Two-Minute Drill (7 page)

“Sorry, brain,” Jimmy would say when the play was over. “But there’s just something about putting you on the ground that is so totally awesome. It’s like I’m racking up points playing video.”

Water boy would actually be a step up, he realized.

“Your chance will come,” his dad said from across the dinner table now.

“Dad, I’m trying not to get my hopes up,” Scott said. “All I see myself doing this year is riding the bench, unless we’re winning, like, 100-0.”

His dad put down his knife and fork and in a soft voice said to him, “Hey, what happened to my Rudy?”

Rudy
was one of their favorite sports movies to watch together. No, that wasn’t right. It was one of their favorite movies, period. The story of the Notre Dame guy, a little guy who wasn’t supposed to make the team and then, once he was on the team, wasn’t ever supposed to get in a game. But he finally got in for one play and made a tackle and got carried off the field by his teammates at the end.

It said on the screen at the end of the movie that it was the only time in the whole history of Notre Dame football that any player had ever been carried off the field.

“You just gotta be ready for your Rudy moment,” his dad said.

“But what difference does it make if I’m ready if I can’t even make a tackle in practice?” Scott said. “If the only person I can bring down most of the time is myself?”

“Yet,” his dad said. “You haven’t made a tackle
yet.
”

Scott said, “The only big play I’m gonna make this season is in your dreams.”

“Let me worry about my dreams,” his dad said. “You just worry about your own.”

 

He called into the den and told his parents he was going to take Casey for a walk.

“With the leash,” his dad said.

“Case won’t go anywhere,” Scott said.

“Case goes everywhere,” his dad called back, “especially at night. And, besides, you know the rules.”

“At night he’s on the leash.”

“And don’t—”

“—leave the neighborhood.”

Casey had never liked being on a leash, from the time he was a pup. But he knew the leash was a signal he was going outside, and he loved going outside. So he’d get almost as excited when he saw Scott with the leash in his hands as he did when Scott came walking down stairs with a ball.

“Let’s go, pal,” Scott said.

Casey’s answer was to come sliding right into Scott on their slippery kitchen floor.

As soon as they were out the door, Casey was pulling him down the front walk. It was completely dark by now, and the old-fashioned streetlights were lit. When they got to the sidewalk, Scott saw a woman he recognized from up the block walking at them from the other direction, power-walking the way his mom did sometimes, earphones in her ears.

As she passed them, she said to Scott, “Very cool dog.”

Scott smiled and said, “I know,” wondering if she even heard him over whatever it was she was listening to.

When the sound of her footsteps was gone, there was just the panting Casey the dog, straining against the leash the way he always did once they got going, wanting Scott to go faster.

Alone on the street, Scott began to announce an imaginary game.

“Welcome to Bloomfield North Field,” he said. “It’s a perfect morning for football as the Eagles prepare to open their season against their cross-town rival, the Jets.”

Not a great voice,
he thought.

“The Eagles have won the toss and elected to receive,” he said.

On the quiet street, his voice sounding loud, Scott said, “Scott Parry to kick off. . . .”

Chris’s big day in class was the Thursday before their first game.

Mr. Dykes, their English teacher, was going to give them a passage from a book, ask them to read it in an allotted period of time, then quiz them on it right after they finished reading.

Quiz them and grade them.

“It will be like a homework assignment, just in class,” Mr. Dykes had told them on Monday. “And it will give me a good read, early in the semester, on your ability to not just read, but understand what you’re reading.”

On the bus home on Monday, Chris had said, “If I have to read a chapter fast, I’m done like dinner. You know how slow I read.”

“So you pick up a step by Thursday,” Scott had said.

“You sound pretty confident.”

“I am.”

Actually, he wasn’t.

That afternoon they figured out that it took Chris about two minutes to read a page. The book they were using was one they were reading in school, called
My Brother Sam Is Dead,
about a family during the Revolutionary War.

When Scott put himself on the clock, they found out he needed fifty-five seconds to read the same page.

“Great,” Chris said. “You’re more than twice as fast as me.”

Scott smiled.

Chris said, “You’re smiling
because
?”

“Because I just came up with another one of my brilliant ideas.”

“Your brilliant ideas usually mean more work for me,” Chris said.

“You want to hear it or not?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Nah.”

“Before we get to Mr. Dykes’s class on Friday,” he said, “your time is going
down,
sucker.”

“You sound like Mr. Dolan when he takes his stopwatch out.”

“Exactly,” Scott said. “You’re going to compete. Against yourself. And I’m going to time you.”

The hero of
My Brother Sam Is Dead
was a boy named Tim Meeker, and the story was about how his brother Sam runs off to fight for the American rebels and against the British army in the late 1770s, before America won its independence. Scott, who’d finished the whole book even though the class hadn’t been required to do that yet, thought it was a solid book. Chris was only about halfway through, but Scott could see that he was getting into it, too.

“I still can’t believe I actually like a book,” Chris said.

Scott looked at him, curious now. “You’ve never read just for the fun of it?”

Chris shook his head. “Would you, if you were me? And who said this is fun, anyway?”

“You’re liking this book, you said so yourself.”

“I like it okay.”

“That’s good enough for now,” Scott said.

As the week went on, Scott saw the athlete in Chris coming out a little more every day, saw how competitive he was getting, how he was pushing himself. Could see how Chris would finish a page, say “done,” then look at Scott and ask with his eyes what his time was without saying a word.

“Eighty-five seconds,” Scott would say.

Or eighty-three. Whatever it was. Chris seemed to knock off a couple of seconds every time Scott put him on the clock.

When they did their last page on Wednesday, studying at Scott’s this time, he got under eighty seconds for the first time.

