THERE IS A gigantic red bow around my new loader when the two men from Bobcat deliver it, one having driven it practically to our front door and the other having followed in a Ford Ranger Raptor that makes me second-guess myself for putting the Bobcat at the top of my wish list with Laurance Most.
There is a note taped to the side of the loader:
Dear 109:
I still give 110 percent.
Love you the most,
L. Most
Ten minutes after they’re gone, there is a knock at the front door and Gus Blasingame is standing there, wearing a black-and-gold sweater, holding a football in his left hand.
Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“Looking for a quarterback,” he says as we shake hands.
“He doesn’t live here anymore,” I say.
“Prove it.” He tosses me the ball and says, “Let’s take a walk.”
Gus Blasingame had been the hot assistant coach in the National Football League when the previous coach of the Steelers had retired, after what felt like the worst season in about a thousand years to Steelers fans.
I remember watching Gus’s introductory press conference on the NFL Network and hearing him say, “As bad as things were last season, I can promise Steeler Nation that we’re just a quarterback away.”
Then he’d smiled into the cameras and said, “And I do believe we all know who that quarterback is.”
Then he’d paused, just briefly, smiling even more broadly, and said, “And when we get him here, I just might petition the league office to let him wear three numbers on his back, instead of just one or two: One. Oh. Nine.”
He’s only ten years older than me, if that, and had been a quarterback in college himself. Now he’s one of those boy wonder head coaches that seem to be taking over the NFL. Except he’s the boy wonder without the quarterback the Steelers had taken with the first pick in the draft back in April.
We walk toward the fields and talk, small talk mostly, moving past rows of crop all the way out to the open field at the very end of the property.
“Shouldn’t you be at training camp?” I ask.
“One of those new rules,” he says. “Got to give the guys one day off every week.”
“So you decide to fly down here on your own day off?”
“Thought about calling,” he said. “But wanted to surprise you. And to see for myself.”
“See what? How I did helping plant this year’s soybean crop?”
“If you’re in the same shape I was told you are,” he says.
I can’t help smiling. “You’re telling me you believe my agent?” I ask. “Coach, you know they lie on occasion, right?”
“Well, not in this case,” he says. “You look like you’re in better shape than when we worked you out on your pro day over in Chapel Hill.”
Pro days are individual workouts for teams thinking about drafting you, even though by the time Gus Blasingame and his general manager and owner showed up on campus, people in outer space knew the Steelers were drafting Silas Tucker number one.
I lightly pat my shoulder now.
The right one.
Or the wrong one, in my case.
“Tip-top shape everywhere except here,” I say.
