Coward in the Game

It all happened in the famous, fabulous college football season in the fall of nineteen forty-six... the year that had the old boys dreaming up memories of nineteen-nineteen and nineteen-twenty, when, as in forty-six, a big bunch of hard-bronzed men hit the gridirons all over the country and hung up records for all to see. Maybe a kid who hasn’t done very much living can get pretty impressed with the idea of diving low into a flock of cleats coming around left end. I don’t know about that. I do know that a joe who has wormed his way under a bunch of small arms fire isn’t going to do a lot of gasping at the horrors of the so-called “physical contact” sports. And that’s the way it was in forty-six. It’s a year for the books.

As soon as I got out of the service, I tried to get into any college or university with a decent journalism course. I only had one year to go, plus a lot of experience on army sheets. They sent me their regrets. At last a little eastern outfit called Chemung University in the small city of Chemung, New York, wrote me that they might have room in the fall term. I looked them up and their journalism course rated fair. It had to do. Naturally the name of Chemung University wasn’t as well known before the fall of forty-six as it is now.

The idea of existing on the education allowance in the G.I. Bill didn’t look like a very good deal to me. Also, I don’t like small towns. But I went.

The city of Chemung is in a steep-sided valley. The university sits up on the top of the hill south of town. I registered a few days late, and the only place they had left for me was half of a room in a condemned dormitory that they were using for the football boys. I growled at the gent in charge of living quarters, but there was nothing I could do to change it.

I lugged my gear over to the first room at the top of the stairs in a frame dormitory. I crowded through the door and a husky kid jumped up from one of the two beds.

I stuck out my hand and said, “Sorry to move in on you like this. My name’s Tom Western.”

He grinned. “That’s okay. They told me somebody would be moving in with me. Glad it isn’t one of these little kids I see walking around this place. I’m Sven Stockwitz. Don’t let the name stop you. I’m half Swedish and half Polish.”

I liked his looks. He was about five eleven and I guessed him at a hundred and ninety or so. Square face with good solid bones in it. Pale blue eyes, quite small. Hair so blond it was almost white. A grin that hiked one side of his mouth halfway up to his eye and made a million wrinkles around his eyes. He had a good heavy handshake.

After I got my stuff settled and spent some time looking out our two double windows down toward the town, we sat around and smoked and talked. We found out that we’d both spent four years working for Uncle Sugar. He’d been with the Seabees in the Pacific. I’d spent my time overseas as a combat correspondent in the Italy affair.

Then he told me that he was going to lay off smoking pretty soon. Said he was going to play football.

“Doesn’t that seem like kid stuff?” I asked him.

“Sure it does. But what the hell. They give me a snap job of looking after a couple of furnaces, oil-burning jobs, and pay me sixty bucks a month for it. I need the dough and I did well enough as an end before the war so that they want to pay me to play. I need the dough. Mary Anne and I talked it over.”

“Mary Anne?”

“Yeah. My wife. Little old girl named Mary Anne McCarthy before I married her. Just like the name of the gal that went to gather clams. She’s living with her folks now, but I’ve lined up a house here so that she can come out and join me in the spring.”

“Then dear old Chemung U is going into the football racket?” I asked.

“Why not? With things the way they are, they got a chance to pick up a bunch of guys like they’d never get in normal times. So they’re laying it on the line. They ought to have about two hundred turn out for it, and I bet there’ll be forty top guys on the payroll. Nearly all of them service joes. And I’ve really seen a few rough boys around this town already. Rough!”

So that was it. I could see their point. A chance to make a great big name without too much expense involved. With a hot coach, and they’d hired Marty Dorrence, there wasn’t much excuse for little Chemung not tripping up some of the giants. Then the new kids coming up would be interested, and they ought to be able to go along for years on the momentum.

You remember Marty Dorrence. When he came off a Kansas farm back in the late twenties — I got a new bicycle the year he first made All American — he was a gangling black-headed kid with vacant eyes and a loose mouth. He looked fat and sloppy around the waist, even then, but he could snap into full speed in a step and a half. He’d run with his knees rising as high as his chin. After the first ten minutes or any game, he’d be making his own holes in the line. Psychological warfare. He’d come in like a freight train, all knees, elbows and shoulders. One good man could stop him dead about three or four times before they took that good man off the field and got out the wide adhesive.

I picked Marty out in those years as a sort of hero. I followed him after he got out of school, just like a hundred thousand other Americans... followed him through the four years of pro ball when he drove big cars and played it high and wide. I was disappointed when he got too soft to play, and then excited again when he landed the coaching job with Murnane Tech.

You remember what happened then. The story made all the papers. The practice session where Marty, for the hell of it, took the ball and rammed through the line of kids he had coached. Apparently he drove at the weakest sister of the lot. He went through into the backfield where they nailed him. Everybody got up but the kid in the line. Broken neck. Died an hour or so later. Remember those headlines? Brutality in College Football. Sadistic Coach Kills College Student. What Is Happening to College Football?

