The Hot Shot

Part I: Dear Old High

My old man was a bum, and my old lady was a slob, and chances are I’d be a slob and a bum both if it wasn’t for this God-damn crazy game.

Funny thing is, I didn’t intend to play it. The way I got started was just one of those things. I was walking down the hall of the high school past the gym, and to tell the truth, I was thinking about going down to Beegie’s pool room to pick up a few nickels playing rotation, but the door to the gym was open, and I just happened to look in while I was passing, and there was this guy I knew, name of Bugs, running around with all these other guys throwing a ball at a hoop. I gave old Bugs a hoot and a holler, and thumbed my nose at him, and he thumbed back and yelled for me to come on in, so I did, and I don’t know why.

You weren’t supposed to walk on the gym floor in your street shoes, so I went along the edge back to where Bugs was standing, and I asked him what the hell he was doing playing around with sissy stuff like that, and he said it wasn’t so Goddamn sissy when you got into it, and he’d bet two-bits I couldn’t throw the ball through the hoop two times out of ten if I’d stand back where he told me to stand. It didn’t seem to me to make a hell of a lot of difference whether I could throw the ball through the hoop two times out of ten or ten times out of ten, but old Bugs was so snotty about it, putting up his lousy two-bits that way, that I decided I’d take the bet, and besides, it was faster than five games of rotation. I saw how the other guys were sort of pushing the ball up toward the hoop with one hand, sometimes jumping up in the air a little when they did it, so Bugs got a ball and tossed it to me and told me where to stand, and I pushed it up the way I saw the others doing it, and damned if it didn’t go through. Bugs just hooted and said it was plain pig luck and I couldn’t do it again if I tried all day, so I pushed the ball up nine more times, and as a matter of fact, it went through the hoop seven times altogether. All the other guys were standing around watching me by that time, and they razzed Bugs pretty good, and Bugs said he’d pay off the next time he saw me at Beegie’s, and I said the hell he would, he’d pay off right now.

It was just about then that someone said, “Skimmer! Skimmer Scaggs!” and the truth is, he said it so sudden and so close to my shoulder that it scared the hell out of me. I turned around to see who it was, and it was this spook Mulloy, coach of the team, and he’d sneaked up behind me on his Goddamn rubber-soled shoes. He was a big guy going kind of bald and with a lot of flab around the belly, even if he was athletic as hell and all that, and he was one of these man-to-man scoutmaster kind of bastards. I thought at first he was going to tell me to get the hell off the floor with my street shoes on, but it turned out he’d been watching me from the beginning and had something else on his mind. He started out telling me I ought to be ashamed of myself, and then he switched off on a sermon about how everyone owed something to the dear old school, and the more you had to offer, the more you owed, because it was the duty of the gifted to give a full measure of their gifts, and to make it short, I finally began to get the idea that I was gifted at throwing a ball through a hoop and was some kind of dirty son of a bitch because I hadn’t been out there in the gym doing it a long time ago instead of hanging around Beegie’s all the time, and altogether it was the kind of crap to make you puke. I was on the verge of telling old Mulloy to blow it, but then I happened to look around and see the faces of the other guys, and I didn’t say it.

I might as well tell the truth about it. The truth is, I wasn’t very popular around school, and I’d been thinking pretty hard about putting the place down for good and all, but now I saw these guys standing there with their teeth hanging out and a kind of old buddy-buddy look in their eyes, and I began to get the drift that I’d made a lot of points just by throwing that damn ball through the hoop seven times out of ten with no practice, and I began to think, What the hell, why not, a guy never knows when he can use a few suckers on his side. It was pretty plain these guys really swallowed the bull old Mulloy put out, and one of them, a tall skinny creep who wore contact lenses plastered on his eyeballs, spoke up and said that the team sure could use a sharpshooter like me, and everyone hoped I’d play, and as a matter of fact, this creep was Tizzy Davis, whose old man was president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank, and the whole family was snotty as the window in a nursery. Well, in the end I told a lot of God-damn lies about how I’d always wanted to play and had started to try out for the team two or three times but never had because I figured I wouldn’t be any good at it, and old buller Mulloy put an arm around my shoulders so I got a good whiff of his lousy stinking sweat shirt that smelled like my old man’s underwear, and he said in one of these loud jovial voices, “Skimmer, you get in that locker room and get a suit and a pair of shoes and get back out here for practice. Fellows, I got an idea Skimmer’s just the fellow we’ve been looking for.”

I went in the locker room and put on a suit and a pair of basketball shoes, and I felt pretty naked because I didn’t have a jock strap. I was supposed to have one for gym class, but I didn’t have it because I never went to the damn class, in spite of their threatening to throw me out of school for not going, and that was because all they ever did in gym class was a lot of corny squats and push-ups and stuff that didn’t amount to anything but plain hard work, and I couldn’t see any percentage in it. Anyhow, I decided I’d have to have a jock strap if I was going to play basketball in public, and I went back out and we played some, and I guess I just had the knack for it, because it turned out that I was pretty damn good. Every once in a while old Mulloy would stop us and show me how to catch the ball and pass it and a lot of stuff about pivoting and dribbling and things like that, and at first I just wished he’d let me the hell alone so I could throw the ball through the hoop, but after a while I was damn glad to have him stop us any time he wanted to, because the truth is, it pooped me out running up and down the damn court. He had us play what he called a firehorse game, and I learned later this was just the opposite of what was called a control game, which meant the teams that played a control game sort of took their time when they had the ball and tried to set up plays for good shots and all, while we just grabbed the ball and raced like hell for the basket that was ours and slammed away at it with the idea that the ball was bound to go through enough times to win the game if you tried often enough. As a matter of fact, it hadn’t been going through so often, though, and that’s why they wanted a sharpshooter like me, but to tell the truth, in the beginning I wished to hell we played a control game ourselves.

We kept at it so God-damn long I began to think, To hell with it, I wish I’d gone on down to Beegie’s and played rotation, and before we were through I began to get sick in the belly, and I thought I was going to puke right there on the lousy floor, but then we quit and went in the locker room and had showers, and old Mulloy came out of his little cubbyhole of an office and had a shower too, and stood around all manly and naked and calling everyone fellow until you wanted to poke him right in his fat mouth, and he wound up saying, “Skimmer, old man, we’re going to make the best dog-gone forward in the state out of you, and I’m predicting right now that this little old team is going to win the league championship and then go right on to take the state tournament. How about it, fellows?”

They all laughed and yelled like a bunch of boobs and said sure, that was right, and slapped each other on the bare butt, and no one but Tizzy Davis himself came over and sat down on the bench beside me and said, “Sure glad you’ve joined us, Scaggs. You’re a natural.” Then he gave me one of these damn virile slaps on the bare shoulders, and it stung like hell, the skinny fruit, and if it’d been anyone else I’d have knocked him on his ass, but as it was I let it go, and he stood up and said, “By the way, Scaggs, you ought to get together with some of us fellows some evening. We have some damn good times.”

He said damn like it was something he just threw in to show what a hell of a guy he was underneath and I almost spit in his eyes, it was so damn funny, but it didn’t turn out to be so funny after all, and a lot of those so-called nice guys really were a lot different underneath than you’d think to watch the prissy way they talked and carried on. That went for Tizzy Davis in spades, and I’m ashamed to say that right while I was talking to him that first time there in the locker room, I was a stinking virgin and he wasn’t.

After I was dressed, I went out with Bugs, and old Mulloy yelled after me that practice was at three o’clock sharp tomorrow afternoon, and I said sure, I’d be there, and Bugs said, “Boy, you’re solid. This game is the nuts.”

“Nuts is right,” I said, and he said, “No bull, Skimmer, this God-damn game’s a racket. You don’t have to study a damn bit, and you still pass all your subjects, because the coach runs down to the principal and raises blue hell if any of the team flunks, and the principal goes and raises hell with the teacher that flunked you, because the principal thinks the team is great stuff for school spirit and all that crap, and he won’t stand for any of the guys being flunked.”

I said I didn’t study, anyhow, and didn’t need any crummy excuse like playing a crummy game to keep me from doing it, and he said sure, that was right, but as it was I flunked half my subjects at least and this way I wouldn’t flunk any at all, because anyone that flunked couldn’t play on the team. “Besides,” he said, “that’s not all of it,” and I said, “What’s the rest of it?” and he said, “Well, the dolls, for one thing,” and I said, “What the hell about the dolls?” and he said, “Jesus, Skimmer, the dolls really go for the guys that play this game. No bull, you’re a hotshot if you’re on the team. You’d think throwing that ball around made you some kind of lousy hero or something. You got to be on some kind of team to get the real classy dolls.”

“I haven’t seen you with any real classy dolls lately,” I said, and he said, “Never mind. I got a couple sniffing at me. You just wait and see. You won’t have to fool around any more with old Mopsy Beacon once the classy dolls get an eyeful of you giving your all for the dear old school,” and I said, “Jesus Christ, you sound just like that God-damn Mulloy. Besides, what’s the matter with Mopsy Beacon? Ever since Mopsy told her old man you tried to sneak a feel, and he told your old man and got the hell beat out of you, you’ve had a hard on for her. You start riding Mopsy again, I’m liable to give you a fat lip.”

“You and who else?” he said, and I stopped and said, “You like to find out?” and he gave this sickly laugh and said, “Oh, to hell with Mopsy. She’s just a ring-tailed wonder. Ava Gardner’s just a hag compared to Mopsy.”

I let it drop then, because I really didn’t want to slap old Bugs around any, him being a pretty good guy for a Goddamn moron, and besides, to tell the truth, Mopsy wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t a bad looking doll when she took her crummy goggles off, and if I’d wanted to I could’ve told Bugs that she might have squealed on him for sneaking a feel, but she didn’t squeal on me, and I’d done it lots of times, but the hell of it was, she wouldn’t let me go any farther. You tried to get down to business, she started telling you all this bull about how that was something holy and precious that ought to be saved till after a guy and a girl were married, and I got sore once and told her that if she was planning to save it that long for me, she’d be saving it forever.

Bugs and I had to go through town to get over on the side where we lived, which was the crummy side, naturally, and on the way we passed Dummke’s Cigar Store. When we got in front of it, I told Bugs to give me the lousy two-bits he owed me because I was all out of cigarettes and wanted to get some. He started in telling me how I couldn’t smoke any more, now that I was on the team, because cigarettes took your wind, and wind was one of the most important things when it came to playing basketball, and I said he was just trying to get out of paying off the two-bits, and I didn’t intend to give up gaspers for any lousy game, and pretty soon he dug down in his stinking pocket and paid off, only twenty-three cents, though, three nickels and eight God-damn pennies. If there’s anything I hate, it’s pennies, because you always feel like a damn fool counting them out, and whoever’s selling you whatever you’re buying keeps looking at you like you were a crummy cheapskate who’d robbed the baby’s piggy bank or something, and besides, someone’s always saying, “You got a penny for tax?” and if you don’t have it, they say, “Oh, that’s all right, I’ll get it next time,” but if you do have it, you got to fork the damn thing over, and you always feel like a sucker for having it.

Twenty-three cents was just exactly enough for the cigarettes, so I went in to get them, and old Gravy Dummke himself came up behind the counter to wait on me. Everyone called him Gravy because he got a cut from so God-damn many crooked things around town, and it was a crying wonder how he did it, because you wouldn’t have thought to look at him that anyone would have bothered to spit on him. He was fat and greasy with a headful of dirty black curls all slopped up with some kind of stinking oil, and when he smiled at you it looked like his whole damn face fell apart and left you standing there looking at about a square mile of ivory. The smile didn’t mean a damn thing, though, and he was a nasty bastard, always throwing something into you and breaking it off, and today he said, “Hello, kid. You still out of jail?”

“You’re a hell of a one to be yakking about jail,” I said. “The cop’ll jump that game in your back room someday, and you’ll damn well think jail.”

His fat, greasy face smoothed out like a billiard ball, and his little eyes got kind of sleepy and mean, and he said, “You got a big mouth, kid. You’re bound to get in big trouble someday, you got such a big mouth.”

I said, “All I want is a God-damn pack of cigarettes. You want to sell me a pack of cigarettes or not?” and he said, “Why the hell should I particularly want to sell you a lousy pack of cigarettes?” but he slapped a pack on the counter, anyhow, the brand I smoked, and I slapped all those stinking pennies on the glass counter and spread them around and left. You ever tried to pick up a lot of coins off a glass counter? It’s a hell of a job.

