The Fumbling Phantom

VII

All next morning, Bill waited for someone in the classrooms to mention the fracas at the Key. There hadn’t been anything about it in the papers, as far as he could find out. Nobody seemed to be wise.

That meant Zomby had kept quiet; it didn’t necessarily mean he’d let the whole thing drop, though. Maybe there’d be a flareup when Bill walked into the locker-room to dress for practice.

There wasn’t a word. Zomby was already in uniform, when Bill got there. The big back looked up nonchalantly, grunted: “Hi, guy”, and went on lacing up his shoes.

Bill drew a deep breath. “About that thing last night...”

Zomby glanced up guilelessly. “You have a big time last night? Where’d you go?”

“All right,” Bill nodded. “Forgetsis. Except... I thought maybe I owed somebody something.”

“Not me,” Zomby stood up and stamped his cleats on the cement; there was a purplish mouse under his right eye, where Bill had socked him. “You don’t owe me a thing. Maybe somebody else... not me.”

That was all. No rehash. As far as Bill could tell, no resentment. Not on the field, certainly.

He and Zomby worked together on the long shots like Friedman-to-Oosterban. Everything clicked... yet things weren’t as they had been. Bill missed the back-thumpings in the huddles, the rough-housing in the locker-room, after practice.

Of course there were other things he missed even more, but he’d resolutely put Lou Ann out of his mind. If she was that kind of a girl, if she’d two-time him once, he was well rid of her...

He told himself that a hundred times a day, but he never could seem to make it ring true...

The squad noticed the new air of restraint between the star passer and the phenom end. Bill knew they noticed, and it began to get him down.

By the time they got on the train to go up to Washington. Bill was in the deep glooms.

Staring glumly out of the club car, as the streamliner zoomed through the big redwoods, he called himself a dirty name. It sort of balanced things up; all week the sport scribes had been pouring on the praise. Praise he felt as if he didn’t deserve. Or wouldn’t be able to justify.

The papers had run photos of him leaping high to spear a pass; cartoons showing him heaving a nag labeled Stallions over the heads of Trojans, White Indians and Huskies... smack into the Rose Bowl. Yet he didn’t feel good about it.

He ought to feel like a million; he was riding the rainbow toward that pot of gold, wasn’t he? Still, he gloomed down the car at his team-mates, and out the windows at the sequoias giving way to tiers of spruce and ponderosa climbing the foothills... and life seemed very nokay.

The steak he’d just put away in the dining-car had tasted like drippings from an umbrella stand. Bob O’Doul’s imitation of Snub watching an opponent score on the Stallions had seemed too corny.

Being so upset over Lou Ann didn’t make sense. But there it was... and he couldn’t get rid of it. He was well on Westwood, but he’d never taken her home so badly... and still he was as dissatisfied as a skinny girl in a bathing suit.

He’d called her up at the store, to apologize, the day after that ruckus at The Kitchen Key, and they’d told him she’d quit her job. Hadn’t said where she’d be going. Or left any forwarding address.

He knew she roomed somewhere in Westwood, but he’d never taken her home on account of her driving the convertible and always having dropped him off, after their dates.

The one time he’d asked her for her home phone, Lou Ann had put him off by saying that she was staying with elderly people; it’d be better if he stuck to calling her at the store.

It was ridiculous, knowing a girl as well as he’d known Lou Ann, all right, as well as he’d thought he’d known her... and having her drop out of his life like this!

He was pretty sure she hadn’t dropped out of Zomby’s...

He gave it up, climbed into his upper. Woke to find the Washington landscape veiled by a slanting rain, whipped against the car windows by a lashing wind.

That rain was bad. It would mean less passing, more dependence on power. And those Huskies had power to spare, with weight to back it.

By game time, the gridiron was practically awash. There were pools at mid-field, in the end zones.

The rain had turned into a drizzling mist, but the wind gusting down from the high rim of the stadium drove Zomby’s practice punts out of bounds after twenty yards.

Snub’s briefing was brusque. Stay on the ground. Keep out of the air. Don’t try to hold the ball inside the Stallion thirty. Kick on third up to midfield. Hammer the tackles.

Bill had to admit the wisdom of the tactics. A wet ball was tough to toss accurately. A soggy one was practically impossible to fling forty yards downfield for the long-gainers the Stallions had been perfecting all week.

Slippery pigskin was mean to hang onto, too. Still, if they were going to beat a team with as bone-crushing an offensive as this Washington outfit, they’d have to take some chances, overhead, wouldn’t they?

Bill’s ideas on the subject were beside the point, anyhow. Midway in the first quarter, with the Huskies sliding and skidding through the slime down to the Stallion thirty-five on straight bulldozer bucks, Snub sent Loftis in to replace him.

