The Moth

7

The football was an accident, and as you might expect, came from some ideas Denny got. The day after the big afternoon on the bay he was due to leave for Frederick, but didn’t. Baltimore Polytechnic, where I had entered the year before, opened, and you’d think Frederick High School would have opened too, but he didn’t start for it, and every time I’d see him there’d be a lot of mysterious talk about something he was cooking up. Then one Sunday his parents were in town, and they came over to the house. Then I was called in to answer questions about my teachers. Denny’s mother was a tiny little woman, that smiled and listened to what everybody said, but his father was a big, two-fisted customer, that wanted attention whenever he talked, and what he wanted to know about was physics. So it turned out that Denny was so serious about engineering, and the course so limited at Frederick, that it was practically a necessity that he check in at good old Poly, where I was, and where everything of that kind was wonderful. Now this holy consecration that had come over him was news to me. I think I’ve mentioned I’ve a mechanical gift myself, and I was hep, even if they weren’t, that his lech for cam shafts and turbines and belts was about as hot as last night’s potato, and what he didn’t know about them would fill a public library, and what he did would go on one side of a rubber washer, with plenty of room for his autograph. So when it was all fixed up about Poly, I took him out into the garage, and threw on the squeeze. “What is it, smart guy?”

“Weren’t you listening? As prerequisite, for all engineering, every one of these technical schools put physics first on the list, because—”

“I’m asking you, what is it?”

“... Well look, I could show you about this mechanical stuff, but—”

“All right, show me.”

I threw open the tool chest of my car, which at that time I carried under the seat, and he looked at it. I pointed at a Stillson wrench and said: “What is it?” He looked uncomfortable and said: “So all right. What difference does it make?”

“Listen, this is not them. It’s me. Talk.”

“It could be football.”

“Football?”

“It’s a game. Or feetball, maybe you call it.”

“And?”

“Maybe I’m going out for it.”

“Why here?”

“Why not?”

“Why not Frederick?”

“Does anybody pay attention to Frederick?”

“Who pays attention to Poly?”

“Everybody... Listen, dope, you think I’m passing up all that moola? It’s amateur, sure it’s amateur. Just the same, they slip you. Don’t tell me they don’t.”

He was awful sure that he was on the trail of something big. “To cut in, you’ve got to have a rep, and the only one place to get that rep is in some high school that gets in the papers. For Frederick you could play till you dropped and not one scout from anywhere would come to see you. Poly, though, that’s different. So — engineering, physics, what’s the dif? You got to tell ’em something.”

Of course that made sense. That you could tell your father the truth and not fool him wouldn’t occur to you at that age. Well, can you? If Denny had come out with that stuff about football, what would his father have said? That he was crazy, as of course he was. Just the same a crazy guy came for a good time too, and now and then, not too often but sometimes, a crazy horse wins.

Denny didn’t have his growth yet, but he wasn’t far from it, and at least he looked like something that ought to be playing football. He was about medium height, five feet eight or nine, but stocky, specially in the chest and upper legs. His waist was small, but his torso bulged out above it, and from his hips to his knees he was thick, specially in back, so his hindside stuck out like a girl’s. But you had to see it to believe how fast he could pump his legs along, and after he went out for practice and I stood around watching him, I suddenly got it through my head that maybe he was right, he could be going places. The coach must have thought so too, because pretty soon he had Denny standing by the first team to learn formations. And then sure enough, on Friday, when we played our first game, with an outfit I’ll call Calvert, there was Denny in the opening line-up, at right halfback. But on running, blocking, passing, and kicking, everything except tackling, he was as bad as he could get and still have on a suit. Toward the end of the second quarter he got yanked, and Gus Schoenfeld, who had had the job in the first place, was put in, and Denny wasn’t put back. That ended his career, for the time being anyway, in spite of his big talk, his limp, and his alibi, which was that he had turned his ankle on the kick-off. He kept going out for practice, but was shoved over to the third team, or the ninth maybe, some outfit that the coach never even saw.