Outside, Bugs said, “You oughtn’t to needle Gravy that way. Gravy’s a pretty damn big shot, if you want to know it. Jackie Bramble’s big brother works for Gravy, dealing and taking bets and things like that, and he says Gravy’s got connections in the city with all the big gamblers and everyone,” and I said, “He’s just a lousy small-town punk, and if he had so much on the ball he’d be a big shot gambler up in the city himself instead of being down here in this jerk town running a crummy game in the back of a cigar store. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference if he had connections with Frank Costello himself, I don’t take any lip from any lousy grease-ball.”

We went on through town, and the lights were on because it was getting late and it got dark pretty early that time of year, and I thought about hanging around for a while before I went home, but I didn’t do it because all the damn running up and down had made me hungry as hell, and I didn’t have any money to buy a hamburger or anything with. The farther we walked, the crummier it got, and when it got just about as crummy as it was going to get, that’s where I lived. Bugs turned off to cross over a few blocks to the street he lived on, and he said he’d see me tomorrow at school, and I said sure, I’d see him around, and I kept on going down the street I was on to the house I lived in, and it was dark as hell down there and pretty cold.

I went up across the porch and back through the house to the kitchen, and the old man and the old lady were still bellied up to the table, and the old man said, “Where the hell you been?”

I said, “I been playing basketball, if you want to know, that’s where I’ve been,” and he said, “Basketball? What the hell you mean, basketball?” and I said, “I mean basketball, that’s what I mean. Didn’t you ever hear of basketball?”

He laid his knife down on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at me like he was stupid, which he was. “By God, I can’t believe I heard right,” he said, and I said, “You dig the muck out of your ears, maybe you could hear better.”

He glared at me across the table and said, “Don’t mouth off at me, you smart little bastard, and I’ll tell you something else too. No kid of mine is going to play any God-damn silly games, and you get home for your supper on time after this or I’ll damn well go up the side of your head.”

“I’ll play any games I like, and I won’t ask you a damn thing about it before I do,” I said, but I said it too close, and the old man jumped up and clobbered me on the side of the head before I could duck. He was pretty strong in spite of being a beer-soaked slob, and he slammed me up against the wall and damn near knocked my brains out. That set the old lady to bawling, and she went into the old routine about how I was a bad boy, and it was all because I’d lost the big brother I needed to look after me and teach me what I needed to know, but that was a lot of bull because my big brother, whose name was Eddie, hadn’t ever loked after me any at all, and the only things he ever taught me were some dirty stories and limericks and how to shoot pool. He’d been in the war and off in some stinking place like New Guinea or somewhere, and he’d written me this letter once that said pretty plain between the lines that he was damn sick of it and was going to pull out and desert the first chance he got, but damned if he didn’t get killed before he could go. That made the old lady a gold star war mother or something corny like that, and she sure as hell got her kicks out of it, especially when she was drunk.

After my head quit ringing, I eased into my chair at the table and began to eat, and the chow was pretty damn lousy, besides being cold, and the only reason I bothered to eat at all was because I’d worked up this big appetite. Pretty soon the old man got up and said he was going up the street to the tavern to watch the fights, and I said if he’d quit blowing all his money for beer in the lousy tavern he’d have enough to buy a television set, and we could all watch the God-damn fights. He looked like he was figuring to clobber me again, but he hardly ever bothered to clobber me more than once a day, and so he just belched and rubbed his fat gut and went on out. I finished eating and went in the living room and sat down and tried to think of something to do with the damn night. There wasn’t any use going back uptown, because I didn’t have any money, and I’d had plenty of Bugs for one day, a little of Bugs going a hell of a long way, and finally I decided I might as well go over and see if I could stir up something with Mopsy, so I went.

The whole damn sky was lousy with stars, and the moon was floating around big and yellow up there among them, and when you walked under a tree and looked up you could see the moon and a big mess of the stars through the bare branches of the tree, and it was like seeing it all through a God-damn black filigree or something, and it was a pretty good eyeful if you cared for that kind of crap. The wind was blowing pretty strong in the street, stirring up the dead leaves in the yards and along the gutter, and it was damn cold, and I got to thinking that it was too cold to sit outside with Mopsy, and what the hell could you do with Mopsy inside with her old man and her old lady hanging around, and I was about to turn around and go home and to hell with it when it occurred to me that there was an outside chance that the old man and the old lady had gone out to a movie or somewhere, and so I took the chance and went on, and that’s just the way it turned out, as luck would have it.

Mopsy opened the door when I knocked, and I said, “Hi, Mopsy,” and I could tell by the way she looked half glad and half scared, like she knew damn well she was going to do something she wasn’t supposed to do, that no one was home but her.

“Hi, Skimmer,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

I said, “I just came over to do a little diddling,” and she said, “Don’t you talk like that, Skimmer. Besides, you can’t come in. Mom and Pop are gone to the movies, and I can’t have boys in the house when they’re gone.”

“Nuts,” I said. ‘Who’s going to know besides us? I’ll get the hell out before they come back.”

“Well,” she said, “they’ll be back around nine, so you’ll have to leave by eight-thirty.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be gone like Callahan,” and I went in.

She had her goggles off and her hair pushed up on top of her head and pinned there, and the fact was, she looked pretty good, sort of sophisticated, if you know what I mean, except she was too heavy, not really fat but damn plump, and she was wearing these crummy saddleshoes and white sox instead of high heels and nylons like any smart doll wears when she wants to send a guy. She was stacked up good, though, even if she did pack a little too much altogether, and her tail had a nice little wobble to it when she walked. I sat down on the sofa and watched her wobble it over to the radio-phonograph, and she said, “You want to hear some music?” and I said, “Sure. Put on a stack.”

She started the first platter spinning and came back and sat down beside me on the sofa, and I began to think that she was just the soft-headed kind that would be impressed all to hell by something like a guy playing on the school basketball team, so I said, “I’ll bet you can’t guess what I’ve been doing,” and she said, “No, what?”

“Playing basketball,” I said.

“Basketball?” she said.

“Hell, yes, basketball,” I said. “Can’t you understand anything?”

“Where you been playing basketball?” she said, and I said, “I been playing at school. Where the hell else is there to play basketball?”

“On the team?” she said.

“God Almighty, yes, on the team,” I said. “You think you play basketball all by yourself or something?”

By that time her eyes were sort of shining, and her mouth was hanging open a little like she was in heat, and she said, “Oh, Skimmer, that’s wonderful,” and I could see that she was already thinking about me being a school big shot, maybe, and dragging her around to dances and places with me, and I thought, Fat chance, sister, if everything old Bugs said about the classy dolls turns out to be true. Meantime, though, I was making a hell of a lot of points, and old Mopsy wasn’t too damn bad while I was waiting for something better, and as a matter of fact, we wound up doing a lot of kissing and having a pretty hot tussle there on the sofa, and if I hadn’t had to clear out at eight-thirty — except it was almost nine before I left — I got an idea I might even have got past that holy and precious stuff she always came up with at the last minute. Anyhow, on the way home I decided that if it worked like that on Mopsy there wasn’t any reason why it shouldn’t work on a lot of others, and I made up my mind right then and there to give this basketball crap the big try, and I didn’t worry any about the old man’s guff about no kid of his playing, either, because he didn’t really give a damn what the hell I did, or if I ever came home for supper on time or any other time, and he’d only stirred up a brawl over it tonight because he was handy and felt like raising hell.

I did it too. I went for it whole hog. I got me a jock strap and went out for practice every God-damn afternoon after school and sometimes on Saturday, and I guess I ran up and down that court damn near a million miles, and as a matter of fact, old Bugs was right, and I had to ease up on the gaspers some, but I didn’t quit entirely as a matter of principle. Old Mulloy would make me stand back on the outside of the keyhole, which means the black lines painted on the floor in front of the basket that look like a big keyhole, and he’d stand in the keyhole under the basket and fire the God-damn ball out to me and yell, “Jump and push,” and I’d jump and push the ball at the basket, and he’d grab it and fire it back like the son of a bitch was hot and yell, “Jump and push,” and I’d jump and push again, and after a while he’d have old Tizzy Davis stand in there under the basket and fire the ball out, because Tizzy was center, and it was really his job, and before long I got free and fancy and loose as ashes and could flip the ball through the net almost every time with a little swish, and it was just like shooting a lot of God-damn fish in a rain barrel.

Like I said, old Tizzy played center, being so tall and skinny and sort of limber, and the idea was to slam the ball to him under the basket, and if he had a chance he was supposed to jump up and away from whoever was guarding him and hook the ball over into the basket — only the other guys called it a bucket instead of a basket, and I got to calling it that too — and if he didn’t have the chance to hook the ball in, he was supposed to fire it back to me outside the keyhole, and I was supposed to throw it through from there, and I don’t mind saying it worked damned good. As a matter of fact, you’ve got to give the devil his due, and there weren’t any flies on old Tizzy when it came to playing that pivot position, which is what we called it, and the only thing wrong with him was that every once in a while he’d lose one of those God-damn contact lenses off his eyeball, and then we’d all have to stop and go crawling all over the lousy floor until someone found it.

We always wound up every practice with the first team playing the second team, and I was on the first team right off, and old Bugs was on the second team. As a matter of fact, he played guard and was supposed to keep me from making any points, and I really gave the poor bastard a hard time, and before we finished playing his tail was always rubbing out his tracks. Old Mulloy would stand along the side, sometimes running up and down a little, and he’d keep yelling, “Run, run, run! Move, move move! Pass that ball, pass that ball!” Once in a while he’d run out on the court waving his arms around to stop the action and chew somebody out for not doing something the way he should’ve done it, but he never called it chewing out because he didn’t go for cussing, and once when I did a little in a natural sort of way, damned if he didn’t give me a five-minute lecture on sportsmanship and clean speech, the son of a bitch, when all the time he wasn’t interested in anything, really, but running the hell out of you, and he didn’t give a damn if you dropped dead just as long as he won his God-damn games.

We came up pretty close to the time for our first game, and along about then I had some trouble with a God-damn old grandma named Cupper. He taught geometry in the school, and if you’ve ever tried the stuff you’ll understand what God-awful tripe it is, and I’d taken it once before and hadn’t done any good with it, and now I was taking it again, because I had to, and I wasn’t doing any better this time, and as a matter of fact, I wasn’t doing a damn thing. Anyhow, old Cupper got wind of my playing basketball, and he served notice on the coach that there wasn’t any way on God’s earth I could make a passing mark in geometry, and that I couldn’t play, and old Mulloy just hit the God-damn ceiling and went screaming down to the principal. I got called down to the office later, and the principal and the coach and old Cupper were all there, and you could tell they’d been raising hell because the principal was red in the face, and he kept taking off and putting on these fancy goggles with a black ribbon on them, and the coach was red in the face too, but old Cupper was white as a sheet, so I figured the principal and the coach had been dishing it out, and old Cupper had been taking it. He looked like he was about a hundred years old, and he had a little gray curl that hung down over his forehead, and these God-damn plates kept clacking around in his mouth. Take it from me, he was so damn dry it made you thirsty to look at him, but maybe it was what you’d expect in a guy who’d spent most of his lousy life teaching something as dry as geometry.

Well, the principal had me sit in a chair just like the rest of them, which surprised the hell out of me, and he started in telling me what great things he’d heard about me from old Mulloy, and what a fine thing he thought it was for a young man to serve his school so well, and I knew he was just breaking it off in old Cupper, but he lost control of himself and overdid it, and I kept remembering some of the other things he’d told me at different times, and it was confusing as hell, and I had a feeling generally that he was talking about someone else. He wound up saying there had been a little misunderstanding, but he was sure everything could be worked out all right and that Mr. Cupper wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt the team, and old Cupper broke in with his voice trembling and said that nothing could ever be worked out unless Scaggs, meaning me, did a little work himself, and then the principal got mean as hell and said right out that Scaggs, meaning me again, would receive a passing mark in geometry or else someone, meaning old Cupper, would suffer the God-damn consequences, only he didn’t say God-damn. Old Cupper got so excited that his teeth began to rattle like a hot crap game. The truth is, I felt kind of sorry for the damn old fool, but I wasn’t going to louse anything up by saying so. What’s more, I had a sneaky feeling he was right, and if I’d been him and he’d been me, I wouldn’t have given him nothing, but nothing. Not that God-damn Mulloy, though. That righteous bastard didn’t feel sorry for anyone ever, and all the way back to the locker room he kept crowing like a banty rooster about how it was time certain people were learning that there was more went into the making of a man than what came out of a crummy book.