“And I slowed down for a second when I got here,” Chris said, pointing to the word
sight
. “Another one that doesn’t sound the way it looks,” he said.

Words like that, ones he couldn’t sound out, were still a problem for him, Scott had discovered. But he kept telling Chris that he couldn’t let words like that make him feel like he’d run into a door.

“You just gotta keep moving,” Scott said.

Chris grinned. “Like I’m getting chased by a couple of linebackers.”

“If you stop,” Scott said, “you’re gonna get sacked.”

“Mr. Dolan calls it getting dough-popped,” Chris said. “Some kind of Southern expression.”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “And, remember,
dough
is spelled d-o-u-g-h.”

“I hate words like that!”

Scott said, “Get over it and start reading the next page.” Pointing to his watch as he said that.

“You have turned into Mr. Dolan,” Chris said.

They read until Scott’s mom said Chris’s mom was there to pick him up. Wednesday wasn’t a practice night this week, but they were studying together anyway, because the test was tomorrow.

When Chris was gone, Scott’s mom said, “So how are we looking there, Professor?”

“Chris calls me Coach.”

“So how is he doing, really? He seems to be in a much better mood lately. Mrs. Conlan says she’s noticed it, too.”

Scott said, “He’s gotten a lot better in just a week. The last page we did today, he had his best time ever. Then I had him read a whole chapter and talk about it afterward. Mom,” Scott said, excited, “he
got
it.”

“You think he can get through this tomorrow?”

“He’s definitely nervous,” Scott said. “Chris said he never chokes at football, but when it comes to quizzes, he gags his lungs out.”

“You’re more nervous about his test than you’ve ever been for one of your own.”

“Not even close,” Scott said.

She put her arms around him then. “Have I told you lately what a great kid you are?”

Scott said, “Well, not in months and months.”

“You are an unbelievably great kid.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You are most welcome.”

Scott looked up at his mom and said, “He’s got to nail this sucker.”

 

Chris nailed it.

They didn’t know for sure he’d nailed it that day, because they weren’t getting their grades until the next morning. At lunch all Chris said was that he thought he’d done a solid job.

“I was going to stop a couple of times,” he said. “I’d get stuck on a word and get that bad feeling. But I made myself keep going, like we talked about.”

English, their last class before lunch, had just ended a few minutes before, and he was still all fired up, like he really had just played a big game. “The whole time, I pictured you standing over me, looking at that cheesy watch of yours.”

Scott said, “What do you mean, cheesy? Do you know how many tickets at the video arcade this watch cost me?”

The book Mr. Dykes had given them was called
Hoot
, about some cool kids in Florida trying to save baby owls. He’d had them read the first chapter, then told them to write an essay about what had happened and how they felt the author had made them want to read the rest of the book.

When Mr. Dykes handed them back their blue books on Friday, Scott could feel himself holding his breath the way he would during the best parts of a movie, could actually feel his heart beating inside his chest.

Chris stared at the grade on the front, not changing expression until Mr. Dykes was past him, then holding up the front of the book so that Scott could see the grade written in red Magic Marker on the front:

Scott knew that the best Chris had done on the first three quizzes so far this semester was a C-minus.

Making sure Mr. Z couldn’t see, Chris pointed across at Scott and mouthed “you.”

Scott smiled, then shook his head.

When Mr. Dykes dropped the blue book on his desk, Scott saw the A at the top and “Excellent work!” underneath that.

He felt much better about the B across the room.

That night, after talking to Mr. Dykes on the telephone, Mr. and Mrs. Conlan made it official that Chris could stay on the team. The next day Chris scored two touchdowns as the Eagles beat the Jets, 12-6.

Scott didn’t play a single down, just watched from the sidelines, helmet on his head the whole time, standing about twenty yards from Mr. Dolan, trying not to cheer for Chris every single time he made a good play, because that made him feel more like a cheerleader than a teammate.

When the game was over, Chris ran straight for Scott, so he could bump him some fist.

“First the quiz, now the game,” Scott said. “You’re on a roll, dude.”

Chris shook his head slowly from side to side. “
We’re
on a roll,” he said. “You and me, we’re a team now.”

In the classroom, Scott wanted to say to him.

In the classroom we’re a team.

Never on the field.

 

They won the next Saturday, against the Bears, and then the Saturday after that, against the Rams, to make it 3-0 for the season.

Chris was great against the Bears, even throwing a touchdown pass to Jimmy Dolan. But it was Grant Dillon, their fullback, a guy usually only in there to block in the backfield for Chris or Jeremy Sharp, who saved them against the Rams. Jeremy had rolled his ankle early in the fourth quarter and had to sit out the rest of the game. After that, Chris was the one running with the ball—when he wasn’t trying an occasional pass, even though Mr. Dolan liked passing about as much as he liked referees.

The Rams were ahead, 6-0.

By the time the Eagles got the ball with two minutes left, the Ram defenders had figured out that if they sent everybody after Chris on every play and double-covered Jimmy when he went out for a pass, they were going to win the game.

But on third-and-four from the Eagles’ forty-yard line, Chris crossed them up.

Big-time.

He took the snap and started rolling to his right. If you had been watching the game, it looked like every sweep he had been running to that side all day. Suddenly, though, he stopped, turned and threw the ball back across the field to Grant, who was wide open on the left sideline, nothing but green grass stretched out ahead of him.

Grant wasn’t the fastest guy on their team. In fact, next to Scott, he was probably the slowest. But with most of the Rams chasing Chris, and Jimmy Dolan having taken his two defenders deep down the right side, he was in the clear.

The only two Rams with a chance were the ones down the field with Jimmy. But Jimmy blocked one of the guys somehow. Like he was a streak of light, Chris appeared out of nowhere, thirty yards from the spot where he’d released the ball, to take down the other.