The Final Play Read online

  North could never be part of such a franchise of the callous and ignorant. He had, instead, turned to science, where equations and formulas of exacting precision could be relied upon and pursued alongside an opportunity for new discoveries at a level that had absolutely no peer in the universe. For instance, every scientist knew what mass was, yet no scientist had ever seen energy, only the effects of it on mass. The possibilities were so great that North nearly wept every time he thought of them. Therefore, it was upon science and not upon history that North had decided to wield his massive intellect. It was actually the best of both worlds for him: a foundation of iron upon which to plant his feet, and a sky without limit for which he could reach.

  North knelt in the grass and studiously surveyed the exact spot where Herschel Ruggles had fielded that kickoff forty years before while playing the Howling Cougars of Appalachian Valley Tech. Long before he and Swift had broken the record, North had read every available account of the incident, and there were many, of varying reliability and specificity. North had spoken with anyone he could find who had actually been in attendance on that unforgettable day, including his own father. From all these sources, North had pieced together the events leading up to Ruggles’s vanishing. North also had Ruggles’s entire touchdown run diagrammed in his mind.

  Ruggles had fielded the ball three yards deep in the end zone. The Howling Cougars kicker at the time had possessed quite a leg and actually went on to play professional ball, first with the Packers and then with Johnny Unitas and the Colts. He routinely kicked the ball into the end zone, and he had never had one taken back all the way on him.

  Carrying the ball as he always did in his right hand, Ruggles had cut to his left, picked up his blocking wedge, and ridden it to the Johns’ thirty-one-yard line, where his protection finally had broken down. At that critical point Ruggles did something that had characterized his entire football career at Draven. Tightly scripted offensive schemes went out the window and pure instinct took over.

  Ruggles reversed field, running naked, for all the Johns had committed to the left side. The fact was most of them were down on the ground already, having sacrificed their bodies for what had been a respectable return. Given the time on the clock and the Johns only down by four, thanks to a missed two-point conversion by the Howling Cougars, things were looking pretty fair for the Mighty Johns and their high-powered offense, headed up by tailback Herschel Ruggles, their only bona fide All-American gridiron legend. Yet what was respectable to ordinary mortals was far from acceptable to a man of Ruggles’s ability and drive.

  It was known across the football conference that Ruggles’s ambition, if not obsession, was to score on every single play. And while of course he didn’t, some Saturday afternoons it seemed like the man accomplished this lofty goal. Yet he had scored at least three touchdowns in every collegiate game he had ever played, and once had scored six times in a single half. Against Nebraska! Fully two-thirds of the season ticket holders at Draven were there solely to watch him perform. And Ruggles well knew it. From everything North had been able to discover, Herschel Ruggles was not a man who lacked confidence. It was often that way with demigods, reasoned North, particularly those of the athletic kind.

  North stood and then started to pantomime the remainder of Ruggles’s legendary run into the records book. He cut from the left sideline and began a race to the middle of the field near the thirty-five. Before he got there, however, an ambitious Howling Cougar had launched what should have been a successful ankle tackle on Ruggles at the left hash mark. Truth was, he should have had Ruggles dead to rights, according to a fan who had seen it, and whom North had interviewed. What he ended up with, said the now very elderly man, was an armful of nothing but crisp Pennsylvania air as Ruggles leapt right over him. Leapt right over him! By a good two feet, declared the man. Not even Michael Jordan could have done that, the old-timer added, not with all the bells and whistles athletes these days got.

  Back then, after a game, all the players would sit around smoking and drinking beer and eating fattening food. There were no strength trainers, no weightlifting rooms, no dieticians, not one shoe contract, just towering men who played the game with all their enormous hearts because they loved it more than they loved their own mothers. Herschel Ruggles was just such a man, pronounced the old fan. Hell, he had leapt over that Howling Cougar by a damn good three feet!

  North attempted such a jump himself, and though there was no opponent seeking to take out his legs, he almost fell. Agility had never been a strong suit of his. The next player who had had a shot at Ruggles was a starting middle linebacker carrying thirty more pounds than his target and who also had decent wheels. A stiff arm, the likes of which no one had seen outside of a Bronko Nagurski bone-crushing jaunt, had left the determined linebacker flat on his back and the crowd stunned, according to several other fans North had spoken with. North also had succeeded in tracking down the former Howling Cougar who actually had been the recipient of this violent if legal blow. The fellow had remembered every second of it, he had told North with seemingly bountiful pride. Indeed, the man had remarked that it was one of the high points of his life. The former Howling Cougar linebacker was now a successful automobile dealer just across the state line in Ohio, so the man presumably had had his share of triumphs in life. Yet being pounded into the earth by Ruggles apparently ranked right up there with all of them.

  North belted his imaginary foe and kept right on going. The next two obstacles were a pair of Howling Cougars who had been slow coming down on the kickoff and thus, ironically, were in a position to make the key stop on Ruggles. The mightiest Mighty John, however, had other plans. Ruggles had thrown a damn near perfect Crazy Legs Hirsch scissors move, split the pair of defenders, and then was gone like a flash of ship’s light in a vicious, unforgiving fog.

