The Underdogs (25 page)

Joe Tyler had brought their copy of the paper with him to practice, even though Will had begged him not to. When they were all together on the field, the way they were before the start of every practice, he just held up the paper and said, “I don't have to say anything tonight because Will said it all.”

Will knew he was blushing, could feel his face overheating, also knew there was nothing he could do about it except put on his helmet. That's when Hannah said, “Not only does he have the right stuff on the field, now we find out he's got the
w-r-i-t-e
stuff.”

“Tell me you didn't just say that,” Will said.

“I had to,” she said.

“Hey, everybody listen up,” Will's dad said now. “Before we get to work, I've really only got one announcement to make. I'd like everybody to show up at McElroy Square tomorrow night around seven o'clock. No pads or anything. Just your uniforms. Just one last chance for us to get together as a team before the big game. For a pizza party to end all pizza parties.”

Chris Aiello was with them on the field, on crutches, his ankle in a soft cast.

“Look what you started,” he said to Will.

Joe Tyler made a gesture that took in all of the Bulldogs, and then said to Will, “Yeah. Look what you started.” It wasn't a pizza party.

And only the Bulldogs had been told to show up at seven o'clock. Everybody else in town had gotten the word—on the newspaper's website and on the local radio station—to be in McElroy Square by six thirty.

When Will and his dad pulled up next to the Flyers factory, Will couldn't believe his eyes.

The Square was already full of people.

“You were in on this,” Will said to his dad.

“I was,” Joe Tyler said. “But we can still go for pizza afterward if you want.”

Will was still staring at the crowd.

“I didn't even know there
were
this many people left in Forbes,” Will said.

“Maybe,” his dad said, “there's still more life to this old town than we thought.”

When his dad got out of the car, he was facing the factory. Then looking up and pointing. And smiling.

Will saw what his dad saw then, the huge banner stretched across the top two floors, saw lights shining in the windows up there, if only for this one night.

The banner read:

“Now it really does seem like old times,” Joe Tyler said.

Across the street, at the head of the park near the old World War II monument, they saw where the temporary stage had been erected, a microphone at the front of it, a long row of chairs behind it.

As Will and his dad made their way into the park, they saw a man waving at them from the stage.

“Who's that?” Will said.

“
That,
pal, is Mr. Rob DeMartini of New Balance. He called and told me he was flying in this afternoon. Said he figured this was as good a time as any for the two of you to finally meet.”

Will was surprised at how young Mr. DeMartini was, not looking much older than Joe Tyler. Dark hair and a nice smile.

“At last we meet,” Mr. DeMartini said, shaking Will's hand.

“I can't believe you're here.”

“No, actually, I can't believe
you're
here,” Mr. DeMartini said.

“We didn't exactly make things easy on ourselves,” Will said.

“Your dad's been keeping me up to speed every week,” Mr. DeMartini said, “including what happened to Chris. No worries, that will just make beating Castle Rock even sweeter.”

Now Mr. DeMartini pulled Will aside, so it was just the two of them.

“But whatever happens tomorrow,” he said, “you kept your word, Will. You made all of us at New Balance proud.”

Before long the rest of the Bulldogs had taken their places on the stage. When they were all there, the crowd cheered. But Will wasn't looking out into the crowd, he was looking at his dad, who was staring up at the banner again. And somehow in that moment Will could see the kid his dad had been once, understood what nights like this must have meant to him.

Mr. DeMartini stepped to the microphone now, introduced himself, explained how New Balance had come to sponsor the Bulldogs, then said, “This team is everything we want our company to stand for. We tell our people every day that we want them to be the best. And these kids behind me expect to be the best tomorrow against Castle Rock.”

The crowd cheered again.

“Everybody in my business knows about the Forbes Flyers,” he said, “and what they meant to this town once. Maybe that's why it's nice to see those lights back on across the street, even if it's only for one night.”

Another cheer.

“And tomorrow afternoon,” he said, “the Bulldogs are going to make Forbes feel like a winner again, and do the thing that sports still does best: make a memory.”

Now the crowd made a sound that maybe only Will's dad, and Toby's dad, understood. Maybe because the people here sounded happy.

Then Will's dad was at the microphone, introducing the Bull-dogs one by one.

He saved Will until last.

“Finally,” he said, “I'd like to introduce my son, Will Tyler, with an old line of Yogi Berra's that kind of fits the occasion. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank my son for making this night necessary.”

He motioned Will up to the microphone then. Will shook his head. But then Hannah was pulling him out of his seat, saying, “You've so got this.”

Will bought himself some time by adjusting the microphone, but then he decided he didn't need a speech, he was going to keep it simple:

“Beat Castle Rock,” he said into the microphone.

He didn't yell, but the crowd did now, making a sound in McElroy Square that Will was sure they could hear on the other side of the river.

Will hoping in that moment that the Bulldogs hadn't heard anything yet.

W
hen Will came downstairs, already in uniform, his dad was holding the New Balance box like it was an early Christmas present.

“Mr. DeMartini dropped this off while you were in the shower,” Joe Tyler said.

Will took the box from him, opened it and smiled. New football shoes. Exactly like the ones he'd been wearing all season, except for one added feature:

The wings on the sides.

The New Balance version of the old Forbes Flyers.

“How . . . ?” Will said.

“Well,” his dad said, “he might have had a
little
help with the design.”

“It's like they're the last Forbes Flyers in existence,” Will said.

“No,” his dad said. “Actually, the last Forbes Flyer would be
you.
”

Will put on the shoes. They felt as if he'd been wearing them all season.

