Time Control Read online

  The ball started doing what he told it. It was kind of magic (not kind of, actually. It was magic).

  Receivers were dropping a few passes, probably because everything was coming in like a bullet, but Pike thinking that’s not the worst thing, let’s don’t be too perfect here.

  The Starling running back scored once more, but by the middle of the 4th quarter Pike had put up 466 yards and 6 touchdowns, and Coach took him out and had Foxe run the ball the rest of the way to kill the clock, and that was it.

  On the bus ride home Coach gave his little speech, how it was a great team effort, and the defense stepped up and controlled their main guy, and we need to enjoy this for a couple hours, but then to get re-focused on our next opponent, which was Clarion Central.

  Nothing about Pike’s performance. But when they got off the bus back at school he took him aside and smiled and said, “I seen you were a little nervous out there, even after you got it going.”

  Pike said, “I was.”

  “Keep being nervous,” Coach said, and walked off.

  Pike didn’t expect it, but Cathy was waiting for him in the parking lot. She’d driven to the game with her friend Gina, but Pike had been so wrapped up in his new quarterback duties that he’d been oblivious and hadn’t noticed her in the stands.

  “What?” he said. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m happy for you, but I’m kinda concerned,” Cathy said.

  “The heck you talking about?”

  “All these things now,” she said. “I think you know exactly what I mean.”

  “Okay hold on,” Pike said. “Stopping that purse snatcher guy, that was a fluke … The game, that probably was too, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Well you’re the big man on campus suddenly,” she said. Her voice cracked, and Pike could see she was tearing up just a little.

  He put his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet around.

  He had always heard that life boiled down to a few specific moments, and this may be one of them.

  “If I told you something,” he said, “that makes absolutely no sense … that no one in their right mind would believe … what would you do?”

  “Gosh … You mean … would I break up with you or something?”

  “For starters, would you think I’m crazy? And would you tell anyone else?”

  Cathy put her arms around his waist and dropped her head against his chest. “No … And no,” she said.

  Pike held her tight and said, “I believe you. Let’s take a drive.”

  They took the old two-lane to Walker Road and turned off and parked. Pike said, “You keep going, a mile or two, it’s some guy’s ranch now, but did you know that used to be a drive-in movie?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that,” Cathy said. “My parents used to go.”

  “So did mine. Sounds like everyone sat there in a big parking lot and you hooked a speaker over your window. Otherwise you couldn’t hear.”

  “You’d think they could have engineered something better, maybe have it play through your radio.”

  “Yeah, you’d think … On my deal … Sweetie, my body has changed … Something REAL weird.”

  She was rubbing the back of his neck, playful. “Oh yeah?” she said. “You could have fooled me.”

  “Why do you joke around? What if I had a terminal disease?”

  “Because I know you don’t,” she said, massaging his shoulders now. “You’re the picture of health … Gina says so too … which is what I’m worried about. That too many other girls may be thinking the same thing.”

  “Forget all that,” Pike said. “What it is … I can’t.”

  “It’s fine. Please don’t tell me, if you’re not comfortable.”

  “No, no … all right … here goes nothing …” He took a deep breath and exhaled and closed his eyes for a moment. “I got a lot stronger, is what’s happened … I’m talking super strong … like something out of a cartoon.”

  Nodding at her.

  “Cathy … I didn’t just tackle that doofus at CVS … I lifted up the front of his CAR.”

  Cathy’s eyes were big, and she was silent.

  “Putting that kid Anthony in the hospital?” Pike continued. “Okay, yeah, I thought it might have been a fluke … But then I tried some other stuff … kind of like an experiment.”

  They sat there looking out the window. It was a clear night and the wind had picked up, and it had gotten chilly. They could hear the occasional hum of the Interstate in the distance.

  Finally Cathy said, “Well couldn’t it just be, I don’t know, that your adrenaline has kicked in for whatever reason? … I’ve read about that kind of thing happening.”

  “I wish,” Pike said. He opened the car door and stepped out and closed it. He squatted down and with the ease of a weightlifter warming up with a light weight, he hoisted the side of the car off the ground. Cathy slid against the far door.

  Pike eased it down and got back inside.

  “So … ” he said. “I’m thinking … Are you going leave me? Now that I’m a freak.”

  “Wow,” Cathy said.

  “That’s it? Wow?”

  She moved closer and closed her eyes and kissed him full on, letting her lips linger. In no hurry.

  When they were sitting back she said, “So I told you my secret, you told me yours. What’s the big deal? Now we’re even.”

  Pike didn’t think many people got married at 18, though maybe in the old days they did.

  But at that moment, there were a lot worse ideas in the world than marrying Cathy right here in this car.

  Chapter 8 4th of July

  Yonkers, New York

  July 4th, 2016

  Don Pascarella never liked the 4 to midnight shift on holidays. Shit tended to happen, usually minor, but the calls came flooding in and you were in and out of the squad car the whole time.

  Last 4th of July, up on Primrose Avenue some guy got into it with his brother-in-law because the brother-in-law kept throwing firecrackers out the window, so he threw the guy out the window.