  The two Cougars ended up colliding, and probably each one thought he had made the tackle on Ruggles. After that Ruggles burst through two more tacklers, knocking both men unconscious with the ferocity of his attack, because even though he was carrying the ball and was the presumptive target, that was not how Ruggles played the game. When it was your task to stop him, you became the target for him to destroy, which he often did, with complete and unassailable finality.

  Finally, the kicker himself had the last legitimate shot at Ruggles yet missed badly after biting on a feint and falling flat on his face. Some said that during his long professional career afterward this same kicker never again attempted another tackle, due solely to his embarrassment at the hands of Ruggles that day. After that it was a mere foot race, and the Olympian speed with which Ruggles was endowed left absolutely no doubt as to the outcome.

  North mimicked that race, albeit far slower than had Ruggles, and as the greatest of the Mighty Johns had done four decades ago, he crossed the goal line, his heart pounding with vicarious triumph.

  The next movements were critical, and North took a few minutes to ponder them. The truly extraordinary fact was that Ruggles had not stopped there. He had not merely tossed the ball to the waiting referee and trotted back to the bench as Jimmy Swift had done. Ruggles had continued running, ball in hand, into the passageway that led deep underneath Herschel Ruggles Field and to the Mighty Johns’ locker room.

  The stadium was renamed from simply Johns Grounds ten years prior when North’s father, Peter, a wealthy businessman, had given a large sum of money to the school.

  A decent two-way lineman with a heart far larger than his physical talent, and a former teammate and friend of Ruggles, Peter North had said, at the time of the field’s christening in Ruggles’s memory, that it was the proudest moment of his life, and a way that would forever keep alive Herschel Ruggles, wherever he happened to be, and regardless of whatever had happened to him. “A great man, an athlete of near-mythical proportion, a scholar of outstanding reputation, and a young man as compassionate and giving off the field as he was predominate and prolific on it,” said a truly moved Peter North. It was a sp
eech that had driven the crowd to tears, including North, who had been only eleven at the time. Not yet fully aware at the time of his mental prowess, that chilly fall day North had made a silent promise to his father that when he felt his skills were suitably developed, the son would once and for all discover the truth of what had happened to a man his beloved father had described as “someone who even more than my own father had the greatest influence over me, and without whom I would not have achieved the success I have today. God Bless Herschel Ruggles, and all those like him, though they would most certainly have to be few in number.”

  The crowd had cheered even as it had wept.

  As North stared at the opening down which Ruggles had run and never returned, a slight chill hit him. Certainly, only a few at the school would know all the nooks and crannies, rooms and passageways, that lay under the stadium. The college had been funded and built by the coal-mining baron John Milton Draven—both the source of the school’s name and the identity of its athletic teams. It had opened in 1930, a year after the Great Depression began.

  Draven had been near maniacal in his building plans, and the earth on which the university was situated, had been gouged open to a great depth by the large machinery from the mogul’s mining company. To such an extent, in fact, that what had been carved out beneath the ground could be said to be almost as elaborate as what lay above it.

  Most folks attributed that to Draven’s background. He had started out as a humble miner, digging out the black rock with a pick and later dynamite. Shrewd and ambitious, he had parlayed his skill at pinpointing enormous veins of coal into enough money to purchase a few choice tracts of land in the Alleghenies. One of these parcels had turned out to be lying above the largest geological trap of both coal and natural gas ever discovered up to that time, and had propelled its fortunate owner into the rarefied financial universe of the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. Yet Draven had never forgotten his roots, and his money cascaded down not upon America’s metropolises, but on the poor and disadvantaged of the country’s Appalachian coal-mining regions. Draven, forever remembered as tall and regal, white haired since the age of thirty, and bearing a striking physical resemblance to Walt Whitman, had explained his construction of these underground labyrinths by stating that the basis of his fortune had originated from there, and the happiest times of his life had come when he was beneath the dirt. Thus, he had added to great humorous effect, he not only did not fear his death, he was actually looking forward to it, as he would be returning to the very place he cherished most in the world, and that had so enriched him.

  His inevitable detractors claimed that Old Draven was a cunning sociopath, interested only in his own well-being and adding to his already deep purse—despite his outward philanthropy, which was not nearly as great as reported, they claimed. These same sources also alleged that the real reason Draven had dug the earth out so much when constructing the school was that he believed precious minerals were buried there, just waiting for a nimble hand to pluck them.

  Whatever the truth actually was, his enemies had the last laugh, for a very elderly John Milton Draven had been buried alive during a visit to one of his Pennsylvania mines, the Gloria No. 3, named in honor of his wife of the same number. His body and those of his entire party of twelve—not including the fortunate Gloria, who had stayed home—were recovered several weeks later. The evidence showed they had lived for perhaps a week, until their air and presumably their hope had given out. There was some indication, as culled from the results of Draven’s autopsy, that the rich man had actually been strangled. Those who had spent considerable time with the hot-tempered Draven—though not in nearly such close quarters as a small pocket of life a hundred feet underground—did not rule such a fate out of the question.

