Game Changers (14 page)

Two home games left in the regular season, one against Darby that coming Saturday, one against Glendale the next.

Parkerville and Glendale were tied for first place, both with 5–1 records. Rockwell and Darby were 4–2. If the Rams won out, they'd not only end up 6–2, they'd have beaten the other three teams fighting to get into the championship game.

Math wasn't always Ben McBain's best subject, but the football math here was pretty simple:

Win two games and nobody could keep them
out
of the championship game, no matter what anybody else did. Even after their 0–2 start, even after everything that had happened with Shawn, if they kept winning now — as Ben just knew they would — they would win the league.

He wasn't saying that out loud, of course.

Not because he was superstitious or afraid of jinxing the Rams. Just because he knew you were never
ever
supposed to get ahead of yourself in sports. You started thinking about anything except the game you were playing and then the math got
real
simple:

The other team would score more points and you'd lose.

The Rams had fought too hard, fought
back
too hard, to allow that to happen now.

“This feels like our version of the Turkey Bowl,” Coop said when they were warming up on the field before the Darby game, the weather much cooler all of a sudden, the first time all year it had felt like real football weather.

Darby and Rockwell were big rivals in everything, Darby being the next town over. Every year, no matter what the records were for Rockwell High and Darby High, the Turkey Bowl game on Thanksgiving felt like the championship of the two towns.

Sam said, “Just try not to play like a turkey today.”

Coop said, “How come you never talk to him like that?”

Pointing at Ben.

“Because he never acts like a turkey.”

“And I do?” Coop said.

Sam grinned. “Gobble, gobble,” he said.

“You know,” Coop said, “for all this Core Four stuff, it sure seems like only
one
of us is the one always getting his chops busted.”

“We just think that the best way to get you up for the game is to knock you down a little bit,” Ben said.

“Thanks for caring,” Coop said. “And sharing.”

They all knew a lot of the Darby guys from other sports, knew their best player was their halfback Ryan Hurley, knew the Darby Bears were going to run Ryan all game long, that their coach didn't like to throw. Nobody in the Midget Division
was going to take time to scout another team, not even someone who loved to be prepared the way Coach O'Brien did. But he told them in his pregame talk that maybe he
had
talked to a couple of the coaches whose teams had played Darby already, so he pretty much knew what to expect.

“Smash-mouth football all the way,” he said. “But let them go ahead and try to run over this team.” Nodding as he said, “When we've got the ball? We run over
them
, and around them, and past them. And throw over them.”

By the time the first half was nearly over, Ben wished it were that simple. Because for the first time since he'd become quarterback, the offense wasn't clicking. The best scoring drive of the day had belonged to the Bears, their first drive of the way, Ryan Hurley getting the ball on practically every down. They ended up with a first and goal from the Rams' five, but when it looked like Ryan was about to run it in for the game's first touchdown, Coop closed the ground between them, rocked him with a hit from the side that knocked the ball loose, recovered it himself.

“Gobble, gobble,” Coop said to Ben and Sam in the huddle. “Who's a turkey now?”

The Rams ran it out of there for a couple of first downs. But Ben was missing with his throws today, long and short. A couple had been batted down by the big guys in the Bears' front line. The Rams' best chance to score came right at the end of the half, but then Ben tried to force in a pass to Sam, who was double-covered the way he had been all day — obviously Coach O'Brien wasn't the only one who had done a little
scouting — and got picked off by Ryan Hurley, back playing safety.

So the game stayed 0–0.

Ben didn't know what his passing stats were exactly, he was too busy playing the game. But he could only remember three completed passes for the half, two to Sam, one to Shawn. The rest of the time he really had been about as accurate as Shawn had been when he was still the starting quarterback for the Rams.

He had come to The Rock with his big plan today. Scrapped now. In the wind. The only plan was to somehow find a way to win the game.

“Don't worry,” Sam said to him when they got to the bench. “I'll figure out a way to get open.”

“Yeah, well if you do, maybe I can start remembering how to get the ball to you,” Ben said.

“You will.”

“And you know this …
how
?”

“Because you always have,” Sam said. “It's nothing–nothing. So it's like we're starting the game all over again.”

But it stayed nothing–nothing into the fourth quarter. Tie game, biggest crowd of the season because it was Darby, another Saturday that felt like a playoff game because of what was at stake, the game almost feeling like sudden death, because you just knew that the first team to score was going to win. The Rams had played all those other close games, Ben knew, but this one was more of a grind, like they'd been playing uphill on offense from the start.

He knew something else: A tie might be as bad as a loss, especially if Glendale won
its
game against Parkerville today and got to 6–1. Because then even if the Rams beat Glendale next weekend, Glendale would finish 6–2 and the Rams would finish 5–2–1.

And if Parkerville won
its
last game, the Rams were out of the championship.

Rams ball on their own thirty, three minutes to go.

Finally Ben got them moving again. No smash-mouth football for the Rams now. Coach O'Brien had them throwing on every down. “Remember when the Mavs won the championship from LeBron last year?” Coach had said to Ben before the drive. “Dirk Nowitzki missed eleven of his first twelve shots. And you know what he did? He kept shooting. Well, we're going to do the same, because I just know you're about to get hot.”

First down pass to Sam. Then another. They were at midfield, just like that. Short pass to Darrelle out of the backfield. Then another to Darrelle. Inside the Bears' forty. The Bears were still doubling Sam, but Ben
was
hot now, put one between the two defenders and the Rams had a first down on the Bears' twenty.

Clock running, inside a minute.

