The Underdogs (6 page)

No limping today, not with Will watching him.

Will had raced downstairs—having a feeling and not knowing why—saw the letter, saw who it was from, took it into the kitchen and sat down at the table to read it.

He read every word and then when he finished, he went back and read the whole thing again, just to make sure that he hadn't dreamed up the whole thing.

His heart was pounding as if he'd just gone the whole length of the field on a kickoff return, had just crossed the goal line.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, trying to be cool.

Then he raised his right arm nearly to the ceiling, fist closed, pulled his arm down hard, the way Hannah Grayson had done after she made that insane kick in front of him
.

“Yes!”
he shouted at the top of his voice, not caring whether the neighbors could hear him or not.

Then:
“Yesyesyes!”

And this time he did the kind of crazy touchdown dance he never did on the field, dancing around the small kitchen like a complete lunatic, banging his hip on the corner of the table and not caring.

Not sure in the moment whether to laugh or cry.

There was going to be a team.

There was going to be a season.

He thought:
Sometimes a running back can complete a Hail Mary pass after all.

He tried to call Tim, got his machine. Same with Chris Aiello.
Forget it,
he thought,
I'll get on my bike and go tell them to their faces.
He would tell it to all his teammates even if it took all day.

A team and a season and new uniforms and cleats and real games after all.

Will left the letter and the envelope on the table, ran out the front door, took the same right up Valley that his dad had taken, knowing the route by heart from all the days when he'd walked it with Joe Tyler.

He was glad that Tim and Chris weren't home, now that he thought about it, running at full speed to catch up with his dad.

His dad should be the first one to know that it was still all right to believe in miracles.

Even in Forbes, Pennsylvania.

W
ill didn't expect his dad to jump for joy when he caught up with him at the corner of Cherry and Elm, not on that knee, but he thought he'd be more excited.

But when Will gave him the news, the first thing he said was, “Ironic, isn't it? One of the companies that put this town out of business is now saving a town football team.”

At first Will thought he might just be trying to be funny, but he wasn't. Will could tell by his eyes.

“But, Dad,” Will said, “the important thing is that Mr. DeMartini stepped up to the plate for us. You can read his letter when you get home. He sounds like a great guy.”

His dad leaned against a tree. “Bud, don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you. I am. It was killing me, too, thinking of you losing a season from your life. Because you're never sure how many of those you're going to get.” He turned his head and looked down Elm, like he was trying to see all the way to the end of it, all the way to the river. “Trust me, I found that out the hard way.”

“It's all right if I go tell some of the guys, right?” Will said. “He's not gonna change his mind? Or do you think I should make some kind of announcement at school tomorrow?”

“That's a lot of questions.”

Will grinned. “Answer them in any order.”

“Go tell your guys,” Joe Tyler said. “Some sneaker companies you can probably trust not to bail out on you. Trust them to do what they say they're going to do.”

Will put out his fist and his dad pounded it with his own.

“Dad,” he said, smiling, “I did it.”

“You did.”

“You always tell me it's not about getting knocked down, it's how you get back up, right?”

“Right as rain.”

“Well, I wouldn't let the town council take me down and keep me down.”

Joe Tyler messed up Will's hair and said, “That's your mom in you coming out. She was the toughest person I ever knew.” Then he said to his son, “Listen, the mail in this bag isn't going to deliver itself today. So you go do what the big sneaker man told you to do, and tell your good news to anybody you want to.”

Will did his best to hug his dad around the large mailbag on his shoulder, and then ran back home to get his bike. As he came through the front door, he heard the phone.

He ran to the kitchen and checked the caller ID and saw that it was Ben Clark calling from Castle Rock.

The two of them hadn't talked all summer and for a second, Will wondered how he could possibly know about New Balance.

“Hey, man,” Ben said, “I heard the news.”

Will said, “What news would that be?”

“About your team. Bummer.”

Will smiled, thinking:
The
old
news. The old bad news.

“Listen,” Ben said, “lemme talk for a second before you say anything.” He was a quarterback and quarterbacks always thought everybody else should shut up and listen. “I was talking to our coach and we agree you should come play for us. He said he'd even drive you over sometimes if your dad was working or whatever. You know I've been telling you since the championship game that you should be playing for us. Dude, imagine what it would be like if you got to play half your games on that field turf of ours. It would be, like,
epic.
”

“Listen,” Will said. “You're nice to offer.”

Ready to tell him no, but not about Mr. DeMartini's letter. He wasn't about to tell the Castle Rock quarterback that news before he told any of his teammates.

But then Ben was talking again.

“It not just a nice offer,” he said. “We're treating you like a free agent that just fell into our laps. My coach was saying how they're always talking about contracting the poor teams in the NBA. He goes, ‘Will's team just got contracted.'”

And for that one moment, Will
did
picture himself on that field turf they'd put in new last season. In that moment, Will wasn't trying to imagine what he'd look like in whatever uniforms New Balance was going to buy but in the cool Castle Rock uniforms that they'd worn last season, the bottled-water company having not spared any expense in styling them up.

Mostly Will imagined himself running behind that huge offensive line of theirs, not having to do it all himself, the defense not able to stack up against him because they had to worry about Ben Clark's golden arm.

Yeah,
he thought, phone in his hand, neither he nor Ben saying anything.

Then he looked over at the kitchen table where he'd left Rob DeMartini's letter.

“I have a team,” he said finally.

