Football Genius (2007) Read online

  Nathan pressed his lips together and shook his head. “That was it for him. He didn’t even get to play in the Super Bowl. He had a bunch of operations, but finally, whop, they had to cut it off. Right at the knee.”

  “Gross,” Tate said.

  “He looked like he was mean before he lost the leg in the pictures I saw,” Troy said.

  “Oh, he was,” Nathan said, throwing a stone. “My dad said the other players were afraid of him, he was so mean.”

  “NFL players aren’t afraid,” Tate said.

  “What would you know?” Nathan said.

  Tate stuck out her tongue.

  “See?” Nathan said. “There you go.”

  “She knows as much as you or me,” Troy said.

  Nathan rolled his eyes and whipped another stone. It landed in the weeds. “She’s a kicker.”

  “You think it’s easy to kick when you’ve got seventy thousand people screaming at you and the game’s on the line?” Troy asked.

  “I would have frozen in front of that maniac too,” Tate said.

  “I didn’t freeze,” Troy said.

  “But you didn’t know the plays,” Nathan said.

  “I didn’t freeze,” Troy said, shattering another bottle. “I just got stuck. Why did he have to do that junk anyway? Snapping his fingers in my face? I could be helping them win; then I wouldn’t have to listen to that moron Jamie.”

  “Man, is he annoying,” Nathan said, “with that stupid ‘Falcons suck’ song he sings.”

  “And that stupid dance,” Tate said, holding her hands up in the air and flopping them around while she tilted her head and let her tongue hang out.

  She stopped and threw a stone that clanked off one of the bottles, and Nathan laughed.

  “At least I hit it,” she said, glowering. “I gotta go anyway.”

  “Don’t be mad,” Troy said.

  “I’m not. I got church,” Tate said.

  “I gotta go too,” Nathan said. “My cousins are coming for dinner.”

  “Come on,” Troy said. “There’s only two left.”

  “You can break them,” Nathan said, scrambling to his feet and hustling after Tate. “See you tomorrow.”

  Troy sat and watched them walk away down the tracks, then he picked up a handful of rocks and walked right over to the bottles, blasting them at close range.

  When he walked up through the pines his mom’s car was already gone, and he saw his grandfather’s small blue pickup truck in its place. Troy jumped onto the porch and threw open the screen door. Gramps was in the kitchen. His grandfather was strong and wiry, with the leathery arms and neck of a farmer, even though he was an auto mechanic. His hair was mostly gone, but there was a fire in his blue eyes that made him seem much younger than his seventy years. Troy ran into his arms and let the iron grip squeeze the air right out of his chest.

  “There’s my quarterback,” his grandfather said, holding him out at arm’s length and looking him over. “Give me the grip.”

  Troy clasped hands with him and bore down with every ounce of strength he had. His grandfather’s hand was a vise, and after half a minute, Troy cried out and they laughed together.

  “Did you see my scarecrow?” his grandfather asked.

  “Already?”

  His grandfather shrugged and walked through the screen door, pulling the stuffed figure from the bed of his truck. Its corn-husk stuffing rustled as he propped it up into one of the crooked lawn chairs on the porch.

  “Halloween’s not for a while, Gramp,” Troy said.

  “About a month too early, I know, but they took the corn in early.” Gramp adjusted the scarecrow and stood back to take a look. “It’ll last. Come on. You hungry?”

  Troy laughed and followed his grandfather back inside.

  “Your mother left me in charge of lunch,” his grandfather said, eyeing the refrigerator suspiciously.

  “We can heat up spaghetti,” Troy said.

  “Then watch the game,” his grandfather said, rubbing his hands together and bending down to look into the fridge. His gramp was as big a Falcons fan as there was.

  “Wanna go fishing?” Troy asked.

  His grandfather turned to him slowly and said, “This is me. Did I ever tell you about the time my mother caught me painting our neighbor’s dog with orange paint? Boys do things. That’s no reason to stop living, or being a Falcons fan, which in my mind is one and the same.”

