Six Point Bombshell

II

At the midfield bench, Marla Gilman halted before a languid youth in wine-colored sport shirt and lime-tinted gabardines.

“Franno phoned to ask if he should bring his box out for the squad pix, boss.”

Lin Hollet took off his dark glasses. It was the polite thing when you were talking to a pretty, even if she was only your secretary. Besides, he never could see enough of Marla, even without them.

“Tell him tomorrow, Marla. Stoney’s cutting the squad after today’s practice.” He waved at the far end of the gridiron where the A and B teams were going through end-zone pass defense — across at the group going through blocking fundamentals on the opposite side of the field. “Franno couldn’t get these all in, with a telephoto. There’ll be twenty less, tomorrow.”

“I’ll call him back.” Marla kept her eyes on the D-squad. “Who’s the lad Yokie’s raking over the coals?”

“Some gahunk named Webb.” Hollet wasn’t interested. “Transfer from Michigan. Backwoods boy… backwards about picking up the fine points of the game.” He chuckled.

Marla watched the D’s run the off-tackle buck again. This time Dan faked a block on Soletti, pulled back fast, behind the line, bunted him for a loop.

“Your gahunk seems to have picked up the mousetrap trick, all right,” she said dreamily. “He looks as if he had lots of — the old stuffaroo.”

Hollet glanced at her quizzically:

“Think so? Take a good, long peek at him then. You won’t be seeing him around after today.”

“Are they dropping him from the squad?”

“Yup. No previous experience. Didn’t even go out for frosh football at Ann Arbor. Hit-or-miss specialist, too. Hits this time, misses next. And,” Hollet watched her slyly, “the coaches say he’s always clowning around. Doesn’t seem to take football seriously.”

“No?” She jumped on the bench, beside Hollet; craned her neck to get a view of the action. The D’s were trying the wide reverse, now. Klupper Smith carrying. Brad Sully, one halfback and both guards, blocking. Mostly one guard. Webb.

He mowed down his right tackle again with a stiff shoulder block, plowed through to the secondary. Backing up, for the C’s Piet De Fano, last year’s All Coast center, met him solidly. Dan didn’t roll into him with a body block. He crashed into De Fano head on, standing up.

“Wowie!” Marla yelped, involuntarily, grabbing Hollet’s shoulder.

The sound of the block was like a couple of freight cars being shunted together. De Fano went down, stayed down. Dan bounced off, kept his feet, went on.

Klupper was up even with him then, running in the clear. Only Coco Lewis between him and the goal. Dan put on a sudden, terrific burst of speed.

“Wait for pop!” He pulled ahead of the racing ball-carrier.

He left his feet in a flying, sidewise roll. Coco stiff-armed him away, but the quarter had to sidestep to do it. Klupper tore past. Only the whistle stopped him.

Marla let out her breath in a long, pent-up “Whee-you! If that’s a sample of Mister Webb when he’s just kidding, I’d sure like to see him when he really gets excited about something!”

On his way to the shower, Dan paused at the mirror beside the locker room door. The features in the glass were clean, lean and well-freckled under the California bronze. But he paid no attention to his long, straight nose, the solemn gray eyes or the short-cropped thatch of rusty red.

What he scowled at was the swollen mouth. It felt as if somebody’d shoved a frankfurter between his gums and his upper lip. It didn’t look that bad, but it wouldn’t be any bonus, meeting a girl for the first time.

Of course there was always the possibility he wouldn’t run into her — though he’d found out from Klupper Smith who she was and that she was working her way through the university, stenographing for Lin Hollet in the Athletic Director’s office.

Also, it might not make any difference how he looked if he did meet her. There was no guarantee about anything — not even that he’d still be around the field house at all after the new squad list was posted today.

“An’ if you aren’t,” he asked the reflection accusingly, “whose fault is that?”

The face in the mirror returned a mocking prop smile.

He nodded agreement, sauntered into the shower room. His own fault. Nobody else to blame.

So far as Yokum was concerned, Dan was, at best, a somewhat clumsy comer. Maybe the coach saw possibilities in him, for next year. Only next year would be nokay for Dan.

He had to make the grade now. All he asked was one good season of football before they found out about things back there in Michigan.

It was just the breaks that this fall Southern was three deep in big, fast-charging linemen… with plenty of experience in Stoney Hart’s celebrated system.

Stop kiddin’ yourself, he told himself, amiably. You made your own breaks. Comin’ out here as Joe No-Name, with a blank record. What’d you expect ’em to do? Throw their arms around you an’ escort you to a place in the first-string lineup? Nuts!

