The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 07

"Coach, you built this team. Now you gotta trust it to do what you built it to do," said Mojo Hale, who had sidled behind Hemphill as quietly as a man that huge can sidle.

"Guys, this is your team and your game to win," Hemphill told the offense clustered around him. "Now go do it."

Instantly, tired legs found new vigor. Crews and Rance looked at each other and smiled as they fastened their chinstraps. And Mojo Hale put it all together: "Awright, y'all, our last 15 minutes together so make it something we don't never forget!"

Stark Middleton's plan to reinvigorate the team's mainstay, the 38 read option, hinged on a new trap blocking scheme in which Rance went directly for the middle linebacker who was reading Bookie Riemer's motion, not fighting with the defensive tackle over him. Disposing of the tackle would be left to Mojo Hale, who was about to allay any doubt among NFL scouts that he should be a first-round draft pick in April.

Since the Generals had been pass-happy during the third quarter, Gerow was pleased that the Irish kept looking for that. Maybe that's why the draw play on first down gained 18 yards. The second play was the revised 38 read option, but with Mojo lined up where he had never been before for that play, Notre Dame was certain he would be Gerow's target for a pass in the flat. That expectation allowed Mojo to crash into the unprotected flanks of the defensive tackle when the ball was snapped and demolish him, rolling him toward the center in a manner that resembled a dog being hit by a speeding cement truck. And the middle linebacker, accustomed to patrolling behind his defensive line unmolested, was not expecting Rance Martin to explode into him and buckle his legs. The hole the blocking created sent Bookie streaking back upfield for 62 yards before he was dragged down a dozen yards from a touchdown.

The Generals sprinted downfield and were over the ball the second the official spotted it. Gerow called the audible at the line: 31 dive, a pure, fast-hitting power play in which Bookie muscles into a gap between Crews and the left guard. The Irish defense was still in disarray when Crews snapped the ball and crashed into the nose tackle, blowing him 4 yards backward before pancaking him flat of his back as Bookie bulled his way into the end zone, dragging three Irish defensive backs with him.

The nervous Fulbright crowd began to believe again. The way it had in the season opener. The way it had against defending national champ Georgia. This was the offense they had come to know, that had defined this team.

The defense began to believe, too. While it seemed as though it took only seconds for the Generals to run the ball down Notre Dame's throat, the drive bled more than five minutes off the clock. Now, the Irish were looking at a deficit of 17 points, meaning they would have to possess the ball at least three more times and score a minimum of two touchdowns and a field goal in less than 10 minutes.

The clock was now Notre Dame's enemy. And for that reason, Notre Dame had to rely on passing for a comeback, not just for its ability to strike quickly but also for the fact that incompletions or plays that ended with a receiver out of bounds stop the game clock. The Generals knew that. Notre Dame knew it. The pope probably knew it.

Some of the most talented high school receivers in America had signed with Notre Dame the previous winter, and now these freshmen had matured and assimilated to the college game. Their speed was dangerous, and they could take the top off the best pass-coverage defenses. That nearly happened twice as the Irish attempted to answer the emphatic drive with which Fulbright opened the final quarter. Once the pass was just off a speedy flanker's fingertips. The other resulted in a leaping catch 40 yards downfield, but a yard out of bounds. A short pass on third down netted eight yards, and the Irish faced the decisive fourth down. Time out, Irish.

"If it were me, I'd try to punch it up the middle for just two yards," the defensive coordinator told Hemphill via his headset. But this was Notre Dame, the school that believes in gambling big with a heavy reliance on divine intervention. Hemp knew the Irish would give every appearance of a power dive up the middle, but probably try a jump pass. So he put in his "heavy package" of his largest defensive linemen but swapped out a linebacker for an additional safety.

For a moment, it appeared Hemphill had made the wrong bet. Notre Dame had a full backfield but lined the quarterback up several yards behind the center in a modified shotgun. When he took the snap, he charged forward instantly toward the line, but pulled up just before he got there and short-armed a pass to where his tight end should be but wasn't. Instead, the pass found Hal Donovan who intercepted it, ran a few yards and then wisely dropped to the ground, using both arms to tightly clutch the ball to his belly and prevent desperate Irish players from punching it free of his grasp.

