Run the Man Down

2 A Buck for a Buck

Tom Lamar knew that his showing in the Blaight game was due mostly to a perfect meshing of his performance with that of Tide Wallinger, left wing, a perfect blocking back.

In the Blaight game they had reached that peak of partnership performance which immeasurably increased the chances of breaking into the clear. He got the glory and Tide Wallinger did half the work.

Tide was a Florida boy, a lean, knobbly character with a wide reckless mouth, a hot glow in his faded blue eyes, and a lust for physical contact, for dumping the opposition as hard and as often as possible.

Yet he didn’t throw away blocks. Cutting out ahead of Tom, he was able to gauge when Tom could avoid tacklers on his own steam. He saved his slamming, rolling-block for the boy who would have a perfect shot at Lamar.

As a ball carrier, Tide was average. When cutting back to avoid a tackle made sense, Tide preferred to try to run down the tackier, run over him, smash him back.

Saturday was open, and as injuries in the Blaight game had been fairly heavy, Gunner Robertson canceled the planned game with the freshman team and instead ran the first teams through the faster-breaking offensive plays, then ran a long session on the perennially important fundamentals.

Finally the call came to break it up as the last daylight faded. Tom, depressed with the worry he had concealed from Carol Ann, found himself walking beside Tide back to the docker rooms and showers.

“I want to talk to you. Private-like,” Tide said.

“The only bills I’ve got are bills due, friend.”

“This isn’t the gouge, son. This is a little piece of heaven. And I don’t want to be seen leaving with you. One of the back booths at Hogan’s?”

“Okay. What are you now? International spy, perhaps?”

“No. I’ve just stopped being an international chump. Maybe you can stop too.”

When Tom arrived at Hogan’s, Tide was already there. He grinned up at Tom and said, “Sit down and listen, Big Tom.”

Tom sat across the table from him. “Babble on, Florida.”

“Whether you know it or not, my boy, we are hot this year. Steaming nicely. With your muscles and my brains, we are a ground-eating combo, as the man says.”

“So you asked me to stop by so we could admire each other?”

“You and I have two-bit jobs and heavy schedules, and change jingling in our pants is a novelty. Check me if I’m wrong. We, my boy, are potential beef for the big time. And they have noted us well.”

“Which big time?”

“Southern Idaho University. Conference champs. Bowl material. A fine, fat country-club life, with bills rustling in your pocket. A special course for the football wonders, including such skull-busters as Appreciation of Music, Current Events, Philosophy of the Italian Renaissance. In the final test on the music course, they play three ten-second recordings. You have to tell which is a flute, which is a snare drum which is a cello.”

“They fit you for life, hey?”

“Don’t be so dewy-eyed, mate. It isn’t what you know, it’s what you look like you might know.”

“You could take other courses?”

“Nope. No choice for the muscle-bound. Besides, the football work is too tough and too long to permit the idle fantasy of home work and term papers.”

“I take it you’ve been propositioned.”

“But right. Last Saturday they had a citizen in the stands. He wants both of us or either of us. Here’s the pitch. We both find we have too heavy a schedule and we are forced to drop out. This week. We take a short vacation and then we move to the thriving college town of Barton where the little men find us an occupation not too tiring. They admit us for the spring session, provide summer employment, and we are on the squad in the fall. The eligibility rules will give us two full seasons with them, even though this is the beginning of our second competitive year. Get it?”

“Take a short vacation, the man says. On what, friend? You are full of single bliss. I have a small family. Remember?”

Tide grinned widely. “There is a special fund for travel expenses. They have paid me my travel expenses in advance. Look closely, Big Tom.” He reached into an inside pocket, took out a flat packet of bills, riffled the corner. “Here you see ten, fat, beautiful fifty-dollar bills.”

Tom stared at the money and thought of how much that five hundred dollars would mean to him and Carol Ann.

“Of course,” Tide said, “it costs you more to travel. The little man told me to tell you that they would double the travel allowance in your case.”

Tom stared down at his clenched fists, saw that his knuckles were white with the pressure. “You’ve decided, then?”

“What other way could I decide, Big Tom? Do you hear any fall winds whining through the holes in my head? In the spring I take up my interrupted education. Books, tuition, living expenses are laid on. Plus forty a week out of a special fund to take care of — incidentals. You would get that too, right on top of the hundred and twenty from Uncle Sugar. A shade over two eighty a month. Pretties for the missus and a chrome-plated bike for the young ’un.”

Tom’s smile felt tight. “I hadn’t exactly intended to start playing pro ball.”

“It’s all in the way you look at it. In pro ball your efforts are going to enrich a group of little men who wear hand-painted neckties. In this deal, your efforts buy nice new buildings and nice new scholarships so that the deserving intelligentsia can study how to be geniuses in the best of modern surroundings. What loyalty have you got to dear, dear old Carvel?”

