Just A Game Read online

  Other works by Dustin Stevens :

  Be My Eyes

  Scars and Stars

  Catastrophic

  21 Hours

  Ohana

  Twelve

  Liberation Day

  Ink

  Number Four

  The Zoo Crew Novels:

  Tracer

  Dead Peasants

  The Zoo Crew

  Just A Game

  Dustin Stevens

  Just A Game

  Copyright © 2012, Dustin Stevens

  Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden, without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.

  For my family. I hope this book brings back as many fond

  memories for them reading it as it did for me writing it.

  Football is unconditional love.

  - Tom Brady

  Friday

  Prologue

  The Dirty Half Dozen.

  That’s the name The Huntsville Herald bestowed upon the Senior Class of 2014. Six boys that made it through several long years of football and were ready to take their place at the head of the table, to serve as the face of the Huntsville Hornets.

  For all intents and purposes, the face of Huntsville itself.

  The group started as fourteen seventh graders just six years earlier. Barely enough in numbers to field a team, more than enough in talent to challenge for the league crown each year. Over time though, attrition and misfortune combined to erode away at their numbers, dropping away more than half.

  The exodus started the summer before eighth grade, when the Monroe brothers moved to Michigan.

  Twelve.

  Two months into their freshman year, Hank Rogers was in a car accident and injured his neck. He would be fine to live a full and productive life, but he would never be able to wear the blue and yellow again.

  Eleven.

  The next summer Jake Hill and Brent Hobarth were both told they were needed to help on the family farm. In Huntsville, such a thing was never questioned.

  Nine.

  After their sophomore season, Kevin Snyder was the next to go. He told everybody that while he loved football, he wanted to spend all his time concentrating on baseball.

  Everybody saw right through the lie, but nobody cared enough about his absence to press it. Huntsville wasn’t the kind of school where anybody concentrated on a single sport. If a kid was good enough to play a sport, he played.

  Truth was, Kevin was never really good enough. And he shied away from contact, a mortal sin on the football field.

  Eight.

  The last two casualties were the toughest to take. First was Danny Bernard, who tore his ACL at the county track meet in May. A full replacement surgery was performed, bringing with it a minimum recovery time of ten months. For a while he had flirted with the notion of holding himself back or sitting out a year, but in the end everybody decided it wasn’t worth all that.

  Seven.

  The final man to fall by the wayside was Shaun Brandt, who fervently believed his status as a football player would be enough for the school to overlook his 1.2 GPA for the final grading period of the year. It was a belief that had been cultivated through a lifetime of watching bad movies and believing stereotypes, a belief that ultimately proved wrong.

  Six.

  Six senior football players, the smallest class the school had fielded in over four decades, since back when teams still played eight man football. Six young men to represent the hopes and goals of Huntsville. Six individuals to serve as the personification of a town’s pride.

  The Dirty Half Dozen.

  Chapter One

  The wooden stairs sagged just slightly under the weight of Clay Hendricks’ feet as he trudged up the visitor bleachers. A dull throbbing poked at the bottom of his right foot with each step and the cold night air nipped at the open cuts on his hands. He ignored all of it as he trudged on, a scowl cemented across his face.

  In his periphery he could see the other five seniors were already there, strewn haphazardly across the top few rows of bleachers.

  “Did you kiss her once for me?” Jason Golden asked by way of introduction.

  Clay snorted and said, “Sure did Goldie. Your mom said thanks and to tell you not to be home too late tonight.”

  A few chuckles went up as Goldie countered, “Well if you were with my mom, guess that meant Chelsie needed someone to keep her warm, huh?”

  Clay threw a glance at Goldie. “Wasn’t with Chelsie smartass. Wanted to talk to Pop before he took off for the fields.”

  “Taking beans off?” Rich Little asked.

  “Yup.”

  Clay reached the top row of the bleachers and sat down, propping his feet on the row in front of him and leaning back against the metal rail that encircled the structure. He pulled a bottle of Gatorade and a hot dog wrapped in foil from the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and set them on the seat beside him. He raised his head towards the darkened sky and drew in a deep breath through his nose, the brisk air filling his lungs. He held it a full moment before pushing it out, his chest falling with the exertion.

  Lowering his gaze, Clay could see his five friends stretched out in front of him, each assuming their own unique position, dealing the events of the night in their own. One by one he took in each of them, assessing what he saw.

  Down two rows and off to his right was Jon Marks.

  Marksy stood an inch or two over six feet tall and weighed just north of two hundred pounds. He played tight end and defensive end for the Hornets and came from a corn family on the edge of the county.

  Down a few more rows and off further to the right was Matt Richmond. Matt was the newest of the group, meaning he had moved to Huntsville in the fourth grade. To say he was five and a half feet tall and weighed a hundred and a half pounds would be quite generous, though his reckless abandon and fiery will often made up for it.

