Landon marched to the line of scrimmage.
As he lined up in his spot at right tackle, Landon looked at the defender across from him. Gunner Miller was no Brett Bell, but he was the team’s starting left defensive end and the starting right tackle on offense and a hitter for sure. Gunner did not look happy about Landon taking his spot. Landon turned to look behind him. Jonathan Wagner stood next to Coach Bell with his arms folded across his chest and his biceps bulging like water balloons. He wore the face of a lion on a high rock, separated from other life forms, but he offered Landon a thumbs-up.
Landon turned back to the line and realized Skip had already begun his cadence. Landon got down into his stance a second behind the other linemen. The defense was ready too, with Gunner hunkered down and trembling with rage right in front of Landon. He could barely hear Skip’s voice, and in that instant he was struck by the thought that Skip was being quieter on purpose, because Landon couldn’t hear as well as the others by a long shot. Landon pushed the thought away. He checked himself quickly to make sure his stance was correct, looking down through his face mask at his feet.
Just as he glanced up, action exploded all around him and Gunner fired out, cracking Landon’s pads. Landon winced, but he took his power step. His hands blasted up into Gunner’s chest and Landon stayed low like he’d been told. They were neutral for a moment, and then Landon began to chug his feet, up and down, up and down, plowing forward, and almost in slow motion Gunner began to go backward. Landon kept chugging. Layne Guerrero flashed past in a blur with the football tucked under his arm.
Landon kept blocking, driving Gunner down the field. Gunner tried to separate, but Landon had his hands clamped up under the breastplate edges of his shoulder pads. Gunner turned and squirmed and desperately began swatting Landon’s helmet. Landon heard the distant sound of what might have been the whistle, but he wasn’t sure, so he kept doing what Jonathan had told him to do, and he did feel a little mad at Gunner for swatting him in the earhole.
Finally, Landon saw that he was alone with Gunner in the middle of the field. No one was around, and he figured it was time to stop because the whistle was really shrieking now.
Landon turned to see Coach Furster’s boiling face, teeth clamped tight on the whistle, marching straight for him.
The coach whipped Landon around by the shoulder pad and gave him a shove. “Are you . . . just . . . stupid?”
Landon saw that everyone had stopped to stare. He shook his head. “No.”
“Well, you just got us a fifteen-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness, did you know that?”
“No.” Landon felt his insides quiver, but he also felt . . . mad.
There was a flash of movement as Jonathan Wagner dashed up and put a friendly hand on Coach Furster’s shoulder. “My bad, Coach. This is on me totally.” Jonathan laughed. “I told him to keep driving his man until he heard the whistle. Landon asked me what to do if he didn’t hear it, and I told him I’d rather see him get a penalty than not finish his block. It’s a lineman’s code of conduct type of thing. My bad. I’m sorry.”
Coach Furster’s face softened, but not entirely.
“Did you see that block my man made, though?” Jonathan’s eyebrows jumped. “Wow, my grandmother could’ve run through that hole.”
“Yes, it was a . . .” Coach Furster seemed to be choking on a fish bone. “It was a good one. A good block. True, but we can’t have a fifteen-yard penalty on every play. You can’t have that.”
Landon knew what was happening. It had happened to him all his life. Just when someone gave him a chance, just when things looked like they were going his way, someone like Coach Furster stepped on him like a bug.
The only difference here was that Landon’s savior was a six-foot-six, three-hundred-and thirty-pound All-Pro lineman for the New York Giants.
If the cruel cycle of Landon’s life was ever going to be broken, it was now.