Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream Read Online Free PDF Page A

players on the team,
herded him into the trainer's room to try to calm him down, to
somehow salvage what little of his psyche hadn't already been
destroyed.
    Boobie stood in the corner of the darkened room with his
arms folded and his head turned down toward the floor, as if
protecting himself from any more pain. "I quit, coach, they got
a good season goin'," he said, his tone filled with the quiet hurt
of a child who can't process the shame of what has happened
except to run from it.
    "Come on, man, don't do this."
    "Why'd [Gaines] play me the last weekend and the weekend
before that?"
    "I know how hard it is. Don't quit now. Come on."
    "That's why I'm gonna quit. They can do it without me."
    "Everything's gonna be all right. Everybody knows how it
feels to be on the sidelines when he should he out there."
    "Could have hurt [my knee] last week, could have hurt it the
week before. He didn't think about it then."
    "You'll be all right. Just hang tough for now. The team needs
you. You know we need you. Use your head. Don't let one night
destroy everything."

    "Why not just quit?"
    "This is one game. We got six games down the line."
    "Six games to sit on the sidelines."
    "We're almost there and now you want to do this, don't do
this."
    "Next week it ain't gonna be a new story because I ain't gonna
play. ,Just leave me alone, and I'll get out of here."
    "You can't walk off now, in the middle of a game. You just
can't walk off in the middle of a game."
    "I'm just gonna leave because I ain't gonna sit on the sidelines
for no one. I see what it's all about.
    "What's it all about?"
    "I'm a guinea pig."
    It went on a little longer, Hearne's heartfelt understanding
in contrast to the attitude of most of the other members of the
Permian football staff who derided Boobie, who had grown
weary of his emotional outbursts and privately called him lazy,
and stupid, and shiftless, and selfish, and casually described
him as just another "dumb nigger" if he couldn't carry a football under his arm.
    Reluctantly, Boobie left the trainer's room and walked back
out to the dressing room. Without emotion, he put on his hip
pads and shoulder pads. Carefully, meticulously, he tucked his
TERMINATOR x towel into the belt of his pants and put that ridiculous costume back on again because that's what it was now,
a costume, a Halloween outfit. He went back out on the field,
but it no longer had any promise. When players tried to talk to
him, he said nothing. The Rebels scored early in the fourth
quarter on a one-yard run to take a one-point lead, 22-21.
The Lee hand broke into "Dixie" and the taunting chant, now
stronger than ever, resumed:
    "REB-ELS! REB-ELS! REB-ELS!"
    With about six minutes left Permian moved to a first and ten
at the Lee 18, but the drive stalled and a thirty-yard field goal
was blocked.
    Permian got the ball back at its own 26 with 2:55 left in the game, but instead of confidence in the huddle there was fear.
Chavez could see it in the eyes of the offensive linemen. He
tapped them on the helmet and said, "Com'on, let's get it, this
is it." But he could tell they weren't listening. The game was
slipping away.

    They were going to lose. They were goddamn going to lose
and everything they had worked for for the past six years of
their lives, everything they cared about, was about to be ruined.
    Winchell, after the glorious touchdown pass he had thrown,
now seemed hunted by failure. His face was etched in agony,
the passes coming off his hand in a tentative, jerky motion,
thrown desperately without rhythm. The Lee fans were on
their feet. There was the incessant beat of the drums from the
band. Both sides were screaming their hearts out.
    "REB-ELS! REB-ELS!"
    "MO-JO! MO JO!"
    How could a seventeen-year-old kid concentrate at a moment
like this amid the frenzy of fifteen thousand fans? How could
he possibly keep his poise?
    With a third and ten at the Lee 41, flanker Robert Brown
broke free down