QB 1 (18 page)

JAKE, BEAR, AND NATE WERE IN THE PASTURE BEHIND THE BARN
a little after five o'clock.

Bear said, “I'm not a receiver. The only thing I catch on a regular basis is grief, from the two of you.”

“Seems to me,” Jake said, “you were enough of a receiver to make your first—wait for it—career interception not so long ago.”

“It was one catch!” Bear said. “And forget about whether I can catch a ball or not. I still can't believe you dragged me over here, dragged
both
of us over here, after we already practiced once today.”

“Speak for yourself,” Nate said. “I
like
catching passes.” He was wearing high-top basketball sneakers, cargo shorts, a T-shirt that read “Not Lucky. Just Lucky To Be This Good.” Nate said, “You both know if I wanted to, I could be the best tight end on our team.”

“You keep tellin' yourself that, big man,” Jake said.

“You told me yourself once,” Nate said.

“I must've wanted something.”

“You mean like you want something now?”

Jake said, “This is a good thing we're doing.”

“I sure hope so,” Bear said. “We got nothing to lose, 'cept the game, of course.”

Jake looked past Bear to the corner of the barn. “I knew he'd come.”

Casey Lindell, wearing baggy shorts and his football spikes. As he got closer to them, Jake saw he was wearing an old black Spurs cap and a gray T-shirt that had “Granger Football” stenciled in white letters across the front.

“Got your note,” Casey said. “Didn't even know people left actual notes anymore.”

“The personal touch,” Jake said.

Casey shrugged. “Don't see as how things could get any more personal between us than they already are.”

“But you came,” Jake said.

“Yeah, I did,” Casey said. “I thought you were crazy at first, the part about me maybe needing to get away from practice
to
practice. But the more I thought on it, the more sense it started to make, maybe because I got no clue right now.”

“We
noticed,
” Nate said.

The way he said it, so much feeling in his voice, made them all laugh. Casey included.

“And you think you can help me?” Casey said, looking right at Jake.

“I do. But not just me.”

“And you
want
to help me?” Casey said.

“Only if you want to be,” Jake said. “Helped out, I mean. Start throwing strikes again, like we all know you can. Get your mojo back.”

“These days I don't feel like I ever had it,” Casey said.

“That's why we're here,” Jake said. “Me and your two receivers here.”

“What, all the good ones in town were busy?” Casey said, grinning, at least showing some of the old Casey, not the whupped dog he'd been all week at practice.

Then he looked back at Jake and said, “Might as well put this on the table right now. After all the stuff I said to you this season, you want to be my quarterback coach?”

“Actually, I don't,” Jake said. “But I went and found you one who thinks he's the best quarterback coach in the world.”

He turned Casey around and pointed him toward the barn, because here came Troy Cullen.

He got right to it, saying to Jake and Casey, “The two of you good?”

It was Casey who said, “Good as we're gonna be, Mr. Cullen.”

“Good enough for me; I ain't out here to be your guidance counselor,” he said. “You ready to work?” Nodding at Casey.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “For the life of me, I can't figure out what's happened to me.”

“Hell's bells,” Jake's dad said. “
Football
happened to you, son, the way it happens to all of us sooner or later. The big game happened to you, and even that happens to the best of 'em. You think it hasn't? Go back and take a look at that last Super Bowl ol' Tom Brady lost to the Giants. He missed a big throw to that little Welker, one that would have changed everything. A throw he could have made with his eyes closed.”

Then Jake's dad grinned and said, “But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now all you have to understand is that somethin' don't have to be broke to need fixin'.”

Jake was a little bit behind his dad, so Troy Cullen couldn't see him smiling. But then maybe this was just funny to Jake, him having brought his dad out here to work with a guy who'd spent the whole season trying to beat him out of a job.

His dad out here, at Jake's request, after all the times in Jake's life when he would've given anything to see him come walking out from the barn toward him.

Troy Cullen and Casey began to warm up now, soft-tossing to each other, his dad's motion as clean and classic as it had always been, same as it was with Wyatt.

