Safety Net (4 page)

Mama had only paused to reload. “And
if that’s not bad enough... No. No, this is even worse. They brought in Ryan
Hutchinson? And what in God’s name was
he
thinking of, going to Crocker?
After Jimmy Givens ruined your chances at State, that Hutchinson kid could’ve
written his own ticket. You can’t tell me he couldn’t get a better deal from ‘Bama
or TCU. Or even Georgia, if it came to that. This situation with Hutchinson
stinks of conspiracy. Or lunacy. Recruit you both and let you fight to the
death? It makes no sense whatsoever. For a supposedly elite school, they’re a
bunch of idiots.”

She never raised her voice. That
was not her style. She simply spoke as if everything she said was so obvious
and true that everyone in the world believed it, and there could be no
rebuttal. Sometimes Erick was up for the challenge -- he loved using logic to
undermine her linchpin arguments -- but not today. It wasn’t that she was right
this time, but she wasn’t wrong, either.

Not entirely. She was wrong about
Terrence Duran. She hadn’t seen him in the Oregon game, and damn, if only he’d
had the team around him to back him up that day. No offense to his teammates,
but they simply hadn’t played on his level. And she hadn’t seen Duran against
Rockridge, when he had had the team with him.

But what could he say about Ryan
Hutchinson? Nothing. He had learned in middle school what happened when the
quarterback didn’t support his players. You didn’t get a good team out of trash-talk
and petty rivalries. The only person he wished he could talk to about Ryan was
Ryan himself, and he knew that was never going to happen. Ryan hated him in
every way possible, he’d made that explicitly clear in private. And it was to
Ryan’s credit -- as little credit as he had around the team these days -- that
he kept his hatred hidden in public.

Erick, for his part, didn’t hate
Ryan but couldn’t understand him. His overriding emotion when it came to Ryan
was frustration. How could the best high school quarterback in Texas turn up
for college ball and blow it so consistently? He didn’t shine in training camp?
Fine. College jitters. But in practice, by now, he should be dazzling everyone,
and there was no dazzle. Ryan on his best days was barely as good as Duran on
his worst days, and the tragedy of it was Erick
knew
Ryan had it in him.
He knew what Ryan was capable of. And was utterly disappointed that Ryan kept
proving him wrong.

So the best he could answer his
mother with on Christmas morning was to grab another gingerbread cookie and
excuse himself from the table to go out for a walk.

The air was crisp and cold, and
there was a sprinkling of snow on the ground. Erick didn’t know the
neighborhood well. His father had accepted a job as athletic director of a
state college in Virginia just before Erick’s senior year. To finish high
school and stay with his team, Erick had lived with his grandmother in Dallas,
and Mama had driven out to watch him play a few times. A hellishly long drive,
but she’d said she made the most of it listening to audiobooks.

It was very strange to spend
Christmas in a house that was his parents’ but not his. Strange to sleep in the
guest bedroom, devoid of any trophies and team photos; those were all proudly
displayed in the den downstairs, where they were public and didn’t belong to
him anymore. Strange to be away from Crocker for his first break and not see
any of his friends from high school. The strangeness of it all turned his
thoughts back to familiarity -- Crocker football -- as he walked along the
curving, sloped road, next to barren trees and sleeping houses.

Damn. Mama had put the Hutchinson
problem back in his brain, so he worried at it and picked at it --
dog with
a bone
, he could hear his Meemaw say -- like he could somehow figure out
the solution. Like it was within
him
to make Ryan Hutchinson, who hated
his guts, rise up and come into his own. Become the star player Erick knew he
could be. And in doing that, what? Kill his own chances at QB1? Why couldn’t
Ryan just play up to his potential so Erick didn’t have to worry about it
anymore?

Back in September, Erick had been
interested in finding out Lowell Menacker’s take on Hutchinson; he had heard
that Lowell knew Ryan from a recruits’ weekend and had hoped to find an ally in
untangling the problem. But while Lowell didn’t dismiss Ryan the way so many
others did, he’d never seen Ryan play the way Erick had. No ally there. The
only people who could possibly share Erick’s frustration with Ryan were the
coaches, and that was a boundary Erick wasn’t going to cross.

He’d been walking uphill for a good
ten minutes when he met his sisters coming down. Rather than continue to the
crest, he turned and fell into step with them.

