Jake, Reinvented by Gordon Korman

Author:Gordon Korman [Korman, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443124676
Publisher: Scholastic Canada
Published: 2003-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

chapter ten

COACH HAMMER’S PEP talk was designed to raise the dead. Which was a good thing, because the dead were pretty much who he had in the collection of hangovers in the locker room that Saturday afternoon.

Three-quarters of the team sat pale and stoic, like they were carved out of marble, while the coach ratcheted up his rhetoric in an effort to get a rise out of this statuary in shoulder pads. It wasn’t enough that the Liberty Lions didn’t respect us and thought we were pushovers. No, they were slashing our tires, urinating in our school halls, and burning effigies of our grandmothers. They were subhuman troglodytes who had to be snuffed out of existence for the good of all God-fearing people. And earth’s last stand against this menace would be made on the gridiron this very afternoon.

“So I want you to get out there and fight!” Hammer rasped with what was left of his voice.

We came roaring to our feet, and Nelson Jaworski’s simmering cauldron of testosterone reached critical mass. With a howl that could only be described as bestial, he picked up an eight-foot-long wooden bench and swung it at all our heads. We were alert enough to duck, and the blow struck a row of metal lockers. The bench shattered, and the lockers went down with a heavy clatter.

Todd, Kendrick, and I grabbed Nelson, and he shrugged us off as easily as he might have swatted a fly.

Still bellowing like a mad bull, he charged across the room and planted his helmet dead center on the chalkboard. The diagram of our pass defense disintegrated as the slate broke into hundreds of fragments.

The look of horror on Coach Hammer’s face plainly said that this had never happened to him before. To rile a team to rage was something straight out of Coaching 101. But it had not occurred to him that the amount of emotion required to get an ordinary guy snarling and spitting would put a Nelson Jaworski over the edge.

He barked out a trite, “Let’s save it for the field!” But it was obvious, even to him, that Nelson’s reaction was far beyond anything mere football could arouse.

The big lineman snatched up a forty-five-pound plate from the weight rack and flung it at the wall. Crack! It took a three-inch chunk out of the cream cinder block.

Something must have told the coach that Nelson’s mental state was not reachable by threats of benching or even expulsion from the team. Being an old linebacker, he dove forward, catching his lineman behind the knees, and toppling him to the floor. Even then it took six of us to hold him down.

“You’re benched!” the coach bawled in his face. “And if I see another outburst like that, I’m calling the cops!” He clapped his hands. “Now, let’s get out there.”

We were afraid to let him up, but Nelson himself panted, “I’m cool! I’m cool!”

Todd and I lagged behind with him as the rest of the guys took the field.

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