“Trip! Jesus!” I had not seen Trip Alexander since graduating from Blackburne, but seeing his unexpected, smiling face lifted my heart so that only now I realized how low it had been. I gave him a bear hug by way of greeting, nearly knocking him down along with the poor Blackburne student in the row in front of me, and I started laughing so hard, it was close to sobbing. For his part, Trip pounded me on the back and told me to calm down before somebody made us get a room.
Since no one was sitting in their seats, we stood half in the aisle and briefly exchanged information in between plays on the field. Trip said he was a financial reporter for the Washington Post. I had always figured Trip would become a lawyer, but I could see how his shrewd analytical skills would be a great asset for a journalist. Trip had read The Unforgiving and made me promise to sign a copy for him. I sidestepped his questions about any new novel I might be writing and instead spoke generally about teaching and working at Blackburne. As perceptive as he had always been when we were in school, he understood that I was avoiding the topic of writing, and he turned our attention to the field. While we had been talking, Blackburne had converted our initial possession into a field goal, but Manassas was now marching downfield, looking to score a touchdown.
Watching the game, I found myself following the progress of a Manassas wide receiver. Most high school football games rely heavily on running plays, but this Manassas player had already made one difficult catch and evaded two Blackburne tackles before finally being brought down inside our forty-yard line. He was tall and rangy and could cut around the Blackburne cornerback like a basketball player heading for the hoop. I wasn’t sure at first why this player, whose name I didn’t know, captured my attention. Then it struck me, just as the Manassas quarterback passed to him and he stretched out his hands and snatched the ball out of the air before being tackled. He looked like Fritz, the way he moved and ran, even the way he wiped his hands on his hips before the ball was snapped. The similarity was so strong that I stood silent for a moment among the screaming Blackburne fans as the wide receiver executed another play, drawing the cornerback and a safety after him, which opened a hole in the defensive line that a Manassas halfback took advantage of. As the fans around me groaned and shouted in disappointment—the Manassas halfback had made it to our twenty-yard line—the earlier, raw joy I had felt while immersed in the crowd began to withdraw like a tide, leaving behind a cold stone bank of resentment. I had wanted to ignore this growing obsession with Fritz, with what had happened to him, for one day. I glared murderously at the Manassas wide receiver as he lined up for another play, as if it were all his fault.
“You okay, Matthias?” Trip said. He was looking at me with concern. I clenched my jaw, put on a smile, and said I was fine.
Manassas scored a touchdown on a sideline pass to the wide receiver, who skipped untouched into the end zone to great rejoicing from the Manassas side. The extra point was good, and then Blackburne’s offense took the field as we cheered with a hint of desperation now, as if we were watching soldiers go over the top in a WWI movie. On our first play, the Duke waltzed through the offensive line and clobbered our quarterback, a senior named Bobby Craw. I could feel the impact from my seat in the stands. The referees’ whistles signaling the end of the play sounded like a dismayed alarm. But the quarterback rose to his feet to cheers from the Blackburne side and went on with the game. On the next play, Craw handed the ball to Bull, who ran straight up the middle, making up the lost yards from the sack and more. The following play, he again handed it to Bull. First down. A Blackburne student gleefully set off a deafening air horn in the row behind us. Craw threw a pass, which bulleted past the receiver and out of bounds. Then Bull again, for six more yards. The Duke was clawing to get through the offensive line for another sack. Once again a handoff to Bull, who ran with Manassas defenders clinging to him for five yards and another first down.
“He’s good!” Trip said, and I nodded, beginning to feel buoyed up again by the crowd’s energy.
Then on the next play, Bull took the ball around the right end, where he found the Duke waiting for him. The Duke spread his arms wide as he lunged toward Bull, who lowered a shoulder and plowed forward, the ball cradled in one arm. For an instant I thought about the hypothetical meeting of an immovable object with an irresistible force. Then the two players collided, Bull rearing upward as the Duke hit him square in the chest. Their feet scrabbled for purchase in the torn earth, each perfectly balanced against the other. Both the Blackburne and Manassas sides hollered and blew their horns. Then players from both teams leapt onto the two boys, burying them in a blur of thrashing arms and legs as the referees blew their whistles. After hauling players off the pile, the refs discovered the ball still in Bull’s arm, but he had not advanced one inch. Mayhem erupted, especially on the Manassas side. Duke had stopped Bull! “Duuuuuke!” they crowed. “Duuuuuke!”
“That fucking sucks,” Hal Starr said, two seats down. I didn’t have the heart to reprimand him.
On the next play, Craw took the snap and handed the ball to his fullback, who ran to the left end. The Manassas defense shifted to cover him and then seemed to stall. We gaped: the fullback had handed the ball to Bull, who was running in the opposite direction. A reverse play! The Duke, having been pulled away by the feint, sprinted to catch up, but the Bull was gone. He didn’t slow down for the entire eighty yards, shrugging off two ineffective tackles and crossing the goal line to ecstatic gyrations and cheers from the Blackburne side. Someone threw their Coke up into the air, drenching a couple of third formers. Trip let out a rebel yell and thrust his arms into the air in victory. I high-fived him and bellowed with joy along with the crowd.
With two minutes left in the half, Blackburne had the ball on Manassas’s forty-two-yard line. Craw faked a pass up the middle, then pitched it to Bull, who had built up a head of steam and shot around the right end. The Duke loomed, arms wide again, and Bull crashed into him. Again the two struggled, throwing up clots of mud and grass around them. Then their teammates fell on top of them to a shrieking of whistles. Again a referee began hauling players off the heap. Then he suddenly blew his whistle, crossed his hands over his head, and placed a hand on top of his cap.
“What is that?” I said. “Ref time-out?”
Trip craned his neck to try to see the field better. The referee was waving frantically at the Manassas sideline. “Somebody got hurt.”
The last players scrambled up from the ground to reveal the Duke lying in the mud, writhing in pain. A moan rose from the crowd. The Duke’s right leg bent sharply outward below the knee.