QB 1 Page 13

  “Well, look at me,” Jake said, still steamed, standing next to Nate after they came off the field. “I’m not just trying to hand the game to Morgan Creek, it’s like I’m trying to hand the quarterback job to Casey on a big old steak platter.”

  “Relax,” Nate said.

  “Easy for you to say,” Jake said. “You know you’re going back in next series. I sure don’t.”

  Nate moved in front of Jake now, his back to the field, the big man blocking out the game and about half the stadium, his way of getting in Jake’s face, the two of them nearly face mask to face mask.

  Nate said, “I’ve never heard you feel sorry for yourself about anything, not one time since we been friends. We still have us a game to win. So don’t you start now. You hear?”

  “I hear.”

  “We’re clear then?”

  “Well, yeah,” Jake said, grinning at him. “But only because of how scared I am of you.”

  Coach decided to stay with Jake when the Cowboys got the ball back. Jake wasn’t sure why he was showing this kind of confidence in him, not the way he’d just turned the ball over. But Jake was determined to reward that confidence.

  And he did, all the way until it was 27–10 in the fourth quarter. The Lions had come at him with a couple more blitzes, but Jake had read them all, releasing the ball quickly, even changing one of the plays at the line of scrimmage and finding the open receiver. Twice that receiver was Calvin, who took the throws and ran them in for touchdowns, Jake certain that nobody was able to cover Calvin one-on-one, the kind of receiver that could make any quarterback look good. All he needed was the right play call so that the defense couldn’t triple-team him in coverage.

  The last score of the night, the game-ender, was just a straight fly off a play-action fake to the running back. It came on a third-and-one from midfield, when the Lions were stacking the line of scrimmage, certain the Cowboys would be running the ball to eat up some clock. Jake stuck the ball in Spence Tolar’s belly and then pulled it out, straightening up and throwing it as far as he could, like he was trying to get it to the old spruce in the pasture.

  Still, Calvin had to slow up to catch it.

  He’d end up with twelve catches for two hundred and twenty yards, three scores. One of those nights when Calvin looked like a man among boys.

  When Coach finally pulled him, middle of the final drive, Calvin got the biggest and loudest ovation Jake had heard at Cullen Field since Wyatt had thrown the game-winner at the end of the state championship game against Fort Carson the year before.

  Calvin hugged Coach Jessup, high-fived a bunch of the defensive guys, finally took his helmet off, came and stood next to Jake at the thirty-yard line, and put his arm around him.

  “Gotta tell you something,” he said to Jake. “You’re not your brother.”

  Jake couldn’t help it—he laughed.

  “I love you, too, Calvin,” he said.

  “But turns out,” Calvin said, “in light of the events that transpired here tonight, you’re close enough to suit my purposes.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jake said.

  “Take it any way you want.”

  Gave him a smile as bright as the lights.

  “Damn,” Calvin Morton said. “I’m good.”

  Jake laughed again. Calvin pulled him closer, into a hug, Jake thinking that the only reason he was doing it was because he couldn’t hug himself.

  23

  IT WASN’T UNTIL JAKE HAD SHOWERED AND MADE HIS WAY OUTSIDE that he found out his dad had left at halftime, hadn’t seen the best of Jake’s game.

  “He said to tell you he was sorry,” Libby Cullen said.

  Jake immediately wondered if that was true, or if it was something his mom thought she had to say to make him feel better.

  “Wyatt called from Dallas, said he needed to see him,” she said, “so he drove right down to the Red River game tonight, not even stopping at home for clothes. Told me he’d meet us there in the morning.”

  “Did something happen to Wyatt?” Jake said.

  Nate and Bear, he could see, were across the parking lot, waiting for him over by Bear’s truck.

  Jake’s mom said, “I just think he needed a pep talk from his biggest cheerleader. Or amateur psychologist. The Red River rivalry’s pretty big stuff for a freshman QB.”

  The next morning Jake was supposed to drive with both his parents to Dallas to see Texas play Oklahoma in the Red River game, one of college football’s biggest rivalries, held annually in the Cotton Bowl stadium.

  Suddenly, though, he wasn’t so sure about that.

  “So Dad drove all the way down there tonight just to, like, prop Wyatt up?” he said to his mom. “Wyatt’s never needed propping up by anybody his whole life.”

  Libby Cullen smiled at him, shrugged. “I guess he had a bad week of practice, and then the other quarterback got more snaps with the first team than usual. I just spoke to him briefly before I handed the phone to your father. He just sounded worried about tomorrow, like he might lose his job if he didn’t play well, even though he didn’t come right out and say so.”

  “I played bad against Bancroft,” Jake said. “Dad didn’t seem too worried about how I was doing. I’m fighting every week to be the number one QB on this team. How come Dad never gave me one of his famous pep talks?”

  “Maybe he didn’t think you needed one,” his mom said.

  “And how would he know that?” Jake said.

  In that moment, Jake was thinking about when Wyatt had been home, Wyatt telling Jake not to worry, he’d make their dad really see him sooner or later.

  Well, not if he wasn’t around.

