The Fortune
Madame Bourgeois looked up from her crystal ball and spoke in a deep voice full of dramatic effect. “You will go a long way in any field you choose.”
Andre scoffed. He didn’t care about what field he chose; the major wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered was playing for a solid college team that would get him into the NFL.
“I don’t care about my major,” he told the fortune teller. “What I want you to tell me is which school I’ll have the best shot of getting into the NFL from.”
Madame Bourgeois cocked one eye at him while seemingly impossibly keeping her other eye staring into the crystal ball. “It is what it is. You will go a long way in any field you choose. That’s all the spirits are telling me.”
Crazy old woman. $300 for that load of crap, and he was still no closer to picking a school. He had hoped she would just come out and say something like “UCLA” – that way, he’d be past this stage of indecision. The choice he made in the next two days would determine his fate for the rest of his life. He didn’t want to screw it up.
*****
Andre had an amazing career at Texas Tech. Not an All-American, but good enough. Occasionally, he thought about Madame Bourgeois and her lack of a prediction. What kind of B.S. answer was that – “You’ll go a long way in any field you choose?” She should have told him “Florida.” If he was their running back, he’d have the Heisman right now. She didn’t know crap. In fact, the only thing she really had going for her was that weird crap she did with her eye.
But now it didn’t really matter. He was now here in Indianapolis showing the NFL scouts what he could do, and that was all that mattered.
“Collins, you’re on Field Two,” Coach Smith ordered. “Let’s see you run some plays in scrimmage.”
Andre lined up behind the quarterback on Field 2’s twenty yard line. The quarterback handed him the ball, but Andre took two steps before losing his footing and hitting the ground.
For the next play, Andre was going to perform a left sweep. The quarterback handed him the ball, and he ran left. The defensive line knocked the fullback down, and Andre tripped over the fullback’s legs, bringing him down again. Two plays down, and he had achieved a net gain of minus eight yards.
Andre looked to the sidelines. Agents, owners, and scouts lined the field, all staring at him. A few were shaking their head. He had to do something now to show them what he was capable of.
For the third down, he was going to plow it up the middle. He took the handoff, took a step forward, and down he went. He could have sworn he fell in a hole, which was impossible in astroturf.
He got up and saw that only a few remained watching him from the sidelines, and those few did not look pleased. But he needed to do something.
“Hey coach,” Andre said, “you think I could go play over on Field 1?”
“You really think that will make a difference?”
“I don’t know what it is, but I think it might.”
The coach rolled his eyes and motioned him over to the other field.
Andre lined up behind new quarterback, who called a sweep play. The quarterback handed the ball off to Andre who ran left, slanted, and took off down the field. Faster and faster he ran. He didn’t know where the defenders were, and he wasn’t going to slow down to find out. He just dashed all the way down the field to the end zone.
“Crap, son,” one scout said, “I didn’t think you had it in you. I guess choosing the right field made all the difference.”
At that point, Andre knew how right Madame Bourgeois had been.
THE END
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