He balanced a piece of soap on the biceps of his outstretched arm, tightened the muscle suddenly so the soap flipped into the air.

If you’d told ’em what happened, with the Wolverines — maybe things would have been different! He flipped the soap high again, caught it on his chin, as it fell. Yeah! I’ll say they’d have been different! He grinned sourly at the idea.

Coco Lawis emerged from an ice-cold, spray.

“Hey, where’d you learn that?”

Dan rotated his head, the soap still balanced on his chin. “Runs in th’ family.” He touched his throat. “We all got a jugular vein.”

Coco snapped a towel-end at him. “I meant that standing-up block you threw at Piet.”

“Ah — just lumberjack stuff.” Dan hollered over the sound of the needle spray. “Some those top loaders get a few beers in ’em, they put on a Saginaw bull fight. Stick their fists in their pockets, stand up and butt each other — chest to chest — until somebody gets knocked on his can.”

“Yeah?” Coco appraised his keg-chested build. “Might not work on Piet the second time. But it sure put the whammy on him then. Maybe Yokum’ll have you teach th’ rest of th’ class how it’s done.”

“Maybe I won’t be among those present when the class is called to order, tomorrow.”

“That’d be terrible,” Coco shook his head despondently. “What would we ever do, without that git-gat-giddle of yours, to relieve the dull monotony of practice!”

“If they cut me off the squad,” Dan’s voice was muffled by the shower, “I’ll try not to take it quiet-like.”

Marla couldn’t keep her mind on the list. The head coach’s incisive voice, issuing from the office down the corridor, was too distracting.

“…not setting our sights for the Rose Bowl just yet… few other little items on our schedule to think about first… we’re using the regulation leather ball, you know, not a crystal one… ought to do pretty fair… wealth of rugged material…” Stoney Hart, giving out to the sport writers.

Marla’s fingers made the keys clatter. Cheyne. Cominski. Callahan. Dominque.

She called to Lin Hollet:

“Those blase birds from the newspapers. They’ll see right through Stoney.”

Hollet frowned. “In what way, my passion flower?”

“It’s so obvious. They know him like a book. Chapter One: if we have a team that’s a world-beater, Stoney’s a pool of gloom. Chapter Two: when things don’t look too rosy, he’s bubbling over with confidence. Just listen to him fizz…”

The publicity man scratched his nose delicately. “Can you keep a secret?”

She stuck her nose in the air, indignantly. “What’s our weakness, now?”

“You know Stoney’s formulae.” Hollet came over to sit on the edge of her desk. “For the line, seven bulldozers who can double as whippet tanks. We’ve got the material for that, two or three times over.”

She typed more names on the Revised Football Squad list, waiting.

“In the backfield,” Hollet went on, “one who can punt and one who can pass.”

“Everson, for the kicking,” she nodded. “In a pinch) Quayley. Everson and My’ Blumenthal, for the passing.”

“One who can run and one who can block.”

“Blumenthal can broken-field like nobody’s business. And Dominque’s even faster…”

“Three from four leaves…?”

Marla stared up at him. “Blocking? Where would you go — except to the pros — to find a better blocking back than Ken Quayley?”

“A long way,” Hollet admitted. “Quayley was sensational last year. He’d be a cold-riveted cinch for the big, black type and the four-color cuts in the magazines, come time for picking the All American crop this year… except for one very small thing.”

Marla’s eyes widened. “An injury! He didn’t show up for practice today!”

“At the hospital. Having X-rays. Showing a slight, not-to-be-mentioned fracture of the fourth lumbar vertebrase. That’s what a cow pony can do to a two hundred and twenty pound fullback.”

“So that’s it.” She made the typewriter hum for a moment. “Stoney’s pride and joy, the big batter and lug man from San Antone is on the infirmary list!”

“It isn’t fatal, you know.” He patted her shoulder, soothingly. “Isn’t necessarily too damn serious, either. There’s Klupper Smith. There’s Bill Prender…”

Prender. Vardeman, she typed. The next name was Wielaski, F.

“What about Webb?” Marla asked.

Hollet walked back to his desk, sat down, cocked his feet up. “I told you he’d been cut from the squad.”

She spun around to face him. “He’s a blocker! You can’t deny that, after the way he—”

“He’s a guard, Marla. Remember?”

“What’s the difference, if he can hit ’em so they stay down! Wouldn’t be the first time a man had been shifted from one position to another!”

He smiled gently. “Trying to tell the coaches how to run their squad?”