  Troy rolled his eyes. “It’s not what I did. I’m just tired of football. Practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter how good you are, it doesn’t matter how much you know. You don’t get to play quarterback around here unless you got a dad to be the coach.”

  His grandfather turned back to the fridge. He removed a big yellow bowl and emptied the tangle of spaghetti and red sauce into a saucepan on the stove. He turned on the flame and began stirring.

  “Josh Lock’s dad didn’t coach his team,” his grandfather said, glancing over at him. “It worked out okay for him.”

  “Mom brings home a hundred sports pages every night, Gramp,” Troy said. “I’m sick of it. Falcons this. Falcons that. They couldn’t win a game if it fell in their laps.”

  His grandfather set the spoon down. He took two Cokes out of the fridge, popped off the caps, and sat down at the kitchen table, pushing one of them toward Troy.

  “Have a drink,” he said. “And tell me what happened.”

  Troy sat down and sighed.

  “Gramp, who’s my dad?”

  His grandfather filled his mouth with soda, swishing it gently around and looking out the window above the sink before he swallowed and said, “Not a bad guy. Just didn’t want the same things as your mother is all.”

  “You mean, he didn’t want me?”

  His grandfather looked right at him, his pupils tight little holes in the pale-blue eyes magnified just a bit by his glasses.

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep your mom from you,” he said. “That’s a lot more’n most people ever have.”

  He studied Troy’s face, then added, “It’s different for men.”

  “You’re a man,” Troy said.

  He nodded. “And I’d walk through a lake of fire for you. Everyone has things they don’t have, things they want. I’m not saying it’s easy, but try to look at what you have, me—your mom.”

  Troy bit his lip and sipped his soda, setting it back down on the water ring it had made on the table.

  “I thought I was, like, a football genius,” he said, sighing. “Maybe the one good thing he gave me. The only good thing.”

  “Your dad was a smart man,” his grandfather said. “That much I know. A math major, I think.”

  “A football player?”

  “Can’t say for sure. I really didn’t know him, Troy.”

  “Well,” Troy said, shrugging and picking up his soda again, “it doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever I thought I had I don’t.”

  “Meaning?”

  Troy told him about Seth Halloway, about the Falcons-Cowboys game, about the Georgia Tech game on TV, and about Coach Krock.

  “Everyone gets nervous.”

  “I wasn’t just nervous, Gramp,” Troy said, squeezing the cola bottle tight. “I didn’t see it.”

  His grandfather just stared and raised his eyebrows before he took a sip of his drink and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

  “What was the game you were watching with the coach?”

  “I don’t know,” Troy said.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a game,” his grandfather said.

  “It was.”

  “A real game?”

  “What do you mean, Gramp?”

  “What kind of game doesn’t have a pattern?”

  “Gramp, I hate riddles.”

  “What about a preseason game?” his grandfather said, a small smile on his face until he took a swig of the cola. “No rhyme or reason to preseason games. They just run a list of plays that has nothing to do with a strategy to win. It
’s like a practice, right?”

  Troy stood up. He was breathing fast.

  “Gramp,” he said, “the Falcons game.”

  “Just started,” his grandfather said, heading for the living room. “Let’s see if you’re not a genius after all.”

  As they watched, Troy predicted the other team’s plays and told his gramps what the Falcons should be doing about it. If someone on the team had been there to listen, the Falcons could have won. As it was, they lost by two touchdowns. And when the TV cameras showed a close-up of Seth Halloway’s miserable expression at the end of the game, Troy said it served him right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “SWEETHEART,” GRAMP SAID TO Troy’s mom, “I know you don’t like me to tell you what to do, but you’ve got to make them listen.”

  “You’re not serious,” his mother said, looking from Troy to Gramp.

  “Tell her, Gramp,” Troy said.

