Under a blaze of Texas sun, Max rolled left, arm cocked for the pass, looking for his receiver. A teen named Calvin Blue.
When the kid broke through a pack of defenders and slanted across the meadow, Max spiraled the football toward him, hitting the young would-be tailback in the hands. Calvin tucked the ball away and raced for the orange pylons.
Touchdown. Calvin juked and jived in the makeshift end zone. “Can’t touch this. Can’t touch this.” He spiked the ball into the mowed grass, then strutted past his opponents, taunting, “Sorry to make y’all eat my dirt.”
“All right, Calvin, bring it back. Nice play. We’re all amazed.” Max had been around football his whole life. It was his passion next to Jesus, Jade, and the law, and he’d never seen a sixteen-year-old cut and run the ball like Calvin.
The boys gulped water from the cooler. Max reached for his shirt tossed on the ground. Today was a shirts and skins game. The last.
Taking a long drink from his own water bottle, Max dumped the rest over his sweaty head. The cool wetness ran down his hot face and into the collar of the T-shirt that swung loose about his waist. Between fasting before the Lord, ranch work, and afternoon football, Max’s lawyer physique had been whittled down and chiseled.
He whistled for them to huddle up. Calvin arrived first and propped his arm on Max’s shoulder, sweating and panting, his dark skin glistening.
“Good job today, everyone. I’m proud of you. Dale, nice crab block on Sam here.” Max jutted his elbow into big Sam’s ribs. He was what, fifteen, sixteen, and twice Dale’s size. “And Tucker? You created the hole for Calvin’s touchdown.” The shy sandy-blond boy kicked at a clump of grass. He was lean and built, with undisciplined athletic prowess because he lacked the confidence to develop his skill.
“And you.” Max turned to the cocky star player leaning on his shoulder, then bounced the ball against his head. “Remember, every great player needs a team.”
“Coach.” Calvin clapped his hand to his chest. “You think I don’t appreciate my homeboys?”
“Just keep it in mind.” Max took a few more minutes to encourage the rest of the players in the huddle. He’d practiced what he wanted to say next—his good-bye speech—but emotion gummed up his words. “This is the last day of camp because it’s my last day at the ranch.”
He exhaled, fighting the tears behind his eyes. Why was this moment so hard? Something had happened in his heart when he started working with these Colby, Texas, teens. They were good kids, but adrift, looking for a safe place to land.
“I’m going to miss y’all. Thanks for coming. You’ve . . . you’ve impacted me.” Max patted his hand over his heart.
Every afternoon for six weeks, a Randall County rec center bus drove the kids to the ranch. Forty minutes out, forty minutes back. Not one boy ever missed a day.
The bus driver said he’d never seen kids stay so committed to a program.
Maybe, Max decided, it was because he needed them as much as they needed him.
Axel Crowder, the man who ran the Outpost Rehab Ranch, suggested the camp one evening after he and Max had talked football, and since Max had hours in his day to fill, he agreed. Besides, it was football. Say no more.
He watched his team file onto the bus, a missing-them sensation traveling across his chest. When the last one got on, Calvin hopped off.
“Got something on your mind, Calvin?” Max started gathering the gear.
“So, no more ball, Coach?” Calvin said. “They’re letting you out of this nut farm?”
“It’s risky, but they have to cut me from the herd.” After three months and a lot of face-to-the-ground time, Max knew he had to face Jade and the dirge he’d left playing in her heart. “I miss my wife and my son.” He stuffed footballs into a duffel bag.
“You got a kid? No fooling.” Calvin picked up a ball and tossed it between his hands. The bus driver tooted the horn, but he waved it off.
“He’s almost two.” Max didn’t admit he’d only held his son once in his young life before March rolled around. Then all the buried lies surfaced when Rice McClure died.
“Think he’ll play football?”
“If he has any talent. If he wants to play.”
“I got talent for it.”
Max tossed the duffel into the bed of the Outpost pickup. “About as much as any kid I’ve ever seen.”
“Really? Who’ve you seen? Ain’t you a lawyer or something?”
“Yeah, I’m a lawyer, but I played in high school, a year in college. Used to coach youth league, sort of what we did here this summer.”
“I thought so, I thought so. Seemed you knew what you was doing.”
The bus beeped. “Calvin, the bus is leaving.” The driver inched forward.
Calvin gazed over his shoulder but didn’t flinch. “Our football here stinks. Can’t keep a coach. Five in six years.”
“Yeah, I know.” The Outpost was just on the edge of Colby, Texas, a panhandle city that once reveled in state football championships. But in the last decade, something fierce went wrong with Colby High football and no one knew how to fix it. “I hear the coaches quit or get fired.”
“Yep. The more we lose, Coach, the worse the coaches. Who wants a job with the Colby Warriors? It’ll kill a guy’s career.” Calvin squinted at Max. “My brother got recruited to Texas from here. Got his college paid for, but there ain’t no chance for me.”
“I’m sorry, Calvin. What about academics?”
He laughed, pressing his fist to his lips. “I can run. That’s what I do. Run and catch footballs. I got grades that’ll get me in, but nothing so high and mighty as a academic scholarship.” At sixteen, the muscled, quick Calvin stood eye to eye with Max, caught somewhere between boyhood and the man he was to become. “Scouts don’t even bother coming our way these days. Why should they? All the good players transfer to Amarillo or Canyon.”
