I Kicked Him on Purpose
The ball caught Carl Bernstein clean, and he went down sideways with a heavy thud.
The theatrics. It had only struck his shoulder. Take him in the face or the solar plexus and they might have carried him off on a stretcher. I did hesitate, right to the last instant. This was the unveiling of the Guccio collaboration, and that alone was why I had managed, barely, to soften my hand.
"Aaaagh!"
He screamed as if he had suffered some outrageous foul. The match stopped at once, and the referee came over.
"You all right?"
"Agh! He did it on purpose... he kicked me on purpose. I'm certain!"
And why not? You take every foul you can get. Had he really thought I would just stand there and accept it, like a gentleman? I scoffed. A spoiled little scene like that belonged in his own house. With me, life was a real fight. Isn't that so?
I was still looking down at him when the referee spoke.
"Did you kick him on purpose?"
I answered without a flicker of hesitation.
"What?"
"I went into the kick expecting a block. Show a kicking motion, and the other man steps in. That was my assumption."
"And he didn't answer it?"
"No."
"So he was hit because there was nothing else for it?"
"That's correct."
Then—
"That is a lie!"
Carl shouted it from the ground, still lying exactly as he had fallen. One shoulder, and the man was down there yet. Let him.
"Our accounts differ, so the decision is yours, referee. Render your call, and I will accept it without complaint."
The words were barely out of my mouth before the whistle split the air.
"Both teams—prepare for the scrum!"
He was not finished.
"If that injury keeps you from continuing, substitute now."
At that, even Carl had nothing left to cling to. Sure enough, he blew a furious breath through his nose and hauled himself up.
He did not pack down. As expected, Ralph took the middle, with the heavy bodies locking shoulder to shoulder on either side of him. Set against that mass, Jack, Tennessee, and I looked a little slight, and perhaps that was why a cold smile tugged at Ralph's mouth—the look of a man who thought three seconds would be more than enough for the likes of us.
Oh. So that's how it is.
We set our shoulders in a line. Behind my back I spread three fingers, the signal to drive the instant it began: a tug-of-war with the ball trapped between us. Both packs were deep in that tense standoff, like wrestlers waiting on the belt, when the whistle cracked again and play restarted.
It was a scrum we had fitted together more times than I could count.
"Get low!"
The order had hardly left me before we dropped as a single body, centers down.
"Now!"
Feet drove. We went forward at once.
They flinched. No question they had been rocked, and there was a flash of panic at being hit from the first step. Even so—
"Hold!"
They had been breathing as one pack for more than a year.
"Back foot! Hold!"
The moment Ralph roared, their front reset. Seasoned. The strength went without saying, and the timing between them was no small thing. Even so. They aren't Cambridge. Not even close.
I thought of the scrum we had won for the first time only yesterday, and we surged like mad bulls.
"Hold!"
Boots skidded in the grass. The confidence that three seconds would do it evaporated on the spot.
"Hold! Can't you hear me?"
Irritation, and the blame of other people, rushed in to take its place.
"I said hold!"
The back foot that had been driven in like a stake wobbled, and at last it gave. The contest was already settled. I did not stop there.
"More! More! More!"
This early in the match, I wanted their momentum broken clean through. Step after step we marched without a pause, and they had no choice but to fold where they stood—a thud, and then the collapse.
The instant we had them fully down, Leo, waiting behind us, raked the ball clear. Every defender of theirs was in a heap. He did not waste the gap. He shot straight into their half, and Carl, holding the back, came charging in a temper, his face daring anyone to try to get past him.
Leo was not a boy who liked a gamble. Conscious of the cameras massed on him, he would rather not chase the pretty play—a little plain, perhaps, but the type who faithfully carries out the role he has been given. It was no different now. Instead of forcing it, he turned a safe back-pass my way, and then, ready for the man coming in, set a screen in front of me and quietly took the dirty work upon himself.
Because of that, even with the ball in my hands, Carl could not simply hurl himself at me. Leo was a wall he had no wish to meet. He held off, kept his distance, and waited for a gap.
Forgotten, has he.
I let the ball drop to the grass and planted my foot with everything I meant to put through it. The kick went off like a cannon shot, and the ball screamed away toward an empty corner of their half.
An unexpected pass, perhaps. In the heartbeat they hesitated, Jack was already tearing after it. He had been fast to begin with, and every night he had run himself to the edge of death, building that burst. Naturally, no one on the pitch reached the ball ahead of him. He took it, and at that same speed he was off again, straight for their goal.
"What are you doing? Stop him!"
Carl's shout came late. They froze. Jack, already carrying his acceleration, was untouchable. He opened more than twenty meters on the defense and crossed the goal line with room to spare.