  Two stories, but luckily the brother-in-law only broke his arm. Don and his partner got the guy cuffed and under control, but then the brother-in-law, as they’re putting him in the ambulance, yells at the other idiot, “Now you know why Sal got whacked, you prick.”

  Don didn’t want to know, and didn’t add that part to his report.

  The other thing about tonight, if he wanted to categorize it, this was 7 months to the day since it happened. December 4th.

  He’d been down in the city Christmas shopping with Erline. They were looking in the department store windows on Fifth Avenue, the same ones as when he was a little kid. Times had changed, but not all that much when it came to Christmas. Lord and Taylor still had the classic miniature steam train circling around in the window, and a fresh generation of people were pointing and smiling.

  He and Erline had been crossing Fifth at 37th Street, and some asshole cabbie comes barreling toward them in the outside lane. He may have been playing chicken with them, like cabbies did, but on the other hand maybe the guy was legitimately distracted, looking at his phone or whatever. Don didn’t have a good feeling about it.

  What he did was he grabbed Erline around the waist with his right arm, pinned her against his hip, and then kind of broad-jumped them both out of the crosswalk and onto the curb.

  It didn’t feel like much, but when he sized it up he’d jumped them about 10 feet … From essentially a standing start … About as effortlessly as stepping off the outside stoop of his favorite pizza joint on Odell Avenue.

  There were the usual mid-town herds of people walking every which way, and cars honking, everything chaotic, and if anyone noticed what just happened they didn’t say anything.

  Except Erline. She said, “My. That was some feat there.” Her jaw having dropped open slightly and stayed that way.

  Don exp
lained that she was over-thinking it, not to mention exaggerating big-time, what just happened.

  But she kept bringing it up, about every hour, the rest of the day.

  Finally at Grand Central he got her an ice cream to take on the train, and by the time they were halfway back to Yonkers, the tranquility of the Hudson River on their left, he’d convinced her she was mixed up.

  Or so he hoped. Luckily she never brought it up again, and that would have been the end of that.

  Except this insane strength, it was FOR REAL, and as the weeks went on Don didn’t know if he should celebrate or be scared to death.

  Anyhow … tonight he was riding with Otto and their third call was the projects on Nepperhan. These weren’t the extreme projects you had in parts of the Bronx, a few miles south, which the cops down there tried like hell to avoid.

  The ones in Yonkers weren’t as unpredictable. Most of the residents minded their own business and respected, and even welcomed the law. But no matter how you sugar-coated them, they were still the projects, and when you got out of the car you were on high alert.

  Tonight kids were setting off stuff in the front courtyard, probably a fair amount of it illegal, and a couple kids waited for a reaction from Don and Otto. Don gave them a friendly wave and they got in the elevator.

  Dispatch had it a 415F, which was typically a family dispute.

  They knocked and announced themselves as police. A little guy opens the door, tells them he’s glad they came, that his wife was getting physical with him.

  Was. Don and Otto with the radar up now.

  Otto starts asking the guy some questions and Don takes a cautious look around, and there’s a women lying on the kitchen floor, looking pretty damn DOA, a carving knife handle sticking up out of her chest.

  “Over here,” Don calls back to Otto, and the shotgun blast comes through the bedroom door and knocks Don back against the base of the sink, and Don sees his grandparents, and then he’s in his third grade class on a warm spring day with the windows open, and then he’s in an office somewhere trying to answer a question but no one is telling him what the question is.

  Don was in intensive care for 9 and a half days, and then he expired. The doctor told Erline it was a miracle that he lasted that long, that he had no business even making it to the hospital, and she should be very proud of his fighting spirit.

  When Don was near death on the last day, a man in a suit and tie who Erline had never seen before asked to speak to her in private.

  He told her he was from a regionally-based organ procurement organization. Don’s driver’s license, he said, showed him as a potential organ donor, but he had never completed the updated process of registering in the New York State database.

  Erline told the man it wasn’t even a question, that Don would want his organs donated, and the man thanked her and gave her a form to sign, and said others would be so grateful.

  Chapter 9 Come Here

  It was Saturday afternoon and Pike and Cathy were playing a little tennis.

  Last night had been the Clarion Central game, and Pike continued his dominant play at quarterback. Hamilton won 42-10, and before they left the field Coach introduced him to a Mr. Jameson, who was scouting the game for Fresno State. Mr. Jameson said he was impressed with his ‘pocket presence’, in addition to his arm, and he gave Pike his card.

  When the scout left, Coach told Pike not to get a big head. Pike had only heard ‘pocket presence’ on TV games and never thought about what it meant, though he supposed he had the idea. Either way, it wasn’t something he wanted to ask Coach about, and then have to stand there listening to a ten-minute answer.

  Cathy was a pretty good tennis player, graceful, a natural athlete with fluid strokes. They took a break and sat on the beat-up bench between the courts and Pike told her he was impressed.

  “You’re nice,” she said, “but I don’t compete well. In a real match, I fall apart.” She smiled and shook her head.

  Pike was also impressed that Cathy didn’t take herself too seriously.