  They were sitting around the kitchen table, a box of ribs from Fat Matt’s Rib Shack between them. Troy’s mom had picked them up on her way back from the Dome after the Falcons’ loss. Troy had waited until their meal was almost finished. He knew his mom was easier to deal with when she wasn’t hungry.

  “Tessa,” Gramp said, “if they had him there today, they would have won.”

  “Dad, we’ve been through this,” she said, tossing a bone onto her plate. “If it doesn’t work all the time, it doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s a fun diversion, but that’s all.”

  Gramp explained his theory about preseason games and the tape Troy must have watched with Coach Krock.

  “He’s special, Tessa.”

  “I know he’s special, Dad.”

  “Not just special. A genius.”

  “Stop it!” his mother yelled, slamming her palm on the table and rattling the silverware.

  The crickets chirped outside in the dusk. Troy licked his fingers and got up from the table. He took his plate to the sink, scraped it off, and loaded it into the dishwasher. His mom had settled in her place, glaring at Gramp. Troy slipped outside with the old football he used for throwing at the tire. He started up close, zipping the ball, hitting the edge of the tire, and retrieving it from the pine needles before trying again.

  It took him seven times to fire one through. He took a step back, marked the spot by digging his heel into the dirt, and started again. Part of him listened to the rise and fall of their voices from the kitchen. He’d moved back seven more paces by the time Gramp swung open the screen door and marched out to his truck. Troy watched for his mom in the doorway, but she never appeared. Gramp started the truck and rolled down the window, signaling for Troy to come close.

  “When she was your age,” Gramp said, narrowing his eyes at the house, “she took a bus all the way to Birmingham after we said she couldn’t go. They had a Martin Luther King Day celebration there. We thought she was too young, but she did it anyway.

  “You should’ve seen your gram,” he said, shaking his head. “Her head about exploded, but when it came time to punish her, you know what I realized? I realized she was right about that celebration. It was important for people to show their support, and she was old enough to go.”

  “What’s that got to do with this?” Troy asked.

  Gramp looked at him hard. “Sometimes grown-ups’ vision gets cloudy from the smog of the world. Sometimes a kid’s heart tells him to do something and he needs to listen, even if it means getting in trouble.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Troy asked.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Gramp said. “But you’ll know when you think of it. You’ll just know. Now, I gotta get out of here before she throws a rock through my windshield. I’m kidding. It’ll be dark soon, and I don’t like driving in the dark no more.”

  Troy hugged his grandfather’s neck and kissed his bristly cheek, then watched the small pickup disappear. When he turned back to the tire, Tate was standing there.

  “Don’t sneak up on me,” he said.

  She shrugged and picked up the ball, throwing a wobbly pass at the tire, missing completely.

  “Now you go get it,” Troy said to her.

  “Don’t get hot. I’ll shag them for you,” Tate said, scrambling into the trees for the ball and chucking it out to him.

  Troy fired. Right through. He took a step back and marked it with his heel.

  “What’s going on?” Tate asked.

  Troy told her everything.

  “If they hadn’t blocked that hole,” he said, bouncing a pass off the tire’s rim, “I’d go try to talk to Seth.”

  “Call him,” Tate said.

  “It’s too easy to say no on the phone,” Troy said. “I need to talk to him in person.”

  “Would he listen?”

  “I’d make him listen,” Troy said. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m locked out.”

  “If somebody plugged that hole,” Tate said, “why can’t we just unplug it? You’ve got tools in that shed.”

  “Even with them, it’d take all night. My mom would call the police and kill me.”

  “All night for what?” Nathan said, stepping out from around the side of the house closest to the path in the woods.

  “Not for three of us,” Tate said, grinning.

  At first, they picked at the new concrete with the chisels from Troy’s shed. They spoke carefully in whispers and set the pieces down gently in the weeds. But by the time they could see through to the other side, Nathan was swinging away with a sledgehammer and Troy and Tate were tossing the rubble into a pile. The pocking sound of the hammer echoed down the length of the moonlit concrete wall.

  “Can you get through yet?” Nathan said, wiping his sweaty brow and peering through the hole.

