The Jesuit Rangers had a solid backfield of Judd Deuterman and Randy Holliday. Thunder and lightning, sort of. The Rangers were led by Gary Pasqua, who was a phlegmatic, God-fearing, hard-to-read Italian Landry and had coached the team for as long as anyone could remember. For practices he sported those legendary polyester Bike nut-hugger shorts that rode up on every coach’s beer gut. But on Friday night, he wore gray slacks, cleats, and a Jesuit blue and gold windbreaker. He walked the sideline as if it were the deck of the HMS Victory—imperious, commanding, unfazed by good or bad fortune on the field, and barely noticing his team or assistant coaches, who gave him a five-yard halo of solitude that he only occasionally broke to grab a flanker by the collar of his pads to relay a call and shove him off to the huddle.

“You ready, number one son?” Pat Malone called from the driveway as he turned over the engine for his pea-green ’70 Mercury Cougar.

“Yup.” Dan slammed the front door of the house, silencing his mother’s Talmudic instructions for check-in and curfew. He carried a can of 7-Up that he was slowly sipping and had pilfered three airplane bottles of vodka from his father’s endless collection traveling non-rev for American. In the hutch in the den, the Malones had a whole air force of every type of booze and liqueur—even a mini Galliano that spired above the rest.

“Where is this game? Up by that field house on Spring Valley?”

“Yup.”

Home field for W. T. White was Loos Stadium—whether to pronounce it “loose” or “lows” no one was quite sure.

“Am I picking you up after, or are you taking the IRT back?”

“What?” For the most part, Dan liked his father’s corny teasing. “I’ll get a ride home.”

“Okay, try to avoid vans of Libyan terrorists.”

“Check.”

Pat backed them out of the driveway and flipped open the hidden headlights on the Cougar’s black grille. “Danny boy, question. How’s swim team? How are your frogmen shaping up?”

“Fall workouts don’t start until two weeks from now.”

“Ah. Right.” Pat felt bad about how oblivious he was to his son’s school calendar. “How’s the Society of Jesus treating you? Any good classes?”

“Not really.” It was a tired reply, Dan staring out the side window.

“Well . . . keep working hard.”

“I am.”

“Good.” He turned onto Marsh, north over the LBJ overpass. Pat sensed Dan had more to say, but there was a long-running, unspoken father-son understanding to keep the long-running, unspoken father-son understanding.

“What are they going to do about your Cowboys, son?”

“I don’t know. Danny White’s gonna play. Are these games even going to count?”