Those things happen, but Marty was through in college ball. Finally he angled a job as a backfield coach for the Plumbers, that rough old New Jersey pro outfit that has been mauling them for fifteen years.

That was when I met Marty. The school where I took my first three years of journalism had the idea that you try to work up an exclusive yam in any field in which you are interested. I liked football, and after I dug around for a while, I decided to see if I could get some facts for a feature on the way members of pro teams make money on the side bets. I hoped to get a good grade out of it, and get away without getting my head punched in.

I didn’t realize the dynamite in that yarn. When I got my facts together, the hottest angle was about Marty Dorrence. He and two other guys were rigging a pro pool and cleaning up. I turned it in. It was printed and reprinted all over the country. Actually the set-up was not dishonest but looked it. Marty got the pink slip and he was out of football for good... so everybody thought. I was sick about it. He looked me up and asked me what the hell I’d done it for. He wasn’t mad — just hurt. I couldn’t even answer him. I can still see the way his back and shoulders looked when he walked out of my room.

But old Marty fooled them all. Right after the story broke, he enlisted in the Marines. He got his field commission after a patrol on Tulagi. He got the Navy Cross on Guadal, and his majority after Tarawa. He earned his way up there; no politics. They made him a Lieutenant-Colonel just before he got his discharge. That’s what cleared him. That’s what sweetened the name of Marty Dorrence up so that Chemung was glad to take him on as coach.

Stockwitz and I talked some more. Then we went out and ate and came back with some bottled beer. We talked until three, when he got off onto the sterling qualities of his Mary Anne. I yawned my way out of it and went to bed. When he stripped down to climb in the other bed, I sat up to get a better look at that build. He had the neck, chest and shoulders of a guy that ought to weigh two and a quarter. The slimness of his hips and ankles brought him down to around one ninety something. He had a tropical tan burned well down into the fair skin. The muscles were smooth, not bunchy. I counted four places on which he carried the distinctive puckered scars of mortar fragments.

I dropped back onto the pillow and said, “Purple heart kid, hey?”

“Yeah. The medal for not ducking.” That’s all I ever heard him say about the scars or about the war.

The next day, while I signed up for classes, I did a little thinking about the probable football history of Chemung — the golden future — and wondered where I could fit Tom Western into the picture. During the afternoon I went into town and had a long talk with a soft old gentleman who was full of quiet sarcasm and contempt for his own job — managing editor of the daily paper, the Chemung Message. I haggled him out of thirty bucks a month for detailed coverage of all football games. I wasn’t worth it. I figure that he felt sorry for me.

Then I went to see Marty. It was a bit tense when he recognized my name. I told him that it had happened a long time ago and that I was plugging for him. I told him about the sports writing. Then I listened while he told of the football deeds, past and future, of the great Dorrence. After a half hour he loved me as only a thorough bore can love an eager listener. I knew that I could sit with my fingers on the great man’s pulse for the rest of the season.

In a couple of weeks my routine was set and I liked it. Classes, food, sleep and games. I located a little wench named Hilda with a blue Buick which matched her eyes. She didn’t insist on dancing, she didn’t talk much and she could make a big evening out of one cup of coffee. A good gal.

Every day I’d be at the practice field watching wise old Marty shape the boys up. He had it down to a hundred by the time scrimmages started. He made the line coach and the backfield coach tell the eager but inept characters when to stop coming out to play. After two afternoons of practice plays, I could see what he wanted. Pure power. He had simple plays that picked up all the power of the backfield and sent it crashing through holes dug the hard way by the guards and tackles. No razzle-dazzle. Just plain brute power with enough impact at the point of contact to bash in the front end of a truck. It was the smart way with the material he had. And it was the kind of football the big coach knew best. I personally counted twenty boys that were over six-two and over two-ten. They were ex-paratroopers, combat engineers, infantry, Seabees — in fact, almost every tough, dirty branch of the service. It isn’t necessary to say that there were a sprinkling of Marines — big Marines.

Every day I would go down and file some stuff with the Message, and every day they printed it. Marty thought I was a wonderful guy. Sven and I got along wonderfully. I never had a roommate I liked better — but of course he kept wishing out loud that he could trade me in for Mary Anne. I got so I felt that I knew her. He kept four pictures of her in the room. He was gay and happy and working hard at his two trades— learning to be an engineer and playing end for Marty.

The other slots filled up quicker than the end slots. There was some fine, stiff competition for the end positions. I watched them all work out, and I guessed that Sven was one of the two best. He was fast and had a good eye. He could climb higher in the air than many a lad several inches taller. He just about had the right end position cinched when another one of the lads, a boy named Carson, made a beautiful play in a scrimmage. He was playing defense against a power play around his end. Three men running interference. The ball carrier was too close to his interference. They were bunched. Carson spread out and floated through the air, parallel to the ground and about six inches above it. He clipped the whole four at ankle level and piled them up in a heap. That night Marty posted the first string team. Sven wasn’t on it. The two ends were Carson and a slim kid named Pogoni who was as good as they come— maybe better than Sven. Maybe.

