The Fumbling Phantom

XI

The locker room was hospital-quiet.

Snub walked back and forth in front of the rubbing tables a few times, while they waited and the tension grew until you could feel it on your face, like cobwebs.

Finally he stopped short. “Right here is the spot I’m supposed to hypnotize you or give you an injection of adrenalin or a whiff of oxygen to- stimulate you to go out and do great deeds. I can’t pull that stuff. I never have. I don’t know how.

“But this I can do for you. I can tell you something you don’t know. This: you’re a great team. The greatest, I think, I’ve ever worked with. But you haven’t hit your peak yet. You’ve never played as well as you could. Some of you, individually, in certain games, yes. All of you, in one game, no. Not yet.

“If you hit that peak all together, now, this afternoon, — you’ll win a ball game. The Coast Title. The Bowl Bid. I know you can do it. What I want to know is, will you?”

They made the locker doors rattle with their “Yea-a-a-a!”

“Go on out and show me.”

They piled up the ramp, out into the enormous bowl in the hot, bright sun.

Bill looked up at the sea of faces, searching for one. She’d be here for this game. Sure. And her eyes would be on Zomby, every minute, every yard.

He put her out of his mind. Stanford won the toss, elected to receive.

They lined up, strung out across the field. The White Indians looked bigger than any team the Stallions had faced. There were two All-Coast linemen in there. Their T-quarter Ettan was being compared to Johnny Lujack. The Thirty-two’s might not go so easy...

They didn’t. The first time Mike called for one Ettan intercepted. Bill didn’t blame himself; he hadn’t given the play away. Ettan was just too fast. Zomby would have to poosh ’em up a little further, to keep the ball away from that safety man.

They battled up and down between the thirties. Three tries at a first... a boot and start all over.

Halfway through the second period, Mike called the thirty-two again. “Long,” Bill grunted. “Five feet beyond where you think I can get it.”

They snapped out of the huddle, built up the T. O’Doul crept across, catlike. Telfer banged it back. Bill faked a check, shifted into high, floating into the secondary with that deceptive gliding gait that could so easily be misjudged.

He went to the Stanford forty before he turned, — and Ettan was a shadow at his side.

Bill took that extra, braking stride, but used it as a takeoff for a jump. Ettan went up after him. But the ball beat the safety man by inches. Bill touched, bobbled it, held it.

The stands began to boil. First and ten on the enemy 37.

Mike switched to spinners and deep reverses. The line caught fire, got that split-second timing into its blocks. O’Doul knifed through a door that slammed shut an instant later. Seven yards.

They marched to the twenty. They bogged down. Stanford bogged them down. But solid.

Hustling Mike begged them to make a thirty-four good just this one single time for gossake.

Thirty-four was the longie out of the lateral. Zomby to Bill.

Bill went toward the goal line like a sprint man closing in the hundred. He swerved, cut behind Ettan, leaped, and lunged hopelessly at an oval twelve feet above his head. That was the first really bad one Zomby’d chucked at him.

It flashed into his mind a few minutes later when Stanford punted out on the Stallion’s thirty-five and Mike had pistoled a buttonhook to O’Doul on the forty. The quarter called for a thirty-two on the next play. “Low,” Bill looked at Zomby. “Shorten this one.”

It went sweet and sure. As Bill stopped on his dime and spun, the leather came lancing in at waist level. All he had to do was scoop it in, stiffarm Ettan and set out for score-dirt. They murdered him on the Indian’s fifteen, but the Stallion’s were pounding at the gate.

They crashed the line, got nowhere in two plunges. Once more Mike pleaded with them to make the thirty-four good. And again, Zomby heaved the oval ten feet above Bill’s head.

Back in the huddle, Zomby tried to explain: “That right tackle’s coming through, hurrying me, Bill. I have to bang it down there before I can gauge your distance.”

All Bill said was “Yeah?” But since he said it with a rising inflection and a question-mark at the end Zomby’s neck reddened as it had that night Bill had first been suspicious of Lou Ann.

The half ended with no score on either side of the board.

In the field-house, Snub confined his get-in-there-and-win talk to individuals. Bill noted the Head Coach spent quite a few minutes with Zomby, and when Snub got around to him, all he said was: “Don’t put up your mitt and adjust your helmet every time you’re supposed to take a pass. That quarterback of theirs is hep to the habit.”

“Check, coach.” So he had been giving away the plays. Maybe that had something to do with Zomby’s overthrowing. If the halfback saw Ettan riding close herd on Bill, the pass might very well be too long, in an attempt to avoid interception!

Bill was on the point of going over to Zomby and admitting as much, but just then a thin, silver-haired individual sauntered into the locker room and waved languidly at Zomby. Walch! Bill gawked. He hadn’t supposed anybody — even one of the Athletic Council big-wigs — was permitted in the locker-room between halves!

But there was Zomby, talking to the old geezer. Probably about Snub! Sure, that must have been the ticket. Lou Ann’s father had met Zomby on the night of the shambles at the Kitchen Key. That would have been where the old boy picked up his gossip about dissatisfaction with Snub!

Walch only stayed a minute. He flicked that languid paw in Bill’s direction before he departed. Bill nodded curtly.

On the way up the ramp, he couldn’t help needling Zomby: “Who was your pal?”

Zomby didn’t smile. “He brought Lou Ann to the game.”

“That what he was gabbing to you about? Little celebration after the game, in case we win?” Bill laid it on with a trowel.

Zomby fiddled with his chin strap. “You sure do see everything cockeyed, don’t you? He was talking about what he should say on the program, tonight.”

“What program?” Bill knew, before he asked.

“Television. Murf’s show. You’re on it, too, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” But I didn’t know he was gonna be on it. It complicated things. If Walch was going to be there, Lou Ann would be there also, probably. And with Zomby in the studio, there might be the makings of another fracas...

Maybe Zomby had the same notion, because he was saying, “I’d like to beat some sense into that bird-brain of yours.”

“Any time.”

“See what I mean. You’ve still got that one-track idea I’m trying to cross you up with Lou Ann. When all the time, the only damn reason she’s wanted to see me at all, was to ask if I knew what really made you tick. You and your git-gat-giddle about dough, dough, dough! An’ you’re such a fat-headed stupe, you can’t even...”

Snub called sharply, “Pour it on ’em fast now. They’ll be figuring on getting the jump on you. Mike, you...”

Bill didn’t hear the rest of it. He was concentrating on the seats near midfield on the Stallion’s side, looking for a pale, straw blonde that would be sitting next a silver-white head of hair.