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“We have a beautiful night for football and I’ve got the most beautiful girl on the planet standing next to me, lying about my looks.”
    He noticed Charlie now. “How’s the biggest Bulldogs fan doing?”
    â€œHey!” Anna said.
    â€œApologies,” Joe Warren said. “What I meant to say is, how’s the biggest
boy
Bulldogs fan doing?”
    â€œExcited to be here,” Charlie said, shaking his hand and looking him in the eye, the way his mother had taught him.
    â€œYou’ll sit on one side of me when the game starts,” Joe Warren said, “and Anna will be on the other. Unless you can find a better date in the next forty-five minutes or so.”
    â€œHe couldn’t find one in forty-five years.”
    â€œDo you ever want to mute this young lady the way you do a television set?” Joe Warren said.
    â€œYou have no idea,” Charlie said.
    â€œThe two of
you
have no idea,” Anna said, “how lucky you both are to have me.”
    â€œShe makes it sound as if we’re in a special club, doesn’t she, Charlie boy?” Joe Warren said.
    â€œOnly because she believes it,” Charlie said to him.
    Charlie watched Anna’s grandfather shuffle off to greet more guests now. He hadn’t seen him since the last game of last season, and noticed how much older he looked now than he had then, how much slower he seemed to be moving.
    â€œSuch a good guy,” Charlie said.
    â€œThe best,” Anna said, watching her grandfather smile and take a woman’s hand and kiss it.
    The woman said something to Joe Warren. He laughed.
    â€œHow old is he?” Charlie said.
    â€œSeventy-nine, but he doesn’t think old and he doesn’t act old. He still thinks every day is going to be the best day of his whole life.”
    Charlie thought Anna’s eyes were starting to fill up as she said, “My mom always says that God likes Gramps best. But every time she says that, I ask her if that’s true, how come He won’t give him a better football team?”

Six
    â€œTRUE STORY,” JOE WARREN WAS saying to Charlie and Anna now.
    Charlie on his right, Anna on his left. Not a bad game so far, even for the preseason. Not many mistakes, three good drives, and the Bulldogs ahead 14–7 halfway through the second quarter. JJ Guerrero was in at quarterback for Chase Sisk by now, moving the team a lot better than Chase had before his night was over.
    â€œYou start out every story by saying ‘true story,’” Anna said.
    Joe Warren looked at Charlie. “I assume she’s this much of a know-it-all with you?”
    â€œShe doesn’t think her family name is Warren, sir,” Charlie said. “She thinks it’s Google.”
    â€œYou should start out by saying ‘good story,’” Anna said. “Because they always are, Gramps.”
    Joe Warren rubbed the back of her head.
    â€œSee those horns on the side of the Rams’ helmets,” the old man said. “A Rams player back in the day, back when I was a boy, painted horns on his helmet one day in 1948. And people liked the way it looked so much that it became the first team emblem on a helmet in the whole league.”
    Even Charlie hadn’t known that.
    Down on the field JJ Guerrero scrambled to his right, pulled up, threw a little floater to the tight end for a first down.
    â€œHe makes better decisions than Chase Sisk,” Joe Warren said.
    â€œChase thinks that because he’s got a cannon for an arm,” Charlie said, “he can throw it into any kind of coverage.”
    â€œI wish he’d just throw it away sometimes rather than try to force it in there,” Joe Warren said.
    Charlie said, “I read this quote once about how smart football coaches graded quarterbacks the way basketball coaches graded point guards. He said the only stat he cared about was the final score, and whether they’d scored