Sven didn’t seem to care. He wanted to be number one man, but as long as he got his dough, he was content to play good ball and try to work his way up in there. I knew that he’d be able to do it.

It was about three days later that I found out that there was a little group on the first team who were friendlier than they should have been. It’s always nice to have the boys work together, but when you get three guys who are working for three guys instead of for the team, you have trouble. By coincidence, it turned out that the three dear, dear friends were all on the right side of the line. Carson, the swarthy end who had lucked into a first-team position, Sleegal, a stolid beefy right guard, and Kelly, a red-faced, sullen Irish tackle. I heard them talking in the locker room.

The only important thing I heard was Kelly saying softly, “Now, if you guys stay on your toes and we work together, we can break off any bum who tries to take the first-team job away from any one of the three of us.”

I didn’t like the sound of it and I wanted to tell Marty, but I didn’t want to be a stooge. Besides, I figured that he probably would think I was trying to teach him his business. If he did, I could kiss thirty bucks a month good-bye.

That night I told Sven about it. He fingered his square chin and said, “Well, I’ll be damned! So they got a club. Now I got to get Carson’s job. Besides, if I stay second string, they may cut my pay and then I can’t buy Mary Anne so many pork chops.”

The worst threats to Carson’s peace of mind as the training went further along were Sven and a smiling kid named Billy Jenner, who, strangely enough, was the only non-service kid left within shooting distance of the big time. Sven had it over Jenner like a tent, but I figured that with Jenner’s natural ability, he might be able to crowd Sven a little by next season.

It happened on a Thursday practice session. Jenner was playing right end on the substitute team. He was on offense. He had managed to cut inside of Carson and block him out of a couple of plays that started wide and then cut in. He was making Car-son look bad, and I knew that Marty knew it. I was grinning and pulling for Jenner. There was something about Carson that I didn’t like.

So I was watching Jenner on the next play. I couldn’t figure the play out. Evidently Jenner was supposed to cut inside of Carson and run back through flat center as a decoy. He didn’t get far. I saw Sleegal hit him gently and stop him without knocking him down. I thought I saw Sleegal’s elbow hooked around Jenner’s knee. Then Carson came over and blocked Jenner high and hard, knocking him over the crouching Sleegal. There was a ringing crack that you could hear all over the field. Everybody ran over and stood in a tight circle around Jenner. Marty bulled his way through the circle and I followed him. The play had snapped Jenner’s thigh midway between his knee and his hip. The big muscles of the thigh had contracted and pulled his knee halfway up to his hip. He lay on his back, his eyes shut, his face gray. Knots of muscle stood out on his jaw. He had guts but he was through for the season.

The docs came out and stuck field splints on him. Before they lifted him into the ambulance, he looked up at Carson and said, “When I’m back in shape, I’m going to bust your face in.” Carson was still grinning when the ambulance was out of sight.

Marty called the two teams together and said, “You guys are making trouble for me. Somebody’s going to holler about that. Save that kind of play for the opposition. I like to see you guys play good hard ball, but leave me with some ball players. Now get back in there and run through the same series again. I’ll send Stockwitz in for Jenner. Don’t sissy up on me, but don’t make it too tough, either.”

He sent Sven in and Marty and I squatted out where the linesmen would normally be. We both chewed hunks of grass. I knew from the first play that there’d be more trouble. Sven had added what I’d told him to what happened to Jenner. On the first play he left the ground about eight feet in front of Carson. It turned into a rolling block. He bounded up first and Carson had a funny expression on his face.

Marty saw it. I glanced at him and he met my eye and grunted. He spat out the piece of grass and said, “Now I get to find out which is the best man.”

“And if Stockwitz gets what Jenner got?”

“Then Carson’s the best man. Simple.” He pulled another grass heart and we watched the next play. Sven cut way inside his normal position and hit Kelly in another rolling block which filled Sleegal’s face with heels. I wouldn’t have wanted to be any one of the three. Sven had the gift of hitting full speed in about two steps. We could hear him hit. I knew it must feel to Sleegal, Kelly and Carson like trying to catch a burlap bag full of bricks dropped out of a fourth-story window.

I noticed on the next play that Sleegal, Kelly and Carson had a few mumbled words to say to each other before lining up. They glanced guiltily over toward us. I found out afterward that Sven didn’t have a chance to try to rough them up on the next play, as he was supposed to cut wide and go deep for one of the few pass plays in the Dorrence book. As soon as he pulled out and started wide, the unholy three started after him. He was faster, but when he heard them coming he stopped and they closed in on him. Marty didn’t move. He just watched. Sven stood for a second and they were only feet away from him. He wavered and then when it looked as though they could touch him, he turned and ran as fast as he could. He ran off the field.

I heard Marty breathe. “Yellow! I’ll be damned.”

Sleegal, Carson and Kelly came swaggering back to the line. Sven walked a couple of dozen feet behind them. He looked pale. He didn’t glance at Marty. Marty didn’t stop him. On the next play, Sven dropped the second Carson touched him. Carson looked for a second as though he would pile on. Then he put his hands on his hips and looked down at Sven. He spat on the ground near Sven’s feet and ambled back to his own spot.

