Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp

His reputation as an all-state sprinter didn't make an ounce of difference and neither did the fact that he'd scored him something like a sixty-yard touchdown in the game before this one. I aimed at just the right angle to cut him off and charted my route so perfect, all your math geniuses with every protractor and compass in the world couldn't have mapped it out better. Old eighty-eight had no way of guessing I'd done predicted every one of them moves before he even seen he was going to make them his own bad self. Nothing left but to figure out which way I'm gonna spike the ball and dance around the goalpost. He was thinking, I'm the hero now, buddy boy. Had him twenty-five yards of open pasture clean to the end zone, and I knew he was thinking surefire touchdown. After that, number eighty-eight tucked the ball under his arm, juked, and zigzagged into the open.

That was bound to earn him a good chunk of grief at practice on Monday. Our little old Vietnamese cornerback, Tommy Nguyen, grabbed at the receiver's jersey, but he couldn't get ahold of it firm and spilled off to the side. The scene whirled back up to full speed, and over by the sideline, the ball snapped right into the Wynette receiver's hands. Not one had the least idea who the real me was. But none of them folks knew what went on in my head. Big, redheaded dumb jock, that's all he seen, and he wasn't the only one probably neither. Moon, told me it was too bad they'd passed them child labor laws 'cause I'd do a lot more good hauling coal up out of a mine twelve hours a day than I done wasting desk space in his classroom. I had me this math teacher one time back in junior high, Mr. That was my talent, the one and only thing I knew how to do better than anyone else around.

Thing was, I'd focus so hard that I'd squinch everything down so it seemed like time froze just long enough for me to look and see what I'd have to do next. I didn't wave no magic wand or poof out a cloud of fairy dust or crank up some science-fiction machine with spinning gears and flashing lights on it. Not with me freezing time like I could.Ĭourse, time didn't really stop. But, sorry to say, it wasn't going to be enough.

I had to admit it was a thing of pure beauty, that pass, even if it was the enemy quarterback that thrown it. Made quite a picture, the stadium lights blazing overhead like fractured stars and the football froze slick and hard as a rocket against the night sky, our outside linebacker's fingers stretching just an inch too short to do a thing but let it fly over. Every single player on that football field locked up stiff as them wax figures they got over in the Pawtuska Wild West Wax Museum.

Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp