The Underdogs Page 7

  Will pulled a chair closer to the couch, sat down.

  “I do have something I want to talk to you about,” he said. “It’s important.”

  “Told you,” his dad said. “So what is so important to my boy?”

  “I want you to coach our team,” he said.

  His dad didn’t respond right away, just seemed to sink deeper into the couch, like he wanted it to swallow him up somehow. Closed his eyes, looking more tired than when he’d walked through the door. When he opened them, he turned his head and looked at Will and said, “Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming.”

  “You’re the best guy to do it,” Will said. “The guys came up with a bunch of names. I kept running them through my head, all week long. But the name I kept coming back to was yours.”

  “This must have been Tim’s idea, or Chris’s or somebody’s,” Joe Tyler said. “Not yours. Because you know better. You have to know better.”

  “No, it was mine, Dad,” Will said. “Even though I was the one who told the guys you couldn’t, before somebody even asked.”

  “You’re right. I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Because, see, that’s the thing; it’s not that you can’t. It’s that you won’t.”

  His dad carefully took the ice off his knee, set it on the coffee table, got into a sitting position, wincing again as he did.

  In a quiet voice, like he was really curious, he said, “And why is that?”

  It had only taken them this long to get down to it.

  “You really want the truth?”

  His dad said, “We just went over this. I’ll know right away just by looking at you if it’s not the truth. You know the real reason you’re a bad liar? Because you never lie, at least not to me.”

  Will had his hands in his lap, wondering if Joe Tyler, who saw a lot even when you wondered if he was paying attention, could see now how hard Will was squeezing those hands together.

  “I think you won’t coach because you’re afraid to coach,” Will said. “Because you’re afraid football might find a way to hurt you all over again. Because even though you watch football with me on television, and you watch my games, there’s this part of you that hates football. And now if you won’t coach the team, it’ll be like you’re taking it out on me.”

  “Afraid?”

  Like he hadn’t heard a word Will had said after that.

  “Yeah, Dad, you are. Afraid of what football can do to you. When you’re not just plain old mad.”

  “So if I turn you down, it wouldn’t have anything to do with holding down one job and going to school in my spare time, which feels like another job? You don’t suppose that it might have anything to do with that?”

  He stepped on the last two words, his voice starting to rise up a little bit.

  “And we haven’t even discussed the job that’s most important to me, which means trying to be the best father I can be for you. And mother. So maybe that’s two more jobs.”

  Will said, “I know all you do, Dad.”

  “Do you? Well, of course you do, because it’s clear you understand me so well.”

  Just like that, hearing the sarcasm in his dad’s voice, Will felt something rising up in him. And his own voice along with it.

  “You think I don’t? You think I don’t see how hard you work, and how much it hurts you? The way thinking about Mom does?”

  Will saw the look on his dad’s face as soon as he mentioned his mom, quickly added, “Sorry.”

  “No need. That’s the truth, too.”

  “All I’m saying is, I get it, Dad. I’m not stupid.”

  He unclenched his hands.

  “Didn’t say that you were,” his dad said.

  “Like I said, I told the guys it was about work and school with you,” Will said. “But I knew those weren’t the real reasons. I knew they weren’t the real reasons last year when I talked to you about being an assistant coach and you said no.”

  “So you think work and school are just some kind of cover story with me, is that it?”

  “Yes,” Will said in a soft voice. “But only as a way of getting out of coaching.”

  “That so?”

  “I know you didn’t give up playing football by choice, that you didn’t want to give up something you loved that much,” Will said. “But not ever coming back, that has been your choice.”

  Say it, Will told himself.

  You’ve been giving this speech inside your head the last few days.

  Say all of it.

  “It was your choice to give up football forever,” Will said, the words in a rush now to get out. “I know why you had to stop playing. But there’s more to football than playing, and you know it. And you know—because I do—how much football you still have in you. I hear it every time we watch a game. I hear it every time you say something before the announcers do.”

  His dad leaned back into the couch.

  “Why are we even talking about this?” his dad said, his voice the loudest it had been yet. “Even if I wanted to do it, I can’t! There’s no way we could come up with a decent practice schedule around my crazy schedule.”

  Will said, “I know your school schedule by heart. You go two nights one week, three the next. We could work around that easy. And practice on weekends if we had to, at least the one weekend day when we didn’t have a game.”

  “Okay, let’s say all of that is true. What about this? What about that I’ve never actually coached a team in my life, at any level? You guys are gonna want a real coach if you’re gonna do this right. You’re not doing this just to compete; I know you pretty good, too. You’re doing this because you want to get back to the championship game and beat Castle Rock.”

  “I want you to coach,” Will said.

  His dad reached over, took a sip of lemonade, cleared his throat. Leaned back, looked at the ceiling, as if he might find the right words to say up there. He was still looking up when he said in a voice that was full of hurt, “I can’t. As much as I try to love football watching you play, I’ve just hated it for too long. It took too much from me, kid. I’ve got you, and so I’d never say I’ve got some kind of crummy life. But apart from you, what’s great about it up to here? Maybe after I get my degree, okay? But if we’re keeping score on the life and times of Joe Tyler so far, it’s not like I’m winning any trophies.”