Marty said, “Stockwitz! Go over and run around the track six times. Then take a shower and knock off for the day.” Sven walked away with his head lowered. No one spoke to him. I felt sick. Marty sent an eager, clumsy kid named Wallace in at right end. The scrimmage continued, but there wasn’t any more rough stuff.

I went from the Message office to dinner and then I went back to the room. I knew somehow that Sven had had his head in his hands. He looked up and nodded at me. I said, “Hi, Sven,” and went over to my own desk. They were arranged so that we sat back to back. I turned around and stared at him. I stared for a long time. He had his head bent over a book, but in fifteen minutes he didn’t turn a page. I turned around and went to work on my books. I’ve seen too many guys yellow out to be foolish enough to try to talk with them when they’re going through that period of hating themselves.

The world didn’t seem like such a good place after that. I couldn’t figure why Marty kept Sven on, why he didn’t tell him he was through, he could turn in his shoes. Instead he kept Sven circling that track every night. I would look up from the field and see his white head going doggedly around the cinder track. It was refined torture. I knew that if it hadn’t been for the dough and Mary Anne, Sven would have quit. He usually waited until the showers were empty before he went in. He didn’t speak at all in the room. Maybe I should have tried to help him out. I felt bad, but I didn’t know what to do.

The team was shaping up. They plunged through the first two teams they met. You remember the scores. They made headlines all over the country. Seventy-seven to six, and an eighty-three to nothing. Marty had no mercy. He didn’t put in the third, fourth and fifth string boys. He kept the best in there, and rolled up a score. They left a string of broken bones and torn cartilage— on the other teams. Sven still plodded around the track. I began to wonder if Marty had forgotten him.

It was in the early part of October that some local gyp outfit began to send out the fancy discharge buttons to the ex-servicemen in the school. Somehow, they had gotten hold of our military records as transcribed on the school records. They made up discharge buttons with little rows of service ribbons below them, the same service ribbons we had been handed by Uncle Sugar. The little row also included decorations. Some kids were handling it in the school for the outfit in town. I got back to the room and saw the two little boxes on the desks. I found mine on Sven’s desk. I went over and unwrapped it. It had my ribbons on it and they wanted three bucks for it. It looked worth about fifty cents. Besides, I don’t like to wear the discharge button.

They told me in a short letter that I could either send them the three bucks or the button back. I tossed the whole works in the basket, and then decided that was sort of small change. I fished it out and stuffed it in my pocket. I planned to return it to the gyp outfit the next time I hit town.

Then I picked the box for Sven off my desk and started to carry it over to his. The seal had broken and the button fell out. I fished it out from under his bed and started to put it on his desk. And then I saw something. I looked closer. Stockwitz had won himself a Navy Cross.

I know about that Cross. They don’t give that out for eating your K-ration or shining your shoes or because you’ve stayed out of the stockade. It’s not one of those “you cite me and I’ll cite you” decorations. It’s the McCoy. You’ve got to have a record of being one hell of a rough kid and then you’ve got to pull something that is a display of pure guts, outside of what they normally expect of you. It’s the nearest thing to the Congressional. Some navy guys say it’s often better than the Congressional.

I laid is gently on Sven’s desk just as he walked in. He walked over and looked down at the pin. He picked it up and shoved it in his pants’ pockets.

“So they give you the Cross?” I said.

“So what if they did?”

“It kind of changes my mind.”

“How?”

“I figured after that Carson deal that you were yellow.”

“Do you figure that’s going to bother me?”

“Doesn’t it?”

He stared at me and his eyes looked smaller than ever. “How would you feel, Western, if you had waited four years to get that engineering degree — if you had it all set so that your wife could move here with you — if you stood on a field and saw three guys running right at you — three guys who could bust enough bones in four seconds to make everything impossible — the degree, living here with your wife? Suppose in the last two seconds you remembered that you weren’t a wild kid any more — that you were risking too much for a bunch of kid stuff?”

“You’re nuts, Sven. I’m going to tell the guys about that Cross. I’m going to tell Marty.”

He grabbed me by the throat and slammed me up against the wall. His nose was an inch from mine and my throat felt like he was crushing it. “I like it this way. I’d rather run around the track than play ball. I don’t need any help and I don’t need any sympathy. You tell anybody on that squad, and, so help me, I’ll fix you so that little dish with the blue car won’t know you.”

He let go. I straightened my collar and said, “You don’t get cooperation out of the Western clan with that kind of stuff, Stockwitz. I won’t tell them because you don’t want me to, not for any other reason.”

He stared at me and gradually a slow grin took over his face. “Cocky little guy, aren’t you?”

We were friends again. We spent hours talking about everything but football. It was then that he told me that Mary Anne was coming in three days for a visit. As he said it, his face looked softer and his eyes were warm.

