Chapter Thirty-Six Seattle
Starboy by The Weeknd blasted in the locker room. Piper let the second chorus hit before he put his helmet on.
The rain was already in the tunnel when they got there.
At the mouth of it, a waterfall came off the roofline in a sheet so continuous it looked like a second wall the team would have to cross through to get to the field.
Piper stood at the back of the line next to Tank, with his helmet under his arm.
Somebody up ahead said, “This game is going to be a fucking nightmare with this rain.”
“Let’s fucking go,” the coach said loud enough for every player to hear in the tunnel.
Piper’s stomach felt like it was occupied by gremlins.
Tank leaned in so Piper could hear him.
“You feel it?”
“I feel it.”
“Good. We got this, my guys got this. Piper, look at me,” Tank said, turning to Piper.
“We got this.”
“That’s my guy.”
The line continued to form.
They hit the sheet of water at the mouth of the tunnel, and Piper closed his eyes. On the other side, the rain was not a sheet, but the whole stadium.
The crowd, seventy thousand people, all of them standing, all of them under plastic ponchos that caught the stadium lights.
The Seattle fans were not afraid of a little rain.
The L.A. sideline was weak for an away game up the coast. Piper knew the L.A.
fans were not built for this kind of weather, and would be watching from their air conditioned living rooms.
Piper tilted his head back.
The cold rain hit his face.
***
The coin toss was at 5:09 p.m. local time.
Piper walked to midfield in a cape the equipment staff had handed him on the sideline.
Noah walked from the other side wearing his own cape.
They hadn’t looked at each other in the tunnel, and they didn’t look at each other now.
The captain from Seattle, a defensive end, said his call.
The coin went up, caught the light, and came down.
Piper deferred. The crowd responded with a roar through the rain as Piper walked back to his sideline without having made eye contact with Noah at any point.
Tank was waiting for him.
“This is going to be a fucking fight and a wet t-shirt contest at the same time.”
“I know, don’t get fined bro,” Piper said.
Tank looked past him, at Noah across the field, and then back at Piper. He kept what he saw to himself. He had a towel around his neck, and he was already chewing the corner like a nervous tic.
***
The kickoff team took the field. The rain picked up.
Seattle’s first drive died at midfield.
Noah couldn’t get anything going. The ball slipped through two of his targets’ hands due to the slick conditions.
The punt was short. Piper watched from the sideline, understanding that the rain was going to take plays away from both of them, and that the question of the game was going to be who found a way to work with it first.
He put his helmet on.
Tank grabbed his face-mask on the way past him.
“Small fucking windows tonight.”
“I know,” Piper replied, as rain pounded his helmet.
“Let the rain show us what it wants to do,” Tank said as Piper nodded, and they both jogged out.
The first pass hit Tank in the hands and he couldn’t catch it.
It was not a drop, the ball had arrived where it was supposed to arrive, and Tank’s hands had arrived where they were supposed to arrive, and the rain had other plans. The ball spun wrong in the last half-yard. It hit Tank’s right palm and came off it and hit the ground.
Tank looked up at the sky. “Fix it, Jesus,” he said as he got back into position.
Piper nodded once.
Second down belonged to the running back for three yards. Third and seven was a slant to the slot receiver that was almost there but wasn’t. The punt team came on. No score yet.
Piper came off the field. The coordinator looked at him from beneath a hooded poncho and didn’t say anything, and Piper stood on the sideline with his hood up and watched Seattle return the punt cleanly, which was, in itself, a small miracle, and get to the thirty-four yard line before the L.A.
coverage brought him down to the field pooling with water.
Seattle scored first on a long eleven play drive. They ran the ball seven times, because Seattle had practiced running the ball in rain for the entire season, and L.A. had practiced running the ball in rain when they had to.
The Seattle running back broke a tackle on a fourth-and-one and then broke a second tackle on the same run and then went down at the six yard line, and two plays later Noah threw a fade into the corner of the end zone that the rain almost knocked down.
The receiver came down with one foot in, but his body was sure about the other foot.
The officials huddled, replay caught it, and the review held. Score: Seattle 7, L.A. 0.
Piper watched Noah jog back to his sideline. He didn’t celebrate. He tapped his helmet once against his running back’s helmet and went to the bench.
Tank walked past Piper.
“Let’s fucking answer it.”
“I know.”
L.A.’s second drive started at the twenty-two yard line.
