Million-Dollar Throw (6 page)

Tonight Nate had no command.

Short passes, long passes, didn’t matter. The surprise tonight was when he completed one. When Coach finally gave Eric a few snaps before they finished, the way he always did, he pulled Nate aside and said, “Your arm okay?”

“I’m
feeling
fine,” Nate said. “I just feel like my brain and my arm didn’t know each other tonight.”

“Maybe that was your problem tonight,” Coach Rivers said. “Maybe you were just thinking too much.”

Nate knew Coach was probably right. What he couldn’t figure out was this:

Thinking too much about
what
?

A
ll week long, Nate was expecting his dad to go to the Blair game. Chris Brodie had said he’d switch his schedule around, that instead of working on Saturday this week, he’d work one extra night at Big Bill’s the following week.

Nate told his dad he didn’t have to do that, give up one of the few times during the week when he could still have dinner with Nate and his mom. He knew what a grind it was for his dad to come home at eleven most nights, then get up the next morning and try to sell real estate.

“I’m not doing it because I have to,” his dad had said. “I’m doing it because I’ve got prime tickets to watch the best thirteen-year-old quarterback in the state.”

“Dad,” Nate said. “It’s just one game.”

And his dad had said, “Someday when you have a son who’s the quarterback and realize just how few of these Saturdays there really are, you’ll understand.”

It was eight o’clock Saturday morning when the phone rang, and Nate got a sinking feeling in his stomach. It was the manager at Big Bill’s, calling to tell Chris Brodie that the man he’d switched with had called in sick and that Nate’s dad was going to have to work that day after all.

Nate could hear only bits and pieces of his dad’s side of the conversation, because as soon as his dad knew who it was on the other end of the line, he walked out of the kitchen. But one word Nate kept hearing over and over was “please.”

His dad pleading with the man.

When he came back into the kitchen, he said, “I have to work,” in a voice that sounded as small as if it were coming from upstairs.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Nate.

Then he looked at Nate’s mom for a long time, what felt like forever to Nate just because the look on his dad’s face was so sad, and said, “I hate this.” He walked out of the kitchen again and they heard the slow, heavy sound of him walking up the stairs.

When he came back down, he was wearing the red “Big Bill” shirt that he had to wear to the store, one that Nate knew his dad had come to hate, knew because he had once heard him tell Nate’s mom he hated it, that it was like a uniform announcing to everybody what was happening to him.

Like Abby’s orange sunglasses.

Blair called themselves the Bears.

“Pretty sure it isn’t short for Care Bears,” LaDell said when they started their stretching.

“Oh, they care all right,” Malcolm said. “Mostly about giving smackdown beatdowns.”

“You really think they want to do both?” Nate said.

“Remember last year’s game against those suckers?” Pete said. “They thought they
had
given us a smackdown beatdown, and then you hit them with those two long passes in the fourth quarter.”

“I remember,” Nate said.

He remembered because that was the beauty of sports. There were games you watched and games you played that you knew you’d never forget as long as you lived.

He didn’t just remember the two touchdown passes, one to Pete and one to Eric. Nate also remembered how Blair’s nose tackle, Willie Clifton, had absolutely laid him out about a half second after Nate had released the ball to LaDell on the conversion that won the game for Valley by one point.

It was a clean hit, nothing illegal about it. Nate still felt as if he’d been dropped out of his bedroom window.

Willie helped him to his feet that day, picked him up as easily as if he were picking up the morning paper in the driveway. And Nate had thought that was pretty good sportsmanship on his part until Willie said, “This isn’t over,” and walked away.

Nate reminded the guys of that now, saying, “I didn’t know whether that meant he was going to wait for me at the bus, or just see us next season.”

“Look at him,” Malcolm said, knowing he was the one who was going to have to deal with him all day. “If that’s two hundred pounds, I don’t want to see what two fifty is going to look like when he gets there.”

Pete said, “I think I can actually
hear
him getting bigger.”

“Yeah,” Nate said, grabbing the ball that he’d left in the grass next to him, “but you know what they say: bigger they are, harder they fall. At least if somebody puts a good block on them.”

“Blocking him makes him really mad,” Malcolm said. “But I’ll do it.”

“Thank you,” Nate said.

“And try to make sure that when he does do that harder-they-fall thing, he doesn’t do the falling on you.”

Of course it wasn’t just Willie. Blair looked like they had a bunch of guys almost as wide, like the whole front seven on defense was squeezing right up against that two-hundred-pound limit. Nate also knew from last year that they had a quarterback of their own who could throw it around a little, Tyler McCloskey. Tyler could run better than he could throw—he really was Blair’s best running back—which made him as hard to defend as any quarterback in their league.

“You know who the
real
bear is for da Bears?” LaDell said, pointing at Tyler. “That sucker right there.”

Tyler was warming up on the Blair side of the Valley High School field, throwing one spiral after another as tight as money wadded up in your pocket. Looking nearly as big as everybody else on the Blair Bears, as if he’d shot up a foot since they’d played against him in seventh grade.

“He’s big enough to be their tight end now,” Nate said.

“Wouldn’t help,” Pete said. “Even you haven’t figured out a way to throw it to yourself.”

“Yet,” Nate said.

