Chapter 60

“Who is like me?” Quinn asked.

“No one,” they cried as they ran back out onto the field after the halftime show, which featured a former teen pop star on the redemptive comeback trail.

“There’s your answer, Smalley,” Quinn said with a grin, emphasizing the “Small” in his name.

He played lights out now. All the Temps did. There was something about cold white anger that was just so bracing, he thought.

It was brutal though. It had started to snow—the possibility of which had produced much hand-ringing throughout Super Bowl Week. Now that what everyone feared had actually happened, it seemed right, the season’s stinging cold and relentless snow, sleet and rain—should that be snain?—providing the perfect backdrop for a game that was more Battle of the Bulge than sport.

The Temps clawed for every yard, the cold making the clash of bone on bone, metal on metal, bite even more. The Miners managed a field goal. It was 13-7 now and late in the evening.