“What’s the matter with Maddox, anyway?”
“I thought he was supposed to be such a miracle man.”
“He’s afraid of getting his hair mussed, if you ask me,” said Dennie.
Tib said nothing, but she was frowning. Perhaps, thought Betsy, she was getting a little soured on manly beauty unaccompanied by manly achievements. Or perhaps she really liked him and was worried.
At school the pep meetings no longer rang with cries of, “What’s the matter with Maddox? He’s all right!” He still made most of the touchdowns, but he didn’t, all agreed, “pitch in and fight.” Someone even hazarded that he had come over from St. John just to injure the Deep Valley team. It was a plot.
“Do you believe that?” Betsy asked Joe.
“Of course not,” Joe replied. “He wants Deep Valley to win, but his school spirit isn’t strong enough to make him risk that profile.”
Joe was depressed. Even his vigorous pen was running out of hopeful excuses and bright prospects for the Deep Valley eleven.
Fortunately, there were school activities other than football, and Betsy was persistently urging Joe to enter them. “The president of the senior class,” she said, “should really go out for debating…he ought to sing in the chorus…he ought to write a paper for rhetoricals….”
“Look,” Joe would interrupt, “I’m earning my living. Remember?”
But because school was important to Betsy it became more and more important to Joe. Busy as he was, he found time not only for school activities but also for the aimless, carefree loafing of normal high school students.
On Halloween, he telephoned Betsy in high spirits. “Say, I hear that the juniors are having a dance. Strictly for juniors. Seniors are urged to keep out.”
“If you mean what I think you mean,” said Betsy, “Tib and Dennie have the same idea.”
“All right,” answered Joe, “we’ll make it a quartet. I’ll be up about nine.”
It was raining then, but with evening it cleared. Mr. Ray had made Margaret a jack-o’-lantern, and they started out, her eyes shining in a delicious ecstasy of boldness and fear.
Jack-o’-lanterns began to pop up in windows. The doorbell began to ring, but when it was answered the threshold was empty. By the time Tib and Dennie, Betsy and Joe left: the house, the dark wet world was filled with the muffled laughter, the rattling and tapping and running feet of Halloween.
The four trouped downtown, and standing outside Schiller Hall, looked up at the lighted windows. They could hear a faint sound of music.
“Here goes!” said Joe, squaring his shoulders with extravagant valor.
As they tiptoed up the stairs, the music became clearer. Mamie was playing a wistful waltz.
“Tonight will never come again,
To you…and me….”
They reached the fourth floor and peeked into the lighted ballroom. Jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, and orange streamers made a festive picture. The junior girls looked pretty in their long floating party dresses. Betsy and Tib were wearing tarns and coats.
Mamie’s music sang on.
“Tonight will never come again,
To you…and me….”
The two couples danced boldly into the ballroom. Before they had half circled the room the storm broke. Mamie stopped playing, and jumped up from the piano stool, laughing, to watch. Every junior boy in the room had made a rush for Joe and Dennie, who were heading for the door sheltering the senior girls.
Biff! Boom! Bang! Presently the music began again, but only juniors were dancing now. Down at the foot of the stairs in the moonlight, the discomfited seniors were disentangling themselves, trying to make out what had happened and whose foot was whose. As they limped toward Heinz’s, they heard Mamie playing.
“Tonight will never come again,
To you…and me….”
“Let us hope not!” groaned Tib.
At Heinz’s they had the sort of fun that Betsy had grown up with but which was still unfamiliar to Joe. Heinz’s had invented an enormous sundae, The Imperial, which cost fifty cents. The two couples ordered one Imperial with four spoons and raced to see who would consume the biggest share.
“I win!” cried Tib, spooning the last cherry.
“What do you mean, you win?” asked Joe, beating off Dennie to scrape the dish.
“What ho, minion! Another!” shouted Dennie. “At least I’ve got a quarter. Have you, Joe?”
The waiter brought another, calling out good-naturedly, “Take it easy, kids! Take it easy!”
The four walked up the long hill to the Ray house. The Halloween excitement was subsiding now. There were reminders only in the soap marks on doors and windows and the noise of a distant party.
In spite of the Imperials, they went straight to Anna’s kitchen and found half a cake. They sat on the kitchen table to eat it, talking and fooling. After Tib and Dennie left, Joe stayed on. Mrs. Ray had to cough several times at the top of the stairs before he went home.