  “I think I get it,” Jake said. “The game Wyatt hasn’t even played yet was more important than the one I was playing right in front of him.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Usually I’m the one making excuses for Dad over stuff like this,” Jake said. “Not you, Mom.”

  “He felt bad, Jacob, really he did.”

  “Well, guess what, Mom? Sometimes I do, too, whether I show it or not. You know what I think sometimes? That I can’t win with him, even when I do win.”

  “Do you want to ride home with me and take a little time to regroup?” she said.

  “Gonna ride into town with the boys. Some of them are going to Amy’s,” he said.

  “Now remember, don’t stay out too late,” his mom said. “The two of us have to leave pretty early for Dallas.”

  “You know what, Mom?” Jake said. “I think I might pass, do my regrouping tomorrow while I watch the game on TV.”

  “Now, Jacob,” she said, “you’ve been saying all week how much you were looking forward to the game. You haven’t seen Wyatt play a game in person since last year’s championship game.”

  “I can catch him later in the season,” he said. Kissed her on the cheek and said, “But right now I gotta bounce.”

  “Bounce back, how about that?”

  “Didn’t think I’d have to, not the way we played tonight. The way I played.”

  “Wyatt didn’t do this,” Libby Cullen said.

  “He never does,” Jake said. “Does he?” Smiled as he said that, one he didn’t feel and didn’t mean. But he didn’t want to make his mom feel as if she’d done anything, either.

  Because at least his mom had been here. For the whole game.

  Jake gave her one more quick kiss on the cheek, walked toward Bear’s truck, the lights of Cullen Field still bright behind him, the sound of music, loud, coming from a car somewhere behind Bear and Nate in the parking lot.

  Jake knew he should have been hearing something else still, the cheers he and the Granger Cowboys had heard all night long.

  But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t.

  He decided not to tell Bea
r or Nate about his dad. No reason to bring them into it, do anything that might put a dent in their night. All they’d done was help their team win the game, Bear getting more time at outside linebacker tonight than he had all season, all pumped up about that, about finally being a real part of the team.

  But when his boys started talking up the game on the way to Bear’s truck, like they wanted to replay it here and all the way into town, Jake decided, just like that, that he wasn’t ready to leave yet. Didn’t want to leave all that had happened, the good parts, at Cullen Field just yet.

  Just wanted to go inside and be alone there for a few minutes, maybe see if he could hear the cheers again if he tried hard enough.

  Told his boys to go ahead, he’d get a ride into town from Coach J if he had to. He always stayed after the game, looking at game film right away.

  “Don’t know what’s going on, ’cause you’re not sayin’,” Nate said. “But we’re not leavin’ you.”

  “You know our rule,” Bear said. “No Cullen left behind.”

  “I don’t remember us passing that rule,” Jake said.

  “We did it just now, you were talkin’ to your mom,” Nate said. “So go do what you got to do to get yourself right. Bear and I will just sit here and keep goin’ through our own personal highlights.” Nate smiled. “Mine mostly.”

  “So please don’t be long,” Bear said.

  Jake walked back through the tunnel, out onto the field, not sure when they shut off the lights after a game—he’d never stayed around long enough on even Wyatt’s Friday nights—walked across some of the more chewed-up parts of the grass, walked right past what he knew was the exact spot where he’d been pulled down on the ten-yard line after a third-down scramble that set up a slant to Calvin that was one of the best throws he’d made all year, even if it couldn’t have traveled more than five yards, the space he’d had no wider than the front of Calvin’s jersey.

  Thinking: What would Dad have thought about my throwing motion on that one?

  If he’d been in his seat to see, that is.

  He wanted to rally now, clear his mind. That was what he was really in here to do, not let this ruin the rest of his night or let it steal his joy. Wanting in the worst way to get himself an attitude adjustment before he saw Sarah.

  Of all the games his dad missed, why did this one bother him so much? He knew a big part of it: Jake was playing tonight and Wyatt wasn’t, so he didn’t have the excuse of choosing Wyatt’s college game over Jake’s high school game, the way he had been.

  Tomorrow for Wyatt being more important than tonight for Jake. Again.

  Jake stopped and looked at the field again, walked up to where he’d cut one loose to Calvin for forty yards, smiled now.

  That cheer he could hear.

  Went over now and sat himself down on the bench.

  “Damn, they should name this place after you. No, wait. They already went and did.”

  Calvin.

  Again, Jake hearing him before he saw him. Guy had a gift for it.

  Jake turned and saw him sitting in the front row of the stands, bright white sneakers up on the railing in front of him.

  “Calvin, what in the world are you still doing here?”

  Calvin leaned back, cool like, put his hands behind his head, showed Jake teeth almost as bright as the sneakers he was wearing.

  “Was tryin’ to make my own top ten highlights, just about me,” Calvin said. “But couldn’t cut the list down to ten was the problem.” Motioned for Jake to come over. “Come sit awhile ’fore my ride comes. Tell me what the last star Cullen in Cullenville is doin’ out here his own self.”

  “One condition,” Jake said. “No Cullen stuff tonight. Okay?”

  Calvin said, “You tellin’ me this night has to be different from all the others? Doesn’t work that way. Carry the name, deal with the fame. And all the other stuff comes with it.”