  This was a story Will didn’t know by heart, not like this.

  His dad said, “I’m not saying I was going to the pros or anything like that; I wasn’t that good. And even if I’d gotten a scholarship to a big school, that didn’t mean I was going to beat out all the other recruits like me for a starting job. But after I got hurt . . .” He cleared his throat again. “After I got hurt, it was like I’d wrecked more than my knee, if that makes sense to you.” He put his eyes back on his son now and said, “I’m still not sure I’ve come all the way back. Or if I ever will. So I get how much this matters to you. But football doesn’t matter to me anymore. It hasn’t since high school.”

  Will thought: All in.

  “You’re the one who’s lying, Dad,” Will said.

  “Careful.”

  “You’re the toughest guy I know,” he said. “You never feel sorry for yourself, except when it comes to football.”

  “This conversation needs to be over.”

  “It’s true, Dad. It is.”

  Like he was talking to Toby all over again, trying to get him to do more than listen, to really hear.

  Will said, “You don’t just have to do this for me, even though I want you to more than anything. You ought to do it for you. I remember everything you’ve ever told me about what it takes to be a good player, the way good players are supposed to act. But I’ve listened just as closely when you’ve told me about what it takes to be a good person.”

  Looking right at his dad, afraid to look away now.

  “You’re the one who says nobody goes through life undefeated,” Will said, his voice rising, surprising him.
“You know we talk all the time about getting back up after you get knocked down. I just think that when it comes to football . . . well, it’s time you got back up.”

  Then he was done.

  So was Joe Tyler.

  It took him two tries to get himself up off the couch; sometimes that happened if he’d been off the knee for even a few minutes, it stiffened up on him that quickly. Sometimes he’d have to ask Will to give him a hand.

  Not this time.

  He stood up and Will was sure in that moment that he’d failed, that he’d taken this too far, crossed some kind of line that kids weren’t supposed to cross with their parents.

  At least he’d tried.

  His dad turned and limped out of the room and a few seconds later Will heard the slow, painful walk up the stairs, Will sometimes not sure whether it was the old stairs creaking or his dad.

  Will didn’t move.

  Until.

  Until he heard, “Will.”

  Got up and walked to the bottom of the stairs, and saw his dad at the top.

  “You’re right,” he said.

  “I’m . . . right?”

  “I’ll do it,” Joe Tyler said.

  Will stared up at him.

  “I’ll give it my best shot,” he said. “Don’t ask me to love it. I stopped loving football a long time ago, mostly because I found out it didn’t love me back. So don’t think that because I’m doing this, I’m gonna love it the way you do. I’m not sure anybody does. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “But I’ll do it.”

  Then he spread out his arms the way he did when he came home sometimes, when he was standing down where Will was now standing. Only Will Tyler wasn’t there for long. In the next moment he was running up the stairs to where his dad was waiting for him.

  He knew how bad his dad’s knee was. But his arms felt stronger than ever.

  CHAPTER 12

  His dad said he would get in touch with Mr. DeMartini’s office first thing on Monday. Will was in charge of getting the nine other players they had so far to e-mail the size of their jerseys, pants, cleats, even hat sizes for the new helmets.

  The two of them sitting there at the kitchen table.

  “I’ve got to come up with a practice schedule that doesn’t cheat you guys and works for me,” Joe Tyler said.

  Will grinned.

  “Now, no missing assignments because of sports,” Will said, wagging a finger at his dad.

  “Not a problem,” his dad said, serious again. “Those classes I’m taking are still my—our—ticket to a better life. I found out the hard way that it wasn’t football.”

  Will said, “You’re sure you want to do this.”

  His dad laughed. He didn’t laugh a lot, but when he did, it was a good sound, at least to Will. A happy sound. That always made him wish he could hear more of it.

  “Am I sure? Heck no!”

  “I know I came at you pretty hard,” Will said. “But you don’t have to.”

  “Yeah,” Joe Tyler said, “actually I do.”

  Then he asked Will what his best guess was on Toby, saying he thought it was important they have eleven players on the field for the first practice. Will told him the truth; going off his gut, he thought they had a real shot. But said at the same time he didn’t want to put any more pressure on Toby than he already had; he was going to wait until school on Monday and then hope Toby would bring it up.

  And then say yes.

  “I remember that kid,” Will’s dad said. “Something about him I liked, even knowing he drew the worst-possible cards, getting Dick Keenan as an old man. But he could play. I’m not even positive what his best position is, as big as he is. We could sure use him.”

  The first time he’d said “we” when talking about the team.

  Like they were officially in it together now.

  “But we need more than him,” his dad said. “We both know that. When I give them the sizes and order the uniforms this week, I’m gonna order one for him, just guessing his sizes. And then three more different sizes on top of that. Just being an optimist.”

