The Big Game Read online

  Dedication

  For my Six Angels . . . I’m right here with you. Always.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Books by Tim Green

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The three friends lay side by side with Danny in the middle. The floor of their tree house was triangular. It worked out okay because Janey fit near the wall, under the window. Danny was a big kid for twelve, but he went in the middle because Cupcake took up the most space. Cupcake was enormous and his legs extended through the open trapdoor. He was built like a small refrigerator, with square shoulders and jaw, a flattop haircut, meaty hands, and ears flatter to his head than a coonhound. He looked like he’d been assembled from a giant Lego set. The only thing small about Cupcake were his teeth, which spilled around the inside of his mouth like corn off the cob.

  “After your first four years in the NFL, you become a free agent,” Danny explained. “So even if we don’t get drafted by the same team, we can go wherever we want after four years.”

  “Pittsburgh?” Cupcake suggested, brushing light brown hair out of his pale blue eyes.

  Danny frowned. “I’m not my dad, Cupcake. When will you get that through your head?”

  “Who wouldn’t want to be your dad?” Cupcake grumbled. “Only you.”

  Danny wanted to change the subject. “I think we’ll let Janey decide where we go.”

  Janey smiled.

  “Janey?” Cupcake sat up and looked down at Danny with a frown.

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “By then she’ll be a doctor and she’ll have to pick where she wants to do her residency. Wherever that is, we can go play for that team.”

  Cupcake’s face still hovered above them. “What if the team stinks? Like, Cleveland or something?”

  “Janey wouldn’t want to go anyplace with a lousy team,” Danny said.

  “For sure.” Janey spoke in a dreamy voice, almost like she’d been dozing off.

  “Oh.” Cupcake lay back down. “I wish it would cool off. I swear, four o’clock is the hottest part of the day.”

  Danny bolted up. “Wait, it’s not four yet.”

  “It’s three minutes after four.” Cupcake held up his phone.

  “No. I set an alarm.” Danny fumbled with his own phone and saw he’d set it for 3:30 a.m. “Oh, shiitake mushrooms!”

  Danny scrambled up, pushed Cupcake’s legs aside, and scrambled down the ladder.

  Janey’s face appeared in the window above. “Where you going?”

  Danny turned and ran, shouting over his shoulder. “My dad’s work! He’s taking me for football cleats!”

  He flew through the woods, down a long winding path that came out by the guardrail on Route 222. He scooped his bike out of the tall grass and rocketed into Crooked Creek.

  Shops in town had already changed their Fourth of July red-white-and-blue banners and flags for football banners and bunting—purple and white for the Crooked Creek Junior High Raiders, gold and black for the Jericho High Cowboys. The clock over the old brick corner store showed how late he was. He turned left at the store and pedaled like a madman to the edge of town, where the enormous showroom of Zurich Farm Implements dominated the street. In the front of the three-story glass showroom window was a bright red combine the size of a dinosaur.

  Danny ditched his bike near the service entrance and entered the showroom from the back. The first floor was lined with offices of the salesmen who worked under his dad. There were seven other stores across the state with their own stables of salesmen who also worked for Danny’s dad. Danny waved at Mr. Humphrys through his office window and took the stairs two at a time up to his father’s large glass office overlooking the showroom. He rounded the corner and froze.

  Sitting across from his father’s desk was the hulking figure of a farmer wearing a plaid shirt and suspenders. Danny’s dad saw him, and instead of giving Danny the scowl he expected for being late, he grinned and waved his son in. Danny obeyed.

  “Mr. Lindsey, this is my son, Danny.”

  “Sorry I’m late, Dad.”

  “Mr. Lindsey, are kids ever on time?”

  “Not like you and me ever were.” The farmer stood up and extended a leathery hand to Danny. “I heard you’re a chip off the block. Gonna lead Crooked Creek to the county championship this season, people are sayin’.”

  “I hope so, sir.”

  “Even looks like you, Daniel.” The farmer squinted at Danny’s dad. “We’ll see if he gets that ring you got, though. If he’s like my kids, he won’t. My kids want to play in a rock band. A rock band. I’m ashamed to say it, and me with thirty thousand acres.”

  “That’s why you’ve got me, Dave.” Danny’s dad thumped his chest before rounding his desk and putting an arm around the man. “These new combines practically run themselves.”

  “That’ll be a comfort when I’m in my grave.”

  Danny’s dad gave a hearty laugh. “Well, this is some deal for us both, Dave, and I appreciate your business. I’ve seen a man or two go over to the Kubota dealer in Dustville.”