When Casey announced that he was ready, Troy Cullen brought Bear and Nate into it, telling them to go stand about twenty-five yards down the pasture, a little bit apart.

Jake said, “And what do I get to do?”

His dad grinned. “Watch and learn.”

At first Troy Cullen kept things simple, just having Casey drop back, quick three-step drop, and yell either Bear's name or Nate's, just asking Casey to hit stationary targets, Casey doing that with no problem.

“So far, so good,” Jake's dad said.

“With receivers not running around,” Casey said, “and nobody running at
me.
It's not just that I feel like I've lost my location, Mr. Cullen. I feel like I lost all my timing.”

“Nah,” Troy Cullen said. “It's like I told my other boy, Wyatt, before the Red River game: You've just misplaced it, is all, like I do all the time with my reading glasses.”

Eventually Bear and Nate ran patterns, simple ones, outs and slants and hooks, nothing deep. Sometimes Casey would take a snap from Jake, acting as his center, sometimes Jake—a pretty good snapper—would give it to him in the shotgun.

And Casey started to miss now.

Not by a lot, but by enough. Jake could see him, even out here, start to squeeze the ball like he did when things started to get sideways in practice, reminding him of a Little League pitcher who couldn't throw a strike if his life depended on it.

Same old, same old,
Jake thought. Harder he tried, worse it got. After one overthrow to Nate, Casey looked at Troy Cullen and said, “What do I do?”

Troy Cullen said, “Close your eyes.”

Troy Cullen told Jake and Bear they could—his words—sit and take a load off, all's he needed were Casey and Nate for the time being. Sending Nate ten yards down the pasture and explaining that the idea for what they were about to do came from
his
dad, a golfer whose putting always drove him crazy.

“Not a thing in the world he was afraid of, 'cept that little putter in his bag,” Jake's dad said. “Couldn't putt under pressure to save this ranch. Finally the pro at his club took him to the putting green one day and made him start making short putts with his eyes closed. Two-footers, then five-footers, then back to ten, even. Told him to see the hole, see the ball, close his eyes, let 'er go. Told him not to worry about the result, just the process. And before long, damned if it didn't work.”

“Let me get this straight,” Casey said. “You want me to throw
with my eyes closed
?”

“Yes, son, I do,” Jake's dad said. “It may sound crazy, but I'm here to tell you it works. Worked for me in college one time I got scatter-armed. And it will work for you, I promise.”

Jake said, “How come you never did this drill with me?”

“Because the one thing you always did was hit what you were throwin' for,” his dad said, then smiled at Jake and said, “No matter what motion you used.”

At first, Casey was as off throwing to Nate with his eyes closed as he had been when they were wide open. He'd miss short, bouncing the ball in the grass, or wide, or high.

Troy Cullen just told him to stay patient, it would come.

And eventually, to Casey's amazement—and Jake's—it finally did.

Casey started to get it, suddenly throwing one spiral after another, Nate going five minutes sometimes without having to move a single step. Every few throws, Jake would watch Casey's eyes to make sure he wasn't cheating. But he wasn't.

“Yeah,” Casey would say when he'd open his eyes and see another ball in Nate's hands.
“Yeah, man!”

Troy Cullen started to move Nate back, five yards, then ten.

“You're seein' him now,” Troy Cullen said, “like your eyes were open instead of closed.” He'd had Nate running simple patterns, telling Casey that Nate was going to run ten steps, or fifteen, then cut left or right, telling him to close his eyes on the cut, see in his mind's eye where he wanted the ball to end up.

“Trust it,” Troy Cullen kept saying, and then Casey Lindell would complete another pass.

He didn't hit every one, but hit most, his passes looking better now than when he'd gotten here. When he had
been throwing with his eyes wide open.

In a quiet voice only Jake could hear, Bear said, “You actually think he can do this tomorrow night?”

Jake grinned. “Think I'll close
my
eyes and imagine it happening just that way.”