“If the staff is looking all over for a four-leaf clover to replace the one they’ve lost, they might do worse than give this Webb kid a try. To me,” she whirled back to the machine to avoid Hollet’s reproving eyes, “it looked as if he had something, out there today.”

“If he’d had enough, it would have shown up at Ann Arbor, precious.” He grinned wisely.

“I didn’t see him at Michigan,” she retorted. “I saw him bounce Piet De Fanno on his ear, though. Klupper Smith couldn’t do that if he was riding the front end of a locomotive. I’ve a good mind to speak to Stoney about him!”

“You may have a good mind, sweetie plum. But not a good idea.” He sighed. “Coaches don’t like little girls to stick their noses in the big boys’ game. But if it’ll amuse you, I’ll mention him to Stoney, myself.”

“Don’t act as if you were doing me a favor. You might just possibly be doing a smart thing for the team. Of course,” she tossed over her shoulder, typing rapidly, “I couldn’t be expected to know about such things. But I’ll bet you Stoney puts him back on the squad.”

“Bet me a date and I’ll take you,” he said lazily.

“All right.” Swiftly she typed:

Vardeman, T.

Webb, D.

Wielaski, F.

“Hun, taa, three, zip! Hun, taa, three, zip!” Boyd Mason, backfield coach, barked over the portable amplifier.

Strung out in a circle, the squad alternately chopped wood with locked fists, then bent in a knee-straining squat. Dan Webb hummed, in cadence with the drill caller:

“All right,” yapped Mason. “Backs at north goal. Ends here. Line, south goal. Put some life in it.”

Yokum was organizing two-on-one offensive charging when Dan joined the linemen. The coach tugged at the visor of his baseball cap, scowling:

“I can take a joke as well as the next man. But not day after day. What you doing out here Webb?”

Dan raised his eyebrows: “Whatever you say, coach.”

Yokum twirled his whistle: “Didn’t you read the Revised Squad List?”

“Sure. My name’s on it.”

The line coach consulted his carbon copy. There it was, in smudged type. Vardeman, Webb, Wielaski.

“Mistake somewhere.” Maybe Stoney’d reinstated this clown, in spite of the line coach’s report. “Better see the head man.”

Stoney Hart watched My’ Blumenthal limber up the backs on quick buttonhook flips.

“Keep it low, keep it low, My’. So the secondary can’t bat it down. Aim for the belly button. What is it?” He rasped brusquely to Dan.

“Mister Yokum told me to report to you, coach.”

The pale, gray eyes in the long, narrow saddle-leather face studied him. “Webb, aren’t you?”

Dan nodded.

The Head Coach recalled something Lin Hollet had said to him. Also, there were certain notations on Yokum’s candidatereports that lingered in Stoney’s mind. “Lineman?”

“Played backfield some.”

“Where?”

“Full.”

The gray eyes sized up his hundred and eighty-five pounds. “Where’d you play fullback?”

“High school.” Dan was bland. “Michigan.”

“How many games they use you at Ann Arbor last year?”

Dan shook his head. “I meant my high school was in Michigan. Petosky.”

Stoney let it go at that. “What can you do?”

“Buck, some. Block, some. Back up.” Dan’s flippant manner was gone.

This horsefaced man was one of the great gridiron strategists. He’d built a dozen devastating football machines here on the coast and down in Texas. The cutting edge of his sharp tongue had shaped a score of top rank stars who’d gone on to set new marks in the National Football League and the All American Association.

No sense kidding a man like this. “I’m not so hot on chucking or booting.”

“No?” Stoney turned his head away, looked at him out of the corner of the cold, pale eyes, as if he couldn’t believe the admission: “Can you catch a pass?”

“If I can reach it.” No point underplaying himself too far, either.

“Get on the line, there.”

The halfbacks were starting from the goal, as an imaginary line of scrimmage, sprinting ten, cutting over fast, whirling to grab the quick buttonhooks. Dan stepped in place behind Everson.

It looked easy. It wouldn’t be, though. If Blumenthal timed his hair-trigger pass wrong, if the rifled ball was wide— Oh! what the hell! he growled at himself, It’s only a game!

Everson made his cut and his catch, lobbed the leather back to Blumenthal.

“Set… One… two… Go!” Stoney snapped

Dan got away fast, swerved, whirled, hands out Voom! The ball socked his navel. All he had to do was hold it.

He threw the oval back to the chunky Blumenthal with a grin of admiration for the passer who could place that leather like a moundsman tossing strikes.

