Tim Green - The Big Time

Once through the jungle, they emerged on the edge of the runway near a bigger plane, with an engine the size of his mom's VW bug. Its stairs were down. The pilot next to them stood checking a clipboard. He tipped his hat to Troy and his dad before following them up the stairs and into the airplane.

A man in a different kind of uniform greeted them politely and told them to let him know if there was anything they needed. Troy lost his breath when he smelled the leather and saw the gleaming brass and the swirling grain of the dark wood. The cabin looked like an elegant living room, and Troy didn't know what to do, even when his father flopped down into a plush leather seat and extended his feet.

"Where should I go?" he asked, directing his voice away from the attendant and trying not to sound like a fool.

"Anywhere you want," his father said, removing a laptop from his briefcase and booting it up.

"What about everyone else?" Troy asked, looking about at the empty room.

His father glanced around, then smiled. "Oh. There isn't anyone else, buddy. It's just us."

The sound of the door being pulled shut from the front proved his father was right. Troy sat down in the other big chair, facing forward like his dad. While his father's fingers jittered across the computer's keyboard, Troy studied the big screen on the wall in front of them. Various maps and charts took turns filling the screen like a slide show. The attendant hurried to finish fussing in the small kitchen area by the front and ducked out to say that he'd be with them in just a blink.

The plane turned fast, and the engines howled, thrusting them forward. Troy felt the wheels leave the earth. Up they shot, nearly straight, engines groaning under the strain so that Troy's stomach clenched with the fear of dropping from the sky like a brick.

Instead, they sailed ever higher until they began to level out. As they approached the Georgia mountains, the earth below lay spread out like a rumpled blanket. His father didn't even look up.

"You can get internet service?" Troy asked.

"Yup."

"You working?" Troy asked.

His father glanced up and said, "For you, I am."

"Doing what?" Troy asked.

"Whipping them up."

"Whipping who?"

"Them," his father said, waving his hand at the world below. "The teams, the media, the fans."

Troy tilted his head, and his father's hands rose up from the keyboard to gesture as he spoke.

"Remember that hockey player who broke his neck, and they thought he'd never walk again but he did?" his father asked.

"The one from the Blackhawks?"

"Right, him," his father said. "I sold the movie rights to that story. Got him half a million dollars."

"I think I saw that movie on TV," Troy said.

His father's eyes gleamed. "The day after he took his first step, I had ten TV cameras at the hospital and twenty print reporters. After that I started whipping up the producers and the studios. I got five times what that story would have been worth if I'd just put it out there. You can't just put things out there; you have to whip them up. You make up a number and say you already got an offer from some big name. Then the rest get scared they're going to miss something. They get hungry. They stop thinking with their heads, and they let their stomachs take over. They drive the price up into the stars. That's when I ink the deal."

"Is that," Troy said, hesitating, "honest?"

His father shrugged, grinned, and said, "I don't know. That's being an agent."

He offered Troy a final nod before turning his attention back to the computer screen. Troy studied his dad's flurry of typing and then turned to look down at the wrinkled mountains below.

Troy watched the mountains, countryside, and small towns and cities slide by beneath them. Still, it was sooner than he imagined it would be when the buildings of New York City appeared in the distance, surrounded by water, closely packed together and stretching for the sky. Troy stared at the enormous city on their approach-marveling at its buildings, its bridges, and the pale green Statue of Liberty poking up from its harbor. His eyes couldn't get big enough to take it all in, and he craned his neck for one last glimpse of the skyline as they took the final plunge, then thumped down to land at the airport. The plane taxied to a stop just outside the terminal. They descended the steps and his father searched the area outside the chain-link fence, smiling with a satisfied nod at the sight of the cameras and the milling crowd of reporters who surrounded a long black limousine just outside the terminal.

"Is that for us?" Troy asked.

His father grinned and gestured for him to walk on. "Son, welcome to the Big Apple."

FROM INSIDE THE TERMINAL,Troy eyed the flailing mob through two big glass doors.

"What do we do?" Troy asked.

His father looked up from the BlackBerry he'd been working with since they walked inside. Holding it forth, he said, "Here's what we do. We say nothing. I'll push through that mob like a lead blocker. You tuck in behind me, and I'll get you into the limo. I just got a text here that says we might be doing the David Letterman show. How's that sound?"

"What?" Troy said, choking with nerves and uncertain if it was because of the crowd outside or the thought of appearing on Letterman .

"Yeah," his father said, pumping a fist, "I got them. This is so big, the entire country will be watching. Everyone will be talking. It's more than sports. It's the lifeblood of America. You'll be a superstar."

"The big time?" Troy asked.

"Oh yeah," his father said.

Troy hesitated, glancing at the crowd, and said, "But you got all these reporters to come here, right? How can we just push past them without talking?"

"Believe me," his father said, "they'll get over it. They're used to it. They know the game. They'll all have a shot of you pushing through the crowd and saying nothing. It'll yank their chains. But trust me, it'll make tonight even bigger."

"Should I at least say that I'm sorry?" Troy said, worrying.

His father swatted the air and said, "Naw. Come on. Follow me. Don't worry. These maggots will get over it."

The word "maggots" startled Troy, but his father gave him a wink and a nod, and he couldn't do anything other than follow him as instructed, actually gripping a handful of his father's shirt as they burst out of the terminal and pushed through the mob and into the waiting limousine.

Once Troy was inside, his father turned to the angry crowd and held up both hands to speak.

"Hey," his father said, "I'm sorry about the rush, but you folks know Seth Cole and his reputation. We're late to meet him, and this is shaping up to be an eight-figure deal. The team that signs Troy White is guaranteed to be the next NFL dynasty, and you can quote me on that."

Troy's father seemed to enjoy slamming the door shut on the questions that rained down on him. He smacked the lock down and barked at the driver to get going. Troy turned around to watch as a handful of cameramen scrambled after the limo, filming their departure from the airport. As they approached the Lincoln Tunnel, Troy gasped at the sight of New York City up close. From the plane he had no idea how big things really were.

Then the limo twisted around and dipped into the tunnel, which seemed to run forever beneath the Hudson River. When they emerged into the canyon of buildings, Troy was amazed. He twisted his neck so he could look up, catching sight of only random patches of sky.

"It's so big," Troy said as they drove on and on, into the heart of the city, up Sixth Avenue and toward the spindly, bare branches of the trees in Central Park. Through the park they went, and Troy couldn't keep his jaw from dropping at the mystery of so many trees in the middle of a city that seemed to never end. He had so many questions, but his father was intent on the BlackBerry, where his thumbs flickered like the mouth parts of a feeding crayfish.