Janine blew out a frosty breath. “You
look like you just killed someone and hid the body. Mama bring up Crocker?”

Erick rolled his eyes in response.

“Her favorite subject,” Trisha
said.

“I can’t talk to her about it,” Erick
said. “It’s impossible. She won’t listen. She knows everything. Hell, if she
was going to be like this about it, why’d she agree to let me go there?”

“Daddy talked her into it,” said
Janine. Trisha expanded, “Daddy said it had to be your decision. But he wanted
you to go to Crocker. He said it would be the best match.”

Erick, back in Texas with his
grandmother at the time, hadn’t been aware of any of this. Crocker the best
match? “Hm,” he said. “Where did Mama want me to go?”

“Oklahoma State. But she said she’d
settle for Oklahoma.” Janine nudged him with her elbow.

Of course. His mother had attended
Oklahoma State. No matter that their starting QB had three years of play ahead
of him.

Erick huffed out an angry sigh. “So
I’m just a huge disappointment to her, I guess! I’ve already ruined my life!”

Trisha gave him a soft slap on the
back of his head. “Oh, don’t be a big baby about it. Yes, in this one decision,
Mama’s darling little boy went against her wishes, and she’s adjusting to it by
letting you know just how inadequate poor Crocker is for her doll baby. Don’t
worry, give it a year and you’ll be beating USC single-handed, and she’ll get
over it.”

Erick hated when Trisha ranted at
him for being “the darling little boy” -- was it his fault he was the youngest
and his parents hadn’t had another son? He cut back at her with, “If it’s no
big deal, why did you two run away and leave me to face her alone?”

Trisha looked smug. “One thing
about being a woman, you earn the right to get the hell away from your mother
when you know she’s about to drive you batshit insane. Baby boy, you don’t have
that luxury.”

Erick wondered if he’d earned the
luxury of pushing his sister down a hill, and Janine, sensing danger, deflected
obviously by saying, “What is with that beard, by the way? You going for
hillbilly chic? Because you’ve got the hillbilly part but I’m not so sure about
the chic.”

Erick rubbed his chin. “I was too
busy to shave and it grew in this way. I thought I’d see how I liked it.”

Janine raised her eyebrows at him. “And
you like it?”

Erick shrugged. “I don’t know. I
like not shaving twice a day.”

“I’m surprised they let you keep
it,” Trisha commented. “I would’ve thought even Crocker had standards.” But she
said it good-naturedly, and Erick, who knew the beard looked a little scraggly
at the moment, laughed it off with, “You can say that because you haven’t met
the guys. I’m the prettiest one on the team.”

Janine made gagging noises, and
Trisha whistled low. “Oh, so that’s why they never show Crocker on TV.”

They reached their parents’ front
yard. Janine and Trisha went inside and Erick, not ready to face Mama yet, kept
walking, amused by the idea of being the best-looking guy on the team. If he
thought about it critically, the best-looking guy on the team was, without a
doubt, Lowell Menacker. Next year they should use Lowell on the posters.

Then, as he thought about this,
Erick felt a little weird and disloyal to the others by singling out Lowell,
even in his own private mental space, so he finished his walk objectively
rating a bunch of his teammates by how photogenic he thought they’d be. By the
time he returned to the house he was convinced he was losing his sanity,
probably because he’d been so pissed at Mama he’d only eaten two gingerbread
cookies for breakfast.

-----

Erick returned to campus early.
Classes didn’t start for another week, but the dorms re-opened a few days into
the New Year. When he’d booked his ticket months ago, he’d had ideas of
spending the extra time going down to Dallas, but once he was back in California
he decided against going anywhere anytime soon. Economy class seats were not
built for six-foot-four football players, and he couldn’t afford to rent a car
for two weeks.

Campus was dead. Hopkins Hall was
almost deserted and eerily quiet. As Erick headed down the hall to his room, he
could hear the television faintly from the floor’s lounge. Hoping it was
someone he knew, he started toward the lounge and was stopped by a loud “Homeboy!”
coming from Dale Lennart’s room.

The door was propped open and
Lennart was sitting at a desk with his feet up, balancing on the back legs of
his chair. Erick came inside and dropped his baggage on the floor. “You see the
Rose Bowl?”

Dale let his chair drop onto four
legs. “That personal foul against Davitz? That was brutal.”