The night of the first game finally came around, and I might as well come right out and admit it, I was as nervous as a whore in church. It was a home game, and I’d never been to see a damn game before, even though I was a senior and was there my fourth year, and to tell the truth, I was surprised at the big fuss they made over it. Man, the God-damn place was jumping. All the seats were full up in the sections where people were supposed to sit, and they brought in a lot of folding chairs and set them up around the sides of the court, except where the benches for the teams were, and the school band sat down at one end of the gym just off the court and played all these snappy marches that are enough to make you get your rocks off, and all the time these crazy guys in white pants and dolls in little white pleated skirts ran up and down on the court and jumped in the air and waved their arms and yelled, “Fifteen for the team, fifteen for the team,” and everyone, even the ones old enough to know better, jumped up and yelled fifteen rahs in batches of twos and threes with three big teams after them, and in my opinion they all acted like God-damn maniacs.

The game finally got started, and I guess all the rest of the team were as nervous as I was, because every time we got hold of the ball we threw the damn thing away, and the only good thing was that the other team was even worse than we were. After a while, though, someone managed to get the ball in to old Tizzy, and Tizzy banged it out to me, and I banged it through, and you’d have thought from the racket that went up that I’d won a war all by myself or something. After that, we settled down, and I could hear old Mulloy yelling, “Run, run, run!” and we ran like hell, and I’m telling you straight that the other team didn’t have a sucker’s chance from then on. We really ran the pants off the poor bastards. They must not have been so hot, anyhow, to tell the truth, because they finally wound up in the cellar at the end of the season, but it was a damn good game to get us started off on top, especially me, because I got hotter than a bitch in August and scored thirty points altogether. To tell the honest truth, it would have been better sometimes if I’d passed back in to Tizzy under the basket, because he’d broken free of his guard and could have laid it in like nothing, but you don’t make points for number one that way, and besides, I was hitting the bucket myself, so what the hell. The God-damn goofy creeps up in the seats and all around the floor in the folding chairs kept yelling, “Scaggs, Scaggs, Scaggs!” and once, during a time out that the other team took to suck their guts in, the guys and dolls in white pants and white shirts got out on the floor and got everyone to yell fifteen rahs with three Scaggses after them, and I’m bound to say it gave me a funny feeling in spite of myself to hear my name yelled out like that. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, or any other Scaggs, either, for that matter, except in a kind of way to Eddie when the paper printed his name as a war hero, but he was dead then and couldn’t appreciate it. And incidentally, the guys who led the yells weren’t the only ones who wore white pants. The girls did too, and you could see them when they jumped up in the air and made their skirts fly up, and I thought myself that it was a better show than the God-damn game.

In the locker room after it was all over, everyone was yelling and horse-playing and acting as wild as a pregnant fox in a forest fire, and no one but the principal himself came in and shook my hand and said, “Congratulations on a great game, Scaggs,” and I was naked at the time and felt silly as hell. Old Mulloy kept prancing up and down the room in the steam and stink, taking big breaths of the air like it was blowing over roses and sticking his God-damn chest out like Tarzan, and he kept saying, “Great game, fellows, great game,” but then he’d stop and say, “Don’t let it go to your heads, though. There’s a lot of kinks in this team, a lot of kinks, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get them out,” and it was pretty plain that he was trying to give the impression that he was about the only God-damn coach on earth who could do it. It all got pretty pukey, to tell the truth, especially the horseplay, and while I was in the shower old Tizzy Davis reached around inside with one of those skinny arms of his that were about as long as an ape’s and turned the hot water off and damn near froze my tail. I never did go for that kind of stuff much, and I was about to go out and slap his stinking chops for him, but then I decided if I was going to mess around with this bunch of goof-balls I’d have to learn to take that kind of kid stuff, and I might as well start now, so I didn’t do it.

It was a good thing I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. When I finally went out of the locker room into the hall, there was old Tizzy talking to a couple of dolls, and he said, “Come on over here, Scaggs. I want you to meet my sister.” Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard him say that, because I was already beginning to get the idea that Bugs had been right about the classy dolls, and some of them were already beginning to look at me that hadn’t ever looked at me before, but I’d never expected anything like Tizzy Davis’s sister, and that’s no bull. Anyhow, I went over there, and Tizzy said, “Marsha, this is Skimmer Scaggs, the best damn forward in the state,” and Marsha laughed and said, “Well, it isn’t exactly true that Tizzy wanted you to meet me. It’s more that I wanted to meet you,” and I thought, Oh, oh, hold on to your God-damn hats because here we go.

I said I was glad to meet her, and I was, and that’s the truth if I ever told it. She was a junior in school, a year younger than Tizzy and me, and she had this very pale blond hair and this willowy kind of body that looked like it could wrap itself around you and tie a half-hitch, and besides, her voice had this kind of little laugh running through it all the time that made you wonder what the hell she was thinking about, and her eyes, which were blue and kind of shining, came up at you through her lashes with a sly sort of look that made you wonder what they did for entertainment over on the side of town where people like the Davises lived. She was a classy doll, all right, doubled in spades, and I don’t mind telling you that I met and had a lot of dolls after her, but there never was a damn one of them a damn bit classier, even in college or the city or places like that.

She said, “Do you have anything in particular to do?” and I said I didn’t, and she said, “We’re going over to Tompkins’ for hamburgers and cokes. Would you like to come?”

I said that sounded pretty good to me, and she said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Don’t you think that’s wonderful, Tizzy?” Tizzy said he did, and I couldn’t tell from his voice whether he really meant it or not, and to tell the truth, I didn’t give a damn. We all walked over to Tompkins’, Marsha and me behind, and she hung onto my arm real tight, sort of running her hand up and down the inside of it every now and then, and all the time she kept telling me what a wonderful game I’d played, and just to think it was the first real game I’d ever played in my life, and she bet someday I’d be one of the best basketball players in the country and make All-American in Collier’s and Look and all the big magazines and newspapers.

Tompkins’ was a joint where all the classy dolls and fancy guys from school hung out, and I’d never been in it before, but tonight I walked in like I owned the place, and the way everyone started yelling Good game, Scaggs, great going, Scaggs, thataboy, Scaggs, they must have thought I owned it too. We got a booth in the back, Tizzy and his girl, name of Marion, on one side and Marsha and me on the other, and we ordered hamburgers and cokes, and I’m ready to swear that was the first time I remembered that I didn’t have a God-damn red cent in my pocket. It took some of the fun out of it, that’s for sure, because I kept wondering if that damn Tizzy would pick up the check, and what the hell I’d do if he didn’t.

There was a juke box jumping in a corner, and Tizzy and his girl got out of the booth to dance, and Marsha said, “Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?” and I said, “I don’t know much about dancing. I guess I just never bothered to learn,” and she said, “Oh, it’s easy, there’s nothing to it, come on.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the booth, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot to it, at that, and I had a kind of knack for it, just like I had for basketball. As a matter of fact, I found out I had a knack for a hell of a lot of things I’d never thought anything about, and probably I’d never have found out about any of them if it hadn’t been for the day old Bugs called me into the gym and bet me two-bits I couldn’t throw the ball through the hoop two times out of ten.

Marsha was a real classy dancer and hardly seemed to touch the floor, she was so light on her feet, but she touched plenty in other places, namely all up and down the front of me, and she kept whispering things to me about how marvelous it was I could pick up the steps so quick and how strange it was she had never noticed me around before, and her lips kept brushing the side of my neck, and it may not seem like much to happen, but it was better than a tussle with old Mopsy on her lousy sofa anytime. We kept on dancing for a long time to the nickels other guys fed the juke box, and when we finally got back to the booth, old Tizzy and his girls were standing up ready to go.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’d better pay the check,” but Tizzy said, “Oh, never mind, I’ve already paid it,” and I said, “You didn’t have to do that,” and he said, “That’s all right,” and the truth is, I’d seen him pay it, and that’s why I’d come back to the booth.

Outside on the street, old Tizzy said, “Sorry I don’t have the old man’s car tonight, Scaggs, or I’d drive you home.”

I said, “Oh, that’s all right,” and it was too, because to tell the truth, I didn’t much want them to see the crummy dump I lived in, and besides, if the old man and the old lady happened to be in one of their brawls, you could hear them all over the God-damn neighborhood, even with all the doors and windows closed. Anyhow, Marsha spoke up and said, “It’s a wonderful night for walking. You go on with Marion, Tizzy, and Skimmer will see I get home. You wouldn’t object to walking me home, would you, Skimmer?” She said it with this sly look through her lashes and the kind of little laugh in her voice, like she knew God-damn well no guy with all his marbles would object to walking her home, and I wondered for a second what she’d say if I said Hell, yes, I’d object to taking her shank’s mare clear the hell across the lousy town, but you can bet I didn’t say it, but said instead, “It would be my pleasure,” which was pretty damn corny, I admit, but true, nevertheless.

Old Tizzy said all right and went off with his girl Marion, who wasn’t a bad piece herself, except she had the kind of teeth you could use to eat roasting ears through a picket fence, and I started off with Marsha across town, not east toward the crummy section where I lived, but north toward the section where the people lived who were lousy with dough, and she held onto my arm and kept running her hand up and down the inside of it like she did before on the way to Tompkins’. She said again she simply couldn’t understand how she’d missed me so long around school and asked me to tell her all about myself, because she simply had to know every little detail about a guy who was bound to be a big basketball star and famous as all hell, and I thought, Anytime you think I’m going to louse up the works by telling you about my crummy family, baby, you’re a hell of a lot crazier than I think you are, so instead I told her a lot of God-damn lies about how my old man was pretty poor, even though he’d once been on the way to becoming a damn millionaire or something, and this was because he had a very bad disease of some kind that he never talked about and the doctors couldn’t do anything about, and it was just a damn crying shame all around. I told her, besides, that my older brother had been killed in the war, which was the only true thing I told her, and that my old lady had been heart-broken ever since and just seemed to keep on wasting away over the grief of it, but as a matter of fact, my old lady never felt any grief in her life that she couldn’t cure with a few cans of beer. Anyhow, I got warmed up to it pretty well and laid it on pretty thick, and she kept hanging onto my arm tighter and tighter and rubbing harder and harder on the inside, and every once in a while she’d make this little cooing sound that was like a doll makes when she’s working up to a tumble, and by the time I’d finished, damned if we hadn’t walked all the way across to her neighborhood and down to her house on the very street she lived on.

It was a big God-damn place, built like one of these old colonial mansions you see in pictures about the Civil War and stuff, and it was set back of a big front yard with a lot of trees and bushes growing around and a curved driveway going up one side and around in front of the house. We stopped along the drive under a tree, and she said, “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to come in tonight. You understand, don’t you?” and I thought, Sure, I understand. I understand your old man would probably throw me out on my butt if you did, but I said, “That’s all right. It’s getting pretty late, anyhow, and I’d better be getting home.” Then she turned and put her arms up around my God-damn neck and said, “Here’s a kiss for the hero, anyhow,” and that’s when I found out for sure what I’d been suspecting already, that this little old Marsha was a real worker, and that it didn’t make any God-damn difference which side of town you were on when you got down to business, it was the same wherever you were, only a little better some places than others, depending on who you were doing business with. I don’t mind telling you that kiss would have blistered the paint on a new automobile, and she may have been pretty good at it and all that, but no doll is that good naturally, and the only way she gets that good is by a hell of a lot of experience. I sneaked in a feel or two upstairs, and she didn’t seem to mind, but pretty soon she pulled away and skipped up the driveway laughing and said over her shoulder, “Goodnight, Skimmer. See you at school.” I watched her go up between the big columns on the porch and through the door, and then I turned and started shank’s mare for home, and as you can see, there hadn’t really been much to it, just a kiss and a couple of feels where they didn’t count much, and that’s the way she worked on me.

I went on home and to bed, and I lay there listening to the old man snoring like a hog in the next room, and I thought, Hell’s fire and save matches, was old Bugs right! Was old Bugs ever right! Then I began to think that one thing was sure as hell-fire, that I couldn’t be running around with my God-damn pockets empty if I was going to get anywhere with a classy doll like Marsha Davis, and what the hell would have happened if I hadn’t been able to jockey old Tizzy into picking up the check at Tompkins’, and I tried like hell to think of some way to pick up some easy dough, but I couldn’t think of any, except shooting rotation at Beegie’s, and I didn’t have time for Beegie’s any more, now that I was on the basketball team, and besides, rotation Beegie’s was just for crummy nickels that wouldn’t get you to first base with a classy doll whose old man was president of a bank unless you had a God-damn barrel of them.

The next day at school everyone kept coming up to me and slapping me on the back and saying things like, “Boy, what a game, Scaggs! Man, were you hot!” and a lot of other crap like that, and it wasn’t bad at first, being different from anything that had ever happened to me at school before, but after a while it got to giving me a pain and that’s no lie. I kept on looking out for Marsha, but I didn’t see her at all until school was almost over in the afternoon, and then it was in the hall with a lot of jerks between us, and she just waved and yelled, “Hi, Skimmer,” over their heads, and that’s all there was to it. I went to practice feeling pretty sore, and I thought more than once that just as soon as basketball season was over I was going to poke old buller Mulloy right in his fat mouth. Jesus, that guy was a pain. He was a pain up to here if I ever saw one.

