The Hot Shot

Part II: Pipskill U.

Well, like Marsha would have said, the summer got pretty God-damn deadly before it was over, and I was glad to get away from the old jerk town when September finally came. I went up to Pipskill University, which was just outside the city on a big hill beside the valley that a river went through, and at first I felt sort of funny being away from everyone I knew, and I wished someone had come up to school with me, someone like old Bugs, or even Tizzy Davis, but Tizzy’s old man had sent him back east to some crummy college that went in mainly for books instead of things like basketball, and old Bugs was too God-damn dumb to go to any kind of college whatever. That was the difference between Bugs and me. I was pretty ignorant myself, I mean, never having taken the trouble to crack any books except once in a great while, but old Bugs was just plain dumb, and the difference between us was the difference between being ignorant and just plain dumb, which is quite a difference. A guy who’s ignorant is a guy who could learn if he wanted to take the trouble, but a guy who’s dumb is just S.O.L. when it comes to anything in the brains department. I don’t want to overdo this ignorance stuff, though, as far as I was concerned. What I mean is, I was ignorant about most of the crap you were supposed to know from books when you got into a college, but I knew quite a bit about a lot of other things.

Old Pipskill was a kind of pretty place, I’ll have to admit that, and you could sit up there on the hill where all the buildings were and look down into the valley where the river was, and it wasn’t half bad. Most of the buildings were made out of this gray stone that you see around, and they all had this God-damn green ivy crawling all over them, and there were all these big trees around that spread out over the walks you walked on, and here and there in various places there were these cast iron statues of guys who had given something or other to Pipskill, or had gone to school there and had later got to be big shots in some way, but I went around and looked at the names under all these statues, and I hadn’t even heard of a one of them before, and I couldn’t help wondering what the hell was the use of being a big shot in a way that hardly anyone ever heard of, and I made up my mind that if I ever got to be a big shot it would be in a way that got noised around.

The first thing I did when I got there was go around to the gym to see the basketball coach, whose name was Barker Umplett, like I told earlier, but the guy I saw was this guy Dilky who had scouted me out at the tournament, and it turned out that he was the freshman basketball coach as well as a scout. He’d gone to Pipskill himself once and had been a big basketball star who’d got his picture in Collier’s and stuff, and in fact I learned that one magazine had printed a whole article about no one but him, and the reason I learned this was because he showed it to me just so I wouldn’t have any doubts about what a wonderful bastard he was.

He was sitting in a stinking little office just off the locker room when I got there the first day, and he stood up and shook my hand in this God-damn manly way that damn near cracks your bones and said, “Well, well, Skimmer, I see you made it,” and I said I had, and he said, “Well, how do you like old Pipskill U?” and I said what I’d seen of it looked okay, and he said, “The more you see of it, the better you’ll like it,” and I thought, Well, I’ll make up my own God-damn mind about that, and then he took me out through the locker room and showed me the gym.

To tell the truth, I didn’t think much of it, and it was pretty old and dark when the lights weren’t on, and there wasn’t much room for anyone to sit and watch, and as a matter of fact it didn’t seem as good as the one in the high school. I was just about to say something about it looking like a God-damn crackerbox to me, but before I had a chance he said sort of off-hand, “This is just the old gym where the freshman team practices, of course,” and I felt a little better and asked him where the hell the first team played, and he said, “Oh, they use the field house. Haven’t you been down there yet?” I said I hadn’t, and he said, “I’ll take you down and show it to you right now. Man, it’s a honey,” and he did, and it was.

It was made out of gray stone, like the other buildings, only it was a lot newer and didn’t have any ivy on it, and from the outside it looked like a great big God-damn cow barn, but on the inside it was fancy as hell and looked like it covered about a thousand square miles and had enough room for about a million people to sit and watch, and as a matter of fact old Dilky said there was room for fifteen thousand. I got to thinking that fifteen thousand people could make a hell of a lot of racket if they were even half as crazy as the God-damn spooks who went to the games at the high school, because there were usually only a couple thousand at the high school at the most, and I found out later that the people who watched the games at Pipskill were even crazier, and when you played in the field house it was just like being in all the God-damn nut houses in the world wrapped into one. As a matter of fact, Pipskill was what’s called a basketball school, and no one cared if the stinking football team wound up in the cellar every year, which it always did, but if the basketball team didn’t win the league championship and everything else that was around to be won, somebody better look out for his God-damn head.

I might as well say right now, though, that I didn’t get to play much in the field house the first year because they had this lousy rule that you could only play three years on the first team — the varsity team, it’s called — and the first year you had to play on the crummy freshman team, and you went around and played the freshman teams at the other schools in the league, and no one paid much attention to it. I was against the rule and thought it was pretty God-damn crummy, and I tried to think of a way to get around it, and I asked Dilky if I couldn’t play the first three years and just skip the last one, but he said I couldn’t and it was just something I’d have to put up with, though he thought himself that it was pretty stinking not to let a guy play four years.

After we’d looked at the field house, old Dilky took me around to the frat house where I was going to stay and introduced me to a guy named Mellon who was a senior in the school. This guy turned out to be the big cheese around the frat house, and I didn’t like him from the start because he had this snotty attitude, and you could tell just by looking at him that his old man was loaded, a God-damn millionaire or something, and the truth is, he was nothing less than the vice-president of a railroad, as it turned out. Anyhow, this Mellon spook had a way of tipping up his chin and looking at you down the sides of his stinking nose, and his nose would sort of quiver like whoever he was looking at needed a God-damn bath, and he looked at me this way and held out a hand with the fingers kind of dangling from it. “How are you, Scaggs?” he said, and I said I was all right and took his hand, and it was just like picking up a handful of fishing worms, and he said, “I understand you’re a damn fine basketball player,” and I said I sure as hell was.

Old Dilky said, “Well, Skimmer, I’ll leave you to get settled now. We don’t start serious practice for another month, but you’d better drop in afternoons and start getting your eye back,” and I said I would, and he went away, and Mellon said, “You’ll be bunking with Spicer. Come along now, I’ll show you your room.” I didn’t know who the hell Spicer was, but I followed Mellon upstairs to the room, and Spicer wasn’t there, but it was a damn swell room, and I don’t mind saying it was a hell of a lot better than any room I’d ever had or thought about having. Mellon hung around a few minutes telling me some of the God-damn house rules I was supposed to mind, but I didn’t pay much attention, just wishing he’d go the hell away and leave me alone, and after a while he did, and I went over to the window and looked down at the yard.

It was a big yard with the grass as green and smooth as one of Beegie’s pool tables and a box hedge all around it that was clipped slick and level on top by someone who knew just how to do it, and the house itself was a lot like the house Marsha lived in, only bigger, with white pillars at the front and green shutters at the windows and everything, and as a matter of fact I was damn lucky to get a fancy place like that to flop in, because usually you had to be pledged and voted in and all that crap, but they had it set up to let star basketball players in without it, and I’m not kidding myself a God-damn bit that I’d have never got in otherwise, but otherwise, as far as that goes, I wouldn’t have been at the God-damn school at all.

I flopped on the bed and lay there thinking that this was sure as hell the life and wishing that the old man and the old lady could get a look at me now, and I was still lying there when the door opened and this guy about six feet tall came in, and he had sort of sandy hair that stuck up every which way on his God-damn head and a nose that looked like it had got caught in a knuckle shower, and he saw me flopped on the bed and said, “You’re Scaggs, and I’m Spicer,” just like that, just like he’d settled the God-damn issue once and for all, and it annoyed the hell out of me, to tell the truth, and I said, “The hell we are!” and he stopped and laughed and ran his hand through his crazy hair and said, “Well, aren’t we?” and I was bound to say then that I was Scaggs, at any rate, and he could damn well be Spicer if he wanted too.

He sat down in a chair and swung his legs up over one arm and said, “I suppose old Bunny brought you up,” and I said some creepy bastard named Mellon had done it, and he said, “That’s Bunny,” and I said, “Why the hell you call him Bunny?” and he said, “Didn’t you notice the way his nose quivered? Like a damn rabbit’s?” and I said I had, as a matter of fact, and he said, “Well, that’s why we call him Bunny.”

“He acted pretty snotty, if you ask me,” I said, “and just between us I felt like poking him in the mouth,” and he said, “Everyone feels like that about Bunny, but no one ever does it because he’s got all the God-damn money in the world, or anyhow his old man has, which is the same thing in the long run. Personally, I think he’s a fairy.”

“What makes you think he’s a fairy?” I said, and he said, “Well, he’s got this damn dainty way about him, you just watch the way he flips around and goes on about things, and you never see him with any girls or anything, in spite of having a car of his own and all that money, and besides, he was kicked out of some school back east, and everyone thinks that was the reason, so don’t let him get you in any dark corners.”

I said it would be a sad day for fairies when the son of a bitch got me in a corner, and I asked him how long he’d been there, and he said a couple of days, and I said it seemed to me he knew a hell of a lot for a guy who’d only been around two days, and he said, “Oh, I pick up things fast,” and then he looked at me for a long time like I was a stinking freak in a sideshow or something, and finally he said, “So you’re another one of old Umplett’s whores.”

It made me a little hot, to tell the truth, and I said, “What the hell you mean, whores?”

“Basketball player,” he said. “Like me.”

“Where’d you get that whore stuff?” I said, and he said, “Oh, don’t get your bowels in an uproar about it. I just call us that because of the way we get paid and kept and all, and I guess if I include myself you got no call to bitch, and besides, I’m all for it, and it looks like a hell of a good life.”

Well, I had to admit that he had the right to call himself anything he damn well pleased, and if it just happened to include me, that was just tough, and what was more, when I got right down to it, I sort of liked the God-damn goofy bastard, and that’s the truth of it. I asked him where he’d played basketball, and he said over in the next state, and he’d had a pretty good deal at the state university over there, but at the last minute old Dilky had shown up with a better one, so he’d changed his mind and come to Pipskill. I told him about how I’d been top scorer in the whole damn state and most valuable man in all the tournaments and everything like that, and he asked me what my points total had been, and I told him, and he whistled and said I must be pretty damn good at that and he’d bet we’d make what he called a damn good one-two punch on the Pipskill team, and all in all I had a feeling we were going to get along good together, and he started calling me Skimmer, and I started calling him Micky, which is what he said he wanted to be called.

The very next morning I got enrolled in some classes, and later I took a test that was supposed to show if you were bright, and I guess I was bright enough at least, because I never heard any more of it, and I got the general idea that they didn’t much care how God-damn ignorant you were just as long as there was some chance they could teach you a little something later, and I’ll have to admit there was another test I took that turned me up ignorant.

This was a test in spelling and grammar and how to say things the right way and all, and I guess I didn’t do much on it, and as a matter of fact, from what they told me, hardly a damn thing. They gave you this test so they’d know which rhetoric class to put you in. Rhetoric is what they called it, but it was the same damn thing they called English in high school, only they made it a little tougher for you, and it had always given me a pain in the you know what, and it still did. Everyone had to take it, there wasn’t any getting out of it, and they had it divided into three classes that they called Rhetoric I and Rhetoric II and Rhetoric Zero. Rhetoric II was for the God-damn geniuses or something, and Rhetoric I was watered down a little for the ones who were no better than they were supposed to be, and Rhetoric Zero was for the ones who loused up the test, and I was in Rhetoric Zero.

This class in Rhetoric Zero only had about ten guys and one girl in it, and the guy who taught it was about the spookiest guy you could hope to meet outside a freak show. He was tall and thin with bones that stuck out at all his God-damn corners, and he had this long face with sad eyes that made him look like a mule, and when he walked his arms and legs just flew off in any damn direction they pleased without any relation at all to the direction he was supposed to be going, and honest to God, it looked like he was about to fly all apart any damn second.

The first day of the class he walked in like this, and he put his crummy old beat-up brief case on the desk and stood there looking at each one of us in his turn without saying anything, and then after a while he said in this God-damn deep voice, “Maybe you’re wondering why I’m teaching this class instead of someone else, and I must tell you now that it’s in punishment for my sins, and how bad those sins are I’ll leave you to surmise from the degree of the punishment.” Well, even a guy in Rhetoric Zero knows when he’s being called a God-damn boob, and I didn’t like it, and I’d have clobbered the bastard if he’d ever said it again, but he didn’t. As a matter of fact, though, what he did was worse, but it wasn’t anything you could clobber him for and explain it afterward.

What he did, he’d talk to you like he was reading out of a primer to a kid, and when you didn’t know something about the damn crummy rhetoric that you were supposed to know, he’d just look at you with these mournful eyes that were like a mule’s and let out this long sigh and say, “Now, Mr. Scaggs, let’s go over it once more,” and he’d bear down on the Mr. like it was a God-damn honorary title or something. His name was Boxer, and I don’t mind admitting I got to hating the son of a bitch, and the longer I was in the class the more I hated him, and I finally got to hating him even more than I hated Gravy Dummke, in spite of the fact that Gravy hired two guys to beat the hell out of me. What made it worse, I just couldn’t put my mind to that rhetoric bull, and I never seemed to know any answers to what he asked me. They had a whole God-damn file of questions and answers on most subjects at the frat house, and generally these got me by pretty well in the other classes I took, but nothing seemed to do any good in rhetoric.

Meantime, I went back to the gym and saw old Dilky again and asked him about my job. He looked down at me with a blank look on his face like maybe I’d asked him who was the second king of Peru or some God-damn place like that, and he said, “What job?” and I said, “The job I’m supposed to do for the hundred clams a month I’m supposed to get,” and for a minute, the way he looked, I began think it had been a lot of bull he’d fed me just to get me up to Pipskill and that there wasn’t really any job or any hundred clams a month, but then he laughed and said, “Oh, that job. Well, we’ll think of something after a while, maybe. Right now, you just come in and sharpen up your eye and don’t worry about it.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s not the God-damn job I’m worried about, it’s the hundred clams,” and he laughed again and said, “Oh, you’ll get the hundred, all right, regular as clockwork the first of every month,” and sure enough, the first of the next month I got the hundred, and I got it on the nose every month after that, too, but old Dilky never got around to thinking up a job for me to do to earn it, which was all right with me, if that was the way he wanted it, and I damn sure wasn’t going to make any issue of it. I kept going in every afternoon to sharpen my eye and get in condition, and there were some other first year guys who came in, too, including old Micky Spicer, and old Dilky got to making us run around and around the God-damn gym for our wind and our legs, and as a matter of fact it wasn’t much fun, but mostly a lot of work, and after a while I began to figure that I was earning my lousy century and then some.

There was one guy who came in whose name was Carboy, and this guy was damn near seven feet tall and still growing, and Barker Umplett, the head coach, had snaked him in off the prairie somewhere to play center for him. He was pretty good in lots of ways and got around on the floor pretty good in spite of being so damn tall and awkward, and he was great stuff for reaching up and snatching rebounds off the board, which is pretty damn important in itself because it keeps the other team from getting more than one shot at the bucket at a time and helps you to keep on shooting yourself until you finally hit it, but the worst thing about him was that he couldn’t hit a bull with a spade. It damn near drove old Dilky nuts. He worked with this Carboy all the time, trying to teach him how to hook over and hit the bucket, but when he hit one now and then it was mostly just an accident, and the truth is, you just couldn’t tell where in hell the God-damn ball was going once he let loose of it. Honest to God, it might go sailing clear up over the lousy backboard or anywhere.

About the middle of October we really got into it in earnest, and I soon found out then that playing basketball in high school wasn’t anything to playing it in college, even on a crummy freshman team, and this Dilky had been pretty easygoing up to then, but afterward he wasn’t easygoing at all, and as a matter of fact old buller Mulloy had been a stinking piker by comparison. He didn’t run up and down and yell, “Go, go, go!” all the time like old Mulloy, but he let you know pretty quick that he expected you to go, and if you didn’t do it, or even let down a little once in a while, the slop really hit the fan, and once when old Carboy slowed down to about eighty miles an hour Dilky stopped the action and walked out on the floor and got the ball and stood there real quiet and polite and smiling at Carboy a little, and he said in this soft voice, “Run, Mr. Carboy, run, God-damn you.” And then damned if he didn’t haul off with the God-damn ball and knock old Carboy ass over elbows, all seven feet of him.