  “I’m not that skinny,” Troy said.

  “Well, I gotta be home before nine,” Nathan said, looking at the glowing piece of moon.

  “Work, don’t talk,” Tate said.

  Ten minutes later, Nathan held his wristwatch out at them and said, “I gotta go. For real.”

  Tate put her hands on her hips and said to Troy, “Can you get through that?”

  Troy put his hands on the broken edges and started to squeeze through. Wiggling his shoulders, he just made it. He wormed the rest of his body through, hanging down with his hands in the grass until he could free his feet.

  He fell with a thud.

  From the other side, Tate called, “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Troy said, brushing off and whispering back through the crack. “I’ll see you tomorrow, in school.”

  Then he turned and headed into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CRICKETS AND CICADAS BUZZED in Troy’s ears. He pushed aside the needles of a pine tree on the edge of Seth Halloway’s lawn and stopped to catch his breath. There were lights on in the two lower levels of the house.

  A stick snapped behind him. Troy spun, his heart leaping, panic lifting him off the ground as he backed away.

  “Hssss.”

  He scrambled backward toward Seth Halloway’s lawn and fell over a bush. Without getting up, he crabbed backward toward the pool. The image of a horrible snake—worse, some crazy monster from a nightmare—forced a low moan up out of his throat.

  “Hssss!”

  He groaned.

  “Troy,” came an urgent whisper.

  Troy froze. “Tate? Are you crazy?”

  The pine branches parted and there she stood.

  “You scared the heck out of me,” Troy said, getting up from the ground. “What happened?”

  “We figured you better have someone to watch your back, and Nathan’s butt’s too big to get through,” she said, grinning. “So here I am.”

  Troy ran his hand over his face, shaking his head.

  “Well, come on, then.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Ring the bell, I guess,” Troy said.

  They crept around the outside of the house. On the ground level by the pool w
as a big room with sliding glass doors. Inside was Seth Halloway with three other players, sitting around on an L-shaped sectional couch, watching the Sunday Night Football game with three teammates. Each of them had one or more bags of ice packed onto his body. Seth had four. Two on his knees, one on the elbow, and the last he held against his ribs.

  Tate gripped his arm and said, “That’s Patrick Kerney, John Abraham, and Demarrio Williams.”

  Troy looked at her in the glow of the light, then back at the big men to study their faces.

  “How can you tell without their numbers?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “You think I just trade those cards? I study them.”

  Troy motioned with his hand for her to follow. They rounded the house, checking the street for a sign of anyone who might stop them or call security. The street was empty and dark. Troy climbed the stone steps and stood in front of the door, breathing hard. He tried to slow down his breathing, but finally just rang the bell.

  The bell chimed deep inside the house. No one came. Troy tried again. Ding dong.

  After another minute, Tate stepped up and jabbed the bell over and over until they heard noises from inside.

  “Tate,” Troy said, pulling her hand away. “Are you kidding?”

  The door swung open. Seth Halloway said, “Kid, are you crazy?”

  “Yes,” Troy said, staring at him hard. “Crazy and a genius, at least at football.”

  Seth rolled his eyes and shook his head. “We been through this, buddy. Where’s your mom, anyway? She’s not going to be happy, you know.”

  “I know,” Troy said. “But no one will be happy if you guys keep losing. I can help. It was a preseason game, that’s why I couldn’t call it. With Krock.”

  “Kid,” Seth said, sighing long and loud. “This is like my weekend. Film and meetings tomorrow, and Tuesday’s my only day off. It’s like Friday night to me. I’m not happy we lost. My ribs are killing me. My elbow. Both knees. I’m gonna go back inside now and pretend you didn’t bust in here again, because I like you and I like your mom, but you better get on home and let me enjoy what time I do have. And take your girlfriend too.”

  Seth started to turn and close the door, but Tate jammed her foot against it and it bounced back open. She stepped up onto the threshold and kicked Seth Halloway in the leg.