Well, as it turned out I didn’t see Marsha at school again that week, and I got to thinking it was just a God-damn one-night stand, and not much of a stand at that, and I told myself that I was a damn fool, anyhow, to think a snotty bitch like her would have any time for a guy like me who came from the wrong side of town and didn’t have a cent but then I got to thinking about that kiss under the tree by the drive, and it sure as hell didn’t seem like the kind of kiss a girl would give a guy if she didn’t figure on having some time for him afterward, but of course some girls will kiss anyone who’s handy, and that’s just a cheap way to get their kicks. I got to thinking to hell with her, she wasn’t the only pebble on the lousy beach, and to hell with basketball, the God-damn crazy game, you ran your guts out and threw a damn silly ball around for no damn reason except so a lot of clowns could jump up and down and yell fifteen rahs for this and that, and I was going to turn in my suit at the end of the week, and the last thing I was going to do was poke old Mulloy in the mouth and slap the b’jeesus out of Tizzy Davis. Then, would you believe it, on Friday, the day I was going to do it, old Tizzy came up to me in the locker room and said, “Oh, by the way, Scaggs, Marsha told me to tell you that she had to go out of town with Mother for a few days, in case you might wonder where she was, and I forgot all about it until right now.” He said it just like that, the skinny bastard, just as calm and cool as a Goddamn prince or something, and the worst part was, it changed everything again, and I couldn’t afford to hit him.

So I didn’t quit the team, and we made a trip out of town for a game the next night, which was Saturday, and we won the game, and I made twenty-six points. We rode on a bus that the school chartered, and we got back to town after midnight, and the next afternoon I went uptown to Beegie’s and shot rotation, which was the first time I’d done it for a long time. When I got back home, the old lady was having a can of beer at the kitchen table, and she said, “Someone called you on the telephone,” and I said, “Who the hell you mean, someone?”

“A girl,” she said, and I said, “What girl?”

“How would I know what girl?” she said.

“God damn it to hell, didn’t you even ask who she was?” I said.

“Why the hell should I ask her who she was?” she said. “She didn’t want to talk to me.”

“What the hell makes you so God-damn ignorant?” I said. “Anyone knows you’re supposed to ask anyone’s name when they call on the damn telephone.”

Then she began to blubber and say that I wouldn’t talk to my old mother that way if only Eddie was here, and I said that was a lot of bull and she knew it, and even if Eddie hadn’t got killed in the war he probably wouldn’t be around, anyhow, because he’d probably be in jail, and that tore it for sure, and she began to bawl and howl about what a terrible sin it was for me to talk that way about my poor dead brother, so I got the hell out of there. I walked up the street a few blocks to a crummy neighborhood drug store and screwed up my courage and called Marsha, and sure enough, it had been her on the phone, just like I’d suspected.

She said, “Is that you, Skimmer?” and I said it was, and she said, “I just called you this afternoon.”

I said, “I thought maybe it was you. That’s why I called back,” and she said, “Did you miss me around school?” and I said, “Well, I sort of looked around for you, but you didn’t seem to be there,” and then she let out this little squeal and asked me if Tizzy hadn’t told me what she’d told him to tell me, and I said he’d forgot all about it until Friday, and she said, “Oh, that damn Tizzy! I’ll fix him!” and I thought, I hope she fixes you good, you son of a bitch.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve simply had a deadly time all week. You know how it is when you have to go somewhere with your mother.”

I said sure, I knew, but I didn’t, as a matter of fact, because my old lady never went anywhere, and even if she’d run all over the God-damn place, she wouldn’t have taken me with her. Anyhow, Marsha kept going on about how deadly it had been, and how she simply had to have something interesting and exciting to do or she’d go right out of her mind, and after a while it turned out that what she wanted with me was, she could have her old man’s car for a couple of hours and would I like to take a ride? I said I didn’t mind, which was the God-damnedest understatement of the year, and she said she’d drive by and pick me up if I’d give her my address, and I said it just happened I was calling from a drug store and she could pick me up there, and I gave her the address of the drug store and hung up.

I had fifteen lousy cents in my pocket, and I wondered what the hell I’d do if Marsha wanted to stop somewhere for a coke or something, and I was thinking that maybe I could get away with that old dodge of putting your hand in your pocket and feeling around and saying, “Well, Jesus Christ, what could’ve happened to the money I had? Do you suppose I could’ve left it in my other pants?” but just then who do you think I saw but old Bugs dropping a nickel in a pin ball machine at the end of the soda fountain. There was an outside chance that Bugs might have some dough, even if it was a damn slim one, so I went up to him and said, “Hi, Bugs, old boy. You happen to have an extra buck on you?” and to tell the truth, I never had any God-damn idea he had anything like that much, if any at all except the nickel he’d just dropped in the machine, but I could tell right away by the sneaky look that got on his face that he really had it.

“Hi, Skimmer,” he said. “Where the hell would I get that kind of dough?”

“Same place you always get it,” I said. “Out of your grandmother’s purse.”

It was a pretty good shot, and it was plain enough from the way old Bugs got all red in the face that I’d hit it right on the nose. Old Bugs had this grandmother who was about a million years old and got a pension from the government because Bugs’s grandfather had been in some God-damn war back in the Middle Ages or sometime. Every month after she got her pension, she’d put part of it in the bank and put the rest of it in this little black purse she carried around with her. The way she carried the purse, she’d wrap it in a handkerchief and pin it to her long underwear under about six inches of other underclothes and stuff, and the only way Bugs could get to it was to wait until she’d undressed and gone to bed. She kept pieces of hoarhound candy in the purse with the money, and you could always tell when old Bugs had swiped some money from his grandmother because it always smelled like this God-damn hoarhound.

Well, he swore up and down that he didn’t have any, but I knew he was a damn liar and just didn’t want to come across for a buddy, so I said, “Look, Bugs, don’t give me any crap now, because I’ve got to have some lousy dough, and I’ll tell you why. I got this date with Marsha Davis, and I’m stony, and she’s going to be here any minute to pick me up in her old man’s car.”

He looked at me and said, “Oh, bull, you haven’t any more got a date with Marsha Davis than I have,” and I said, “The hell I haven’t. You just stand up inside the window and see if she doesn’t pick me up, and if you’ll let me have a buck I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll try to fix you up with one of Marsha’s friends.”

That was a God-damn laugh, because no classy doll was going to have any time for old Bugs, even if he’d played on a dozen lousy basketball teams, and besides he was only a stinking substitute who hardly ever got to play in a real game, but it worked just the same, Bugs being pretty God-damn stupid when you got right down to it, and he said, “No bull, Skimmer? You really think you could fix me up?”

I said sure, it was a cinch, and he forked over a buck, and sure enough, it smelled just like this stinking hoarhound. I took the money and started for the door, and Bugs followed me up past the soda fountain saying, “Don’t forget now, Skimmer. You promised to fix me up,” and I said, “Sure, sure, I’ll fix it, Bugs,” even though I didn’t really have any idea of doing any such damn thing, and I went on outside and stood by the curb and waited. It was quite a while before she got there, and I began to think how maybe she wasn’t coming after all, and how old Bugs would hoot if she didn’t, and how I’d knock his God-damn teeth out if he did, and that’s for damn sure the trouble with having a classy doll like Marsha on the string, she always keeps your lousy guts in an uproar. Pretty soon she came, though, in this black Buick about a mile long. She pulled up to the curb and said, “Hop in, Skimmer,” and I hopped in beside her and looked back through the window of the drug store, and there was old Bugs with his teeth hanging out, and I could see that he was just about to wet his drawers, he was so God-damn jealous.

We went buzzing along in this big Buick that was like riding on the damn air, it took the bumps in the crummy street so easy, and Marsha said, “Sorry I was so long picking you up, Skimmer, but Dad always has to go through this deadly routine of giving me simply hours of instructions when I take the car out, and it’s just too sickening for words.” and I said, “I was just fooling around killing time anyhow. Would you like to go over to Tompkins’ for something?” and she said, “No, I don’t think I’d better go to Tompkins’, because I’m supposed to be over at Marion’s, and if I went to Tompkins’, Dad would be sure to hear of it. Honestly, I think that man has paid spies or something, and besides I only have the car for an hour, instead of two hours like I thought, and I know we can find something better to do than sit around in Tompkins’ with a lot of juveniles. Honestly, Skimmer, don’t you sometimes find them just too juvenile?”

I said I sure as hell did, and by that time we’d got out to the edge of town, not on a highway but on a little farm-to-market road, and she said, “What are you sitting way over on that side of the seat for, Skimmer?” Well, I may be a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but I don’t have to be kicked in the teeth before I get the God-damn point, so I eased across the seat until I was right up against her, and she said, “You wouldn’t bother me if you put your arm around me,” so I did.

We kept on going out the gravel road until we got to the river, and we kept talking about how she’d missed me, and I’d missed her, and how the past week had been longer than a damn year, and how strange it was how something had just gone bang like a God-damn bomb the minute we first looked at each other, and when we got to the river she turned off at the end of the bridge onto another little road that went along the bank down past some cabins. Pretty soon we came to one that was bigger than the rest, set in under some trees, and she stopped the Buick beside the cabin and said, “This is the old man’s shack, in case you’re interested. He comes out here fishing in the summers, and sometimes he brings his friends out here when they want to have a brawl that might corrupt their dear children if they had it at home. Isn’t it just too disgusting how transparent fathers are?” I said sure, fathers were for the book, and I could have backed that up with some stories about my old man that would probably have made her think hers was practically a plaster saint or something, but I didn’t and she slipped out of the seat on her side and said, “Let’s walk down and look at the river.”

We walked down to the bank and looked at the river going past, and she said, “There’s something about a river that makes you feel kind of sad, isn’t there?” and I said it made me feel that way too, which was a lie, and to tell the truth, it wasn’t much of a river, and just a lot of God-damn muddy water as far as I could see. We kissed once while we were standing there, but it was too damn cold with the wind blowing at us across the river, and so we went back to the Buick and really got started. Man, we really wallowed all over the lousy seat, and I won’t tell you what all we did, any details or anything like that, but it’ll give you an idea when you hear what she finally said. She laughed this little laugh and said, “Tough luck, Skimmer. I’m in the saddle.”

To tell the truth, it sort of got me for a minute, hearing her come right out with it like that, just as cool as a Goddamn cucumber, because girls usually act like it was a stinking crime or something and will go all out to keep a guy from finding out anything like that ever happens, and once I razzed old Mopsy about it a little, and she got all colors and began to bawl like I’d accused her of being queer at least. Anyhow, that put a ceiling on us, but we kept fooling around a long time under the ceiling, and she kept whispering things to me like how cute I was, and rugged, and sort of tough-like and different from all the other guys she knew, and then she sat up all of a sudden and looked at her wrist watch and said, “Oh, my God, my hour’s up, and we haven’t even started home. My father will simply be livid.”

Well, she took the Buick back up that gravel road like a bat out of hell, and I thought more than once that she was going to smash the damn thing up and kill us both, but to tell the truth, I didn’t much give a damn. When we got back to town, she asked me where I wanted her to drop me, and I remembered that I still had old Bugs’s dollar to spend, so I said, “Oh, just drop me off uptown somewhere. I think I’ll loaf around a little.” She let me off right in front of her old man’s bank, which seemed sort of ironic or some damn thing like that, and just before she pulled away she turned and said as if it was just something she happened to remember at the last second, “Oh, by the way, Skimmer, a bunch of us are having a little party at the Club after the game Saturday night, and I wondered if you’d like to go with me.”

“What club?” I said, not that it made any difference, because I intended to go, whatever damn club it was, and she looked surprised and said, “Why, the Country Club, of course,” like what the hell other club is there?

“Oh, sure, the Country Club,” I said. “I thought maybe you meant some kind of special club or something. Anyhow, I’d be glad to go.”

She said swell, and she’d meet me outside the locker room after the game, and then she drove away, and I wanted some cigarettes, so I walked down to Dummke’s to get them. Old Gravy was sitting on a high stool behind the counter reading the Sunday funny papers, and he looked up at me when I came in and said, “Well, well, if it isn’t the God-damn hero. Getting his name on the sports page and everything.”

I said, “Just cut the crap and give me a pack of gaspers,” and he looked shocked as hell and made a big red O with his stinking mouth and said, “Don’t tell me a big athlete like you smokes cigarettes,” and I said, “Ha, ha, you think you’re pretty God-damn funny, don’t you?”

