Page 41 of Hell Bent (Portland Devils #5)

I forgot that, because the game was back.

No huddle now. No time for one. A short pass to Harlan Kristiansen near the sideline, and he ran out of bounds, then flipped the ball to an official and sprinted to the new spot.

A handoff to a running back, who made three and did the same.

Third down, a pass to … somebody else—I couldn’t tell in the snow—who made a couple of yards, maybe, slid, and went down like a toppling snowman.

Two officials, made bulky by the extra clothing they wore under their striped jerseys, running out with a length of chain.

One of them holding it at what must have been the original line of scrimmage—how could they even tell?

—and the other one moving forward through the deepening snow, stretching the chain taut.

Almost a foot ahead of the nose of the ball.

The referee—who, Ben had explained, was the guy in the white hat—holding up a fist, and Ben saying, “Fourth down. A minute and five seconds to go.”

“Where are they?” I asked. “How close?” The view had shifted to Sebastian, his heavy parka off for almost the first time tonight, kicking a ball into a net.

Looking—well, the same way Sebastian always looked.

Kicking the same way Sebastian always kicked.

Like he was a machine, but he wasn’t a machine.

Ben said, “At the Bills’ 39.” Even as the team was in place again, the quarterback so close behind Owen Johnson, the center, that his hands were between the other man’s legs as he turned his head from side to side, calling the play.

Players shifting position behind him, the defense shifting with them, and before I realized it was happening, Owen lunging forward, bent nearly double, the whole offensive line going with him, all crouched low, like a herd of charging, snow- covered bison, the quarterback seeming carried by their momentum, practically running up Owen’s broad back.

The referee’s arm in the air, and I was saying, “Did they get it? Did they make it?”

“Yes.” Ben’s hand was still in mine, and he was leaning forward on the couch, beating the other fist against his knee. “Come on,” he muttered. “Come on.” As if he hadn’t seen it before.

Forty-nine seconds. Two more plays, the team making almost no progress at all, and I tried to add the seventeen yards to the Devils’ field position and for once, struggled with simple addition.

That one guy had barely made it when his team was at about the 10-yard line, and the Devils were barely past the 40!

Third and eight, and the quarterback was farther back from the center now, for some reason. It seemed dangerous. The ball would be slippery, and how good would Owen’s aim be, snapping the ball in this?

I was thinking it, and then I wasn’t, because the ball zipped straight back into the quarterback’s hands like it was on a string, and he was taking a bare two steps back and letting it go.

Not on one of those slant routes, but straight down the field to where a tall, slim white ghost was turning, leaping, his blonde hair showing under his helmet, his gloved hands in the air.

Jumping higher than a man should be able to, and another player jumping up too, not quite as fast, not quite as high.

The ball hit Harlan’s hands, and he was coming down, the other player still all over him, trying to wrestle the ball away.

Harlan twisted in the air, landed on one leg in a sort of arabesque, somehow kept his feet in the snow, and was sprinting. Four yards, five, and somebody else coming fast, sailing through the air, grabbing him at the thighs, pulling him down .

And Harlan still holding the ball.

I was on my feet somehow, jumping up and down. Ben was there beside me, laughing, saying, “I did that too. Jumped.”

“How long now?” I asked. “That was so risky.”

“Twelve seconds,” Ben said, even as the players ran into position again, Owen snapped the ball again, and the quarterback took it and threw it to the ground.

“Stopping the clock,” Ben explained. “At the 25. This is it. This is the whole game right here. This is the whole season. Forty-two yard kick in a blizzard. This is it .”

Sebastian

I was still in that bubble, because the seconds had ticked by and the events unspooled as if that were how it was always meant to be.

Owen leading the charge to get the QB over for the first down with the same total commitment he’d shown in going after that meaningless ping-pong ball, heedless of his safety, aimed single-mindedly at his one goal.

Harlan going up and plucking that ball out of the wintry sky, coming down as gracefully as a dancer, spinning out of the tackle and making those extra yards.

Making them for me, putting the game into my hands as neatly as he did everything, making it seem easy.

I was running on, then, and he was running off.

Catching my eye, and grinning. Only a fraction of a second, but I got it. It’s on you now, bud. Put us through.

Our punter and my usual holder, Josh Turnbull, had gone down with a groin strain after a slip in the snow following his last punt, but I wasn’t worrying about that.

I was slapping the shoulder of Kelsan Simmons, who’d been the holder on his college team, for the second time in ten minutes, then watching him take a knee seven yards behind the long snapper and brush the snow away around the place the ball would land, as much as he could do that in about two seconds.

Twenty-five yards from the goal line. Forty-two-yard kick. Nine seconds on the clock.

There was no thinking, only the movements, choreographed and rehearsed as that ballet. The impossible broken down into pieces, practiced again and again, and then achieved. The same way you did it every time.

The space in my head was limitless, because I contained multitudes.

The ball sailing back seven yards to Simmons’s sure hands, Simmons rotating it so the laces faced away, the point of it still a few inches down in the snow, and I had the distance covered already.

I didn’t think about how deeply that ball was buried or where I should hit it.

I hit it the same way I always did. Instep first, arm swinging forward, head down, straight into the swirling wind, hard as I could do it, right down the middle. A bullet shot from a gun, sailing true.

The snow muffled the sound, or the crowd had gone quiet. A second in the air. Two. Three. The ball curving to the right in the gleam of the lights, then coming back around as surely as if it had been laser guided.

Between the sticks. Over the crossbar. Into the net.

The whistle. The end.

10 to 9.

We were going to the divisional playoffs.

I wasn’t an expressive guy. I was Canadian.

I’d been the worst celebrator and the worst actor on every soccer team I’d ever played on.

I couldn’t writhe on the ground in agony to save my life.

But now, as Simmons thumped me on the shoulder and I saw tears in his eyes, as Harlan was there in front of me, both of us jumping, laughing like fools, I?—

Well, yeah. I fell on the ground and made a snow angel.

I’d barely done that when I was five. I have no idea why I did it then, but Harlan was laughing, dropping down beside me, and making his own, and then there were grown men lying in the snow all around me, sweeping their arms and legs out like windshield wipers, carving angels into the deepening snow.

We were cold. We were hurt. We were tired.

We were winners.