Cody's Varsity Rush (4 page)

Grant head coach Martin Morgan carried forty-one athletes on his varsity roster, and that was after cutting five seniors that he deemed not up to playing varsity ball. Some coaches let seniors play JV, but Coach Morgan didn't believe in robbing practice and game time from younger players—players who might earn their way up to varsity someday.

The Saints won the pregame coin toss and elected to receive the opening kickoff. “Receive” was a bit of a misnomer when it came to ATV's kickoffs. Cody tried to remember one of the powerful athlete's kicks that had actually been returned.

ATV charged toward the ball, which rested on the kickoff tee almost perfectly perpendicular to the field. As he made contact, the ball seemed to explode off his right foot. Cody watched in awe as it flew in tight, end-over- end somersaults through the uprights, bounced once, then hopped over the chain-link fence that marked the outer boundary of Grant Field.

Last year, Cody had seen one of ATV's kickoffs, aided by a powerful tail wind, clear that fence on the fly, landing in the bed of a Ford pickup parked on the road south of the field. Still, this most recent kick wasn't bad for an early-season effort.

Holy Family showed desperation early, trying a gadget play on first down. Minnery, the Saint QB, handed off to his fullback, who then flipped the ball right back. “Pass! Pass!” Cody heard the coaches screaming on the sideline.

Yancey Mack, the Saints' star wideout, sprinted down the center of the field. Lydell trailed him by two strides.
Uh-oh
, Cody thought,
Lydell must have bit
on the fake. This is trouble.

Cody knew Yancey Mack. Cody had competed against Yancey's little brother in middle school. Both of the Macks were fine athletes. Minnery lofted a high, tight spiral. Cody held his breath.

“Dude,” Bart said, “if Mack catches it, he's takin' it all the way to the house. Look—Winston can't keep up with him.”

Cody nodded.

The pass looked a bit short. Looking back for it, Mack slowed his pace and extended his arms back for the ball.

Come on
, Cody urged silently,
here
'
s your chance,
Lydell, close on him. Now
!

The underthrown pass did give the Grant corner time to catch up with Mack. The two were side by side as the Saint receiver pulled the ball into his chest. But then, with the ball secured, Mack went into sprint mode again.

Lydell was candy.

“Aw, man,” Bart groaned. “Mack's leaving Winston Lydell behind like he's a stationary object! Coach is gonna have him running gassers all week!”

Grant quickly answered the Saint score. ATV tripped over one of his own blockers on first down, gaining five yards to the Eagle thirty. The next play sent ATV off left tackle. Pork Chop was left tackle. Chop backed his opponent up five steps and sealed him to the inside of the field. ATV charged through the gaping hole. He bowled over a linebacker at the thirty-eight and chugged through yards and yards of open field before dragging a cornerback and a free safety into the end zone.

A pack of grade-school students, aware of ATV's kicking prowess, stood outside the field area in the middle of the road at the field's north end, awaiting the extra point. ATV kicked the ball over all of their heads, sending them scrambling into the parking lot to find it.

ATV's ensuing kickoff bounced off the crossbar in the Saint end zone, giving Holy Family a first down at its own twenty.

After a quarterback draw picked up six yards on first down, the Saints lined up in shotgun formation, with Minnery standing three steps behind his center. As Minnery bellowed the snap count, Mack went in motion, jogging toward Craig Ward's side of the field.

“Check this,” Brett said, his puberty-stricken voice cracking, “Mack's gonna go up against Ward? That's crazy! Ward will be on him like a second skin.”

On the snap of the ball, Mack bolted into the Grant secondary. He ran up to Ward as if he were meeting a long-lost brother, than planted his left foot and turned 180 degrees back toward his quarterback. Ward stayed right behind him, ready to tackle him as soon as the ball arrived.

But Mack had no intention of gaining only a few yards. He did another 180 and dashed toward the end zone.

A hook-and-go
, Cody thought.
Man, Mack runs a
crisp pattern. And that was a pretty good pump fake
Minnery just gave
.

Ward must have found the pattern crisp too, or maybe he bit on the pump fake. Whatever the case, he overplayed his opponent. When Mack turned and went long, he left Ward behind. Minnery reared back and launched the long ball. It looked to Cody like he put everything into the pass, not wanting to under-throw to his ace receiver again.

“This is bad, this is bad, this is bad,” Bart chanted.

Mack was running under the ball now. It looked as if he would be able to catch it in stride. Ward had recovered, but he still lagged two strides behind. Mack looked over his left shoulder. Cody heard one of the two athletes grunt from the supreme effort he was exerting, but he wasn't sure which one.

The ball descended toward Mack's eager hands as he crossed the twenty-five-yard line. Ward, closing on Mack's left side, leaped into the air.

Cody heard a stew of gasps and shouts of “Noooooo!” behind him in the bleachers.

Cody had seen Craig Ward dunk a basketball with two hands, but some guys didn't have the same hops when pack-muling a dozen or so pounds of football padding.