Every now and then, after we got started good, Barker Umplett would come over from the field house to watch us work, and he’d stand there and look us over and not say anything at all, and after a while he’d go away, and all in all he was about the creepiest bastard I ever saw, and maybe it’s time I told you a little about him, but not much, because I didn’t see a hell of a lot of him that first year, him being busy with the first team over in the field house, and I can tell about him better when he comes in more.

He wasn’t very tall, only about five feet seven or eight, but he was damn near as wide as he was tall, and he probably weighed around two hundred pounds without any flab to his belly like there’d been to old Mulloy’s, and altogether he looked like he’d been hacked out of a chunk of rock. He had these bushy eyebrows and hair growing out of his God-damn nose and all over his chest like a bramble patch, and as a matter of fact he was about as hairy as a guy could get, except on his head where a guy usually wants a little hair, and on his head there wasn’t any at all, not a God-damn spear, and it was just as naked as the palm of your hand. Under those bushy eyebrows that stuck out in all directions, his eyes were about the color of cold dishwater, and when you looked in them you were liable to get the impression that the bastard was blind, because they had this empty kind of look that blind guys have, and if you did get that impression, it was your God-damn mistake, and as a matter of fact he saw a hell of a lot more than you ever thought he did or wanted him to. He wasn’t the old buddy-buddy type at all, like old Mulloy all the time and old Dilky some of the time, and all the years I played for him at Pipskill he never gave me a good word or a pat on the back, nor to anyone else, either. This was because of the way he looked at things, and I’ll tell you later how it was he looked at them.

Well, everything kept going along pretty good and about as expected, the basketball team shaping up for a good season and the lousy football team losing all their God-damn games, and after a while it got to be close to Thanksgiving, and it was about then I got called in for a consultation with this spook Boxer I told you about, and I knew damn well in advance what it was for, because I’ll have to admit things hadn’t picked up any in the rhetoric class. He was sitting behind his desk when I got there, and this doll was sitting in another chair in front of the desk, and I didn’t pay much attention to her at first, except to notice that she wore goggles that were pointed up at the corners where the handles fastened on and had little sets in them that were supposed to look like diamonds or something and were really glass.

Old Boxer looked at me like he was about to break out bawling from the general sadness of things, and he said in this fancy way he had, “Sit down, Mr. Scaggs. I know your time is infinitely precious, and I won’t claim any more of it than is absolutely necessary,” and I could tell he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but just the opposite, the snotty bastard, and I sat down and said, “I got all day,” and he said, “Unfortunately, I haven’t, so I’ll come right to the point. I am aware, of course, that you are a shining, ascending star in the heavens of basketball enthusiasts, and this places me in a precarious position because you have demonstrated beyond doubt over a period of time that it is utterly futile to expect you to make a passing mark in Rhetoric Zero, and nothing sets a shining basketball star any quicker than a flunk in rhetoric, and nothing sets the star of a simple teacher in this school any quicker than setting one of the stars of Coach Umplett. If all this is making you see stars, Mr. Scaggs, you have my sympathy, because I’m seeing them, too, and it has indeed been my misfortune to see far too many of them for much too long.”

That’s about the way he said it, as near as I can put it down, and you could tell he thought it was clever as hell to break it off in me that way, but the truth is, he had me a little confused from trying to follow him, and before I could make up my mind to clobber him or at least say something back he went on. “In other words, Mr. Scaggs, as a man named Cellini once put it, my guts are in the sauce pan, and consequently, in order to salvage then, I’m prepared to compromise my integrity still another time, to sell another little bit of my soul. This young lady sitting here is Miss Sylvia Pruet. Miss Pruet has brains. Miss Pruet takes to rhetoric like a duck to water. Being myself too great a coward to undertake the odious task, I’ve prevailed upon Miss Pruet to tutor you. I’ll insist upon calling it tutoring, even though I really know better, and I have no doubt in the world that it will be largely a matter of your simply turning in her work, because while I have utter faith in Miss Pruet’s brains, I have none whatever in her ability to withstand the corruption of an ascending star. All I ask is that you support me in my pitiable delusion by disguising the work, by copying it in your own hand, and for Christ’s sake, be certain to make plenty of errors short of failure, because any reasonably accurate paper from you would be evidence of cheating that even I couldn’t ignore.”

Well, I didn’t know who the hell this guy Cellini was, and still don’t for that matter, but I could tell easy enough when someone had spit in my eye, and I was about to tell him what he could do with his Miss Pruet, but then I thought what the hell was the use of fouling my own nest because of this spook, and I didn’t tell him because I knew he was just the kind of unreasonable bastard who would really flunk me if I pushed him to it. I started thinking about the hundred clams a month and the soft life at the frat house with old Mickey and the other guys and all the other things that might develop from this God-damn game that I didn’t even know about yet, so I finally stood up and said, “Well, it’s all right with me, if it’s all right with her,” meaning this Pruet doll, and she stood up and said, “I’ll be happy to help you all I can,” and I looked at her good for the first time then, and I was glad I’d gone along with it after all, because to tell the truth, she wasn’t a bad looking doll whatever. She wore these fancy goggles, like I said, but they didn’t seem to hurt her much, and she had a lot of good stuff wrapped up in a sweater and skirt, and her face wouldn’t have stopped any clocks, either, in spite of being kind of sappy and dewey in the way you’d expect in any doll who went in for rhetoric and literature and crap like that. Besides, to tell all of it, I had this thought that she ought to be a pushover for a guy like me who played basketball and got to live in a frat house without being voted in and everything like that, and as a matter of fact she was.

We went outside and started walking across the campus together, and she said, “When do you want to begin your lessons, Mr. Scaggs?” and I said, “Call me Skimmer,” and she said, “Very well, you may call me Sylvia, then,” and I said, “Sylvia’s a pretty name. I always wanted to meet someone named Sylvia. You ever get a name in your mind and just go on for a long time wishing you could meet someone with that name?” which was a lot of bull, of course, because I’d never thought about meeting anyone named Sylvia and didn’t even think it was such a hot name at all, as a matter of fact, and I guess she didn’t swallow too much of it, anyhow, because she just looked at me and said, “When do you want to begin your lessons, Skimmer?” and I said, “You’re the teacher.”

“Very well,” she said. “I suggest that we meet three evenings a week and that you come over this evening to make a beginning,” and I said, “Over where?” and she said, “Drayton Hall,” which was a place the dolls lived who weren’t in sororities and stuff, and I said, “What time?” and she said, “Around seven,” and I said I’d be there.

We’d come along to the old gym by that time, and I had to go in, so I said, “I got to go in and practice basketball now, and as it is I’m late, and old Dilky will be blowing his stack,” and she said, “Don’t let me detain you,” and it sounded pretty snotty the way she said it, and I made up my mind right then to have her talking out the other side of her God-damn face before I was through, and I said, “Well, I’ll see you around seven,” and she said, “Very well,” and I found out later that she was always using that crummy expression, very well, and when she walked off I could see that her skirt fit pretty tight and had a nice wobble to it.

I practiced and went back to the frat and ate and got my Goddamn rhetoric book and went over to Drayton Hall, which was a big stack they’d built with money that had been left to Pipskill by some old doll name of Drayton and was called Mother Drayton’s Fun House by the guys at the frat and others. There was a desk in the hall with a doll behind it, and she said, “Whom are you calling for?” and I said, “Sylvia Pruet,” and she said, “If you’ll just have a seat in there, I’ll call her,” and what she meant by in there was a big room with sofas and chairs scattered around, and quite a few of the girls who lived there were doing this and that with guys who had come to see them, and I went in and sat, and pretty soon old Sylvia came down. She looked pretty damn slick, if you want to know it, and I got to thinking that what had looked like a damn dull year at Pipskill, what with having to play on the crummy freshman team and no one paying much attention or anything, might pick up after all and turn into something pretty good, and the truth is, I was damn glad I had trouble with the lousy rhetoric and needed a tutor.

“Well, Skimmer,” she said, “shall we get started?” and I said that was what I’d come for, which might have been all of the truth in the beginning but wasn’t any more by a damn sight, and we got on a sofa in one corner of the room and went at it, the rhetoric, that is, but to tell the truth I had something else on my mind and couldn’t show much progress, and after about an hour I said, “I just can’t seem to put my mind to it with all the noise and the people around and everything,” and she said, “Perhaps you’re right. I think we’d better use the library after this.”

We arranged it between us to meet at the library three nights a week, and we did it for a couple of weeks, and studied, and I picked up a little on the rhetoric, but not much. It came around Thanksgiving then, and school closed up for a week, the classes, that is, and nearly everyone went home, but I didn’t, and neither did Sylvia. We went on meeting at the library just like we’d been, only now it was every night instead of only three, and we had the room we studied in pretty much to ourselves, and to tell the truth, we started doing less studying and more other stuff, and I guess now’s the time to tell it and get through with it.

She was nuts, this Sylvia Pruet was. All slobs who go for literature and stuff like that are nuts, of course, but she was even more nuts than most. She asked me if I liked poetry, and I said I didn’t, except the kind of dirty limericks my brother Eddie used to teach me before he got himself killed, and she said it didn’t do any good to talk to her that way, because she’d made up her mind that all my toughness and everything was just a kind of protective armor to keep me from being hurt and that I’d been hurt terribly sometime or other and had been embittered by it. This was strictly bull, but I could see it made me look romantic or something to her, so I didn’t deny it, and she said she’d like to teach me to love poetry the way she did, because she knew I was the type would really go for it once I got into it, and it looked like an angle to me, so I told her she might be right and I’d try to learn if she thought there was anything in it for me.

After that we only spent about half the time on the rhetoric, and the other half she’d read this poetry to me, and it was enough to make you puke, honest to God. The poems she liked best and read most were all full of Aprils and lost loves and broken hearts and all sorts of crap like that, and they were written by someone I’d never heard of, name of Sara Teasdale, and one night after we’d left the library we sat on a stone bench in the dark out behind the museum, and I was just about to make a pitch and see if she’d do a little business when she said, “Oh, the fall, Skimmer, the beautiful fall. I think fall is just the most perfect time, don’t you?” and then before I could say yes or no she started reciting this poem by Sara Teasdale that was all about how someone named Robin had kissed her in the spring, and someone else named Strephon had kissed her in the fall, but how a third guy named Colin had only looked at her and hadn’t kissed her at all, and personally I thought Robin and Strephon had showed some pretty good sense for guys in a poem but that Colin was altogether a simple bastard, and I said so.

She reached up and patted me on the cheek and said I was just hiding my tender emotions behind a false front and that the point was that the most powerful feelings were often mute and undemonstrated. To show how this was, she went on and finished the poem, which told how Robin’s kiss was lost in jest and Strephon’s in play but that Colin’s, which had only been in his crummy eyes, kept right on haunting her and everything, and it was just more than I could stand, and I said I guessed it was pretty enough but awful dull. That tore it for the time, and she got up and walked off back to Drayton Hall and wouldn’t say another word to me, and I got to thinking that maybe she wouldn’t meet me at the library the next night, either, but I went there and waited when the time came, and she did.

She said hello, and I said hello, and she sat down and asked me if I wasn’t sorry for the way I’d talked last night, and I wasn’t in particular but said I was, anyhow, just to get things going again, and she said, “I don’t feel like rhetoric tonight, Skimmer. Let’s go for a walk,” and this was fine with me because I didn’t feel like rhetoric myself at the time, or any other time, either, for that matter, and so we went outside and walked along to the same bench behind the museum and sat down. We were sitting there not saying anything, but just looking off down the slope in the darkness, and all of a sudden I began to recite this poem, and I’ll admit I’d gone to the library and looked it up and memorized it just that afternoon, because I thought I might need it to get me in good again, and it was just a short one about how I’d once been as fresh as rainwater but was now as bitter as the God-damn sea.

When I got through it, she said, “Oh, Skimmer, I knew it, I knew it. I knew you were just all hurt and twisted up inside like a little boy,” and she said it in this chokey voice, and I looked at her close, and damned if she wasn’t really bawling. She was so damn intense and nutty about it altogether that I began to get a little uncomfortable, to tell the truth, and I was just thinking maybe I’d better get the hell out of it when she turned and threw her arms around me and kissed me about sixteen times. Well, that wasn’t any time to be leaving, as you can see, so I started to give her as good as I got, and she kept saying things about how I was good and noble underneath and she’d known it all the time, and she was shaking and running her hands over me and things like that, and what she was, she was one of these dolls who ordinarily keep themselves all corked up tight, and then a guy comes along at the right time and just touches them and they blow the cork and fizz all over the place. We sort of got out of control and kept going from one thing to another, and the short of it is, I got to her there on the bench, and afterward she started to cry again and say over and over, “Say you love me, Skimmer, say you love me,” and finally I had to say it to get her to shut up about it.

Well, I might as well tell all of it while I’m at it, and that wasn’t the last time, one place or another, and mostly she acted pretty sensible about it, and I didn’t think too much about it when it wasn’t happening, but then one night when I was with her she said, “Skimmer, I’m worried,” and I said, “What about,” and she said, “I’m three days late,” and I said, “Late for what,” and she said, “Late, Skimmer. You know,” and then I did all of a sudden, and it scared the hell out of me. I don’t mind admitting I was in a sweat about it, and I got to thinking about a movie I’d seen about a guy who got a girl that way and took her out in a boat to drown her but lost his nerve and wasn’t going to do it but then did it accidentally, anyhow. I wasn’t really so damn dumb as to think of trying anything like that myself, but I was trying hard enough to think of some other way out of it that wouldn’t ruin everything, all that the basketball was bringing and everything, and then after I’d sweated myself into a God-damn blue funk, damned if she didn’t show up one night a little later and say, “It’s all right after all, Skimmer,” and I’d had plenty by then and said, “The hell it is. It may be all right with you, but it’s not all right with me, and I wouldn’t touch you with a ten foot pole if I flunked a dozen God-damn rhetoric classes.”

I didn’t go for any more rhetoric lessons, and I worried about it some because I knew sure as hell that old Boxer would give me the ax, but then something happened that just shows you how these things work out, and there just isn’t any damn use worrying about them at all. I was telling old Micky Spicer about Sylvia one night in the room at the frat house, about how nutty she was and everything, and he said, “What the hell were you studying rhetoric with her for,” and I said, “Why the hell would I be doing it? Because I was flunking the damn course, naturally,” and he said, “You mean you’re having trouble with that stuff? Man, it’s duck soup,” and I said, “It may be duck soup to you, but it’s not duck soup to me, and if you’re so God-damn good at it, maybe you can give me a lift,” and he said, “Sure. Why not?” and damned if he wasn’t as good as he claimed, and after that he always did my work for me in no time.

I didn’t see old Sylvia any more, except now and then at a distance on the campus, having quit the rhetoric lessons, and just to show you how nutty she really was, she started letting herself go to hell like one of these dames carrying a torch in a corny movie, and there just wasn’t any damn sense in it whatever that I could see. Mainly it was just the way she looked, the way she drooped around and had shadows under her eyes and acted like there wasn’t anyone else in the lousy world, and about a month after I broke off the lessons she went away from Pipskill and didn’t come back, and I learned later that she’d had a nervous breakdown and been sent to a rest home, which is just another way of saying she’d flipped her lid and been packed off to a fancy booby hatch. Another thing I learned, I learned that she’d had these nervous breakdowns before and was the kind of doll who’d go along all right for a while until some damn little thing triggered her off, and then she’d go through one of these nutty periods until she finally came out of it again, and I thought it was about the dirtiest damn trick I’d ever heard of for old Boxer to shove someone like that off on me, and it’s just another score I’ve got to settle with the son of a bitch if I ever get the chance.

All this time I kept on practicing basketball under Dilky in the old gym, and old Micky and I got to be just what he’d said we’d be, a real one-two punch, and as a matter of fact we got so sharp and good that Dilky got together with Barker Umplett and decided to change the kind of offense they’d been planning for the team. The way they’d planned it, they’d planned to use old Carboy under the bucket as the big scoring gun, but he was such a lousy shot, like I told, that they decided to use him there to get the ball and feed out to Micky and me for jump shots instead, and as a matter of fact it was something like Tizzy Davis and I had done it under old buller Mulloy, only a damn sight better. In December we started playing freshman teams from other schools, and we cleaned up everything around and looked plenty sharp, and it was a damn good thing old Umplett had something coming, if you want to know it, because as a matter of fact the varsity team wasn’t so hot, and it was the first time in years old Umplett had had a lousy team. First of December, they made a tour through the East and played five games and lost three of them, and old Umplett could feel his throat bleeding and was sour and mean and hard to get along with.

