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  Copyright

  Copyright © 1981 by Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  First eBook Edition: December 2009

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Matt Christopher® is a registered trademark of Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-09605-8

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  The #1 Sports Series for Kids: MATT CHRISTOPHER®

  Matt Christopher®

  1

  James Cort, Sr., came down the wide sidewalk holding a small, black suitcase in his left hand and a dark coat over his right arm. He was bareheaded, and wisps of dark hair whipped over his receding hairline from a light, Gulf of Mexico breeze. The September morning sun, shining directly into his face, made him squint.

  “The best sight I’ve seen in two and a half years,” Jim’s mother said as they stood beside their car, waiting for him.

  Two and a half years. It seemed like ten, thought Jim.

  “He looks great, doesn’t he?” whispered his sister, Peg.

  “Great is right,” Jim murmured.

  Behind their father and the wire gate he had just come through loomed the high, gray walls of the prison from which he had just been released after having served time for embezzlement.

  Jim’s breath caught in his throat. His vision blurred. He felt Pegs hand touch his, then clamp tightly around his fingers.

  Mrs. Cort ran forward, her arms outstretched, her figure freed from the burden it had carried for over two years.

  Her husband put down his suitcase and coat and took her in his arms. He was tall and lean, his skin pale. Once he had weighed close to a hundred and eighty pounds. Now he looked to be about one sixty. Jim, himself one sixty-two, five foot ten, and a sophomore in high school, could see that he resembled his father.

  “Oh, Dad!” Peg said. Her green eyes misted. Then she, too, ran to meet her father, her long blond hair bouncing on her shoulders.

  Jim watched as his father held both of them in his arms, his raw-boned face buried in their shoulders. Then he saw his father’s eyes look up and meet his own.

  The happy smile broadened. “Hi, son.”

  “Hi, Dad.” In a minute Jim was beside his father, embracing him, hanging tightly on to him until the choked feeling in his throat wore off.

  His father leaned back and looked at his bushy brown hair, his strong, athletic frame. “Hey, man, you’re not only taller than I am, but you’re better looking, too.” He beamed at Peg. “Bet it’s even-steven with the phone calls. Right?”

  Jim shook his head. “Wrong. Seniors have more fun. She gets more than I do.”

  “Sure,” Peg replied, her eyes flashing in the sunlight. “But they’re mostly from girl friends.”

  She gave her head a saucy toss, letting her hair cascade in soft waves down her back.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mrs. Cort to her husband. “You’ll soon find out just which one keeps the hot line hot. Come on. We’ve got a long way to drive, and I’m not about to push that speedometer up past the fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit.”

  She hurried to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk. “Hon, put the suitcase in here,” she advised.

  Hon. It was a long time since Jim had heard that word of endearment pass between them.

  His father laid the suitcase inside the trunk, slammed down the cover, and headed for the driver’s side of the front seat. He and his wife met in front of the door, his hand on the door handle, hers on top of his.

  “I’m driving, Jim,” she said softly.

  He smiled. “I know, sweet,” he answered. “But won’t you let me start out this beautiful day by being a bit chivalrous? I just want to open the door for you.”

  She beamed at him. “Of course.”

  He opened the door, waited for her to get in, then closed it.

  Jim, already comfortable in the back seat, winked at his sister. She smiled back.

  Mrs. Cort started the car as her husband opened the door on the passenger side and got in. She pulled the shift lever to D, checked the traffic, and drove smoothly forward.

  “Well!” Mr. Cort said as he laid his arm over the top of the seat and looked back at his children. “What’s with you two? Hey, that’s right! School has started, hasn’t it? And now you’re in your last year, Peg. Still playing the trumpet?”

  “Oh, yes. I was lead trumpet last year, Dad, and Mr. Bush promised I’d be lead again this year.”

  “Good. Then on to college?”

  She shrugged. “If I can make it.”

  “If you want to make it, you’ll make it,” he assured her. “What are your plans? Or is it too early to think about that?”

  She smiled. “No. I’ve decided.” She hesitated, glanced down, and smoothed a wrinkle in her dress. “I’m shooting for the moon, Dad.”

  “That’s the only way. What’s your target, sweetheart?”

  “I’d like to be a research chemist.”

  “Ho-ho! That’s my girl!” Her father reached back, took her hand, and squeezed it. “All the power to you, Peg.”

  Her face glowed. “Thanks, Dad.”

  Mr. Cort looked at Jim. “How about you, son? Are you playing in the school band, too?”

  “No.”

  There was silence in the car for several seconds. They all had their own thoughts, and Jim could guess what they were. While his father was serving a term in prison, money was tight for the other three in the family. His mother had found a job almost immediately after his father was imprisoned, but the job — she was a salesperson in a department store — didn’t pay enough to allow for luxuries. And buying an instrument for Jim would have been a luxury, in Jim’s opinion.

  “Why not?” his father asked.