  “So … ,” he said. “You … been thinking any more … about my thing? My deal?”

  Neither of them had brought it up since a week ago that evening when they’d driven out off Walker Road.

  “I have,” Cathy said.

  “Uh-oh, good or bad?” Pike said, and he got serious and held her hand and waited.

  “I’ve been googling it,” she said, “pretty much to death, if you want to know the truth. Pike I can’t wrap my mind around it … There has to be some explanation.”

  Pike said, “I know. Some logic behind it … Believe me, I’m with you … First few days, I’m online 5 hours a pop, looking. Give me one little friggin clue … Then everything I’m reading, all these dudes chiming in, I start worrying I’m dying … That I may be terminal or something … Or like those unlucky people with genetic shit, where they age 10 years for every 1 of ours … So I stopped trying to figure it out.”

  “Well you’re not dying,” Cathy said, but the words came out a bit shaky.

  “Sweetie anything’s possible.” Pike felt himself getting choked up, but fought not to let Cathy see it. “The only good thing,” he said, “you appreciate every day more … At least I think I am.”

  ***

  Gina had a party at her house that night, and a lot of football guys were there, and after a while Gina’s mom and step-dad announced they were going out bowling and for everyone to please keep the party on an even keel.

  As soon as they pulled out of the driveway, the booze came out, and some of the football guys were putting away too much too fast. Foxe, the original quarterback, who Pike had replaced now, was one of them.

  Foxe started riding Pike, friendly at first, then not so friendly, then nasty. Making comments about his mother, and his sister. Foxe clearly wanted to fight, and someone yelled Right on, let’s take it outside!

  Pike followed Foxe out there and he could see Cathy standing inside near the patio screen door, both hands over her mouth.

  Pike swung first and Foxe put up a forearm and blocked it, and he swung from down low and got Pike around the ribs, and Pike doubled over. Foxe finished him off with right hand to the temple. Pike fell forward and stayed there for a while, rolling around, his face all scrunched up.

  Someone brought him some ice and he struggled into a patio chair, and most everyone went back inside and some music started up.

  There was a side gate off the back yard, and Pike and Cathy got out of there and drove downtown, or to what passed for a downtown, which amounted to three blocks full of stores and small businesses on Division Street.

  “You’re okay,” Cathy said. “Right?”

  Pike said, “I hate to say ‘unfortunately’, but yeah, I’m good.”

  “You had to let him win, I get it.”

  “What you’re saying,” Pike said, “I need to show I’m human?”

  “Okay fine, I guess that’s what I mean … But he hit you hard. Didn’t you feel anything at all?”

  “It hurt a little. Not the first one so much. When he hit me on the side of the head, I could feel a little something … Kind of like when you take your index finger, put it behind your thumb, and flick yourself with it.” Flicking himself in the cheek, demonstrating.

  “Just your skin then?”

  “Pretty much. Maybe I felt it inside my head just a tad … I’m not Superman, not that kind of freak … If that’s where you’re going, babe.”

  “I wasn’t … I didn’t mean to imply that at all.”

  They were at a stoplight. There was an uneasy silence.

  Pike said, “I know you weren’t. That’s my fault … This is what I was afraid of … dumping all my garbage in your lap.”

  Cathy didn’t respond to that. She was dialed in on something else. “All right, I’m just trying to throw things out there,” she said. “Did anything happen? Beforehand, that you can possibly think of? Was there, like
, an incident at all?”

  “Nah. I wish it was that simple. Like I said, the game. Tackling that first guy’s when the bullshit officially jumped onto the radar.”

  “Okay let me stop you please … Just continuing that direction for a moment, why do you call it that?

  “BS?”

  “Yes. Pike you’re powerful, maybe more than anyone else … And okay I’ll go ahead and say it. You’re a strong … sexy … hunk of a guy … You can help people. Which you already did, the lady at CVS with her purse snatching.”

  “I know, it sounds awesome on the surface … But being different … when you can’t explain it … is scary. Shitstorm scary. Something I can’t expect you to understand, without it happening to you.”

  “I don’t like it when you tell me you’re scared,” she said, lying against him. They’d circled around the main drag twice now, repeating themselves, and were doing it again.

  “Well, playing good in the games,” he said. “I guess that helps take some of the edge off. For now.”

  She said, “How about, were you sick at all? … Please really think as hard as you can … Were you run down, any fever? … Aches and pains? … For Gosh sakes, I don’t even know what I’m asking.”

  “No, you’re being reasonable,” Pike said. “I’ve been through this in my head a million times … Only time I was sick at all—in I can’t even remember how long—was I threw up bad for a day. But that was way back, the beginning of summer.”

  “You did? Okay, that’s something.”

  “Nah. What I’m pretty sure happened, it was from whatever they gave me at the dentist. Novocaine or some shit.”

  “Well has that happened to you before, after the dentist?”

  “Not that I remember, but this was a different dentist. We were on a trip actually.”

  “You were?”

  “Right when school let out. Probably I never mentioned it to you, because we hadn’t hooked up yet … No big deal, my parents dragged us down to the southwest. The whole thing was pretty lame.”