It was starting to get dark, they'd been out here in the pasture that long. Not that the fading light was bothering Casey any; Nate was the one having trouble picking up the ball now. So finally Troy Cullen said, “One more.” Nate started to back up, and Troy Cullen said, “Nah, let's have some fun here 'fore we call it a night. We'll split Jake out this time, like him and Casey here are both in the game runnin' one of those fancy wildcat plays, kind where one QB throws it to the other one. Nate, snap it to him in the shotgun. Bear, pretend you're the tight end. Jake'll take off down the sideline and Casey'll hit him deep. Wait and see, you boys'll want to call up John McCoy, tell him to put it in his playbook.”

“You want
Jake
to be a receiver, and for me to throw him a deep ball?” Casey said. “With my eyes still closed?”

“Pretty much,” Jake's dad said. “I know my boy can't run like Calvin, but he can move it pretty good when somebody's chasin' him.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Jake said. “I think.”

Casey said, “I don't want to end the night on a miss.”

“You won't miss,” Troy Cullen said. “Like I said: Just trust it and let 'er go.”

Casey did.

The ball sailed through the twilight like a shooting star until it came down in Jake's hands, Jake gathering it in, running about twenty more yards, spiking the ball. Pretending he
was
Calvin.

“Lindell to Cullen,” Casey said. “Didn't see that coming when I woke up today.”

Troy Cullen said his work here was done and started toward the barn, until he stopped, turned, grinned at Jake, and said, “I still got it.”

THE HORSESHOE-SHAPED STADIUM AT HIGHLAND JUNCTION
wasn't as new or as nice as Cullen Field. But it seemed to be a little bigger, had a big scoreboard at the closed end, and, the Cowboys found out, a spacious visitors' locker room that had a flat-screen TV and carpets on the floor.
Texas high school football,
Jake thought,
with all the trimmings.

Bear said, “Looks like we got all the comforts of home.”

“All we need to make it better is pie,” Nate added.

“Beat Sierra,” Jake said, “and I promise to buy you all the pie you can eat afterward.”

Nate thought about that, his face serious, and said, “There isn't that much pie.”

Jake went and sat with Coach Jessup as his teammates started to get dressed, knowing the only part of his uniform he was wearing tonight was his jersey, over a pair of jeans. He came out about fifteen minutes later, walked over to Casey's locker, and said, “We got this.”

“We're not playing behind your barn,” Casey said.

“Just keep telling yourself that you are,” Jake said. “Tell yourself it's like when you're out playing in the yard or the street and you get called for supper and you don't want to stop because you're having too much fun. That's the fun of it tonight. Playing to just keep playing.”

Jake didn't wait for an answer, afraid he might not like it, just went outside and walked around the field as the stands started to fill up, seeing the sky start to get darker, feeling the threat of rain in the air, worrying about a sloppy field and a sloppy game, then shook his head, like he was trying to get the worries about the conditions out of there before they could settle.

“Control the things you can,” his mom had always told him, one of her favorite lines, “then leave the rest to God and Texas.”

Jake walked by the cheerleaders now, where they were warming up, so he could say hi to Sarah.

“You gonna be okay tonight?” she asked.

“No, but it'll be worth it,” he said. “Long as we win.”

He walked slowly back to the locker room, feeling the night begin to start without him, stood just inside the locker room door as Coach McCoy addressed the Granger Cowboys, nobody knowing if this was his last season or not, Jake realizing that if it was, and they didn't beat Sierra tonight, this might be Coach's last game.

When he quieted them down and had their attention, Coach said, “Sometimes, you get to this point in the season and realize you got nothin' original left to say. So I guess all I got tonight is a question: You boys done yet?”

In a good, loud voice, the Granger Cowboys shouted,
“No, sir!”

Coach said, “Good, 'cause I sure ain't done,” and that was it, all he had. He turned and walked out the door. The Cowboys followed him, Jake high-fiving as many as he could as they walked past him, waiting until all the guys who were playing the game were out of the room, every last one.