Kevin Nolti brought in the play from Coach O'Brien: “Lookaway” it was called. Ben liked it. He was supposed to fake a throw to Sam on the right, then look the other way and hit Shawn on the left sideline, ten yards or so past the line of scrimmage. They ran the play a lot in practice in two-minute
drills. Shawn knew he was supposed to step out of bounds after the catch, stopping the clock.

“We got this,” Ben said in the huddle. He was talking to all of them, but looking at Shawn. Like he was trying to make him believe he could make this catch.

As they broke the huddle, Shawn O'Brien said the first words he'd said to Ben all day.

“I know the play's to me,” he said. “But if Sam's open, throw it to him.
Please
.” Not the Bad Shawn now.
Or
even close. Just a scared kid.

“No,” Ben said. “Like I said, we got this.”

Thinking to himself that sometimes things worked out the way they were supposed to, you didn't need a plan, you just had to let it happen.

He dropped back into the shotgun. Coop gave him a perfect snap, waist high. Ben sold the fake to Sam as hard as he could, Sam double-covered again. For one real bad moment, Ben was afraid he'd sold the fake too well, felt the ball slipping out of his hand as he brought his arm forward.

He managed to hold on. And it was as if the whole defense had leaned in Sam's direction when Ben made his fake. So when he did look to the left, Shawn was wide open, having stopped just as a way of not drawing any attention to himself, as if he were as surprised as anybody at how open he really was.

Ben hoped that Shawn knew how much open
field
there was in front of him, that he didn't need to go out of bounds, that he could take this sucker all the way once he had it in his hands.

Take it all the way to the house.

Ben threw a tight spiral to him, as good a pass as he'd thrown all day, the ball feeling just right coming out of his right hand. It came at Shawn like a perfect strike in baseball, down the middle of the plate. He wore “11,” like his dad had before him.

If he'd taken his hands out of the way, the ball would have hit him right between the ones.

Shawn dropped it.

Maybe he'd taken his eyes off it just for a split second, having seen what Ben saw, all that open field in front of him. Knowing all he had to do was catch it and run. But he didn't. He dropped it the way Ben had earlier in the season, when Shawn was the one doing the throwing.

Shawn ended up staring at the ball on the ground in front of him like some bottle he'd just dropped and smashed all over the kitchen floor.

He finally jogged back to the huddle, head down.

“Don't worry about it,” Ben said. “It was only first down.”

In a voice Ben could barely hear, Shawn said, “Don't try to make me feel better.”

Nothing more to say, because Darrelle brought in the next play then. Another simple name for it: “Post.” Sam over the middle. Another one where he was just supposed to get his shoulder inside the corner covering him and make one of his quick cuts over the middle. As much of a money play as they had.

Until Ben changed it.

In the huddle he said, “We're gonna run Lookaway again.”

In a voice almost as quiet as Shawn's had been, Sam Brown said, “You're calling an
audible
?
Now
?”

Coop said, “Dude. You haven't called an audible all year.”

“They won't be expecting it,” Ben said.

“You mean, because we aren't, either?” Coop said.

Shawn acted as if he wasn't listening to the others, just looked at Ben now and said, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because it gives us our best chance to win the game,” Ben said.

“My dad knows better,” Shawn said.

Ben said, “Not everything.”

Ben told Sam he could even yell for the ball this time. To Shawn he said, “Don't stop running until you get to the end zone. That's where the ball will be.”

“I
can't
.”

“Run or catch?” Ben said. “You can do both.”

Before Coop walked up and bent over the ball he said to Ben, “You
do
know what you're doing, right?”

“Trust me.”

“Always have, always will.”

Sam was actually a yard behind the coverage when he yelled for the ball. Ben almost threw it to him. Didn't. Sold his fake again, turned, and picked up Shawn, sprinting down the sideline. Only this time the kid covering him hadn't bit on the fake, was running almost shoulder to shoulder with him.

Trust it, Ben told himself.

Trust yourself and trust him.

He thought he'd led Shawn just right, until he saw at the last second that he'd put the ball too far out in front of him.

But then he saw something else, the way everybody at The Rock and everybody from the two towns did. Saw Shawn O'Brien laying out as far as he could, like he was doing a racing dive off the side of a swimming pool. Saw him stretching out his arms and his big hands as he hit the ground hard, bouncing a couple of times before he showed the ref that he'd held on.

The ref puts his own arms and hands up and signaled touchdown.

And in that moment, Shawn became a Ram.

Not a
scared
kid now. Just a big, happy one. He jumped up and handed the ball to the ref and then put his arms in the air, pumping them up and down as he sprinted for his teammates.

Like he really was one of them now.

“What the heck?” Ben heard Coop say. “What the heck?” And ran straight for Shawn, the two of them launching each other into a crazed, flying chest bump.

For this one moment, Shawn O'Brien looked happy. Or maybe, Ben thought, he just looked like a football player.

At last.

Shawn didn't celebrate with Ben, didn't say anything to Ben until the game was over, until Ben had run around left end for the conversion that made the final score 8–0, Rams. Until Sam, playing the deepest safety he'd ever played, had intercepted a long pass intended for Ryan Hurley on the last play of the game.

Then Shawn came walking over to where Ben stood at midfield.

Ben could see how awkward this was for him, knew at the same time there was nothing he could do to make it any easier for him.

Shawn put out a fist, Ben bumped it, Shawn said, “I owe you one.”

Ben could see he surprised him when he came back with, “Yeah, you do.”

“Well, go ahead and name it,” Shawn said.

“I want
you
to make
me
a promise,” Ben said.