Free Football Fugitive by Matt Christopher

1
    G ame time was drawing nearer and nearer. And Larry Shope was getting more nervous by the minute.
    He paced the room like a caged animal, glancing now and then out of the big plate-glass window. The sun was out and a breeze
     was blowing. You couldn’t ask for better football weather.
    “Larry,” a voice said calmly, breaking into his thoughts.
    He stopped pacing and looked at his mother, a tall, slim woman with black,shoulder-length hair. She was standing on the threshold of the door leading to the kitchen.
    “You’re going to wear a groove in that rug if you don’t stop pacing back and forth like that,” she said.
    “What time is it?” he asked, fighting to control his nervousness.
    She glanced at the clock in the kitchen. “Ten after four,” she said, looking at him with a sunflower smile. “Don’t you think
     you should be getting into your uniform?”
    “Yeah,” he said.
    He went to his room and started to take off his clothes, his fingers trembling as he unlaced his shoes and unbuttoned his
     shirt. He wondered if his father would come home from his office in the city and offer him a word of cheer.
Good luck, son. Play hard and you’ll come home a winner.
    Forget it. Dad was too busy with his very busy, very important law practice to think about him and
his
old football game.
    He pulled on his pants, drew up the front laces, put on his shoulder pads. He was tightening the laces on them when he glanced
     at the picture in front of him. He paused and gazed straight at the eyes of the man in the picture.
    They looked almost real. They were icy blue, set in a square-jawed face framed by sideburns that came about an inch below
     the ears. The man looked like a giant in his white, black-trimmed football uniform. “Bet his shoulders are five feet wide,”
     Larry thought.
    Across the lower right-hand corner of the picture was the inscription,
To Larry Shope, from Yancey Foote.
    “I guess that if I were as big as you,Yancey, I wouldn’t have a thing to worry about,” Larry said.
    Six feet three, two hundred and forty-five pounds, thirty-one years old, Yancey had been a star player with the University
     of Southern California and then a crushing guard with the Green Bay Packers. He liked to hunt and fish, and preferred being
     by himself to crowds. Larry knew Yancey’s background like the back of his hand.
    He finished dressing, sat on the bed, and looked at the picture again, then at the other pictures, all of Yancey Foote, which
     he had clipped out of newspapers and football magazines. Two walls were literally plastered with Yancey Foote pictures.
    “I’m scared, Yancey,” Larry whispered. “This is our first game and I’m scared to pieces.”
    He got up, went to the antiquated desk inthe corner and pulled out the top drawer. A chill rippled through him as he looked at the letter at the top of the heap on
     the right-hand side. Stamped across the face of it were the words
Moved
—
Left No Forwarding Address.
    Larry picked it up. The one underneath it was stamped the same way. The third one was different. It was addressed to him in
     Yancey Foote’s handwriting.
    “I wonder where he’s gone to,” Larry thought. “He doesn’t seem to be with the Packers anymore, but why hasn’t he written to
     me telling me what happened? I don’t understand it.”
    He laid the first letter aside, then took the letter out of the envelope addressed to him and unfolded it. The writing was
     in ink and neatly written, as if Yancey had taken a lot of pains over it.
    Dear Larry,
    Thanks for your recent letter. No, I don’t think you’re dumb for going out for football just because you’re overweight. As
     a matter of fact, football should do you good. The important thing is to get in condition and learn the rules so you won’t
     get hurt. Not that you will get real hurt, understand. Your kind of football isn’t like the kind we pros play!
    We lost a close one on Sunday. Did you watch it on television? Well,