Then he followed them. This was going to be the hardest game of his life. And he wasn't even playing in it.

The Sierra Broncos had led their league in scoring, done that by a lot, mostly riding the arm of their senior quarterback, Tommy Chavez, son of a famous tie-down roper named Freddie Chavez. Tommy had already committed to Baylor next season, people saying he was going to light it up there like he was the second coming of RG III.

But it was all throwing with him; he couldn't run like RG III or Johnny Manziel. Couldn't run to save his life. But Tommy Chavez had thrown twenty-eight touchdown passes in ten games, the Broncos having won nine of those games, seven by double digits. Coach J told Jake they didn't have just one stud receiver like Calvin; Tommy had thrown touchdown passes to
seven
different players.

He was six four, looked like he went two-twenty easy, and wore number 1, just like Calvin—like it wasn't just a number on his jersey, it was a grade.

“What I hear about Tommy,” Nate said, “is he thinks God has to check with him before the sun rises in the morning and sets at night.”

“Whatever,” Jake said. “My money's on our number one tonight.”

“All's we need is somebody to throw it to him,” Bear said.

“Casey'll be fine,” Jake said.

“How you gonna convince us of that,” Bear said, “when it sounds like you haven't even convinced your own self?”

It wasn't that Jake didn't think Casey couldn't come out of his slump tonight. He just didn't want this to turn out to be a quarterback's game, because if it did, then the Cowboys were going to be in trouble—Tommy Chavez was that good.

Yet for all the pregame talk about him on the radio and in the newspaper, all the talk about what an aerial circus this game was going to be, it was the defenses, from both teams, that dominated early. The defenses and nerves, actually. Even from Tommy Chavez.
Especially
from him. Making a prophet, in the first half anyway, out of Coach J, who'd said to Jake before the game, “Tommy's a talented kid. But he's still a kid.”

Melvin intercepted him on the Broncos' first series of the game, the Broncos having driven to the Cowboys' thirty. Then it was the Cowboys driving, Casey hitting his first three passes, all short ones, the coaches trying to get him into the flow of the game that way.

But the first time he tried to stretch the field, like the coaches were ready to get him off training wheels, he eyeballed Calvin all the way, same as he had at the start of the season. The Broncos' strong-side safety read the play like a book, stepping in front of Calvin for the interception, breaking some tackles, getting all the way back to midfield.

Three Tommy Chavez passes and a couple of runs later, the Broncos were up 7–0.

Casey started missing now, forcing throws even when everybody in the place could see his intended receiver was covered. It was one three-and-out after another for the Cowboys, out of the first quarter into the second. Jake thought that even if their defense could continue to contain Tommy Chavez, the best the Cowboys could hope for would be going into the locker room at halftime down a touchdown.

But with under a minute left in the half, third-and-two from the Cowboys' thirty-five, Coach Jessup decided to put the ball—and the game—into Calvin's hands in a slightly different way.

Jake was standing with Coach J and Coach McCoy when he heard the play call, then Coach J turned to him and winked and said, “More than one way to skin a Bronco.”

Casey spun away from center, stuck the ball in Spence Tolar's belly for what looked like a simple off-tackle play, sold the fake a lot better than he'd been throwing the ball, pulled the ball out and flipped it to Calvin Morton, flying around from where he'd split out wide on the left.

An end-around.

First one they'd run all season.

And it caught the Broncos completely by surprise, Jake seeing what everybody in the stadium at Highland Junction saw: that nobody was going to catch Calvin once he got to the edge and turned upfield. The Cowboys' number 1, on his way to the house.

It was 7–7 at the half.

Jake stayed away from Casey in the locker room, stayed away from everybody, just took his place by the door. Part of the night but not part of it; in the locker room with his teammates but feeling like some fan who'd snuck in. Listening as Coach McCoy said there was no doubt in his mind, none, that the boys on defense were just going to keep bringing it, saying they were going to keep mixing it up on Tommy Chavez, dropping extra guys into coverage, blitzing him enough that he didn't get too comfortable.

