Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (36 page)

“
I trust him.”

“
You trust him. What did you promise him?”

“
Nothing.” He snaps it back. “I’ve been looking at the articles he wrote over the years. They’re all nice, safe, and bland. Nothing controversial. He told me he interviewed a gay basketball player a while back. There’s nothing like that in anything he wrote. He says he won’t write the story.”

“
He’s unemployed now,” I point out. “Money talks.”

“
You weren’t there, stud.” Lee’s voice crackles over the line. “I guess we’ll see if I’m wrong in a week or so, right?”

“
Hell of a gamble.”

“
I thought he could help us. It was worth the risk.”

“
You decided it was worth the risk.”

“
Yeah, and I’m the one who gets burned if it wasn’t. Okay?”

“
How do
you
get burned? I’m the one the press is going to be asking about this fox I’m with, this fox who works for another team, who’s—”

“
I’ll get called too. And work. I could...”

I grumble. “You’d get some remarks here and there.”

“
I could be fired.”

“
For being gay?” I can’t believe that. But then he explains, and a lot of his stress over telling the guys at the party about his job makes more sense. “Shit. I’m sorry. Fox, you shoulda told me.”

“
Didn’t want to worry you. And then at the party there wasn’t really time.”

“
Still, I mean...”

“
I didn’t think you’d be telling people I work for the Dragons. You haven’t been talking about me at all.”

“
You could really be
fired?
”

He sighs. “That’s what Morty says.”

“
Are you okay? Shit, I’d be freaking out.”

“
You were in kind of the same situation. Except it worked out okay for you.” He laughs shortly. “If anyone in college had told me I’d be closeted at work, but my boyfriend would be out...”

“
I’ll make sure no-one on the team tells anyone.”

“
Maybe it’d be better not to make a big deal out of it.”

So then I tell him about the cheerleading outfit. Of course, he gets it right away, the rookie hazing part of it. He thinks it’s a great sign, and he wants to see pictures.

The next day, the guys all agree to keep Lee’s workplace to themselves. Charm, typically, says, “I already forgot where he works.” Nobody but Gerrard even asks why, and once I tell him that I’m asking people at Lee’s request, he understands pretty well.

That night, when I tell Lee that the guys are all gonna be cool, he perks up considerably. That gets me feeling pretty good, too, good enough that after we hang up I call home. Mom answers, but when she hears my voice, she just says monosyllabic answers.

The next night, she has more time. Things go well—she even asks about Lee’s paw—until I bring up that I want an apology from Dad, and she says he’s not ready to do that. I ask her if she thinks he’ll be ready by Thanksgiving, and she says she thinks it’ll be easier in person.

Which is just Dad’s way of putting off the confrontation. He knows if I come home for Thanksgiving without Lee, I’ve already kind of given in. The flash of anger that accompanies this realization gives me a vision of myself spending Thanksgiving with Lee, just the two of us, with turkey and all the trimmings.

It’s nice, until I picture my family eating Thanksgiving dinner without me. If I weren’t home, my brother wouldn’t understand why; my mother would put on her forced smile and look wistfully at my usual space from time to time; my father would bluster and pretend not to care. More than that, I’d miss it, the sitting around remembering past Thanksgivings, talking about relatives, catching up.

That second time, when I hang up the phone, it’s Friday night and I’m standing in my apartment. I talked to Ogleby earlier that day: more interviews, but no more endorsement deals. He says it’s just a matter of time, but I don’t know. The reporters I’ve been talking to keep asking more and more about how I react to homophobia, and I can’t help but link that back to my TV appearance. I try not to think about it too much, because it makes me feel a bit ill.

So I talk to Lee about anything but my family. I ask about his job; he’s going back to Freestone this weekend and then he’ll be out here Sunday night and Monday. Hopefully we’ll win and have the day off. Lee gives me a few pointers on Gateway, I tell him some of the things we’d covered in our practice, and ask him for any more advice.

He says, “You’ve got it covered, I think. But you know, the more you can practice with Gerrard, the better.”