  Will said, “I thought you were a pessimist.”

  “Don’t press your luck, junior.”

  Some day, Will thought. And it wasn’t over. Still a couple of hours before dinner.

  “By the way, we’re having hot dogs on the grill to celebrate,” his dad said.

  “What I’m talkin’ about.”

  “Because you know what they say about hot dogs,” Joe Tyler said.

  They both knew the answer was one more inside joke between them, part of the secret language they shared, maybe because it had just been the two of them for so long.

  “The hot dog,” Will said, trying to sound like a deep commercial voice on television. “America’s most underrated food group.”

  They high-fived each other.

  Yeah, Will thought, some day.

  Now he needed to run it off a little bit, blow off some steam. But in a good way. By himself. Run some sprints at Shea, just for the fun of it. And not totally for fun, because now he really was getting ready for a season.

  He really did have to get in shape for football, not that Will Tyler was ever really out of shape.

  He grabbed his ball from his room, told his dad he was heading for Shea, but that he’d be back in plenty of time for supper.

  His dad by then was back on the couch, ice back on his knee, watching one of the first college football games of the season on television.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah, bud.”

  “You’re sure you’re sure?”

  “Go.”

  Then Will echoed what Toby had said to him a few hours ago and what already felt like something that had happened last week. “Thanks,” he said.

  His father’s arm came up from the sofa, and then he jerked a thumb toward the front door.

  “Go.”

  He thought about getting his bike out of the small garage, decided to walk to Shea instead.

  After half a block, he started to jog.

  By the time he got to Arch Street, ball under his arm, he was at full speed.

  Football wasn’t like basketball, where all you needed was a ball and a hoop to keep yourself entertained for as long as you wanted to be out there shooting around.

  But even on a football field, even when he wasn’t making up one of his imaginary games—and he wasn’t doing that ever again, not if a girl might be watching—Will never had a problem keeping himself entertained.

  Maybe because he was used to being alone. You had to put some effort into being alone. If you were going to do it, you might as well do it right.

  So he ran his sprints, forty yarders at first, knowing that was the money distance in football, that’s the one they were always timing at those NFL combines. He ran them with the ball at first and then without it. Took a breather. Ran a few more. He ran backward, knowing he was going to have to do some of that this season, that he was going to be dropping back in coverage as a free safety, that he probably wouldn’t be off the field for a single play.

  Then he went down near one of the goalposts and practiced his throwing, trying to hit one post, then the other, pretending they were skinny receivers. Doing that from ten yards, twenty, backing up to thirty, because he knew that was the limit for his arm. It was accurate; he could hit what he was aiming for. Definitely not a gun. Will knew that the way things were going, he might have to play some quarterback this season if there was nobody else, if only taking a direct snap in the wildcat.

  He tried a few extra points, just goofing around—teams in their league only tried to kick extra points if they had a surefooted kicker; most of the time they went for two from the twoand-a-half-yard line.

  Finally, some punts. Because they might need a punter, too. Bobby Carrington, the quarterback who was leaving town, had handled the job last season. Bobby, in fact, had been such a good punter for an eleven-year-old that he’d turned punts into a weapon for
them, occasionally burying their opponents inside the ten.

  Now Bobby wasn’t just taking his arm with him to Ohio; he was taking that big leg of his, too.

  The next-best punter they had was Will.

  Will stood out at the forty, trying to angle kicks out inside the ten the way Bobby had. He started with some gnarly-looking knucklers and wobblers, but then he got into it, got into rhythm, got off some good ones, the last one a dead spiral that looked like a pass he’d thrown high and deep, one that hit the sideline right at the five-yard line.

  “One out of twenty?” he heard a voice say. “Is that a good percentage?”

  Her.

  Hannah.

  Sitting in the first row of the bleachers, her ball next to her.

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” Will said. “And by the way? If you’ve been watching, you know that wasn’t my only good kick.”

  Hannah said, “Yeah, it was. Put it this way: if this was a punt, pass and kick contest and you needed a kick to stay alive, well, you lose, Thrill.”

  “How do you know that’s my nickname?”

  “We go to the same school, remember?”

  They were actually in three classes together and had been passing each other all week in the halls or seeing each other at lunch. Most of the time Will just nodded.

  The most he’d said was, “Hey.”

  He had enough going on these days; he didn’t need Tim LeBlanc or Chris or Jeremiah chirping at him because they thought he was giving the new girl the eye.

  Even if that’s exactly what he was doing.

  Even if he secretly thought that Hannah Grayson, as cocky and obnoxious and annoying as she was, was a kickin’ girl.

  All ways.

  Will grinned. “I’ve been trying to ignore that fact,” he said. “And you.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Right,” Will said, “that’s how I spend my day now, checking you out.”

  “Well, not the whole day.”

  Smiling at him, like somehow she knew he’d been watching her make her way through her first week of school.

  She stood up now and said, “Is this more fantasy football or would you like some company out there?”