Well, in spite of old Sylvia and a few other things I won’t mention, the first year at Pipskill was pretty dull, as you can see, and after the freshman team got through beating all the other freshman teams around, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of use hanging on, except that the living was pretty good, a hell of a lot better than anywhere else as a matter of fact, and besides, I had to finish out the term if I wanted to come back and play basketball in the fall, so I did.

The varsity team wasn’t so hot, like I said, but old Umplett really worked the hell out of them when they got back from the eastern swing, and it looked for a while like he was going to bring them out of it, and the truth is, he damn near did, and after Christmas, when conference play started, they went into a winning streak and went right on winning all their games up to the last three, and damned if they didn’t drop all of those in a row. That knocked them right out of the conference championship and the right to play in the national tournaments that came afterward, and old Umplett just blew his God-damn stack, because a coach at Pipskill that didn’t win the conference and get in the national tournaments afterward was damn well liable not to be around long. It made it tough on us guys on the freshman team, because next season we’d be on the varsity, and old Umplett had blood in his eye and would be expecting us to save his God-damn hide for him, and just before we knocked off practice in the old gym, Dilky got us all together and told us that was the way it was and that we damn well better produce if we knew what was good for us.

That was in March, and I hung on a couple of months or so, a little longer, until school quit in June, and then I went home for the summer. The old man was at work when I got there, and the old lady said, “Well, I see you’ve come back to sponge off your old man some more. What’s the matter? They quit feeding you up there at the college?” and I said, “That’s a hell of a God-damn welcome to get when you’ve been gone damn near a whole year,” and she said, “Welcome! Look who the hell’s yakking about welcome. You never wrote to us or sent us a dime all that time you were up there and the minute your belly gets empty you come running home yelling welcome. You expect me to fall on your neck or something?” and I said, “The only place I expect you to fall is on your God-damn face from always swilling that lousy beer,” and she said, “You wouldn’t talk to me like that if only Eddy was here,” and right away we were off on that crummy routine, and she started to bawl, and I wished to hell I hadn’t come home at all, and to tell the truth, I wouldn’t have if the hundred clams a month had kept on during the summer, but they didn’t.

When the old man got home from work, he looked at me and said, “Where the hell you been?” and I said, “Been? You know God-damn well where I’ve been. I’ve been up to Pipskill going to school and playing basketball, that’s where I’ve been,” and he said, “Don’t hand me that. The God-damn school closes up for Christmas, at least. Why the hell didn’t you come home for Christmas? You afraid you’d have to buy someone a present or something?” and I said, “Now isn’t that a crying shame! Since when did anyone in this crummy family ever buy anyone else a Christmas present? What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway? You know damn well you don’t give a damn if I come home for Christmas or any other time, and the way it looks to me, it looks like you’d rather I wouldn’t, as a matter of fact.”

He looked at me for a minute without saying anything, and then he said, “Well, now, maybe that’s just the Goddamn way it is, now that you mention it, and I’ll tell you something else, too. Your old lady and I know you been getting paid a hundred dollars a month to play basketball up there at Pipskill, so there’s no use trying to tell us any of your Goddamn lies about it, and if you’re planning to louse around here all summer, you’ll damn well pay board, and that’s all of it.”

“You’re crazy as hell,” I said. “They don’t pay me anything during the summer,” and he said, “They sure as hell paid you something during the winter, and you better have some of it left if you expect me to fill your belly any longer,” and then the old lady jumped in and asked the old man who the hell he thought he was to be throwing her only son out of the God-damn house without asking her anything about it, and he was surprised at that, and so was I, to tell the truth, and he said, “Who the hell pulled your string?” and she said, “He cusses me and abuses me and breaks my heart and is a bum in general, but he’s my own flesh and blood and poor Eddy’s own brother, and I won’t have him thrown out of the house,” and he said, “Well, mother, maybe you’d like to pay for the God-damn chow he’s going to eat,” and they kept at it back and forth and forgot about me, and I went out in the kitchen and ate and got the hell out of there for a while, and the old man kept threatening to throw me out off and on all summer but never did.

I had an idea I’d pick up again with Marsha Davis, which would have made the summer something to tell about, but the high school had quit two weeks earlier than Pipskill, and by the time I got home she’d already gone off somewhere with her old lady, to some God-damn lake or somewhere, and she never got back while I was there, and as a matter of fact I never did pick it up again, and I guess it was just as well in the long run, but I didn’t think so at the time. For a while I loused around with old Bugs, as much as I could stand him, and the truth is, he was always making snotty remarks about big shots and stuff and how some guys got swelled heads over nothing, and it was a lot of crap in general because I made a special effort not to break it off in him, feeling kind of sorry for him because he was too damn dumb to go to college, but finally I got sick of it and knocked him on his tail, and that was the end of it. After that I shot a little rotation and stuff and went out to the high school and got permission to sharpen up my eye in the gym while no one else was using it, and nothing much happened until just a few days before it was time to go back to Pipskill, and it was then I got even with Gravy Dummke, and I’ll have to tell about it.

It was one morning about nine o’clock, and I was walking along the street and just happened to look down this alley that went in back of Gravy’s cigar store, and there was old Gravy up on a ladder looking over the edge of the building at the roof. I guess he’d been up there doing some work or something, and maybe had just stopped at the top of the ladder on his way down to see how it looked from there, but anyway he was just standing there, and I went down the alley fast and quiet and got between the ladder and the building and pushed the God-damn ladder over backwards. Old Gravy screamed like a crazy woman, honest to God, and you could have heard him a mile away, and he came down like a barrel of lard on the bricks, which is what the alley was made of, and I was a little scared at first because he didn’t move, and I thought I’d killed him sure as hell, but it turned out he only had a concussion and broke his God-damn arm and was only in the hospital a couple of weeks.

Considering Gravy and everything, it was a good thing it was time to leave town, and I left and went back up to Pipskill and got set in the frat house with Micky, and we went around and reported to Barker Umplett in the field house when the time came. Most of last year’s team had graduated, which was good riddance of bad rubbish, but there were a couple of guys left over who were seniors and pretty good, and it was plain enough right from the start that the first five would be them and Micky and old Carboy and me. Old Carboy had practiced all summer on his hook shot, but it hadn’t done him a hell of a lot of good, and usually when he tried to hook one over it was just the same as throwing the God-damn ball away, and old Umplett would stand him up like a kid in grade school, all seven feet of him, and he’d look at him for a while with his little eyes like a couple of nasty smears in his face, and then he’d start in a low voice to chew old Carboy out, and when it came to chewing old buller Mulloy and even Dilky had been sissies compared to Umplett. He always talked low and never bellowed or threw himself around like Mulloy had done, but he never had any prejudice against cussing, and more than anything he actually said, it was the tone of his voice that counted. He sounded like he hated your guts, and his little eyes looked like he hated your guts, and as a matter of fact he sure as hell did. I found out about that a couple of weeks after we’d started practicing, and this is the way I found it out.

I was on my way to practice, and I stopped in this place called the Pink Pig, which was a place just off the campus where a lot of us guys hung out and bought malts and stuff, and I happened to run into this girl I knew, name of Ellen, and I set up a malt for her, and she said, “I just happen to have the old man’s car at school this week, Skimmer. How about running out to the Barn for a couple of beers?” Well, the Barn was a place out on the highway about a mile, and I said, “I haven’t got time. I got to get to basketball practice,” and she said, “Basketball practice? You rather go to basketball practice than out to the Barn with me? I must be slipping,” and I said, “It’s not that. It’s just that old Umplett gets pretty mean when you miss practice,” and she laughed and said, “Oh, if you’re afraid of getting your wrist slapped, you can just forget I asked you.”

“Who the hell’s afraid?” I said, and she said, “It looks to me like you are,” and I said, “Well, I’m ready to go out to the Barn any time you are, and I’ll tell you right now you better have more than a couple of beers to offer, too,” and she laughed and said, “That’s the way I like to hear you talk. Rough and ready,” and that was no lie, because she did like it and was pretty much that way herself, and whenever you were with old Ellen you could count on going on from a couple of beers to other things, and she always knew what she wanted and didn’t mind letting you know it, a lot like Marsha had been and nothing at all like old Sylvia, who had been a cry baby besides being crazy.

Anyhow, I went on out to the Barn with Ellen and missed practice, and when I got back to the frat house that night, old Micky was flopped on the bed looking at some cheesecake in a magazine, and he said, “Where the hell you been?” and I said, “Out with Ellen, and if you want to put your asbestos ear muffs on, I’ll tell you about it,” and he said, “Asbestos ear muffs, hell! You better have an asbestos tail at practice tomorrow, because old Umpy’s going to chew it good.”

“Well,” I said, “if he messes with me, he’ll think he’s got a God-damn wildcat by the tail,” but I didn’t put much heart in it because, as a matter of fact, I didn’t feel much, and when I went around to practice the next afternoon I’ll have to admit I was as nervous as a pregnant spinster. Old Umplett didn’t look at me or say anything or do any God-damn thing at all, and that made it even worse, and all the time practice was going on I kept wondering when the hell he’d start in on me, and what with thinking about it all the time, I fumbled some passes and missed some easy shots and was pretty lousy altogether. He still didn’t say anything, though, even when I loused up the plays, and afterward in the locker room I got to feeling easier and began to think maybe I was going to get away with it all right, and of course that’s just when the son of a bitch reached out and grabbed me.

I’d just finished dressing, and he stuck his bald head out the door of his stinking little office and said, “Come in here, Scaggs,” and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but go. I went in and stood there with my teeth hanging out, and he sat down in the chair behind his desk and slumped down on the back of his neck and looked at me through his God-damn eyebrows and didn’t ask me to sit down or drop dead or anything at all. He just sat there looking at me like it made him sick to his stomach to do it, and after a while I got to feeling all squirmy inside like I was full of worms, and I said, “You want to talk to me, Coach?” and he said, “No. The last thing on God’s earth I want to do is talk to you, so I’m going to make it short and to the point.”

I could see then that he was feeling pretty mean, which wasn’t anything unusual, and pretty soon he said, “Where the hell were you yesterday?” and I said, “I had something else I had to do,” and he got a little smile on his face and kept looking at me with his nasty eyes that looked half asleep, and after about a full God-damn minute, he said, “Now isn’t that interesting! Isn’t that just about the most interesting God-damn thing you could imagine! Well, Mr. Scaggs, I’m sure an important fellow like you just has a lot of things to do that might interfere with basketball practice, so I think I’d better tell you how I feel about it. To put it bluntly, Mr. Scaggs, if your God-damn grandmother dropped dead at your feet at five minutes to three, I’d expect you to be to practice at three sharp as usual. Is that clear? While I’m at it, I might say that I’ve been in this business more years than I can count, and I’ve had my head on the chopping block more times than I care to remember, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot of things a man has to know to stay hooked to a contract, and one of the things I’ve learned is the smell of a sharp little opportunist like you. By God, you’re just barely dry behind the ears, and you’re already making a business out of what was once meant to be fun. So it’s a business. It’s business with you, and it’s business with me, and there’s no God-damn fun left in it. You’re getting paid to come to school to play basketball, and you wouldn’t ever come to school at all if you didn’t get paid to play basketball, and so you’ll God-damn well play basketball. You’ll come to practice after this on time and every time, and you’ll run and you’ll sweat and you’ll hate my guts, and the more you hate them the better I’ll like it, and don’t ever expect me to treat you like anything but the hired sharpshooter you are. You’re paid to win games, and that’s exactly what I expect of you and nothing more, and God help you if you don’t. Is all this perfectly clear, Mr. Scaggs?”

Well, it sure as hell was, and I said so and left, and after that it would have taken a hell of a lot more than a few beers and what I could find in a pair of drawers to make me miss a practice, and to tell the truth, I didn’t miss another damn one, and whatever else he was, old Umplett was the best damn basketball coach that ever lived, and I’ll admit it even though I hated his guts just like he said I would.

He worked the hell out of us all through November, and we got faster and faster, and the faster we got the smoother we got, and even old Carboy quit falling over his own feet all the time and got pretty good at jumping up and ramming one through from the rafters now and then, but mostly he took the ball in the slot and fed out to Micky or me, and there weren’t any flies on that Micky, either, if you want to know the truth of it, and you could tell that God-damn Umplett was looking forward to a good season but would rather have dropped dead than say so.

Toward the end of November we had a couple of home games scheduled, and these were just with small colleges not far away and not very good, and we won them both by scores that looked like the totals in some lopsided election or something. You wouldn’t have thought a couple of crummy games like that would get much play, but anyone who thought like that just didn’t know Pipskill, and they’d have turned out for a game there if it had been with some team scraped up in a kindergarten. The field house was packed, and the band played, and all in all it was just like the old high school, except bigger and louder and even crazier. As a matter of fact, I never saw such blood-thirsty God-damn maniacs in my life, and even when we had the score almost doubled they kept yelling at us to pour it on and kept cheering every lousy point like it might make the difference between winning and losing. Lots of coaches will ease up a little when their team gets a big lead, but not old Umplett. He kept the first stringers in right up to the end, and maybe it was because the crowd wanted him to and he knew he damn well better, but it was more likely because he was just as blood-thirsty as any bastard in the crowd, and however it was, it was great stuff for your point total, and I made forty points the first game and thirty-five the second, and right after that everyone started calling me the Platinum Sophomore, which is what they kept on calling me all year, even in the newspapers.

First part of December, we made a swing through the East all the way to New York and played two games on the way and one in Madison Square Garden and one on the way back, and we won all the games but not by any God-damn lopsided scores like the first two at home. As a matter of fact we damn near lost the one in Madison Square Garden because we had a fat lead at the half and got sloppy in the third quarter while the other team was getting hot, and we were lucky to pull it out by three points at the end. Old Umplett was so God-damn mad about it that he jerked us all back to the hotel and wouldn’t let us go out and see some of the town, and Micky and I talked about sneaking out to see some of it, anyhow, but decided not to.

The next morning we started home and stopped off for the last game, and this game was with a college that hadn’t lost a game on their home court for about a million years, and I guess no one around there thought they were ever going to lose one, but we changed a hell of a lot of thinking on that subject before we were through with them. The God-damn people who came to watch the game were just as crazy as the people at Pipskill, and when the game was almost over and they began to realize how it was coming out, they started to boo us and throw paper and stuff on the court and raise hell in general, and damned if it didn’t look for a while like they might lynch us or something, but we got out of it all right and left town the next day. I read later on in the sports page that they said the only reason we beat them was because their star player had a stinking virus or something and was sick and played the whole game on the verge of death like a God-damn hero, and we couldn’t beat them again in a thousand years, but this was just sour grapes and a damn lie, and we proved it by beating them again in a tournament after the regular season was over, and I made ten more points than their lousy hero to boot.

When we got back to the university station on the train, the band was there and about a thousand people, and they made a hell of a fuss about damn little, it seemed to me, but I was glad they did because it reminded me that this basketball racket was a pretty big thing and worth taking care of, and old Umplett made a speech on the platform about how last year had been a long dry spell as far as basketball was concerned, but this year looked like being a hell of a lot greener.

Well, he was right about that, and it sure as hell was, and after the Christmas holiday, which I spent at the frat house again, we got started on conference play and won two fast games. There’s not a hell of a lot of use telling all about the games we played, as far as I can see, because basketball may be fun to watch, especially if you got a band playing and some good-looking dolls leading cheers and stuff and giving you a chance to raise some general hell, but I can’t help thinking it would be pretty damn dull reading about, and to tell the truth I wouldn’t spend a minute myself reading about a lot of guys running up and down a court trying to throw a ball through a hoop. Anyhow, I’ll just tell you that we went through the damn conference like a dose of salts and never lost a game, and when the season was about half over we were rated number one team in the entire country by those so-called experts who go in for that kind of stuff, the sports writers and spooks like that, but to tell the truth I wasn’t much impressed by it because it seemed to me they just sat around and waited to see who won most of the games and then made a big production out of saying these were the best teams, and as far as I can see almost anyone could be a God-damn expert at something like that.