The only thing that happened in the three days before Mary Anne showed up was that we won another game. As usual, Sven sat on the end of the bench, a blanket draped over his head like Joe Louis’ towel. Marty left the number one boys in for all but the last three minutes of play. The papers were beginning to notice little old Chemung more every Saturday. We won by a criminal score again. I counted the kids carried off the field — kids from the other school. I knew there wouldn’t be any more heart in their game that year.

Sven got Mary Anne a big room in the Walner Hotel and had me in for a drink before dinner. I took Hilda. I liked Sven’s choice — a tall, Irish gal with blue-black hair, good shoulders and brave, straight eyes. We sat around and talked about the town and the school and screwball classroom scenes where the seventeen-year-olds were being forced to compete scholastically with guys of twenty-five who were digging in with dogged determination.

Then Mary Anne said, “And how is the All-American Swede making out with his ball game?”

“Cut it, honey!” he said sharply.

She had a puzzled frown on her face. She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it slowly. Her eyes looked angry. Then she saw how the happy lines in Sven’s face had sagged away, saw the bleak look in his eyes. I knew she’d have some things to say after we left. I polished off my drink and left with Hilda as soon as I could.

Sven stopped at the room later in the evening to pick up his toothbrush. His jaw was set in a hard, firm line. He didn’t look easy to talk to, but I said, “Did you tell her about it?”

“I told her that I couldn’t get along with the coach.”

“That’s not the truth.”

“It is the truth.” He slammed the door as he left.

When I was certain he was gone, I ran down the stairs and phoned Mary Anne at the hotel. I said, “Hello. This is Western the guy who was up in the room. I want to talk to you without Sven knowing about it How about it?”

Her voice was warm, and yet uncertain “I guess I’d like to.”

“Is he going to classes tomorrow?”

“As far as I know?”

“See you in the hotel coffee shop at nine-thirty.”

She agreed and I walked slowly back up to the room. I still didn’t know what to say to her. It was just that she had something in her eyes, something in the way her head was set on those good shoulders that made me feel she’d know the answers.

I found her sitting on one of the benches along the wall. There was a fresh cup of coffee in front of her on the maple table. I told the waitress to bring me one, and then made light conversation until she had brought it and gone away. I noticed that Mary Anne had some new little wrinkles between her eyes. They had grown there overnight.

I told her the whole story, as I had seen it; told her about the pin and finding out about the Cross; told her what he had said. As I talked, she looked squarely at me and I still liked her eyes.

When I stopped talking, she looked down at the coffee and stirred it slowly. She took some tentative sips. “I don’t know what to say, Tom. I know why he did it. I can understand why he did it. They might have... hurt him badly. And he couldn’t take a chance on losing everything we’ve planned on.” She smiled at me and said, “You know, a wife is supposed to be a hostage to fortune.”

“But it’s wrong. The guy’s got guts. You know that. He tries to act as though he doesn’t care, but it’s feeding on his insides.”

“I know,” she said softly, “his letters have been... odd...” She paused and looked over my shoulder, her eyes widening.

Something grabbed me by the back of the neck and practically lifted me out of the chair. I twisted around. It was Sven. His face was dead white, and his eyes were gray slits. His bunched fist looked as big as a bushel basket.

“Thought I’d find you two together. Thought you’d stick your big nose in my business,” he said, without unclenching his teeth.

He started to slip the big fist back a notch before unwinding on me and Mary Anne snapped, “Sven! Sit down!”

I guessed from the way it stopped him in midair that it was the first time in their short married life that she had used that tone on him. He stopped as though someone had stuck a gun in his back. We sat on either side of her. Her eyes blazed.

“Stop and think why he’s meddling in your business. Stop being so stupid.” He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut in on him. “He’s apparently the only friend you’ve got here. He told me what happened. You’re wrong, Sven. Now don’t interrupt me. I married a man, and if he’s going to stop being a man just because I married him, then I don’t want him. If you start hedging the risks just on account of me, you’ll do it all your life and life will be dull. I can take anything the world dishes out to us — everything except being wrapped in cotton. Now please go up to the room. I want to talk to Tom a few minutes. I’ll be right up.”

They stared at each other and I saw every atom of stubborn resistance given him by his Polish and Swedish ancestors swim up into his eyes. His face was like a rock. She stared at him, and I couldn’t see her face, but I guessed that there was love and fury in her dark eyes.

I saw him waver and then saw the slow grin crack his face into a maze of wrinkles. He stuck out a big hand and ruffled her black hair. “Okay, boss,” he said, and walked out of the coffee shop, toward the lobby.

“Mary Anne,” I gasped, “wouldn’t it have been kinder to slug him with a club?”

“He’s my boy,” she said, with a nice grin. “He’s just got rocks in his head. He’ll be okay now, but you have to give him the chance.”

It took me about thirty seconds to figure out the way to do it. I didn’t want to handle it that way, but it was all there was. I walked off, remembering the small glow in her eyes that said, “Thanks.” It made me feel less badly about the job that had to be done.

I found Marty playing gin rummy with Moe, the bandage and rubdown man. I kibitzed the game silently until I made Marty nervous. He couldn’t cheat so easily with me watching.

