Six Point Bombshell

VI

Stoney stood at the blackboard, with a fist full of colored chalk. The locker room was quiet except for the scraping of cleats on cement. Dan was sprawled out on a bench.

“The other team can’t score while you’ve got possession of the ball,” the head coach made red circles rapidly on the board, in the single wing. “They can’t get the ball as long as you keep making those first downs. That’s why it’s more important to be able to make a first down than to try to shake a man loose for a touchdown on every play.”

He sketched in a 6-2-2-1 defense in white. “Say we’ve cracked off tackle and inside guard and picked up only four or five on two tries. We’ve got one more down to gamble with, before we have to kick out of trouble. Play I’m going to outline is for a spot like that… and no other. If it goes, and it ought to work so smoothly it goes every time, it’s good for that six or seven you need, to keep the ball and have four more shots at pushing it downfield.”

Stoney traced the path of the ball in yellow chalk. “You don’t want to use it very often or it’ll curdle on you. Save it for those spots where you have to get that first down.” He used the pointer. “It’s a pass. Run from any formation. Goes best when the ball is thrown by a bucker.” He glanced at Dan.

Dan shifted his position uncomfortably. He knew all there was to know about the Paycheck Pass.

The pro clubs used it right along. No good for big gains. Tough to stop, when you needed small ones. Yeah. He knew how it went.

Stoney said: “You have to be about fifteen yards in. Pass goes right to the sideline — six or seven yards down. Like so…” he zigzagged the path of the mythical receiver. “End goes down, secondary covering him. He fakes a catch, as the passer fakes a throw. End cuts in as if he’s going to cross over. Secondary runs along with him.

“Then the end wheels, sprints for the sidelines. The ball has to be there… about a yard inside… to meet him. The defense can’t intercept or bat down, because the secondary has four or five yards further to run, since he’s at an angle, while the end’s running straight for the sideline. Understand?”

The squad rumbled assent.

“Webb?” Stoney was sharp. “See how it goes?”

“Sure.” Dan had the feeling the coach was well aware how thoroughly the fullback understood that particular play.

“You’ll do the passing.” Stoney laid down the chalk. “We might need this against Stanford, Saturday. Let’s go out, run through it.”

As they trooped up the ramp into the stadium, pictures flashed through Dan’s brain. Movie shots of the famous ‘Jet’ Janok, dancing back from the battling linemen, fending off tackles crashing in with upflung arms, calmly taking his time, faking off to the left, double faking to the right, firing the ball at the last possible instant far to the sidelines at the left.

The paycheck pass. The Sure-thing Shot. How many had the flashy Janok completed? Twelve out of fourteen, — when the chips were on the line? Yes… he remembered very well indeed.

They lined up against the C’s, on the forty.

Coco called: “Ninety. Webb. Block, youse. Block your butts off.”

The whistle. The pass-back. Dan had it. He faded. Tacklers tore in.

He faked. Retreated another three. Faked again. Threw to Ship Morey as a shoulder drove into his hip.

Ship caught it, for seven. But Stoney found nothing right about it.

“What good’s a fake, Webb, if you keep looking at the eventual receiver all the time? You have to bank on his being there, keep your eyes off him until you throw. Over.”

They did it again. This time Dan didn’t look in Ship’s direction after the first momentary fake. His pass was a little low. Ship fumbled it.

The Head Coach was patient. He took Dan aside for special treatment while Dommy kept on with 90.

“Never mind about your passing style, Webb. Forget all that crap about hitting your ear with the ball when you bring it back. Throw it like you would a baseball. It’s just like a baseball only shaped different. Use your wrist. Get some snap in it. It’s just doin’ what comes naturally.”

Dan tried. Again and again. If he improved, Stoney didn’t say so.

“Keep the point up. Ball coming at a receiver end down is twice as hard to hold.

“Don’t try to see how swift you can shoot it. Nobody’s going to intercept these. Just get ’em accurate.”

And finally:

“You’ll never make a great passer. Work your head off, you might get to be a fair one. That’s all you need to be to make this 90 click.”

“I’ll get it down,” Dan answered, “so he can catch it in a soup plate.”

“Never mind perfecting it that far,” Stoney retorted dryly. “Get it in clothes basket range, I’ll be satisfied. Didn’t you do any passing on your high school team in… where was it, Petosky?”

“Yuh,” Dan said. “I did a little.”

“You must have forgotten everything you knew.” The coach started to say something more, changed his mind, turned back to the scrimmage.

“Webb in,” he called. “We’re going to get this right if we have to keep at it until they play hockey in hell.”

“Yuh,” Dan said.

Lin Hollet hung his houndstooth sport jacket carefully on a hanger. He poked a cigarette in his genuine amber holder, eased into his swivel chair, adjusted it at a satisfactory angle and shuffled the morning applications for “six seats on the forty-yard line.”

“Did my eyes deceive me, my precious petal? Or was that you with Dan Webb in the Bowl last night?”

Marla jerked a letter out of her machine.

“It was I. Why?”

“Don’t tell me the big gahunk goes for longhair music!”

“Maybe he goes for me,” she said primly. “And you’re a fine one to be calling him a gahunk. We ought to have a couple more like him on the team.”

Hollet slit open an envelope marked Personal. He read it with a smug expression. “The soph’s done all right for himself so far,” he conceded. “Stoney might make a back out of him, yet, if nothing goes wrong!”

“Promising young athletes have been known to flunk out. Or fail to make sufficient grades.”

“Go ahead and bet your cash on Southern. Dan’s right in there with the old marks.” She was mildly scornful.

“You seem to be pretty hep on D. Webb.” Hollet cocked a supercilious eye.