  In the middle of the bleachers sat Rich and Lyle Little, twins that bore an exact semblance of one another everywhere but their faces. Together the Little’s made up the starting guards and defensive tackles for the hornets, two boys that compensated for a lack of God given ability with a willingness to put in long hours of work.

  Below them and just on the other side of the aisle from Clay was Jason Golden. He and Clay had known each other since birth and had been playing together since the first grade. Jason was a running back for the Hornets, Clay the quarterback. Together they comprised the line backing corps on defense.

  Never had two people that were so different been such good friends, but somehow the two just clicked. Always had.

  Clay unwrapped the hot dog beside him and took a bite as his gaze panned the field in front of him from one side to the other.

  The tradition had started nearly twenty years before, a gift from the school to the local farmers. Hunt County was so flat that the lights from the stadium could be seen by every farm in the area. The only valid excuse for missing a game in Huntsville was tending to the fields, and even then only once or twice a season. In the rare instance that such a thing did happen, the town would leave the lights on after games. If the Hornets won, the lights would blaze forth all night long, burning like a beacon into the night sky.

  If they lost, the lights went out one hour after the game.

  The field before them was lit up brightly. The blue and yellow block H
could be seen straddling mid-field in blue and yellow paint. The word Hornets was written in block letters across each end zone using the same color scheme.

  The stadium was void of life save the six players in the visiting bleachers and a single maintenance man. Clay watched as he slowly worked his way up the sidelines on a riding mower, pulling behind it a flat bed cart. Every ten yards he would stop and pick up a padded sideline marker or end zone pylon and toss it on the cart before moving on to the next one.

  “Old George better hurry,” Goldie said, his voice indifferent. “He’s only got twenty more minutes before it gets mighty dark in here.”

  Clay sniffed in response and bobbed his head, crumpling the tin foil wrapper between his fingers and stuffing it in the front of his sweatshirt. “How the hell did we blow that one tonight?”

  Marksy looked back and raised his palms upward, shaking his head in uncertainty. Richmond stared off into the distance, saying nothing.

  “Ran out of gas,” Lyle said. “Only thing I can figure.”

  Goldie snorted and said, “How? How the hell could we ever run out of gas? Stanson has run our asses off this year. I could run a marathon tomorrow and then go for a jog afterwards.”

  Lyle himself around on the bleacher below them and raised his feet onto the plank he sat on. He draped his wrists across the top of his knees and said, “I don’t mean, we literally ran out of gas. I mean, the numbers game eventually caught up with us.”

  Clay cracked open the Gatorade and took a long pull.

  Lyle was at least partially right. Huntsville was far and away the smallest school in the Hill Valley Conference, boasting a total population of just over five hundred students, less than half of them males.

  The conference had been brought together many years before, created solely on the basis of geographic proximity. Outward growth from Dayton and Cincinnati had started to ebb into their tiny corner of Ohio and the surrounding schools were growing by leaps and bounds. These days, it wasn’t uncommon to match up with an opponent that had almost a thousand students to draw from.

  That was the case tonight. Culver High rolled into Huntsville with a team of seventy-four players and barely escaped with a 34-33 victory. When the two teams lined up after the game to shake hands, the forty-two Hornets were dwarfed in comparison.

  “Six and three,” Goldie spat out into the night air. “You believe that? Six and three.”

  “We kick the shit out of Sentinel next week, we finish seven and three,” Rich said.

  “Win the conference,” Richmond added.

  “Tie for the conference, you mean,” Goldie said.

  “Does it matter?” Richmond said. “We still go out as champions.”

  “Yeah, it matters,” Goldie said. “Co-champions is like kissing your sister.”

  “True, but your sister’s hot,” Richmond said.

  Goldie rose to his feet and shouted, “My sister’s fourteen!”

  The other three started to laugh as Clay reached out a hand and motioned for Goldie to sit down. Goldie saw the motion and stopped himself before shouting anything further, his finger still raised as if he was about to drive home a point.

  “What do you think, Superstar?” Goldie asked as he lowered himself back to his seat, his hands retreating back into the pockets of his letterman jacket. “Co-champions the same as champions?”

  Clay finished the Gatorade and screwed the cap back on. He shoved it to into the front of his sweatshirt and shook his head from side to side. “I don’t really care either way.”

  In unison, everyone turned to face him, their expressions ranging from curious to concerned.

  “Why’s that?” Marksy asked.

  Clay kept his gaze aimed out at the field, his voice low and even. “League champions or not, seven and three doesn’t get us into the playoffs.”

  The words hung for a minute in the air as each person weighed them.

  “State title or nothing, huh?” Goldie asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Clay responded. “I just wasn’t expecting it all to be over so soon.”

  Marksy let out a low shrill whistle as a few heads bobbed up and down.

  “Hadn’t really thought about that,” Rich admitted.

  “I hadn’t either,” Clay said, “until Pop pointed it out a little bit ago.”