But I kept wondering why. In the first place, I’d tangled with him a lot, and he could take it, I knew that. Maybe he folded after round one, but for that long he was a tornado. And in the second place, there were those tackles he made. Football’s rough, every part of it, but the tackle can’t be faked. A guy that’ll come up fast, slip past the interference, line out his runner, then cut him down and really cut him down, so he’s on the grass and the ball is dead, that guy has something. Mind, I don’t say he’s much good to his team yet. Tackling’s defensive, and you can’t win games with a o-o score. For that you need touchdowns, but if they take more than the guts that tackling takes, they don’t take any less either, and that’s what crossed me up. Because that much Denny had. And yet, even in Scrubville where he was now, he couldn’t make two yards before he was thrown. Then after a while I saw what the trouble was, and as usual it came from a slight case of looky-looky-looky. On defense that was all right, because on busting up plays he could show off fine and nobody did it better. But on offense, advertising how fast he could run, shooting past his interference until he was away out front, that may have been a fine way to lead a parade but it was a poor way to hit a line. Because then the line hit him and it was the same old story: second down, ten to go. I argued with him about it, and he got hot and said he knew what he was doing and what counted was speed and he had it and he meant to use it and soon he’d get the recognition that was coming to him. I said he should follow his interference, and I even put on a suit and went out there, got myself put in the squad that he was in, and because I could run a little too, made the backfield. When I was part of his interference I’d try to keep him near me, but it was no soap. And then one time when he was out in the open, with no protection, some kid piled into him head-on, and it was an hour before they could get him quiet, from the hysteria the shock brought on, and he was so ashamed of the way he had blubbered that he came over that night and at last asked me to lay it out for him, what he had to do.

So I drew him some pictures of the plays and what he ought to be doing, and he studied them and tried to reform his character. Then at night we’d slip over to the park and try a few things. I’d trot and he’d follow, and no matter how I’d duck or turn or twist, he’d stay with me. Then we’d step up the speed, until we looked like a lunatic and his shadow zipping around under the trees. Then we’d reverse it and I’d follow him. Then we thought we better try a little blocking, and right there, trying to figure things out by electric light, was where I learned what was to make me famous a second time. There’s more bunk going around about blocking than anything else in football, and it’s seldom done right, and I came to the conclusion, fooling around out there with Denny, that the trouble was that guys tried to do too much. I mean, from what’s said to them in practice, they get an imaginary idea they’re to aim for some spot about three feet ahead of the tackler, so when the lines cross they’ll catch him in the middle and spill him cold so the runner can go on for a touchdown. And occasionally that’s how it happens. But mostly what they hit is fresh air first and green grass second, and the runner gets smeared. So I thought: Why not aim for the tackler? Why not just bump him? If you bump him hard enough it takes him out of the play but not necessarily you, if you hold your feet

So that’s how we did, and from the speed we both had, and the weight we got into it after we caught the hang of it, it looked like we were going to be bad news for somebody, sooner or later.

The day we began pulling our stuff with the third team Denny went down for so many touchdowns everybody kind of lost count. But the word must have been sent over, because pretty soon the coach was there and next day Denny was back with the first squad, and I was right at his side. So our next game was with an outfit I’ll call Chesapeake, and we went over to the stadium with paper streamers on our cars and making quite a little noise. What they did to us was murder, for about a quarter and half the next quarter. In our stands was nothing but gloom, because they ran up three touchdowns on us before we could turn around, and kicked two goals. Denny and I sat with the other subs on the bench, and it wasn’t till the third touchdown had been made that we got sent out, both of us together. “Don’t forget to report to the referee.” A fat chance we’d forget. They called an off-tackle slice, which was what they’d been doing so well with before, and Denny busted it up before it got to the line of scrimmage. Second down, twelve to go frontwards, but only thirteen backwards, to be sitting on their own goal line. They tried it again and Denny smashed it again, a little quicker that time. Third down, fifteen to go frontwards, ten to the rear. The fullback dropped back. So did we, me and Denny, he to take the kick, I to cover. But when he caught it he did just what I’d told him to do. He let me lead him, headed for the sideline, for maybe ten or fifteen yards, with the whole Chesapeake team coming over at us, and our guys splitting up to block them.