Then the two of them went off to start throwing the ball to each other. And this, even more than the stretching, was the real beginning of Nate’s football day. The only thing that would have made it more perfect was if his dad had been able to be here. But at least his mom was here and had picked up Abby on the way. Nate could see them now in the stands, noticing right away that Abby didn’t have her sunglasses on, as bright as the day was, and knowing why:

Too many people to see she needed special glasses.

She was looking right at Nate now, as if she were reading his mind, not about the glasses, just knowing he was thinking about her even as he got ready for the best part of his day and the best part of his week.

It wasn’t just the football, even though football was a huge part of it.

This was the best part of being a
kid.

Nate had tried to explain it to Abby one time, fumbling to find the right words—this from a guy who prided himself on hardly ever fumbling on the field—and get her to understand what he meant.

Because, man oh man, talking about your feelings was harder than third-and-long.

“When I’m playing a game,” he’d said, “or even just getting ready to play a game, it’s like I’m feeling something more than happy. I don’t even know what the right word is.”

“You just had it, Brady,” she’d said. “You just feel
right
.”

“So you know what I mean?”

Then she’d gotten this look in those eyes, the ones that were never going to be right, and it was like in that moment she wasn’t even looking at him, she was looking at someplace on the other side of him, or way in the distance.

“I know,” she’d said.

She waved at him now from the stands. Nate gave her a small wave back and then, because minutes always had a way of turning into seconds when there was a game about to be played, Blair was kicking the ball off and Ben Cion was like a blast of air right up the middle of the field, returning it all the way to the Valley 40-yard line, and Nate was running out onto the field with the guys on offense who hadn’t been out there with the kick-return team.

Nate knew that back when Joe Montana was winning Super Bowls with the 49ers, when he was the Tom Brady of his time, that his coach, Bill Walsh, would actually script out the first thirty plays of the game for Montana.

Coach Rivers didn’t do that with Valley, but he did always e-mail Nate the night before a game with the ten plays he wanted to use the first time they were on offense, telling him he wanted Nate to picture their first drive of the game, the way they both wanted it to go, inside his head.

“I wouldn’t do this with just any thirteen-year-old quarterback,” Coach told him one time. “But then, you’re not just any thirteen-year-old quarterback.”

There would still be three plays up on the chalkboard before every snap, and Coach Hanratty would give Nate a signal like he was a third-base coach letting him know which one was the “hot read,” but Nate didn’t need the chalkboard for those first ten plays because he had them down cold.

Two running plays to start the game today, then eight straight passes, four with Nate taking the ball from under center, four from the shotgun.

In the first huddle of the day, he called “L-Six,” which meant LaDell going through their “six” hole off right tackle, and gave them the snap count.

“Let’s play some football,” he’d added, like he did before the first snap of every game.

LaDell got eight yards and looked like he might get more before Willie Clifton somehow caught him from behind.

A sweep to the left for Ben, who in addition to returning kick-offs was the Patriots’ other running back, got eight more.

First and ten. They were already into Bears territory, their 44-yard line. Just two plays into it and Nate felt as if he had the Bears backing up. Now it was time for a quick hit, a simple slant pass to Pete, coming from Nate’s left. It was one of Nate’s favorite plays, making him feel as if he were releasing the ball as soon as Malcolm put it in his hands. A quick two-step drop before Nate straightened up and put the ball right on Pete as soon as he got an inside shoulder on the guy covering him.

Only this time he put the ball right on big Willie Clifton.

He didn’t know whether Willie had just gotten lucky, straightening up unblocked as Nate backed away from center, dropping back into coverage. Or whether he had somehow been able to read Nate’s eyes. But Willie was right in the middle of Nate’s passing lane to Pete, and the reason Nate didn’t see him was because Willie
wasn’t supposed to be there.

Only he was.

The ball ended up in his hands as if Nate had handed it off to him, and it wasn’t one of those deals you saw in NFL games, the big lumbering defensive lineman looking down and acting shocked that the ball was in his hands. Like,
what’s this?
Willie acted like he was
supposed
to be there, like he was the one who was supposed to end up with the ball, and just like that, the third play of the game was going the other way. The wrong way. And fast. Because as big as Willie was, he sure hadn’t gotten any slower from last season to this.

By the time Nate reacted with his feet, Willie was gone, having cut straight to his right sideline, ten yards clear of everybody in a white uniform.

Including Nate.

Nate chased him all the way to the end zone, as hard as he could. Pete was running along with him. But they both knew Willie could run like a halfback even though he looked to be twice the size of one.

He beat both of them to the end zone, even looking back over his shoulder at the 5-yard line, not because he was worried they were catching him, just because he could. It was 6-0, Bears, and they hadn’t had to run a single play on offense yet.

Willie didn’t celebrate once he crossed the line because that would have been like crossing another kind of line in football, one that got you a fifteen-yard penalty the way it did at every other level of football up the ladder from eighth grade. And Willie was cool enough to know that a nose tackle turning around a pass like that, turning it into a touchdown, was much cooler than trying to turn the end zone into some dance routine from
High School Musical.

He just handed the ball to the nearest ref, slapped five with a few of his teammates who’d finally caught up with the play, and jogged toward the Blair side of the field.

Willie slowed slightly as he passed Nate, who was standing there at the 5-yard line with Pete. Got close enough to Nate to say, “Who wants to be a millionaire, yo?”

T
he teams were tied 7-7 at halftime. It had hardly anything to do with the way Nate was playing and absolutely nothing—zip, zero—with the way he was throwing the ball.