Rain now had taken down the last of the withered leaves. Except for a few oaks, the trees showed bare against the sky. Slowly the world grew browner, the weather colder and more wintry.
Snow started falling. A filmy white blanket on the ground startled the eye with its half-forgotten, half-familiar beauty.
“It always makes me feel queer to smell the first heat in the registers and see the first snow,” Betsy said.
Mr. Ray put on the storm windows. Children got out sleds and everyone got out overshoes. Duck hunters were undeterred by snow, and Deep Valley kitchens were filled with savory odors. Betsy began to hint for invitations to dinner at the Mullers’. No one could bake wild duck as Matilda could, stuffed with apples and served with dumplings and gravy.
Football players slipped and slid on a snowy field, and Deep Valley lost to Faribault. This was the last home game, and it had been preceded by elaborate goings on. There was a big rooters’ meeting, and the school marched to the field in a body with the band at the head of the procession. But all to no avail! The score was forty to nothing.
There was only one game left now, the St. John game. It would be a slaughter, everyone agreed. St. John had an undefeated team. Moreover, it was Maddox’s old home town.
“We’re lucky if he doesn’t throw the game,” said Lloyd when the Crowd was gathered in the Social Room and neither Tib nor Maddox happened to be present.
“Certainly it’s the last team he can be expected to fight,” Tony replied.
“He doesn’t know the meaning of the word fight,” said Dennie. “All he knows is how to comb those curly locks.”
“Somebody ought to wake him up,” said Stan. “He’d be darned good if he’d only get going.”
“All he cares about is combing his hair,” repeated Dennie, and suddenly his eyes brightened. He ran his hands through his own curly thatch and dimples flashed out in his cheeks. He looked maliciously cherubic.
“Hey, listen to this!” he said. The four boys fell into a whispered confab.
“What are you kids talking about?” Winona asked.
“Never mind,” they replied, walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Stewie. Say, you can come along if you like.”
“Can all of us come?” asked Betsy.
“No,” said Dennie. “Just Winona. She can be Florence Nightingale.” The boys guffawed with laughter, and hooking arms with Winona, they hurried away.
Betsy, Tacy, Irma, and Alice looked at one another. “What can they be up to?” Alice asked.
On the day before the St. John game, Miss Bangeter called another pep rally. The students filed in dejectedly, sure that no matter how loudly they sang and cheered, Deep Valley would lose again. The team sat on the platform looking uncomfortable, with Maddox, as ravishingly handsome as ever, in the center of the front row. Stewie kept running his finger around the inside of his collar.
Miss Bangeter made a speech. The St. John game, she said, was the last
one of the season, and the school must remain loyal to the end. Whether or not the team would win wasn’t half so important as how the school would support them. She hoped that a large delegation of students would go to St. John for the game.
It was a fine speech, a noble speech. Miss Bangeter made everyone want to support the team. But she didn’t convince anyone that the team could possibly win.
Stewie, too, failed, although he perspired and grew red in the face and talked long and hard. Various boys and girls made stump speeches. They praised the team, making everyone squirm, including the heroes themselves.
Joe didn’t get up, although Betsy urged and poked him. He just sat and looked blue. But at last Miss Bangeter beckoned him to the platform.
“The president of the senior class,” she said, “must always have a word.”
Joe stood up and grinned. “I remember one time when the president of the senior class didn’t have a word, and that was at the junior dance,” he said.
This was uproariously received, and Joe’s speech was snappy. But it didn’t inspire the audience with confidence. The gloom in the Assembly Room could have been cut with a knife.
“Gangway!”
“Clear the track ahead!”
“Is there a doctor in the house?”
A jumble of cries caused all heads to turn. Everyone started up in excitement as four shouting boys came down the middle aisle carrying a stretcher on which reposed a recumbent form in football uniform.
“It’s a dummy.”
“He’s wearing a St. John sweater.”
“It must be a skit. Thank heaven!” Betsy remarked. “This deadly meeting!” Then she grasped Tacy’s arm. “Why, there’s Winona.”
Winona was, indeed, swinging along behind the stretcher, looking taller, thinner, more debonaire even than usual in a nurse’s uniform. A chic white cap was perched on her black hair. Her eyes glittered with fun.