Winning the conference meant we got to play in the regional tournament after the regular season and got to go on and play in the national finals if we won the regional, and the closer we got to the time to play the meaner old Umplett got in the way he acted and talked, and he said he didn’t see how the hell we’d ever get past the first game, and the only reason we were in the tournament in the first place was because the conference had been so God-damn weak, and it just made him sick to his crummy stomach to think what jackasses we were going to look when those sharp teams from the other conferences turned loose on us, but none of us believed a damn word he said, and he didn’t, either. We had almost two weeks between the last conference game and the tournament, and the last week of practice was pretty light because old Umplett was afraid we might go stale if we overdid it, and it was during this time I met this guy named Arnold Hamshank, and since I got a good job for the summer and a little red Crosley out of him, I better tell you why it was.

The simple truth is, he was a God-damn fool about basketball, and as a matter of fact he was probably the biggest fool about basketball I ever met, and I guess I’ve met them about as big as they come. The way I met him, I went into the city with old Carboy and Micky one evening to see a doll named Zalita at a burlesque show who was supposed to be hot stuff, but the truth is, she must have been someone’s grandmother at least, and she reminded me of the doll in the joke who tried to shoot herself under the left breast and blew off her kneecap. After the show we went to a place to buy a steak and sneak a beer, and this Hamshank was there and came over to our table.

“Aren’t you Carboy, Spicer and Scaggs?” he said, and we said we were, and he said, “Congratulations on winning the conference championship,” and we said thanks, and he said, “Now for the national championship, and I know you can do it because you’ve got the best damn team in the whole country, which is the same as saying in the whole world.”

The way it turned out, he sat down at our table and began talking all about basketball and stuff, and he knew all the good players from back when they first started playing the Goddamn game, including all the statistics for practically anyone you cared to mention, including me, and as a matter of fact he was a real God-damn maniac about the crazy game, and a funny thing was, he didn’t particularly look like he would be. I mean he was a big fat guy with a lot of gray hair and a kind of dignified look about him, except for being a little red in the face, and you might have thought he was a lousy judge or someone who didn’t go in for light stuff like basketball, but the truth was, he had an automobile agency and sold Packards and Crosleys. After we’d talked a while, he picked up the check and said he’d pay it, and we told him he didn’t have to do it but didn’t argue a hell of a lot about it, and he said he really wanted to do it as a kind of gesture to three of the greatest little old players in the country, and what was more, he was ready to give a brand new red Crosley sports car to the man on the team who wound up high point man in the tournament. I thought at first the old son of a bitch was drunk, but I couldn’t smell anything on him, and I decided that he was really serious, the goofy bastard, and that I’d sure as hell have that red Crosley or my name wasn’t Skimmer Scaggs, which it sure as hell was.

Well, I might as well tell you right off that we didn’t win the national tournament that year. Maybe you remembered it and how it was, but if you don’t, it was this way. We won the regional, all right, and went right on through the national finals to the last game, and damned if we didn’t get beat by a lousy team that no one had thought would even get out of the regionals, let alone win the finals, and the reason was, they were just as hot as God-damn firecrackers, and that’s one of the goofy things about basketball, especially in tournaments. What I mean, a team that ordinarily wouldn’t show a chance will catch fire and play over their heads for a few games, and in a tournament a few games are plenty, and that’s the way it was with this team. It seemed like they couldn’t miss the Goddamn bucket for any reason whatever, and every time someone grabbed the damn ball and fired away from practically any place on the court, it just dropped through with a little swish of the net, and altogether it was enough to break your damn heart. They beat us by six points and were national champions, but I was high point man of the game and of the whole damn tournament, as a matter of fact, so I didn’t feel as bad as I might have otherwise, and I planned to go around to Arnold Hamshank’s place just as soon as I got back to find out if he really meant it about the red Crosley or was just a damn liar.

The truth is, he was a hell of a windbag, especially when he got onto basketball and started telling you how you should have done something this way or that way or any God-damn way but the way you did it, but he wasn’t a liar and had meant what he said and came across with the Crosley like it was nothing but a scooter. I went down to his display room a couple of days after I got back, and it was a real fancy place right downtown on a corner with three slick Packards and a lot of green plants and things behind about a million square feet of plate glass. When I went in a guy came up to me rubbing his hands together, and he asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to see Mr. Hamshank, and he said he was sorry but Mr. Hamshank wasn’t in right then but would be back soon. I said I’d wait and went around and looked at the three Packards and thought to myself that maybe I’d have one myself one of these days if this basketball racket kept on growing the way it had been so far, but for the time being I was just concentrating on that God-damn red Crosley. It was maybe half an hour later when Mr. Hamshank got there, and he saw me looking at the Packards and recognized me right away and came over and said, “Well, well, Skimmer, welcome, my boy. Tough luck about the tournament, but better luck next year.” I said hello and that I was glad he remembered me, and he said how the hell could he forget the best forward in the country who was on practically everyone’s All-American team even as a sophomore, which I was, and he asked me to come into his office and sit down, and we went in and did.

“How the hell did it happen?” he said, and I said, “What?” and he said, “Why, that last game. How the hell did that scrub team ever happen to beat you?”

“It was just one of those things,” I said. “They just got hot and couldn’t miss the basket any way they tried, and you know how it is with a team like that, there just isn’t anything you can do to stop them, because if they bent over and fired the damn ball between their legs it would still go in,” and he said, “That’s the damn truth, but just the same, if I’d been coach instead of Umplett...,” and then he went on telling me what he’d have done if he’d been coach, and it was a lot of crap, of course, and it took him damn near a half hour to get through with it, and I’d just about decided that he was just giving me a Goddamn runaround and was trying to talk about anything but the red Crosley he owed me, but then he wound up saying, “But however it might have been, it’s water under the bridge now, and the fact is, you were high point man of the tournament and have won the Crosley sports car.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t expect you to give me anything as valuable as a Crosley sports car. Besides, I never thought for a minute you really meant it,” and he said, “The hell I didn’t mean it. When Arnold Hamshank says he’ll do a thing, he’ll damn sure do it, and the car’s greased and oiled and full of gas and ready to go in the back room right now.”

I said that was sure as hell generous of him, and it was sure swell to know someone who liked basketball well enough to do something like that to encourage one of the players, and he said to think nothing of it and that he was always ready to do a little thing now and then for the boys who made the game what it was, and to tell the truth, I thought he was a damn fool to put out a new Crosley to someone like me that he didn’t even really know just for throwing a God-damn ball around. Anyhow, he asked me if I’d like to go back and take a look at it, and I said I would, and we went back and looked it over, and it was sure as hell little, just a one-seater like all sports cars, bright red and shiny as a new nickel, and I thought it was a damn sweet little job but that you’d sure never get any business done in the seat like old Marsha Davis and I had almost got done in the front seat of her old man’s Buick.

He said, “Well, what do you think of it?” and I said it was a slick little job, and we went back to his office again, and he had all the papers and everything already fixed up for me to sign and all I had to do was get a driver’s license and buy some tags and I was all set. We talked some more about other things, and after a while he said, “Where’s your home, Skimmer?” and I told him, and he said, “That’s not a very big town, is it?” and I said it sure as hell wasn’t, and he said, “It must be pretty dull for a guy like you around there in the summer,” and I said it sure as hell was.

“How’d you like to stay here in the city this summer?” he said, and I said I’d like it fine but didn’t have the money, and he said, “You could get a job, couldn’t you?” and I had to admit I hadn’t thought of that, and he said, “How’d you like to work for me selling cars?”

“Well,” I said, “I’d like that fine, but I never sold cars before,” and he said, “There’s nothing to it. A big basketball star like you would be a cinch, because people around here go in a big way for basketball players. I’d pay you fifty bucks a week plus commission,” and I said, “That sounds good to me, and you’ve just hired yourself a salesman for the summer,” and he said, “That’s the stuff. I like a guy who can make up his mind in a hurry, and I knew you could do it because you wouldn’t be the best forward in the country if you couldn’t. That’s one thing about basketball, it teaches you to make up your mind fast.”

After a while I said I had to be getting back to the university, and he said to drop in and see him once in a while, and I said I would, and he said he’d be expecting me to start work right after school was out in June, and I said I’d do that, too. He followed me back to the Crosley and watched me crawl in and start it up, and he laughed and waved and yelled as I drove out to be sure to remember to get out of the Crosley before I got into the mood, and I yelled back that I would and drove on out, and I was feeling damn good, I don’t mind admitting, not only because I had the Crosley but because I had a job for the summer, too, and wouldn’t have to go home and put up with the bull from the old man just to get a crummy meal now and then.

That was how it happened that I stayed in the city that summer, and if it hadn’t been for old Arnold Hamshank giving me the job selling cars I’d probably have gone on home and never met Candy Caldwell or Francis Z. Ketch, who was called Franzie because of everyone’s running his first name and middle initial together like one word, or any of the others that I met. Everything goes right back to that God-damn crazy game of basketball, and it just seems impossible that so much could have come of it, but that’s the way it was, and it’s a good thing for me I learned to play it. Candy Caldwell was the one I met first, and I didn’t meet this Franzie Ketch for quite a while afterward, because he wasn’t the kind of guy you met easy, and as a matter of fact you didn’t meet him at all unless you had something he wanted, which I did, and so I’ll start with Candy and work through it the way it came.

After school was out I went down and took over the job selling cars, and it was a pretty damn plush job, if you ask me, because old Hamshank didn’t seem to give a damn whether I put in much time selling or not, and every now and then he’d come around and say, “Skimmer there’s a guy I know ought to be about ready for a new Packard. This guy’s a hot basketball fan, so why don’t you run out and see him,” and so I’d run out and see this guy he told me about, and usually he’d get warmed up right away when he found out who I was and wind up a little later taking the Packard, which meant a commission on top of the fifty bucks, and altogether it was just like sitting under a tree in the shade and having someone shake apples in your lap. I got me a room in a little hotel that didn’t cost too much but wasn’t a bad place to flop, and this hotel was right at the edge of the downtown area where a lot of nightclubs and things were, and I got to going down there nights to see the shows and learned how to drink stuff like martinis and daiquiris and not always plain beer, and you’d be surprised how many people I met who knew me from all the publicity I’d got over the basketball and wanted to give me the glad hand and buy me a drink and things like that.

One afternoon a little after five o’clock I went into a cocktail lounge called the Gay Gander that was a pretty fancy place with a thick carpet and big pots of green stuff here and there and soft light coming out of a little trough that went all around the room up near the ceiling. I was sitting by myself at a table, because all the stools at the bar had roosters on them, and all of a sudden this guy with slick black hair stepped out with a little microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, here she is,” just like any damn fool ought to know who she was, and I guess most of them did, even if I didn’t, because they started to clap in the quiet way they do it in joints like that, and another guy came out and sat down at a piano, and this doll followed him and leaned against the piano and began to sing. She was wearing a black dress that was made out of thin stuff that showed the black slip underneath, and it came down to just below her knees at the bottom and down to damn near below her knockers on top, and her hair was black, too, and cut short and sort of shaggy on purpose, and I’d like to describe the rest of her, just the way she looked, but I damn sure can’t, and no one else could, either.

Well, it was this Candy Caldwell I mentioned, and she sang these little songs that weren’t dirty in exactly what they said but were damn sure dirty in what they meant, especially the way she sang them, and everyone in the place just ate it up, including me. As a matter of fact, I never had a doll get to me the way she did, not even old Marsha, and I sat there and watched her for all the half hour she was on and wished it was longer. When she’d finished and gone, a waitress came up to my table and asked me if I wanted another drink, which I did, and I asked her the name of the doll who sang the songs, and she said, “Why, that’s Candy Caldwell,” and she said it with this snotty look like she thought anyone would have to be pretty damn ignorant not to know who Candy Caldwell was, and I said, “Well, I’d sure like to have her sing some of those songs to me personally,” and she said, “You and a million others, sonny. Give it up. She’s got connections, and she comes high,” and that just showed how damn ignorant this snotty waitress was herself, because she didn’t even know that I was a big basketball star with connections of my own, which was just as bad in its way as not knowing who Candy Caldwell was. Anyhow, I asked her if Candy Caldwell was going to sing any more songs later, and she said yes, a hell of a lot later, about nine o’clock that night as a matter of fact, and I made up my mind right then and there that I’d be back at nine o’clock to see her do it, and I was.

The second time was even better than the first time, and she was dressed in a white dress that came all the way to the floor at the bottom, instead of just below her knees, but came down to about the same place as the black one at the top, which was about as far down as it could go without being nothing but a skirt. She sang for a half hour again, all these little songs that meant more than they really said, and when she quit I decided I might as well take the God-damn bull by the horns and called a waitress over and told her to go tell Candy Caldwell that Skimmer Scaggs would like to meet her, and it cost me a lousy fin to get the waitress to go. I sat there and waited for a while, and pretty soon someone came up to my table, but it wasn’t Candy Caldwell. It was a tall guy with blond hair brushed straight back over his head with the scalp showing through, it was so God-damn thin, and he had a kind of narrow, mean face with a little smile on it that didn’t help much. I thought at first maybe he was going to throw me out on my ass for trying to get to meet Candy Caldwell, but it turned out he was friendly and said, “Are you Skimmer Scaggs, the basketball star?”

I said I was, and he said, “Sure glad to meet you, Scaggs. I’m Hershell Goans. I manage this place,” and I said I was glad to meet him, too, which was just a way of speaking and not particularly true because the only person I really wanted to meet was Candy Caldwell, and he must have read my mind because he said, “I understand you’d like to meet our little singer.”

I said I sure as hell would, and he laughed and said, “Well, a lot of guys would like to do that, and she usually doesn’t give any house to strangers, but I’m pretty sure she’d be willing to make an exception of a famous athlete like you. I’ll tell you what. You just sit here and take it easy, and I’ll go back and see if she won’t come out and have a drink with you.”

He went away to get her, and I sat there waiting, and they didn’t come for so long that I’d just about decided they were only making a God-damn monkey out of me, but then they came, and this guy Goans said, “Skimmer, meet Candy Caldwell. You’re in luck, boy. It just happens Candy’s quite a fan of yours,” and I stood up and said, “No bull?” and she laughed and said, “That’s right, Skimmer. I was just too excited when Hersh told me you were out here and wanted to meet me.”

She sat down, and I did, too, and Hershell Goans called a waitress over and said anything we wanted was on the house, and I couldn’t help wishing it was the snotty bitch who’d waited on me in the afternoon, but it wasn’t. Candy ordered a martini, and I said I’d have the same, and Goans said, “You kids have fun,” and went away, which was the best thing he could have done as far as I was concerned. I tried to think of something fancy to say, but damned if I could think of a thing, and to tell the truth, I was too busy looking things over right at first, anyhow, and it seemed to be all right with her. She was still wearing the white dress she’d worn to sing in, and she sat there smiling a little and fiddling with the stem of her martini glass, and pretty soon she said, “Well, you like it?” and I said, “What?” and she said, “What you’re looking at,” and I said, “What you mean, it? There are two of them,” and as a matter of fact, it just slipped out, and I was afraid at first that I’d fouled the nest, but she thought it was funny and said, “My God, you’re really a fast worker, aren’t you?”

After that I felt as loose as ashes, and I started talking about basketball and asking her questions, because this Hershell Goans who managed the place had said she was a fan and I thought she’d be interested, but the truth is, she didn’t seem to know a damn thing about basketball, and I decided that maybe she wasn’t exactly a fan of the game but was just a fan of mine personally. The way it turned out, though, she wasn’t really any kind of fan at all, and after a while she laughed and said, “Look, honey, don’t get sore about it, but I don’t know a damn thing about basketball and care less and I’ve never seen a game in my life. The way it was, I looked out and saw you sitting here, and I thought you were cute, and all that stuff about being a fan was just an angle. You know how it is.”

