Run the Man Down

1

The flimsy front door opened with a squeak and shut with a reverberating slam. Tommy, irritated at being trapped in the highchair too long, banged on the tray with his spoon and glared at her. Carol Ann said softly, “One minute, honey bun. That big man is home.” She turned up the gas under the pressure cooker, met Big Tom at the kitchen door. Her heart ached at the lines of weariness in his face and with her arms around him, she felt the leaden exhaustion of his body.

“They kept you a long time, darling,” she said.

He smiled in a tired way. “Every day on Robertson’s squad is just like Sunday on the farm. Nothing to do but work. I think I’m too tired to eat.”

He sat at the table in the cramped kitchen and Tommy crowed with delight, tried to express his approval of having his father home by bashing him with the sticky spoon.

“Hmm,” Tom said. “Offensive type. With the beef on you, we’ll have to use you in the line.”

“Say good night to your father,” Carol Ann ordered.

Tommy made a few strangled gurgling noises. Big Tom rumpled the silly blond hair, said, “Shove off, squarehead.” Carol Ann took Tommy out of the highchair and into the bathroom.

The pressure cooker started to chuckle and she called to Tom to turn off the gas under it. From his chair at the kitchen table he could reach the stove easily.

She made quick work of Tommy, tucked him in his crib, kissed him and snapped out the light. When she went into the kitchen, Tom had his elbows on the table, his face on his hands. His dark blond hair was still damp from the locker-room shower.

He didn’t stir until she put his plate in front of him, sat down opposite him. Then he smiled at her as he unfolded his napkin.

“A little on the beat side, darling?” she asked.

“Beat like a Dutch pudding. Every man with two left feet gets a bid to come to Carvel. Robertson’s answer is to run us through the plays a couple of hundred thousand times. If I’d run in a straight line, I’d be in Chicago.”

“How does it look for Saturday, Tom?”

“We ought to take ’em. The word is that their line is only two deep and by the second half we ought to be making yards.”

He ate listlessly, and she saw that his big brown hands trembled with fatigue. She chattered gaily about life in “the barracks”. Their small apartment was in the middle of what was called “Uncle Sugar Village”, and the partitions were so thin that they could hear the private life of the married students on either side of them. She knew that it was no time to bring up the most recent blow to their budget, the insurance premium that they had both forgotten, the final notice that had come in the afternoon mail.

After he finished dinner, he pushed his chair back, glanced at his watch. “Poppa is off to keep the home fires burning,” he said.

“Hurry back, darling,” she said, and forced herself to smile.

The little apartment was quiet after he had gone. She did the dishes quickly, went to the desk and studied the budget again. Tom was making his rounds of the oil furnaces in the campus buildings. Ten stops. He had to check the fuel level, the flame and the water pressure at each stop. She knew that it would take him close to an hour.

When he was due back, she put the bills in the back of the check book, slipped it into the bottom drawer of the desk.

The walk in the night air had seemed to revive him a little; his face didn’t look as tired. He sat in the big chair in the twelve-by-twelve living room, put the plywood board across the arms of the chair and pulled the books off the shelf beside him.

She loved him very much. He was a big man, rangy and strong, with quiet strength and good humor in his deep-set eyes. He had been raised on a fertile, prosperous Indiana farm. When he was fourteen, the farm had been “dusted out” and the memory of the poverty that followed was the bitterest thing in his life... and the urge that drove him.

They had met during the war and had been married three weeks before he had gone overseas. On one of their last few nights together, his voice hoarse with sincerity, he had told her his dream.

“Honey, after this war is over, one of the most important things in the world will be food. Food is just another way of saying good land. I’m going to come out of this war and go to college. And I’m going to be one of the guys who are going to see that our land isn’t wasted. I want to learn the chemistry of the soil, and about erosion and how to save the greatest wealth this nation has. I saw what happened to my folks. It killed my dad. It doesn’t have to happen, you know.”

She looked up from her magazine, saw his eyes intent on the lecture notes. Yes, he was fighting for his dream. And the fighting was hard and bitter. Little Tommy had come along. They had needed an extra source of income. The university was willing to provide jobs for the top football players. Tom got fifty a month for checking the oil furnaces every night.

That fifty, plus the G.I. Bill, gave them one hundred and seventy a month. His share of his mother’s maintenance was twenty-five a month. The hundred and forty-five was dangerously little. Care for Tommy would cost as much as she could earn, so there was no point in her working.

On the basis of his work on the freshman team, Tom Lamar had made the squad the second year, had justified his position by a style of play that was outstanding. In this, his third year, he was team captain.

And Carvel, more than any other school in the country, could provide him with that knowledge of the soil which he wanted.

The budget was a cruel and inexorable thing. The printed words in the magazine faded and she saw the neat columns in her mind. Sixty for food. Forty for rent. Eleven for utilities. Fifteen for insurance. Those deductions left the magnificent sum of nineteen dollars a month to cover clothes, medical care, entertainment, toothpaste, razor blades, dry cleaning, and, of course, emergencies.

