The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [49]
"Let's get to business," Moxie snapped out. "Our fancy sub on a fly pattern." Purcell's Adam's apple bobbed for everyone to see, but he looked determined as he took his stance at right end.
On this pass play to the other side of the field Ben was to knock the defensive end opposite him off balance, which he thriftily did, then Carl Friessen rotated onto the man, springing Ben loose into the secondary to block as needed when the catch was made. From the corner of his eye he saw Purcell already was twenty yards downfield. The kid did travel like a flash.
Moxie's pass was one of his patented flings, not that much on it but it somehow sailed and sailed to give the receiver time to get under it. Almost. Purcell not only got there but had to pull up a bit and, off balance from broken momentum, he juggled the catch, the ball bouncing on and off his fingertips, those phantom footsteps distracting him just enough. Racing toward him from the opposite direction Moran, an ambitious scrub, snatched the ball before it could settle into Purcell's hands and lit out up the sideline for the end zone seventy yards distant, the entire TSU varsity strung out behind him like barnyard puppies trying to catch up with a coyote.
If Bruno whistled the play dead, no one heard it. But before everyone had even stopped running, the coach had stormed the middle of the field, his jowly head swinging back and forth as if trying to clear away what he had just witnessed.
Unexpectedly, when he spoke there was clemency for some. "Second-string, head for the showers, you at least have earned it." Then, though, he turned ominously to the varsity.
"The passing game, people, only works if the receiver hangs on to the ball." Bruno was enunciating now like a coroner giving a tutorial. "Can you grasp that, Purcell? Along with the football, perhaps? Purcell, I did not hear your answer."
"Yup, Coach, I—I'll do better."
"You will also do the Hill," Bruno decreed, "you heard me invoke the Golden Rule. In the meantime, get your dropsy butt over there to the bench and wait for me. The rest of you," the coach swept a hand as if to get them out of his sight, "head for the locker room and while you're there, see if by any chance you can talk each other into playing some actual football next week. Seven days, people!" he flung over his shoulder as he stalked toward the sideline.
The team, half of whom had flubbed chances to teeter Moran out of bounds, stood rooted in surprise that Purcell was the only victim among them, Ben more caught by it than any. Then and there, he gave up on waiting for the right moment, there did not seem to be such a thing around Bruno. Of course Loudon had been absolutely sopping all this up on the sideline. Just what we need, a slobbering columnist spending the next week ranting about the sputtering TSU football machine and its noble mechanic of a coach trying desperately to fix it. Sportswriter be damned, Bruno and his Letter Hill had to be dealt with somehow, the faces of the team were saying as much to Ben.
Four-fifths of them, rather. Already jogging to the locker room, Moxie Stamper looked piously murderous, while Purcell, the object of that, went slinking off the field in the opposite direction. The other eight teammates hung on around Ben. "Purcell got the shaft on that," Carl Friessen stated the case from the linemen. "Could have been any of us on any old thing."
"Moxie underthrew that pass," Vic said quietly.
"Maybe not by accident," Dex fitted on to that.
Jake and Animal were not saying anything, worse than if they had.
"All right, I know. I'll try my goddamnedest to make Bruno hear us on this," Ben promised. "But I want to do it out of range of Loudmouth."
"That'd be good." Sig Prokosch seldom spoke up, so when he did everyone pointed an ear. "Coach has got his hand up Lou-don's butt, he operates him like a puppet."
All around Ben the expressions moodily backed up that assessment. "I'll be a while, guys." Everyone else filed off the field, and he trudged over to speak with the