Tom frowned. “Not exactly loyalty. They have some courses here I want.”

Tide laughed. “I remember. You and the little green growing things that have to be protected from the dust and floods. Hell, on the reputation you’ll pile up at S.I.U. you will be able to grab a job where you can learn that gunk out in the field. Why keep hitting your head on the books?”

“Why didn’t your friend come to me?”

“Well,” Tide said slowly, “I told him that you might be a shade touchy. Why all the questions? You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

“I... I guess I better think it over, Tide.”

“And while you’re thinking, just remember what those babies are going to do to you next Saturday without Tide Wallinger, that famous blocking back, to keep their greasy hands off you. Tomorrow I visit the dean with tears in my eyes.”

“Are you going to hang around town?”

“Until you make up your mind. If it’s yes, I contact a little man who gives me the roll which I pass on to you, maybe with a ten percent agent’s cut.”

“And what if it’s no, Tide?”

Tide shrugged. “Will it be no? Ask the little woman. Last time I saw her, she had a hungry look. Just a little beat.”

Tom clamped a lid on his anger. “I’ll let you know.” He got up heavily, walked out of Hogan’s and went home.

During dinner he said little to Carol Ann, but he watched her. Her gayety seemed forced. He felt uncomfortable, realizing that the proposition relayed by Tide was the first thing he had ever kept from her. And yet he wanted to make up his mind alone, without her aid.

As they sat at the table after dinner, she said, “Darling, I love to have you come home to dinner, and it was nice that Robertson let us arrange it this way to give us a little home life during the season, but I really think we could feed a horse cheaper. If you would please eat at the training table, darling, I think we would save over five dollars a week, at least. Probably more.”

“She’s getting tired of me,” Tom said mournfully.

“I hoped you wouldn’t find out.”

And so a joke was made of it. He wondered what had caused her to give up when she had fought for it so hard in the beginning of the season. After dinner when she handed him the letter, he knew.

It was from something called the Doctors’ Credit Bureau and it said in a very cold manner that their account in the amount of so-and-so had been turned over to the Bureau for collection as it had been inactive for over a sixty-day period and would Mr. Lamar please write immediately and tell them what he intended to do to pay off the amount owing.

He crumpled the letter and threw it toward the wastebasket. He felt bleak and cold. Before, he had shrunk when he thought of how Gunner Robertson would react to his leaving school just as the season was well under way. Now it did not matter too much about Robertson.

Nothing mattered except any move which would save them from further shame.

“That does it!” he said hoarsely.

“Does what, darling?”

“That puts us on a fine little easy street from here on in.”

He told her about the proposition and as he talked, she watched him with grave eyes, her clenched hand at her mouth, tapping her thumbnail against her teeth.

When he was quite through, she said calmly, “But it isn’t what we want!”

“Is this what we want?” he asked, making a gesture that included the flimsy apartment, the mud where there should have been grass, the look in Endry’s eyes.

“This is the way to get what we want, Tom. That other way is no good. No good at all.”

“But I can’t keep doing this to you, Carol Ann. I’m married to you. Remember? Don’t you think I want to buy you nice things? Don’t you think I want to see you without those two little worry wrinkles between your eyebrows? What the hell kind of a life is this for you and the kid?”

“It’s a good life because it leads to what we want, Tom. Can’t you understand that? We’ll get through somehow.”

“But will we? How long can we go without having fun? Wouldn’t you like to go dancing? Wouldn’t you like to eat out?”

“But it won’t last long, darling.”

“It’s been endless already and there’s nearly two more years of it. I’m damn well sick of it right now. I’m sick of this... this—” Again he made the gesture.

All of the fight suddenly went out of her. He saw the look of weary resignation. “Whatever you decide to do will be all right with me, Tom,” she said dully.

He stood up. “Oh, fine! You’re really thrilled, aren’t you?”

He walked out, slammed the door behind him. His anger lasted for about two blocks. Then he felt miserable. It was their first real quarrel, and it was heavy within him.

He made his rounds of the furnaces, walked heavily home. She was standing in the dark in the kitchen, looking out the window.

He went to her, put his big hands on her slim shoulders and turned her around, pulled her into his arms. She came willingly enough, and he felt her shake with the sobs she muffled against the front of his jacket.

“I’m sorry, honey,” he whispered.

“So am I. Maybe — maybe you’re right. Maybe we aren’t — aren’t strong enough, Tom.”

He kissed her, tasted the salt of her tears on her lips.