When they were nearly on top o£ us I cut right, hit it up, and let them see, for the first time, how fast Denny could run. They all cut over, but of course losing speed as they went. As soon as I saw they were going to pass to our rear I let them go. They’d never catch Denny that day. I ran on, headed for the kicker, who was laying back as safety man. I aimed and caught him. He staggered and I did. It jarred me so bad I thought I’d never get my breath. But that was all Denny needed. He hooked it up, and before I even got the ring out of my ears there he was over the goal line. We did it three more times.

The street was jammed with girls after we dressed, and I don’t think Denny even thought about me, or knew I was there, or even considered thanking me. He was gone before I was even through the mob, and I drove home alone. But by accident, I put it over on him anyhow, anyway in the papers. They had pictures of him, that had been taken earlier in the season, when he went up with the first squad. But they had none of me, except the other stuff, with the Little Boy Blue suit and the Come Blow Your Horn collar. So that hit them funny, and there was I, smeared all over the Saturday-morning sport pages. My aunts called people up on the telephone, and I could listen and feel a little proud. My father kind of passed a few remarks at breakfast, and seemed pleased. Myself, I began to get that tingly feeling again, that I hadn’t had in a long time. I went out and bought an extra Sun and clipped the story out and went upstairs and wrote Miss Eleanor and put the clipping in with the letter.

College, after three years at Poly, taking Denny over goal lines, catching his passes, and protecting his kicks, was just a matter of calling our shots. Just like he said he would, we got bids from all over, especially from Alabama, Southern California, and Georgia, with U.S.C. indicated, if football was what we wanted, but none of them indicated, if we were thinking about something else. I didn’t mind glory, but it wasn’t getting me anywhere either, as I wanted to go on with the mechanical stuff I’d had at Poly, and the football schools weren’t right for it. Denny was all hot for U.S.C, as Howard Jones was alive then, and he was plenty big. But then things settled themselves, in a way that was all right for me and terrific for Denny. At that time, Maryland was doing a little better at football than it does now, as Curley Byrd wasn’t president yet, but just coach, and he didn’t turn out many flops. Then after a game we played in 1927, we were brought down to the Belvedere Hotel to meet him, and Denny fell for him hard. Maryland didn’t hit me at first, but after I went to College Park and found out they were pretty good in mechanical engineering, I decided for the deal. So in 1928, after we graduated from Poly, we entered, shared a room in a dormitory that looked out on the Washington Road, and checked in for the freshman squad.

At that time Byrd was in his late thirties, but I think he still could have held a job on most teams himself, college or professional. He was a little heavier than he had been when he played, but he was something to look at, tall, straight, with high color and a mane of curly hair that had been black, but was getting gray, and now, of course, is completely white. He gave us plenty of time, even if we were only freshmen, and taught us stuff we’d never had before. So we weren’t too proud to get on the field early, boot a few, and do a little passing. And as soon as the snow melted in the spring, we put on sweat shirts, rough pants, and cleated shoes, and got out there for a little more of it. I had my growth then, the same six feet I am now, and weighed 170, though I got a little heavier later.

So, early in October of our sophomore year, when at last we could play on the varsity, all of a sudden Denny was an A.P. dispatch, on practically everything he did. But I was a special article, with pictures and inside dope. I mean, they fell for me, and specially the coaches did. I was that player they prayed for, that did everything right, and was even better helping somebody else than at doing stuff himself. I was a big shot once more, and would get clippings and postcards and boxes of fruit from Miss Eleanor, and felt pretty good.

