Maybe more.
“Hey,” I heard from behind me.
I turned and saw Ryan Morrissey standing behind our bench, Wolves hat pulled down tight over his head.
“Shouldn’t you be coaching your own team?”
He pointed past me, and I saw that Chris had finally gotten to the sideline.
“Shouldn’t you be coaching yours?” he said.
“Got a play for me?”
“Nah,” he said. “You’ll figure something out.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
We needed eight yards. If we didn’t get them and keep the drive going, this would be our first loss of the season. Even if we did get the first down, we still might have only a couple of plays after that to try to win the game.
“What are we doing, Coach?” Chris said.
And then I smiled, hearing a familiar voice inside my head.
Thomas’s.
When we’d watch a game together, and there would be a moment like this, he’d always say the same thing:
Throw the damn money on the table.
“Something funny?” Chris said.
I said, “Just to me,” and then told him the play I wanted him to run.
“Seriously?”
I told him I was serious but not too serious—it was just football. Not life and death.
He smiled at me and put his helmet back on and ran to the huddle and told his teammates the play they were about to run. Then he took the snap and rolled to his right, blockers in front of him, a lot of them, and made the defense think he might run for the first down.
But at the last second, he stopped and threw the ball all the way across to the other side of the field, to where Davontae Lillis was wide open in the left corner of the end zone.
And when Davontae caught the ball, it meant that the Bears had won again.
While the kids were still on the field, I went and sat by myself on our bench until I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw Ryan grinning down at me.
I looked up to the sky then and said, “Thanks.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“Wasn’t talking to you.”
Fifty-Nine
JOHN GALLO WAS INanother private room, this one at Original Joe’s, an old-school San Francisco steak house on Union Street. The room was quite narrow, with a long table stretching the length of it, ending withJOE’Swritten in script behind the place where Gallo sat.
Jack knew this was where Gallo came to eat most Saturday nights, sometimes with guests. Jack had been one of the invited guests a few times. Sometimes Gallo came here alone and ate at this same long table.
“I am not one of those people,” Gallo had told Jack once, “who thinks that having a good steak is a criminal offense.”