Emergency Quarterback (6 page)

Members of the city council and the mayor went by on a float, tossing candy to the crowd. Jason picked up a mini chocolate bar that landed by his feet and unwrapped it. He popped the whole thing into his mouth.

The next group surprised them, not because it was a troop of Brownies, but because Wade was walking alongside them. He was holding hands with a tiny girl who looked a lot like him. The girl had trouble walking but was gamely marching on.

“Did you join the Girl Scouts, Wade?” shouted Lamont.

Wade gave an embarrassed grin. “My sister’s got a leg problem,” he said. “But she’s toughing it out.”

“You earning a merit badge for helping her?” Calvin asked.

Wade rolled his eyes. “Real funny.”

Wade’s sister waved to the boys. She said something to Wade that Jason couldn’t hear, but he patted her head and smiled at her. They kept walking. Jason turned and watched them go. It was something to see Wade thinking outside of himself, helping his little sister like that.

The parade only lasted about thirty minutes, trailed by hundreds of younger kids in costume. A party was to follow at the Y, and prizes would be given for the best attire. Jason had won third place once when he dressed up as a Ghostbuster. But they were kind of old for that now.

They walked up and down the Boulevard a couple of times, getting free candy at some of the shops. Jason almost suggested that they walk up to the cemetery, but decided that he didn’t want a big rowdy group for that. So he hung out for an hour or so until most of the group had gone home. Only Vinnie and Anthony remained.

“Ready?”

Vinnie looked at his cast and frowned. “I don’t know if I can get over the fence,” he said.

“We can squeeze in through the gate,” Jason said. “I’ve done it.”

“Done what?” Anthony asked.

“Snuck into the cemetery. Sound okay?”

“Okay by me,” Anthony said. “The way we look, any goblins in there tonight will think we fit right in.”

Hudson City is small, densely populated, and busy with foot traffic and automobiles. Many of the houses don’t even have yards, and the ones that do exist are small. It’s hard to find any place that isn’t at least partly lit by a streetlight. But if you walk up past St. Joseph’s Church and make your way over to Terrace Street, then past the high-school baseball field and head for the cliffs, you reach the darkest stretch of town.

The boys walked past rows of tightly clustered homes decorated with pumpkins—large blown-up plastic ones that sat on lawns, and carved real ones on porches with jack-o’-lantern faces lit by candles.

On one side of Terrace, at the corner of Washington, is a small city park—just a bunch of tall maple trees, some wooden benches, a swing set, and a blacktop basketball court. If you follow the path to the edge of the park, you reach the gate to the tiny cemetery, where some of the city’s founders are buried and a few Civil War soldiers. Nobody goes down there much. The plots were all filled by the first half of the previous century, so not too many city residents have relatives buried there that they’d remember knowing.

There was a chain around one old post and through the first post of the gate, but there was some slack in it. Jason and Vinnie had no trouble slipping in, and Anthony sucked in his breath and managed to squeeze through, too.

The brush was dense near the gate. And though the leaves on the trees had turned brown, many had not yet fallen. Very little moonlight got through to the ground.

“Could use a flashlight,” Anthony whispered. A misty condensation followed his words. The evening had turned cold.

“Just go slow,” Jason replied.

They walked carefully, each step bringing with it the smell of dying grass and of the few dry, brittle leaves that had reached the ground.

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jason stopped in front of a small slate gravestone. JACOB ADDISON. JAN 15 1836—NOV 11 1904.

“The guy’s been dead for more than a century,” Jason whispered.

“That’s nothing,” Anthony said. “Here’s one from eighteen thirty-one.”

They looked around some more, finding dozens of graves from the early 1800s, including many children who’d died soon after birth.

“A lot of kids never even got to grow up back then,” Vinnie said.

The narrow dirt path circled the perimeter of the grounds. It had been built long before automobiles, so the lane was tight. The trees were tall and old, and the gravestones were cracked and covered with lichens.

