The Underdogs (9 page)

So he decided he wasn't going to wait for the perfect moment or wait until tomorrow, he was going to recruit himself a coach right now; it couldn't be any harder than trying to get Toby turned around.

Getting Toby to listen when Will started talking to
him
from the heart.

On his way through town, Will did stop at Scoop after all, ordered himself a black-and-white shake because he'd brought just enough money for one with him.

He sat and drank it at the end of the counter, trying to rehearse his speech a little more, knowing he was probably only going to get one shot at this.

That meant, one shot to get it right. And maybe
Tim
was right, maybe he did think better if he wasn't trying to do it on an empty stomach.

When he finished the shake, he got back on his bike, ready to roll in all ways. If Will Tyler knew one thing, it was this: he was pretty honest with himself. So maybe he was just being a dreamer all over again, about all of it, maybe Toby was only being polite, he had no intention of playing, he just wanted Will to leave. And leave him alone.

A definite possibility.

But Will always chose to believe in the best possibilities, even when he was down. There'd never been a time in football when he thought a play wasn't going to work before the ball was snapped. Even last season, the championship game against Castle Rock, Will knowing that there really wasn't enough time to come all the way back, he kept telling himself and his teammates that there was.

He'd waited behind Bobby Carrington and seen himself taking the handoff from him and breaking into the clear, going all the way, recovering the onside kick that would come next. Coming all the way back the way the Eagles did later in the same season against the Giants, that game right before Christmas when they were behind 31–10 with seven-and-a-half minutes left and then scored the last twenty-eight points, the last touchdown coming when DeSean Jackson—who had the kind of speed even Will only had in his
dreams—
took a punt return all the way to the house as time expired.

“As long as there's still time,” DeSean Jackson said that day, “you can't give up.”

So Will wasn't even close to giving up yet, on the season or on Toby or getting the coach he wanted, the coach he knew would be perfect for his underdog team. What did his dad always say?

Will rode his bike to the house and waited.

He was sitting there on his windowsill when he saw the guy he wanted to be his coach finally show up.

Saw Joe Tyler move slowly and painfully up the walk, limping more than usual today, worse than ever, limping so badly that he didn't even try to fake it when he looked up and saw Will waving at him.

 

His dad had been at the gym.

Even after a week when he'd mostly delivered the mail on foot, he still dragged himself to the gym on the weekends, sometimes both days, trying to gut his way through the exercises the physical therapist had given him. Somehow trying to make the knee stronger, build up the muscles around it, doing everything he could to stay away from something his doctor and the therapist had told him was probably inevitable:

Knee replacement surgery.

Joe Tyler fought that idea even harder than going back to a factory job.

“There are two words that would never go together with me,” he told Will. “
Elective
and
surgery.
”

“But I was with you when Dr. Friedman said that the operation would improve the quality of your life,” Will had said.

Even now he could remember the look his dad shot him when he said that, smiling, but his eyes sad. Will knew those sad eyes; he'd see them on his dad sometimes when he'd look at pictures of Will's mom.

“Quality of life?” he'd said. “It would take more than a knee operation.”

Now he was stretched out on the couch, ice pack on the knee, Will having brought him a tall glass of lemonade, his dad doing what he always did when he got back from the gym, asking out loud, not really even talking to Will, why he bothered, he always felt worse when he got home, would probably feel even worse when he had to get up and do it again tomorrow.

And worse than that on Monday when it was time to get back to work.

“I wouldn't even know what good felt like,” he said, “if good ever did come along.

“Maybe, in my next life,” he said to Will, “I'll get to sit down once in a while during my workweek.”

He looked up at Will, standing over the couch, and said, “And what's on your mind?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure there is. It's written all over your face.” He winced when he shifted his position and moved the ice pack a little. “You're a great son. Great ballplayer. Truly terrible liar.”

“Gee,” Will said, “I never heard
that
one before.”

“How about the one about people wearing their heart on their sleeve? That's you right now.”

Will pulled a chair closer to the couch, sat down.

“I do have something I want to talk to you about,” he said. “It's important.”

“Told you,” his dad said. “So what
is
so important to my boy?”

“I want you to coach our team,” he said.

His dad didn't respond right away, just seemed to sink deeper into the couch, like he wanted it to swallow him up somehow. Closed his eyes, looking more tired than when he'd walked through the door. When he opened them, he turned his head and looked at Will and said, “Well, I certainly didn't see that coming.”

“You're the best guy to do it,” Will said. “The guys came up with a bunch of names. I kept running them through my head, all week long. But the name I kept coming back to was yours.”

“This must have been Tim's idea, or Chris's or somebody's,” Joe Tyler said. “Not yours. Because you know better. You have to know better.”

“No, it was mine, Dad,” Will said. “Even though I was the one who told the guys you couldn't, before somebody even asked.”

“You're right. I can't.”

“Yes, you can. Because, see, that's the thing; it's not that you can't. It's that you won't.”

His dad carefully took the ice off his knee, set it on the coffee table, got into a sitting position, wincing again as he did.

In a quiet voice, like he was really curious, he said, “And why is that?”

It had only taken them this long to get down to it.

“You really want the truth?”

His dad said, “We just went over this. I'll know right away just by looking at you if it's not the truth. You know the real reason you're a bad liar? Because you never lie, at least not to me.”