The gas bill was unpaid, and there was one hundred and fifty dollars still unpaid on the doctor bills. Twenty-two owing to the dentist. One dollar and ninety cents to the drugstore. And before the end of the month, she would have to start charging groceries.

And it was her job to stay bright and gay. The cheerful little wife. Everything is just ducky, darling. We are getting along beautifully. Tommy needs new shoes. You’re almost out of socks. I have one pair of stockings left. Things are lovely.

She glanced over and saw that he had fallen asleep over the books. His head was slumped to one side, and he was breathing through his open mouth. His brown hands rested on the open pages of the notebook.

She walked quietly over, touched his shoulder. He mumbled in his sleep, then jumped. “Huh? Oh! Guess I dropped off.”

“I guess you did. Bed for you, Mr. Muscle. Come on. Up!”

He held his hand out to her. She grabbed it and tugged. He pulled her down, held her tightly. Then he got up and his walk as he went to the bedroom was like that of a drunk. He was drugged with the need for sleep. But she knew what he would do. He’d set the alarm for six, get in an hour and a half on the books before he had to go to class.

By the time she crawled in beside him, he was in the deep sleep of exhaustion.

Carvel’s average season record was four wins and five defeats. The schedule was always tougher than it should have been. Carvel belonged to the borderline of commercialized college football. The alumni groups did a lot of scouting and various alumni scholarships were set up. Usually the first team was all composed of boys who went to Carvel because they had been sought out and urged to go there.

But about half the second team and two-thirds of the rest of the squad were on an ‘amateur’ basis.

Since the schools that did extensive and well-planned solicitation of athletic talent were content to fit breathers into their schedules. Carvel was matched against many of the teams that always attract national interest.

Thus the gate receipts were adequate, and Gunner Robertson, the head coach, was very adequately paid. His job was to so handle a semi-commercial squad as to provide the constant threat of an upset.

Carol Ann knew Tom was disappointed that she wasn’t able to attend the Saturday game against Blaight University, whose team maintained about the same standards as Carvel. But sitters cost money and the day threatened to be cold and she did not want to risk taking Tommy.

The small and ancient radio could pick up just one local station, but that was the station broadcasting the game.

There was always the fear of his being hurt, of course. And somehow it was worse listening to the game than actually being there.

She turned the radio on at two o’clock. She smiled when she heard the announcer say, “and in the offensive fullback slot for Carvel is Big Tom Lamar, six foot two, two hundred and fifteen pounds and one of the hardest-driving backs that these tired old eyes have ever seen. It will not surprise me, folks, if Carvel has All American material here. We’ll watch him closely during this, Carvel’s third game of the year. So far they have had one victory and one defeat. They are eager for a victory today.

“Now the Carvel team is coming out on the field. It’s a clear, cold day, perfect football weather. The Carvel squad looks like it had a lot of snap. Those red and black uniforms have a trim look. Carvel will receive and defend the south goal.”

Tommy was tottering around on uncertain legs, pulling a wooden duck that quacked and flapped its bill. He stopped by the radio with half his hand in his mouth and looked solemn as though he were following the game.

Blaight held Carvel after two first downs and ran back the kick to their own thirty. They kicked on third down, and Big Tom came back into the game.

On the second play, the announcer’s voice rose in excitement and she could hear the roar of the crowd. “Right through the middle he went in a line plunge, and got into the secondary and for once they gave him the right kind of blocking. Twenty, fifteen, ten, five and over for a touchdown! Man, that Lamar can run like a... well, he can run!”

“Daa?” Tommy asked.

“Yes, baby. That’s your pop.”

In the second quarter, a pass into the flat took Carvel to Blaight’s twelve. She held her breath while Tom took it over in three punishing smashes, once off tackle, and twice right through the middle.

After the half, with Carvel leading 13-0, Blaight took to the air in earnest. Their passes began to click and they took it in four plays down to the Carvel fifteen. Two defensive backs were injured and Tom Lamar was sent in as defensive fullback. Blaight shifted to line play and made four yards in two attempts. On the third play, they passed out to the right and deep. The receiver was waiting on the one. Tom came knifing in from the side, went high, and picked the ball out of the air. He made it back to the fifty before he was run out of bounds.

That setback seemed to take the heart out of Blaight. Carvel pushed over three more scores during the second half, and the game ended with the score 33-0.

He arrived back at the apartment a little after six. She met him at the door and after his kiss, she looked at the purple bruise under his eye, touched it with her fingertips.

“Hey!” he said, pulling away. “I got needles in there. Feels that way.”

“Darling, you were a hog all afternoon. I’ve got no sympathy for you. According to the announcer, you’re the greatest thing that has happened to football since the dropkick.”

He had his arm around her as they walked through to the kitchen.

“Oh, sure!” he said. “Me and Grange. Listen, I’m just a guy earning his fifty bucks a month.”

“Go on, you love it!”

“That’s the trouble with getting married, honey,” he said fondly. “You have to let somebody in on all your secrets.”

She became solemn. “Are you sorry?”

