Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (72 page)

Lee’s grin just gets wider. “Did you think when you woke up yesterday that you’d be in the owner’s box in Hellentown?”

His father flicks his ears around. “When I woke up yesterday, there were a whole lot of things I wasn’t thinking.”

Because I’m watching Lee, I see the twitch of his whiskers, but he keeps the smile. “Glad I could help broaden your horizons.”

I excuse myself to find a bathroom and leave the two of them to their conversation and go out into the hall. After finding the restroom, I slouch against the wall nearby and call up the Firebirds’ owner, Corcoran. Yeah, I have his number in my phone. I never get rid of a number, because, well, you never know.

It goes to voicemail, of course; he probably doesn’t recognize my number, and he’s watching the game with family. So I just say, “Hi, John, it’s Hal. Just wanted to let you know that your rising star tiger is doing great, which you know,” stupid, of course he knows that, “and his boyfriend and father are here with me in Hellentown watching the game. Thanks for calling Ponaxos and getting us into his box, by the way. The reason I called is I almost got this story ready on Miski and just wanted to know if I can mention that you flew the boyfriend and father to this game. Thanks.”

No matter how well you plan out what you’re going to say, you always end up going off on some stupid tangent. At least, I do. The offer I made to Corky isn’t ethical by any means I stare at my phone and then put it back in my pocket. Lee and Brenly can use a couple more minutes alone to chat, so I wander around the hallway. Nice soft carpeting in the Pilots brown and gold colors, abstract triangle patterns that catch my eyes, losing me in the pattern for a moment. A gold stripe runs along the white walls, with the Pilots logo every couple yards or so. The whole corridor smells of cougar, with a flair of sterilizer, as though it was brushed casually but isn’t so important in this part of the stadium as it is down where thousands of people walk around every week. That’s what it means to be rich: you don’t have to clean up after yourself.

I think about that for a while, about all those kids down on the field, most of them making more in a year than I made in the last ten. But when you cover sports, you can’t dwell on that because it’ll get into everything you do, everything you write. You’ll find bitterness tinging your articles about athletes’ lives, you’ll snap when talking to them. It’s just a bad idea.

My phone rings. I pull it up and it’s Corcoran. Well, I’ll be.

Over voices and party noise in the background, he tells me he appreciates the thought, but he doesn’t want people to think he traded the use of his private jet for control of the story. Which is what I knew he’d do, but I had to ask. I thank him and let him go. Nice, I think, putting the phone away. Made time for a two-bit reporter and a player’s extended family. But Corky’s always been like that, even as he was building up his empire of furniture stores: family first. He grew up poor and never believes he has enough to provide for his kids: that’s what drives him.

And those kids down there are pushed by something too. It’s easy to dismiss them, to say that they were just born with speed, with strength, with hand-eye coordination, but the country’s full of people as strong as these kids, as fast as these kids, who flame out of sports if they ever pick it up. The country’s full of businessfolk who started in the same or better circumstances as Ponaxos in there, who never made enough to buy this box, let alone a football team.

I pace up and down outside the corridor, thinking back to something Cim used to say, about how I wasn’t gonna go anywhere because I didn’t have that fire in me. I told her I didn’t need her making excuses for me, but maybe it isn’t about that; maybe it was never about that. Maybe she was right. I said it was ethics holding me back; she said it was lack of passion. She cited other cases of lack of passion too.

The crowd roars, and the door of the owner’s box opens again. Brenly pokes his narrow red muzzle out, scans the corridor until he finds me. “Hal,” he says. “Coming?”

“
Yeah.” I scuff at the carpet and join them back in the box.

Lee’s already back up at the glass. The third quarter gets under way with the Firebirds on a good offensive drive. The box stays quiet as they get into the red zone, and then Aston tosses a screen pass to the cheetah wideout, Haley, number 83. He turns upfield and is drilled by one of the safeties, a grey fox, immediately.

And the ball comes loose. Hellentown recovers.

The box goes nuts. The weasel and his friends jump around, the owner’s family are standing, pumping their fists. Lee stands dejected by the window. Hell, I’m not feeling too good myself.