He stood up. Time for them to go.

They walked out the front door and got into the car for the short ride to what Will, even at twelve, already knew was the best place in the world: the big game.

 

It was as if the crowd from the Square had come straight from there to Shea Field. By the time they were ten minutes away from the kick, the bleachers were full on the home side of Shea for the first time this season. Not only were the bleachers full, the Forbes fans were stretched out four and five deep from both ends.

The Castle Rock fans had to use the smaller bleachers on the other side.

Hannah said, “Must have been that long speech of yours last night that got people to come out.”

“Funny.”

She shrugged. “As always.” Then she pointed to his new shoes. “Cool kicks,” she said.

“You noticed.”

“Hey,” she said, “of course I noticed shoes, I'm a girl.”

Kendrick had tried to start chirping early, while both teams were warming up. Edging as close to the Bulldogs as he possibly could without actually
joining
their warm-ups. When he was about ten yards away, he made a big show out of counting the players.

“Wait,” he said. “You must be one short. No matter how many times I count, I still only come up with ten little Indians.”

Will tried to ignore him. They all did. Except for Toby, the one who usually had the least to say. Will hadn't heard him say a word to an opposing player all season, the only exception being with Kendrick, when he'd run him off behind the bleachers.

But Toby made one more exception now, walking slowly toward where Kendrick was doing all his talking. Will moved up a little closer so he could hear.

“Try to learn something new every day,” Toby said, big grin on the big guy's face. “Now I already have today.”

Will watched Kendrick as Toby got close to him, saw the swagger falling off him like sweat.

“What's that you learned?”

“That you can count, Kendrick,” he said.

Kendrick's comeback was so weak Will wondered why he'd even bothered.

“Well,” he said, “we'll see who's talking at the end of the game.”

Toby said, “Oh, I expect you'll be. But what you'll be talking about is us holding up the trophy.”

Toby turned and jogged toward the sideline with the rest of the Bulldogs, over to where Will's dad and Toby's dad were waiting for them in front of their bench.

“The time for talking is over,” Joe Tyler said. “You deserve to be here today. I believe you were
meant
to be here today. The only thing left for you to do now is play a game that you're going to remember for the rest of your lives.”

He put his hand out. They put their hands on top of his.

“Don't make me proud today, or all those people in the stands,” Will's dad said. “Make yourselves proud.”

He looked at each face, one by one, finally stopping at Will's.

“I'd give my
good
knee to have one more game like this to play.”

He came into the season saying he wasn't a shouter. Didn't shout now. Kept his voice low.

“Bulldogs,” he said.

“Bulldogs,” they said back to him.

Joe Tyler was right. Time for talking was over. Time to play Castle Rock.

 

A couple of times during warm-ups Ben Clark had tried to get Will's attention, but Will had ignored him. They could go back to being friends when the game was over.

All season long, Joe Tyler had picked a different captain for every game. But today, all of the Bulldogs went out for the coin toss.

All ten of them.

“Safety in numbers?” Hannah said to Will.

“That only works,” Will said to her, “if you actually
have
the numbers.”

They won the toss, elected to receive. Kendrick looked like he wanted to say something, but the ref was standing right there.

So was Toby.

Will ran down to his position, waited for Ben Clark's kick.

It was a surprisingly short one, considering the leg Ben had. Will's dad would tell him later he caught it, in full stride, at the Bulldogs' thirty-yard line.

He took it straight up the middle, not worrying that he had one less blocker than usual, just looking for a seam. Saw one open to his right, Toby's side, got to it before it closed.

Cut to the right sideline.

And just like that, like it was too good to be true, Will was in the clear, all this green grass in front of him, running free, running one more time like he had Shea Field to himself.

He just looked over his shoulder one time, to see where the defense was, saw Kendrick angling across the field at full speed but knowing that as fast as Kendrick was, he had no chance.

None.

The only trash talk right now was inside Will's head.

He was still ten yards ahead of Kendrick when he crossed the goal line, handed the ball to the ref, waited for his teammates at this end of the field, high-fived them when they got to him, made sure not to look like he'd lost his mind over the first play of the game, even one like this.

The crowd on the Forbes side of the field, however, was going nuts. Will had never heard such thunder at Shea.

Hannah kicked the point. Just like that it was 7–0. Before the Bulldogs kicked off, Dick Keenan yelled for them to come over to where he was standing.

“Okay, boys and girls,” he said. “Now comes the hard part: trying to trick them into thinking we're the ones have
them
outnumbered.”

Somehow they kept the Bears scoreless in the first quarter. Toby sacked Ben three times and forced Kendrick to fumble. Mr. Keenan made sure the Bulldogs never gave Ben the same look on defense, never used the same blitz twice in the same series of downs. He kept calling out the coverages and formations to Toby, sometimes just using hand signals. Toby would nod and then tell his teammates what they were doing, totally in command, Toby and his dad connected on this day every bit as much as Will and Joe Tyler were.

The Bulldogs stretched their lead early in the second quarter. Toby, who had to be stronger than any quarterback Castle Rock had seen this season, got away from one of their blitzes, shrugging off their middle linebacker like he wasn't even there. He scrambled to his right and threw the ball as far as he could to Will, who'd gotten behind the Bears' free safety, Will running under the ball at the Bears' five-yard line before scoring, the ball having traveled fifty-five yards in the air.

Like Toby was born to throw a football this way. Same as he was born to be this kind of football player.

The Bears blocked Hannah's extra-point attempt, flooding one side of the line, so many guys smothering the ball Will wasn't even sure which one got it.