Usually you could needle the greasy bastard into blowing his lid right away, but this time he didn’t get mad at all, but just laughed and tossed the gaspers across the counter and said, “You know, that basketball racket’s got possibilities. You get good enough, you might be able to make a big thing out of it for yourself.”

I thought about old Marsha and me in the front seat of the Buick, and I said, “Maybe I’ve already made a big thing out of it,” and his little eyes got all narrow and still all of a sudden, and he said, “What the hell you mean?” and I said, “That’s none of your damn business.”

Then he laughed again and gave me the change from Bugs’s dollar and said, “Well, I read in the sports page how you made thirty points your first game and twenty-six your second game, so you must be pretty good. After you get a little sharper, you come around and see me, and maybe I can do a good thing for you, and you can do a good thing for me at the same time,” and I said, “I wouldn’t put you out if you were on fire,” and went out.

I still had seventy-seven cents to spend, and I thought about going around to Beegie’s again, but I decided not to go because there was a chance of running into old Bugs there, and besides, to tell the truth, I didn’t get much of a bang out of Beegie’s any more, so what I did was go to a diner for a hamburger and bottle of coke and then to a movie. It was a corny movie, and this doll who was supposed to be such hot stuff wasn’t half as good as Marsha, and Marsha had got more done in the front seat of the Buick for free than this one did in a dozen fancy joints with rich guys all over the place offering her diamonds and fur coats and all kinds of stuff for it. After the movie I went home and started thinking about how I could get hold of some dough for the party Saturday night, because you’d sure as hell have to have a pocketful to go to the damn County Club, and I had exactly seven cents left out of Bugs’s crummy dollar.

That week old Mulloy really worked the hell out of us, and he kept talking about what a tough game it was coming up on Saturday, and how we’d have to be a hell of a lot better than we’d been yet to win this one, because this team was really a sharp one that could beat half the colleges in the country, and altogether he laid it on so God-damn thick you knew it was a pack of damn lies and just a trick to scare us into working all the harder. Old Tizzy and I were getting our business down better all the time, and we got so we could tell by the blink of an eyelash just which way the other one was going to jump, and old Mulloy puffed and blew about what a classy combination he’d made out of us, just like it was all due to nothing but his crummy coaching, and the truth is, whatever caused it, we were slicker than grease.

Along about Tuesday evening I was walking home late, and I was still trying to think of a way to get my hands on at least a fin for Saturday, and who should I meet over on my own side of town but old Mopsy on her way home from the grocery store. I hadn’t seen her to talk to since that night when her old man and old lady had gone to the movies, and she said, “Hi, Skimmer. How come you haven’t been around to see me lately?”

I had a good reason, of course, namely that you don’t eat hash when you’ve got roast beef, but I tried to make it easy on her and said, “Oh, I’ve been pretty busy with basketball and all,” and she said, “You’re really getting to be a big star, and I’m proud of you,” and I said, “Well I guess I’ve just got a knack for it,” which, like I’ve said before, was the way it was.

We kept walking along, and pretty soon she said, “How would you like to come over to my house Saturday night after the game? We could pop some popcorn and listen to music and have some fun.”

“Your old man and old lady going to be home?” I said, and she said they were, and I said, “Then how the hell we going to have any fun?”

She said, “You oughtn’t to say things like that, Skimmer. You sound like you never thought about anything else,” and I said, “Is there something else to think about?” and she said, “Do you want to come, or don’t you?” and I said, “No, as a matter of fact I don’t, because I’ve got a date to take Marsha Davis to a party at the Country Club.”

You could see it knocked her for a loop, me just tossing it off that way, and she got sulky and said, “I guess now that you’re a basketball star and running around with someone like Marsha Davis, you won’t have any more time for me,” and I said, “I guess maybe I won’t.”

“Well,” she said, “you don’t need to think I care,” and I said, “I don’t give a damn whether you care or not, and besides, you ought to be glad I don’t come because you’re so damn determined to save it, and if I was hanging around you might be tempted to spend it.”

That really fixed things up swell, that made everything just fine, and at the next corner she turned and went over a block just to get away from me, and damned if she didn’t go home and tell her old man what I’d said, just like she’d told on old Bugs when he tried to sneak a feel. The first I knew about it was when I got home the next evening, which was Wednesday. The old man was in the living room when I got there, and he said, “What the hell’s this I hear about you talking filthy to Mopsy Beacon?”

He sort of took me off guard, to tell the truth, and my damn tongue wouldn’t work right, and all I could say was, “Filthy? What the hell you mean, filthy? Who says I been talking filthy?”

“You know damn well what I mean,” he said, “and you know damn well who says so. Mopsy’s old man says so, that’s who, so don’t bother to tell any damn lies about it, and I can tell you I’m getting damn tired of having someone like old man Beacon jump me every time I turn around about some damn dirty thing you’ve been up to.”

“That’s just a crying God-damn shame about you,” I said. “Besides, old Mopsy’s just got her nose hard because I won’t have anything to do with her any more, and all I told her was that if she was so damn anxious to save it, I’d just stay away and not tempt her to spend it,” and the old man got quiet then and looked at me and said, “You mean that’s really all you said to her?” and I said yes, and he said, “Well, that don’t sound so God-damn filthy to me.”

That set the old lady off, and she said to the old man, “That’s right. Support him in his wickedness. How the hell can you expect him to be anything but a bum with no respect for womanhood when you say it’s not filthy to say something like that to a nice girl like Mopsy?” and the old man said, “Who the hell asked you to horn in, and how the hell do you know who’s a nice girl and who’s not? You never had any experience at it.”

The old lady began to bawl and cuss the old man and threaten to leave him for talking to his own wife like she was no more than a street-walker, and the old man said any time she wanted to leave he’d be glad to help her pack, and they got going so good that they forgot all about me and Mopsy and how the whole thing had started, and I went in the kitchen and had some cold supper and left. I was still trying to figure out a way to get hold of a fin, because here it was Wednesday already and Saturday would be the day I’d have to have it, and I even thought about going uptown and trying to find a drunk to roll in an alley, but that’s sucker stuff, that’s really taking a big chance for peanuts, and I’d never done anything like that before, and I didn’t do it now. I finally went over to Bugs’s house and told him how I was working on that classy doll for him, and how I thought I might get the job done if only I could scrape up a fin for this brawl at the Country Club, and then I asked him if he thought his grandmother would be good for that much. He said, Jesus, no, it was a long time from last pension day, almost the end of the month, and he’d already got to his grandmother for all she could stand, so I said sure, thanks for nothing, and went away.

Walking along, I got to thinking, What if all of a sudden I’d just see a fin lying on the sidewalk in front of me, just see it lying there as big and green as a God-damn corn field, and I actually got to thinking about it so hard I got the idea that maybe I could make it happen just by thinking of it that way, so I closed my eyes and walked along a way with them closed, and then I opened them and looked down at the sidewalk, but there wasn’t any fin there, of course, and nothing like that ever happens except in some God-damn corny story where some jerk finds some money, a nickel or something, and runs it into a fortune and then spends the rest of his life telling other people what a hell of a guy he is and what bums they are for not doing the same thing.

Just to show you how things go sometimes, though, I finally got the fin with hardly any trouble at all, and that was because Thursday was the old man’s payday, and he got drunk at the tavern on the way home from work and passed out on the sofa in the living room in his clothes. As luck would have it, the old lady had gone over next door for a few minutes just before he came home, and I helped myself to a fin from his stinking pocket while he was flopped on the sofa, and that’s all there was to it. He was a pretty shrewd old bastard, though, and the next morning he missed the fin and accused the old lady of taking it. She said he was a damn liar, of course, which he was, and then she looked at me and said, “Wasn’t you home when your old man came in?” and I said, “Don’t go accusing me of swiping the God-damn lousy fin,” and she looked back at the old man and said, “You lost it, you drunken bum. What the hell you want to accuse us of stealing your money for?” You could see the old man wasn’t convinced of it, but there was always the chance it was true, so he let the matter drop and probably took the fin out of the grocery money later.

That afternoon at practice, we didn’t do anything but take turns shooting free-throws and tossing the ball around and stuff like that because we never went at it very hard the last practice before a game, and afterward we all went in the locker room and sat around on the God-damn hard benches while old Mulloy drew diagrams of plays and stuff on a blackboard with a piece of chalk. To tell the truth, I couldn’t see much sense to it, because once we got in a game we hardly ever used any of the plays but just ran like hell and banged the damn ball at the bucket, but I guess it made old Mulloy feel important to go through all that bull just the same. He’d be talking along about something, and all of a sudden he’d point his damn finger at someone like he was ready to pull the trigger, and he’d say real fast, “What would you do in these circumstances?” and then he’d go on to tell the circumstances, and whoever he’d pointed at had damn well better know what he was supposed to do or else get chewed. You could see from the way the bastard acted that it made him feel important as all hell, a real hot-shot coach and all that, but like I said, we hardly ever went in for any of that fancy crap in a game, and what’s more, he didn’t seem to give a damn whether we did or not, and all he’d do then was jump up and down on the God-damn bench and yell, “Run, run, run!” until you wanted to poke him right in his stinking mouth.

After he finished with the chalk-talk, which was what he called it, he started in with the old pepper crap, and that was even worse. The idea was to get us all steamed up over the game and ready to go out and give our all for the dear old school and such bull, and he began by telling us what a tough team this was we were going to play, and how we’d have to play like we’d never played before if we hoped to beat them, and at first he hadn’t had much hope, to tell the truth, but now he was sorry as hell he’d had so little faith, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it and say right out he was sorry, and he knew we weren’t going to hold it against him, or let him down, and he wasn’t going to say anything more about it, not a Goddamn word, but he knew we were going out there tomorrow night and win this game, and all in all it was just about the sloppiest crap you could ever hope to hear.

When it was all over and he let us go, I went over to old Tizzy Davis, because there was something that had been bothering me, and I wanted him to put me straight, but I hardly knew how to bring it up. I’d thought about it some and had decided that it would be best to be just sort of casual, so I said, “By the way, Tizzy, about this thing at the Club tomorrow night. I forgot to ask Marsha what the guys generally wear,” and he said, “Oh, these things are just little informal brawls. Most of us just wear something like what we ordinarily wear to school,” and so that was all right, a big relief, as a matter of fact, and if he’d said anything else I’d have been right up that old creek without a paddle.

I fooled around the house almost all day Saturday and started out for the school about two hours before time for the game to start, and the old man was home at the time and said, “Where the hell you off to now?”

“I’m off to school to play basketball, if you want to know, that’s where I’m off to,” I said, and he said, “I thought I told you to quit that God-damn foolishness,” and I said, “Who the hell pays any attention to what you say?”

“I’ll damn well show you who better pay some attention to what I say,” he said, “and I’ll tell you something else right now. You get home here early tonight and don’t go lousing around Beegie’s pool hall or bumming the streets, and I don’t want any other old bastard like old Beacon telling me you been talking filthy or doing some other God-damn thing to shame your family.”

I laughed right in his fat face and said, “Shame my family! If that’s not a belly laugh I never heard one. What the hell could I do that would shame this lousy family? Just tell me what I could do, and what’s more, I probably won’t be home until one or two o’clock, or maybe even three, because I’m going to a party at the Country Club.”

He looked at me and said, “Don’t be trying to impress me with any of your God-damn lies, because I know you’re a damn liar and wouldn’t tell the truth if you were getting paid for it by the hour,” and I said, “Who the hell’s trying to impress you? I don’t give enough of a damn about what you think to even bother thinking up a lie for you, and if you don’t believe I’m going to the Country Club, it’s all right with me, and you can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”

He kept on looking at me, and I could tell he was beginning to believe I was telling the truth, and then he began to laugh sort of soft with his big sloppy beer-belly shaking up and down, and he said, “Well, damn! Ain’t he getting to be a big-shot, though! A regular God-damn plutocrat, going to the Country Club and everything!”

He kept on laughing that way, like he thought it was a hell of a good joke on the other people who went to the Country Club, which maybe it was, come to think of it, and I turned and started to leave again, but he stopped me before I could get out the door, and he’d quit laughing all of a sudden. “By the way,” he said, “where the hell you getting the money to go to the Country Club?” and his eyes were narrow and pretty mean, and I could see that he was remembering the fin that had disappeared from his stinking pocket, so I said in a hurry, “Who the hell needs money? You so God-damn ignorant you don’t know that a guest of someone whose old man is a member doesn’t have to pay for anything? I’m going with Marsha Davis, and no one has to pay for anything because her old man’s a member.”

Well, that part about my going with Marsha Davis really broke off in him, and he sat there gawking at me with his nasty mouth hanging open, and I got out before he could close it and start in on me again. I walked across town to the high school, and all the rest of the team were already in the locker room when I got there, because I’d lost so much time jawing with the old man, and old Mulloy was pacing up and down like a God-damn cat on hot rocks.