I said sure, I knew how it was, and as a matter of fact I wouldn’t have been a fan of the God-damn crazy game myself if I hadn’t got to playing it by accident. She asked me how I got started, and I told her about the time old Bugs bet me his lousy two-bits that I couldn’t hit two out of ten, and how I went on after that and became the best player in the state and got an athletic scholarship to Pipskill, and how I was thinking about going ahead and getting on a pro team after college, because I’d heard that was a good racket, too. She said I must really be good, and I said I sure as hell was, and she said she liked men who were good at things, no matter what they were, and I said she might be surprised how good I was at certain things besides basketball, and she laughed and patted my hand and said, “Jesus Christ, what a busy little man you are. Always in there trying.”

We had a couple more drinks after the first one, and I asked her if she’d like to go somewhere in my Crosley, and she said, “In your what?” and I said, “In my Crosley, God-damn it,” and she said, “You mean one of these little tiny cars?” and I said, “Well, it’s pretty small, all right, but it’s a red one-seater, a kind of sports car, and all sports cars are supposed to be small,” and she said, “Oh, a sports car! I love sports cars. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got to go on for another half hour spot at eleven, but if you’ll hang around until after that, I’ll let you take me home.”

I said I’d hang around, all right, and I did, and we kept on sitting there and talking and having a fresh martini every once in a while, and about a quarter to eleven she got up and said, “I’ve got to get ready for my next spot now, honey. Don’t go away,” and that was a God-damn laugh because you couldn’t have drug me away from there with a team of mules, and I’ll admit that the gin was working on me pretty good and I had about three sheets in the wind. Candy came on and sang her songs, and she picked out the most suggestive one of all to sing right to me, and everyone could tell what she was doing, and a few people started to laugh and clap a little, and I sure didn’t give a damn. The song was one where some doll was in a hot spot with some guy, and she kept saying don’t and stop, and pretty soon she got to saying them so close together that it sounded like she was saying don’t stop, and I thought, Well, you can just bet your pretty tail I won’t.

When she’d finished singing, she disappeared for a while, and I had another martini on the house while I was waiting for her to show up, and when she came she was in a street dress instead of the long white one she’d been wearing, but I was so fogged up with gin by that time that I don’t remember just what it looked like except that it was enough to knock your eye out, just like all the other dresses she wore.

“You ready to go, honey?” she said, and I said I was and stood up and damn near fell on my face, and she laughed and said, “Who the hell’s taking who home?”

She took my arm, and we went out, and when we passed this guy Hershell Goans, he laughed and said, “Take good care of our basketball hero, baby,” and Candy said, “Oh, I’ll take care of him, all right,” and then we got outside on the sidewalk and walked down to where I’d parked the Crosley, and she said, “Well, isn’t it cute! Does it have an engine, or do you pump it with your feet?” and I said, “You just crawl in the God-damn seat, and I’ll show you if it’s got an engine or not,” and she said, “Nix, honey, I’m too young to die. You just crawl in like a good boy, and I’ll drive this gadget myself.”

I argued about it a little, but she said I’d damn well let her drive or we’d just call the whole thing off, and so finally I got in the seat and she went around and got under the wheel and drove us to the apartment house where she lived. It was a medium fancy place with one of these awning things running from the front entrance to the curb for you to walk under, and Candy pulled into a parking space at the curb just below the awning and cut the engine and said, “Look, honey, you’re in pretty bad shape. I’ve got an electric pot and some coffee upstairs. You want to come up with me, I’ll fix you up,” and I said, “Is that a promise?” and she laughed and patted my cheek and said, “My God, you’re about the busiest sophomore I ever ran into,” and I said I wasn’t any God-damn sophomore, but a junior, and she said, “Okay, Junior, come along,” which I did and had intended to do, anyhow, coffee or no coffee.

We went up in the elevator and down to her apartment and inside, and it was a nice place with some modern-looking furniture standing around on black wrought-iron legs. She was holding me by the arm when we went in, and as soon as the door closed behind us she swung around in front of me and put her arms up around my neck, and I put mine around her down where it counted for more, and we started kissing, and that went on for a while, and then she stepped back and laughed this shaky laugh and said, “Well, well, Junior, you’re not only cute, but talented. Maybe this caper will turn out to be more fun than business.”

I started to grab her again, but she put her hand against my chest and held me off and said, “Let’s build it up as we go along, Junior. It’s better that way,” and I thought I might as well play it by her rules and let her go, and she walked over toward a door that led into a bedroom and said over her shoulder, “Sit down and take it easy, honey. I’ll be back in a minute,” and it wasn’t much longer than that before she was, and I sat on a sofa and waited and thought about all the stories I’d read, especially about private eyes, how the doll walks off to the bedroom saying something like that and comes back pretty soon naked or in a God-damn thin robe or something, and I wondered if that was the way it was going to be with Candy, and hoped it was, but it wasn’t. She still had the same dress on and hadn’t done a damn thing to herself as far as I could see, and she walked over to a chest and took out a couple of bottles and glasses and mixed drinks and carried them over to me and handed me one and said, “Since you probably won’t be driving home tonight after all, we can just skip the coffee, can’t we?”

Well, I guess I was pretty tight, but I was still able to tell when I’d had an invitation, and I took the glass and said we sure as hell could, and she sat down beside me real close and said, “Tell me all about yourself,” and I couldn’t see a hell of a lot of use wasting time on it and said so, but she took a swallow of her drink and said, “For God’s sake, Junior, don’t push it so hard. We got all night.”

I took a big swallow of my drink and damn near choked to death, it was so damn strong, and my head got to going around and around all of a sudden, and I tried to think of some good lies to tell her about my family and who I was and everything, but I couldn’t seem to get going on it, and then I had this feeling that there wouldn’t be any percentage in telling lies about it to Candy, anyhow, because it wouldn’t make any damn difference to her at all like it might have made to old Marsha, and so I just told her the truth about everything, about the old man and the old lady and how I’d pushed the ladder over with Gravy Dummke on it, and she laughed and laughed and thought it was funny as hell. When I was finished I thought it might make me some points if I acted like I wanted to know everything about her, too, not that I cared a hell of a lot about it, and so I asked her to tell me all about her God-damn life and stuff, and she said, “Junior, I haven’t had any life. I just started to live when I met you tonight.”

This was bull, and I knew it, and she said, “Is your name really Skimmer?” and I said it sure as hell was and was her name really Candy, and she said, “Christ, no. Who the hell ever named a kid Candy?” and I asked her what her real name was, then, and she said it was Myrtle, if I wanted to know, but she’d changed it to Candy because who the hell would come to a cocktail lounge to hear a girl named Myrtle sing songs? I said as far as I was concerned I’d come to hear her sing if her name was Mud, and she said that was a sweet thing to say, and it got us started on a pretty good tussle that led from one thing to another, and pretty soon she stood up and said, “Let’s go in the other room,” meaning the bedroom, and I stood up to go and fell on my lousy face. She laughed and helped me up and into the bedroom and told me to sit down on the bed and she’d be right back. I sat down and heard her in the bathroom, and my head was going around this way, and I remember lying down on my back for just a second until she came, and damned if I didn’t pass out and not come to until the next day, which was the damnedest thing I ever did.

When I came around I was still lying on the God-damn bed, but I didn’t have anything on but my stinking shorts and was lying around the long way instead of crossways, and I had a hell of a headache, and my mouth tasted like I had my socks in it. No one was on the bed but me, but I could tell that someone had been on it, and there was a racket going on somewhere that turned out to be the shower in the bathroom, and pretty soon Candy came out in a blue robe and said, “Well, Junior, how you feeling?” and I said I felt like hell, a little from the gin and whisky, but mostly because I’d missed the lousy bus, and she said I sure as hell had and started to laugh about it.

“Well,” I said, “you miss the first bus, you can always catch one later,” and she came over and sat down on the edge of the bed beside me and said, “Look, honey, you’re a cute kid, and all this business about your being a star basketball player and everything is just too precious, but now it’s the morning after the night that was almost before, and it’s time to look at the facts. What I mean is, it looked like it might be fun, so I gave you a free pass for one ride, but I can’t make a habit of it. To put it bluntly, Junior, I like to go lots of places and do lots of things and wear lots of what makes a girl pretty, including precious stones, and I’ve got to save my time and talent for the guys who can afford to give me what I like.”

That was laying it on the line, all right, and it was fine with me, and I said, “Maybe I got more in the sock than you think,” and she said, “If you got more than your foot in it, it’d damn sure be more than I think. Tell me, Junior. How much you making out of this damn game?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m only getting a hundred a month to play out at Pipskill, but there are things on the side,” and she said, “Such as?” and I said, “Such as fifty bucks a week plus commissions from Hamshank’s Automobile Agency,” and she laughed and patted my cheek in the way she had and said, “You see? You don’t even know the meaning of big dough. In a way it’s a shame, too, because you’re cute and I really go for you and there ought to be ways a guy in your position could cash in.”

The way I looked at it, I didn’t want this to slip away from me without another chance at it, and I said, “Well, this basketball thing has room to grow. I’ve been thinking about quitting out at the university after this year and turning pro. Pros make a pot of dough if they’re good enough,” and she said, “Are you good enough?” and I said I sure as hell was, and she said, “Well, come around then and maybe we can pick it up again,” and I said, “That’s a year. Who the hell wants to wait a year?” and she smiled this little smile and reached up and let her fingers trail down my cheek, and all the time she was looking at me like she was trying to make up her mind whether she should say what she had on it or not, and after a long time she said, “Would you really like to make a potful, honey?”

As far as I could see, that was nothing but a foolish question, and I said I would, and she said, “Maybe I can put you in a way to do it,” and I said, “How?” and she said, “There’s a man I know might be able to use you,” and I said, “Who?” and she said, “His name is Francis Z. Ketch. You hear of him?” and I said I couldn’t remember hearing of him but I’d be willing to see him if it meant getting in the way of making a potful, and she laughed and gave my cheek a last little pat and said it wasn’t that easy, you didn’t just go see Francis Z. Ketch, but that she’d work on it and try to arrange it.

The blue robe she was wearing didn’t hide a hell of a lot, and I still had the idea of picking it up where we’d left it off, but she ducked away and clucked her tongue against her teeth in this cute way she had and stood up. This made me a little sore, if you want to know it, and I got up, too, and started to pull on my pants with the idea of getting the hell out of here, if that was the way she wanted it, and she stood there watching me and laughing a little, and after a second she said, “Don’t get sore, honey. I’m strictly a night girl. In the daytime I just feel foolish.”

Well, I felt pretty damn foolish myself, to tell the truth, standing there pulling on my pants and her laughing about it, and altogether it wasn’t the kind of situation to make a guy look or feel his best by a damn sight. When I had all my clothes on, she came over and gave me another one of those pats on the cheek and said, “Do you really want me to see if I can get you an appointment with Franzie?” and I said, “Who the hell’s Franzie?” and she said, “Why, Francis Z. Ketch, the man I told you about,” and I said she could just suit herself as far as I was concerned, and she said I was still sore, and I said the hell I was, and she said, “Look, honey, don’t be a damn baby about it. It just went sour on us this time, and it wouldn’t be any good at all to try to pick it up now, but there’s always the next time. How’d you like to come around to the Gay Gander and catch my songs tonight and bring me home afterward?”

Finally I said okay, I’d do it, and she said, “In the meantime I’ll see if I can get Franzie to see you,” and I said, “Why the hell do you call him Franzie?” and she told me this stuff about how his real close friends had called him Fran, and then someone had run it into the Z, and after that they called him Franzie as a result, and I said, “Are you one of his real close friends?” and she said, “Why? Jealous?” and I said why the hell should I be jealous, and she said, “Maybe because you go for me,” and I said I’d be a damn liar if I said I didn’t, and next time, what was more, I was going all the way, and she said, “My God, how you push!”

After that I left and found a telephone and called Arnold Hamshank and told him I was sick as a dog and wouldn’t be in to work, and he said it was okay, boy, to take good care of old Pipskill’s most valuable player, and I went back to my room at the hotel and went to bed and didn’t wake up until evening. I fooled around and did this and that until about ten o’clock and then went around to the Gay Gander, and Hershell Goans saw me at the bar where I was having a highball and came over and said, “Well, well, the big star’s back again. You must like us here, boy,” and I said I damn sure liked some of them at any rate, and he said, “You mean Candy?” and I said what did he think, and he laughed and thumped me on the shoulder and said, “Well, I don’t mind telling you she seems to go for you, too, boy, and to tell the truth, it sort of surprises me because Candy’s a high class dame with a million guys after her, more or less, and this is the first time I ever saw her go for one in a big way like this.”

The bastard meant well and thought he was giving me a good word, but personally I couldn’t see why the hell he should be so surprised about it, and to tell the truth, it made me kind of sore to hear him say it. I said thanks, though, I was glad he thought so, and I waited for him to tell the bartender to make everything on the house, like he’d done last night, but this time he didn’t do it, and damned if I didn’t have to pay for everything I drank, which was three highballs by the time Candy came on. She sang songs for half an hour, which was until eleven-thirty, and then it was another God-damn half hour before she came out to the bar, which made it twelve, and when we got outside to the Crosley, she said, “I tried to get Franzie to see you tonight, honey, but he said he couldn’t do it and would try to find time for it some time later,” and I said, “Well, isn’t that just too God-damn big of him!”

She gave me this quiet look that was like she was trying to decide whether to tell you something or not, and pretty soon she said, “Look, Junior, you’re a cute guy, and you’ve got more brass than an old-fashioned saloon, God knows, but take my advice and don’t go throwing your weight around with Franzie Ketch,” and I said, “Well, I’m just scared to death,” and she said, “You damn well better be,” and I said, “I don’t mind telling you I’m not afraid of anyone in the God-damn world, and I don’t intend to wet my pants over this Ketch guy even if he’s one of the big shots Gravy Dummke was supposed to know in the city,” and she said, “Gravy Dummke? Who the hell’s Gravy Dummke?” and I said he was the guy I’d told her about that was on the ladder I’d pushed over, and she said, “Well don’t get any God-damn ideas about pushing any ladder over with Franzie Ketch on it.”

To tell the truth, I was pretty sick of this God-damn Ketch character before I’d even met him, and didn’t give much of a damn whether I ever met him or not, and I said, “Well, to hell with him. Just between the two of us, I didn’t hit the booze at the Gay Gander so hard tonight, and I don’t have any God-damn intention of passing out again, so I got better things to think about than some spook named Francis Z. Ketch, and you may not know it yet, but so have you.”

She patted me and laughed and said, “Jesus, Junior, I wouldn’t miss it for the world because there’s just an outside chance you’re maybe half as good as you think you are,” and we drove on around to her apartment and went upstairs, and I had another drink but didn’t pass out from it, and everything was different and a damn sight better than the night before. About three o’clock she told me I’d have to get the hell out, and I didn’t want to go, but she said I’d damn well have to go whether I wanted to or not, and I could see she meant it, so I got ready and started, but at the door I turned and said, “I’ll see you tonight at the Gay Gander,” and she said, “The hell you will,” and I said, “Why not?” and she said, “Listen, Junior, I got a soft spot in my heart where you’re concerned, but don’t get the idea I’m reorganizing my whole God-damn life to accommodate, you. I’ll work you into the schedule when I can, but that damn sure doesn’t mean every night.”

“Well,” I said, “when’s my next turn on the schedule?” and she said, “How the hell would I know? Didn’t you ever hear of a telephone? Give me a ring sometime,” and I could see that was the best I could get out of her right then, so I said I sure as hell would and went back to the hotel in the Crosley and went to bed. I didn’t want to get up in the morning, but I thought I’d better get on around to Arnold Hamshank’s just the same, so I went and when I came in he said, “Jesus, Skimmer, you really look pooped. You really must have been sick, boy,” which was a damn belly-laugh, as you can see, but I didn’t tell him why.

I thought I’d just let Candy sweat a little, since she was so damn independent, so I didn’t call her for a couple of days, but when I finally called her on the third day I’m bound to admit she didn’t seem to be in much of a sweat, and she told me she had other things to do and couldn’t see me again until Saturday night, which was still two days away. I figured she was just playing hard to get, even though she’d already been got once, and to tell the truth, it made me a little hot, and I said well, it just happened I had something else to do Saturday night myself and couldn’t make it, which was a damn lie, and she said, “Okay, Junior, have fun,” and hung up.