Ward wasn't one of those guys. Sailing upward, he deftly batted the football away from Mack, and the receiver trotted toward the end zone holding nothing but unfulfilled expectations.

“Did you see that?” Cody shouted, grabbing Bart by his freshman game jersey. “That was big-time closing speed! That was big-time hops!”

“Yeah,” Brett said admiringly. “No wonder they call Ward's side of the field the No Passing Zone. That's a DB who can handle his business, just like us this year, right, Cody?”

Cody laughed dismissively. “Yeah, whatever,” he said.

Yeah, I hope so
, he thought.

Ward's big defensive play turned the momentum of the game. Grant went ahead by two touchdowns before halftime, and in the second half, Brendan Clark took over the game. Early in the third quarter he sacked Minnery in his own end zone for a safety. Two series later, he collapsed the pocket, forcing a bad pass that Ward intercepted and returned for a touchdown.

Midway through the fourth quarter, Clark bulldozed a Saint halfback behind the line of scrimmage, forcing a fumble that was pounced on by ATV. With the score 30–7, Coach Morgan sent in his second team. The backup unit earned two first downs before punting the ball away.

Lydell was flagged for pass interference on third-and- long, which allowed the Saints to get in field goal range and make the final score a slightly more respectable 30–10.

The third-team offense, sparked by Berringer, was driving for a possible late score when time expired. Before he joined his teammates in their stampede to the locker room, Pork Chop detoured toward the bleachers. Before Cody and the Evanses could congratulate him, he shouted, straining to be heard above the buzzing, euphoric crowd, “Code, did you see Weitz around tonight? The bleachers? The snack bar? Anywhere?”

Cody shook his head. “Nah, dude. No sign of him. Go enjoy this. This is really cool. And you played a fierce game. Didn't allow a single sack.”

Pork Chop dipped his head. “Thanks, dawg. Hey, you guys gotta come join the celebration. After all, you're Eagles too.”

The Grant locker room was bedlam. ATV worked the room like a party host, moving from locker to locker and exchanging high fives and fist pounds with every teammate.

When ATV arrived at Pork Chop's locker, he clasped both hands around his face, like a vise. “That's the way to hold it down on the O-line, big Chop. I could have driven my truck through those holes you were blasting. And I have a big truck! Your big brother woulda been proud if he could have seen you tonight!”

Pork Chop stood—speechless—something Cody didn't witness very often. Chop could manage only a grateful nod.

When ATV finished his rounds he threw back his head and released a howl that reverberated off the concrete floor, steel lockers, and cinder-block walls. Then he punctuated his victory cry by flushing three urinals in quick succession.

“We should go congratulate ATV,” Bart said to Cody and Brett. They were watching the celebration from just inside the entrance.

“Yeah,” Cody agreed.

The trio approached ATV, who had shucked his jersey and shoulder pads. Cody noted that his sweat-soaked gray T-shirt bore the hand-scrawled message across the chest: “100%—Every Play!”

“Great game, ATV!” Brett said. Cody and Bart nodded their agreement.

“Hey, thanks, freshmen!” ATV boomed. “You see how it's done? You see how good it feels to win? Take note. That's gonna be you out there someday!”

“Another hundred-yard game for you, huh?” Cody offered.

“One hundred and forty-six—in only three quarters! That's 12.9 yards per carry. But who's counting?”

“That's awesome,” Cody said, smiling. “Hey, do you know where Clark is? He had twenty solo tackles. We counted. We wanna tell him.”

ATV rolled his eyes and tilted his head in the direction of the wrestling room. “He's in his chapel, just like always.”

There was something in ATV's voice when he said “just like always.” Cody couldn't tell if it was disgust or bewilderment.

“Chapel?” Brett said. “I don't get it.”

“Go see for yourself,” ATV said with a shrug.

The team was singing the Eagle fight song, off-key and at full volume, when Cody and the Evans brothers headed for the wrestling room only a few steps from the locker room doors.

The wrestling room's double wooden doors creaked softly when Cody and Brett pushed them open. The lights were off. The only illumination came from the moonlight that filtered through a row of windows along one side of the low-ceilinged rectangular room.

Brendan Clark was in a far corner, on his knees, moonlight gathered around him. The scene reminded Cody of a movie, but he couldn't recall which one. He could see Clark's lips moving, but he heard no sound.

Bart started to say something, but Cody poked an elbow in his side and held a forefinger to his lips. Bart shrugged, confused, but after a few seconds, nodded in apparent understanding.

After a minute or so passed, Clark popped to his feet. He walked toward the trio, narrowing his eyes. “Cody Martin and the Evans twins, right?” he asked.

The three looked at each other stunned. Cody knew he and the twins were thinking the same thing: “
Brendan Clark knows
our
names?
”

“Uh, right,” Brett stammered. “Um—that was a fierce game, Brendan. You had twenty solo tackles: did you know that?”

Clark smiled faintly. “I guess I do now.”