I got into my suit and sat down on a bench, and outside in the gym you could hear all the maniacs raising hell and giving fifteen rahs for this and that, and the band was playing these snappy marches that make you lose what little God-damn sense you might have had to start with, and it got into you a little, at that, even though you knew you were a creep for letting it and should have had your tail kicked up between your shoulders. Just before time to go out on the floor, old Mulloy got out in the middle of the locker room and raised his arms like some evangelist or something who was trying to get everyone to pay attention, and when we were quiet he still didn’t say anything but just stood there with his shoulders sort of stooped a little like he was tired as hell, and the silence kept stretching on and on until you wanted to jump up and yell at him, for Christ’s sake, and then finally he said in this low, tired voice, “Fellows, this is where I get off. I’ve done my best for you, I’ve taught you all I know, and now it’s all up to you. All I’m going to say is, I know you’re going to get out there and give me all you’ve got.” Then he turned and walked off to his crummy little office in this God-damn awful silence that was like a damn funeral or something, and his shoulders were stooped this way that seemed to say that it was all pretty damn hopeless, and he walked like every step damn near broke his back, but he wasn’t fooling me any, and I knew it was just a corny act that was supposed to get us all juiced up and ready to run our guts out just to show him we could beat this other team, and probably he’d read about some big college coach doing it sometime or other, because, as a matter of fact, I don’t think he had the brains to think of it all by himself. I’m bound to say it worked with the rest of the team, though, the God-damn spooks, and when old Mulloy was gone they all jumped up and started banging each other around, including me, and saying, “Let’s go, gang! That’s the old pepper, gang! Let’s show Coach we can do it! Let’s get this one for old Coach!” and I thought, Horse manure! I’ll get it for old Skimmer, that’s who I’ll get it for.

Pretty soon we ran out on the floor in a line behind old Tizzy, who was captain, and the second we showed up everyone began to jump up and down and raise the God-damn roof, and the band broke into the school march that was really some college song they’d swiped and just changed the words some, and the guys and dolls in white pants and white skirts ran back and forth waving their arms, the dolls flashing their butts, and we began running in for setups and passing the ball around and doing the things we were supposed to do to get warmed up. After a while everyone got off the floor except the referees and the two starting teams, and the game got started, and I’ll tell you one thing, however full of bull old Mulloy was about practically everything else, he was sure right about that damn team being sharp as hell and hard to beat, and to tell the truth, I thought for quite a while we weren’t going to do it. They were really tall, in the first place, a bunch of God-damn goons, and in the second place, they played firehouse basketball, just like we did, and they could run like wolves, and it’s a fact that they were leading us by three points at the damn half.

Well, you can bet old Mulloy had forgotten all about his corny act by that time, and in the locker room he was so damn mad he was slobbering at the mouth and really chewed the hell out of us.

He said we weren’t doing anything right, and the other team was making monkeys out of us, and as a matter of fact we were playing like a bunch of stumble bums who’d never seen a basketball before, but this was bull, too, and the truth is, we were playing a damn good game, but the other team was playing just as good and in fact, so far, three points better. We went back out on the floor for the second half, and it’s a good thing we went when we did because I was on the verge of telling old Mulloy he could play the rest of the God-damn game himself if he thought we were such bums, and it just happened that we got the ball right away and banged it into old Tizzy, and Tizzy banged it out to me, and I jumped and pushed just as one of the guys on the other team hit me like a freight train, the dirty bastard, but the ball went through the hoop anyhow. This gave me a free-throw besides the bucket, and I made it, and we were all even. Old Mulloy over on the bench started yelling, “Go, go, go!” and that big mouth of his was just like a diesel horn, and the crowd picked it up and started yelling, “Go, go, go!” like a God-damn chant or something, and we went. For a while it got into you in spite of yourself, and you kept going like you’d sure as hell be shot at sunrise at least if you didn’t, but then it began to get pretty damn thin, and you just wanted to sit down on the lousy floor and let all the loud-mouths come down and go themselves for a while and see how they liked it, the sons of bitches. By that time, though, we’d run those goons down to where they were about two inches high and had built up a ten-point lead, and we never lost it, and I was high point man again with twenty-seven points.

In the locker room was the same old bull again, everyone horseplaying and slapping tails and old Mulloy strutting back and forth and gobbling like a God-damn turkey. He’d changed his tune again, now that the game was won, and he said he’d never doubted for a minute that we’d win it and that this little old team wasn’t going to lose a game all season, and as a matter of fact it was true, and that’s the way it turned out, but I’ve got my own opinion about how much he had to do with it. I’ll say one thing, though, and that is, I’m damn glad we did win all our games, and I’d sure as hell hate to play on a team coached by that bastard that didn’t win, because all this stuff he was full of about clean play and sportsmanship was a lot of bull, and all he wanted us to do was win, and he started getting mean as a damn alley cat every time it looked for a while like we might not do it.

I was just about dressed when old Tizzy came over and said, “I’ve got the old man’s car, Scaggs, and you and Marsha are supposed to ride out to the Club with Marion and me. You about ready to go?” I said I was and hurried up and finished dressing, and Tizzy and I walked out in the hall together, and Marsha and Marion were waiting there. Marsha grabbed me by the arm in that way she had and began telling me what a great game it was, and how wonderful I’d been, and how she was just simply limp from excitement, and I thought, Well, Skimmer, it looks like a big night, and as a matter of fact it was.

Marsha and I rode out to the Country Club in the back seat, of course, and old Marion was sitting all plastered up against Tizzy in front, and he was driving the damn car with one hand all the time and didn’t have any time to pay any attention to what Marsha and I were doing in back, and we were doing plenty and then some, and the truth is, in spite of Tizzy and Marion being all tied up in their own business, I was a little worried about the damn rear-view mirror. It didn’t take long to get to the Club, not near long enough from the way I looked at it, and we drove up this long gravel drive in front of the clubhouse, and we all got out and went inside but Tizzy, and he drove the Buick on down to park it and come in afterward. The clubhouse was built on a slope, and there was a big front veranda on the ground floor, and we went downstairs to the room where we were going to have the brawl, and it was still on the ground floor there, too, only on the back because of the slope, and there were big glass doors that opened onto another veranda that looked right out over the golf course. The doors were closed, naturally, because it was cold, but you could look out over the course that was smooth and rolling with trees scattered around over it, and the moon was up out there, about as big as a God-damn washtub and a kind of orange color, and it wasn’t too bad if you didn’t have any more to do than look at it.

There were a lot of other guys and girls there that I’d seen around school, and we went through the great game, Scaggs, routine, which was all right to loosen me up and make me feel at home, because to tell the truth, I felt like a slob right at first and mad as hell because I did, and if anyone had said the wrong thing, I’d probably have clobbered him right in the mouth. No one said anything wrong, though, and someone started a stack of platters going on a big phonograph against the wall, and Marsha and I started to dance, with her all up and down the front of me, and after that it was free going, with me loose as ashes all the way.

In the next room, which was the bar, there was a bunch of old crumbs having a party, and I guess they were really supposed to be looking after us, but as it turned out, before it was over, they needed someone to look after them. They were drinking highballs and stuff like that, and we were drinking cokes, and after a while a couple of guys in our bunch slipped in and swiped a bottle of whisky from behind the bar and brought it back, and we spiked up some cokes and passed them around, and everything was going pretty good until one doll got sick and checked her cookies in the middle of the floor, and that tore it. Three or four old guys came in from the bar next door and took away what was left of the spiked cokes and probably drank them themselves, the bastards, and I was ready to throw them right back where they came from on their tails if I could’ve got anyone to pitch in, but I couldn’t. After that, someone cleaned up the mess, and an old doll who had about three sheets in the wind and was doing her damnedest to hide it came in and said in this God-damn coy voice that fun was fun and no one wanted to spoil it but just to think about what we did before we did it, and Marsha looked at me and said in this voice that she made sound just like the old doll’s, “Well, I’ve already thought about what I want to do next, so let’s go outside and do it.”

Well, some guys may need an engraved invitation, but not old Skimmer, so we slipped out through the glass doors and across the veranda and started down across the golf course, and Marsha said, “Have you ever played golf?” and I said I hadn’t, and the truth is, I hadn’t thought much about it at all, except that there didn’t seem to be any God-damn sense in it whatever, and I’ve heard my old man say that anybody who’d carry a bag of clubs around for miles hitting a little ball in front of him must have damn little to do and be queer in the head besides. Anyhow, old Marsha didn’t really care whether I played or not, or even answered her question, and neither did I, for that matter, because we both had something else on our minds that even my old man could see some sense in now and then. We went quite a way across the grass to a big tree and sat down under the tree and began to kiss and fool around, but the wind whipped in under the tree, and it was cold as hell, and before long I could hear her teeth rattling together and feel little goose pimples all over her skin.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Let’s go find the car,” and to tell the truth, I was ready to go almost anywhere myself to get out of that damn wind, and under the circumstances, that probably gives you a pretty good idea just how damn cold it was. We went back across the grass at an angle to the parking lot and down a row of cars until we came to the Buick, and Marsha said, “This is it,” and I started to open the door, but damned if old Tizzy hadn’t locked it, the skinny bastard.

Marsha stamped her foot and said, “Oh, that damn Tizzy!” and I said, “What the hell would he want to do a thing like that for?” and she said, “Oh, that’s just like him, he doesn’t give a damn about anyone else as long as he’s got the keys to get in himself in case he gets that drippy Marion to come outside.”

Anyhow, the cars on both sides kept the wind off of us, and we stood there and did a lot more kissing and fooling around, and it wasn’t so bad after all, but not as good as it might have been, and Marsha said we’d been gone so long someone might miss us and we’d better go back, and so we did, but no one had missed us at all, and we might as well have stayed outside all the rest of the time we were there as far as I could see, except that it was pretty damn cold.

As a matter of fact, though, we finally got on a sofa out in another little room that was almost as good as outside, besides being warmer, the only trouble being that you had to be sort of careful and not do too much and be ready to pretend that you were just sitting there talking if anyone else came in. Marsha kept telling me how I was just what she’d always wanted, the strong type that always knew just what he was after and wasn’t like all these other guys that seemed so juvenile, and I said she was just what I’d always wanted, too, and she said she knew there wasn’t anything on earth that could keep us apart, now that we’d found each other, and altogether it was damn good stuff, in spite of being largely bull, and it didn’t seem like any time at all before one of the old dolls from the bar came in and said we had to get the hell out of there and go home.

It was about midnight then, but we didn’t go home but went to an owl diner in town instead and had sandwiches and stuff to drink and listened to the juke box. When it got time to leave, I decided I’d better pick up the check, because if I kept letting old Tizzy do it someone might get the idea I was a God-damn deadbeat, or something, so I did, and old Tizzy said I didn’t have to do it and let him pay half at least, but he didn’t insist very hard, damn him, and it cost me a dollar and twenty-eight cents with tax. We got in the Buick again and started off, and old Tizzy saying, “Well, now, how shall we work this?” and I knew what he was getting around to was, should he take me home first or Marsha, and the idea was that, either way, he didn’t want us around to cramp his style when he took Marion home.

If there’d been any way to louse him up, I’d have done it, just for locking the door of the God-damn Buick, but there wasn’t any way that I could see, so I said, “Why don’t you just let me off at your house with Marsha and then I’ll walk on home,” and he said, “Oh, you don’t want to walk clear across town this time of night,” and I said, “Sure I do, I like to walk,” and so he said well, have it your own way, which I intended to, and he drove up to his house and let us out in the driveway.

I walked Marsha up to the front steps, and we stood there in the dark and kissed and fooled around some more, quite a bit as a matter of fact, and she said, “I wish I never had to go in,” and I said I wished she didn’t either, and she looked up through her lashes and gave this little laugh and said, “Better yet, I wish you could come in and stay all night,” and I said I sure as hell wished I could, too, but that it would be a damn hot day in January before we ever got her old man to see it the same way. She said that was right and fathers were a hell of a problem when you came right down to it, and then we loved each other up pretty good for the road, because she was getting shivery and goose pimply again, like on the golf course, and so was I, to tell the truth, and besides, old Tizzy would be getting back any minute and it was time she was getting in.

I went home to bed, and I lay there thinking about what a hell of a big difference this God-damn crazy game of basketball had made in everything, and how the difference might even have been a little bigger by this time if only the weather had been warmer, but there was always another time coming up, and I began to get the idea that maybe I had something really big by the tail, a hell of a lot bigger than old Bugs or I had ever thought, and God only knew what might come of it if I really kept at it and worked it for all it was worth. I was just about to go to sleep when I remembered the change from the fin that was still in my pants pocket, and I got up and got it and stuck it in the toe of my shoe, because it would’ve been just like the old man to sneak in and go through my pockets to see if I’d really taken the fin and had anything left, the sneaky son of a bitch.