“We're tied with those boys on the other team,” he said, “and we haven't even taken our cuts yet.”

As the Cowboys were walking out of the room, Casey Lindell came over to Jake.

“I'm letting you down,” Casey said.

“No, you're not,” Jake said. “Like Coach said, we haven't come close to playing like we can, and it's still seven to seven.”

“I'm probably making your dad want to close
his
eyes,” Casey said.

“You made some great throws,” Jake said, trying to do anything to pump the guy up.

“That fun you talked about?” Casey said. “When does it start?”

Put his helmet on, walked past Jake.

Not good,
Jake thought.

Not good at all.

But it was still tied at the end of the third quarter, 14-all. Tommy Chavez had put the Broncos ahead with a ten-yard bullet, but with the Bronco defense over-playing the run, Casey suddenly found his form, nothing to indicate that he was about to do it, hitting Roy, Justice, and Calvin in succession. Then, with the defense loosened up and looking for a pass, Spence ran twenty-five yards, straight up the middle for a touchdown, on a draw, nobody touching him. So the game was even again. One quarter to go.

The rainstorm blew into Highland Junction then. Jake had been thinking that as bad as the sky looked, maybe the storm would hold off until the game was over, but it came now, came hard and fast and mean, the way storms did in Texas, the rain howling, blowing across the field in sheets. What Troy Cullen called Bible weather.

Tommy Chavez got hit, fumbled the ball, and Michael Pinkett recovered it for the Cowboys.

David Stevens fumbled it right back, the ball coming out of his hands as he was running free around right end. The aerial circus everybody had predicted just turned into mudball now, both teams still trying to throw, but neither having much success.

Meanwhile, the clock kept moving, Jake wondering what kind of shape the field would be in if they had to keep playing into sudden death overtime.

Late in the fourth quarter, the Cowboys got the ball back at the Broncos' forty-seven. The Broncos' punter had slipped in the mud as he planted his lead foot and had kicked the ball only twenty yards, nearly getting blocked by Bear Logan.

Two minutes left.

“What are we gonna do?” Casey asked Coach J.

“That end-around to Calvin where you roll to your right and he comes behind,” he said. “Then hope the misdirection makes ever'body slip 'cept Calvin.”

It worked just like that, Casey flipping Calvin the ball as he came behind, Calvin putting the ball in his left hand, making the turn without sliding around, running twenty yards until a safety knocked him out of bounds. Just like that, the Cowboys were in business at the Broncos' twenty-seven.

Then, Coach J brought Calvin into the backfield—first time they'd done
that
all year. Casey pitched it to him, and Calvin ran ten more yards until he got shoved out of bounds.

Jake said to Coach J, “You think we could kick a field goal if we had to?”

“No,” Coach J said. “No way we can get off a snap, hold, and kick in these conditions. We need a score.”

“You got something good?” Jake said.

“I got Calvin, is what I got.”

They ran Calvin again from the backfield for six, down to the Broncos' eleven. Then, everybody on defense watching for Calvin, the Cowboys ran a direct snap to Spence, who ran for five more. They were at the six-yard line now, with under a minute to play, first and goal to go.

Casey rolled out, hoping to find Calvin in the end zone, but Casey was pulled down from behind, Jake nearly dying as the ball came loose before it slid out of bounds at the ten.

Clock stopped, forty-one seconds left.

Pitch to Calvin, smothered, no gain.

The Cowboys called their last time-out.

Coach J decided to throw for it. The play was for Calvin to push the corner and the safety on him a few yards deep into the end zone, then curl toward the sideline. Casey was supposed to roll with the pocket to buy some time in the mud and get it to him somehow.

Before Casey went back on the field, Jake went over to him and said, “You can do this.”

“Don't tell me with my eyes closed.”

“Not gonna,” Jake said. “You got hot before. Get hot for one more throw.”

Nate snapped him the ball and Casey moved carefully to his right behind Nate and the right side of the line. Calvin drove the guys covering him into the end zone, planted without slipping, started back for the ball.