“
Well, duh,” I say. “I could get that kind of advice from the newspaper.”

“
You mean the Internet.” He chuckles. “Gerrard’s used to running that unit, and you know the plays, but you need to figure out how he works. When he’s going to come forward, when he’s going to drop back. You can’t diagram for every occurrence, so you have to know how he plays. When you watch film, watch him.”

I feel a stab of guilt. I don’t want to say anything about Fisher, but I need to know that Lee doesn’t blame me for it. “Is this because I let Fisher down?”

“
That wasn’t your fault.” He sounds surprised. “Did someone say it was?”

“
Nah. But if I hadn’t left him alone—”

“
Trust me, nobody’s blaming you, not in the columns or in the locker room. The team paid your fine, didn’t they? And the league fined the boar fifty.”

“
But we’re supposed to look out for each other. If I’d been nearer, I coulda stopped the boar.”

“
Gena says Fisher’s rehabbing well. He’ll be back for the playoffs. At his age, he can use a few games off.” Lee’s calm. “He doesn’t blame you either.”

“
You should’ve seen the film. I look like a rookie.”

“
You’re only one year removed. You’ll get ’em next time you see ’em.”

I growl. “They better hope that isn’t the playoffs.”

He laughs. “Millenport? The only way you’ll meet them there is if they buy tickets.”

The thought of getting the boar back on a national stage is too appealing for me to let go. “Hey, one and five isn’t out of it.”

“
That sounds like something you heard at the Dragons.”

“
Are you allowed to bad-mouth your own team like that?”

“
I’m not on the clock now.”

I ask him about work, and as he tells me about Morty and his friend Alex and the old stag Paul, I realize that he did it again: he made me feel better. “I can’t wait for Sunday to get here. I miss you,” I say as we’re hanging up.

“
Miss you too, tiger,” he says. He doesn’t use the Lauren Bacollie voice.

No questions about my family. If he thinks I need a push to handle it, I’m sure he’d have given me one. I smile at my phone, set it down, and get to bed.

Game day dawns bright and cloudy. It’s going to be a temperate mid-fifties, which is good for us. If we were playing in Gateway, we’d be playing in single-digit temperatures with snow flurries. Their wolverine’s thick claws, a big advantage in slick, snowy conditions, aren’t so much of an advantage in our stadium, even if it rains. That doesn’t make him less dangerous; it just makes us more able to cope with him.

I feel comfortable with my knowledge of the plays; less so with my ability to mesh with Gerrard and Carson. I was feeling fine about that until Lee brought it up again. But he was right; it is something I need to understand better. I spent an extra two hours watching film on Saturday, and I found three plays in the Millenport game where I ended up in the same place as Gerrard because I didn’t see him deviate from the play.

I asked Steez, Saturday, to get me some film of really good linebacking units, and he clapped me on the shoulder. “Watch Gateway,” he said. “Next week we look at film. This week you will be good.” Those words stick in my head as I change, as the familiar pre-game rituals go on. I sit with Gerrard and Carson, waiting for our punch from Aston, and then we gather the rest of the defense and head out to the field.

The scene is much the same as the previous week. Many of the same signs are out: I spot “Dev’s Divas” again, this time seeing a coyote in a fancy scarf holding one end of the sign, a slender little tiger holding the other. I don’t know if the people with the “We’re Behind You #57” sign realize the double entendre they’ve created, but their sign makes me smile. I raise my fist to the cheers of people as we jog by them. Ty, the wiry fox rookie, jogs with me. “Gettin’ a good fan club going,” he says.

“
I guess.” He makes me think of Lee. My fox isn’t in the stands, but knowing he’s on his way here is enough to keep me bouncing through the pre-game intros. Then we’re out on the field and the Gateway Tornadoes and their star runner Bixon are coming after us.