  “One last go round,” Goldie said, his voice taking on the same far-off tone as Clay’s.

  “Seven days and that’s it,” Clay responded as the overhead lights blinked out, leaving them alone in the darkened silence.

  Saturday

  Chapter Two

  The first gray streaks of light played across Clay’s wall as the alarm clock belched out a steady stream of beeps. Seven o’clock Saturday morning came even earlier this week thanks to the night he’d spent staring at the ceiling, thinking about the night before.

  All that he seemed to find were more questions he didn’t have the answer to.

  Rolling out of bed, Clay showered and dressed quickly before making his way down for breakfast. He found his mother sitting at the table reading the morning paper, a half eaten piece of toast on a plate in front of her.

  “Morning, Mama,” Clay said, going straight to the refrigerator.

  “Morning,” she replied from behind him. “Can I get you anything?”

  He poured a glass of milk and grabbed a banana, sitting down across from her. The smell of coffee hung heavy in the air, though the pot was empty on the counter.

  “Pop’s already back out there I take it?”

  Beth Anne Hendricks sat the paper down on the table in front of her and sighed. “Yeah, went out about a half hour ago.”

  “What time did he get back last night? I was up pretty late and never heard him come in.”

  She leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table, rubbing her eyes with the pads of her fingers.

  “It was well past two when he finally made it in. It’s supposed to rain this week, says he wants to get the beans off before it does. You know how bad that back field floods.”

  Clay knew the last two sentences were aimed to make him feel better. He had told his father a hundred times to skip the game and bring the crop in, but his father wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, he’d go all night to make up for the time lost.

  “How you feeling this morning?” his mom asked, feigning innocence.

  The corner of Clay’s mouth played up a bit as he peeled the banana and began to eat it.

  This was how it was, how it had been, every Saturday for seven years. It started when his older brother Colt made varsity as a freshman in 2004 and had continued every Saturday morning since.

  “I’m fine, Mama.”

  “You sure? Nothing broken? Sprained? Badly bruised?”

  “There are always bruises. I wouldn’t be a very good player if I didn’t at least get some bruises.”

  His mom twisted her mouth in a look of disapproval and pushed onward. “How about your head? Ears ringing? Vision blurry?”

  Clay chuckled and shook his head. “No more than usual, Mama.”

  Beth Anne drew in a sharp breath that rocked her body back a few inches. “That’s not funny Clayton. You know what they’ve been saying about concussions and brain injury lately.”

  Clay took another bite of banana and studied his mother. She was a mixture of kind-hearted and hard pan that was tough to describe and even harder to find. Gentle as could be with the boys and around the home, but every inch of her a farmer’s wife.

  Her mid-forties were fast approaching, though her body didn’t show it. Her forearms and hands were smooth and bronze from working in the sun and her frame was lithe and graceful. Frown lines were just starting to etch their way around her mouth and eyes.

  Clay didn’t pretend to think they were there from worrying about him on Friday nights.

  “What’d Pop have to say about the game?”

  “Said it was a hell of a way to get knocked out of the playoffs, playing a team three division
s bigger than us to a one point game like that.”

  Clay bobbed his head in agreement, but offered nothing.

  “So seriously, your head? It’s alright this morning?”

  Another laugh escaped Clay’s lips as he said, “Colt’s game on today?”

  Colt was a redshirt-sophomore tight end for the Indiana Hoosiers. Despite being only four hours from the IU campus, the Hendricks were rarely able to watch him on television. Instead, the entirety of Ohio was blocked out for Ohio State games.

  “I don’t think so. They’re playing over at Northwestern today, somewhere outside of Chicago.”

  “Evanston.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. It’s not supposed to be a very big game, I doubt they show it.”

  Clay finished the milk and put his glass in the sink, before tossing his banana peel into the garbage.

  “One last time honey, you’re feeling fine this morning?”

  Clay laughed out loud again before leaning down to kiss his mother on top of her head. “You’re relentless, Mama. And yes, I’m fine. I’ll see you after film session.”

  “Bye!” his mom called as he walked out across the front porch toward his old truck, a large smile played across his face.

  Chapter Three

  Depending on what happened the night before, Saturday morning film session could run the gamut from joyful to miserable. Every week the benches from the locker room were arranged in rows and a large screen dropped from the back wall. In front of it, a projector sent the game from the previous night onto the wall in complete ten foot clarity.

  Nowhere to hide, no excuses to be made. If a player messed up, it was on the film.

  The Huntsville coaches liked to claim the sessions were to be used as a teaching tool, though the truth was it served two functions, neither of which was teaching.

  First, it allowed a player to revel in a great play in front of his friends. Lyle got a round of wolf-whistles the time he put a Trotwood defensive end on his back. Matt earned a room wide call of exultation for a diving catch against Branton. Clay received an ovation for the time he hit a Weatherford ball carrier so hard it knocked his helmet off.