AS THEY RAN THROUGH THE TUNNEL AND out onto the field, Jericho could hear the noise out there reach a crescendo. He could hear cheers, predominantly from the Excelsior side, he estimated, and he could barely make out the sounds of the Douglass band, striving to be heard above the din. He thought briefly of Olivia puffing on her sousaphone, but soon the world became, as Crazy Jack had said, an uncontrollable splash of color and noise.
The first people he saw when they reached the field were the Douglass cheerleaders, who screamed and jumped as if they were possessed when the team was announced. Arielle blew him a kiss, but it barely registered.
The Douglass players trotted over to their bench and waited for the Excelsior team to emerge onto the field. The lights around the stadium were bright and glaring, like small suns, and their new uniforms looked iridescent under their glow. Beyond the delicious odor of hot dogs and popcorn, which wafted by from time to time, it seemed to Jericho that the air smelled like rain was coming.
The appearance of the home team onto the field was truly a spectacle. The Excelsior band, almost one hundred strong and dressed in blue uniforms that seemed to shimmer under the lights, began to play. The drummers started first—pounding a beat until the rumble of the drums became a roar. Then the brass section took up the sound, the music boldly working the crowd into a frenzy. Finally the announcer spoke, with the excitement of a true fan: “Ladies and gentlemen! It is my great pleasure to introduce to you, the Eeeeeeex-ceeeeelllll-siiiiiiiii-oooooooorrr Wildcats!”
The crowd erupted with frenzied screams. Their band danced and played wildly. The team, in blue uniforms with gold trim, burst through a massive paper hoop held by their cheerleaders. Then a cannon exploded from the top of the stands. Jericho and the rest of the team jumped, then stared at one another.
“What the hell was that?” Roscoe asked.
As if the announcer had heard, he said then, “Ladies and gentlemen. For those of you who are not familiar with our traditions, every time Excelsior scores a touchdown, our Wildcat cannon will be set off in jubilation! Keep it ready, Willie!”
The crowd cheered again and the Excelsior players continued to file onto the field. It seemed as if they’d never stop coming. They filled up the players’ benches on the field, plus several other blue-and-gold-painted benches behind them.
“Who are all those guys, Coach? They can’t have that many boys on a team, can they?” Jericho asked.
“They dress their ninth-grade team, and, I suspect, their junior high boys as well. Those kids don’t play—they just sit there in all that blue and gold, trying to impress us with volume. It’s simply more intimidation. Ignore it.”
But their sheer numbers were hard to ignore. Jericho knew that Todd and Rory were out there somewhere, cheering and stomping like crazy, and his dad and Geneva, too. He hoped that Kofi and Dana and November were out there as well, but it was amazing how focused he had become. After a while, the band, the crowd, the cheers—everything began to fade as game time approached.
“Captains to the middle for the coin toss,” the coach commanded. He swatted Luis on the butt as he ran out.
“We got the ball, Coach,” Luis cried out after the flip of the coin gave them the advantage.
“Okay, here we go. Receiving team on the field,” ordered the coach. “Roscoe, when you get out there, back up. This boy can really kick. Don’t do anything fancy—just catch the ball. Got it?”
Roscoe nodded and hurried to the backfield, his face tense with expectation. Jericho and the others trotted onto the grass and got into position, facing their Excelsior opponents, waiting for the kickoff.
There was a brief flurry of activity from the other side, and suddenly the ball soared in a high arc, a swirling disk heading directly toward Roscoe. As it spiraled through the air, Excelsior thundered on the ground, heading directly for the Douglass team and that ball.
“I got it! Fair catch!” Roscoe yelled, as he signaled that he had the ball. Jericho knew Roscoe was somewhere behind the twenty-yard line, and the ball was now out of play.
But suddenly, someone from the other team cried, “Fumble! He fumbled the ball!” The football had slipped from Roscoe’s grasp, and it was back in play.
That Roscoe! Jericho thought as he ran toward the ball. Always acting silly, and now he’s dropped the ball on the very first play of the game. Coach is gonna kill him!
Everyone converged in that direction, trying to get their hands on the free ball. Whoever picked it up would have possession. Coach Barnes was yelling at Roscoe, “Pick up the ball, Roscoe! Pick up the ball and run with it! Run, boy, run!”
Out of the corner of his eye, almost as if in slow motion, Jericho saw Roscoe scoop up the ball, tuck it in the crook of his elbow, and take off with it. Roscoe glanced around and saw that the field was thick with Excelsior boys to his right, so he pivoted and headed toward the left side of the field, where, incredibly, no Excelsior players waited.