Finally he said, “That’s enough for me, Moe.” He stood up and stretched his big frame. Moe gave him eighty cents and walked away.

He sounded irritated as he said, “And what cooks with the boy reporter?”

I sat on the bench where it was still warm from Moe, and Marty sat down near me. I gave him a cigarette. “You’ve heard of the power of the press, haven’t you, Marty?”

“Hope to tell you. You busted me out of my last ball job with it.”

“I got a little favor to ask, Marty. I want you to put Stockwitz in as a first-string end. Next game.”

“You’re nuts, Western. The guy’s yellow.”

“I don’t think so.”

“And who the hell are you?” he demanded belligerently.

“Just a jerk newspaper guy with a story home in my desk. A great big old football history of the great Marty Dorrence. I’m calling it, ‘The Butcher Comes Back to College.’ It tells all about that kid you killed, and it tells about the pro pool racket and then it has a lot of comments about the boys you’ve put in the hospital so far this year with your big score mania. And it tells about that end with the busted leg that you ignored. I’ll get it into some big sheets and I bet they don’t even let you finish out the year. You won’t be able to land on the cheapest team of any kind in the whole country. I can’t vouch for Russia or the Argentine.”

I leaned back and took a cool drag on my cigarette. I didn’t feel so cool inside. It was dirty and I knew it. He stared at me for a time, and his eyes looked hurt, older. He tried to sound mad, but his heart wasn’t in it. I let him pop off for about five minutes before I interrupted him.

“Look, Marty. This is a university. Football’s a nice game. You’re supposed to keep it clean. You’ve been crumbing it up and I got a hundred bucks to your one that even if I don’t publish the article, you’ll get busted out of here after the season’s over. There’s some damn fine gentlemen coaching ball in this country, and I’ll bet you that more than half of them don’t like the name of Marty Dorrence.”

It wasn’t pretty to watch. He’d built his self-esteem and I was ripping it down. He cursed me and then he cursed the system. He unraveled at the edges and he was scared. He saw Fate getting ready to bog him again. I pushed my advantage.

“Marty, you put Sven Stockwitz in and you clean up your brand of ball. Keep that first team of yours from playing sixty minutes. When you get a lead, yank ’em out. Don’t give the boys the idea they got to bust legs to earn their keep. Okay?”

That started him off again. I had to sit and listen to him bluster until I got tired of it. I stood up and yawned. “Okay, Marty. Have it your way. Tomorrow I send out the article. Maybe I ought to change tine name to ‘Let Dorrence Kill Your Kids.’ ”

I walked toward the door. Slowly. He caught me by the arm as I went out the door. “Wait a minute, Tom. This is one hell of a spot to put me in. I got my strategy all laid out. Besides, that Stockwitz is yellow.”

I shoved his hand off and walked away along the path. He caught me after I’d gone fifteen feet. He spun me around roughly, and said, “Okay.” His voice was tired. He added a few choice terms about my probable ancestry. I don’t insult easily. I walked back toward the room wondering if I could really sell the article — if I sat down and wrote it.

The fourth game was also a home game. But it was the first really rough team on the schedule, Worker Tech. That’s the school that claims to take the boys that Minnesota doesn’t have uniforms big enough for. And they’ve always had a rep for playing smart and very heavy football. They, like Chemung, were undefeated, as you will remember, and had no intention of letting us bust up their string. In spite of the fact that I consider the do-or-die-for-old-Chemung attitude to be a lot of kid stuff, I couldn’t help feeling excited about the game. I had only seen Sven for a few minutes and we’d both been a little shy with each other. He’d told me that Mary Anne was staying over for the game. I told him that a bird had told me he might get in the game. He liked that. Marty had stopped the track running stuff and had had Sven working out with the fourth team.

The afternoon was perfect — clear, bright and chilly. I sat in my usual spot on the bench next to Marty and watched the big boys from Worker warm up on the field. I wondered about Sven. The first team from Chemung was pounding around out there. I didn’t want to remind Marty because I didn’t want to make him mad again. At the last minute, just before the kickoff, he hollered down the bench, “Stockwitz! Get in there for Carson!”

Sven jumped up and tossed off the blanket. He grabbed a helmet and ran out. I heard the guys on the bench mutter, and I noticed that Marty looked a little grim. Carson came walking off the field. He slung his helmet down so hard that it bounced almost into Marty’s lap. He said, “You gone nuts, Coach?”

“Shut up and sit down!” Carson muttered something and wedged himself in on the other side of me.

Worker Tech kicked off, a high end over end that carried well down. Bates took it on our ten and started up. He made back up to the twenty-six before they clipped him down. Those men from Tech were big, fast and hard-hitting. They looked good on the field.

The first play was a delayed buck through center. We made two yards. The next play was a fancy one. I recognized it as soon as it started. It was a play where the left wingback comes around right end with a lot of power. Sven, playing right end, has to drift back for a slow count and then cut out wide and fast, giving the ball carrier a chance to cut inside of him with the interference. The idea is, the right end is then available for a lateral when it gets too tight for the man with the ball.