  “Pshaw! Dustville? That ain’t even in Jericho County! You won’t see me in Dustville. You think the Kubota sales manager won them a state title? You think he’s got one o’ them rings?” The farmer pointed to Danny’s father’s right hand, where a giant, bejeweled Super Bowl ring glinted in the light.

  “Well, thank you, Dave. Thank you very much.” Danny’s father
dipped his head as if embarrassed.

  “You see that, son?” The farmer scowled at Danny like he’d done much more wrong than being late. “That’s why this town—heck, this whole part of the state—loves your daddy. He coulda stayed in Pittsburgh. A Super Bowl winner? He coulda done whatever he wanted, but he’s a good ole Texas boy, and humble too. Not like those ninny-hammered showboats you see on TV today. You’d be best served to follow this man’s footprints, son, step for step, an’ that’s comin’ from a man with thirty thousand acres.”

  The farmer was quite worked up, and Danny hung his head as if to apologize for all wrongdoers, but he didn’t mean it. He was tired of this game.

  “Okeydokey, Dave. Now I gotta get the boy to the shoe store for some cleats, then back home for his momma’s supper on time, so we’ll be seein’ you.”

  They saw Dave to the stairs before Danny’s dad wheeled him past the owner’s office. Mr. Zurich sat at a big desk wearing a bow tie with his sleeves rolled up, amid a pile of paper.

  Danny’s dad ducked his head inside. “I’m gone, boss. Gotta get Danny’s football cleats.”

  The owner whipped off his glasses. “Danny? You take those Raiders to the championship, boy. People sayin’ good things about you maybe bein’ as good as your dad. That I’ll have to see, no offense, son.”

  Danny shook his head as if none were taken.

  “Looks like you, don’t he, Daniel?” Mr. Zurich smiled, showing a line of perfect white teeth that didn’t match the deep lines in his craggy face.

  “More an’ more, boss, more an’ more.”

  Danny waved like his dad and off they went.

  In the car, the radio played a country song about a boy and his dad, and Danny felt like pulling his hair out. He loved his dad, it wasn’t that. And he was proud of the way everyone waved at his truck as they drove through town or stopped him on the street to look at the ring, or how his dad got to be on the sideline with a select few Jericho alumni for the varsity games.

  It was that Danny wanted to be himself.

  And in this town, he just didn’t know if that was possible.

  The box of new white cleats rested in their bag at Danny’s feet.

  “Thank you,” Danny said. “For the cleats.”

  “You said thanks already—twice.”

  “I know. Just wanted to make sure you knew.”

  His dad pulled onto State Route 414 before he gripped Danny’s knee. The ring’s many diamonds sparkled in a beam of late-day sun. “You’re a good kid, Danny. I’m not just saying that because of the way you play football. You got good manners and you’re smart.”

  “Tell my teachers that,” Danny scoffed. His grades were up and down, mostly down recently.

  “Don’t worry about teachers and all that school stuff. Look at me. You play in the league, you’ll be all set. You don’t got to be book smart, just playbook smart. And you’re people smart, like me. You know how much equipment I sold Dave Lindsey today?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Seven million dollars’ worth.” His dad gave Danny a glance and Danny’s mouth dropped open. “Yeah, commission on that’ll buy a new roof and pay for a huge vacation. But I had to work my way up to that spot. I started down on the ground floor like everyone else. What I’m saying is that me being gone all summer is for a reason.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But I’m fixin’ to spend some more time home now the season’s comin’. I got to be there for you. I been through all this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His dad messed his hair and turned up the radio. Lee Brice was singing “I Drive Your Truck.” His dad’s voice boomed as they both sang along. When it was over, Danny’s dad had tears in his eyes, something that never happened. His dad got a sour look on his face and scowled at the road so long that Danny wondered if his eyes had been playing tricks on him.

  The radio’s harsh beeping—an emergency warning—distracted them both. A tornado was coming. They looked up at the sky.

  “Nothin’ so far,” his dad said.

  When they got home, the sun in the west dipped quickly behind a dark bank of clouds on the horizon.

  “Maybe that’s it.” His dad pointed. “We’ll see. It’ll be what it’ll be, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s throw the ball around, break in those new cleats while your mom makes us dinner.”

  “I’ll be right out!” Danny ran in past his mom and changed into the new cleats, and then he hightailed it back outside. He and his dad threw and caught and threw some more until the sky was dark.

  “Time to wash up and eat,” his dad said.

  They headed in against wind kicking grit from the driveway into their faces.

  Outside the kitchen window, the black sky twisted and moaned. Rain spattered the glass and lightning flashed like a loose bulb on a bad wire. Amid the crash of thunder and the bickering his parents had gotten into ten minutes earlier, Danny drank his milk and listened for the sound of a train. That was the sound he worried about. That’s when you really needed to hide in the basement under a thick beam. When the sky made that train sound, a tornado was coming.