“The interception in the fourth.” Erick
pulled a chair over from one of the other desks and sat astride it, back to
front. “I felt so bad for Torres.”

“Between that, and that fumble on
third-and-long... Harsh game.”

Erick bunched a fist over the chair
back and rested his chin on it. “I don’t know, maybe it’s because we played
them, but I think Oregon’s a better team. Hell, they’re terrifying. They could’ve
won that one.”

Dale rolled his shoulders and
stretched his arms back. “I thought they would. But, bro. Wisconsin. They
fucking brought it.”

“Wisconsin, yeah. It’s too bad. I
thought if Oregon won there’d finally be some love for PWAC this year. PWAC
beyond SC.”

Dale tchted and stared at him
wide-eyed. “Love for PWAC? Do you ever read, like, anything at all?”

Erick grimaced. “Has it been
savage? What the hell do you read, anyway?” Back east, the reaction had been as
if Wisconsin had met a nothing team from some place no one had ever heard of
and inevitably had won. Not much discussion.

“The PWAC blog. Savage? The fucking
comments--”

“You read the comments? No wonder.”

Dale sat back and clasped his hands
behind his head. “Eh, it’s worse than that. I was leaving comments.” Erick
looked at him askance, and Dale said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. But I couldn’t leave
it alone. I was sick of seeing this shit against PWAC. And Oregon was
fan-fucking-tastic this season. Fucking Rose Bowl, what the hell? I kinda got
into it with some asshole who said Oregon were a bunch of pussies for letting
Wisconsin roll through their D. I told him to go back to his SEC school and
learn how to spell pussies. It went downhill after that.”

“How does anyone misspell pussy?”

“One s.”

Erick laughed. “Dude. Comments.
That’s all I’m sayin’. Is anyone else back yet?”

Dale stretched his arms again. “I
think Giordano’s around, and the little kicker.”

“Boylan,” Erick put in. Boylan was
five-foot-eight, looked like a strong wind would blow him away, and in practice
he kicked forty-four yard field goals.

“Yeah, him. Oh, yeah, and Menacker.
He said he might come by later. Apparently Harris is even deader than here.”

Erick scratched at his beard. “Lowell’s
back already?” He didn’t know why he was surprised. He hadn’t seen much of
Lowell since the season ended, and didn’t know anything about his family. He’d
had an impression of Lowell as a happy, steady guy, the kind who’d stay with
family until the last possible second, but what did he really know?

Dale gave him an odd look, and for
a brief moment Erick had a strange, elusive thought about Dale and Lowell that
he didn’t quite catch -- didn’t quite let himself reach for. Dale said, “What’s
with the beard? You look like a mass murderer.”

Erick scratched again. “You sound
like my sisters.” He was fairly sure Dale wouldn’t take that as a slight
against his masculinity, and Dale didn’t. He nodded and said, “Smart girls.”

Erick stood up and sighed
dramatically. “Okay, I get the hint.” He picked up his bags. “Later?”

“Later, homeboy.”

Erick went back to his own room and
crashed for a couple of hours, woke up, and shaved, which took forever and was
a pain in the ass; he was going to have to stay on top of it from now on. He
wandered back to Dale’s room. The door was still open, and Dale was sitting at
his desk, lit by the glow of his laptop. Lowell was lounging on one of the
beds, leafing through
USA Today
and saying to Dale, “Extra cheese, extra
sauce.”

“That’s another five bucks,
Menacker,” Dale groused. “You’ve already got your fried onions, ‘shrooms, and
Italian sausage.”

“Cheese over sauce, then,” Lowell
said, looking up. “Oh, hi, Erick.”

“Hey. Can I get in on this pizza?”

Lowell said, “Sure,” but Dale said,
“No, let’s just make it two pizzas. Menacker’s going crazy with toppings. If
you’re adding anything else? No, just make it two.”

“Onions, mushrooms, sausage,
cheese, sauce. What’s so crazy about that?” Lowell asked.

“One word: pepperoni,” Dale said. “Cheap,
simple pizza. What’s more cheap and simple than plain pepperoni? I ask you.”

Erick sat down on the floor and
leaned against the bed Lowell was on. While Dale was submitting their order,
Lowell flopped back, letting the newspaper fall on Erick. Erick picked it up
and noticed the Crowne Plaza sticker on the front page.