QB 1 (5 page)

“We'll just order our stuff and pull up a table of our own,” Jake said. “We don't have to stay long.”

Just as he said that, he took a better look at the table that had been pulled up to Wyatt's left, saw Sarah sitting there with two other cheerleaders, Sarah's hair pulled back into a ponytail.

Sarah looking at Wyatt the way Jake wanted her to look at him, just once.

She didn't see Jake at the counter because she wasn't seeing anything at Amy's except Jake's brother.

Jake turned around and started heading toward the door, saying, “You're right, Bear. Let's get out of here.”

Nate said, “But we haven't even ordered yet.”

Barrett said, “We can order when we get out to Spooner's.” Then he leaned close to Jake and said, “I saw her, too.”

Before the door closed behind them, they all heard one more burst of laughter from the back room, everybody happy as they could be that Wyatt was back in town, if only for a day.

Nobody looking happier about it than Sarah Rayburn.

JAKE TRIED EVERY WAY HE COULD THINK OF TO GET HIS MOM TO
go to Austin with his dad for Texas's opener. But once she made up her mind, you had a better chance of turning around the Pecos River. So that was that, her decision final: She'd go to the Granger game at one at Cullen Field, and Troy Cullen would be in Austin watching Wyatt at three thirty, the big national TV game on ABC.

“Mom, you're not being logical, and you're usually the most logical person I know,” Jake said the last time he went at her. “Wyatt is starting for the
Longhorns.
As a
freshman.
You don't want to miss his first college game.”

“You make it sound like I'm missing Sunday services, Jacob.”

It was Friday, just the two of them at breakfast, Troy Cullen not due back until that night from quarter-horse sales run by one of the most famous ranches in Texas, the 6666, known to everyone as the Four Sixes. Buying and selling horses for him was just another form of competition, one more thing he used to fill up the hole in his life that once held playing football.

“Mom,”
Jake said. “It would be one thing if I were going to play tomorrow. But I'm not.”

“You don't know that.”

“I've got a better chance of being hit by lightning,” he said. “Go to Austin with Dad in the morning.”

She smiled, what somebody else might have seen as a sweet mom smile, across the breakfast table. But Jake knew better, knew it was a game-ender.

“I can't imagine why we're still even talking about this,” she said. “Now finish up your eggs before Barrett gets here.”

“Did I ever have a chance?”

“Better chance of being hit by lightning, dear,” she said, and started reading one of the morning newspapers on her iPad.

Friday's practice was just a walk-through, no pads, the way Coach John McCoy had always done it the day before a game, whether it was being played on Friday night or Saturday afternoon, this decade or the ones before it.

When they were finished, Coach Jessup came jogging over to Jake, told him to stick around for a few more minutes, there was some this-and-that he thought they could work on.

“Coach,” Jake said, “you know I appreciate all the extra work y'all have been doing with me . . . but it's Friday night.”

“Not yet, it's not,” Coach said.

Jake realized he wasn't changing anybody's mind about anything today.

Every time Jake stayed after, it was something different. They'd moved on from Jake's throwing mechanics, which Coach J thought were getting better, looking more natural all the time. Sometimes they wouldn't even work on the field, they'd go inside Coach J's tiny office, and he'd start drawing up plays on an old-timey black chalkboard. But then he'd stop about halfway through the play, have Jake go up to the board and finish it, showing what his progression was supposed to be if his primary guys were covered.

Coach J's big thing was that a quarterback's brain was as important as his arm.

“It's all about reactions,” he'd said the day before. “Sometimes you got no choice, you got to react to what the defense is showin' you. But more often than that, you got to make them react to
you.
” He'd nodded and said, “You know what the difference is between a win and a loss sometimes? Just freezing a 'backer or safety for one beat of their heart. Or yours.”

Jake actually knew what he'd meant.

“I read somewhere where one of Peyton Manning's old coaches said the only language Peyton wanted to speak was
quarterback.
Like a musician thinking in theory or something.”

Coach Jessup had slapped him on his back and said, “That's gonna be you, boy. You just don't know it yet.” Grinned and said, “One of the many things you ain't figured out yet, and not just about football.”

