The Law of Second Chances

24

Rico called Johnny at home on Sunday, the day after the Vikings game.

“What happened?” Johnny asked.

“Piece of cake,” Rico told him. “Floyd clammed up and I started ranting and raving about the ambulance drivers-how it took them forever to show up. Well, city cops don’t wanna hear that, so after about an hour they let us go. It ain’t over yet, but they ain’t got shit on us.”

“Rico, I don’t think that’s going to work. You get the wrong people mad at you and it usually backfires. Listen. Let me come down with you the next time they call you. I’ve got an uncle who’s a cop. Maybe he’ll help us.”

“Don’t worry about it, Johnny. Floyd and I can handle it. I appreciate the offer, though. I really do.”

The team didn’t find out until the following Tuesday that because of the common opponents they had beaten and the margins of victory, they had won a tiebreaker with the Vikings. They were going to the championship game after all. Joe Sheffield called every player personally to let him know. Practice was as usual on Thursday night, and there would be a full practice on Saturday. The championship would be the following Saturday.

On Thursday night, the coach opened auditions for a long snapper and a holder. It was a little late in the season, but Joe figured he had nothing to lose. Rico grabbed Johnny.

“C’mon, we’re gonna volunteer.”

“I don’t know anything about that stuff!”

“There’s nothing to know. You’ve got good hands. I’ll be the long snapper and I’ll teach you what to do.”

Nobody else volunteered, so Joe Sheffield let Rico and Johnny go off with Jimmy Walsh and practice kicking. He figured they knew their regular jobs pretty well.

For the next hour and a half they practiced extra points.

“It’s all about timing,” Rico told them. “Jimmy, when the ball hits Johnny’s hands, you gotta start moving toward it. You gotta trust that Johnny is gonna get it down in time. Mayor, you just concentrate on catching the ball and getting it set. You don’t even look at Jimmy.” Johnny wondered how Rico knew so much.

Rico had taken three balls from the equipment bag, so they got plenty of repetitions in. It wasn’t working too well at the start. Gradually, however, Jimmy Walsh got Johnny’s rhythm down and adjusted his approach to the ball. Rico was remarkably good at the long snap. By the end of the hour and a half, Jimmy was kicking four out of five balls through the uprights. He was stoked.

“I knew I was a good kicker,” he told them. “We just had no timing.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t get timing in one practice,” Rico said. “Timing comes from repetition. The timing you have now will be gone by next week.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Jimmy Walsh asked.

“Can you get to the park at four o’clock every day next week?” Rico asked him.

“Yeah,” Jimmy replied.

“How about you, Johnny?”

“I think I can, yeah.”

“All right, it’s settled. We’ll meet at the Hamilton statue every day next week at four o’clock and then go to the big field and practice extra points.”

They shook hands on it.

By the last practice on the Thursday before the championship game, the new kicking team was very consistent. Jimmy Walsh was getting almost every ball through the uprights. Joe Sheffield was impressed. He announced to the rest of the team at the end of practice that Rico, Johnny, and Jimmy were the official new extra-point team. He had another announcement for them as well.

“We’re going to meet at 8:30 in the morning on Saturday in front of the Carlow East. The regulars at the Carlow chipped in and rented a bus so we can travel together to the game.”

Everybody cheered. They wouldn’t have to lug their equipment on the subway to the Bronx. They’d be traveling in style.

Joe Sheffield saved the final surprise for Saturday morning when they were all assembled in front of the big yellow school bus. Mary McKenna was there. She opened the bar up and Joe ushered everybody into the back of the room. He stood next to Mary, who was smiling from ear to ear. They were standing behind a table with two cardboard boxes in front of them.

“Mary called me the other night,” Joe said, scanning their faces. “She didn’t want you guys going up to the Bronx to represent this neighborhood looking like a bunch of ragamuffins. So we had some jerseys made.” Joe pulled a jersey out of one of the boxes. It was white with short sleeves, kelly-green trim around the shoulders, and a shamrock on each sleeve. It had a big number ten in kelly green on the front and back. Everybody cheered when they saw it.

“Everybody has to have a number for the championship game,” Joe went on. “I have already handed in a roster with your name and number on it. There’s a program they’ll hand out today, and each of you will be in it.” More cheers. “So come up here when I call your name, pick up your jersey, and get on the bus. We’ve got to get moving.”

Johnny watched Floyd as he took his jersey and walked over to Mary McKenna and gave her a big hug. Ever since the night Mary kicked Joe Meeley out of the bar they had developed a special relationship.

Joe Sheffield called Johnny’s name. He got his jersey, number thirty-three, put it on over his T-shirt and headed for the bus. After a send-off like this, he was sure they were going to bring the championship trophy back to the Carlow.

Johnny sat next to Floyd on the bus ride to Mount Vernon.

“What happened with that police thing?” he asked. “Rico keeps saying nothing happened.”

“It’s over,” Floyd told him.

“That’s it? They just dropped it?”

“They didn’t just drop it. They didn’t have anything on us, really. I mean, it was just a tackle. Rico kept talking about the ambulance guys not showing up and I think it made them mad-you know, like he was trying to use it as an excuse even though it was absolutely true. If they had showed up in five minutes instead of twenty-five, that guy would still be alive. Anyway, the last time they called us down to the station they had an Army recruiter there. They told us they would drop all the charges if we agreed to sign up for four years. If we didn’t, they were going to charge us with manslaughter.”

“So you signed up?”

“Yeah. We had no choice.”

“You could have fought it and won.”

“Johnny, where we come from, getting rousted by the cops is a daily occurrence. Fighting with them only makes it worse. Part of me thinks that if they’d nabbed you instead of Rico, this wouldn’t have happened. They don’t have the balls to railroad a white kid from a nice neighborhood.”

“I can change that. I can still say it was me.”

“It’s too late now. It’s done.”

Johnny was silent. Floyd was right. There was nothing either of them could do about it.