The Trigger Effect
© 2005 By Ken Glassmeyer
© 2005 By Ken Glassmeyer
CHAPTER ONE
Armen looked up from the huddle. Coach Grabowski was working with the first-string defensive backs and linebackers, exhorting them with his usual drill instructor demeanor. While he rarely cussed, he could make the most innocent words blaze whenever his players let him down. Brewster was calling the next play they would run. It was a sweep to the right and a cocky smile slanted across Armen’s lips. This was their money play—at least it used to be before Kellen Winslow got kicked off the team last week. Winslow claimed he quit, but that was only because he was about to be removed after his third suspension in just four weeks of school.
Kellen had been their fullback. He and Armen once had a great on-field relationship. The former fullback was built like a fireplug and had a punishing speed that made for the perfect lead blocker and short gainer. In fact, he had most of the team’s touchdowns, but Armen often rushed for three hundred or more yards per game when running behind him.
The big fullback had run with rage whether or not he was carrying the ball. He was a very angry young man that enjoyed bruising the other team into submission. It was that constant fury that put the two complementary players at odds off the field as people. The boy was bad news and lived in the wrong part of the neighborhood. Even his DNA had been against him. His dad, uncle and older brother were all serving hard time in state prison, and Kellen had already served a few stints at the county reformatory school. It used to be that he cleaned up his act come football season, but now not even the fall held sway over his criminal instincts. The sad part was that Kellen was probably the smartest athlete in the school, but all that raw intelligence didn’t protect him from the thug life.
The Winslow name was already infamous at Sally Ride Middle School even before it had been renamed after the astronaut over the summer. Kellen did his family proud when he established the rare accolade of being the only kid in school history that failed to make the honor roll not because his grades were poor, but because he was suspended for more than ten days per quarter and ended up force failed by school policy. In seventh grade he had been disqualified from the debate team after he punched one of his own teammates in the face for being too stupid to sit next to him at the table.
Then there was the time Kellen had taught their fifth grade teacher algebra at the board when old Mrs. White had scolded him for not showing his work on their homework. She had accused him of just guessing at the right answer and demanded that he go to the blackboard and work the problem out just like the book showed. With smugness, he explained that the textbook was dumber than her and showed the way he could eliminate four of the steps with one simple equation, which even an idiot like her should be able to work in their head. That had been good for a two-day vacation, compliments of the office. Most of the kids in the room had laughed when Mrs. White fled the classroom sobbing, but Armen didn’t. He grabbed the tissue box from the teacher’s desk and followed after her. He saw her dash around to an alcove and he approached her holding the box out offering her a tissue for the tears she was trying to hide with a swipe of her forearm.
What drove him crazy is that after Mrs. White thanked him for bringing the Kleenex, she actually started blaming herself and making excuses for Kellen! All he saw in Kellen was wasted talent. Armen didn’t really like the kid, even before all the trouble started this year, otherwise, he might have actually shed a few tears over Kellen’s story. He had a rough life too, but that didn't give him permission to be a jerk and mess up the school and tear up the neighborhood.
Brewster looked over at him as he finished delivering the call and cadence in the huddle. He slapped down on Armen’s right shoulder pad.
“Get your head in the game, Soda.”
“My head is just fine.”
A couple of the offensive lineman seemed about to make his response into a snappy little joke that involved his nickname until Armen fixed them with a level gaze. Armen looked across the huddle at the new fullback, a pudgy little seventh grader with wide doe eyes that made him look like an escaped zoo baby lost in the city.
Brewster saw his glance and read his mind.
“You miss Kellen—told you so, bro.”
“Not enough to want him back on the team.”
Brewster frowned.
“Yeah, well you’re not the one that has to face a blitz with pudgy there as your only protection in the backfield. I know you liked running behind him, Soda even if he scored more times than you.”
