Page 84 of Hell Bent
Harlan twisted in the air, landed on one leg in a sort of arabesque, somehow kept his feet in the snow, and was sprinting. Four yards, five, and somebody else coming fast, sailing through the air, grabbing him at the thighs, pulling him down.
And Harlan still holding the ball.
I was on my feet somehow, jumping up and down. Ben was there beside me, laughing, saying, “I did that too. Jumped.”
“How long now?” I asked. “That was sorisky.”
“Twelve seconds,” Ben said, even as the players ran into position again, Owen snapped the ball again, and the quarterback took it and threw it to the ground. “Stopping the clock,” Ben explained. “At the 25. This is it. This is the whole game right here. This is the whole season. Forty-two yard kick in a blizzard. This isit.”
Sebastian
I was still in that bubble, because the seconds had ticked by and the events unspooled as if that were how it was always meant to be. Owen leading the charge to get the QB over for the first down with the same total commitment he’d shown in going after that meaningless ping-pong ball, heedless of his safety, aimed single-mindedly at his one goal. Harlan going up and plucking that ball out of the wintry sky, coming down as gracefully as a dancer, spinning out of the tackle and making those extra yards. Making them for me, putting the game into my hands as neatly as he did everything, making it seem easy. I was running on, then, and he was running off. Catching my eye, and grinning. Only a fraction of a second, but I got it.It’s on you now, bud. Put us through.
Our punter and my usual holder, Josh Turnbull, had gone down with a groin strain after a slip in the snow following his last punt, but I wasn’t worrying about that. I was slapping the shoulder of Kelsan Simmons, who’d been the holder on his college team, for the second time in ten minutes, then watching him take a knee seven yards behind the longsnapper and brush the snow away around the place the ball would land, as much as he could do that in about two seconds.
Twenty-five yards from the goal line. Forty-two-yard kick. Nine seconds on the clock.
There was no thinking, only the movements, choreographed and rehearsed as that ballet. The impossible broken down into pieces, practiced again and again, and then achieved. The same way you did it every time.
The space in my head was limitless, because I contained multitudes. The ball sailing back seven yards to Simmons’s sure hands, Simmons rotating it so the laces faced away, the point of it still a few inches down in the snow, and I had the distance covered already. I didn’t think about how deeply that ball was buried or where I should hit it. I hit it the same way I always did. Instep first, arm swinging forward, head down, straight into the swirling wind, hard as I could do it, right down the middle. A bullet shot from a gun, sailing true.
The snow muffled the sound, or the crowd had gone quiet. A second in the air. Two. Three. The ball curving to the right in the gleam of the lights, then coming back around as surely as if it had been laser guided.
Between the sticks. Over the crossbar. Into the net.
The whistle. The end.
10 to 9.
We were going to the divisional playoffs.
I wasn’t an expressive guy. I was Canadian. I’d been the worst celebrator and the worst actor on every soccer team I’d ever played on. I couldn’t writhe on the ground in agony to save my life. But now, as Simmons thumped me on the shoulder and I saw tears in his eyes, as Harlan was there in front of me, both of us jumping, laughing like fools, I?—
Well, yeah. I fell on the ground and made a snow angel.
I’d barely done that when I was five. I have no idea why Idid it then, but Harlan was laughing, dropping down beside me, and making his own, and then there were grown men lying in the snow all around me, sweeping their arms and legs out like windshield wipers, carving angels into the deepening snow.
We were cold. We were hurt. We were tired.
We were winners.
33
RETURN OF THE HERO
Sebastian
I was surprised how hard it was to finish the game and not hear from Alix. She’d watched, what, two of my games before this? How had hearing from her become any kind of expectation? I’d had a text from Ben as soon as I’d had a chance to look—it had been a bunch of exclamation points and a fire emoji, which had made me laugh—but it had been hours, and I hadn’t heard from Alix. I knew she’d had to work, but surely she’d have asked whether we’d won. Surely she’d?—
I was on the bus again. Not by myself for once, because Simmons was beside me. Not saying anything, just listening to his music, his hands drumming on the seatback as a knee jiggled along with them, but I was happy to have him there. Somehow, I couldn’t stop smiling. It had been one of the most frustrating games of my short NFL career, and still, I was smiling. And not because of me. Because of him. Because of Owen. Because of Harlan. Because of our new young QB, Antonio Briscoe, who, like the others, had come through when the team needed him. And most of all, because of ourmuch-maligned defense, which had come of age or come together or whatever other cliché you wanted to attach to it, right in the nick of time. Because we were playing again next week, and we’d all be on the same page for it. Because this team was clicking,and I was part of it.
My phone dinged, and I had it out of my pocket fast.
That was amazing,Alix had written.Not just you. All of you. But especially you.Which was more emotional and less analytical than usual, but it worked for me.
It was good,I typed back.How are you? Get something to eat? Ben buy that new Lamborghini yet?
Why are men so obsessed with cars?she asked.We had pizza.I succumbed. Special occasion. When does your plane get in?