But they didn’t do it that way. While there was still open ground in front of the ball carrier, before Sven had a chance to get into motion, the wingback flipped him the ball.

He was a sitting duck. The opposition end came in fast and rolled him back about four yards. I began to understand what the boys were going to do.

The quarter, Negreno, called one more line buck for no gain and then kicked well out of danger. Sven trailed the safety man on the Tech thirty-two.

The Chemung team worked the same deal on defense. It was a dangerous way to play, but they rigged it so that they knifed in and funneled every play they could right into Sven’s lap. They always had him backed up, but they didn’t help him. What was worse, the Tech team caught on and began to run every other play right over the top of Stockwitz.

It’s bad enough when the opposition concentrates on one man in the line, but when both teams are going out of their way to make it rough, the man in question is in a very bad spot. In a certain sense I didn’t blame the Chemung boys. They’d figured him as yellow. They didn’t want to play with him. So they were taking the smart way to show him up quick and get rid of him. The only trouble was, they might lose the ball game while trying to bust one man out. I began to ache every time Sven was hit. I wondered how Mary Anne was taking it. I knew that she was just as lonesome up in those stands as Sven was out on that unfriendly field.

In the last few minutes of the first quarter, Tech shook a man loose around Sven’s end. He danced across the payoff line without a hand anywhere near him. Sven didn’t get up. The funny thing was, the guys didn’t gather around like they usually do with an injury. They walked away from him. The fixers started out from the bench, but he got slowly to his feet as they got near him. He brushed them off and ran jerkily after the team. I looked at Marty. His jaw was shut tight. I couldn’t read anything in his face.

The second quarter was like the first. They dished everything out to Sven. I didn’t see how one man could absorb it all. They didn’t help him a bit. He got up slower after every play, and yet he made fantastic time getting down the field under punts. He played hard ball. He was playing over his head — but no man can take that sort of thing forever. The Chemung team ran him into every tough spot they could think of on offense, and gave him no cover at all. They sent him out and let Tech shoot him down. Once, on a flat pass, he wiggled loose and made twenty-five yards before they smothered him.

The Tech center was injured and had to be taken out. Marty took our center out and put in the second team boy. He glared at me after he did it. Sven began to limp between plays, but he kept his speed up during the plays. Just before the half ended, the Tech fullback got a bad knee out of a line plunge. They had to take him out. Marty sent in a second string fullback for Chemung. I began to understand what he was doing.

At the half, I drifted back to the locker room with the team. He had a red and purple bruise on one cheek that had nearly closed his eye. Somebody had come down on his left hand with a foot full of cleats. Three of his fingers looked like nothing human. They were cut and so badly swollen that they bulged out above and below the knuckles. A front tooth was chipped. When Moe pried his right shoe off, the ankle puffed up to the size of his calf. He lay on one of the benches with his eyes shut while Moe worked on the ankle.

Marty strolled around and looked them all over. I noticed that all the guys who had been in the game avoided each other’s eyes. Sven was still breathing hard, his big naked chest rising and falling rapidly.

Marty stopped in the middle of the room. I composed myself for another roaring session. When he spoke softly I nearly fell off the folding chair. “All you guys know what’s going on, just like I do. Frankly, I don’t think I give a damn whether you win this game or not. But if any of you got any sense, you’re learning something from what’s been going on. I am.”

At that point, Sven propped himself up on one elbow. He grinned and said, “They’re teaching me some stuff, too.” He dropped back down and shut his eyes. The room was very silent.

Sleegal got up and walked over to Stockwitz. He said, “Hey, you!” Sven opened his eyes again. Sleegal stuck out his fat hand and Sven took it. “In the last half, boy, I give you all the cover I can.”

“Let the yellow son of a gun make his own cover,” Kelly snarled.

Sven rolled off the bench and stood up. He winced as he stepped on the bad ankle. He limped over to Kelly. Kelly jumped up, tense and ready.

Sven stopped in front of him and said gently, “This is kid stuff, Kelly. A game I used to play long ago, but I want you to try it with me. Now. See, I’ll keep my hands down at my sides and you take a slug at me. Hit me anywhere and just as hard as you want to. The only thing is, after I get up off the floor, and I’m going to get up, I get one bang at you. Okay?”

Kelly looked uncertain. Sven stood quietly in front of him. Kelly closed his big fist slowly, and then opened it up again. Sven smiled at him. “What’s the matter, Kelly? Come on! Let me have it! I’m the guy with no guts, remember?”

Kelly looked down at the cement floor. He shuffled his big feet. “Nuts, Stockwitz. That’s kid stuff.” He sat down on the bench without looking up. Sven walked back to the table and stretched out so that Moe could continue working on him.

Marty walked to the door. He put his hand on the knob and turned his head so that he faced the room. “Bowen goes in for Kelly after the half.” He walked out. I stuck around. As the minutes went by, the atmosphere gradually changed. All of the strain was gone. When the time was short, the boys climbed back into the suits, laughing and kidding. All but Kelly. Nobody missed the chance to cuff Sven or beat on his shoulder or stick an elbow lightly into his ribs. He was in.

