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1

Zeb Williams kicked the turf with the tip of his cleat and thought about what was underneath. The field used to be real green, but the school switched it to the Brillo Pad when Zeb got to UC Berkeley in ’81. He thought that was lousy, since he’d mostly learned the game on grass. But he also had experience with dirt, mud, pavement. He’d gone down on a lot of sidewalks growing up, face smashed into the curb. The Italians would make fun of his bruises but shut right up when they saw how good he was with a ball. Soccer wasn’t his thing; basketball sometimes, but what he was really good at was any game when he had to throw and catch. He started playing football at Riordan in the city when the coaches discovered he could also kick. Even cross-­country his freshman year. On top of the rest, it turned out he could run, too.

He took a deep breath in through his nose and wished the field was natural so he could smell it a little bit. Right then it would’ve made him feel like he was in the right place, about to kick an extra point.

“You ready, Two?” said Bear Thomas, the holder, jogging in place while the last seconds of the time-­out ticked.

The joke on Bear was always “Hey, Bear, what would you do if your mama named you Bruin?” Or “Duck,” or “Trojan.” And then, when they really wanted to piss him off: “She should’ve named you Cardinal after all.”

Now, though, no one was joking, and Bear was jacked up; Zeb watched him hit his palm against the side of his helmet, still dancing around in his spot.

Zeb raised his head about an inch but cast his eyes up higher, toward the stands, and suddenly he could hear all the people. Sixty-­five thousand, they told him. That’s what they were expecting. It always surprised him, the sound that that many people made. Most of the time, it was one continuous noise that hushed and rose to a shriek, over and over, like a fighter jet flying back and forth.

Carmen was up there somewhere. She seemed too refined for cheering. Although, since they started dating, she’d told him it was hard for her to watch the games because she got so nervous about the outcome. Apparently, she’d never cared that much before.

He smiled behind his face mask, thinking about her. He liked her because she was so honest. Other girls only talked about what they thought he wanted to hear: game stats; odds; recruiting news. Or they’d do their best not to care less, too preoccupied by modern dance or politics or whatever they studied. It would not have occurred to Carmen to pretend to be cool. She would be just fine in life.

Which brought him back: what was underneath the turf? He’d heard it was a thin layer of rubber below the Brillo. Below that, gravel. Below that, concrete. Below that, dirt. Below that, below that . . .

The time-­out was done. Bear clapped his hands once.

“Go,” he said to Zeb, then squatted, waiting for the snap.

Zeb nodded, glancing up at the board. 6–­6. 4th quarter. 7 seconds. The Stanford kicker was already in the doghouse for missing his extra point, all the love from the fans dried up the second the ball sailed just past the left goalpost. Could be me, thought Zeb. Could be any of us at any time.

He shook out his hands and his feet and then kept a little bend in his knees, left foot in front of the right, torso leaning forward.

Buck Reinhart snapped the ball, and Bear caught it, set it upright, and held his right arm out like he always did, like he was balancing the ball with the power of his mind.

Zeb waited. On the clock it took less than a second, but time on the field was different. Sometimes he felt like it might be a new year out in the world by the time the game was finally over.

He stepped forward—left, right, left—but instead of kicking with his right, he leaned down all the way and grabbed the ball with one hand, gave Bear a shove with the other. Bear tumbled to the ground in shock.

Zeb looked down at the ball tucked nice and snug in his forearm, then back up at the clock. 4 seconds now. He didn’t have much time at all.

He turned around and started to run, headed for Stanford’s end zone.

He heard Bear yelling as he chased him; Bear had been a corner in high school, too, so he was fast, but not as fast as Zeb. He could see the Cal defense coming for him off the sidelines: Jimmy Moffat the tackle, Roger Swain the outside linebacker, flags falling at their feet. If they caught him they’d crush him—hitting the turf wasn’t like hitting the grass. It would be Jasper Alley in the city all over again, with the Italians piled on top of him, all of them giddy with the game, laughing away how much it hurt.

His teammates weren’t laughing. They were screaming his name, at first Roger Swain shouting, “Wrong way, Two, wrong way!” It had happened before, players getting disoriented after a sack and charging for the wrong end of the field, but when Zeb didn’t stop or slow down, Roger and the rest seemed to realize this wasn’t a mistake.

The sound from the crowd had taken on a sky-­high pitch—to Zeb they sounded like the spaceship’s laser from War of the Worlds when it fried up the priest. Only louder.

Thirty, twenty, ten.

Some of the Stanford band and cheerleaders stood scattered in the end zone, confused, sipping cans of beer, tossing pom-­poms into the air carelessly.

Zeb spotted a narrow route between a cheerleader and a guy holding a trombone and accelerated, lighter with each step. That was one thing he could say for the turf—it didn’t cling to the cleats like grass and dirt did, gave him a spring when he landed on the balls of his feet.

He barreled into the end zone, the screech of the crowd higher and louder than before, the refs’ whistles shrieking. People began to jump down from the stands onto the field, dropping over the wall.

Zeb threw the ball backward over his shoulder, knowing it would be impossible for his teammates to resist catching it, like bridesmaids with a bouquet, even though the game was over now.

He pumped his arms, free of the ball, heading for the passage he’d scoped out, but then the trombone player moved, the hand slide sticking right into Zeb’s path.

Zeb crashed into the musician’s shoulder and knocked the instrument out of his hand but kept heading for the exit. He caught a whiff of a cheerleader’s hairspray—strong, like rubbing alcohol. He heard the clash of his teammates against the band and the cheerleaders, the thumps of them hitting the ground. He didn’t look back but imagined them all tangled, some laughing, others peeling themselves off the turf to keep up the chase.

Into the corridor, and instead of making a right to the locker room, he ran straight into the parking lot and slowed down for a few seconds to hop on one foot and then the other, pulling off his cleats and tossing them to the ground. He stripped off his jersey and threw it up in the air as he gained speed, heading for the edge of the lot, still hearing the collective shriek of the crowd. He thought about running to Piedmont Avenue, where he might be able to blend in with the kids, or running a little farther, to Carmen’s sorority, to wait for her. He thought about running all the way to the interstate, figured it was about three miles. He thought about running across the Bay Bridge to the city, back to Jasper Alley, where he grew up, and maybe when he got there he’d get to see all the kids he grew up with, and maybe they wouldn’t have changed at all, still ten or eleven or twelve years old, still cracking crude jokes and chugging Coke from the bottle, wrapping their old footballs with masking tape to stop the air leaks. Maybe they’d be right on the corner where he left them, and when he finally made it there, they’d see him running toward them and say, “Where ya been, Zeb?”