Well, if you were around at the time and read the sports page, you’ll remember that I went through with this basketball stuff, just like I decided to, and really made a big thing of it. I got my picture in a lot of papers in other towns, even, and stories about how I was the best damn sharpshooter anyone had ever heard of, and I guess I must have been, at that, because I was high point man in the league all season and wound up after it was all over being high point man in the whole God-damn state. In the league, every team had to play each other twice, home and home, which means once on each other’s court, and old Mulloy really sweat out the game we had to play on their court with the team that damn near beat us on ours, and he was a genuine pain in the tail, the way he kept pointing us for that particular game, as he called it, and trying to juice us up with his corny crap that was supposed to be psychology or something.

It turned out that he did all his sweating for nothing, anyhow, because we beat them on their own court easier than we had on ours, and from then on we just coasted in and were league champions going away. I kept going out with Marsha all this time, and I’m not going to say a hell of a lot more about it, except that she was a real classy doll who always knew just what the score was, and that the weather wasn’t always as God-damn cold as it was the night we had the party at the Country Club.

After all the leagues in the state had finished playing and had a champion, they divided the state into regions, and all the champions in each region played each other in what was called regional tournaments. It happened that it was the year to have our particular regional tournament in our own gym, and that was a break for us because a team usually can do a little better on its home court, and the school really made a God-damn production of it. We had these big pep rallies in the auditorium, with the cheer leaders and the band there and everyone going crazy, and old Mulloy was really in hog heaven, and you’d have thought to hear him talk that the bastard had won the championship all by himself. Every day on the sports page of the paper there was a big black headline that said ALL THE WAY, FELLOWS, and when we finally got around to playing the games, it seemed like everyone in town except my old man and old lady tried to get in the God-damn gym, and I’m bound to say that it got out of hand and pretty God-damn silly, all in all, but it was all gravy for Skimmer any way you looked at it, and who the hell was I to complain?

Anyhow, to make it short, we went through the tournament like a dose of salts and were regional champions as well as league champions, and I was voted most valuable player by the God-damn coaches, and that didn’t leave anything but the state tournament, where all the regional champions played each other, to wind it up. The school had a big outdoor rally to send us off, and they had these crazy God-damn snake dances through the streets and a hell of a big bonfire on a vacant lot uptown, and old Mulloy made a stinking speech about how wonderful it was to have such support and how no team can get anywhere without everyone behind them and urging them on to victory, and it wound up with an old wooden building catching on fire, and it looked for a while like they were going to burn down the whole God-damn town.

After a while I got tired of it and looked around for old Bugs to walk home with, but I couldn’t find him, and then I decided I’d walk around to Dummke’s and get a package of cigarettes before I went, because we were leaving on the bus the next morning for the town where the tournament was going to be played — you probably remember it was a town called Stockton — and I figured I might not have a chance to buy any afterward. When I got to Dummke’s, it was someone besides Gravy behind the counter, and he gave me the gaspers without any lip, and the two cents change from the two-bits I gave him, and I was on my way out the door when Gravy came out of the back room and said, “Hey, kid, what’s the hurry?”

That struck me as pretty God-damn fishy right away, because always before I couldn’t be in a big enough hurry to suit him, but I just stopped and looked at him and said, “Who the hell’s in a hurry? I got my God-damn cigarettes, and I’m leaving, that’s all,” and he showed all these stinking white teeth all over his greasy face and said, “Don’t be like that, kid,” and I said, “Like what?” and he said, “Always with a Goddamn chip on your shoulder. Why in hell don’t you relax once in a while? How’d you like a coke on the house?”

If I’d had any doubt about him being up to something, I sure as hell didn’t have any after I heard him say that, because any time Gravy Dummke gave anything away, even a lousy coke, you could be damn sure he was looking at it as an investment of some kind, but to tell the truth, I was curious to know what it was he had on his crummy mind, and besides, I didn’t have any objection to the coke, either.

“Well, thanks all to hell,” I said. “A whole God-damn nickel coke? You sure you can afford it?”

His fat face smoothed out the way it did when he was about to flip his lid, and his little eyes got mean for a second, but then he found his teeth again and shrugged and said, “Always kidding. Damned if you ain’t the greatest God-damn kid for a joke I ever saw,” and I went back, and he got a bottle of coke out of this crummy cooler he had at the end of the counter and took the cap off and handed it to me. I lit a cigarette and started drinking the coke, and he said, “Ain’t it against the rules for guys on the basketball team to smoke?” and I said, “Screw the rules. Besides, what the hell business is it of yours?”

“None,” he said, “but I’d hate to see the star of the team kicked off the night before the state tournament started,” and I said, “That’s a laugh. That God-damn Mulloy wouldn’t kick you off for murder if he thought it might make him lose a game,” and he laughed and said, “Well, you’re safe, then, because I guess they wouldn’t have much chance without you,” and I said they sure as hell wouldn’t, and he said, “That leaves you in a pretty good position, kid, you know that?” and I said, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” and he said, “Why don’t you come on in the back room and talk it over. I hate to see a smart kid not taking advantage of his opportunities,” and to tell the truth, I thought it was just some of Gravy’s nonsense, but then I thought it wouldn’t cost me anything to listen at least, so I went.

The back room was a crummy dump a little bigger than an outdoor privy with a dirty window looking out on the alley and a few tables and chairs scattered around where the Goddamn penny-ante bastards that hung around Gravy’s could play pinochle and poker and different card games, and there was no one there but Gravy and me. He told me to take a load off my feet, which I did, and he sat down in another chair across the table from where I sat, and he asked me if I wanted another lousy coke, and I said I didn’t, and he said, “Jesus, kid, you’re really getting to be somebody. Every time I look at a God-damn sports page there’s your name or picture or something, and to tell the truth, I never dreamed all the time you been coming in here for cigarettes that you’d be such a big shot basketball player.”

I hadn’t dreamed it myself, as a matter of fact, but I wasn’t telling him that, so I said, “You can just skip the crap, Gravy. You didn’t ask me to come back here just so you could pin a medal on me,” and he laughed again and said, “You’re a pretty smart kid. That’s one thing I always knew, even if I didn’t know you were going to be a big star and everything, because I can smell a smart kid a mile away,” and I said, “So I’m a Goddamn marvel or something,” and he said, “Not quite. Not yet, anyhow. Even a smart kid’s got to learn the ropes. For instance, I bet you don’t know just how big this basketball thing can be. A lot of money changes hands on basketball games, kid, even high school games,” and I said, “Well, if you’ve been riding our God-damn team, you ought to have a potful,” and he looked at me for quite a while with his face smooth and his nasty little eyes half asleep, and then he said, “Oh, I’ve been getting my share. Have you been getting yours?”

I thought about how everything had changed after I’d started playing the God-damn crazy game, about Marsha and going places I’d never gone before and everyone thinking I was a regular ring-tailed wonder, and I said, “I’ve been doing all right,” and he said, “Oh, sure, a few stinking kids setting you up to cokes and hamburgers and a few girls flipping their tails in your face because they think you’re a lousy hero, but I’m talking about the long green, kid, the folding stuff, the stuff that counts. How much of that you been getting?”

I said, “You know damn well they don’t pay you anything for playing basketball at school,” and he said, “Sure, I know it, but that wouldn’t keep a smart kid from taking care of himself,” and I said, “You give me a pain in the ass, if you want to know it, because you’re always acting like a big shot and blowing about all the lousy money you got, but as far as I can see you’re just a small town jerk running a cigar store, and I never saw you with more than a fin in your hand in my life.”

I stood up then and was going to get the hell out of there, but he dug down in his stinking pocket and pulled out a wad of bills that would’ve choked a mule, and he peeled off five of them and laid them on the table, and they were all tens, and I stood there looking at them.

“What’s that for?” I said, and he said, “It could be for you, and maybe another hundred later,” and I said, “What’s the angle?” and he said, “You want to sit down and listen, I’ll tell you. No charge for listening,” and I figured there wasn’t, so I sat down.

He got out a cigarette and lit it and rolled it around in his stinking fat lips until it was soaked about half an inch down with his nasty slobber, and all the time he kept looking at me through the smoke like he’d probably seen some big shot do in the movies or something, and pretty soon he said, “That team of yours could go all the way in this state tournament,” and I said it sure as hell could, and he looked at me some more and said, “As long as you’re playing, that is,” and I said that was sure as hell right and I was sure as hell going to be playing.

He laughed and threw his cigarette into a can half full of water on the floor, and the cigarette went out with a little hiss. “Well,” he said, “that’s up to you, and probably you’ll get fifteen rahs and a couple of cokes for your effort, but I was thinking if you played all the games but the last one you might make a good thing of it,” and I said, “How good?” and he said, “Like I mentioned, this fifty now and a hundred later,” and I said, “That’s all right, but I don’t like the idea of looking like a God-damn monkey by getting beat in the finals. I got my reputation to think of,” and he said, “You’re a smart kid with brains, so why the hell don’t you use them? You won’t look like any monkey, but just the opposite, because you’ll get sick and not be able to play at all, and everyone will say just see what happens when old Scaggs isn’t in there. The first game old Scaggs doesn’t play, the God-damn crummy team loses,” and when I came to think of it, I knew it was true and that’s just what everyone would think.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’ll look pretty fishy, me getting sick that way at the last minute,” and he said, “Hell, kid, everyone’s got the right to get sick. It would be too big a chance to have you throw it on the floor, because, besides hurting your reputation, you’re too God-damn green to get away with it without making it stink to the rafters. Remember, though, you’d have to get sick right at the last minute, in the locker room or something, because otherwise the news would get out and change the odds, and if you lose before the finals the whole thing’s off, but you can keep the fifty for your trouble.”

I sat there and thought about it, and it sounded pretty good, not only the one-fifty but the idea of everyone saying that stuff about see what happens when old Scaggs isn’t in there, and I got a bang just thinking about old Mulloy tearing out what little hair he had left and beating his God-damn chest, the son of a bitch, and it was almost as good as poking him in the mouth. After a while I stood up and took the five tens off the table and put them in my pocket, and it was the most money I’d ever had at one time, and you could see it was just like pulling five of Gravy’s God-damn back teeth, and he said sort of slow, “Remember, kid. Don’t try any tricks. I got ways of handling, smart bastards who try to cross me,” and I said, “You just have the God-damn hundred ready, that’s all, and don’t bother trying to scare me with any crummy threats because in my opinion you’re just a fat slob with a big mouth.”

I went home then and put the fifty in my shoe and went to bed, and I thought that the returns from this basketball stuff were sure picking up and that it was a God-damn shame it was so close to being all over, and that was the first time I really began to wonder if there wasn’t some way I could go on with it.

The next morning I got up and got ready to go to Stockton for the tournament, and when I went out in the kitchen for breakfast, the old man was sitting at the table and the old lady was frying his egg at the stove. The old man stood up and bowed like he’d met a God-damn king or something, and he said in this snotty voice, “Well, well, if the God-damn hero ain’t honoring us with his presence. It’s damn generous of you to come out and sit down with common folks,” and I said, “Ha, ha, you kill me. You’re about as funny as a lousy crutch,” and he said, “What with being a God-damn hero and having your name and picture in the paper and running around with a bank president’s daughter, I don’t suppose you’ll be having much of anything more to do with your old man and your old lady,” and I said, “What the hell’s the matter with you? What the hell you want to start this bull first thing in the morning for?” and the old lady spoke up at the stove and said, “Just the same, I notice you haven’t brought your fine girl friend around to see your old folks,” and I said, “You think I’ve lost my marbles or something? Why the hell would I want to louse everything up by bringing her to this lousy dump with you and the old man raising hell all over the place?”

The old man said, “Well, maybe we ain’t good enough for you any more, but I notice you’re around regular enough when your God-damn belly’s empty,” and I said, “As far as I’m concerned you can take your God-damn slop and feed it to the hogs,” and then he started around the table after me, so I got the hell out of there and walked uptown and had breakfast at a diner, using one of the tens I’d got from Gravy Dummke to pay for it, and when I got to the school, the bus was parked out front with a big crowd around it and the band playing, and there was a hell of a big banner fastened on the bus that said, ALL THE WAY, FELLOWS, just like it had been saying in the paper.

