Emergency Quarterback by Rich Wallace Read Free Book Online

rows of tightly clustered homes decorated with pumpkins—large blown-up plastic ones that sat on lawns, and carved real ones on porches with jack-o’-lantern faces lit by candles.
    On one side of Terrace, at the corner of Washington, is a small city park—just a bunch of tall maple trees, some wooden benches, a swing set, and a blacktop basketball court. If you follow the path to the edge of the park, you reach the gate to the tiny cemetery, where some of the city’s founders are buried and a few Civil War soldiers. Nobody goes down there much. The plots were all filled by the first half of the previous century, so not too many city residents have relatives buried there that they’d remember knowing.
    There was a chain around one old post and through the first post of the gate, but there was some slack in it. Jason and Vinnie had no trouble slipping in, and Anthony sucked in his breath and managed to squeeze through, too.
    The brush was dense near the gate. And though the leaves on the trees had turned brown, many had not yet fallen. Very little moonlight got through to the ground.
    “Could use a flashlight,” Anthony whispered. A misty condensation followed his words. The evening had turned cold.
    “Just go slow,” Jason replied.
    They walked carefully, each step bringing with it the smell of dying grass and of the few dry, brittle leaves that had reached the ground.
    As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jason stopped in front of a small slate gravestone. JACOB ADDISON. JAN 15 1836—NOV 11 1904.
    “The guy’s been dead for more than a century,” Jason whispered.
    “That’s nothing,” Anthony said. “Here’s one from eighteen thirty-one.”
    They looked around some more, finding dozens of graves from the early 1800s, including many children who’d died soon after birth.
    “A lot of kids never even got to grow up back then,” Vinnie said.
    The narrow dirt path circled the perimeter of the grounds. It had been built long before automobiles, so the lane was tight. The trees were tall and old, and the gravestones were cracked and covered with lichens.
    Jason stopped and stared at a marker from 1827, topped by a marble lamb and the simple words At Rest. He was thinking hard about these people’s life spans. 1807—1861. 1840—1842. 1833—1918. Some lives had been long, some very short. And all had ended a long time ago.
    They stood quietly, respectfully for a few minutes, glancing at the gravestones, at the moon above the trees, at the skyline of New York City visible on the other side of the Hudson.
    “Life matters,” Jason said finally. “You have to leave a mark.”
    “You have to do what you can do,” Anthony replied. “Win or lose, you have to go after it.”
    Jason turned to Anthony, thinking of something equally solemn to add. But he’d forgotten that they were still wearing face paint. The sight of Anthony’s yellow face and red nose made him laugh instead.
    “What?” said Anthony.
    Jason pointed to his own orange face.
    Anthony smiled. “Let’s get back to town,” he said.
    They started walking, then stopped and looked back across the cemetery. “I never thought about it before tonight,” Jason said, “but life is short. We gotta make every day count for something, don’t we?”

8
    A Secret Play
    P alisades kept things interesting for half a game, going into the locker room with an 8—6 lead. But the Hudson City defense clamped down in the second half, Jason sprinted fifty-one yards for a touchdown on a quarterback keeper, and Miguel bulled through for a fourteen-yard scoring run and then added the two-point conversion. Final score: Hudson City 20, Palisades 8.
    The announcement that Hoboken had scored a narrow win over Bayonne that same evening left a simple scenario. Whoever won the Hudson City vs. Hoboken game on the final Saturday would walk away with the EJJFL title.
    “It’ll be like a bowl game!” Anthony said as the Hornets got off the bus after the ride home from