One day in early November we had played Yale and tied, 13–13, by something I’d done as it happened, when I hooked a pass and made a forty-yard run. We were given our tickets from New Haven back to College Park, but separate instead of club, so we could stay in New York if we wanted to, take in a show or something, and be back Monday. So Denny and I took our bags to the McAlpin, but we couldn’t get in and went to another place a block or two away. We went upstairs, brushed and came down, and then sure enough, there by the newsstand, he picked up a couple of girls. On that stuff, by now, he counted me out, so he went off with them and I took a walk. On Broadway, around Fortieth Street somewhere, I saw a place I liked and went in and had dinner, then went down to Loew’s State where I had sung years before. But I didn’t like it, so I came out and called Miss Eleanor. There was no answer. I started to go back in, but was restless and went out on the street. Then I caught a cab to the hotel. I still had a paper, and I thought I’d drop her a note and enclose the picture of myself being a hero.

The desks in the writing room were in pairs, facing each other over kind of a low partition, and opposite me was a blonde girl in a black suit and hat, writing letters too. Her pen wasn’t working so I handed her one from my side and she wrote two letters and stuck a dollar bill in each. “Aren’t I the big-hearted, generous thing, passing out money like that? Oh well, easy come, easy go. I put over a fast one on a wholesale house today, and then won ten bucks on a football game, so—”

“Which game did you see?”

“Yale-Maryland. Felt like a ride and went up there.”

“You go to college?”

“I—? Well now, that if sweet of you. But you’d better take another look. I’m an old widow with two children — that’s where the money goes.” She held up the letters, one addressed “Master,” the other “Mlle.” The last name on each letter was Lucas. “Then you’re Mrs. Lucas?”

“That is correct.”

“My mistake.”

“But I’m not in the least offended. Is it really possible, even under these soft lights, that I look like somebody going to college?”

“I took you for a co-ed.”

“But you — you go to college?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have a name?”

“Don’t you know it?”

“Why — I never saw you before. Or have I?”

I picked up the picture that I’d cut out for Miss Eleanor, and handed it over. She gave a gasp, put it down, stared at me. “But of course!... The wallop you gave me today — I’m still not over it — I And you’re just a baby.”

“Well... thanks.”

“Don’t you like being a baby?”

“Would you?”

“I did.”

“That’s right, I — sort of said the same, didn’t I?”

“And I loved it.”

“Then thanks again. This time, real thanks.”

“I think I owe you something.”

“You certainly do.”

“I’m not talking about the ten dollars you helped win for me — I bet Maryland would score — though that I can use. Something else. What I felt looking at you out there, with that taffy hair shining in the sun, and the heavy determined look on your face. Did anybody ever tell you how your head cocks to one side?”

“Hadn’t heard of it.”

“And when the other team is up to something you stand there for all the world like a cat watching a mouse hole. Then your shoulders go forward. Then something happens to your jaw. Then you spring. Then the cat’s no longer a cat. He’s a tiger... Let’s go to some club.”

“All right, but I’m taking you.”

“It’s I who owe you. And besides, I’m a very successful widow, as I’ll probably tell you all evening, now we’ve discussed you a little bit. Quite a high-pressure girl, and today I put something over, as I think I said.”

“I’m not exactly a failure, myself.”

“Well, listen to him!”

“I too can pick up a check.”

“Can’t we match for it?”

She was standing beside me and we both laughed. Then her eyes crinkled up in a way that made me like her even better than I had liked her, and we both got out quarters and cupped our hands and rattled them around. “You’re matching me, Mrs. Lucas, and if you win the drinks are on me.” So she won, and I got up and bowed, and she picked up her letters and I put the clipping in mine and stamped it and sealed it. Then we went out and across the lobby to the mail chute. Then she headed for the elevators. “I’ll have to put something on.”

“I have no evening clothes with me.”

“All right, but I can’t go in a suit.”

“Then I’ll wait here.”

“Why? Come on up.”

It was my first contact with a suite, because while my father always took one, it was on account of the gang he always had with him, his sisters, me, and like as not some friends, and I hadn’t known that one person, if they just take that sitting room extra, can have anybody up there they please. She was on the ninth or tenth deck, her windows overlooking the Hudson, and as soon as she turned on the radio she excused herself and went in the bedroom. I sat and listened and looked out at the lights, but it seemed to me my heart was a little high in my throat, and why I didn’t exactly know. Everything was straight down the middle, exactly according to Hoyle. And yet here we were, the two of us alone together in a strange city, and I was excited. The buzzer rang and the bedroom door opened a little bit. “Will you see if that’s the boy? I thought we could have something before we started. Just let him in and ask him to wait.”