  Jake hopped over the railing, sat down next to him, said, “Ask you something, Number One? You ever ride my brother this much about being a Cullen?”

  “Whether I did or didn’t, doesn’t matter. Told you already, you’re not him.”

  “Sometimes,” Jake said, “I forget.” Turned and looked at Calvin and said, “What are you really doing out here, with everybody else gone?”

  “Do it every game, you just never came and saw me. Really do go over the game in my mind. What I did good and the few things I did bad.” Grinning as he said the last part. “I look at film same as you, more than you know. But I first got to see it inside my head, while it’s still fresh. And I can still hear the roar of the crowd, baby.”

  Him too, then.

  “But the difference between you and me right here is that I’m feeling soooo good about myself. And you look like you lost the game tonight. Or maybe your best friend.”

  Jake took a deep breath, let it out. “Between us?”

  “You can trust me here the way you trust me out there.”

  Then Jake told him about his father leaving the game when he did. Not sure why he was telling Calvin this when he didn’t tell his best friends, when he thought he wanted to be alone with all of it. Here he was, anyway, in here looking for quiet time and now telling his secrets to the loudest guy he knew.

  “It was like my dad telling me, straight up, no more getting around it, that Wyatt will always matter more than I do, leastways when it comes to football,” Jake said. “I knew it inside me already. But this time it got to me more than the others.”

  For once, Calvin Morton was silent, face serious. Not saying anything until he said to Jake, “That it? You done now?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You waitin’ for me to respond, am I right?”

  “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Boo hoo,” Calvin said.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, boo hoo. Let me ask you a question, Cullen, now that you’re feelin’ so sorry for yourself. You ever even seen my daddy around here?”

  “Now that I think of it, no. Just your mom.”

  “Right, just my momma. That’s because my dad hasn’t ever come to one of my games ever, is why.”

  In that moment, it occurred to Jake how little he knew about Calvin’s life away from football. Or school. He knew Melvin was his cousin, he’d seen Calvin with his mom in the parking lot after games. He knew some of the girls he liked, because there was never just one with him. But that was it. Jake didn’t even know where Calvin’s dad was.

  “Is he around here, your dad?”

  “He’s never been around, from the time I was six and he walked out, said he was going out for a quart of milk and went and lived with his girlfriend and the family he’d already started with her, as it turned out, over there in Plano. Put it another way, Cullen: It isn’t like I sit around on my birthday every year waiting for a call or a card.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said, because he was. And because he didn’t know what else to say.

  “I don’t want your sorry,” Calvin said. “You’re missin’ my point here. What I’m tryin’ to do is tell you to stop feelin’ sorry for yourself. So your daddy showed up and then left tonight. So he missed the last two quarters. How about my own daddy missin’ all the quarters, like he’s tryin’ to set the Texas state high school record for that? How about him doin’ that my whole damn life?”

  The lights suddenly dimmed at Cullen Field and the sprinklers started to come on, one after another, in formation, moving down the field, the sound of the water being sprayed on the grass the only sound in here right now.

  “I didn’t know any of that,” Jake said.

  “Lot you don’t know about me,” Calvin said. “But you still got time to learn.” Now he smiled again. “About me and from me.”

  He pulled his sneakers back off the railing, noticed a speck of dirt on one of them, wet a
finger, cleaned it off, and stood up.

  “Got to be someplace,” he said.

  “Me too,” Jake said.

  Calvin looked at him and said, “You ain’t nearly as good as you’re gonna be, Cullen. And maybe ain’t ever gonna be as good as you want to be. But you ought to appreciate what you got, next time you want to throw yourself a damn pity party.”

  Calvin didn’t wait for an answer. Just hopped over that railing now, graceful as a cat jumping off a couch, managed to stay clear of the sprinklers—not even hurrying when it looked like the water might get him—walked out of Cullen Field and into the tunnel and never looked back.

  Leaving Jake in his dust the way he had the Morgan Creek Lions.

  24

  WYATT CULLEN DIDN’T PLAY GREAT AGAINST OKLAHOMA IN THE Red River game, not by a long shot. But he was way better than he had been in that loss to Kansas, throwing a touchdown against one pick and scoring the winning touchdown on a quarterback sneak after the defense—which had carried Texas that day—had caused a fumble deep in Oklahoma territory.

  When Troy Cullen did get home, of course he thought that the pep talk he’d given Wyatt the night before the game had made all the difference.

  He had grinned and said, “Looks like I can still get ’er done in the big game.”

  “Yes, dear,” Libby Cullen had said. “I’m surprised they didn’t give you one of the game balls.”

  “Have your fun,” Troy Cullen had said. “Wyatt would tell you, not that I’d ever want you to bring it up, that I got his head back to bein’ screwed on right.” He looked at Jake and said, “You missed a good one.”

  “Wyatt didn’t need me there when he had you.”

  Knowing he could always get by telling his dad what he wanted to hear.

  Troy Cullen never said anything about leaving Jake’s game early, and Jake never asked him about it, maybe because he knew the answer, knew that in that moment, his dad had just decided that Wyatt needed him more.