The reaction from Fulbright's fans was reserved euphoria. Euphoria because their team held a three-possession advantage with half of the fourth quarter gone and the Generals' offense returning to the field. Reserved because the other team was Notre Dame, the mother church of college football with more than a few miraculous, last-minute turnarounds in its history.

Fulbright could slam the door with another touchdown, but it could also lock away the game with a clock-consuming drive on the ground that would kill the next five minutes or so. Three first downs by the Generals and they would carry home the school's first Sugar Bowl trophy.

Rance looked around the huddle. It hit him and everyone else in it at that moment that this would likely be the last drive that they would make together as a team. Crews and Mojo would both be gone after this season, and Mojo certainly would be playing on Sundays a year hence. Bookie had the option of declaring for the draft. And the captain and quarterback, Matt Gerow, was playing his final series for the green and gold.

"Fellas, let's execute this one like it's the last time we'll ever do it together," Gerow said in the huddle with a noticeable hitch in his voice. Then the offense did something it had never done on the field in a game huddle before. All 11 players extended their hands into the center of the huddle for a few moments.

"One more time," Mojo Hale said, tears flowing from the big man's eyes, "for us."

The team broke the huddle, lined up with one back — Bookie Riemers — in the backfield with Gerow. The quarterback faked a dive up the middle with Bookie and kept the ball on a sprint around the right end of his line. The left guard had pulled and was Gerow's escort. He crushed a safety who came up to stop Gerow as Rance sealed off the defensive end, giving a quarterback not renowned for his running ability a 17-yard gain on first down, the longest of his Fulbright career.

Content to continue huddling and allowing time to burn off the clock rather than run plays at the tiring Irish defense at the dizzying pace it had earlier, Gerow lined up in the same formation, but this time fed the ball to Riemers on a 31 dive through a crease between Crews' left hip and the left guard, who had walled off the middle linebacker and gave Bookie room for a 12-yard pickup and another first down.

Seven plays later, with just two minutes left and the Generals on the 15 on fourth down with a yard to go for the first down, they faced a decision: field goal just to make the margin an even 20 points or get the first down and kill the clock in victory formation with the offense still on the field? Notre Dame had burned all three of its second-half timeouts and couldn't stop the clock. Hemphill called timeout and brought his players to the sideline.

"Fellas, the book says go with the field goal here. Well, fuck the book. Guys, go out there, get this first down, win it with yourselves on the field and take the bow you deserve. Matt, the call is yours," Hemphill said.

The offense, denied the same opportunity in that heartbreaking loss to Tennessee, roared its appreciation.

"Thirty-eight read option," Gerow said. "We go with what got us here, right Rance?"

They lined up with Crews' hand on the ball before the official blew the ball ready for play. An instant later, the ball was snapped. As he had since the opener when Rance came into the game in relief of the injured starting right tackle, Tyrone Harvey, he uncoiled with startling quickness and force into the defensive end across from him, instantly achieved leverage on the larger adversary and rolled him harmlessly aside as Bookie Riemer picked up the needed yard. And seven more yards after that before four Notre Dame players finally wrestled him to the turf.

Three more snaps with Matt Gerow taking a knee each time and the 2023 Sugar Bowl was in the books. Throughout the Superdome, the few remaining Irish fans were flocking to the exits as Fulbright fans at last experienced an unrestrained euphoria that had been pent up for decades. On the field, Generals players tearfully hugged one another as the last seconds of this remarkable team — the first ever to win 11 games at Fulbright — melted off the clock.

Gerow took the final snap, dropped to a knee and lifted the football skyward in his right hand, a football that would reside for posterity in a trophy case wherever Generals teams called home. Green and yellow confetti exploded from compressed-air guns on the sidelines. Mojo Hale lay on his back on the playing surface moving his arms and legs to create the confetti equivalent of a snow angel.

With the air full of falling bits of shiny green and gold mylar, it was difficult for Gia to find Rance and vice versa. Mindful of this remarkable denouement of their moving, bizarre and bloody story over the course of the season that just came to a storybook ending, ESPN cameras had been tasked in the closing minute of the game to follow each and chronicle their reunion in the celebratory aftermath. For the network and viewers at home, it was worth the wait.