Today Coach promised they wouldn't be out here long. But he still had Jake help him bring out some of the super-sized orange traffic cones they'd use, ones that Coach J had written numbers on in Magic Markers, one through five—the usual number of available receivers Jake might have on a given play in Coach McCoy's spread offense.

Once they started, Coach J would have Jake turn his back, then he'd move the cones around to different points in the red zone. Jake would walk up to an imaginary line of scrimmage, call out a play, roll to his left or right, like he'd been flushed from the pocket, then Coach would yell out a number, his way of telling Jake to find a secondary receiver. Jake would do his best to find the cone and hit it with the ball, knowing Coach would blow his whistle if he took more than a second or two.

Now, Coach yelled, “Roy's covered . . . locate number one!”

Even here, with cones, number 1 was Calvin.

Jake rolled to his left, stopped, and threw a perfect spiral, clipping the tip of the cone in the right corner of the end zone.

“Look at you, Cullen! You're better with cones than with humans.”

Not Coach J. It came from Calvin himself, standing there with Casey Lindell.

Coach Jessup heard him, too. Couldn't help it.

“Hey, Coach J?” Casey said. “How come I never get any tutoring?”

“On account of your already knowin' everything,” Coach J said, grinning at him. “Or so you say.”

“You bustin' on me?” Casey said.

“Never,” Coach J said. “Care to join us?” When Casey didn't move, Coach J smiled and said to Jake, “Last one.”

Coach J moved the cones around one last time, then Calvin and Casey watched as Jake dropped back, rolled to his left again, kept rolling, waiting for Coach Jessup to call out a number. Finally he yelled “One!” again, and Jake didn't hesitate, didn't come to a complete stop, didn't even square his shoulders, just flung the ball across his body to where the cone he wanted was, still in the right corner. Hit it square, knocking it over.

This time Calvin didn't say anything, just looked at Jake and nodded and pointed. Was still nodding as he and Casey walked off the field and into the tunnel.

Like maybe Jake had finally showed him what Nate Collins liked to call a little somethin'-somethin'.

Coach John McCoy, who never said much, didn't say much in the locker room before the opener against Shelby the next day.

“Just remember,” he said, “you're lining up against the Shelby Mustangs today, not last year's Granger Cowboys.”

They all nodded, some standing, some sitting on benches, Coach in the middle of them.

“So you boys go out there and make some memories for your own selves today,” he said, then turned and walked out the door. Then this season's Granger Cowboys followed him, the way Cowboys players had been following John McCoy for the past thirty-five years.

They followed him out of the tunnel and into the sun, into the sound and force of high school football in their small Texas town, like the New Year in Granger, Texas, didn't start until they came out of that tunnel for their first game.

They were yelling as they came into the sun, but you couldn't hear them above the shouting from the stands, the first loud roar of the season for Cowboys football, as they ran past the cheerleaders—Jake saw Sarah at the end, on the left—and across the field. The PA announcer's booming voice rose above the roar, welcoming “
your
Granger High School . . .
Cowboys
!”

Taking the last part of
Cowboys
and making it sound as if he was running all the way down the field with it.

Jake knew, from growing up in this town, from being related to the two greatest quarterbacks in Granger history, that this was the time of the year when the town was most alive. All the waiting for the opener, the waiting for football to be back on this field, was over.

So was all the wondering, at Stone's and Amy's and the filling stations and coffee shops and street corners, all the talk on the one radio station Granger had, about what this year's team would be like, how the 'Boys were gonna do this time. Whether they had a chance to get 'er done the way last year's team had.

They would start finding out today how the 'Boys would do without Wyatt Cullen standing back there in the pocket flinging the ball around, with Tim Mathers being the one throwing it to Calvin, with Nate anchoring the offensive line. All that, in what people had been speculating might be the great Coach John McCoy's final season.

Liza George, the girl with the prettiest voice in the church choir, sang the national anthem. Then the mayor officially presented Coach McCoy with the league championship trophy that would go in the case in the front hall of the school with all the others John McCoy had won.

Granger won the coin toss, elected to receive, and the ball was kicked off. It
was
football season again in Granger, the one played on the field from September through November, not the one talked about the rest of the year, as if the main business in town wasn't ranching or horses or cows, it was high school football.