Loftis was a defensive wingman; there couldn’t be any argument about the situation, out there in that sea of mire, being strictly defensive.

So Bill sat on the bench in a wet blanket, watched the Huskies punch out first downs, ram through to the ten, the six.

The Stallions reared up, fought for inches. Held one smash to a scant yard. Gave a half a yard of ground on a quarterback knifethrough.

Washington gambled on a lateral, lost the ball when Zomby tackled the runner so hard he spattered slime for ten feet in every direction when he lit on the back of his neck. The ball skittered into a sheet of water, Telfer fell on it.

The Stallions started back upfield, got nowhere, booted. Zomby’s kick only traveled twenty-five in the air, but the williewaw blew it out of the safety man’s clutch. It roled almost to midfield before a Huskie slapped his belly pads on it.

Washington lost the greased pig on the first play. Loftis recovered.

Hustling Mike sent Zomby caroming off left tackle. The Stallion halfback slipped, lost his balance, staggered through the slot with nobody laying a flipper on him.

He recovered, stiffarmed the Huskie center, ran all the way to the fifteen before they smeared him.

O’Doul took it around right end for the score. Hustling Mike foozled the pass for placement. Zomby’s kick for conversion never got off the ground.

By half time the Stallion’s 6 points looked as big as a blimp. The Huskies hadn’t been able to get their powerhouse rolling.

In the Visitors locker-room, Snub didn’t say much:

“They’ll open up on you, this half. When they do, rush that passer. Tenth of a second can make a lot of difference to a man trying to get a throwing grip on a greasy egg.”

Jersey Joslin said: “Don’t try to get under those guards and tackles. They’re too big. Let ’em skid around in their own mud puddles. Keep ’em off balance, that’s all you got to do.”

You’ll probably park your pants on that hardwood again all this half, Bill noted sourly. Fine way to grab yourself a hunk of headline!

But Snub started him. Maybe Loftis was tiring. Or it might be Snub thought Bill would have a better chance to hurry the passer, on account of his height.

At any rate, he hadn’t been sent in to snag long shots. Hustling Mike ran a couple of line smashes after receiving the kickoff, punted to the enemy forty.

Maybe Zomby had something to do with that decision. Once when the Huskie secondary was pulled in too close, Mike suggested a pass, but Zomby shook His head.

So Mike called for a punt.

Bill went down, tackled the Huskie right half. “Here’s mud in your eye, bud,” he growled.

The stands were full, in spite of the rain. These Washingtonians didn’t let a little thing like weather stop them.

But it stopped the Huskies, for all of the third period and part of the fourth.

They tried spot passes, over-the-line quickies, buttonhooks out past the ends. They completed a few but by the time the receiver had his hands on the ball, the Stallions spread him horizontal.

Both long down-the-field tosses they attempted were incomplete. The second miscue gave the ball to the Stallions on downs on their own thirty.

Mike called for a smash at guard. Zomby got up to the line of scrimmage, got hit by the Huskie center. No gain.

Some Stallion fan who’d journeyed north to yell for the Rampaging Remuda, proceeded to do so in a voice reinforced by ample draughts of cough medicines:

“Cady... We wan’ Cady!”

Mike grinned, looked at Bill, shook his head, said to Zomby: “Boot it, boy. Watcha blocks, ev’body.”

Zomby got it away. High and short. Wobbling in the wind. Curving in the wind.

Bill was down under it fast. There were two Huskie receivers. Left half and quarter. One to block, one to catch.

The quarter circled ahead, under the ball, calling: “Got it, Andy...”

Bill drove at him racing in past the halfback.

The quarter struck out his left arm, scooped in the ball. Bill hit him at the knees. The safety man tossed the leather, underhand, backward. The half caught it on the dead run. He swung wide, lit out for the sideline, went scooting toward the Stallion goal, with nobody near him.

Bill let go of the quarterback, let out an expletive. He’d committed the flank-man’s unpardonable sin. Letting the ball-carrier get outside him!

Bob O’Doul caught the Huskie on the five, but the Washingtonian bulled and staggered and skidded over for six points.

It helped some that Bill, cursing himself with well-remembered GI obscenities, raged in at the snapback, — flung himself desperately at the place kicker, — blocked the extra point with his outstretched fingertips.

But it didn’t help enough. Not from Bill’s point of view. They hadn’t lost. But they could have won... and didn’t.

Nobody to blame but himself, he realized, trooping wearily off the field with the other wet rats at the final gun. He couldn’t pin that on Zomby.

But the feeling persisted that it was the trouble over Lou Ann that had thrown him off stride. So when Zomby muttered, as he stripped off his muddy socks,—

“That was one dilly of a block, Buster,” — Bill didn’t take it with good grace.

“Go climb a cactus,” he snapped. “I played it as if I had my head under water!”

Zomby looked at him queerly without answering.