  North felt the gaze upon him before he heard or saw anyone.

  “Something on your mind, young man?”

  Chapter 4

  T​HE OLD FELLOW STARING at North was badly stooped, though it was clear he had once possessed an impressive physique. In the bent torso North could sense intense pain. And yet the man’s features betrayed not a trace of agony. He looked to be in his seventies, his hair a carpet of straggly gray and white. The face was a jumble of mismatched parts. The eyes were too large for the face, and the forehead was too short and spare in dimension when aligned against the slope of nose and width of skull. By contrast, the jutting chin was a shelf of intimidating proportion, and the jaw was so geometrically perfect it seemed carved by a jeweler’s wheel. His long, stained fingers were wrapped around the handle of a broom. He held the tool, it seemed to North, like it was a part of him, an appendage of planed maple to go with the deformed body; perhaps it was necessary support, for the legs looked too spindly to be of much practical use.

  “Something on your mind, young man?” he asked again, taking a few hesitant steps forward.

  North rose and headed over to the man, who was just outside the entrance of the immortal passageway through which Ruggles had raced to his apparent doom.

  “You’re one of them football players, ain’t you?”

  “Merlin North. First string outside linebacker and second string offensive guard.”

  “Merlin? Don’t hear that name much.”

  North looked a bit embarrassed. “I was named after Merlin Olsen. He was a member of the legendary Fearsome Foursome defensive front with the LA Rams back in the sixties. He was my dad’s favorite NFL player. My friends call me Merl.”

  “Right. Hey, you’re the one what threw that block sprung Jimmy Swift, ain’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Helluva hit, young man. Ain’t seen one like it for years.”

  “Probably since Herschel Ruggles played,” commented North with what he hoped was delicate inducement.

  “Oh, I ain’t been here that long. Heard about him, though. Hell, who ain’t heard of that feller? Legend, I guess you’d call him.”

  “Exactly how long have you lived around here?”

  The man leaned forward more on his broom handle, as though for additional support if the two were going to stand there jawing for a bit.

  “Oh, ’bout a year now. Surprised you ain’t seen me before. I do the cleaning ’round the stadium.”

  North looked around the large complex. “Just you?”

  “No, not just me, young feller. But even though I ain’t been here all that long, I know the ins and outs of this place better’n just about anybody.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “Because I took the time to learn it, that’s why.” The man’s eyes sparkled under the litter of oddly cut hair.

  North glanced down the tunnel. “Find anything interesting while you were doing your learning?”

  The man looked behind him, following North’s gaze. “Depends on what you call interesting. But it lights my fire.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Benny, Benny James. Folks call me BJ. You g’on and do that too.”

  “Okay, BJ, what if I wanted a little tour through the stadium? Would you take me?”

  BJ cocked a fuzzy eyebrow at him. “You play football here every Saturday. Ain’t you know the place by now?”

  “No, I mean that part of the stadium.” North pointed down the tunnel. “Past the locker room and the tape room and the laundry. Further on, into the bowels of the place, so to speak.”

  BJ moved his broom forward an inch or so before once more resting his chin on the handle. “Why you want to do that?”

  North tried to appear casual. “Like you said, it lights your fire. Maybe it’ll light mine.”

  “Young feller like yourself, should be getting your fire lit with the pretty young things running ’round here. Cheerleaders and such. They go for the fellers in the uniform on Saturday afternoon.”

  “So you played football?”

  “Nah, wanted to, but ain’t got what it takes. Too light in the bones, can’t run worth a spit, and bleed too easy. I just watch, but I’m a good watcher
. Over my time seen all the great ones play.”

  “So you’ve traveled quite a bit?”

  BJ took a few moments to sweep up some paper shreds next to the tunnel entrance and scooped them into a dustpan, which he then emptied into a trash can sitting next to the last row of seats on the lower level. “I get around. Big country, like to see what I can of it before I kick off.”

  “So will you show me the underground part of the stadium?”

  BJ steadied himself on the broom handle before answering. “I tell you what, you come see me tomorrow night right here around nine, I see what I can do.”

  “Why at night?”

  “Got to work during the day. Don’t worry, there’s light in there.” He added quietly, “At least in most of the places. We get to the others then we use flashlights.” He seemed to appraise North keenly. “You game?”

  North stifled a chill deep inside of him before answering his new friend and now informal scout, BJ. “I’m game.”

  Chapter 5

  A​ SLASH OF HEAT LIGHTNING, unusual for this time of year, greeted North as he made his way to meet BJ. The man was not there when North arrived at the entrance. He took a cautious step forward into the tunnel. Though he had been down that passageway many times, after games and practices, something did not feel quite right. Perhaps it was as simple as the fact that he had never before been down here alone.