I stood at the door and watched them go back out onto the field. They didn’t look like a team that had played thirty minutes of rough ball. They ran out on their toes — all but Sven. He was saving it. He ran as if his legs were canvas tubes stuffed with putty.

Worker kicked off and Negreno, the quarter, took it back about twenty-two yards to the Chemung thirty. The backfield pranced and the line boys bounced up and down until the last three seconds before the ball snapped back. Negreno took it, faked to the left wing and slipped it to the fullback who slammed in between left guard and tackle for a fat seven.

It was a setup for a couple of solid yard and a half bucks to carry it to a first down. I could see the Worker backfield pull in. Negreno did the smart thing. He called one of the few razzle jobs. The right wing took it and faded back, giving the left end time to run wide and then cut sharply back into the flat. The left guard bulled through in time to wham a beautiful block into the Worker left wing. The Chemung left wing circled wide and delayed so that he was pounding along a little behind and to the left of the end. The pass was a beauty. When the safety man came in on the left end, he lateraled back to the left wing. He did it a little too soon. He should have waited until he felt the hands on his legs. The safety man kept his feet and took off after the left wing. He nailed him on the Worker nine.

I suddenly realized that I had been holding my breath until my ears were buzzing. The crowd sounded like a hundred fire engines in the middle of a thunder storm. I looked down at Marty’s hands. His fingers were knotted together. I couldn’t see a scrap of expression on Marty’s face.

The Worker gang missed their chance to hold the line because they half expected a play or two to be run over Stockwitz. They were still handing him the business. Negreno called three wicked smashes into the left side of the line... one inside tackle, one outside tackle, one inside tackle. The boys with the poles ran out part way and then ran back. You don’t need the poles when you started less than ten yards from the payoff line. Guess they got excited — linesmen are human too.

Once again Negreno handed it to the full, so I thought. It would have been a good idea because he banged two yards across the line with six men hanging onto him. But his arms were empty. Negreno slanted across with it himself, banging diagonally across the huge hole that had been torn in the line. It was a play that wasn’t in the books. I heard Marty gasp. But it had been smart ball. Negreno figured that if the full had been stopped cold, he still had a chance of sliding down left end. If the full went through, then he could too.

The point was missed and it stood six all. The two teams settled down to hard, brutal ball. Worker Tech had wised up, and they played it close to the vest. I began to wonder why Marty didn’t haul Sven out of there. There were a few short passes that didn’t connect. They’d kick to us and we’d battle our way from our twenty-five down to around our forty and then kick back. They’d do the same. The boys were tiring, but neither coach ran in many substitutions.

When they shifted at the quarter, Worker had the ball on their own thirty-eight, fourth down and four to go. The kick was good and we battled it up to our own forty-five before we kicked out. Neither team could get the edge. When Chemung would take it beyond the fifty before kicking, the kick would be a fearful wabbling thing. When we kept them bottled up behind their own thirty, their kick would soar like a rocket. The breaks of the game were coming out even.

The last quarter ticked slowly on and at last the hand of the big clock touched the black line that said three minutes to play. Chemung had the ball on our own forty. Negreno faked a buck and wiggled loose around left end for eleven yards. It was the biggest gain in twenty minutes of ball. The crowd yelled like it had been a touchdown.

I felt Marty jump when the next play started. “Watch Stockwitz,” he hissed.

Sven had picked up his tired bones and flashed off like a spooked horse. He ran with his head down, and I knew that the smooth muscles of those thick calves were paying off. I glanced back toward the back-field. Our left end had the ball, and he was dancing back, in serious danger of being trapped. Our blocking was bad. He waited a long time. Finally he wiggled loose and ran back a few more yards. He wound up and put his heart, his back and his prayers into a high spiral pass.

I glanced toward Sven. He had his head up, his eyes on the ball, and he was running along the goal line. He stopped and stood perfectly still, his knees flexed. The safety man was coming in on him fast. Swen went high in the air and the ball thumped against his chest.

Accomplishment can wear a false face, the idiot grin of a clown. In front of thirty thousand people, Stockwitz jumped high in the air, forcing himself backward. His legs went out from in under him and he made the most spectacular pratt-fall in the history of organized sport. He hit with a thud that jarred every set of teeth in the cramped stadium. But he hung onto the ball and he landed in pay dirt. Several grown men with burbling briars and blue stubble on their chins had respectable cases of hysteria. Marty sent Carson in for Stockwitz. We made the point and two plays later the game ended thirteen to six.

Marty shared the headlines with Stockwitz and the rest of the team. “Dorrence Shows New Sportsmanship.” “New Ethics on Substitutions.” “May be New Unwritten Law of Football.”

I’m due to go back to Chemung tomorrow as a house guest. It’s probably the last chance I’ll get to visit Sven and Mary Anne before they become a family of three.

I saw a little piece in the paper the other day. Marty Dorrence is using his between seasons’ time making lecture tours now. He talks at high schools. His subject is “Teamwork and Sportsmanship.”

I wonder if he still cheats at gin rummy!