He streaked down the left side line, no one between him and the far goal line except for one Excelsior lineman wearing the number 88. Jericho saw what was happening and leaped into action. He sprinted across the field as fast as he could to cut off the other guy’s angle of pursuit. Breathing heavily, but running as if he were made of sound instead of substance, Jericho flanked and shielded Roscoe from the lineman who was desperately trying to stop him.
The crowd, at first stunned into silence by Roscoe’s unbelievable run, began to cheer for him. “Go! Go! Go!” Jericho kept up with him the entire length of the field.
When Roscoe reached the end zone and scored the touchdown, the small crowd from Douglass went wild. No cannon exploded for them, but they didn’t need it. “Roscoe! Jericho! Roscoe! Jericho!” Finally even some of the Excelsior fans joined in the cheers.
The announcer reported, in a voice thick with disbelief and disappointment, “And the first touchdown of the game is scored by Cincinnati’s Frederick Douglass High School!”
In vibrant colors the scoreboard displayed what most of the crowd thought would be impossible: Excelsior: 0. Visitors: 6.
Jericho and Roscoe, covered in sweat and trying to catch their breath, jogged back to the sidelines, where the rest of the team raced toward them, slapping them on their helmets and cheering.
“I didn’t know you could run that fast, Jericho!” Luis exclaimed. “You kept up with Roscoe step for step, and he’s a little squirrel!”
“You’re the man, Roscoe!” said Coach Barnes. “An eighty-five-yard touchdown run! I knew you could do it.”
“I think I’m starting to believe in your magic, Coach,” Roscoe replied with a grin.
The coach turned to Jericho, his face a huge grin. “Way to go, man! Roscoe’s personal escort the whole run. Dynamite!”
“We bad! We bad!” Roscoe said, jumping up on the bench.
The coach brought him back to reality. “No time to kiss yourself, Roscoe. Extra point team—listen up. They think we’re going to kick for the one point, but let’s go for the two-point conversion instead.”
“You mean we’re gonna run it?” Jericho said in disbelief.
“Why not? They won’t expect it because they think we’re weak. But we’ve got power, men. Power and speed. Let’s do it—man for man. Our best against their best.”
Jericho, Roscoe, and the others ran back out onto the field. The Excelsior players looked angry. They lined up in tight formation. Number 88, who probably outweighed Jericho by fifty pounds, placed himself directly in front of him. His face was a snarl.
The ball was snapped, and the quarterback grabbed it, faked a move to his left, then deftly handed off the ball to Roscoe. Jericho, lunging straight ahead, put the force of his whole body into the meatball who was number 88 and bulldozed him straight back. Roscoe darted through the opening and into the end zone, scoring the two extra points.
The crowd went wild.
“Impossible!”
“Incredible!”
“Unbelievable!”
The Douglass cheerleaders screamed and screamed. Jericho heard his name and Roscoe’s coming from their area, where the small Douglass crowd was in a frenzy. He thought he might have heard Arielle screaming his name, but he couldn’t be sure—and surely had no time to think about it as his team exulted for the moment in their success.
But Coach Barnes wouldn’t let them gloat, because every play required focus and concentration, and the game continued relentlessly.
After a while it all became a blur to Jericho. The grass, which grew muddier as the game progressed. The white lines on the field—indicators of first downs and progress—which gradually smeared. The distant sound of the bands and roar of the crowd in the bleachers. The distinct smell of impending rain, then the cool relief of heavy raindrops on sweaty bodies. Tackles. Hits. Runs. Blocks. But no more scores. Jericho could barely believe it when he glanced up at the scoreboard—still, amazingly, reading Excelsior: 0, Visitors: 8. It was almost halftime, and the supposedly magnificent Excelsior team had been unable to score against Douglass. Their cannon had remained silent.
The rain, which had begun like a pleasant shower, quickly turned into a storm. No thunder or lightning, but it was as if the heavens had decided to open the clouds and simply drown the football field with a flood of water. Jericho was dimly aware of umbrellas and blankets being raised in the stands as fans huddled to stay dry, but no one seemed to want to leave as this incredible game rushed to halftime.
On the field, both sides, dripping with sweat as well as rain, moved into position for the very last play. Three seconds remained on the clock. The grass, muddy and slippery, squished under Jericho’s feet as he took his place on the line.
Excelsior was in scoring position, and Jericho could tell from the looks he got as they lined up that they wanted this bad. How dare this lowly little poor school from nowhere dare to challenge the mighty ones? he imagined them thinking. Number 88, directly in front of Jericho once more, mouthed a curse at him. Jericho narrowed his eyes and stared him down.
The ball was snapped, their quarterback caught it, but it was wet and slick with mud. He dropped the ball. The entire Excelsior cheering section—almost twenty thousand of them—gasped. The clock ran out, the buzzer sounded, and the first half was complete.