I was in a sweat myself after that, and I finally decided there wasn’t any use cutting off my nose to spite my God-damn face and called her again and said I’d found out I’d be able to make it to the Gay Gander after all and would be waiting for her after her eleven o’clock spot, and she said, “Well, it’s lucky for you that you can make it, Junior, because I’ve finally got an appointment with Franzie Ketch for you, and he’ll see you Saturday night. As a matter of fact, he wants me to bring you up to his place around ten, and I’ve got out of the eleven o’clock spot to do it, so you be at the Gander by nine-thirty.”

“Well,” I said, “I haven’t seen you for a hell of a long time, and I’m in no damn mood to waste any time talking to Franzie Ketch or anyone else,” and she said, “Push, push, push! My God, it won’t take all night to talk with Franzie,” and I said, “Any God-damn time is too much,” and she said, “Damn it to hell, Junior, can’t you get it through your head that Franzie can be important to you? Anyhow, he’s damn sure as important to you as I am, because I told you before and I’ll tell you again that I’m no lousy philanthropist to be trading time and talent for peanuts, and if you want to drop your shoes beside my couch any more you’d better believe me.”

I said okay, okay, I’d see him, and she said, “Good for you, Junior,” and hung up. I’d called her from Arnold Hamshank’s place, and I went in his office and said, “Who the hell’s Francis Z. Ketch?” and he looked at me and said, “No one but the biggest gambler and crook in this town. Why?” and I said, “Oh, I just heard someone mention him like he was supposed to be pretty hot stuff and just wondered who he was, that’s all,” and as a matter of fact I’d been pretty sure he was something like that all along, and I was pretty sure how he’d want to put me in the way of making a potful, too, and I didn’t know if we could work anything out about it, but it wasn’t any skin off my tail just to go see, so I went.

It turned out he lived in a hell of a big apartment house over on one of the fancy boulevards, and Candy and I buzzed over there in the Crosley and went up about a God-damn mile in the elevator to the floor he lived on. Candy pushed a button beside the door and started a mess of chimes going off inside, and the last few seconds while we were waiting, she whispered, “Now act your damn age, Skimmer, for Christ’s sake, because Franzie’s no guy to stand for any cute stuff,” and I said, “All right, God-damn it, I’ll be a regular lousy angel,” and just then the door was opened by no one but Francis Z. Ketch himself.

We went into a living room that was bigger than a barn and covered with a carpet up to your God-damn knees, and Candy said, “Skimmer this is Mr. Ketch. Skimmer’s the one I told you about, Mr. Ketch,” and this Ketch held out a hand and said, “How are you, Skimmer?” and I said I was fine, and as a matter of fact you could have slapped me ass over elbows with a feather, and this was because he didn’t look any more like a big crook and gambler than old Bugs’s grandmother, for instance. He was a little sawed-off bastard, to start with, not even as tall as Candy, and he was one of these plump guys with a round face that had rosy cheeks and a little red mouth like they paint on Kewpie dolls, and his hair was soft and pure white and combed back in little waves on both sides of a crummy center part, and his hands and feet were so God-damn little they looked like a woman’s. He talked in this soft, prissy voice that made you think he might be a fairy, and he told us to come on in and sit down, which we did, and some spook wearing soup and fish came in then with some drinks on a tray and gave us each one.

“Well, Skimmer,” Francis Z. Ketch said, “I understand from Candy that you’re quite a persistent fellow,” and I said if that meant trying to get what I wanted, I sure as hell was, and he smiled and said, “That’s very commendable, and if Candy’s one of the things you want, I also commend your good taste,” and I said Candy was damn sure one of the things I wanted, all right, and I was in there trying all the time, but she’d been making it pretty tough for me for some damn reason or other, and he laughed and made a little tent with his fingers over his pot gut and said, “Well, Candy’s quite a popular young lady, and I’m afraid she’s been spoiled, and indeed I feel impelled to warn you that if you expect to remain in favor you must be prepared to stand considerable expense.”

That sounded to me like an invitation to take the God-damn bull by the horns, so I did and said, “Well, that’s why I’m here, because Candy said you might be able to put me in the way of making a potful,” and he smiled with his stinking little rosebud of a mouth and said, “You’re certainly a direct young man, I’ll say that for you,” and then he sat there looking at me with these round blue eyes that looked so damn innocent you wouldn’t have believed it, and as a matter of fact they reminded me of old Mopsy Beacon when she was talking about saving it.

I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say, and pretty soon he said, “As a matter of fact, there are definite prospects for a young man in your position, provided he’s willing to cooperate in certain essential matters,” and I said, “You mean about the basketball?” and he said to Candy, “How refreshingly direct this fellow is,” and to me, “Yes, about the basketball,” and I said, “You mean to throw some games so you can make a potful betting against us like Gravy Dummke wanted to?” and he made a little face like something was hurting him and closed his eyes and said, “Oh, no, no, no! I have no idea who this Dummke person is, but I have nothing so crude in mind. You see, it’s merely the matter of the spread.”

I said I didn’t know exactly what the hell he meant, and he said, “What I mean is, betting is done on the spread of points between the scores of the two teams. To illustrate, if Pipskill was favored to win by, say, ten points, I could bet on a closer score — take the other team and nine, for example — and thereby stand to win a considerable sum,” and I said, “You mean we wouldn’t even have to lose the game?” and he said, “Oh, gracious, no,” and that’s no damn lie, he really said oh, gracious, and I thought about it and said, “Well, to tell the Goddamn truth, I don’t even see anything particularly wrong in just missing a few to keep the score a little closer,” and he sighed and said, “Personally I share your practical view of the matter, but I must say that many people do not, the authorities among them, and if we were to come to some agreement and it became noised about, I would be in more trouble than I care about, and you would be in a great deal more than I.”

Well, I wasn’t so God-damn thick that I couldn’t recognize a threat when I heard it, even if he said it in the same voice he’d have used to ask the time of day, and the funny thing was, you wouldn’t have thought it would have scared a lousy Brownie, coming like it did from a guy who looked like a cross between Santa Claus and a pansy, but as a matter of fact I got a little cold spot inside me and knew he meant what he said and a hell of a lot more than he said, as far as that goes, and maybe I got that feeling from him just because he was such a gentle looking little bastard and said these things so quietly with his little red mouth smiling all the God-damn time. Anyhow, I said I wasn’t fool enough to go around beating my chops about something like that, and besides I didn’t think it would work, because old Micky Spicer was a damn good sharpshooter himself and might run the score up in spite of everything I could do, and he rubbed his hands together and said, “That’s a very astute observation and shows you have your wits about you. I’m familiar with Spicer’s record, just as I’m familiar with yours, and you are undoubtedly correct. Tell me, do you know your teammate well?”

I said we were roommates and old buddies, and he said, “Do you suppose you could influence him to enter into a three-party agreement?” and I said I wouldn’t put it past him, and he said, “Good. Suppose you negotiate it,” and I said I wouldn’t be seeing Micky until school started, and he said that would be time enough and I could inform him of results through Candy, and then he stood up to let us know it was time we were getting the hell out, and at the door he said, “You will not use my name with Spicer until he’s committed, of course,” and I said I wouldn’t, and Candy and I went on around to her apartment and had some drinks and some fun, and it was almost four o’clock when she threw me out.

Well, after I’d seen Francis Z. Ketch that first time, I didn’t see him again all the rest of the summer, but I kept seeing Candy whenever she figured it was my time on the schedule, which wasn’t often enough by a damn sight, the way I looked at it, and she kept telling me that Ketch was counting on me to set things up with Micky whenever school opened again, and I said he didn’t have to worry about it any, and if I knew old Micky like I thought I did he’d be right in there with his shoes off when it came to earning another buck. I kept on working for Arnold Hamshank, too, but there wasn’t really a hell of a lot of work to it, and about a week before time for school to start I quit the job and checked out at the hotel and went on back out to the frat house at Pipskill and got settled. When I left, Arnold Hamshank shook my hand and told me what a privilege it had been to do something for one of the boys on the team and to be sure to stop in and see him now and then, and I said I would, and the truth is, I couldn’t understand why anyone would be so God-damn crazy over someone just because he happened to play basketball, but I just thought it and didn’t say it, you can bet dollars on that.

I was all set in the room when Micky got back, and it was pretty good to see the goofy bastard again, as a matter of fact, and I wondered if I ought to come straight out with the Francis Z. Ketch deal or wait around for a time that seemed just right for it, and finally I decided to wait because you couldn’t always figure just how old Micky would take one thing or another, and he was a crazy bastard, like I said, and that’s the truth of it. Meanwhile, over a month went by, and I went into town three or four times and had some fun with Candy, and the last time I went she said, “How you coming with this Micky Spicer?” and I said, “What you mean, how am I coming?” and she said, “You know damn well what I mean. Is he going to play ball or not?”

“Well,” I said, “the truth is, I’ve been sort of waiting for the right time to ask him and haven’t got it done yet,” and she said, “In case you’re interested, you damn well better get it done because basketball season’s getting pretty close and Franzie Ketch wants to know what he’s got to look forward to, and he told me to tell you,” and I said, “Well, you can tell Franzie from me to keep his God-damn drawers on,” and she said, “Oh, sure, I’ll tell him, Junior, and while we’re on the subject, it might interest you to know that I’ll damn well be keeping mine on, too, as far as you’re concerned, if you foul up and miss out on the heavy sugar.”

If you think she didn’t mean it, you’re crazy, and I knew damn well she meant it, so I went back out to Pipskill with the idea of putting it right up to old Micky, and as it turned out, it happened to be the right time I’d been waiting for, anyhow, and this is the way it was. He was flopped on the bed in the room when I went in, and he was grumbling to himself about something, and I said, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” and he said, “In case you want to know, I’m just God-damn sick of being stony at least half the time, that’s all.”

I could see right away that I’d never find a better time to come in with Francis Z. Ketch, and I said, “What the hell brought this on?” and he said, “Oh, nothing, nothing at all, except I’ve got a chance to make hay with a sweet doll, and damned if I’m not broke, and everyone else seems to be, too, and I can’t borrow a damn dime,” and I said, “Well, don’t look at me, I don’t have any God-damn money,” which was a damn lie, because I had some, and he said, “I sure as hell wish I could find a way to turn a few extra bucks. That hundred a month was all right for a lousy freshman, but a junior’s got more expenses,” and I said, “That’s the damn truth if it was ever spoken,” and then I stopped and looked at him, and he could see I had something on my mind, and pretty soon I said, “How’d you like to make some big dough and cut out this crap of borrowing a few stinking nickels and dimes until payday?” and he said, “How?” and I said, “Well, I know how I can put you in the way of it, if you’re really interested.”

He lay there on the bed and looked at me, and after a minute or two he said, “Bull! If you know so damn much about how to earn big dough, how come you haven’t even got a lousy fin to loan me?” and I said, “Well, I only said I knew how to do it, I didn’t say I was doing it, and to tell the truth, I can’t get in on it myself unless you’re willing to get in, too, and that’s the damn truth,” and he said, “I don’t get you,” and I said, “It’s not so damn hard to get if you’ll just pay attention, and as a matter of fact it only amounts to missing a few buckets now and then.”

He rolled over on the bed and sat up on the edge and began to scratch around in his crummy hair that went every which way, and pretty soon he said, “You mean throw some games?” and I said, “Hell, no. You think I’d let dear old Pipskill down that way? We just miss enough to keep the score closer than the wise guys figured it, that’s all,” and he said, “It sounds dishonest to me,” and I said, “Well, isn’t that a crying damn shame! You sound like we’d have to lose the damn game or something. I told you we just missed enough to keep the score tight,” and he shook his head and scratched in his crummy hair some more and said, “Just the same, I’ll bet it’s considered crooked,” and I said, “Well, it may be considered crooked by a lot of unreasonable bastards, but what the hell of it, and the way I look at it is, it’s not crooked unless you really lose the damn game.”

He kept on sitting and scratching and thinking about it, and after a long time he said, “Who the hell’s putting out this dough?” and I said, “A guy who’s got it to put out, and that’s damn well all you’ll ever know unless you decide to come in,” and he said, “How much would we get?” and I said, “I don’t know yet, but it’ll be plenty to start with and even more later because this is big time stuff, and make up your God-damn mind one way or the other because I don’t intend to fool around with it forever, if you want to know the truth,” and he said, “Okay, Skimmer, count me in,” and I said, “Now you’re being smart, and what’s more, I just happen to remember an extra fin you can have to make hay with this damn doll, whoever she is.”

The next day I called Candy and told her I had to see her about the deal, and she asked why I couldn’t just tell her over the phone, but I said I’d rather not talk about it over the phone and if she didn’t want to see me about it she could damn well wait until my turn on the schedule came up, and she said, “Jesus Christ, you’ve got more tricks up your sleeve than a card sharp. Well, come on downtown tonight and get it over with,” so I went, and she was right, of course, and I didn’t mind talking about the deal over the phone at all but just wanted to get in an extra turn, which I did.

I went to the Gay Gander and had some drinks and shot the bull a little with Hershell Goans, and at eleven Candy came on to sing in a dress that damn near wasn’t there, and it’s the truth that I was pretty crazy about her and never got tired of her or wanted anyone else all the time I knew her, no matter how many extra turns I managed to get in. After she was finished, she went back to her room to change clothes, and everyone kept clapping for a while to get her to come back and sing some more, though mostly the guys probably just wanted to look at her, but she was pretty snotty about things like that and wouldn’t sing any longer than her half hour even if they beat their damn hands off. We had a drink together at the bar and went out to the Crosley and around to her apartment, and when we were up there she said, “Well, what’s the big news?” and I said, “Nothing except old Micky’s coming in,” and she said, “Why in hell couldn’t you have just said so over the phone?” and I said, “Well I could have said so, as a matter of fact, but there are other things you can’t do over a telephone,” and she threw her hands up in the air and said, “My God, Junior, you’re so insatiable,” which I found out later was just a way of saying I was hard as hell to satisfy.

She wasn’t sore, though, and as a matter of fact she wasn’t so damn easy to satisfy herself, and we wound up having some fun, and afterward she said, “Listen, Junior, you may not know it but Franzie Ketch owns the Gay Gander, and a lot of other people know it, even if you don’t, so now that you’ve closed your deal with him you better not come there any more,” and I said, “Why the hell not?” and she said, “If you’re so damn dumb you can’t see the reason, there’s no use trying to explain it. Just don’t come, that’s all.”

I could see the reason, all right, and said, “Well, where the hell shall I meet you when it’s my turn on the schedule?” and she said, “What’s the matter with this place?” and I said, “Not a damn thing as a matter of fact,” and she said, “All right, then. Now get the hell out of here and let me get some sleep,” and I did.

Out at Pipskill we started basketball practice, and you’d have thought after damn near seven months that old Umplett would have forgotten how we’d got our butts tromped in the national finals the season before just because the other team happened to be better than pistols, but I can damn sure tell you he hadn’t forgotten it, and he was sour and mean and had blood in his eye, and the truth is, he seemed to hate the guts of everyone on the team, especially mine, and I don’t mind admitting that I began to get a hell of a bang out of thinking how I was fooling him by being set up with Francis Z. Ketch to make something on the side. He worked the hell out of us, and if you fumbled a pass or missed a shot or slowed down under ninety miles an hour in the God-damn firehorse game we played, he’d stop the action and chew you out in that quiet way of his that was somehow a hell of a lot worse than if he’d bellowed at you like old Mulloy or someone, and all the time he was chewing he’d be looking at you with his little eyes all sick and sour in their sockets and his lips working around like his words had a lousy taste in his mouth, and if you want to know what I think, I think the son of a bitch was crazy, and in fact I’d bet on it.

He was a good coach, though. Like I said before, he was a damn good coach, and I can’t deny it. We got fast and slick and better than we’d been the year before, and even old Carboy smoothed out and got a little better with the hook, and when we had our first warmup game about a week after the football team wound up in the cellar as usual, there must have been fifteen thousand maniacs piled into the field house to see the team that everyone thought would be national champs sure this year, and certain people damn well knew we’d better be, including us and old Umplett, and after the game everyone thought so more than ever, especially the team we played, because we murdered them. After that we played another team that wasn’t any match for us, and then an outfit from the East breezed in on tour, and they were experienced and supposed to be damn good, and it turned out that this was the first game that Francis Z. Ketch wanted me and Micky to fix the point spread in. It was Candy who called me to pass the word, and I’ll tell you how it was.