First play was a run that went for two. Second play was play action Piper had been running since college, on which the receiver broke and Piper lofted the ball over the corner to a spot where the receiver was going to be, but the rain did what the rain had been doing all night, because this throw had distance, pushed the ball down the field.
The receiver had to come back to it. The safety closed in, the ball was caught but the receiver was hit at the catch point and went down on his back in a puddle that Piper could see from thirty yards away, splashing up around him. First down.
“Good throw,” Tank said when Piper got back to the huddle.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Good enough.”
They drove. They drove for nine minutes and thirty-one seconds and ate two-thirds of the first half.
It was a rain-soaked messy drive Piper pushed through, and nothing was pretty.
A pass went for twelve because the defensive end over-committed in the mud.
Tank made a catch on second and eight, where the ball arrived six inches off his chest, and he adjusted and got his hand under it before it hit turf, and got up, and handed the ball to the ref without celebrating.
Second and goal from the seven yard line.
Piper took the snap.
The pocket held, it was the only pocket of the night that was going to hold for him this clean, though he didn’t know that yet, and he had three full seconds to move through his reads.
His first read was covered. His second was a tight end with a linebacker trailing closely behind.
There was a window. In dry conditions, Piper threw that ball for a completion nine out of ten times.
In these conditions, he was living on a prayer.
Piper saw the throw and didn’t take it.
“Fuck me,” he said under his breath.
He pulled the ball down and ran.
He hadn’t run a quarterback sneak into the end zone in two years, and the rust showed. Piper Ashton was not an improvisational running quarterback, always fearing injury, but today he had to do what he had to do.
He crossed the goal line at a full sprint with his head down and the corner’s hand on his hip and the safety closing from the other side, and he went down in a skid of mud and water six feet inside the end line with the ball tucked against his arm, and he was already thinking about the next drive before the whistle blew. Touchdown.
Tank was there first, in the mud, pulling him to his feet, and Piper was laughing, briefly, because the adrenaline was still pulsing through his body.
The head coach nodded and smacked the back of Piper’s helmet. Score: Seattle 7, L.A. 7.
Forty-one seconds until half.
Seattle came out throwing.
Noah threw for ten yards down field. The rain appeared to lift for a second, a break in the cadence that both sidelines felt, and Noah threw into a tight gap, and the ball got there with four inches to spare before the safety closed.
Fifteen yards. He spiked the next one to stop the clock with twelve seconds left.
Then the rain came back with a vengeance.
Piper was watching from the sideline with his hood up and he saw the rain visibly accelerate across the field, a front moving from one end to the other in real time. It was coming. It was going to be a problem.
Noah didn’t flinch as the rain picked up.
He took the snap with eight seconds left and threw the ball to the sideline at the forty-six because that was as close as Seattle was going to get and he needed to stop the clock, and the kicker came out, and the kicker missed the field goal as a wind gust pushed the ball to the left as the crowd held their breath.
The half ended. Score: Seattle 7, L.A. 7.
***
The locker room was angry.
Nobody talked at first, the first half had taken it out of all of them.
The coordinator was standing in the middle of the room with a whiteboard and was waiting for the room to be ready for him.
Tank sat down next to Piper.
“Nice work out there keeping us in it.”
“I need to do fucking better,” Piper replied.
“Better ask Joan about it,” Tank whispered into Piper's ear as he placed his hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
The coach started his half time pep talk.
“They’re going to bring the house in the third. Whatever you think about tonight when it’s over, this is the one, this is our shot at the playoffs, it’s win and in. Each one of you needs to remember that!”
***
They came out for the second half under a sky that had gone entirely black.
Piper watched Seattle come out first, and Noah come out last. They still hadn’t made eye contact during the game.
Piper could feel the coldness, like they had never had that moment months before at their first meeting.
The wink was not forgotten as far as Piper was concerned.
It changed Piper in a way he was still processing.
The rain was coming down in waves now as the wind gust pushed it from side to side.
Whatever cadence Piper had been playing at in the first half was not going to work anymore.
Tank came up beside him.
“Fuck Seattle,” Tank said.
“Fuck Seattle,” Piper replied.
They jogged out. The third quarter was about to start, the rain was getting harder, and Noah Reyes was standing on the opposite sideline with his helmet under his arm looking across the field at him, and Piper met his eyes, across the distance, and didn’t look away.
Finally, he fucking looked, Piper thought as he put on his helmet.