Inexcusable Read Free

restaurant and I would eat like a king and listen to the best people I knew telling me I was very good.
    That was my dream. That was as far as my dream went, and I would have stacked my dream up against anyone’s.
    Which is why I shouldn’t have been on the field that day. I should have been working on my field goals, because guys were starting to get their offer letters from schools and I wasn’t. I had had some interest from schools, but you would have to call it tepid if you called it anything.
    Understand. I should not have been on that field. They should not have had me on that field. I had to kick if I was going to get anywhere.
    But first, there was business. It was late in the season,in a game that didn’t matter to the state championships or the league standings or even to any of the parents of the players beyond the twelve or so in the stands, but for some reason, the quarterback on the other team started going mental. One of those parents had to be his, and he must have been aware that one or more of the others was a scout with a desperate need for a quarterback and an offer letter in his fist, and that quarterback must have been opening his mail every morning just like I was, to the same screaming lack of interest from the college football fraternity with time whipping by at whiplash speed.
    Because he started to throw. The sonofabitch started to throw. And throw and throw and throw.
    I even had to stop kicking to watch. He was immense. He was a monster. I was thinking, jeez, if you had just thrown like this the last three years you could be sitting at home right now comparing illegal incentives from Nebraska and LSU instead of busting your hump trying to get somebody’s attention now.
    But he sure was kicking snot out of us. All our defensive players—from our tubbo linemen to our confused concrete linebackers to our backs who circled and flailed their arms looking like they were flagging down help for one car wreck after another—were absolutely ragged. They had their tongues dragging on the ground as they lamely pursued the quarterback, then when they missed him, missed the ball, then when they missed that, missedthe receivers. Replacement defenders were shoved onto the field after every play.
    Which is how I came to be there, when I shouldn’t have been. When fate and the coach and the devil shoved me in there.
    I did what I was told. I did what I was taught. I did what I did, what I always did, what I still always do. I followed things to the letter of the law. And I followed things to the spirit of the law.
    It is a game played to a particularly rough spirit. It’s a fact. Some would call it violent. Functioning within that specific world is not the same thing as functioning within the regular one. Circumstances change things.
    They were getting away with a lot of over-the-middle stuff. Anybody could see that. It’s elemental. You cannot just let a team keep throwing the ball right over the middle, behind your linebackers and in front of your corners and safeties, and not make them pay for that. Everybody understands this, and if they don’t, then they need to try.
    They teach you that from very early on. I learn my lessons. I comprehend the game. I play as I am taught.
    Stick ’em.
    I saw it unfolding again, the same way I saw it unfolding from the sidelines, play after play, when the guys on the field could probably guess what was happening but were just too whipped to do anything about it.The quarterback took the snap, took three quick long strides back into his pocket, and let sail with a motion too quick practically to even see, more like a baseball catcher throwing out a runner.
    The receiver, my guy, my responsibility, was just slanting off his pattern, angling across toward the middle of the field.
    You could see it from a mile. There was no decision to be made, really. There was not more than one possible thing for me to do. There was in fact exactly