It gets worse on the first play from scrimmage. Everybody knows the offense goes for a big play after a turnover. But how the hell do you guard against that? The Pilots QB drops back and launches a ball fifty yards out of his own end zone. It drops perfectly into the arms of a mule deer two steps ahead of the fox in the Firebirds uniform, and there’s nobody else between him and the end zone. It’s tied, and now most of the box is standing and cheering, high-fiving.

I know that feeling, though can’t say as I’ve ever felt it at a football game. It’s the feeling of the favorite, in the middle of what looks like an upset, as order appears to be restored. It’s the windstorm dying down and the rattling of the barn door quieting down, the car coming off the patch of ice, out of the skid. It’s the feeling of regaining control, even if you never had it to begin with.

And we lifelong Firebirds fans, we never had any kind of control. Our feeling is more the feeling you get after four matches when the fifth and sixth lottery numbers come up wrong, the feeling when the bank error isn’t really in your favor, the feeling when the guy who jumped you to the front of the line at the DMV says he made a mistake. It’s the feeling of the natural order reasserting itself and you finding yourself back where you belong: on bottom.

I don’t say anything, of course, but a look at Brenly confirms that he’s got that same feeling. Dragons fans this last decade, yeah, we’re partners in misery. At least they’ve got the glory days of the fifties and seventies to look back on. The Firebirds have been to the playoffs exactly four times since I’ve been a fan, only once to the championship game. They got trounced by the Devils, 48-12.

But Lee, Lee doesn’t leave the glass. He turns around when the weasel says to one of his friends, “Been a while since I bet less’n a hundred on a game, but you know, I don’t mind winning pizza money, too.”

And Lee just grins at him, a long fox grin, and he says, “Did you lose when you bet more than a hundred, too?”

The weasel kinda scoffs, but you can tell he doesn’t know what to do with that. Lee’s the one who should be cringing, who should be dreading the next twenty-five minutes of game time, and instead this young fox is acting like his team’s favored by ten. So the weasel just turns to his friends and says, kinda loud, “Twenty-three or twenty-two to sixteen, that’s what we’re looking at.”

“
You want to add a bit to that sixty?” Lee asks, low so Ponaxos doesn’t hear.

The weasel has to look at him then, because all his friends do. He laughs and turns to his friends. “You believe this guy? Nah, I don’t want to take your bail money,” he says.

“
You wouldn’t be.” Brenly fishes in his pocket. He pulls out his wallet and hands two twenties to the weasel.

Lee lights up. Well, he was already pretty lit up, but his smile gets wider and his tail thwacks the wall below the window.

The weasel just shakes his head. Then one of his friends says, “I’ll take that bet,” and the weasel says, “Hang on, hang on, he asked me.”

He glances at the front of the box, waves Brenly’s money back, and they settle the bet with a shake of the paws just as the crowd cheers: Aston’s thrown incomplete on third and five, and the Firebirds have to punt.

But Hellentown, even though they stage a pretty five-minute drive, stall at midfield when Marvell charges through the line and drops the running back (the elk) for a loss on third down. They punt with three minutes left in the quarter and the Firebirds take over again from deep in their own territory.

Jaws runs it forward on the first couple plays for about six, and on third and four, Aston drops back to throw. He tosses it to the cheetah again, but the cheetah fumbles it into the air, directly into the waiting paws of a Pilot cornerback, a rangy coyote who speeds twenty yards down the sideline, dodges Aston’s game attempt to tackle him, and dances into the end zone. Nineteen-thirteen, Pilots, and this time, it’s the Firebirds getting a good jump to keep the extra point out of the uprights. Still only down six.

“
How you like your boys now?” the weasel cackles, his friends joining in. Ponaxos and his family, more restrained, still slap paws and relax, their ropy tails unclenching to relax behind them. All I can see is the black and white tips, suddenly gliding back and forth under the chairs where they’d been tight and immobile for most of the rest of the game.