Casey Lindell took his place next to Coach McCoy, and Jake was next to Coach Jessup, the coaches wanting both their quarterbacks right there, hearing what they were saying, understanding why they were sending in this play or that, even why they'd be making their substitutions.

So that was where Jake was standing when he saw Tim Mathers scramble to his right on the Cowboys' fourth play from scrimmage, saw him try to plant and make a cut when some field opened up past the linebacker right in front of him, saw Tim's cleats catch in the grass, saw the terrible angle of his left leg.

Saw him go down without being touched, grabbing his left knee with his free hand, and start screaming in pain in the sudden quiet of Cullen Field.

JAKE DIDN'T KNOW THEN THAT TIM'S ACL HAD EXPLODED ON
him, nobody did. But he did know was that it was always real bad in sports when it wasn't a hit that put you down like that, put you in that kind of pain.

Dr. Mallozzi wasn't out there too long before he signaled for a stretcher. But Jake could see Tim shaking his head, saw Tim reach up to the teammates in a half circle around him for a little help, saw Nate pull Tim up all by himself. Then Tim put one arm around Nate's shoulders and his other around Dana Padgett, who played right guard next to Nate.

Slowly they made their way off the field. When they got to the sideline, Jake and Barrett took over for Nate and Dana, who had to get back into the game. The three of them began the long, slow, careful walk to the locker room as the fans at Cullen Field, even the fans who'd come over from Shelby, stood and applauded.

Casey Lindell was behind the bench, quickly taking some warm-up throws, before Jake and Barrett and Tim Mathers were halfway to the tunnel.

Jake had asked Tim if he wanted to take off his helmet, but Tim said he'd keep his hat on till he was inside; it was the last time he was going to wear it at Granger High.

Tim said, “Shortest season on record.”

“You'll be back.”

“No,” Tim said, “I won't.” And Jake knew the hurt he was hearing, from the kid who'd played behind Wyatt Cullen and waited his turn, waited for this day, was about more than whatever he was feeling in his left knee.

Then Tim said to Jake, “You better hustle back once you get me inside.”

“Why?”

“'Cause you just moved up in the line, that's why.”

Jake knew what he meant. They both knew Jake was the backup quarterback now. But all Jake said was, “C'mon, man, I'm not thinking about me.”

They were out of the sun and into the tunnel, the noise of the crowd in the distance now, like somebody had turned the sound on the day way down. Dr. Mallozzi was up ahead, waiting for them outside the locker room door, Doc having already told Tim they were going straight to the hospital so he could have machines take a look at the knee.

What had just happened back on field was just sports. It had happened fast, all right, because sports did that, too, everything changing with one bad cut. Sometimes that's all it took.

Just sports. Coach McCoy had told them to go out and start making memories for themselves this afternoon. Just not a memory like this. But Tim's season had ended and the Cowboys' season had changed, all in less than ten minutes after it had begun.

Jake Cullen, like it or not, ready or not, wanting to talk about it or not,
had
just moved up in line.

It was already 7–0, Shelby, by the time Jake and Barrett were back on the Cowboys' sideline, Shelby lining up to kick the ball off, the Granger offense ready to go back on the field.

“I was only gone five minutes,” Jake said to Nate. “What the heck happened?”

“Pick six is what happened,” Nate said. “First pass was to Calvin, and the new guy never looked at anybody '
cept
Calvin, and that there was all she wrote.”

Casey was standing next to Coach McCoy, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, like he couldn't wait to get back out there.

“It's early,” Jake said. “We still got this.”

“You sure about that?” Nate said. “Our backup quarterback seems to have lost some of his swag now that it's a real game on this field. Now that he's doing more than woofin' about who should be the starter.”

Casey started to move the ball on the next series, hit Justice Blackmon with a nice throw over the middle for fifteen yards. But then on first down from just past midfield, Casey looking to his right at Calvin, Shelby blitzed an outside linebacker from his blind side. Jake wanted to yell out, warn him somehow, knowing Casey never saw the guy coming, but there was nothing to do except watch him get buried and cough up the ball, which the linebacker who'd just hit him recovered.