I was at the frat house, and this guy called up from downstairs and said, “Telephone, Scaggs,” and I went down and answered, and it was Candy, and she said, “Hello, Junior. Well, it’s your turn on the schedule,” and I said, “I’m damn glad to hear it, but it’s the first time you ever called me to tell me so, and I’d like to know why,” and she laughed and said, “Not my schedule, Junior. Franzie Ketch’s schedule. You better come on downtown tonight and get the details,” and I said, “Well, since I’ve got to come downtown anyhow, you might as well work your schedule around to fit Franzie’s,” and she said, “Lord God, you can figure more angles than any engineer. Remember to come’ right to my place and not to the Gay Gander,” and I said I would and did.

I got there before she did and had to wait in the hall, and I made up my mind right then if I was going to have to meet her that way, not knowing just when she’d get there, I’d have to have a key to the joint so I could go on in and make myself comfortable. She came along after a while and said, “Hi, Junior,” and we went in and had a drink, and she said, “I guess I’ll have to quit giving you drinks now that you’re playing basketball again,” and I said, “The hell you will! You just let me worry about the God-damn basketball,” and she said, “Well, you can start worrying about the game Saturday night, because Franzie Ketch says the wise money is going for you to win by eight points on your home court, but he figures it will be closer,” and I said, “How closer?” and she said, “The way he sees it, not over seven.”

Well, that’s how it was, the way we-settled it, and I started to get down to other business, and she said, “How the hell do you expect to keep on being a star athlete with the kind of habits you’ve got?” and I said she could damn well quit bothering herself about it, and after a while she did, and when I was finally ready to get on back out to Pipskill, I remembered about having to wait in the hall and said, “By the way, you better get a key made for me,” and she asked me what the hell I meant, a key, and I said, “A key to open the God-damn door with. You think I want to stand out in the lousy hall waiting every time you’re late?” and she said, “Well, of all the lousy damn brass I ever heard of, this takes the prize. I’ll just tell you, Junior, that you can wait in the hall or in hell or any place you damn well please, but if you think you’re getting a key to my apartment you can put it out of your little mind right now,” and I could see that she was really in an uproar about it for some God-damn reason or other, so I let it drop for the time being, but I didn’t put it out of my mind, like she said, but intended to come back to it later because I couldn’t see any sense whatever in waiting around for her in the damn hall.

I went back to the frat house and told Micky how it had been set, and he said, “It oughtn’t to be very hard to make it look good at seven points because this team’s supposed to be pretty sharp,” and I said, “Well, we damn well better make it look good because I’ve got a feeling old Umplett will smell something damn fast if we don’t,” and Micky said, “That’s for sure, and I don’t mind admitting that the son of a bitch gives me the creeps,” and I said that went for me, too, doubled in spades.

The truth is, we damn near flubbed it. It was the other team’s fault, really, the bastards, because they didn’t come through the way they were supposed to, and the way it was, they played sharp and fast the first half and kept within four points all the way, which was the widest spread we built, but then, the second half, damned if they didn’t grow all feet and thumbs and get as cold as a damn ice cube, and almost before we knew it we had a lead of twelve points. I got worried as hell, and that’s the truth, and during a time out I whispered to Micky to start missing some, for God’s sake, and he whispered back, “Well, damn it, it’s not so much our missing some as figuring a way to get those spooks to start hitting some,” and I had to admit to myself that he had a damn good point.

To make it worse, that God-damn Carboy had a good night and even hooked in a few, and Micky and I had to look so damn bad to make up for it that I got to worrying about old Umplett jerking us out of there, and then we wouldn’t have had any chance at all to fix the spread. In the fourth quarter, though, the other team got its eye back and began to move the ball better, and with the help of Micky and me they got the spread narrowed to six points with less than a minute to play, and it looked like everything would come out all right after all, and it was right then that the thing happened that looked pretty God-damn phony, and I’ll have to admit it.

The other team had the ball and took it downcourt and banged away at the basket and missed, and old Carboy went up and took it off the boards and passed it out, and we took it down in no hurry because we had the game on ice, and ordinarily we’d have just hung onto the ball until the gun. They were playing a man-for-man defense, though, and the guy on me got sloppy and dropped away, and old Carboy in the slot got the ball and popped it out to me, and there I was in the open with the God-damn ball and plenty of time to dribble in and lay one up that would have been as easy as hitting a bull with a spade. To tell the truth, I didn’t know what the hell to do, and so I wound up not doing a damn thing, and the spook who was supposed to be guarding me woke up and got in between me and the basket, and it looked pretty phony, like I said, and as a matter of fact it stank.

The gun went off then, and we went in the locker room, and when I came out of the shower and started dressing, old Umplett came out of his office and looked at me with his sour, sick eyes and said, “Why the hell didn’t you go in for that last shot?” and I’d been thinking he might ask me about it and had a reason ready for him, so I said, “Well, we were ahead and only had a few seconds to go, and I thought there wasn’t any use in it.”

He kept on looking at me, and his lips sort of curled back off his crummy teeth in a little smile that didn’t have any Goddamn humor in it at all, and pretty soon he said in this very soft voice, “Well, isn’t that just too God-damn touching for words! If there’s anything makes me want to break right out in tears, it’s a guy like you who has such a tender heart that he just can’t stand beating anyone any worse than’s absolutely necessary. I’ve been at this business a long time, and sometimes I get to feeling pretty low and thinking maybe it’s been a wasted life and I’ve never done anyone in the world any good to speak of, and then a fine, tender-hearted lad like you comes along and makes me feel ashamed of feeling and thinking that way. However, we got to remember to be realistic about things, and one of the things we got to remember is that there’s a time to hold the ball and run out the clock, and there’s a time when it’s better to take a shot, especially when it’s a dead cinch to make and not even enough time left for the other team to get the ball back downcourt. I don’t have to tell you this, though, because you’re a natural sharpie and know damn well when to shoot and when not to, and you knew you should’ve taken that shot tonight. I don’t know why you didn’t, except for the natural tenderness of your heart, and I don’t want to know, but I can God-damn well tell you that if you ever pull another phony trick like that while you’re playing on this team I’ll make you sorry you were ever born, and don’t you forget it.”

Well, I could see the son of a bitch didn’t trust me and was going to be suspicious of every lousy little thing I did, and I knew damn well I’d have to smooth it up and do better if I ever intended to get away with it and had just about decided to tell Francis Z. Ketch to blow it when I got a call from Candy to come downtown to her apartment and pick up something she had for me. I went down there in the Crosley to pick it up, and it was the payoff for fixing the spread, and as a matter of fact it was five hundred for me and three for Micky, and I got the extra two for setting it up and being the contact man, which was just adding sauce to the gravy, the way I looked at it, since the one I had to contact was Candy and she usually had something extra for me herself.

She gave me the money and said, “Well, how does it feel to be in the chips?” and I thought I might as well push it a little while I was at it and said, “It feels pretty damn good, all right, but Francis Ketch doesn’t need to think I’m going to keep on fixing points for any lousy five C’s per, and you can tell him from me it’ll have to go up a couple of C’s each time,” and she looked at me with her eyes wide for a few seconds and then said, “By God, you might be worth hanging onto, at that, if you can manage to keep living,” and I said, “Don’t worry about that, and while we’re on the subject of living, how about living it up a little right now?” and she laughed and shook her head and said, “Probably someday I’ll wonder why I was ever so damn crazy, but just the same I think you’re pretty cute, Junior, and I’m tempted to cooperate.” Which she did.

I went back out to Pipskill pretty late, and the next day I slipped Micky the three hundred, and it bucked him up some and made him feel like going on with the deal with Francis Z. Ketch, and the truth is, he’d been pretty shaky about it and inclined to give it up. The first part of December, about the tenth, we took off on a tour, and this time we swung west instead of east. There wasn’t any worry about fixing the spreads, of course, because Francis Z. Ketch couldn’t keep in contact, and we let ourselves go and won all five of the games we played by big scores, except one that was close in California, and by the time we got back, Pipskill was already being voted number one team in the country, and I was way out in front personally in individual scoring. I might as well tell you right off that the team and I both stayed right there all season, in spite of my having to miss a few on purpose in some games, and as a matter of fact I got a lot of attention in the sports pages and had my picture in about six national magazines, two times in color, and was called the Pipskill Flash and the Pipskill Ace and other things like that.

We got back to Pipskill and laid off until after Christmas, and then we won two home games with the spreads fixed, and they worked out a lot smoother than the first one, and I didn’t get the two C’s more each game, but I did get one C more, which was as much as I’d expected, anyhow. The only thing that bothered me was that God-damn Umplett, and I kept thinking he was looking at me and watching me and crap like that, but I decided it was just because I had him on my lousy mind all the time, and finally I put him out of it, and damned if I didn’t feel better right away.

Right after that, just when I was feeling free and easy and loose as ashes about it all, the whole thing started going to hell and it seems like that’s the way things go sometimes, just all to hell and nothing you can do about it, but anyhow, I guess I’d better get into it and tell how it happened. It was all that God-damn Micky’s fault, and I don’t mind saying he had me fooled all the way, and I never even suspected that he’d play me the dirty trick he did. We started conference play and won a couple of games away from home, and I noticed he didn’t play up to par and made a hell of a lot of mistakes he didn’t usually make, but I didn’t think much about it because everyone gets off his game now and then, and the truth is, it was the way he started acting in the room at the frat house that finally made me wonder what the hell was itching him. He acted like a spook, I mean, like he had a God-damn bellyache or something, and finally one night I tried to get a little chatter going with him about this and that, and he wouldn’t say much but acted like he wished to hell I’d get away and leave him alone, so I said right out, “What the hell’s the matter with you, anyhow? As far as I can see, you’re about as gay as a pregnant spinster.”

He said, “I been meaning to talk with you about it, Skimmer, and the truth is, I’m pretty damn miserable,” and I said, “What the hell you got to be miserable about?” and he sighed like he had a God-damn pain and said, “You remember the girl I told you about? The one I borrowed the fin to make hay with?”

I said I did, and he said, “Well, I didn’t make any hay, and as a matter of fact I ought to have my tail kicked for even thinking about it because this girl doesn’t go for stuff like that and has extremely high standards,” and I hooted and said, “Well, pass the God-damn collection plate!” and he got red in the face and a stubborn look in his eyes and said, “No bull, Skimmer, I’ve really got it bad over this girl, and she’s got it bad over me, and the truth is, we’ve been talking about getting married and everything,” and I said, “Well, if you’ve got to get married to get it, you better go ahead and get married, but I don’t see why the hell it should give you gas on the stomach just to think about it,” and he said, “It’s not that, Skimmer. The thing that’s wrong, it’s this deal we got to fix the spreads in the basketball games. If Helen ever found out about it, she wouldn’t have a damn thing more to do with me because she’s got these God-damn high standards, and besides, if you want to know it, I’m beginning to feel kind of dirty about it myself, and I wish I’d never got started at it as a matter of fact.”

I could see right away that it was pretty damn serious, and I don’t mind admitting that it scared the hell out of me, and I said, “I don’t know anything about how damn dirty you’re feeling, but I can tell you one thing, and that is that this Helen, whoever she is, damn well better not find out anything about it,” and he said, “Oh, I wouldn’t tell her, of course,” and I said, “Besides, you been getting paid pretty good for helping fix the spread, and I’ll bet Helen’s been getting her share of it one way or another, and what’s more, I’ll bet she didn’t bother to ask whether it was dirty or not,” and this made him sore, and he stood up and stuck out his stinking chin and said, “You lay off Helen or I’ll knock your God-damn teeth out,” and I laughed and said, “Lay off, hell! It looks to me like a guy can’t even lay on!”

When I said that, he flipped his lousy lid and swung at me and missed and I swung at him and hit and knocked him back across the God-damn bed, and he bounced up and came back at me, and altogether we made so damn much noise that a couple of guys from the next room ran in and pulled us apart, and one of them said, “What the hell’s going on? What the hell’s the matter with you guys?” We couldn’t tell the truth, as you can see, so I lied and said it was nothing much, just a little disagreement, but now we had it out of our God-damn systems and everything would be all right. They patted us on the backs and said sure, they knew how it was and everything, and pretty soon they got out and went back to their own crummy room, but it wasn’t all right, not by a damn sight, and I knew right then he was going to play me a dirty trick, and I should’ve had my head examined for trusting him another God-damn minute.

I thought about it and wondered how to get him back to being the same old Micky, and one of the things I thought of was to go and find this Helen and make her or something and break it up between them, but I wasn’t sure it would work out just right, because you never can tell exactly how a guy will react to having his girl made by a friend, and besides, to tell the truth, I had Candy on my mind and couldn’t put my heart in it. Anyhow, as it turned out, I wouldn’t have had time, because there was a heavy non-conference game coming up, and the night before the game Candy called me and told me to come downtown, and I went, and she said, “Franzie can take this team and seven and get plenty of takers, so he says for you to keep it under that,” and I said I’d try.

She said, “What the hell you mean, try?” and I said, “I mean there may be complications in it,” and she said, “Junior, you don’t know anything about complications until you foul up on one of these deals. Explain yourself. What the hell you mean, complications?” and I told her about how old Micky had been set on his tail by this Helen doll, and how he was thinking about backing out on his agreement with Francis Z. Ketch because of it, and Candy said, “Believe it or not, Junior, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt in this thing, in spite of feeling personally that it would do you good to get slapped around a little, and so maybe we’d better get in touch with Franzie and get you off the hook ahead of time just in case something goes wrong.”

“Well,” I said, “I sort of hate to put the finger on old Micky right now because I’ve got an idea he may come out of it, and anyhow, I’m pretty damn sure I can talk him into sticking one more game at least,” and she said, “It’s your funeral, Junior, and don’t expect me to send flowers,” and I said, “You talk like I’m practically in the God-damn morgue or something.”

She said, “Famous last words, Junior,” and I said, “Well, in that case, I’d better start living up what’s left to live in a hurry,” and she said, “My God, we went through that routine the last time you were here. I’d think you’d be absolutely limp!” but the truth is, she didn’t think any such damn thing and was pretty good at living it up herself, and that’s the big reason we hit it off so damn good, and in my opinion it’s a crying shame it had to end up the way it did, which I’ll tell about, and all because that damn Micky had to go off the deep end over a doll who was all cluttered up with high standards and stuff like that.

I didn’t have a chance to talk to Micky the next day, and as a matter of fact I didn’t have a chance to talk to him until we were in the locker room in the field house just before the game. I got him in a corner and told him how the spread was fixed and what it was supposed to be, and the son of a bitch just looked at me with his eyes all snotty and didn’t say a damn word, and I had a feeling right then that he was going to do me the dirty, and damned if he didn’t. I don’t intend to go into it much because, to tell the truth, it’s sort of painful to remember, and I don’t like to think about it, but I could tell from the beginning that the bastard was out to make it a big night, and the worst of it was, he happened to be hot and couldn’t miss and was popping the damn ball through the bucket from all angles. The other team called a time out after a while, and I whispered to Micky, “What the hell you trying to do, you crazy bastard?” and he looked at me with these snotty eyes and said, “Go to hell,” and I said, “You’ll think go to hell if you get fouled up with Francis Z. Ketch,” and he said, “Francis Z.

Ketch can go to hell, too, as far as I’m concerned,” and I knew I’d had it, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I kept on trying, though, and wouldn’t pass to the bastard even when I saw him open for a shot, but old spooky Carboy kept feeding them to him from the slot, and as a matter of fact I had to look so damn bad trying to keep the score down that old Umplett finally jerked me, the son of a bitch, and it was the first time I’d ever been jerked except once in a while for a short rest. He wouldn’t even look at me when I went over and sat down on the bench, but I could tell he was smelling something and hating my guts, and I rode the God-damn bench the rest of the game, and I won’t tell you the final score but will just say that the spread was a hell of a lot too wide to win any money for Francis Z. Ketch, and as a matter of fact lost him a hell of a potful. The God-damn maniac spectators were going crazy and raising hell, and the lousy band started playing what they called the victory march, but from my point of view there was damn little to celebrate, and I went in the dressing room feeling lower than a snake’s belly and wondering if Francis Z. Ketch could blame me for what had happened, even if it wasn’t my God-damn fault whatever.