Lee’s got one paw on the glass, and both eyes on the field. His tail’s wagging still, and a moment later, when the weasels have forgotten about the offhand comment that wasn’t really a question, Lee says, “I love ’em.”

Or maybe he says, “I love ’im.” Hard to tell, even for a big-eared fox.

The weasels kind of stop, and the betting weasel says, “Live and die with the team, huh?” He raises his beer. “Good on ya.”

Lee nods, a tight, focused nod. Everyone quiets down as the game goes on.

The Firebirds take it down the field, get some good field position, but have to punt. Hellentown has it back at the end of the quarter, and the score stays 19-13.

“
Dragons always do that too,” Brenly says. “Get up on a team and then give it back in the third. Like they don’t believe they deserve it.”

“
Yeah,” I watch the TV. Fourth quarter coming up. Time for the Firebirds to struggle to get a field goal, get within three, and fall short. Time for the miracle season to start its slow, inevitable descent back to earth. Once you’ve seen the movie a few times, it gets predictable.

Lee slaps the glass in frustration. I watch the young, passionate fox stare down through glass. And I think, talk about predictable movies. His tiger’s about to hit it big, hit it huge. Whatever happens with the Firebirds, Devlin Miski is going to be in demand, and at the end of this season he’s gonna have good teams sniffing around him. He’s gonna sign a good mid-level contract, something like four or five years at, say five mil a year. Maybe seven if the linebacker market is thin. And he won’t need the trouble this boyfriend is going to cause him.

Hell, any boyfriend would be trouble, just because of the gay thing. I noticed Miski isn’t exactly embracing it. But Lee, smart kid, great kid, is double the trouble because he’s outspoken, he’s—not flamboyant. Like Brenly said, that has the wrong connotation. He’s impossible to ignore. And that just doesn’t fly, not in the football world.

That makes me sad to think about, which I don’t expect. So I shove the thought away and I watch the game, which I think is just going to make me more sad. But sometimes, sometimes, the natural order laughs at you.

Hellentown’s running back, the deer this time, fumbles on the drive. Marvell is there to pick it up, and somehow Miski is too. The coyote ends up with it, but Miski was instrumental in keeping the Pilots from getting it back, even though it was nowhere near his coverage assignment. Good play, good player. The box groans; Lee pumps his fist but keeps quiet.

The Firebirds, like the Pilots before them, go for the long bomb on the first play after the turnover, but with less success. Ford, the fox, can’t quite catch up to Aston’s throw, and they hand it to Jaws to get them a first down. They march down the field, eating clock, and get down to the twelve with six minutes left. From there, they eat up three and a half minutes with seven straight running plays, the last one a sweep right that leads Jaws right to the corner of the end zone. He skips across and plunges the stadium into dead silence as the scoreboard rolls up to 19-19.

The Pilots line up pretty determined for the extra point, but Charm is a terrific kicker and he’s ready for them this time. He boots it almost straight up, over even the tallest defender. It comes down into the net on the other side of the uprights and we’re ahead.

Nobody in the box is making a sound now. The Pilots start on their twenty with just under two and a half to go, and the Firebirds defense is jumping around, excited. Marvell yaps at them, calming them down, and it’s the Pilots who jump. False start, five yards back.

They’re just throwing, throwing, throwing now, that lion in command of the offense, and Miski’s assignment is the slot receiver, a fox. They throw to him once for four yards, and Miski’s got his arms around him, driving him down before he can gain any more.

“
Wonder if Lee’s jealous,” I murmur to Brenly in a fox-whisper, just because there’s nobody else to say it to.

He snorts. He’s trying to act casual, but his foot taps and his tail twitches and he doesn’t look away from the TV. None of us do.

The Pilots get to the twenty-eight by the two-minute warning. They probably need to get thirty-two more yards to be in field goal range. We spend the two-minute warning silent (us foxes), murmuring quietly (the cougars), or talking loudly about how much we love claw-chewing finishes (the weasel and friends). Lee stays out there by the glass, opting not to come back and talk with us, as though worried someone will steal his spot.