The stands came apart. While Jack roared in the middle of their half, I went over to Leo.
My kick and Jack's break might look like the heroes of the score. This attack, though, had begun with Leo's screen and nowhere else. I wanted to tell him it had been a superb piece of play. Face to face, the words turned shy on my tongue. Nothing else for it. I put a thumb up and beat a quick retreat to my spot.
An opening score, early, and not one they had seen coming. I would have liked them to come charging, hot in the head. Unfortunately they rebuilt the line at their own slow pace. Even Carl, who until now had done nothing but scream, was perfectly calm. We had owned the attack up to this moment. Possession had passed to them.
For a while, we may have nothing to do but defend.
Right then Carl's speed came up in a flash. His eyes were a complete reversal of the ones he had worn on defense. He scanned our half for the briefest instant and, as if he had already found the weakness, sprinted at Jack.
Jack blew out a breath, set his weight on his back foot, and waited. He meant to see the play to its end before he committed—a judgment worth full marks. It did not matter. Carl's attack had been on another level from the start. Carrying all that speed, he seemed about to kill his tempo in a single beat, and then, with no feint at all, one turn undid Jack completely.
That was not the end of it. Even the tackle Leo threw, timed to the heartbeat, Carl shed with a change of stride, easy as anything. On breaking alone, he felt better than Steve, and that only made it worse. He never so much as considered a pass. The power on him was already professional—explosiveness and elegance together—and like the finest attacking runner alive, he did not know how to retreat. In under ten seconds he had swallowed half our half.
In that moment Gary and James went together. Even moving as one body, stopping Carl was close to impossible, and those two knew it better than anyone. They went anyway. If they were going to be beaten, they would be beaten showing, without a cut or an addition, the play they had sweated to learn, taking a triangular shape against him.
"Distance!"
"Check behind!"
They talked as they ran, fighting to hold the gap, and rather than simply trying to stop him—
"Right side!"
"His way out!"
—they worked to funnel the break in one direction.
Of course, the moment Carl feinted a collision and knifed off on a new line, both of them were shaken at once. That much was plain. Even so—
"Hngh!"
"Stop him!"
They burned everything they had to steal a tenth of a second. A tenth was enough. No—it was more than enough. Because of the two of them, I could step across Carl's path.
I let out a breath. His eyes, of course, brimmed with confidence. Getting through was a given; his face was busy only with how to make it look good, and it was not arrogance. My chance of stopping him sat under one percent. If I wanted to raise those odds at all, I had to rule the pass out. In front of me, at least, he would never turn the ball away. Only the break. Yes. Think of nothing but the break.
He came at me then, as if to say I was welcome to try. Fast. The trouble was that his change of direction frightened me more than his speed. Sure enough, he shaped to drive a shoulder to the right, shifted his weight in an instant, and cut away with a clean rhythm. The moment I reached for him, he turned out of that same posture and opened the distance between us in a heartbeat.
The corner of his mouth lifted, wide. This is the difference in class. Carl's eyes seemed to say exactly that.
There was one thing he had missed. Do you even realize how far you've drifted to the right? I could not stop him. Strictly speaking, I had never meant to. Why? Because Tennessee is behind me.
In that instant Carl's body rose into the air. Tennessee's tackle, thrown on perfect timing, swallowed him whole. An attacker already a cut above any schoolboy—slammed flat on his back in the grass. In a turn of the match he had never imagined, the ball spilled from his hand and tumbled away.
I took it at once.
"Let's go!"
"Counter! Now!"
Tennessee's face asked why he had to come as well. What, was I meant to sprint the length of the pitch on my own? I'm a defender, for heaven's sake. Whatever he tried to argue with his eyes, it did nothing.
"Run!"
Only then did Tennessee actually start. Yes. This is it.
We ran at nearly the same speed, holding a steady gap. We were not adjusting to each other. Go flat out, and you simply arrive at almost the same point—which made him the ideal partner for a passing play, stride for stride. We did not break with Carl Bernstein's fluent grace. Tennessee supplied the finish. He opened his body as if the pass were coming to me, then in truth drove on into their half, and with the softest touch of the ball to the grass, he scored after all.
The roar poured in from every side.
"Tennessee! Tennessee! Tennessee!"
They chanted his name fit to tear their throats. Even so, he was still on the same complaint. Why do you have to order me here and there? What a nuisance. Pleased as anything, and still playing coy.
They're in an uproar over you. At least wave.
Why should I?
Why? I told you. You're the protagonist.
A nuisance, from one end to the other.
Pretending he had only given in, Tennessee lifted a hand toward the stands.