The new fullback was too busy being afraid of the second string defense they were scrimmaging to be offended by the quarterback’s insult. His eyes seemed to get even bigger and Brewster and Armen followed his darting eyes to where the defense was lined up on the line in a formation that looked more like a sketch of an amoeba in their biology notebook than the fearsome 5-2 that Porter Middle School would be throwing at them next week. Brewster and Armen looked over the huddle to follow the fat little fullback’s frightened gaze. There they saw the front three interior defensive lineman of the second string they were scrimmaging. The nose guard had his kneepads over his thighs and his thigh pads over his knees. His mouthpiece actually appeared to be in upside down. The lineman to the right of him was alternately picking his nose and scratching his crotch, when he wasn’t admiring the latest nose nugget he had mined. The other lineman was no longer in position as he was chasing a field mouse or a chipmunk to the sideline trying to feed it a handful of clover and dandelion. It was going to be a long season if any other starter left the team.
They were just about to break their huddle when what looked like a gorilla on a street bike flew past them. Then ape-like figure darted across the field on a silver bike with blazing speed. Armen followed the figure as he headed toward the woods, his large body pummeling the too small bike he was squatted on. He turned back to Brewster and the huddle hoping that at least the offensive line would block correctly so he wouldn’t be embarrassed by the paper curtain defense. He didn’t want to look sillier than a monkey riding a bike.
Suddenly he heard the coach blowing his whistle sharply while also yelling through it. The pea in the whistle rattled violently making it difficult to translate the exact curse the coach was trying to express just before the red-faced man spat the whistle out and trotted off the field and faced the trail that connected the practice field to the school through the small but thick wooded area. Coach G. was soon bellowing at the top of his lungs. Armen walked away from the huddle were Brewster was calmly explaining to the new fullback how he was to execute the next play. At first he thought the coach’s ire was being launched once again at the benchwarmers that couldn’t even play on the laughable second-string squad. Those clowns tended to goof off more than practice and learn, but looking to his left he saw that for once they were all taking a knee and paying attention to one of the assistant coaches as he explained the sled drill they were about to run.
“What’s up, Soda?” Brewster called after him when he realized the tailback he would pitch the ball to on the right sweep, was no longer in the huddle.
“Coach is after somebody, but I can’t see who it is.”
“It probably that fool Jenkins again. Let it go. That lame’s got it comin’. Man, we warned him in the locker room to quit clownin’ during practice.”
“It isn’t Jeren—coach is real pissed, and he sounds a little bit scared.”
“Coach scared? Nah.” Now the whole huddle reconvened around Armen down on slope away from the field.
“Hey, I think that kid on the bike was Kellen. He’s supposed to be suspended. Dude is crazy, when old man Harris finds out he was on grounds he won’t be just suspended—he’ll be gone. My auntie says he’s headed to Serenity House the next time he messes up, too,” Bobbie Tyler offered.
Armen was about to comment on the fact that Kellen probably had a season pass for the county reformatory school when coach Smith trotted over to them.
“Brewster, Hammer! What are you guys doing over there? You are supposed to be running the eagle series not standing around like a bunch of Kansas City f. . .”
Armen and Scott didn’t turn to look at the assistant coach. Their eyes remained fixed on the heated exchange going on down on the path.
“Relax, Coach Smith! It’s G. I think he might need your help down on the hill. Kellen Win. . .”
“I’m on my way. You guys get back up here. Run some sled drills with the seventh graders. Who’s got a cell phone in their bag?”
The players stood around sheepishly looking at each other.
“It wasn’t a trick question. No one will run sprints.”
Four of the boys peeled out of the huddle and ran towards the sideline where book bags and street clothes were stacked on the benches to get the cell phones they were never supposed to have on school property.
Brewster looked over at the assistant coach with wary eyes.
“Man, you’re not going to call 5-0?”
Coach Smith smiled at his quarterback patiently.
“No, not yet. But I want Kellen to think I’m calling the cops.”
Armen took two more steps toward the coach and the kid on the bike. The coach fell to the ground in sudden lump. Armen looked at Coach Smith with a face that had turned to gray ash as he flipped his helmet off and to the ground.
“Forget the trick, call 911 now! Grabowski is on the ground and it looks like he’s been shot.” Armen took off for the coach faster than he had ever run the ball. The figure on the bike was speeding around the building and out toward the street. The coach was on the ground and he wasn’t moving.