Will had his hands in his lap, wondering if Joe Tyler, who saw a lot even when you wondered if he was paying attention, could see now how hard Will was squeezing those hands together.

“I think you won't coach because you're afraid to coach,” Will said. “Because you're afraid football might find a way to hurt you all over again. Because even though you watch football with me on television, and you watch my games, there's this part of you that hates football. And now if you won't coach the team, it'll be like you're taking it out on me.”

“Afraid?”

Like he hadn't heard a word Will had said after that.

“Yeah, Dad, you are. Afraid of what football can do to you. When you're not just plain old mad.”

“So if I turn you down, it
wouldn't
have anything to do with holding down one job and going to school in my spare time, which feels like another job? You don't suppose that it might have anything to do with
that
?”

He stepped on the last two words, his voice starting to rise up a little bit.

“And we haven't even discussed the job that's most important to me, which means trying to be the best father I can be for you. And mother. So maybe that's two more jobs.”

Will said, “I know all you do, Dad.”

“Do you? Well, of course you do, because it's clear you understand me
so
well.”

Just like that, hearing the sarcasm in his dad's voice, Will felt something rising up in him. And his own voice along with it.

“You think I don't? You think I don't see how hard you work, and how much it hurts you? The way thinking about Mom does?”

Will saw the look on his dad's face as soon as he mentioned his mom, quickly added, “Sorry.”

“No need. That's the truth, too.”

“All I'm saying is, I get it, Dad. I'm not stupid.”

He unclenched his hands.

“Didn't say that you were,” his dad said.

“Like I said, I told the guys it was about work and school with you,” Will said. “But I knew those weren't the real reasons. I knew they weren't the real reasons last year when I talked to you about being an assistant coach and you said no.”

“So you think work and school are just some kind of cover story with me, is that it?”

“Yes,” Will said in a soft voice. “But only as a way of getting out of coaching.”

“That so?”

“I know you didn't give up playing football by choice, that you didn't want to give up something you loved that much,” Will said. “But not ever coming back, that has been your choice.”

Say it,
Will told himself.

“It was your choice to give up football forever,” Will said, the words in a rush now to get out. “I know why you had to stop playing. But there's more to football than playing, and you know it. And you know—because I do—how much football you still have in you. I hear it every time we watch a game. I hear it every time you say something before the announcers do.”

His dad leaned back into the couch.

“Why are we even talking about this?” his dad said, his voice the loudest it had been yet. “Even if I wanted to do it, I can't! There's no way we could come up with a decent practice schedule around my crazy schedule.”

Will said, “I know your school schedule by heart. You go two nights one week, three the next. We could work around that easy. And practice on weekends if we had to, at least the one weekend day when we didn't have a game.”

“Okay, let's say all of that is true. What about this? What about that I've never actually coached a team in my life, at any level? You guys are gonna want a real coach if you're gonna do this right. You're not doing this just to compete; I know you pretty good, too. You're doing this because you want to get back to the championship game and beat Castle Rock.”

“I want you to coach,” Will said.

His dad reached over, took a sip of lemonade, cleared his throat. Leaned back, looked at the ceiling, as if he might find the right words to say up there. He was still looking up when he said in a voice that was full of hurt, “I can't. As much as I try to love football watching you play, I've just hated it for too long. It took too much from me, kid. I've got you, and so I'd never say I've got some kind of crummy life. But apart from you, what's great about it up to here? Maybe after I get my degree, okay? But if we're keeping score on the life and times of Joe Tyler so far, it's not like I'm winning any trophies.”

This was a story Will didn't know by heart, not like this.

His dad said, “I'm not saying I was going to the pros or anything like that; I wasn't
that
good. And even if I'd gotten a scholarship to a big school, that didn't mean I was going to beat out all the other recruits like me for a starting job. But after I got hurt . . .” He cleared his throat again. “After I got hurt, it was like I'd wrecked more than my knee, if that makes sense to you.” He put his eyes back on his son now and said, “I'm still not sure I've come all the way back. Or if I ever will. So I get how much this matters to you. But football doesn't matter to me anymore. It hasn't since high school.”

Will thought:
All in.

“You're the one who's lying, Dad,” Will said.

“Careful.”

“You're the toughest guy I know,” he said. “You
never
feel sorry for yourself, except when it comes to football.”

“This conversation needs to be over.”

“It's
true,
Dad. It is.”

Like he was talking to Toby all over again, trying to get him to do more than listen, to really hear.

Will said, “You don't just have to do this for me, even though I want you to more than anything. You ought to do it for
you.
I remember everything you've ever told me about what it takes to be a good player, the way good players are supposed to act. But I've listened just as closely when you've told me about what it takes to be a good person.”

Looking right at his dad, afraid to look away now.

“You're the one who says nobody goes through life undefeated,” Will said, his voice rising, surprising him. “You know we talk all the time about getting back up after you get knocked down. I just think that when it comes to football . . . well, it's time
you
got back up.”

Then he was done.

So was Joe Tyler.

It took him two tries to get himself up off the couch; sometimes that happened if he'd been off the knee for even a few minutes, it stiffened up on him that quickly. Sometimes he'd have to ask Will to give him a hand.

Not this time.

He stood up and Will was sure in that moment that he'd failed, that he'd taken this too far, crossed some kind of line that kids weren't supposed to cross with their parents.