Three plays later, the Mustangs' halfback took a pitch, got to the outside so fast it was like he'd been shot over there, and ran all the way down the sideline for a score. The kick made it 14–0, Shelby. With six minutes left in the first quarter.

First game of the season.

As the Cowboys lined up to receive the kickoff, Jake saw Casey seated now, end of the bench, head down.

Jake went over to him.

“Plenty of game left,” he said, crouching down next to Casey. “I don't think you've even taken six snaps yet.”

Casey turned his head, looked at Jake. “I'm
good,
” he said, as if he suddenly needed to convince Jake of that. “You've seen me. You know I'm good. Only now the whole town, first time it gets to see me play, thinks I'm a choke artist.”

“Nah,” Jake said. He stood up and pulled Casey up. “It's like my grandpa says: They're all just sittin' there waitin' for the good parts.”

“I don't need much time,” Casey said. “But I need more than this.”

“Hang in there,” Jake said, trying to be a good teammate. “They'll give you more time, and you'll get to show off that gun you got.”

But the problem with Casey, Jake was discovering,
was
that gun. Jake didn't know what it was like to be able to bring that kind of heat, believe you could throw the ball into any kind of coverage and get away with it. Casey managed to complete a couple on the next series, including one throw to Calvin into double-coverage, that reminded Jake of Casey's hero, Brett Favre.

But then, the very next play, Casey tried to force another one, and this time Calvin had to turn himself into a defensive back when the safety stepped in front of him. Calvin knocked the ball from the safety's hands or it would have been another pick six and 21–0 against Granger before the first quarter of the first game was over.

That's what the score was at halftime, though, the Cowboys down three scores because, in the last minute of the half, Shelby's version of Calvin—a kid almost as big and almost as fast as Calvin, named Michael Gilmore—beat Ollie Gray on a deep sideline route and ran away for what turned out to be an eighty-yard catch-and-run touchdown play.

As the Cowboys ran off the field after Casey's last pass of the half fell incomplete, Nate said to Jake, “We waited all summer for this, and now we come out and it's like we stepped in something.”

“We'll play better in the second half,” Jake said, knowing he was talking just to talk, not really believing what he was saying. He looked for Sarah in that moment, finally spotting her at the end of the line right before the tunnel, last cheerleader on the right.

Jake wondered if she even knew what his number was. Even if it was the number 10 that the sons of Troy Cullen were born to wear at Granger High.

“Can't get worse than this,” Nate said.

“No way,” Jake said.

They were both wrong. It was 28–0, Shelby, before the Cowboys—who hadn't lost a regular-season game since Wyatt Cullen's junior year—got on the board, set up when Melvin Braxton returned a punt all the way to the Shelby twenty. Casey followed with a bullet to Roy Gilley on first down to the ten. Then he threw one even harder to Calvin on a slant, Calvin getting popped good at the two, but managing to hold on to the ball. Spence Tolar ran it in from there, and the Granger Cowboys were on the board at last.

The Cowboys started moving the ball after that with some consistency. Casey aired it out on nearly every down, making a throw or two every series that you had to see to believe. But then he would turn around and make decisions you absolutely
couldn't
believe, the way Favre used to even in the best of times, flinging the ball around in a boneheaded way as if he thought his arm could beat any defender and any defense. He finally threw another interception when it looked like the Cowboys were driving for their second score of the game. His eyes locked on Justice this time, not even seeing an outside linebacker who drifted back into coverage. The kid picked the ball off and returned it all the way to the Shelby forty-eight.

But the Cowboys' defense held the Mustangs, keeping the score where it was, and forcing a punt. Melvin fair-caught the ball at his own twelve.

Two things happened then, one right after the other.

First, Jake saw Coach McCoy put a hand on Casey's arm as Casey started to run back on the field with the rest of the offense, saw Coach talking to him, saw Casey say something back, saw Coach shaking his head no, patting him on the back and walking away.

That was when Jake felt a hand on his own shoulder, turned around, and saw Coach Ray Jessup grinning at him.

“Okay,” he said. “Let's see what you got.”