Gia wasn't sure what happened to her trademark visor in the chaos, but it was gone. And she didn't give a damn. When she finally spotted No. 74 amid the swarming celebration, she ran to him, a cameraman close behind, and leaped with abandon into his arms. The world watched the two share a joyful, celebratory kiss live and up close.

"That's Gia Jones and Rance Martin," network play-by-play announcer Dave Pasch said in the voice-over. "Their amazing story, front page news worldwide, during this indescribable season all comes down to this - an impressive victory over Notre Dame in the school's first Sugar Bowl, bringing the first 11-win season ever back to Fallstrom, South Carolina. They — and all of Fulbright University, and all of college football for that matter — earned this moment of joy."

●●●

Rance had always heard that nothing rivals the hedonistic abandon of Mardi Gras, but Bourbon Street after a Sugar Bowl had to be a close runner-up.

Fulbright green and gold ruled the Vieux Carre in the hours after the Generals' convincing victory over football's most legendary college. Fulbright players, coaches and support personnel were greeted by joyful inebriants. But the adulation was, nonetheless, an unaccustomed moment of bliss for them, and they hung together quite remarkably in the crowd, perhaps clinging to the final moments when these individuals would still be recognized as the 2022 Fulbright Generals.

Some who recognized Gia and Rance tended to attach themselves to them like ticks, gushing over their sensational story of the season just ended and sometimes getting all drunk-weepy. They were gracious, even as they struggled to disentangle themselves from some of the more overwrought and determined well-wishers.

The mass of players was making its way slowly through the dense crowd in the direction of the most celebrated Bourbon Street venues — Preservation Hall, Pat O'Briens, Desire. Rance and Gia remained with them, though both doubted that they could enter drinking establishments having not yet turned 21.

An hour later, drained from the game, the excitement and the long day, Rance spotted the Royal Sonesta and recommended that they go in and just chill for a while with his family.

"Deal," Gia said.

●●●

"Maaan, yaw played great," the slim man with a Cajun dialect wearing only a embroidered, satiny vest over his dark, lean and hairless chest and belly. Immediately, his looks worried Gia as he seemed to slip like an eel through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd still jamming Rue Bourbon just after midnight. His eyes twitched quickly, wildly, focusing on no one more than a microsecond, it seemed, as he moved closer.

"Hey, maaan, you got a twenty I can baw for bus fare," the short, wiry man said as he approached them.

"Sorry, friend, got no cash on me," Rance said, wisely not making eye contact while pushing toward the Royal Sonesta grand entrance and its doorman wearing his tunic with gold epaulettes only a few more steps away.

"How bow'cho lady, maaan," the sweaty street urchin said, now more insistent.

Rance said nothing, but made sure to keep himself between Gia, to his left holding his hand, and the troublesome man, now uncomfortably close on his right.

"So, dass how it is," the man hissed.

It was a sudden burning, stinging pain in Rance's right side. He bent protectively in that direction as his massive right arm instinctively swept in the direction of the attack to ward it off and knocking the much smaller man off balance. Gia grasped him and said, "Rance! What's happening?"

Around them, the crowd momentarily froze and then recoiled from the sight as a stain of crimson expanded into a wet, black oval against Rance's green Fulbright Football polo shirt. In the commotion, women shrieked and men cursed. One young man who had grabbed Rance's assailant had been slashed across the arm by the butterfly knife he had just jammed into Rance's right side about midway between his armpit and his hip.

"Oh God, Rance! Someone help! — call 9-1-1, get a cop," Gia screamed as Rance slumped to his right and fell to his knees. Blood was now pooling on the filthy concrete beneath him.

The doorman was blowing his whistle, a signal to law enforcement — uniformed and undercover working the crowd — that something was badly wrong and help was urgently needed. The doorman cleared the crowd away from Rance as Gia persuaded him to lie flat. She raised his shirt, found the narrow slit of a wound and applied pressure in an effort to stop the bleeding.

Rance was looking around, stunned bewilderment evident in his eyes, wordlessly imploring, someone please explain what just happened.

A young man with salt-and-pepper hair kneeled over Rance. "I'm a thoracic surgeon. We need to get this man to the closest ER fast," he said.