“But I thought—”

Now Will was the one doing the interrupting.

“You're a couple of days behind the news,” Will said. “We came up with the money.”

Nearly saying,
I
came up with the money.

“In
Forbes
?” Ben said.

He couldn't have sounded more surprised if Will had told him he'd found ten thousand dollars under his bed.

“How?” Ben asked.

“Long story,” Will said. “But as stories go, pretty stellar. Tell you about it the next time I see you.”

“You're really gonna have a team?” Ben Clark said. “Because my dad went to the coaches' meeting with Coach Tate last night, and he said the league's pretty much resigned to going with seven teams this season instead of eight.”

“It'll be eight,” Will said. “We're in.”

“Well, congrats,” Ben said. “I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Dude,” Ben said, “you guys barely had eleven to suit up last season. You bringing in some kind of big recruiting class now?”

Will knew what a good guy Ben Clark was. What Tim called a bro. Not spoiled or stuck up like he could have been. Will knew Ben was just playing. But he knew something else: it had only taken a few seconds for him to go from a friend back to being an opponent.

“We'll be all right,” Will said.

He thought of saying it as
aiight,
but every time he tried that, he just sounded—and felt—like a tool.

“Well, we'll see how all right you're gonna be when they make the schedule,” Ben said. “Game'll be at your place in the regular season this year.”

“Who knows,” Will said, “maybe the championship game will be here, too.”

“Oh, so you're going from having no team to getting home field in the playoffs? If you count that junkyard as a field.”

“You never know.”

“In your dreams, Tyler.”

Then they were both laughing, chirping back and forth a little more, before Will said he had to be someplace. But before he hung up, he said, “Ben? Thanks for calling and asking. No lie.”

“You still belong with us, whether you've got a team over there or not.”

“Nah,” Will said. “I'm right where I belong.”

Something he never would have said before he picked up the mail today.

Then he hung up and got on his bike.

Ben Clark had to be kidding, worrying that they weren't going to have enough guys who wanted to play over on this side of the river. In their own cool uniforms? With their cool New Balance football shoes?

Every kid in school would want in.

Or so he thought.

B
y the end of the first week of school Will had only found ten guys his age who wanted to play football in Forbes this season.

On a scale often?

He felt like a zero, felt almost as bad as he did when he thought there was going to be no season.

The worst part?

The team had no coach.

Mr. Carrington, who worked at the Bank of Forbes, had coached the twelve-year-old team in town for as long as Will could remember. And Mr. Carrington had agreed to do it again this season, at least before the town council had spread the news about not having enough money. But when Will and Tim stopped by the bank on Monday to tell him about New Balance, tell him they were going to have a season after all, he heard a different kind of bad news.

Mr. Carrington had gotten a better job at a bank called Fifth Third, in Toledo, Ohio. It had all happened so quickly, but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. He said that his wife and kids had already moved so that they could start school on time.

Mr. Carrington said he felt terrible telling them like this, that he hadn't bothered to tell the kids on the team or even the town council, because he didn't think there was going to
be
a team. Said he'd been away for most of the last couple of weeks looking for a house to buy in Toledo.

“As great an opportunity as this is, I honestly feel terrible about leaving you guys,” Mr. Carrington said. “And once Bobby hears the news, he's going to feel worse than I do. This has been hard enough on him already.”

So that's why none of the guys had seen Bobby lately. Their quarterback had moved to Toledo.

No coach, no quarterback. Just like that. Not even Troy Palomalu could sack that many people with one hit. Now the week had come to an end—amazingly, at least to Will's way of thinking—with them being one player short of being able to call themselves a real team. Will had thrown up his prayer and New Balance had answered it . . . except it turned out they only had ten live bodies in a sport where you needed eleven.

So now Will and Tim and Chris and Jeremiah were sitting on the floor of Will's bedroom, an emergency summit of the core players on the team. They had all chipped in to order pizza.

“It's a good thing we have food,” Tim said. “I don't think nearly as well when I'm hungry.”

“Then how do we explain the way you think the rest of the time?” Will asked.

Tim neatly folded the slice of pepperoni in his hand and said, “Why do you have to be such a hater?”

There hadn't been much talking while they waited for the pizza to be delivered. Their initial enthusiasm over the letter, the excitement of spreading the news that Mr. DeMartini and New Balance were willing to finance their team and their season had been replaced now by the very bad vibe they all had now because of the
lack
of enthusiasm shown by the rest of the seventh grade when it came to football.

Before the letter came, Will had thought the only number he had to worry about was ten thousand dollars.

Not ten players.

They had all talked up the team to their classmates. They had posted a sign-up sheet and had everyone on the team add their name to get the ball rolling. Ten names on Tuesday.

By Friday?

The same ten names.

One kid from last year's team, Carlos Estrada, had decided he wanted to play soccer this year, not football. “Where?” Will asked him. “On what team?”

“Castle Rock.”

“Dude, you're killing me,” Will said.

But there was no talking him out of it. Carlos had been a soccer player growing up in the Dominican Republic and he was happy to be playing again.

So he was gone and Bobby Carrington was gone, and thirteen had become eleven. Brendon Donelson, their center from last season, was the next to go. He had broken his arm at the skateboard park over in Castle Rock at the beginning of August and was still in a cast. He was just hoping he'd be ready for basketball season.

Ten guys. Nobody new wanted to play.

It was beyond amazing to Will.