Well, when I walked up there was a big God-damn cheer and everyone started yelling, “Scaggs, Scaggs, Scaggs!” and there was a guy with a camera there from the paper, and he took my picture, and Marsha was there, too, and she wanted to get in the act just like these damn girls always do, which was all right with me, and she put her arms around me and gave me this big kiss that must have lasted a whole damn minute at least, and damned if the guy from the paper didn’t take a picture of that, too, and it came out in the paper that evening with some big black printing under it that said, A WARRIOR’S FAREWELL. I got on the bus then, and everyone razzed me about the kiss and said pukey things like, “Oh, you dog!” and “How do you do it, Casanova?” whoever the hell he was, which I got the idea he must have been hell with the women, and old Mulloy pranced up and down the aisle and said, “The old pepper, fellows, the old pepper,” until you wanted to tell him to sit down, for Christ’s sake, and shut up, and the truth is, the crazy bastards kept it up all the way to Stockton, which was damn near a hundred miles, and it’s a wonder the driver didn’t run the God-damn bus in the ditch and kill us all.

We had three rooms in a hotel in Stockton, and I was in a room with Tizzy Davis and another guy and old Mulloy himself, which was a God-damn lousy break if I ever had one, because he was one of these sloppy bastards who sing in the bathtub and slop water all over the place and leave their God-damn crappy shaving stuff thrown all over, and every time you turned around or wanted to sneak a cigarette or something, there the son of a bitch was. Besides, he kept going on and on all the God-damn time about what we’d have to do to win the tournament, and what we’d have to watch out for when we played this team or that one, but how he knew we could do it and nothing was going to stop us now that we’d got this far, and I couldn’t help thinking that all the other teams had got this far, too, and probably felt the same way about it, and altogether he was such a pain in the ass that I got to thinking again about how he was going to feel after the last game, and I had a hell of a good time thinking about it.

After we were settled, he got us all together in our room and delivered a God-damn lecture about athletes being gentlemen and not destroying private property, meaning the hotel, and I could tell from the way he said it that he’d had some pretty bad experiences with things like that, and he went on to tell us we had become famous and had acquired a moral obligation to set fine examples for all the kids who admired the hell out of us, and he wasn’t going to snoop or anything but was going to put us on our honor and have perfect faith in our integrity and trustworthiness and crap like that. Then he wound up saying, “Now, fellows, on to the state championship! The old pepper, the old spirit!” and everyone jumped up and yelled and beat on each other, and Tizzy Davis said, “Three cheers for Coach,” the brown-nose creep, and they gave the cheers, and a couple of guys got old Mulloy up on their shoulders and started to march around the room with him, but the fat bastard was too heavy, and they dropped him, and it sounded like he was going right through the floor, and as a matter of fact it looked to me like they’d started to tear up the God-damn hotel already.

Well, we played our first game that evening, and we won going away, and there’s not a hell of a lot of use going into it any more than that, or any of the other games in our bracket, either, except to say that we won all of them, and I was high man in every damn one, and we had to play Stockton in the finals, because they won all the games in their bracket, too. They were pretty good, all right, and they had this guy who played center and was about as tall as a God-damn building and was practically a freak, as a matter of fact, and old Mulloy was in a regular sweat about it, because he knew this guy would be all over old Tizzy like a dirty shirt, and old Tizzy wouldn’t be able to hook any shots over his head, and it looked like it was going to be all up to me outside the keyhole. I didn’t tell him that I had what was left of fifty bucks in my pocket that said I wasn’t going to be there, and I had it all figured about pretending to get sick, just how I was going to do it, and the evening of the game we were all lying down in our rooms resting, which was something old Mulloy made us do, and when he came in, saying, “All right, fellows, time to go, this is it, the old pepper,” I got off the bed and started to sway a little and hold my head, and he said, “What’s the matter, Skimmer,” and I said, “Nothing. I’ll be all right. I just felt a little dizzy for a second, that’s all.”

He grabbed me by the arm and held me up like I was a lousy drunk or something, and he said, “Here, now, fellow, you can’t go getting sick on us just before the big game,” and I said, “I’ll be all right, don’t worry,” and he said, “Well, I hope so, for your sake as well as the team’s. I wasn’t going to tell you about it, because I thought it might make you nervous and throw you off your game, but as a matter of fact there’s a scout down here from Pipskill University just to watch you play this game, and if you’re sharp he’ll probably offer you a big athletic scholarship or something. I’ve known for a long time they had their eyes on you, and this is it, fellow, this is the one that will make or break you.”

I said, “What’s an athletic scholarship?” and he said, “Well, they pay all your expenses at the University and give you a job besides that isn’t much of a job, and they set you up in a swell frat house, and all this is just so you can play basketball on the Pipskill University team,” and I looked at him and started thinking about it and said, “No bull?” and he said, “That’s straight stuff, Skimmer, and what’s more, there are always a few loyal alumni around with a lot of money and the good of the school at heart, and they’re always making little donations to the star players and things like that.”

What I had in mind was to pull that little act about being dizzy in the hotel room just to soften them up so it would seem more like the real thing when I pulled the big act in the locker room later, but now I kept on thinking about this Pipskill University stuff that old Mulloy told me, and I’d never thought about going off to college or very much about going on with basketball, but now I could see how I could do it, and I knew all of a sudden that I was going to do it, and to put it plain, I wound up thinking, Well, screw Gravy Dummke. It’s every man for himself.

“I’m okay now,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about me,” and it was the truth. Old Mulloy slapped me on the shoulder and said, “That’s the spirit, that’s the old fight,” and we got all the other guys and went out to the school and suited up and waited a while for the end of the consolation game, which was the game between the two teams for third and fourth places, and then we went out on the floor and warmed up, and I knew just what I was after and was as cool as a God-damn cucumber.

Just as soon as the game started, it was pretty damn plain that old Mulloy had been right in sweating this one, and old Tizzy was in for a bad night, because this God-damn goon who played center on the other team was all over him all the damn time, and he hardly ever got a chance to hook one over and had to pass out to me. Old Tizzy’s poison was my meat, though, because I got a hell of a lot more shots this way and more chances to look sharp for the scout, and as a matter of fact I was feeling good and hotter than a pistol, and damned if I didn’t wind up with forty points in the game, and in case you don’t know it, that’s a hell of a lot of points. The other team was hot, too, though, the bastards, and every time I made a bucket, it seemed like they went right down and made one themselves, and my forty points plus what the other guys could scratch out now and then were damn near not enough, and the truth is, we were ahead by the skin of our teeth, one point to be exact, when the game ended. Anyhow, we were state champions, and the school got a big cup, and the guys on the team all got little medals that were cheap as hell, to tell the truth, and I got a little cup of my own, besides, for being voted most valuable player again by the God-damn coaches.

In the locker room old Mulloy went clear off the deep end, as nutty as a peach orchard bore, and he kept running around to all us guys and saying, “Hi, champ. How’s it going, champ?” but all I could think about was that lousy scout from Pipskill University, and kept wondering where the hell he was, and I got the idea old Mulloy had been feeding me a line just to juice me up, which would’ve been just like one of his Goddamn crazy ideas, and I thought, I’ll champ you, you son of a bitch, if there wasn’t really a scout like you said. When I was dressed, though, and had just about given up, in came this guy about six and a half feet tall and shook hands with old Mulloy and said, “Congratulations, Elroy,” which turned out to be Mulloy’s first name, for Christ’s sake, and Mulloy brought the guy over and said, “Skimmer, this is Mr. Dilky, the man from Pipskill U that I was telling you about.” This guy Dilky reached down and shook my hand and said, “Well, Skimmer, that was a great game. I guess you must be pretty hungry after that, aren’t you?” and I said I was, and he said, “Suppose you and I just run downtown to a restaurant and have a steak and a little talk,” and I said that was okay with me.

We went out and got in his car, which was no less than a God-damn Caddy, and drove downtown to this fancy restaurant and had steak dinners that cost him three bucks per, because I got a look at the check, and while we were eating he said, “Well, Skimmer, I understand this is your last year in high,” and I said it was, and he said, “Have you considered attending Pipskill U?” and I lied and said I had but that Pipskill was pretty expensive and I didn’t know if I could cut it down there, and he said, “Well, I’m not going to beat around the bush, Skimmer, and I’m here to tell you right now that you can come to Pipskill if you want to.”

I said, “How’s that?” and he said, “I was authorized by Barker Umplett, head basketball coach at Pipskill, to offer you an athletic scholarship if you looked good enough, and I don’t mind telling you that you looked plenty good enough to me,” and I said thanks, he didn’t know how much it meant to me to hear him say it, which was true enough, but not in the way he thought, and then he explained to me how I’d get all expenses paid and a job that wouldn’t take any of my time to speak of and a hundred dollars a month for doing the job. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t dreamed I’d get that much, and I was damn sure ready to grab it, but just the same I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to push my luck a little, so I said, “Well, that’s fine, but my folks are pretty poor, and I don’t have any money to buy clothes to go to college in and things like that,” and he laughed and said, “Think nothing of it. Soon as I get back to Pipskill I’ll send you something to take care of these incidentals. We have a little fund for that purpose,” and that sewed it up, and we shook hands on it, and he drove me back to the hotel in the Caddy.

The next morning we went home in the bus, and there was a big celebration there that I’m not going to tell about, because it was just more of the same old crap, and I hung on at school till it was over, since it was only a couple of months, anyhow, and I kept going around with Marsha, and it was really something with the weather warmer, and I looked forward to it for the whole summer, but damned if she didn’t go away on a vacation and not get back until damn near September, and by that time I was about ready to leave for Pipskill and had other things on my mind.

That’s about all there is to it, how it started and how it grew, but I guess before I quit telling about the high school part and start telling about the Pipskill part I’d better tell how it came out between Gravy Dummke and me. As a matter of fact, nothing happened at all for a long time, not until after school was out, and you can bet I kept out of his God-damn cigar store, and I’d just about come to the conclusion that he’d decided to cut his losses and nothing was ever going to happen when all of a sudden it did. I went to town one night and shot rotation at Beegie’s, and I was leaving to go home when this guy I’d never seen before said, “You going home, Scaggs? I happen to be going your way, and I’ll give you a lift.” He was a short guy, but pretty heavy, with one smeary eye that looked like a stinking broken egg and red hair and so God-damn many freckles it looked like the old cow had blown bran in his face, and he kept picking his nose, which is why I didn’t suspect him of anything, I think, because who the hell suspects anything of a guy who picks his nose? I’d heard some of the guys in Beegie’s call him Pinky, so I said, “Sure, Pinky, thanks,” and we went out together and up the street to his car, which was a Chevvie. There was another guy sitting in the back seat, but I didn’t even see him until this Pinky guy and I had got in the front seat and started off, and then I saw him, and I don’t see how the hell I missed him in the first place, because he was as big as a God-damn barn.

We drove fast as hell down the street and around the corner, not toward the side of town where I lived, and I said, “Where the bell you going?” and Pinky said, “You’ll find out,” and I said, “Well, I don’t know where the hell you’re going, but I know where I’m going, and that’s home, so you can just stop this God-damn can and let me out,” and he said, “You’re a smart little bastard, aren’t you? We don’t like smart bastards. It’s our job to teach smart bastards it doesn’t pay to be so damn smart.”

By that time I knew what was happening, that it was Gravy Dummke behind it, and I said, “So you two goons are doing the dirty for that fat slop Gravy Dummke,” and Pinky said, “Who’s Gravy Dummke? Never heard of him,” and I said, “The hell you haven’t, and you can tell him from me that someday I’ll get his God-damn greasy hide for this,” and then the big guy in back reached up and clobbered me behind the ear, and I couldn’t say anything more or hear a damn thing but bells for at least five minutes, and when I’d got over it we were out of town on a gravel road and kept going down the road for about half a mile and stopped. I didn’t figure there was any point in being a lousy hero with no one around to see it, so I jumped out and started to run, but I tripped in the Goddamn ditch and fell on my face, and they were on top of me before I could get up, and the big guy had fists as hard as rock that must have weighed about twenty pounds apiece. They beat the hell out of me, I’ll have to admit it, and as a matter of fact they damn near killed me. They’d drag me up on my feet and then take turns knocking me down again, and once I hauled off and kicked one of them in the crotch, and he fell down and held himself and rolled around yelling, but as luck would have it, it was the little one, and still left me with the big one. After a long time it just seemed to stop all of a sudden, and this was because I passed out, and when I came to, they were gone, and I was still in the ditch.

Well, it took a hell of a long time and was pretty tough going, but I finally got home to bed, and the next morning I was a mess and lied to the old man about being in a gang fight with a bunch of high school guys from another town, and it tickled the hell out of him, and he said it damn well served me right for being a bum. I never told anyone the truth about it all, but I made up my mind I’d get Gravy Dummke for having it done to me, the son of a bitch, and I finally did, too, and I’ll tell about it later in the place it comes.