“I’ve been out with him two or three times. I think he’s extra special.” She challenged him to disapprove.

“Mean lad on that samba stuff?”

“Mmm, hmm.”

“Pitches quite a line on the git-tar, huh?”

“Uh, uh. Strictly a zither man.” She stacked a row of ticket envelopes. “Why so curious all of a sud!”

“My interest in you, light of my life. Hate to see you wasting your sweetness on a lone wolf with such an… um… vague and uncertain background.”

She rose, planted fists on hips, elbows akimbo. Her eyes slitted. “Precisely what are you getting at, Lin Hollet!”

“Webb’s kind of a mystery man.” He was amused at her anger. “Nobody knows anything about him. Around the campus, I mean. Hasn’t joined any fraternity. Rooms by himself. Doesn’t buddy up with his classmates—”

“How awful!” Her eyes opened wide in mock alarm. “You think he ought to be psychoanalyzed or something!”

“Something.” He agreed, imperturbably. “You remember Stan Llewellyn of the News called up to get the lowdown about Webb, for his colyum?”

“So…?”

“I put it up to Dan. Did he give me any dope? Not enough to shove in your eye. Bunch of mahooly about spending his vacations working in the lumber mills in northern Michigan, log-spinning or birling or whatever it is you do in hobnailed boots!”

“I suppose there are sportswriters who would call that ‘color.’ I could be mistaken.”

He flicked ashes at a bronze tray. “It occurred to me the Dean’s office would have enough to fill in, on him. I gave them a buzz. And what do you think!”

Marla clapped both fists to her cheeks, dramatically. “He’s a fugitive from a chain gang!”

Hollet pulled down the corners of his lips. “Might be for all they know. They don’t have any card on him. His application isn’t on file in the registrar’s office. There’s not even any record of his credits from the University of Michigan, which he was supposed to have attended, last year. All they have is a notation: Webb, D. Confidential. See Dean.”

She thought quickly. “The Dean’s abroad. Geneva.”

“Exactly. Made it a little more difficult. But Old Slewfoot Hollet stuck to the trail. I dropped a line to Ann Arbor.”

Marla came over beside him. “You’re going to quite a lot of trouble about him, aren’t you?”

“Business of this office, star-eyes. To keep track of our budding amateurs. The authorities in Michigan wrote back there was no student registered there last year by the name of Webb.”

Marla sat down, slid an envelope in her machine, began typing. “If I tell you the truth, will you keep it under cover?” She asked, in a hushed voice.

“Huh?”

“He’s really a member of the French underground, still being pursued by Gestapo agents for putting arsenic in Goering’s cream puffs. If they learn where Dan’s hiding…” she drew a finger across her throat, shuddering.

The assistant to the Athletic Director reached for the letter he’d taken from the envelope marked Personal. “It might be a kidding matter, my honey bunny, if it weren’t for the trivial item called eligibility. We’re under obligation to competing colleges not to run in ringers on them. Take a slant at this.” He tossed it to her.

She read it. It was from the office of the Principal of the Petosky High School. It expressed regret that no record had been found of any Webb who had attended that institution except a Laurence Webb who had graduated in 1937 and was now engaged in the undertaking business in a nearby town.

“Oh! For the love of—” she came up out of her chair, giggling. “Why don’t you just ask Dan to explain, straight out, instead of beating ’round the bush like this! He isn’t the kind to lie about anything he’s done.”

“We’ll ask him all right,” Hollet said. “Before he goes on the field for Southern, again.”

The sun beat down on eleven men, ringed about by the coaching staff and a dozen second-string replacements. But the coaches wore light baseball pants and T-shirts… and the B’s weren’t being raced through their paces at this blazing speed, Dan beefed silently.

Sweat ran down him in rivulets. Sweat got in his eyes.

“Fifty,” panted Coco. “Left shift. Webb, Go!”

“Zip it up!” roared Mason Boyd.

“Get some drive in it!” ordered Yokum.

“Faster!” barked Stoney over the amplifier. “You act like you’re dead on your feet!”

The Friday signal drill. Dan would rather have scrimmaged all day than go through an hour of this relentless pace.

A line buck. A sweep. The wide reverse. Delayed off tackle. A pass. End around. No pause that refreshes. Just jump and bump. And over again.

It wouldn’t have hit Dan so hard except for the terrific heat.

“This Califunny weather gets me down.” he wheezed to Everson.

“That won’t be all that’ll get you down, tomorrow, if you don’t shake the lead outa your baggy pants, clowner.” The team captain had been surly.

Maybe it was just that Everson and some of the others were touchy on account of this tropical weather. Or… maybe there was a certain undercurrent of resentment against him. Dan wondered about that.

Coco was more than friendly. Ship Morey razzed him amiably enough. Dommy Dominque was openly admiring. Yet the others…?

Dan was a soph and Everson was a senior, of course. So were some of the linemen. That might make for a certain reluctance to accept a new man, particularly a transfer.

Then, too, he wasn’t any native son while most of the gang were. Dan wasn’t even a Westerner.

He’d only been at Southern a few weeks; the majority of the squad had been mixing with others at the university a couple of years, at least. Dan was the Johnny-Come-Lately. Yeah. That would account for any rough edges, naturally.

Who you kiddin’, Danny! You know there’s something more than that! You know what it is, too! You’re not one of the bunch. You’re an outsider, and what did you expect? You don’t talk about yourself, so how can they get to know you? You clam up every time any one of them begins to show an ordinary, friendly curiosity about you. Why would they warm up to you? Give me one good reason why!

“Try that 90,” Stoney yapped.

They worked it neatly. Dan shot the ball toward the sideline pocket with a short, sharp wrist-snap. Ship couldn’t have missed it blindfolded.