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president of sales for Meador Pharmaceutical Company, lifted his Wild Turkey and water, peered through its amber lens at the glittering bottles across from him, and said, “God, that was a good day. That . . . maybe . . . was the best day of my life.”
    The man sitting next to him smiled at the mirror across the bar. A fat man with an odd name Teach had now forgotten.
    It was the end of a long week, and Teach was tired. Here he was in a pretty good bar, Malone’s, in an unfamiliar part of Tampa, lifting his fourth bourbon—or was it his fifth?—and talking to a stranger about the good old days. The days when Jimmy Teach, a walk-on from little Cedar Key, Florida, had quarterbacked the Gators to an SEC championship and two bowl games.
    On his best day, against Auburn in Shug Jordan Stadium, Teach had thrown for three touchdowns and rushed for one. Everything had worked for Jimmy Teach that day. His feet dancing the backfield, his arm a gun firing tight spirals through the crisp fall air into the hands of his fast friends in Gator blue and orange.
    He finished the story: “So, I called a quarterback sneak and just put my head down and prayed to my Jesus, and the next thing I know I’m lying in the end zone with my ears ringing, and the ref’s hands are reaching straight up to heaven.”
    The fat man’s smile applauded the story. Teach shrugged and threw in some humility. “Hell, what was it that guy said? Half of it’s just showing up? ” He grinned, noticing the man’s pricey olive-green suit and tropical tie. Teach’s wife, Paige, would have known the three places within a hundred miles where you could buy the suit and probably the name of the designer. Would have known. Paige had been dead a year now, and thinking of it, remembering that next week was the anniversary of her death, Teach felt guilty about the best day of his life. Why wasn’t it the day of his marriage? The day of his daughter’s birth? He shook his head and said, “Who was it said that thing about showing up? You remember?”
    The guy smiled again, showing his teeth, a little rabbity on top, the lower jaw undershot. “No, I don’t. But I do think it was a rock star.” The accent was Savannah or Charleston. The man had said, Rock stahhh.
    In his present state, Teach liked the accent. It was funny. He tapped the bar with his glass for another bourbon. “Hell, enough about football. No great deed goes unpunished.”
    He examined his right hand, the one that had thrown the bullet passes, the one with the half-moon cleat scar on the back. The hand had been stomped by an Ole Miss linebacker, a stomp applied with purpose and glee. “I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten your name.”
    The fat man said, “Trey McLuster.”
    McLustuh. Teach liked it, that old Charleston music.
    McLuster looked at Teach and smiled the fan smile. That knowing, loving smile. The guy wanted to touch him. Teach knew it from years of times like this, though not so frequent anymore. The guy wanted to squeeze the arm that had thrown the high tight spiral that had settled as soft as cotton fluff into the hands of Digger Dupree in the FSU end zone with three seconds on the clock and bookies dying of cardiac arrest all over the Great Republic.
    Then McLuster said, “Screw rock stars. Tell me about the time you beat Miami in that hellacious rainstorm. That must have been something.”
    So Teach told it. How the ball was heavy with the rain, and slick as a Suwannee River catfish, but he’d completed nineteen of twenty-three and led the Gators to a squeaker 14–13 victory over a team that bettered them in size and speed. Bettered them on paper. But football games, he told the man next to him, weren’t played on paper. They were played on grass in real weather against men whose skill and courage equaled yours or didn’t.
    Teach lifted his glass and gazed into it. Christ, he’d had more to drink than he’d intended. More than he was used to. His companion was quiet now,