Jason stopped and stared at a marker from 1827, topped by a marble lamb and the simple words At Rest. He was thinking hard about these people’s life spans.
1807—1861. 1840—1842. 1833—1918.
Some lives had been long, some very short. And all had ended a long time ago.

They stood quietly, respectfully for a few minutes, glancing at the gravestones, at the moon above the trees, at the skyline of New York City visible on the other side of the Hudson.

“Life matters,” Jason said finally. “You have to leave a mark.”

“You have to do what you can do,” Anthony replied. “Win or lose, you have to go after it.”

Jason turned to Anthony, thinking of something equally solemn to add. But he’d forgotten that they were still wearing face paint. The sight of Anthony’s yellow face and red nose made him laugh instead.

“What?” said Anthony.

Jason pointed to his own orange face.

Anthony smiled. “Let’s get back to town,” he said.

They started walking, then stopped and looked back across the cemetery. “I never thought about it before tonight,” Jason said, “but life is short. We gotta make every day count for something, don’t we?”

P
alisades kept things interesting for half a game, going into the locker room with an 8—6 lead. But the Hudson City defense clamped down in the second half, Jason sprinted fifty-one yards for a touchdown on a quarterback keeper, and Miguel bulled through for a fourteen-yard scoring run and then added the two-point conversion. Final score: Hudson City 20, Palisades 8.

The announcement that Hoboken had scored a narrow win over Bayonne that same evening left a simple scenario. Whoever won the Hudson City vs. Hoboken game on the final Saturday would walk away with the EJJFL title.

“It’ll be like a bowl game!” Anthony said as the Hornets got off the bus after the ride home from Palisades.

Jason raised his fist and shook it. “Like the Super Bowl. Winner take all.”

“Hoboken has a dynasty going,” Miguel said. “They seem to win the league every year.”

“Time to end it,” Jason added. “Dynasties are made to be broken.”

“Overthrown, you mean,” Anthony said.

“Whatever.”

Wade slipped past them in a hurry. He hadn’t played at all, barely moving from the bench, where he’d sat with his helmet on. He hadn’t budged when the Hornets had scored, and had nothing to say when the game ended in victory.

Jason started to say something. A simple, sarcastic “Nice game, Wade” would have been enough, but he caught himself and stayed quiet. , Why stoop to that level?

Miguel smacked Jason on the back. “Your buddy there must have splinters in his butt from all that bench time,” he said with a laugh.

Jason shrugged. “Yeah, well, he earned them. Too much mouth on him.”

“He’s history, man. You proved that tonight.”

Jason nodded slowly. As much as he disliked Wade, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, too. Sitting on the bench for an entire game must be agonizing. Especially knowing that you’d blown a huge opportunity to be the starter.

 

Tuesday afternoon Jason sat waiting for the bell to ring, ending the social studies class. The teacher had just handed back the tests from the day before. Jason had not done well.

“Let’s see,” said Anthony, reaching across the aisle for Jason’s paper. “A C-minus? When was the last time you got less than a B on anything?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Been a while,” he said.

“Didn’t you study?”

Jason turned in his seat to face his friend. “I thought I did.” He took the paper back and stared at it. “Guess nothing sunk in. Everything I try to think about turns into one subject this week: Hoboken.”

Anthony shook his head. He showed Jason his own paper, which was marked with an A. “We’ll beat Hoboken, Jason. Stop worrying.”

“They beat Bayonne last week,” Jason said. “Bayonne clobbered us.”

“Bayonne did
not
clobber us, Fiorelli. Get over that. Like my ma always tells me when I think I can’t accomplish something, ‘Disavow yourself of that notion.’”

Jason smiled. “Wish we could just play the game tonight and be done with it. I can’t wait four more days.”

“You can wait. You better wait. The game’s not till Saturday. And we got another social studies test on Friday.”

 

It was nearly dark as Jason and Wade stood face-to-face on the practice field Thursday, sizing each other up, but listening to Coach Podesta go over the strategy. Jason rubbed the toe of his cleats into the soft dirt and scratched at a tiny zit on his jaw.