  Jim shrugged. “Well, to tell the truth, Dad, I’m not really crazy about playing any kind of instrument.”

  Their eyes met. “I thought you said once you’d like to play the drums?”

  “Yes. Well, maybe someday. I’ve still got a couple of years to go in high school to change my mind.”

  “Playing any sports?”

  “Yes. Football.”

  His father glanced at his shoulders, his thighs. “You’ve got the build for either a backfield man or an end. I would guess end.”

  Jim smiled. “You’re right. Tight end.”

  “Hey! Good!”

  Jim had started last year in a running-back position, then had changed to end when Coach Dan Butler realized he could catch a ball better than he could run with it.

  “Have you had any practice games yet?”

  “Oh, sure. Matter of fact, we’re playing our first league game Friday night.”

  His father grinned. “Nothing’s going to keep me from seeing it,” he said proudly.

>   For the next several minutes no one seemed to have a word to say, and Jim reflected sadly on the circumstance that had caused a complete change in their lives. His father had been an accountant for a car dealership in Port Lee. A strike in the automobile industry took place, affecting a lot of dealerships, including the one where his father worked. He was forced to take a big cut in pay. It was either that or get fired.

  A month later Jim’s mother suffered an attack and had to be rushed to the hospital for a gall bladder operation. Because their cash was scarce, the doctor agreed to be patient for his bill. The hospital wasn’t as kind. Weeks passed. Bills began to mount. Jim’s father started to inhabit some of Port Lee’s bars. He never came home drunk, but Jim sometimes wondered if the amount of drink his father consumed could have influenced him to do what he had ultimately done: embezzled several thousand dollars from his employer.

  He was apprehended at home one Saturday morning.

  Jim could picture the scene in his mind as clearly as if he were looking at it now on a screen: the knock on the door, the two men entering and introducing themselves as police investigators. They had his father’s picture, and they asked him to go to the station for questioning. His father paled, got his hat, and left. The photo was somewhat blurred, but not enough to matter. The man in the picture was clearly James Cort, Sr.

  What had helped the police trace him so quickly was the carelessness with which he had tried to cover up his crime. It was as if he wanted to get caught.

  Dumb, Jim thought. A dumb, foolish move to get some quick money to help his family out of a growing debt. And look what happened. A two-and-a-half-year prison term, every minute of it undoubtedly filled with hurt and regret, and a sad, embarrassed, painful life for his wife, for Peg, and for Jim.

  What now? Jim asked himself. What was their life going to be from now on?

  They had dinner at home: Delmonico steak, whipped potatoes with gravy, honey-dipped carrots, creamed onions, corn on the cob, hot rolls, and pineapple turnover cake, Jim’s father’s favorite dessert.

  “Good to be back in paradise, hon,” he said to his wife, and reached over to touch her hand.

  At eight o’clock, Ralph and Frieda Delaney and their seventeen-year-old son, Barry, came over from next door with a large strawberry ice-cream cake. Barry was a junior in high school, a tall, ruggedly built boy who was vying for an end position on the school’s football team. Although he was older, it was his first year, and Jim didn’t think he was fast enough to compete with him or the others who were also fighting for the end spots.

  There were awkward moments at first, as if the Delaneys didn’t quite know what to say to the man they had once known before he went afoul of the law. But later, over coffee, the conversation turned to light topics and stayed that way, thanks to the talkativeness and resourcefulness of Mrs. Delaney.

  The Delaneys accepted large pieces of the cake they had brought, and Mrs. Delaney immediately explained the problem she had in trying to bake a topsy-turvy cake. She found out, too late, that she had left out baking powder, so she had driven hurriedly to the bakery at Jacaranda Square. Once there she saw this scrumptious-looking, calorie-loaded cake and bought it. She remembered that James loved cakes, and he couldn’t possibly resist this one. She laughed and chattered on.

  Almost without taking a sentence break, she started to tell about Ralph’s coming home last night with a rip in his pants that had opened up during the third frame of his second bowling game. It had embarrassed her, because every time he leaned forward to roll the ball down the lane the rip got larger. She wanted him to go home and change his pants, but he refused.

  “Go home and change my luck?” Ralph cut in, looking at her as if he couldn’t understand her reasoning. “I had two strikes going into that frame, and finished up with a two-twenty score. I should let a little rip interfere?” He looked at Jim, Sr. “What would you have done, Jim? Would you have gone home and changed your pants?”

  “Don’t get James involved in this!” Mrs. Delaney exclaimed, striking her husband lightly on the arm. “It’s your problem!”

  Jim was glad they had showed up, but he was just as glad when they left at a quarter of ten.

  The four of them retired to the living room and talked — about the children, and about Mrs. Cort’s job — until ten-thirty, when the ringing of the telephone interrupted them. Peg went to the kitchen to answer it.

  A moment later she was back. “Jim, it’s for you,” she said. A frown knitted her forehead.