  “Son!” Danny’s father scowled at him from across the table. “Did you not hear me?”

  Danny shook his head. “No, sir. I was thinkin’.”

  “I said you need to get your butt running. Practice is just two weeks out and you’ve done nothin’ except play video games and fool with Janey all summer. This is a big year for you, son. This is the year.”

  “The year.” Smiling now, Danny’s mother shook her head. “Every year’s the year to you, Daniel. Ever since we were just kids. But if you ask me, there was only one year I’d call the year.”

  Danny’s mom aimed her fork out into the living room, where the framed photo of her husband, sweat-drenched and holding the Lombardi Trophy, rested atop the pinewood mantel. “That year in Pittsburgh . . .”

  Danny’s father growled. “You gotta get there, Sharon. He needs to be the one who jumps out at Coach Oglethorpe come the big game.”

  Danny’s father finished off his can of beer and slapped it down beside his place at the round table before locking eyes with Danny. His father’s eyes swirled like the storm outside and Danny knew he was about to hear a story he’d heard many times before. Yet he knew to pay attention. He’d seen his dad charm folks time after time with the story. And he knew how to be polite and act like this was the first time he’d heard it.

  “That’s when it happened for me.” His father stuck a thumb in his own chest before cracking open a fresh can of beer. “Seventh grade. We played Burnside in the county championship game. Coach Sutton—it was Coach Sutton back then—he saw me run for two hundred eighteen yards and punch it into the end zone five times. Five. We won that thing, and who do you think got the invite to play on the Jericho High varsity team as an eighth grader?”

  “You?” Danny said, knowing his part in the story.

  “Yeah, me. All-county freshman year. Second team all-state as a sophomore. First team junior year. All-American as a senior and a five-star recruit. Five stars, that’s when everyone and their brother wants you.”

  Danny’s father looked at his mother and his face softened. “Your mom was the prettiest gal in Texas and she wanted me, too.”

  She was happy to take up the memory. “We were in Pittsburgh with the Steelers for six years, including his world championship season.” Danny hoped she wouldn’t start on how much she still wanted to be there instead of back here in this country town.

  Danny’s father looked successful. He was proud of his height and his looks, and of his strength. Still, if you just saw him without knowing, it would be hard to imagine he’d run for 103 yards and punched in two touchdowns in the Super Bowl. His job for Zurich Farm Implements called for lots of travel and entertaining, and at just over six feet tall, he’d taken on weight, most of it in his belly.

  “So tomorrow morning it’s you and me,” Danny’s fath
er said to him, getting back to business. “Road work. First light.”

  Danny’s mother made a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a snort. “Since when have you gotten up at dawn to run?”

  “You got no idea, Sharon. You were painting your toenails by your daddy’s pool, getting a suntan, when I was making my way.”

  Danny felt a knot in his stomach. He hated this bickering. He stabbed the last piece of chicken fried steak on his plate and stuck it into his mouth, chewing fast, all the while thinking he might get an opening where he could ask to be excused.

  “That’s a pretty high horse you’re sittin’ on, Sharon, for a wife that never had to work a day in her life. Just shops and buys clothes so she can flirt with every man on Main Street.” His father took a big swig of beer and sat back.

  His mom smiled with her answer. “I don’t flirt with them. They flirt with me.”

  Then she got serious. “You don’t call keeping your clothes nice and putting up with your schedule and taking care of him”—she pointed her fork at Danny—“work?” She stood to begin clearing the table.

  “He’d be a darned sight better off carrying a football under his arm than that cell phone you gave him.”

  “Kids have them, Daniel. How would you like it if we sent him to school with no shoes?”

  His father sat still, drumming his thick fingers against the beer can. The wedding band on his father’s ring finger made little clicking sounds as Danny got up and began to silently help get the dishes into the kitchen. When a lightning bolt exploded right next to the house, Danny’s mom screamed and dropped a plate. It shattered against the kitchen floor as the house plunged into total darkness.

  “Now you broke a plate!” yelled his father.

  Danny heard his mom digging in the cupboard before the scratch of a match produced a small flame that became a glow as she held it to a candle on the countertop. From the candle, she lit one of her long, thin cigarettes and surrounded herself in a halo of smoke. Tears glistened down her cheeks in the wavering light and she sniffed softly.

  “See?” Danny’s dad said to him. “What do I always tell you about girls? Waterworks.”

  With that his mom let out a desperate-sounding sob.

  “Oh, now . . .” Danny’s father scraped his chair back and engulfed his mother’s narrow frame in a bear hug.