Now police officers were standing nearby pushing the crowd back. One was speaking into the radio mic clipped to his shirt calling for New Orleans Fire Department emergency medical techs to arrive "code 5." He also called for additional police units for crowd control and to clear the packed streets for the nearest ambulance. In the distance, approaching sirens yelped to life.

Gia stood by screaming, trembling, weeping, pleading — with anyone in the crowd who could help, with first responders, with God himself — to somehow deliver Rance from this moment. She asked the doorman to inform his parents, guests on the hotel's third floor, though she couldn't remember the room number.

Half a block away, as word of the attack filtered through the street crowd, another commotion developed. A violent crowd had surrounded someone lying on the pavement and began cursing him. "Kill that motherfucker," someone bellowed.

Rance began to shiver. The humid midnight air felt like an icy wind, particularly against the cooling blood covering his chest and belly as the surgeon struggled to assess the severity of the wound. He felt drowsiness overcome him and his eyelids grow heavy.

"Gia!" He called out in the strongest voice he could muster, now barely over the level of normal conversation. "Stay with me please ... help me through this," he said.

Gia knelt by his head and shoulders to his left and held his face in her hands, willing him to stay awake, to keep talking to her as help arrived.

"I will never leave you, baby ... never ever ever ever," she said in words that came out as sobs. "You make sure you don't leave me, Rance. I love you."

He smiled at her as his eyelids fluttered. "Not ... leaving you, Gia. You're my ... life," he said.

"Where are the EMTs, he's going into shock. He needs blood now," the surgeon yelled into the crowd, his arms, white dress shirt and the knees to his khaki pants now smeared with blood.

The searing pain in Rance's right side was fading now. He felt a deep sense of peace as the periphery of his vision progressively narrowed into darkness. He could hear voices approaching, "Clear a path," a woman was yelling. Something was covering his mouth and his nose, something plastic and cold. The last words he could make out, "You stay with me, 74! You hear me Rance? Stay ... with ... meeee!" were from the love of his life, Giacomo Jones.

●●●

It had been four and a half hours since emergency surgery began in a desperate attempt to save Rance Martin's life. In a small waiting room outside the surgical suite at the Tulane University Medical Center about a mile from the site of the attack, Ed and Lorrie Martin sat mute on either side of Gia Jones, each holding her hand. They silently prayed, trying to balance fearful desperation with tenuous hope. The thin, pink hue of the oncoming dawn was visible through the windows to their right, facing the eastern sky.

Occasionally, they would see a nurse or someone else in scrubs, medical masks and scalp coverings enter and leave through the swinging double doors that opened onto a hallway and several operating bays. In one of them, doctors had fought through the wee hours to stop the internal bleeding that might have exsanguinated him if not for continuous blood and plasma transfusions.

"Six thirty-three," Ed Martin said, glancing at the time displayed on his mobile phone. "That's a long time, but that means they're still fighting, that he's still with us."

Gia tightened her hold on both hands that clasped hers, a wordless affirmation of Ed's optimistic conclusion. For her part, she was too frightened to break the hushed calm of the room where they were accompanied only by an attendant at a desk by the door. She dared do nothing now but breathe, nothing that might upset the fragile cosmic equilibrium of the moment for fear of the unbearable consequence that even the slightest shift might bring.

Just then, they were startled by the muffled trilling of the desk phone in front of the attendant. "Yes, doctor, they are," she said, speaking into the receiver just above a whisper. "OK, I will." Then she hung up.

"Mr. and Mrs. Martin, the doctor will be out to speak with you momentarily," she said.

The words were like razor-sharp shards of ice filling Gia's stomach. Ed and Lorrie could feel her hands tremble. The color had drained from her face and they saw her jaw quiver as they turned toward her. Both put an arm around her and pulled themselves close to her. As promised, the doors opened and a tall, thin man in lavender-colored scrubs walked toward them, drawing a deep breath as he did.

"The Martin family?" he said as the three rose from their seats to meet him. "I am Dr. DeFusco. I am the lead cardiovascular surgeon here and I was leading the surgery on Rance. We've done all we can, and they're closing him up now. I think we've stopped the internal bleeding, which was the big thing, but there's no way to really predict ...," his voice trailed off. "It's going to be hour-to-hour for a quite a while."