  Jim frowned, too. Who would be calling him at this time of the night? he wondered.

  He rose from his chair, went to the kitchen, and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Jim Cort?” The voice sounded muffled.

  “Speaking.”

  “Listen, we heard your father’s out of prison. Why don’t you get smart and quit football? Nobody will want to play with an ex-convict’s son.”

  Jim stared at the receiver. “Who in heck is this?” he snapped.

  The caller hung up.

  2

  Jim stood, waiting for his heart to calm down. He tried to place the voice, but the muffled sound of it meant that the caller had probably used a cloth to disguise it.

  Darn! Jim thought. Who would be so crummy and low enough to make a call like that?

  He returned to the living room and plunked himself down on his chair. He avoided his mother’s eyes, studying his left thumbnail as if there were something on it he had just noticed.

  “Who was that?” Peg asked. “His voice sounded funny.”

  “It was Ed,” Jim lied, and thought quickly for an explanation. “He wanted to know if I was up for the game tomorrow night.”

  “Wonder why he didn’t tell me who he was?” Peg said.

  “Did you ask him?”

  “Yes. He just said ‘a friend.’”

  Jim got up and headed for the stairs. “Think I’ll hit the sack,” he said. “Good night, everybody. Real good to have you home, Dad.”

  “Thanks, son,” his father said. “Darn good to be home.”

  “We’ll be going up shortly, too,” his mother said.

  Jim went up the stairs, his gladness over his father’s being home again suddenly clouded by the mysterious phone call.

  He took a shower, brushed his teeth, and went to bed. He didn’t fall asleep right away. The phone call stayed on his mind. He was trying to figure out whose face might be behind that disguised voice, and why the person wanted him to quit the team.

  Why? Why should anyone want to make a call to him about his father that was going to gnaw at him till he didn’t know when? Did he have an enemy he didn’t know about?

  It was late when he finally dropped off to sleep.

  He started to get ready to head for Rams Stadium right after a light meal on Friday evening. While his father watched him put clean football socks and a couple of small towels into his duffel bag, Jim said, “Hope you’ll see a good game, Dad.”

  “Me, too. But that’s not important.”

  He paused, and Jim found his father’s eyes focused on him with a strange awareness behind them.

  “It’s not bothering you that I’m going, is it, Jim?” his father asked quietly.

  Jim’s eyes widened. “Why, no, Dad. Why’d you say a dumb thing like that?”

  His father smiled. “Sorry. But you look bothered. I just wanted to know.”

  “I just hope I’ll do okay,” Jim assured him. “I’m on the first string, but the season’s early enough for the coach to shift me back a notch.” He zipped up the bag, picked it up, and headed for the door. “See you at the game, Dad.”

  “You bet.”

  “We’ll all be there rootin’ for you,” his mother broke in from the dining room. “Just come out of it in one piece.”

  “I plan to!”

  Jim left by the front door, thinking about what his father had said, and about the phone call last night. The call had been bugging him most of the day. He had trie
d to read something cold or bitter in the eyes of the guys he had met and talked with during the day, but had gotten nowhere. He felt, though, that because the caller had mentioned football, he had to be a member of the team.

  Jim paused in front of Barry’s house and made a loud, sharp whistle through his teeth. Seconds later Barry came out of the front door, carrying his duffel bag.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “How you doin’?” said Jim.

  Barry came down the steps fast, and they walked up the street together. The boys had been friends since the Delaneys had moved into their home eight years ago. They had gotten into squabbles now and then, which sometimes had turned into fist fights. But the squabbles and the fights never lasted long. The boys would be sorry afterward, apologize to each other, and play again as if nothing had happened.

  “Your father looks good,” commented Barry. “Is he going to the game?”

  Jim nodded. “He said that nothing’s going to keep him from seeing it.”

  “Good go!”

  At the school they went to the locker room, changed, and dressed. The Rams’ uniforms were maroon with white trim. The helmets were white with the profile of a ram on their sides.

  About a dozen players were in the locker room, suiting up. A flash of light lit up the room momentarily, and someone shouted, “Oh, knock it off, will you, Watkins? Why are you wasting that film in here, anyway?”

  Jim looked up from tying his shoes and saw the school photographer, Jerry Watkins, focusing his camera on a player putting on his shoulder pads.

  “You do your job, I’ll do mine,” Jerry answered him. The room brightened briefly again as the automatic flash went off.

  “What are you complaining about, Newton?” Ben Culligan, the team’s one-hundred-and-eighty-five-pound nose guard, said. “This might be your only picture. You might not even get in the game.”

  The team responded with guffaws and sly remarks.

  “Hey Jim! Look this way a second.”

  Jim, his hand on the doorknob, turned and saw Jerry focusing the camera on him. He posed with a lukewarm smile.

  “Come on. Let’s have it. Show those teeth,” Jerry coaxed.