Payback Time Read Free

three, Horst called the slant pass again. "Don't drop it this time," he barked. "We need this first down."
    On the snap, I took two steps forward and made my cut. I tried to concentrate on the ball, but my eyes searched instead for the linebacker who'd laid me out before. Horst's pass hit me in the chest, right between the numbers, and bounced away. A millisecond later, the same guy unloaded on me again.
    For the second time I climbed off the deck and wobbled to the sideline. Five minutes ... ten minutes ... fifteen minutes. I sat on the bench, head woozy and legs like rubber. When the scrimmage was just about over, Shoeman came back to me. "Next punt, I want you out there on the coverage team."
    I watched the game, praying there wouldn't be another punt, but there was. Shoeman nodded to me and clapped his hands. "You've been hit hard twice. Now
you
hit someone." I pulled on my helmet and lined up as a wide-out. The punter booted the ball, and I raced downfield, praying somebody else would tackle the returner, and quickly.
    At first the play was moving away from me, but the punt returner suddenly reversed field, broke into the clear, and now was barreling right at me. I was the last guy with a shot to tackle him. When he was right in front of me, I lurched to the side as if he were a bull and I were a matador, and he roared by me. I spun around and watched him cross the goal line. When I turned back, Horst was glaring at me.
    Shoeman blew his whistle. "Same time tomorrow."
    I was dragging myself off the field when Shoeman called me back. He looked down at me as if I were a stinkbug. "A football player has to be able to take a hit. If you can't, you need to quit this game and find another."
    I didn't find another game, but I did quit, and Horst stopped knocking on my door.
    That summer, Lenny Westwood's family moved into the brick house on the corner. Westwood is a tall, skinny black kid with a quick first step and good hands, exactly the friend Horst wanted. In the fall Horst's mom had her twin girls, and by December they'd moved into their huge house near Sunset Hill Park.

7
    A T THE NEXT NEWSPAPER MEETING, Alyssa did a double take when she saw me at the big table in the center of the room, and then she came over. "I thought you were quitting," she said quietly.
    "I never said that."
    "I thought you did."
    "Well, I didn't."
    "I'm glad, because you can add a lot to the newspaper."
    "Thank you, Alyssa," I said. "That's nice of you to say."
    "It's true, Mitch. I mean Dan."
    "Call me Mitch."
    Her long brown hair had fallen into her face, so she pushed it behind her ear. "This'll work, Mitch. And who knows? You might uncover a big sports story that will shake all of Seattle."
    "Sure," I said. "And maybe I'll star in a Hollywood movie."
    Her temper flashed. "Well, you don't know for sure, do you? It could happen."
    "What? Me starring in a movie?"
    "Very funny." She rose, but before she walked away, she fixed me with a steely stare. "Mitch, if you're not going to do the job right, tell me and I'll get somebody else."
    "Don't worry. I'll do my job."
    She stayed on me. "That means you'll have a football preview ready to go for September's issue. And you'll cover girls' volleyball, too."
    She was being serious, so I owed her a serious answer. "I won't have time for any minor sports. But I will do the major sports, both girls and boys, all year long, and that's a promise."
    She nodded. "I'm going to surprise you, Mitch. Last year there were four newspapers. I'm going to put one out every month, or close to it. And every single one of them is going to be better than anything we did last year. That's a promise, too."
    She walked to the front of the room and called everyone to attention. As she ran the meeting, I thought about big sports stories that reporters had broken. There'd been articles on steroids, and there'd been a book on Bobby Knight and how crazy he was as a coach. The more I thought, the more I came up with. Baseball,