with everything except parallel parking. At the end, the examiner handed me a sheet with the number 82 on top. "Congratulations," she said.

I drove the Honda home. When we were inside, my mom gave me a lecture on driving responsibly. She'd printed off the Internet a page with twenty safe-driving rules, and she had me sign at the bottom of the page. "Break any of these," she said, "and you lose your driving privileges. Understood?"

That next morning my dad came downstairs while I was eating breakfast. "I hear you passed your driving test," he said.

"First try."

"It took me three. I kept rolling through stop signs." He poured himself a cup of coffee. "You got anything planned for this morning?"

"I was going to call Drew."

"Don't. It's time I taught you how to drive the Jeep. That is, if you want to learn."

"You bet I want to learn."

"All right then. Finish your breakfast." He stopped and gave me one of those looks that let you know there's a joke that you're not in on. "I know the perfect place."

He took Fifteenth across the Ballard Bridge and turned toward Discovery Park. He wound along one of the wooded park roads for a while and then made a quick turn into a driveway and put on the brakes. "Okay, let's switch seats."

I looked up. In front of me were hundreds of tombstones. "This is a cemetery."

He laughed. "Like I said—the perfect place to learn."

It turned out he was right. There were no other cars, not one, so when I screwed up engaging the clutch and
the Jeep lurched forward and then died—which happened a lot—nobody was behind me to honk. The roads in the cemetery meandered, turning this way and that, so I was constantly shifting back and forth from second to third to second. All through it were rolling hills that gave me a chance to practice engaging the clutch and working the emergency brake. It took a while, but after an hour I had the knack. "You're pretty good," my dad said when he took the wheel back. "A couple more times and you'll be ready to go on the road."

Then came the strange thing.

Instead of going home, my dad drove over to I-5. "Where we going?" I said.

"You'll see."

We went north to Mountlake Terrace, and he wound his way through a bunch of back roads. "There," he said, pointing to a billboard. gun range—first timers free! the sign promised. He followed a gravel road about half a mile before pulling into the parking lot. "You're sixteen," he said. "Time you learned how to fire a gun."

"A gun? What for?"

"It's something every man should know how to do." We got out of the Jeep and walked across the parking lot. When my dad pushed open the door, little bells rang. A leathery-faced guy behind the counter was watching an NBA game on the television.

"What can I do for you?" he said.

"Is the first time really free?" my dad asked.

He laughed. "Not exactly. It'll end up costing you ten bucks. What do you want to shoot?"

"Not me. My son. I want him to learn how to shoot a gun."

"What size?"

"You got a little Colt he could use? A revolver?"

"Sure. You want to show him, or do you want me to?"

"I'd rather you did it," my dad said. "I'm no expert."

"That'll cost a little more."

"No problem."

The leathery guy turned to me. "Okay, son, this way."

We walked through a door to an indoor firing range. Before he did anything else, Bert Bronson—that was the name on the guy's shirt—gave me the rundown on gun safety. Then he nodded toward a target pinned up on the opposite wall and handed me a Colt revolver. "Let's see what kind of eye you got."

The whole thing had seemed like a joke until Bert handed me the gun. When I felt the cold metal in my hand, everything changed. It was small, not much bigger than my hand; still, it was a real gun with real bullets. You hold a gun, and you've got life or death in your hand.

I listened carefully as Bert gave me some tips on holding a gun and aiming it and on squeezing the trigger. "A little revolver like this doesn't have much recoil," he said, "but it takes some getting used to."

He was right. At first, the gun kept jumping in my hand, making me fire way high. But after a while I was able to hit the target, if not the bull's-eye. "Good enough," Bert Bronson said. "This isn't exactly a marksman's gun."

We walked back to the lobby area. The NBA game was over and my dad was sitting on a plastic chair, reading a newspaper. "That it?" he said.

"Not a whole lot to a little Colt," Bert said. "Kind of a squirt gun with a jolt. Now if you'd like him to learn how to handle a rifle, that's different."

"Another time," my dad said. He went to the counter and paid. "I appreciate your help."

"Don't mention the gun range to your mom," he said as he backed the Jeep up and returned to the road. "She wouldn't understand."

The great thing happened last.

Just before Christmas my Grandpa Leo and Grandma Harriet came, as usual. When Grandpa Leo found out that I had my driver's license, he shook his head back and forth. For the first time ever, they didn't insist on taking me to McDonald's, and I sure didn't mention miniature golf. Mainly they stayed in the living room, talking with my mother. Christmas Day, all five of us went to church.

My mom went to services every Sunday, but my dad went only on Christmas and Easter, and that's when I went. When we came back, I opened my presents. I got clothes, some books, a few gift cards from my mom, and two hundred dollars from Grandpa and Grandma. But I didn't get anything from my dad. He raised his index finger and mouthed the word "Later."

The day after Christmas Mom took my grandparents to the airport. "That wasn't so bad," she said when she returned.

"Leo is looking old," my father said.

My mom nodded. "I know. Mom says he's starting to forget things."

They fell silent for a moment. Then my dad turned to me.

"Do you like the Jeep, Mick?"

"Yeah, sure," I said. "It's great."

He took the Wrangler keys out of his pocket and laid them on the table. "Good, because it's yours. Merry Christmas."

"Are you serious?"

"Completely." He paused. "You'll have to work for me to pay for insurance and gas. I figure four hours a week ought to cover it."

I guess my mouth was hanging open in disbelief. My mom explained:

"Mick, Drew's dad has been driving you everywhere. We know he has. All right, there was nothing to be done. Your dad was working and I was working. But we are not going to take advantage of him for three more years. You've got your license, so it just makes sense, what with practices and games, for you to have your own car."