The Underdogs (14 page)

But Chris missed Johnny on first down. Overthrew him badly on second. Rolled out and got tackled for no gain by Ernie on third down.

Fourth-and-ten.

It was right here, right now, that the jock in Will kicked in. He didn't want them to score. He wanted the defense to win, even in a five-on-six scrimmage, and the field was getting darker by the minute.

“Let's switch,” Will said to Tim. “I'll take Johnny.”

“You think I can't cover him?”

Will grinned. “No,” he said. “But I
know
I can.”

As Tim walked away, Will could hear him saying, “Please throw it to her. Please, please,
please.
”

Will said, “You really are an idiot.”

“Please,”
Tim said.

Tim LeBlanc got his wish.

And promptly got beat.

By a girl.

He must have been sure that if Chris did throw it her way, it would be another sideline pass; it's all they'd been throwing her way in the walk-through, then the run-through.

Will saw it all happen from the other side of the field once he saw Chris Aiello looking Hannah's way. If there was one thing Will had picked up on already, it was that Chris—new to the position—never looked off a receiver. Once his eyes locked on somebody, the ball was going his way.

Or hers.

Will saw Hannah plant her right foot like she was cutting to the sideline. As she did, he saw Tim move around her to the outside, where he was sure the ball was coming, Will knowing his bud like he knew his name, knowing he wanted to end the scrimmage with a pick.

But as soon as Hannah felt him on her outside shoulder, she planted her
outside
foot, crossing him up, crossing to the middle of the field on a simple post pattern.

Dusting Tim in the process.

He scrambled to catch up with her but was a good five yards behind.

Chris threw a tight spiral this time, leading her perfectly, his best pass of the night. Ernie was out of position, Jake had been shading toward Johnny Callahan, the middle of the field was wide open.

Nothing but green.

Her only mistake was breaking stride as she caught the ball, being careful to lock the ball into her arms, as if she wanted to make sure she didn't drop it.

It gave Will a couple of extra steps to get over there. The only question now, because Hannah had slowed down just enough, was whether Will or Tim was going to get to her first.

Will made sure it was him. He was faster than Tim now, the way he always was, and he figured that even his hardest hit wasn't going to be as hard as Tim's, especially not after she had just faked him out of his new cleats.

Low or high?

Easy decision; Will wasn't going to take a chance coming in high, even against a girl; he had this way of bouncing off
all
ball carriers when he tried to hit them high. The safest and surest tackle was to come in hard and low, wrap her up with his arms and bring her down, well short of the goal line.

It's exactly what he did. A good, hard, clean hit that did the job, just short of the ten-yard line. Scrimmage over. The defense had won.

Will got up first. But Hannah Grayson wasn't far behind him, popping up like she was bouncing on a trampoline. Right up in his face.

“What do you think you're doing?” she yelled.

She was about to give him a shove, Will was sure of it. He could see her eyes through her face mask, see how hot she was. But Hannah stopped herself at the last second, pulled her hand down, Will happy about that, at least, not sure what he would have done in front of the guys if she
had
knocked him back.

“What am I
doing
?” he said. “Tackling you, that's what I'm doing.”

Hannah yanked her chin strap, pulled off her helmet. “You think I'm mad that you
tackled
me? Are you in
sane
?”

Will said, “Then what
are
you so mad about?”

Hannah said, “If you're gonna hit me, do it like you mean it.”

Then she walked away.

Will stood where he was, glad she hadn't waited for an answer, embarrassed to tell her or the rest of the guys that he thought he
had
hit her like he meant it.

T
he uniforms were as close as they could get to the color of the throwback jerseys the Steelers wore a couple of times a year, somewhere between red and brown.

“Rust,” Will's dad said. “Like the rust on me.”

The Riddell helmets were as plain as they could be, as plain as his dad's other favorite football team, Penn State, no numbers, no logos, just a simple stripe the color of the jerseys.

The people at New Balance, once they had the sizes, somehow outfitted the Bulldogs at what seemed like world record speed to Will. His dad said that money had a way of speeding up any process.

But he was happy when he opened the first box, because he had designed the look he wanted for the Bulldogs himself. Throwback jerseys, old-school helmets.

“It's just the way I see us,” Joe Tyler said. “Bulldogs, just without the bull.”

Will grinned. “That leaves us with dogs,” he said. “Heavy on the under.”

The uniforms showed up on Thursday before their first game. By then, Hannah Grayson was an official member of the team, about to wear the same number 11 she'd worn to her first practice. The other coaches in the West River league didn't like the idea of a girl playing; Will could tell that the night his dad was on a conference call with them, just listening from the top of the stairs to his dad's end of the conversation.

But Joe Tyler finally—and calmly—wore them down, making it sound as if Hannah and her parents were prepared to sue if the league refused to let her play.

He had also let them know that if he had to hang up and tell the Graysons that their daughter wouldn't be playing against Palmer on Saturday, they could all expect to be attacked by the Forbes
Dispatch
and the other papers in Mr. Grayson's chain. And once that happened, they shouldn't be surprised to see the story picked up on television.

Will heard his dad say, “You know what they say about newspapers. Never pick a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel.”

When his dad finally finished up, Will said, “Where'd you get the one about ink by the barrel?”

“Mark Twain. He was my favorite writer even before I went back to school.”

Will said, “And the part about the Graysons suing? I don't remember Hannah ever mentioning that to me.”

“Well, I never actually
said
they were going to sue,” his dad said. “Just call it a good ball fake.”

“But not a lie. Because that would be wrong wrong wrong.”

