End Zone

5

Raymond Toon stood six feet seven. He was a mild young man, totally unintimidating, a former bible student. He was a reserve tackle on defense and he had come here because it was the only school he knew of that offered a course in sportscasting.

"Timeadjusted rate of return," he said. "Redundant asset method. Capital budgeting, Probable stream of earnings. Independently negotiated credit balances. Consolidation. Tax anticipation notes."

We were in the cafeteria. John Jessup was also at our table, reading a textbook. Jessup and Toon were roommates. Jessup didn't like the arrangement because Raymond practiced his sportscasting in the room all weekend. When he wasn't studying theories of economic valuation, he was camped in front of his portable TV set. He'd switch it on, turn the sound down to nothing, and describe the action. At this time of year it was mainly baseball, golf, bowling and stock car racing. Jessup had complained to Rolf Hauptfuhrer that he was being driven out of his mind. But so far nothing had been done. Moody Kimbrough brought his tray over to our table.

"This milk is putrid," Jessup told him.

"What do you want from me?"

"You're one of the captains. Go tell Coach. They shouldn't give us milk like this. They should be more careful with the athletes' milk."

"Back home it's the blanketyblank water you have to watch," Kimbrough said.

"Back where I come from it's the water and the milk," Raymond said.

"This is shitpiss," Jessup said. "This is the worstass milk I ever tasted."

Kimbrough drank from his little carton.

"I'll tell you something," he said. "This milk is putrid."

"Damnright," Jessup said.

"This milk is contaminated. It's putrid. It's the worst I ever tasted. Back up home it's the water. Here I guess it's the milk. I'll be sure and tell Coach."

"Toony, what was the point you were trying to make?" I said.

"The level of deemed merit," Raymond said. "Assessed value. Imputed market prices. Munitions. Maximized comparative risk."

Onan Moley joined us. He was wearing a sweat shirt with a screaming eagle, the team symbol, pictured across the front. The word sacrifice was inscribed beneath the eagle. Onan hunched his shoulders and lowered his head almost to table level before speaking.

"There's a lot of talk about a lot of things."

"What talk?" Kimbrough said.

"Never mind."

"I'm cocaptain, Onan. I've got a pipeline. But I don't know about any talk. Now what talk do you mean?"

"There might be a queer on the squad."

"Offense or defense," Kimbrough said.

Terry Madden seated himself at the end of the table. He broke a roll and began to butter it.

"What's the good word?" he said.

Jessup read aloud from his textbook on monolithic integrated circuitry.

"The pattern match begins with a search for a substring of a given string that has a specified structure in the stringmanipulation language."

Taft Robinson was sitting three tables away. I took my dessert over. He looked up, nodded, then looked down again and sliced a quivering ribbon of fat off the last piece of sirloin on his plate.

"That weakside sweep looked good today," I said. "I finally got in a good block for you."

"I saw it," he said.

"I wiped out that bastard Smee. He likes to hurt people, that son of a bitch."

"Which one is he?"

"Middle linebacker. He's the defensive captain. He 1 captains the defense." "I saw the block," Taft said. "I really wiped him out, that bastard. Hey, look, what are you doing here anyway?"

"Where-here?"

"Right," I said. "Here in this particular locale. This dude ranch."

"I'm here to play football. Same as you."

"You could be at almost any school in the country. Why would you want to leave a place like Columbia to come here? Granted, Columbia's not exactly a football colossus. But to come here. How the hell did you let Creed talk you into this place? It's not as though you're integrating the place. Technically you're integrating the place but that's only because nobody else ever wanted to come here. Who the hell would want to come to a place like this?"

"You came here."

"Hey, Robinson," Kimbrough said.

"I'm here because I'm a chronic ballbreaker. First, it's not likely any other school would have me. Second, I wanted to disappear."

"But you're here," he said. "We're all here."

"I can't argue with that. How's your milk? Jessup says the milk is putrid."

"Which one is he?"

"Hey, Robinson," Moody Kimbrough said. "We don't wear sunglasses indoors around here. We don't do that- hear?"

"Mind your own business," I said.

I watched him coming toward our table. I thought briefly about the fact that he outweighed me by forty pounds or so. Then I got up and hit him in the stomach. He made a noise, an abrupt burp, and hit me in roughly the same spot. I sat down and tried to breathe. When I raised my head finally, Taft was just finishing his dessert.