Stoney said nothing to him. To Blumenthal he gave new orders.

“Long shots, My’. Thirty yards. Ten in from west side. Keep ’em high. Throw ’em soft.”

Klupper Smith came up behind Dan while Al Dominque raced down for the first long heave.

“How’d you promote yourself to the backfield, skutch?”

“Not a promotion,” Dan corrected him. “Just a probation. Yokum no likum. Mebbe Big Chief no wantum, either.”

“Nothin’ to it. You’ll do it,” Klupper encouraged him.

He did only fair on the long heaves, though, catching one, bobbling one. Stoney disregarded him, until the first and second string linemen came up to the north goal for scrimmage.

“B’s ball on the ten. Lewis quarter, Dominque left, Pfieffer right, you at full.” He stabbed a finger at Dan. “Let’s see some stuff, Coco.” He set the ball fifteen yards in.

The A’s strung out in the 7-3-1’ last ditch defense.

In the circle of huddled shoulders, Coco Lewis regarded Dan skeptically. “When’d you get to be a back, Webb?”

“You heard the man,” Dan said easily. “Don’t you believe him?”

The quarterback grunted, unconvinced. “Left shift. Off tackle. Strong side. Pfieffer lugs it. Drop that end, Dommy. Halfback’s yours, Webb. Let’s go!”

They lined up, unbalanced single wing, Dominque flanking.

It gave Dan a queer sensation to be stooping there, hands on knees, instead of crouching low in the line. A good feeling. This was where he belonged. Where he could show something, if they gave him a chance. Maybe Coco wouldn’t…

The snap-back. The quick start. Everson coming up fast from his back-up spot. The hard-rolling block… and the whistle. Ship Morey, the senior who held down the right wing for the A’s, had broken through Dominque, spilled Pfieffer for a three yard loss.

“Come on! Conze on, now!” Stoney demanded, urgently. “Second. Thirteen. Get a gain, Coco.”

The quarter called for a buttonhook pass, to the right, after a fake buck. “Make your crossover fast, Dommy. I’m going to slam it at you.”

It went sour. A guard ripped through, drove Coco back. The fake didn’t work. Coco had to lob the pass, instead of rifling it. It was batted down.

Stoney was sarcastic. “That the best you can do?”

Before Coco could call his play in the huddle, Dan said:

“That guard thinks he’s hell on hooves. Might be a sucker for a trap now.”

The quarterback started to ask who the hell was calling B-team signals anyway. Dan could see it in his eyes. But Coco switched. He saw a chance to shift responsibility to the head coach. After all, Stoney’d stuck Webb in here. If the new back was a droop, that couldn’t be blamed on Coco.

“Guard buck. Weak side. Webb takes it. Pfieff’… wait for that guard an’ nail him! Hit it, everybody.”

All right, Dan told himself. Here it is. You asked for it! You got it! What you going to do with it? Muck it up, the way you’ve done everything else?

Then Coco was slapping the ball at Dommy, pulling it back, socking it into Dan’s ribs. The hulking guard crashed in. Pfieffer slowed him, shunted him. Dan took off.

There wasn’t any hole. There was a slit. He knifed between charging linemen.

Ike Brady, the 220-pound defensive center, came up fast, in a savage, lunging tackle, arms wide.

Dan had no more than a yard to get momentum. He met the center head on. His rigid left arm hit the center’s helmet like a crowbar. His right knee, riding high, caught the pivot man in the wishbone. Brady fell on his face.

Dan stumbled, recovered, side-stepped Everson, bulled into Blumenthal full tilt.

Blumenthal held him. To a twelve-yard gain. Dan spun, twisted, churned fiercely ahead, step after step, the crack safety man clinging to his knees.

It took Everson to clamp hands on his shoulders from behind, pull him over backwards on the eleven yard line.

There was no whistle. Stoney Hart, Boyd Mason and trainer Doc Gurley were bent over Brady. The big center’s face was puckered in pain. He rolled over on his side, clutching at his right shoulder.

Gurley’s fingers explored. “Collar bone,” he diagnosed.

Dan helped the trainer assist Brady off the field.

Mason grumbled: “That’s the lousiest kind of a break.”

“It’s an ill wind,” the head coach answered, “that blows no good. We may have lost a good center. But it sure looks as if we’d found ourselves a bucking back.”

The pale gray eyes watched Dan expressing sympathy for Brady on the sidelines; on the head coach’s long, glum face was a curiously puzzled expression, as if he was trying to recall where he’d seen Dan before…