Muck City (41 page)

She was about to say something else when the crowd jolted her awake. Women seated in the front seats suddenly threw their hands to their faces and men began to curse. Jonteria turned to see Antwan Lee racing past for the score.
Oh dear
. She turned to her squad and shouted,
“Get ’em up.”
It was time to calm the crowd. Jonteria shook off her grogginess and swung into the routine.

“We got spirit … deep down inside.… We roll up, we fold out, and call it Raider pride.…”

•   •   •

ON THEIR NEXT
possession, Mario and the offense answered Lee’s touchdown with an eighty-five-yard push downfield. Using a combination of chipping runs and short pass plays, they thwarted the Tigers’ relentless rush attack and found themselves perched at the Cocoa five. But the Dark Side held.

Facing fourth down and four, Hester had to make a critical decision: whether or not to kick a field goal. He knew that Marvin was not strong under heavy pressure, the line was chronically weak, and he felt Cocoa’s special teams had come dangerously close to blocking the extra point after the touchdown. After discussing with his coaches, Hester made the call: The Raiders would go for six instead. If they didn’t make it, at least the defense would have Campbell digging out of his own end zone.

After hearing the call, Mario dropped back and slung it to Oliver on a slant, only to have Tiger safety DeMario Gilmore swat the pass incomplete. The Raiders lost the ball and the three points. But when the Tigers took over, Boobie and the defense managed to hold them to nine yards and force the punt. The gamble had paid off for now.

The Raiders took over at midfield with the momentum firmly on their side. The defending champs were thrashing in their cage. With only fourteen minutes left to play, the Raiders needed the kill shot.

Just one more touchdown
, thought Mario.
And fast
.

But two plays later, the Glades Central drive came to a terrifying halt. Once again, the Tigers blitzed and flushed Mario from the pocket. He took off running down the middle of the field, and just inches from the first down, he felt his leg seize with pain. As he dove to the turf to protect himself, all he could think was,
My hamstring. I just tore my hamstring
.

The pain was diamond-sharp and took his breath away. He quickly
realized it was only a cramp, but he’d never experienced one like this. With Oliver’s help, the quarterback hobbled to the bench, then collapsed in frantic breaths. The muscle in his leg was clenched up and angry, pulling off the bone. His whole body was in revolt.

The quarterback choked down a mouthful of salt and cursed the food the ADs had been serving them all trip. No lean meats, no pastas, no fruits or vegetables. Just greasy chicken and gravy mashed potatoes that hardened in his veins now like sabotage. He tried to walk but fell. Looking up, Mario saw Davis trotting out to take his place.

The power of his moment was slipping from his grasp.

Desperate, he began screaming at his leg.

COME ON! TIGHTEN UP! TIGHTEN UP! COME ON! COMEOOOOON
!

Soon he was punching it with all his strength, pounding his battered fist into his calf, begging it—
COMEOOON!
!—to awaken and realize the magnitude of 1:14 in the third quarter in a game that could, if only, work to fill that impossible hole in his heart.

Come on. Yeah. Straight
. The muscle finally let go, began to give like an old rusty spring. The salts got him on his feet. He winced through the pain and limped back onto the field.

While Mario was writhing on the bench, Baker had given him a gift. On a third-down-and-one handoff from Davis, he’d rifled through a hole created by Boobie and Corey Graham, juked right, then beat two defenders for twenty-two yards.

Save for three quick offensive snaps that went nowhere, the Cocoa defense had been dragged up and down the field the entire third quarter. They were looking tired, less invincible. By the time Mario returned, the Raiders were at their twelve and going for the knockout. Again, Hester sent Baker straight into their face, headfirst through a wall of black jerseys for a gain of nine. Once at the five, Hester brought out the wrecking ball. Mario took the snap and handed off to Boobie, who leaped over the pile and bounded into the end zone.

Touchdown Raiders!

But if the Cocoa defense had to go down, they were going down swinging. As Marvin booted the extra point, the Raider line separated, allowing Rick Rivers to jump the open gap and bat the ball to the ground. A gasp rose from the Raider stands. Not because Cocoa blocked the point and now had the ball. But because Cocoa had the ball—
and life
!

Raiders 13, Cocoa 7.