He rumpled her dark hair, and laughed at her. “I resent you every waking moment.”

She pivoted as he had taught her, thumped him with a short right hook in the middle. He fell back against the wall, pretending to cry.

Tommy, in his highchair, gave them one wide-eyed look and then began to bellow with all the power of his lungs.

It took them a long time to convince Tommy that they had been fooling. When at last he smiled through the tears, Carol Ann said. “See how much security means to them?”

The good humor fled from Tom’s face. “A good thing he doesn’t know how thin an edge his security is balanced on.”

“But that’s a different sort of security, darling. That’s financial. Emotional security is so much more important.”

But somehow she knew her words had made him think of how they all were hostage to fortune, and how precious they were in their well-being.

After he came back from his rounds of the campus buildings, he sat at the small desk and puzzled over the accounts. She saw the frown cm his forehead. She went over and put her hand on his broad shoulder. “It’ll come out all right, Tom,” she said softly.

He smiled up at her. “I’m glad somebody thinks so,” he said wryly.

On the last Wednesday in October, Carol Ann counted the money in the cigar box in the top drawer of the desk. Two dollars and a little change. Not nearly enough to cover the groceries they needed. It was a surprisingly warm day. The grocery store was on the comer two blocks from the foot of the hill on which they lived.

Tommy crowed with delight as she guided the stroller down the slope and she said, “On the way up, my man, you walk. Your vehicle will be laden with edibles.”

Near the foot of the hill three coeds crossed diagonally toward the campus. Carol Ann was surprised at her feeling of anger when she looked at them. Maybe it was envy. They were laughing, their voices silver-clear in the autumn air.

Carol Ann knew that the two years of cutting comers had left a mark on her. Tiny lines at the corners of her mouth, a sallowness under her eyes. She felt enormously older than the three girls. They wore casual, sloppy clothes and somehow those clothes were in painful contrast to Carol Ann’s ironed and faded neatness. For a moment she wished that she could return to those carefree days — days laden with nothing more important than a new shade of lipstick, a movie that couldn’t be missed, a wonderful new dance band...

Immediately she was ashamed of herself, knowing that in many ways she had something that possibly not one of the three would ever possess.

The grocery store had been recently converted into a self-service steup. She parked the stroller in front, took Tommy through the entrance and looked around until she located Mr. Endry, the owner. He was in a far corner taking canned goods out of a case, marking the price on them with a black crayon and stacking them on a display rack.

She was timid about what had to be done, but there was a relief in remembering the way Mr. Endry had always joked with her, and clucked at Tommy.

Holding Tommy by the hand she went up behind him, coughed and said, “Mr. Endry?”

He turned and smiled at her. He had a lean face, a half-bald head and sharp smiling blue eyes behind rimless glasses. “Well, hello there, Mrs. Lamar. Who’s that good-looking fellow?”

“Say hello to Mr. Endry, Tommy.”

Tommy put half his hand into his mouth and stared at Mr. Endry solemnly.

Mr. Endry laughed. “What can I do for you today, Mrs. Lamar.”

“Well, I hate to ask for this sort of favor, Mr. Endry, but I wonder if I could charge groceries until the end of the month. It will only be a few days—”

He took the short yellow pencil from behind his ear and examined the point of it as though seeing it for the first time. He glanced quickly into her eyes and then away.

“You folks are up at the veteran’s village, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Mrs. Lamar, I’m a businessman. I made the mistake of extending credit to some of you people up there and you left school without settling. I had to take my loss. Now the grocery business has a pretty tight margin these days, and I can’t afford to do business with people that are going to do me that way. I’m sorry, Mrs. Lamar, but—”

His voice dwindled as she walked rapidly away, half dragging Tommy, her face crimson and her lips compressed.

She lifted Tommy, plumped him into the stroller and wheeled it rapidly away. Tears of bitter anger filled her eyes. It was not so much anger at being refused as it was at being thought a sort of... of second-class person, with less moral responsibility than the average.

She went to another store two blocks further on, and spent the little money she had with great care, for the cheapest and most filling food she could find.

When Tom came back from the practice session, she thought she had removed all traces. But he looked at her carefully and said, “What happened, pun-kin?”

She went into his arms as the quick tears came again and after a little time he had it all. His jaw set and his nostrils flared with anger.

He sat in the big chair with her curled in his lap and he said, “Tomorrow I’ll pay Endry a little visit.”

“No, Tom. Please! That won’t do any good at all.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Your check ought to come the day after tomorrow. We can get through tomorrow and I can borrow a couple of things from Janet next door. We’ll make out all right. Honestly. It just made me feel mad, the way he talked so loudly that people nearby turned and looked at him, and at me. It made me feel like — like a cheat or something.”

He tried to laugh. “They talk about rough times building character. Nuts! I wonder how good all this is for us. I wonder what effect it’s having on us. I feel like it’s making marks that don’t show, but pretty deep marks for all that.”

She tilted her head up and kissed the angle of his jaw. “Woof! Philosophy yet! Break it up, soldier.”