Their O-line is different from Millenport’s. For one thing, it’s smaller and quicker, designed to push people out of the way rather than stop them cold. So they have a pair of Dall sheep on the line, blockers who’ll go low and use their horns to force our tackles to go a particular direction. Pike and Brick can handle them, I’ve no doubt, but then they have a pretty good fullback, an elk who uses his antlers to clear out running lanes. So they run the iso—isolation play—a lot, sending the elk to block me or Gerrard while Bixon lowers his head and sends his compact, muscled form through the lane.

For the elk and the wolverine, the instructions are the same. Grab him low, tackle the legs, or else wrap him up completely, Steez and Coach told us. Bixon, especially, will bull through or spin out of any half-assed tackle. And watch out for his claws.

They have a rookie QB, though. If we can stop Bixon enough to make them throw, we have a really good chance of winning this. So when I line up, I’m hopping from side to side, certain we’re going to see a run. Sure enough, they run the iso. I watch the play develop and shadow the slot receiver in case it’s a fake, but it wouldn’t be, not this early in the game. Gerrard tackles the elk and Carson knocks down Bixon.

Second down, they run it to my side. The Dall sheep force Pike and Brick apart, the elk pushes Gerrard again, and Bixon squirts through, coming right at me. The slot receiver tries to throw a block, but I slide away from him and dive for Bixon’s legs.

Sweet Lion Jesus, he’s fast. I barely catch one foot, but that puts enough of a hitch in his run that Vonni and Pace have time to come in and pull him down. First down.

We stop them twenty yards later, on a run that Pace and I help stuff. They pin us deep in our own territory. “Gonna be a long game,” Gerrard says grimly as we trot back to the sidelines. I just nod.

We don’t make much progress on our series. Before long, we’re back out there again, working hard on every play. I catch Bixon once, but miss him twice more, swiping at empty air and falling to the ground. I’m not the only one: Vonni whiffs twice, Carson twice, and even Gerrard once. The guy’s just fast. But I hate the feeling, the helplessness, the slow getting up and watching the play finish somewhere down the field from you. When we do catch him, it takes two of us to bring him down every time, except once, on a corner blitz, when Norton dashes around the line and takes him out at the knees a second after he gets the ball, before he can get any momentum.

Near halftime, we’re still scoreless. I find myself hoping he’ll run to the other side on this play, just so I don’t have to chase him or tackle him again. The moment I think that, the thought repulses me. What am I, a coward? What would Lee say if he knew I wanted to run away from a fight? What would my dad say? I clench my fists and brace myself. Lucky me: they snap the ball, hand it to Bixon, and here he comes around the line. I dodge the elk and sprint to meet him.

I see a white smile, a lowered shoulder. I realize at the last second that my angle is wrong, but I can’t change it. I’m low, trying to tackle him around the waist, but he’s lower. He drives his shoulder into my ribs and knocks me backwards, flat on my ass to the turf.

Something hurts when I get up, but I ignore it. The groan from the crowd means something bad happened. I look up at the screen for the replay and see myself getting flattened, see Pace swipe and miss, see Norton push Bixon out of bounds at the three. Easy score from here. Just a matter of time.

Getting up like that is worse than getting up after a whiff. I’m near the opposing sideline, so I get some jeers from the other players. “Nice dance moves,” and “Paper tiger,” and other, less creative ones.

Zillo comes out to meet me. “You’re out,” he says, pointing at Steez, who is gesturing for me to run to him on the sideline. I hurry up, so we don’t end up with twelve players on the field, but I don’t go to Steez. I slam down on the bench, growling at myself. Everyone else stays away from me. I keep seeing myself in the cheerleader outfit, a photo now posted in my locker. Is that how the team’s going to see me from now on?

They line up. Bixon gets stuffed on the first down. The clock keeps running.

It’s a tight game. That yardage I gave up could be the difference. Zillo isn’t as good as I am, but Corey’s going to be back in a couple weeks. If I don’t do...something, anything, I’m going to lose the starting job. I’m going to be a story Gerrard will tell his kids, about the gay football player who was pretty good for a couple games, that Ty will tell some gay wideout in about ten years like Fisher told me about Tony Calhoun.