I opened the door, and a bellboy was there with a pitcher of ice, some fizz water, and two glasses. She came out in a kimono and paid him and he went. Then she went into the bedroom and came out with a pint of rye. “It’s prescription stuff, so it’s all right. You like it plain or highball?”

“Highball.”

I’m glad, looking back on it now, that I said nothing about training. For all I knew, this was about nothing whatever, but if it was about anything at all, it was a lot more important than football. She made the drinks, then sat across from me with the cocktail table between, and talked about herself. Her husband had been in the hard-coal business, the mining end, but died on a trip to Cuba. They had lived in Easton, Pennsylvania. She had to do something, and got a job in their big department store. Soon she was children’s buyer, and had come piling to town yesterday to stop shipment of stuff ordered for Christmas. She seemed pretty stuck on herself that she’d found a clause in the contract to let her off the hook, on account of some delay in deliveries. That there was any connection between those toys and my stock never entered my mind, and fact of the matter, I’d been too busy running, kicking, and passing to pay any attention to finance. They tell me now it was all over the front pages, but if so, it must have been on days when I was looking for my picture inside.

So I just listened, sipped my drink, and once or twice, for no reason I could see, my heart would give a little bump. After a while she said she’d better get her things on, then drank out and went in the bedroom. I tried not to see it but my heart kept reminding me: she hadn’t closed the door. Pretty soon, sounding like a homesick foghorn, I heard myself say: “You need any help?”

“No, thanks... Of course now, wanting a little help, that might be different.”

Somehow, my legs took me in there. She was in a little pair of filmy pants, bra, shoes, stockings, and nothing else, standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. She had a round, perky little figure, and it did things to me. She stood first on one foot, then on the other foot, with her hand on her hip and one little finger sticking out. Then: “For an old woman of twenty-five, I do look young.”

“You look young, beautiful and — kissable.”

“What are you trembling about, Jack?”

“Am I?”

“The bubbles in that glass are making a regular razzle-dazzle. If it shakes any worse the ice will be clinking.”

“Reaction, maybe. Hard game today.”

“Why don’t you ask why I’m trembling?”

“All right, why?”

“Reaction — or something... I knew we weren’t going out, Jack. That we were just pretending. So I could blow smoke at you and muss up your hair — will you ever stop pasting it down like that? It would have a nice wave if you’d let it wave. I knew all that, but I never did anything like this.”

“Did you say children?”

“That’s different. And you never did, either. All right, I suppose it’s the worst insult you can offer a man, to insinuate, or even hint that he could be anything but an expert on the subject. Just the same, I know what I know. And I want it like this. It’s a lot sweeter that you come to me — as a little child might. As a little taffy-haired boy entering a new and beautiful garden, a little forbidden, and utterly mysterious...”

“Mrs. Lucas, what is your other name?”

“June.”

“June, come here... It’s all true, what you know.”

“Does it hurt, to admit it?”

“No.”

I told her about the car, the way Denny and I had chased girls, and the afternoon on the bay. She listened, then went to the window and stood looking up at the stars. Then: “Jack, I’m so glad it made you sick!... I guess I understand it, how those girls felt, how your friend felt — I wasn’t born yesterday. They want to be exalted but all they’re capable of is to be excited. What was it Wilde said? ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’—? Except that such people don’t kill it, they merely befoul it. I’m proud of you that you didn’t and couldn’t. Tonight is a night you can never have twice, and it’s wonderful you saved it — for me. I’m happy it’s me. And that it’s silly, romantic, and cockeyed. Can I give you one little ideal, I’d like you to keep?... Let it always be beautiful. Don’t ever befoul it.”

She kissed me then, and through the night spread the color of the moth.