Gunner Robertson was a tall, grave man who dressed like a bookkeeper. His coat pocket bulged with pencils and pens. There was scurf on his dark shoulders and a somber look in his eyes. He was a strategist, a tactician of high order. His greatest delight came from engineering an upset through the use of a play so unexpected as to demoralize the opposition.

He sat behind his desk in the small office on the third floor of the gym. He held a broken pencil in his strong hands and, with a ridged thumbnail, he was picking the wood slowly away from the buried lead.

Tom Lamar sat in the straight chair across the desk. It was noon on Monday.

Robertson sighed. “You know, Lamar, I wouldn’t be happy coaching that kind of an outfit. Of course the pay is terrific. That would be nice. But I guess I’m partisan to lost causes. I like to get there lastest with the leastest, and still win.”

Tom flushed. “What coaching? Where?”

Robertson looked at him with amusement. “Why at S.I.U., lad! Where else? You and Wallinger are naturals for them. You fill the slots where they’re a shade weak, if an outfit like that can ever be weak. I listened to Wallinger’s little tale of woe. According to him he’s on the verge of a complete breakdown Poor boy. The coat he was wearing was so new I looked for the price tag. And now you, Lamar. Tch, tch, tch!”

Tom felt uncomfortable “I’m sorry I lied to you, sir, I should have known that I’d be better off telling the truth. I know you can raise hell with them through the proper channels, but that’s about all. They want the two of us or either of us. I... I’ve had it rough and their offer will straighten me out, me and the wife and kid.”

Robertson threw the pencil aside, swiveled the chair so he could look out the window “I don’t blame you. Lamar. It’s your life. Football isn’t too bad a career. I’ve liked it so far. You ought to make a good coach when you’re older.”

“That isn’t what I had planned to be.”

“That’s about all you’ll be trained for, Lamar.”

“I can’t think of myself in this. There are — other considerations.”

“I understand that, too. I’m not begging for anything, Lamar. But if it’s possible I would like to have you hang around until the Southern Mines game is over this Saturday. We won’t win, but I’d like to put a few dents in them.”

Tom thought it over. “I can do that.”

“Good boy! Now, about Wallinger’s slot. How do you think Sigel will shape up?”

“Not as good as Tide, of course. But Sigel’s willing. He did okay in the first game and faded in the second. He was all right the few minutes he was in the last game.”

“Work with him, will you? This afternoon I’ll put you on your own, and give you Chalmers and Gorsek. You work with Sigel and see if you can teach him the knack of getting you through those two boys.”

Three hours later, Tom had Sigel, Chalmers and Gorsek over in the far corner of the number two practice field.

He spotted Chalmers and Gorsek fifteen yards away, about ten feet apart, and called out. “You guys try to nail me good. Charlie, you smell out which one to block and see if you can get me through.”

The first three times. Tom was nailed hard after ten steps, with Sigel either muffing the block, or throwing it on the wrong one.

The fourth time he got through He was running easily, leaving the burden on Charlie Sigel. They took a few breaks and kept it up until they were all bruised and panting.

Tom said, “You’re catching on. You’ve got to develop a sixth sense of knowing where I am without looking around. And you’ve got to stay close and yet give me room to cut around you. I’ll follow your lead as well as I can, and when you do let the block go, you’ve got to drop one man where he’ll be in the way of the other one. Get it?”

“I won’t ever have it as good as Tide did,” Sigel said.

Tom clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll get it down good enough so that we can bull off some yards, boy.”

That evening, after his rounds of the furnaces, he and Carol Ann were oddly uncomfortable with each other. Tommy was coughing badly in his sleep and that made them both nervous and irritable. Somebody three doors down was having a party, and the laughter was too loud, too artificial.

He was studying when she said, “I’m going for a walk, Tom.”

Before he could ask where, the door shut quietly behind her. He raised his eyebrows for a moment and then went back to the books.

The strangeness persisted between them on Tuesday, Wednesday — right up to Saturday morning. He had explained about his arrangement with Robertson. When he left, knowing that he wouldn’t see her again until after the game, he held her close and said, “Wish you could come see it, honey.”

“I’ll be there,” she said coolly. “Janet is coming in to watch Tommy. I wouldn’t miss your last amateur game for the world.”

“Please don’t act this way, honey.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Why, whatever are you talking about, Tom? Act what way?”

He turned and went blindly out, and after he had gone a half block, he wanted to hurry back and find some way to get through the odd wall that had been erected between them ever since the night when he had walked out in anger. But he told himself that all would be well when he had paid off the outstanding bills and they left the flimsy apartment behind them.

Just one more afternoon of ball-carrying for Carvel. It was odd. Always before, he’d been nervous as a girl on the morning before a game. This time he was apathetic about it.

Sigel had shaped up pretty well — and even if he hadn’t, what difference would it make? His mood was sour and he was tired before he started.