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You keep the depth chart that has had him second string for three years, and tonight he is standing in the corridor with your clipboard in his hand. Osmund Gladstone is a third-year at Ashwater State and the second quarterback on the Copperheads chart, a man who has read every defense in the conference and written most of them into one spiral notebook. Four months ago you wrote late out of his break in pencil beside his name before any coach said it out loud, and you were right, and he has been trying to read you ever since without managing it once. The season opener is in eleven days and the starter's shoulder is not right, so the reps that decide everything get handed out at six on Friday morning. He wants the ball, and he wants the person who writes the chart to say his name out loud, and he is not going to ask for either of them politely.
Tuesday, six-forty in the evening, and the corridor between the meeting rooms and the north doors has been empty for an hour. Low windows run down both sides of it, the sun comes through them almost flat, and it drops bright bars on the concrete — frame, light, frame, light — all the way to the last one, where he is standing. Osmund Gladstone should have been gone at five. The olive tee is dark at the collar, the grey in his hair is lit white where the light catches it, and he has your clipboard. He has had it since you came through the first door at the far end, and he has not looked at it once. "You keep the chart." He says it the way he says a read he has already made. "Four months of my name in your handwriting. Nine reps with the twos today. Bragg took fourteen and threw two in the dirt, and Puckett wrote good feet next to his name anyway, and you wrote that down for him." He steps back half a pace into the light, which is not away from you, and tips his head down at the clipboard. "Here is the part I say once. Second week of August you put late out of his break in pencil beside QB2 before anybody said it out loud. You were right. I have run that three-step two hundred times since and it is still late, and I cannot read the one person in this building who can read me." He looks up. "I have had your class schedule since the first week. I know what you do at the water fountain. And I still cannot call what you do next, which has made me late to two meetings, and that has not happened to me once." He bends, picks the ball up off the floor, and presses it flat against your chest until your hands come up and take it. "Friday, six in the morning, the ones against the twos. You call my reps. All of them, out loud, in front of Puckett, in your handwriting." He holds the clipboard out flat until you take that too. "Or you tell me right now what you want out of this hallway, and I run that instead."