“Why don’t you?” Max crossed his arms and leaned against the side of the truck. From his position he could see the rec center bus inching down the winding Outpost driveway.
“Don’t got no kin or ‘cousin’ in those districts whose address I can use.” Calvin air-quoted “cousin” and backed away. “Best go catch my bus.”
Calvin cut across the field, sprinting low, using his arms and legs to pump up speed. He caught the bus just as it turned onto the highway toward town. Max grinned, shaking his head. Incredible.
Then he gathered the pylons and flags, broke down the water table, and loaded up the truck. He’d come to love this place—the space, the miles of blue sky unfurling overhead, the fragrance of a storm rolling in off the prairie.
Fifteen men had started the program the first of April with Max. Men like him with wealth and privilege. Athletes, lawyers, CEOs, entertainment professionals, and one senator. A month later, ten remained. By the end of May, Max was one of six.
Climbing in behind the Dodge’s wheel, Max fired up the old beast, as Axel called it, and followed a rutted path to the Big House—a high and wide twostory ranch nestled between barns and bunkhouses.
He arrived at the Outpost pain-pill addicted, gritted up, ready to work, primed to face his weaknesses. He wanted to understand why he used and why he slept with another woman a week before marrying the love of his life.
He’d prepared for anything and everything Axel Crowder might throw at him. Except one. The love and mercy of Jesus.
Max gunned the gas, firing the truck across the pasture. Yeah, how did a man respond to mercy and grace when he knew in his deepest parts he deserved none of it?
Parking alongside the house, he unloaded the gear into the shed, a fresh gust of manure hitting his nose. He was going to miss that smell.
He locked the shed and started for the house, his heart fixed on a shower before dinner, when he spotted Axel riding the corral rails. The lanky ponytailed cowboy-counselor waved him over.
That’s how Axel did most of his counseling—sitting on the rail. Listening was his specialty, next to pulling scripture to combat a man’s sorrows.
Max hopped up next to him, hooking his heels on the middle rung, gazing toward the meadow where the cattle roamed.
“Last night,” Axel said.
“Last night.” Max looked east when a truck rumbled up the driveway, gravel crunching beneath the tires. A blue Suburban floating on a cloud of white dust. “But I’m ready.”
“Sure you are. Never seen a fellow work so hard. You got a lot of Texas sun on your Tennessee shoulders, Max. I’m proud. You cowboyed up. God’s got good things for you.” Axel jutted out his chin, watching the Suburban, waving when the driver and another man hopped out. “Go on inside,” Axel called to them. “I’ll be along. See what Cook’s set out.”
Speaking of Cook, and dinner, Max’s stomach rolled with a bass rumble.
“You’ll do all right if you lean into Him.”
“He can have it all.”
“How you think Jade’s doing in all of this?”
Max couldn’t calculate the hours he and Axel had sat on the rail talking about Jade, marriage, and the responsibilities of love.
“She’s been doing a lot of her own counseling and praying. She sounds good. Dubious. Don’t blame her but I think—” What? What did he think? That he’d go home tomorrow and be welcomed in her heart and in her bed?
No, the Outpost was prep. The real work would begin when he went home and started winning back his wife after knifing her with his finely honed selfishness.
“Carry on the way you have been. Ain’t nothing special about the ranch other than outside distractions. Prayer works here. Prayer works at home. Deal with your marriage and your mistakes like you done all spring. Humble, facedown, bathed in prayer.”
Axel was devoted to prayer, and Max was confident that’s why the ground shook beneath the man’s feet. Prayer, he said, fueled the Big Ls. The Lord, love, and life.
“I’m sure you’re looking forward to lawyering again.”
Max peeked at his mentor. He was fishing. “You want to ask me a question?”
Axel made a face, meshing his lips toward his lean nose. “Just checking in with you. I’m your counselor, you know. How are those back pains?”
“Not a one since that one night. Two months now. Pain-free, med-free.” When the wind blew east, Max stared toward the dimming horizon. He’d be winging toward that thin black line tomorrow. “I’m going to miss this place, the boys, and our talks, but I have a gorgeous, kind, patient wife at home and a son to raise. God help us glue all the broken pieces together.”
“He didn’t bring you this far without a plan, Max. He’ll not let you down. Just keep that ‘Yes’ in your heart.”
“Question is, yes to what?” Max said. “Taking over the family’s seventy-five-year-old firm? Benson Law is a great tradition. One of the best firms in the country. But, I don’t know, doesn’t feel like me anymore. It doesn’t feel as important.”
“The ranch has a way of fixing a man’s priorities.” Axel hopped off the rail, his boots rustling up a bit of dust. “Come on.” He started for the house. “I got a couple of fellas from town waiting to talk to you.”
“Talk to me?” Max hopped down, suspicious now of the blue Suburban. Who’d want to talk to him? He didn’t know anyone from town. He only went to Colby once a week to check e-mail and call Jade. “Do you want to tell me what this is all about, Ax?”
“Not particularly.” Axel shoved through the short, white gate. Dirt and pebbles crunched under his feet. He took the porch steps with a long, angular leap. “I’ll let the boys speak for themselves.”