The other players had left the field for home after a bruising workout. Coach had kept some key members of the offense behind for a few minutes as he went over a new play, but even they were gone now. Only the two quarterbacks remained—the two biggest rivals on the team.

“Saturday night is going to be brutal,” Coach said. “Hoboken is big and strong—like Bayonne, but quicker. It’ll be the kind of game where two teams just slug each other around the field, and one big play can mean the difference between a championship and a major disappointment.”

Jason looked across the field toward the parking lot, where Anthony and Miguel were talking. He could hear them laughing—they always seemed loose. He was that way, too; at least he had been. These past few weeks had been tough—the shock of losing Vinnie to injury, the fumble and interception against Bayonne, the pressure of becoming the starting QB against Palisades. Now, with the biggest game of his life staring him in the face, Jason was a bundle of nerves. He wanted to be that guy he’d been—joking, making wisecracks, succeeding while having fun.

“I don’t know if we’ll even get to run this play,” Coach was saying, “or need to. But you two have to be ready if we do. It takes two quarterbacks. You need to work
together.”

Wade picked up the football and tossed it from hand to hand. “Just put the ball in my hands,” he said. “I know what to do with it.”

Coach stuck his hands in his pockets and frowned. “You know what to do with it? Show me. Run the play.”

Jason took the ball and mimed the action of lining up behind an invisible center. The crescent moon was up early, shining just above the horizon. Jason pulled back the ball and dropped into passing position, and he and Wade ran the play just as Coach had instructed them to.

“Not bad,” Coach said. “Let’s do it a few more times.”

They stayed at it until it was too dark to continue, successfully making the play more often than not. Of course, there were no defenders on the field.

“It’s a great play when it works,” Coach said. “Not too complicated, but effective. The key here is you two guys”—he grabbed both of their face masks and held tight—“being in sync. That will make all the difference.”

They walked off the field together, and Coach got into his pickup truck and drove off. Anthony and Miguel were gone. Jason and Wade stood alone in the parking lot.

Jason cleared his throat. “Moon’s out,” he said, stating the obvious.

Wade nodded but looked away. “Supposed to be clear on Saturday. Not too cold.”

“I heard.”

Wade let out his breath in a long, audible exhalation. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and took a step toward the street. “You staying here all night?” he asked.

“No.”

“Let’s go then.”

They walked up toward the Boulevard, not talking. Jason felt uneasy; he still didn’t like Wade, but he no longer felt as if a fight could break out at any time. Either way, Jason had the upper hand. He was the starter now; Wade had only this one surprise play that might not even get called. But Jason was glad Wade had that. At least he might be able to contribute.

The streets were busy. It was that in-between time, with New York City commuters arriving home on buses, lots of cars on the Boulevard, kids hurrying home for dinner, and shoppers picking up bread and milk at the grocery store or takeout pizza or Chinese food. All the streetlights were on and everybody seemed to be on the move.

“You ever win a championship before?” Wade asked.

“A few,” Jason replied. They were standing alongside the corner grocery store at Ninth and the Boulevard. “Basketball last year. Some Y leagues.”

Wade took his helmet and placed it over a parking meter, so it looked like a very skinny player. That made him smile. He snapped the chin guard to secure it. “I never won anything yet,” Wade said. “Four years of Little League, three years of junior football, and two basketball seasons. Never even a second place.”

Jason shrugged. “Nobody can do it alone.”

“I know. But if Coach gives me another chance on Saturday like he says he might, I’ll show’em.”

“It’s not about
showing
anybody anything,” Jason said. It annoyed him that Wade didn’t get it, that winning in team sports like football or basketball demanded team spirit and cooperation. But he felt for him, too. Years of playing with Vinnie and Miguel and the others had taught Jason a lot about teamwork. He couldn’t really blame Wade for not having learned those things. But if the opportunity arose on Saturday to use the new play, he didn’t want Wade’s need for individual attention to mess up the whole thing.

“It’s not about showing off or showing up or showing
anything,”
Jason said again. “When we put the team first, we all win.”