•   •   •

WE NEED A FUMBLE. We need a fumble
.

As the fourth quarter began ticking down, this was the plea uttered softly along the Glades Central sidelines, invoked like silent prayer.

Come on, get us a fumble
!

Praying for fumbles only seemed reasonable, especially since the Cocoa offense had only sixty-six total yards and one turnover already. But perhaps three titles in a row for one coach was in fact the prayer too big to ask. Two was a respectable number. In Brevard County, two had made Gerald Odom a legend, and two was certainly enough for Johnny Wilkinson.

Hester wanted just one. Just one championship for his twenty-five years in the game, and especially one as a Glades Central Raider. The fact that he’d never won a ring was the little-talked-about disappointment of his life, his lingering sadness. Throughout college and a decade in the league, he’d never been with a team that contained “those perfect pieces” and, at the same time, that precise chemistry between players and coaches that rendered them unstoppable. The closest he’d ever come was his junior year as a Raider, when he’d stood alone in the end zone waiting for the ball.

As a pro, his biggest window for a Super Bowl had been the Colts. The years in Indianapolis were Hester’s prime, when all of his own pieces had come together and he could flow. It was where he’d also built lasting friendships and enjoyed the love of a town, one where fans still remembered the minutiae of his career nearly twenty years after he was gone.

But the Colts had never possessed the right pieces to win. And before
long, Jessie’s body started giving out. He began slowing down and getting caught, started taking hits to the head. Lena still shuddered at the memory of him lying unconscious in the end zone after being flattened by the Chiefs’ Kevin Ross (whom Hester had juked for a touchdown five years earlier as a Raider). Or the call she got from teammate Clarence Verdin after a Monday-night game saying Jessie was in the hospital. He’d started convulsing on the team plane, so dehydrated that every muscle in his body, even his tongue, had locked up and dropped him in the aisle.

After being waived by Indy in 1994, Hester signed with the Rams. By then, his body had grown tired and football had become more of a job. Monday mornings hurt worse than ever, and Wednesday practice filled him with dread. In November 1995, while playing in New Orleans, Hester’s catching streak finally ended at eighty-six games, the third-longest streak of active NFL receivers behind Art Monk, Jerry Rice, and Keith Byars.

Soon Hester was needing shots in his lower back just to play, then more in his foot for his plantar fasciitis. He ended up missing five of the last six games of the 1995 season due to a deep-thigh contusion. In April 1996, when the Rams needed to free up their salary cap, they cut Hester loose.

Midway through the season, Hester was back home in Wellington and still suffering from foot pain, when he got a call from Ron Wolf. Wolf had drafted Hester in Los Angeles and was now GM for the Green Bay Packers.

“Jessie, we need a receiver,” he said.

“Ron, I can’t run.”

Still, Hester told Wolf to give him two weeks to heal, to figure something out. But the next day, the Packers signed Andre Rison and won a Super Bowl that season.

“My pro career just came down to what-ifs,” Hester said. “In the end, my body just broke down on me and I had to come to grips with that. Some things are meant to be. Certain things are just destined.”

•   •   •

STANDING ON THE
sideline with the fourth quarter under way, his Raiders up by six, Hester battled the urge to imagine that his luck was about to change. The fourth quarter was Cocoa’s witching hour, and something told Hester they’d yet to unveil their most potent magic.

Wilkinson had said as much himself. Before the half, he’d told the on-field reporter for Fox Sports, “Our problem is we’re not playing Cocoa football.” Everyone knew what he meant by Cocoa football, and it wasn’t a fluke seventy-yard kickoff return to tie the game. What was missing was that mechanical, coldhearted execution for which the Tigers were known.

Down 13–7, Campbell and the Tigers came out like a gang of accountants and quickly went to work. On the first snap, it was Campbell to Folston, who swept right and was cut down by Boobie for a gain of four. Next, Campbell pitched to Lee, who swept left and into the arms of Jaja for a gain of two. The Tigers were still working the same clinical rotation the Raider linebackers had memorized and contained all night.

Which was exactly what Wilkinson wanted them to think. Drawing them close, he sprang the trap.

