The Legend of Jesse Smoke by Robert Bausch Read Free Book Online Page B

sorry.
    “It was a heart attack,” she said, looking back at me.
    “He was only fifty-three,” Nate said.
    “Well, he sure would be pleased to see you play now,” I said. I waited a bit, then said something stupid about her mother handling things on her own. It wasn’t a question, just an expression of hope that she was all right and all.
    Jesse’s face lost some of its luster then; she didn’t exactly scowl, but something went out of that usually bright demeanor. “I don’t know my mother,” she said. “She left when I was too young to remember her.”
    “And you’ve never seen her since? Never heard from her?”
    “No. I don’t want to, either.” She flipped the ball up and let it spin. Caught it again gently, then flipped it up again—just the way she had that day on the beach when I first saw her.
    Andy looked at me. It was clear he’d never heard her talk about her mother or father. This was all news to him. He looked sad to me.
    “So what’s the drill?” Jesse asked. “You going to teach me something here or what?”
    “I’m going to try to.”
    She flipped the ball again. She looked a little bit like a tall, teenage boy with those brown freckles across her pretty, broad nose.
    “You’ve got to learn to do one of three things when you’re under pressure,” I said. “Step up, in between rushers and blockers; step to the side a bit and throw, leaning toward your front foot as you should; or take off with it, and throw on the run. What you cannot do is step back and try to whip it off at the same time.”
    “All of this I know,” she said. “But you left out one other option my father taught me.”
    “What’s that?”
    She took the ball into her stomach and doubled up, her head down in front of her knees. Then she straightened and looked at me. “Fold ’em. Take the sack.”
    “Absolutely, he was right about that.”
    “That’s what I can’t seem to learn to do, you know? Whenever, I should do that, I just end up stepping back and throwing the damn thing.”
    “Well, right now I don’t want to drill you on taking sacks. I’d like to see if we can work on the other three options.”
    “Okay.”
    So that’s what we did. All that morning and even into the afternoon we worked on it. By the time we quit, the other Diva players had arrived for practice and were stretching on the sidelines.
    In the first drill, I had Nate and Andy rushing at her, with me and Michelle in front, blocking them, which formed what is called a “pocket.” I showed Jesse how to “step up” in the pocket. I could tell she was just humoring me. It was a move that came naturally to her, though I hadn’t had a chance to see her do it in a game. She moved forward easily, planted, and threw. Then we stood in front of her and waved towels in her face, overhand, fast and hard so she could feel the wind of them, and she’d step to the side, left and right, plant, and throw. Finally, I had her drop back to pass while Nate, Andy, and I threw footballs at her, not exactly trying to hit her, just having them in the air all at once, coming toward her, while she had to plant, look for Michelle in various pass routes, and hit her on the move. Every time she shied away from one of those footballs, I blew a whistle. A few times she got hit, but we weren’t throwing them hard, and after a while, she didn’t even flinch.
    We repeated the last drill, relentlessly, every chance we got, over the next few weeks, hefting footballs at Jesse, and as far as I could tell she’d stopped throwing off her back foot. She got a bloody nose once (after that I put a helmet on her) and had the wind knocked out of her a few times, but as long as she had the ball in her hands, she never ducked or shied away. Jesse learned and adapted as swiftly as any player I’d ever coached. (We like to call that, “coachability.”) But the thing I remember most from all those drills was her power of concentration. After a while, it was as if only