“Bill Parcells used to say that,” I say. “About the ball being blown up or stuffed.”
“He said a lot of smart things,” Blasingame says. “But the bottom line with the rest of them is that you’ve only been playing defensefor a few weeks, and not even in pads.” He sighs. “My owner says that if you’d shown up showing you could throw a football even close to the way you could before the accident, we’d be having a different conversation.”
Blasingame gets up now and comes around his desk and shakes my hand.
“I feel as badly about this as you do.”
“No,” I say. “You don’t.”
“Maybe next year,” Gus Blasingame says.
“This was next year,” I say.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
THE LONG RIDE home to Cross Rivers, mostly quiet except for the music playing on the radio, seems to take twice as long as the ride up had. At least.
I drive the whole way. Vince keeps saying what a big mistake they’d made, how wrong they are to be cutting me loose this way, that any fool could see that I’d looked like a natural on that field, as if I was the one who’d been rushing the passer my whole life.
How sorry they were going to be, making a mistake this big.
Finally, about halfway through West Virginia, I say, “The only mistake right now, as I see it, is if we keep talking about this. Because all the talk in the world isn’t going to change the final score here.” I turn my head slightly. “It’s like we always said when we were kids: scoreboard.”
“Okay,” he says. “But can I say one more thing?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m gonna say it anyway,” Vince says. “I can’t tell you how proud I was of you yesterday, dawg, the way you posted up. Because that’s what you were out there on that field. A dog.”
With him, talking about football players, that was the highest possible praise there was.
I can’t help myself. I smile, maybe for the first time since I’d left Gus Blasingame’s office.
“Right now,” I say, “I just want to see my own dog.”
When we finally arrive at the house, having called EJ to give her a heads-up when we were about to pass into Cross Rivers, Bumper comes running up the road, running like nothing bad had ever happened to her, like she’s about to be one of the emotional support animals people bring on airplanes with them.
We stop the truck and I open my door and she jumps into my lap. When we pull up to the house, I see my grandmother on the front porch, with Taylor standing right there next to her, both of them waving at me.
When I’m up the steps, I smile at Taylor and say, “I told you I had to know. And now I do.”
She smiles back at me, as if she’s trying to smile away the hurt she knows I’m feeling.
“I never liked those uniforms anyway,” she says.
EIGHTY-EIGHT
EJ HAS GONE ahead and invited Abby to join her and Taylor and Vince and me. She describes it as being one of her executive decisions.
On the porch, Taylor and I are drinking beer. EJ has built herself an industrial-sized old-fashioned.
“I know that Abby wants what’s best for you, too,” Tay says to me. “I figure that’s as good a basis for a friendship as any.”
“Better late than never,” I say.
“Listen, I’ve always liked the girl, I have,” she says. Then she grins and adds, “Just never loved her.”
After Abby arrives and we’re all seated in the dining room, EJ announces that we’re going to talk about everything except football tonight, house rules, violators forfeit dessert.