On third and four from their own forty-two, Campbell faked to Lee on another sweep, then rolled out of the pocket. And then—for only the second time in eighteen quarters of play—he threw a pass. It was to Jones, who was wide open in the flat. By the time the Raider secondary could adjust, Jones was across midfield to the thirty-six. The Tiger crowd leapt to their feet, for they saw the dark lightning in the distance and knew what was rolling in.

The pass play rocked the Raiders’ equilibrium and the Tigers continued to pound. Folston for two. Jones for six. Jones again on fourth and one for a fresh set of lives. In the thick of the drive, the cameras closed in on Campbell’s face to reveal a placid calm, the long stare of a young man who’d already played the game and was relaxing by the pool.

On first down, Campbell gave it to Folston for another three yards, before Jones blasted a hole to the Raider nine. Two plays later, Jones met Boobie at the goal line and forced his way inside, tying the game.

The kicker, Cody Bell, ran out to attempt the extra point.

It was Bell who had carried his team to their first state title game in 2008 on a fifty-two-yard field goal in the semifinals. In the championship game against Tallahassee Godby, Bell missed
all four field goals
he attempted. The game ended with the score tied 0–0—the first time that had ever happened in Florida state finals history. It was Godby who scored first in overtime, but the extra point was blocked. Backed into a corner, the Tigers fought downfield for the tying touchdown, then placed their bets once again on the conflicted legs of Cody Bell. His extra point was true.

Now, two years later, on the same stretch of field, Bell’s kick sailed through the center of the uprights.

The Tigers took the lead 14–13.

•   •   •

MARIO WATCHED THE
kick from the sideline and felt a quickening, as if the earth had suddenly gained speed. He looked up at the clock. It read five minutes and fifty-four seconds. It was as if his whole life and its parade of heartbreak were suddenly distilled into this tiny teacup of time. He had six minutes to right so many things: to bring home the ring to rest near his father’s photo, to quiet the ghosts and for once shed the mark of the piteous orphan. Six minutes to become immortal, at last beloved. The man of the city.

Six minutes was enough to win. The quarterback strapped on his helmet and ran back onto the field.

From their own twenty-yard line, the Raiders came out throwing fire. Mario launched his first pass up the right side, hitting Jaime for a gain of eleven and the first down.

That’s right, baby! That’s how to be great
!

His heart pounded in his ears. The rush of the moment seemed to lift his rubbery legs and carry him downfield, his body all but floating to the fresh set of sticks.

Mario looked toward Hester on the sidelines.

“Cadillac! Cadillac!”
the coach shouted.

It was a fifteen-yard dig route on the left side for Davonte. Mario lined up in shotgun and shouted the snap. That’s when everything fell apart.

Not a second after Mario touched the ball, Tyrell Denson appeared on his left side, charging at full speed. There was no time to react. The defensive end wrapped Mario’s waist and flung him to the turf. Mario instantly sprang to his feet in a rage. From the corner of his eye, he’d watched Densen fly past
two
of his linemen. Neither player had done anything to stop him.

Mario ran toward them, his arms raised in a panic. The clock was hammering down. This was not the time to forget assignments.
“What’s goin on?”
he shouted, then saw something in their faces that scared him to death.

“Don’t give up on me,” he said, then pleaded,
“Don’t you give up on me now!!”

Later, Hester would contend that the quarterback had misread his teammates’ expressions. They had not given up on their captain, he said. Rather, they were not made of the same stuff. They did not have that fight raging inside, that impossible hole to fill. Unlike Mario, they just didn’t need to win.

The sack pushed the Raiders back eight yards, and then it happened again. The Tigers blitzed with three defenders, who busted through the line with ease. All three linemen hit Mario at the same time and drove his flailing body deep into the backfield.

The Cocoa crowd were on their feet, hysterical. The momentum had shifted. The Raiders had given the Tigers life. And once they had life, they rarely let it go.

On third down and thirty-two, Hester called a 989 Rolls-Royce. Davonte went into motion up the left side as Cocoa once again brought the rush. As Mario dropped back to pass, Ferguson broke free and slapped his arm just as he let go of the ball. It hung in the air, spiraling in the lights across
midfield, and almost made the distance. Davonte ran it down like an outfielder staring into the sun, then found himself in a frenzy of black jerseys. The ball came down into the arms of Datarius Allen, the Tiger safety.