I showered and got dressed in a hurry, and I was sitting on the bench by my locker putting on my lousy shoes when Micky came up and looked down at me and said, “Now what do you think?” and I looked up at him and said, “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re a dirty, double-crossing son of a bitch, but you better quit worrying about what I think and start worrying about what Francis Z. Ketch thinks, and I wouldn’t be in your shoes for all the God-damn dolls with high standards between here and Texas,” and as a matter of fact I didn’t even particularly like the idea of being in my own shoes, but I didn’t say so.

He turned and walked away without saying anything more, and the next morning he moved all his crummy stuff to another room in the frat house, and as far as I was concerned it was good riddance of bad rubbish, as the saying goes. I kept thinking all day I’d get some kind of word from Candy about how Francis Z. Ketch was feeling about the way the game came out, and I cut all my stinking classes just to hang around the phone, but I didn’t hear a damn word. I went to basketball practice when the time came, and old Umplett didn’t have a damn word to say, either, which was a relief, and when I got back, the guys at the house said there still hadn’t been any call for me, and I was just about to decide that Francis Z. Ketch was going to be reasonable about it when the phone rang, and it was Candy, and she said, “You better get down to my apartment in a hurry, Junior,” and I got in the Crosley and went.

When I got there, she opened the door and let me in, and I said, “Hi, doll,” and she said, “You forget the schedule, Junior. This is strictly business,” and I looked past her and saw no one but Francis Z. Ketch himself in a chair and knew that it damn well was. He had his little hands folded across his pot and this little smile on his stinking little mouth, and he said, “Well, Skimmer, it seems there’s been a misunderstanding,” and I said, “Well, it wasn’t exactly a God-damn misunderstanding,” and he said, “You can call it what you like, but I lost a great sum of money, which disturbs me greatly, and I’ll confess that there’s nothing in the world disturbs me quite so much as losing a great sum of money, especially when it’s due to the defection of a trusted associate.”

I didn’t quite get the meaning of all the words, but I damn well got the general meaning, you can bet your butt on that, and I got this God-damn cold feeling that he gave you with his soft voice and his stinking little red smiling mouth, and I said, “Well, I did my damnedest to keep the spread down, and even got jerked out of the game for looking so lousy doing it, and the truth is, that damn Micky Spicer met a girl with high standards and wouldn’t have any part of it,” and he said, “Are you suggesting that Spicer refused to cooperate?” and I said, “Well, if you’ve got any doubts, you can look at the Goddamn box scores in the paper, and I’m not suggesting a damn thing but saying it right out.”

He sat there looking at me and started flipping his crummy underlip with one finger like he was thinking about it, and after a while he said, “Why wasn’t I informed in time to avoid this fiasco?” and I said, “To tell the truth, I didn’t think he’d do me the dirty when it came right down to it, and I didn’t find out for sure he was going to do it until the game started,” and he nodded and said, “I’m inclined to believe that you personally have been guilty of nothing more than stupidity, which was a calculated risk I accepted in the beginning. This Spicer fellow, however, seems to have pulled a deliberate double-cross. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet, and I think it’s time I had it. You can be of some assistance in the matter.”

I said, “How’s that?” and he said, “Why, you can simply persuade him to come downtown for the purpose,” and I said, “The hell I can. He’s got his nose hard and moved out of our room and won’t have a damn thing to do with me, and I couldn’t persuade him to take a new automobile as a gift,” and he said, “Well, I can see how that might be true, under the circumstances. Perhaps, to avoid any further bungling, I’d better send Conky to get him. Conky is the most persuasive fellow at my command, and I’m sure he can convince Spicer that he shouldn’t deny me the pleasure of meeting him.”

He got up then and got his hat and said good-by and left, and he wasn’t fooling me any with his polite talk and stinking little smile, not a damn bit, and I knew that whatever he had in mind for Micky might be a pleasure to him but none at all to Micky, and I felt a little bad about it and wished it didn’t have to happen, but I didn’t really figure it was any skin off my butt, after all, because the simple truth is, the son of a bitch brought it on himself and deserved it.

After Francis Z. Ketch was gone, Candy said, “Well, that was a close shave, Junior, and it’s damn lucky you had a sucker,” and I said, “It seems to me that I was the sucker, not getting a damn cent for this game in spite of trying my best, and it seems like the least you could do to make up for it would be to put me on the schedule for tonight,” and she said, “Well, you may get slapped down now and then, but you sure bounce up in a hurry, I’ll have to admit, and it might be a good idea to put you on the schedule, at that, because the way things are looking at the moment, it could damn well be your last turn,”, and as it happened, that’s the way it turned out, and I wish it hadn’t.

The next afternoon, Micky wasn’t at practice, and I wondered about it but didn’t say anything. I was feeling nervous as a whore in church, to tell the truth, and after practice was over I went and got something to eat in a joint and walked around some and wound up in a stinking movie, and when I finally got back to the frat house it was pretty late, and no one but old Umplett himself was sitting in my room waiting for me. It scared the hell out of me to come onto him like that all of a sudden without any warning, him just sitting and looking at me with his God-damn sick eyes full of that damn unreasonable hate of his, and I said, “Well, hello, Coach,” and he said, “Don’t bother pretending to be glad to see me, and in fact don’t even talk to me any more than’s absolutely necessary,” and I said, “What the hell’s the matter?” and he said, “You know damn well what’s the matter,” and I said, “Like hell I do,” and he said, “Well, in that case, just come along with me and I’ll damn well show you.”

I followed the sour son of a bitch downstairs and out to his car, and I didn’t like it, and as a matter of fact I was a hell of a lot more worried than I’d ever been or intend to be again. He didn’t say another damn word, and I didn’t, either, and we rode downtown to a hell of a big building with a drive going up in front of it to a parking area, and we went up the drive and parked and got out, and I could see the building was a hospital. Well, I knew damn well what had happened then, that Francis Z. Ketch had had the pleasure of meeting Micky Spicer, though maybe it was more or less by proxy, as they put it, and whatever way they put it, it sure hadn’t been any God-damn pleasure for Micky.

Old Umplett and I went inside and up in the elevator and down a hall to the room where they’d put old Micky, and I wouldn’t even have recognized him if I hadn’t known damn well who it was, and he was in bed with his head all in bandages like one of these God-damn sultans or something, and one arm in a cast and lying on top of the sheet that covered him, and I could see that he was in a hell of a bad way and wasn’t even conscious, in fact. We stopped just inside the door and looked at him, and a nurse was beside the bed and came over and said, “No one is allowed in here for the present. I’m sorry but you’ll have to leave,” so we backed out in the hall, and I said, “What the hell happened to him?” and he looked at me with these damn eyes of his and said in this soft, sarcastic voice, “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know anything about it yet, do you? Well, I know Spicer was a buddy of yours and that you’re naturally worried all to hell about him, so I’ll explain it to you. He was in an accident. He was wandering around down in one of those narrow streets near the river for some crazy reason or other, and he got smeared by a hit and run driver. The cops had a wild idea he’d been beaten up and thrown out of a car, but I managed to convince them it couldn’t have been anything like that.”

He stopped and stood looking down at the floor, and for a minute I had an idea he was going to spit, which would have been a hell of a thing to do in a hospital, but he didn’t and then he looked up at me again and said very softly, “You see, it’s like this. This year I got the national champs. This year I got the champs as sure as hell, and nothing, nothing in the God-damn world, is going to get in the way or stop us or keep us from being champs. It’ll be tougher now than it might have been otherwise, because Spicer’s got a busted arm and a fractured skull and won’t play another game this season, but we’ll be national champs just the same, and I’ll tell you why. We’ll be champs because of you, Scaggs. We’ll be champs because you’re a sharpshooting, ball-hawking natural, whatever else you are or aren’t, and from now on you’ll play basketball each game and every game like you never played it before, and if I get the idea you’re letting me down one little bit, God save your soul!”

After he’d said that, he turned around and walked off down the hall, and damned if he didn’t get in his lousy car and drive back to Pipskill and leave me to get back by myself the best way I could, and a taxi was the best way and cost me over two bucks. I’ll have to admit I was in a damn sweat, and the truth is, I never met a guy who got under my skin any more than he did, not even Francis Z. Ketch. I was pretty sure he didn’t know exactly what had happened, and didn’t even want to know, but he damn well knew what had happened in a general kind of way, I wasn’t kidding myself about that, and mostly what put me in a sweat was, it looked to me like I was in a crack between him and Ketch. I worried about it for three damn days, and finally I decided I’d talk to Candy about it, so I called her and said, “Hello, Candy, this is Skimmer,” and she said, “Who?” and I said, “Skimmer, God-damn it. Skimmer Scaggs,” and she said, “Look, Buster, you better get a new routine. I don’t know anyone named Skimmer Scaggs and never have.”

Well, I was so God-damn surprised I couldn’t find my damn tongue for a minute, and by the time I’d found it she’d hung up. I thought about it quite a while, until after basketball practice that afternoon, as a matter of fact, and the more I thought about it, her trying to kick me out of bed that way, the madder I got, and that evening I got in the Crosley and went downtown to the Gay Gander. It was still about twenty minutes before time for Candy’s spot, so I climbed on a stool at the bar and ordered a highball and was just about to take a swallow when someone said, “Sorry, sonny, we don’t serve minors in this bar,” and I set the highball down on the bar and turned around on the stool, and it was Hershell Goans who had said it.

“What the hell you mean, minor?” I said, and he said, “A minor is a kid under twenty-one, sonny,” and I said, “Well I’ve drunk about fifty gallons of your God-damn slop in here, and you never worried about how old I was before, and besides, I’m over twenty-one, and you know it damn well, and to be exact I’m twenty-three,” and he said, “How the hell would I know how old you are? I don’t know you from Adam’s off ox. You got a birth certificate on you?” and I said, “Oh, sure, I carry a God-damn birth certificate around with me all the time, and don’t give me any crap about not knowing me, either, because that’s the same runaround Candy’s trying to give me, and I’m here to find out why.”

He showed his stinking teeth to me and said, “Look, sonny, don’t” try to tell me you’re a personal friend of Candy Caldwell’s,” and I said, “Well, if I’m not, she’s sure been giving a lot of good stuff to a stranger,” and he clucked his crummy tongue against his teeth and said, “Shame on you, sonny, saying things like that about a nice girl like Candy Caldwell. Don’t you know you could be sued for slander for saying things like that?” and I was getting pretty sick of his snotty attitude and said, “Well, I don’t know a God-damn thing about being sued for slander, but I’ll tell you what I do know. I know you’re going to lose a handful of your God-damn teeth if you don’t get off my back.”

I could see that he was beginning to get riled up himself, and he pulled in his teeth and smoothed out his face and said, “Look, sonny, I don’t like nasty kids who come in here making threats and trying to make the entertainers. I ought to have you thrown right out on your tail, but I’m a kindly guy by nature and inclined to give you a break. Suppose you just step back to Miss Caldwell’s dressing room with me, and we’ll get this all straightened out,” and I said I sure as hell would, and we went through a door into a hall and down the hall to another door, and he knocked and said, “It’s Hershell, Candy,” and she said on the inside, “Come on in, Hersh.”

He opened the door, and I went in ahead of him, and Candy was sitting at a dressing table fixing her face. She was wearing a white satin dress that wasn’t a hell of a lot more than she’d worn on schedule, which wasn’t a damn thing, and she looked up and saw me in the mirror, and it’s a fact that you couldn’t tell from her face that she’d ever seen me before. Hershell Goans said, “Here’s a guy says he knows you, Candy,” and she said to the mirror, “Lots of guys say they know me,” and he said, “You ever seen him before?” and she said, “Never,” I’m damned if she didn’t, and he turned to me with his teeth out again and said, “There you are, Sonny. Satisfied?”

Well, I wasn’t so damn dumb I didn’t know what was coming off, and I’d known it the minute Candy gave me the works on the telephone, which was that Francis Z. Ketch had put out the word to cut me loose, and I said to Candy, “Well, I’m satisfied if you are, because you’re nothing but a round-heeled bitch, and the truth is, I was beginning to get tired of it, anyhow,” and that got under her skin and she jumped up and said, “Tired of it, hell! You couldn’t get enough of it!” and I laughed and said, “I thought you’d never seen me before,” and she said, “What a smart little bastard you are!” and Hershell Goans said, “Yeah. Too damn smart,” and he’d slipped in behind me and grabbed my arm and bent it up behind my back, and it hurt like hell.

I tried to get loose, but every damn time I moved he’d shove up on my arm, and it felt like it was damn well coming out of the socket at the shoulder, and finally I got quiet and looked at Candy, and she said, “Look, Junior, as a Goddamn athlete you ought to know that all schedules end when the season’s over, and the simple truth is, the season’s over for you and me. I won’t say it wasn’t fun, and as a matter of fact I’ll admit it was, but it wasn’t enough fun to justify keeping it up when the percentage is out of it, and now that Franzie’s goons have got too God-damn ambitious and brought the heat on, the percentage is damn well out of it. Right now the risk would be too big for the cut, and that means that you were useful once but aren’t useful any more, and it’s tough as hell and all that, but that’s the way it is. In brief, Junior, it’s just like I said to Hershell. I don’t know you. I never saw you. Who the hell’s Skimmer Scaggs?”

I could see that she was laying it on the line, all right, and that there wasn’t a damn bit of use fighting it, but the truth is, she looked pretty slick in that white satin dress, and I didn’t want to give up my turn on the schedule in spite of what I’d said to the contrary, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of knowing it, so I said, “Well, you may not know who Skimmer Scaggs is now, but you’ll damn well know who he is before he’s through, and everyone else in the damn country will know who he is, and that’s a hell of a lot more than they’ll ever know about a doll who doesn’t do anything but diddle on a schedule and sing dirty songs in a joint,” and then before Hershell Goans could push up on my arm again, I jerked away and turned and kicked him right where it did the most good and scooted out into the hall and down the alley, and from the God-damn noise in the room behind me, it sounded like the bastard’s name should have been Hershell Groans instead of Hershell Goans. I went down the alley and around to the street where I’d left the Crosley, and all the way back to Pipskill I kept thinking about Candy and wishing the schedule hadn’t ended, and as a matter of fact I still wish it, and it seems like I remember her more than any other doll I ever knew, unless possibly Marsha Davis.

Well, as I see it, there’s not a hell of a lot of use going on with it much longer, except to say that Pipskill went all the way and got to be national champs, even without Micky Spicer, and afterward I was pretty tired of it, especially at nothing but a hundred a month, and decided to quit. I went ahead on the quiet and got lined up to play with a pro team, the team I’m still playing with, and then I went around to old Umplett’s office in the field house and walked in and said, “Well, Coach, I’ve decided to quit old Pipskill, and I’ve just come around to tell you to blow it.”

He was sitting at his desk in a swivel chair, and he swung around in it very slowly and looked at me a long time with those God-damn sour, sick eyes of his, and then he said very softly, “So you’re running out. Well, I’ve been expecting it, and I’m not surprised, and it’s God’s own wonder that you stuck around as long as you did. But you made us national champs. It was mainly you, and I’ll hand it to you, and you’re welcome. I made you, and you made us, and we’re even and quits and to hell with it. Go, and God go with you, Mr. Scaggs. I’ll follow your career with interest, and I have no doubt at all that you’ll be a shining star in the professional world, and God himself knows the satisfaction it will be to my soul to remember the part I had in the making of you.”

Then he started to laugh, not out loud like a reasonable person, but so softly you could hardly hear it, like he was laughing at something in his own mind that he didn’t even think was very funny, and I think the son of a bitch was crazy, if you want to know the truth of it, and I turned around and got the hell out of there.

And that’s all I’m going to tell about. The last damn word. All I wanted in the first place was to tell how I got started and made something of myself, and now I’ve told it, and you can see for yourself that it was all because of this God-damn crazy game and nothing else.