“This is football,” his dad said. “You never heard of a little misdirection?”

So they had a full team. On Saturday they were going to start the season, ready or not.

Not,
as it turned out.

 

Palmer was about a half hour east of Forbes. But even though it was smaller than Forbes, its high school team was always one of the best in the area, and so were its town teams.

Last year, Will's team had lost just twice during the regular season, one to Castle Rock, one to Palmer, Palmer beating them on a long touchdown pass in the last minute, thrown by a kid named Ryan Webb, who had the second-best arm in the league after Castle Rock's Ben Clark.

Ryan was still on the team, Will saw that during warm-ups, looking bigger than ever, as if he'd started growing at the end of last season and still hadn't stopped.

“Is that a twelve-year-old like us,” Tim said, “or Cam Newton?”

“He does look like he's got a shot at the Heisman, doesn't he?” Will said.

It didn't take long for Will to find out that Ryan Webb and his teammates knew about Hannah being on their team.

Ryan had caught Will's eye from his end of the field, motioned for them to meet up at midfield, Will thinking that one thing never seemed to change in sports, the best guys always felt as if they knew each other better than they actually did. Like they were in the same club, even though they were on different teams.

Ryan really did remind Will of Cam Newton, not just his face but his body, the biggest kid on the Palmer team playing quarterback. When he took off his helmet, Will noticed he was wearing the same kind of thick orange headband that Cam Newton wore under
his
helmet.

They shook hands and then Ryan nodded past Will to where the rest of the Bulldogs were stretching.

“The rest of your team coming on another bus?” he said.

“No, this is all of us,” Will said. “But I'm pretty sure you can only line up eleven at a time.”

“I heard that's all you had, but I still thought you'd've added at least a couple more.”

Will shook his head.

“And it's for real you brought a girl?”

Now Will nodded.

Ryan said, “You guys are gonna play with a
chick
?”

“Better not let her hear you call her that.”

“Why?” Ryan Webb said, smiling. “She gonna post a mean message about me on her Facebook page?”

“Hey,” Will said, “she might surprise you.”

Wondering if he was going to spend the whole season having conversations like this.

“Surprise me how?” Ryan said. “Going the whole game without crying?”

Will reached up then, lightly banged on Ryan's shoulder pads, said, “Have a good one, dude,” and jogged back to where Tim and Chris were waiting for him.

“What was that all about?” Tim said.

“What do you think?”

“Your daddy's little girl?”

“Pretty much.”

Hannah was standing at the forty now, standing next to Will's dad, getting off one good punt after another to Johnny Callahan.

Please,
Will thought.

A few minutes before the kick, Joe Tyler called the players in around him.

“This is just a beginning today,” he said. “But it's a beginning that I have a feeling means more to us than it does to them.” He looked down the field at the Palmer Wildcats. “They've got more players than us, probably have had more practice time. Looks to me like they can practice eleven-on-eleven. We don't have that luxury. Heck, the only luxury for us is the uniforms you're wearing. And I don't care about any of it.”

Looking around at the faces looking at him.

“We've got talent, we've got heart.” Pointed to his shoulder. “And we've got that chip.”

Joe Tyler put his hand out. They all put theirs on top. Somehow Will never got tired of doing it.

“Whatever happens in this game, we're gonna be better at the end of it than we are right now.”

He looked at Will now.

“And if we get knocked down today, we get back up, and we keep coming, no matter what.”

“One, two, three, dogs,” he said.

They yelled back at him in one loud voice.

They won the coin toss and elected to receive; Will returned the opening kickoff to the Bulldogs' thirty-five-yard line. Then he gained four yards on each of his first two carries, Will feeling as if he'd earned every inch of the eight yards that brought them to third-and-two.

Chris looked over to Will's dad for the play.

“Thirty-four lead,” Chris said in the huddle.

It took Tim out of the slot and put him in the backfield as a fullback. Chris would fake the ball to him, then give it to Will, who would follow Tim through what was supposed to be a great big hole between right guard and right tackle.

Tim sold the fake about as well as you could and headed through the hole ahead of Will, right at the middle linebacker. His mission: knock him down or at least slow him down enough for Will to run past, find some open field.

The ball was in Will's hands now. Wes and Jeremiah had done their job getting off the ball and holding their blocks, Will waiting to see once he'd cleared them whether he should keep running up the middle, where Tim would be trying to cut down the middle linebacker, or cut to the outside. From the time Will had first started playing, his dad had told him that you had to wait for your blocks to develop.

The best opening was inside.

Will wasn't thinking about just making the first down now; he knew there was a chance for a big play.
Feeling
the play, one his dad said went all the way back to his days at Forbes High, Will past the line of scrimmage now, not sure where Ryan Webb was but already looking to see where the safeties were.

Worrying about that when he was still in some traffic, not protecting the ball the way he should have. Not seeing the cornerback coming from his right side, swinging his arm the way they were all taught now, punching it perfectly out from under Will's arm and into the air.

On the third play from scrimmage.

Out from under Will's arm and into the hands of Ryan Webb. Like a power forward standing under the basket and having a rebound just fall into his hands.

Will's momentum was still going forward. Ryan Webb, having made his thank-you-very-much fumble recovery, was already running the other way.

Will got himself turned around, tried to get himself back in the play. But the last Bulldog to have a chance to stop him or even slow him down was Hannah Grayson, chasing Ryan from his right, trying to get an angle on him.

Ryan could have cut away from her easily, toward the goal line pylon to his left.

Instead he slowed down, waited for Hannah to get right up on him, then straight-armed her as hard as he could, dropping her at the fifteen-yard line.