She raced to keep alongside the patient, fanning him, applying sticking plaster, and dousing him from a big bottle marked ARNICA. The Assembly Room roared.
“Is there a doctor in the house?” Dennie kept shouting as he and his companion stretcher bearers rushed up the steps at the left of the platform. Up the right-hand steps strolled a figure in a long white coat. He wore wire spectacles and brandished a carving knife.
“Dr. Carver at your service,” he said in Tony’s deep voice. “And who is the patient, lad?”
Dennie put down his corner of the stretcher and shook sweat from his brow with his forefinger, bringing another laugh.
“A player from the St. John team, doc. I fear he’s at death’s door.”
“Tell me what happened, lad, before I start to carve him up,” said Tony, flashing the knife.
“Yes, doc. Yes, doc.” Dennie could not quite hold back a grin.
“This poor John Doe here was carrying the ball,” he said. “He was slamming down field for a touchdown with ten of the Deep Valley eleven on his heels. The score was tied. A score meant a St. John victory. The crowd on the sidelines was going crazy.
“This poor John Doe has slammed to within ten yards of the goal line. But who bars his way? It is Deep Valley’s safety man! It is our famous, our invincible, our fearless hell-for-leather hero! It is Maddox!” Dennie roared the name like a sideshow barker. The audience applauded half-heartedly. Maddox shifted in his seat, and a line of puzzlement marred his perfect brow.
“Maddox, it is!” Dennie went on after a brief pause to fill his lungs. “And John Doe halts. He pales. He trembles. He freezes. He is duck soup. All the Deep Valley rooters know he is and yell in relief. Maddox is going to save the game. But…”
And with that “But” Dennie paused while the puzzlement deepened on Maddox’s brow and spread to the upturned faces of the pep rally. “But what is this? Maddox ain’t making the tackle. He has John Doe cold, but he is giving John time to warm up. Instead of tackling, he speaks!”
Dennie’s mobile face, his staring eyes, his wide-open mouth all registered consternation.
“He speaks!” Dennie repeated. “And what is this he is saying? No!” Dennie’s voice rose to a hoarse shout. “No! No! It cannot be. But…” And now Dennie’s stricken eyes swept his audience. “But it is. He is saying…! Yes, he really is saying…”
Again a pause. But now the consternation faded from Dennie’s face. He smiled sweetly. His hand rockered over his head to suggest curls. Then he spoke, in a stage whisper that swept the auditorium, “‘PARDON ME, SIR, BUT MAY I BORROW YOUR COMB?’”
For one instant the school sat stunned. Then it went wild. It shrieked with laughter. It shouted, clapped, and pounded with unholy glee. The team laughed, too, unwillingly, but a deep flush crept into Maddox’s face. He looked around with a bewildered expression and forced himself to smile.
“How mean!” Betsy whispered indignantly to Tacy.
“He had it coming,” said Hazel Smith, wiping her eyes.
“I think it was terrible,” said Tacy. She and Betsy were not only suffering for Maddox but also for Tib, and as soon as the meeting broke up they rushed to find her.
But Tib was rushing away.
“Where are you going?”
“To catch Ralph. He’s got to get out and play at that St. John game. He’ll never live this down if he doesn’t.” There were round red circles on Tib’s cheeks. “I’m going to talk to him,” she declared. “I’m going to say, ‘If you don’t win this game, my fine curly-headed friend, I won’t go with you any more! Not ever again.’”
“But he can’t possibly win it,” said Betsy. “St. John has an undefeated team.”
“He has to,” said Tib, and started running again.
10
The St. John Game
MISS BANGETER’S REQUEST for a loyal attendance at the St. John game was heeded far beyond her expectations. The depot platform, next morning, was crowded with boys and girls. It was a cold day with a driving north wind. The seniors had abandoned their gray and violet caps. Boys wore heavy woolen caps with ear muffs. Girls wore stocking caps, or tarns, or hats tied down with automobile veils. All wore neck scarfs, galoshes, woolen mittens, heavy winter coats.
Maroon and gold rosettes, or maroon and gold bows with long flying ends, graced every coat. There were dozens of Deep Valley banners, a few horns. But in spite of these brave trappings, hopes were low. The team huddled about Stewie, down at the end of the platform. Joe, as a Sun reporter, stayed with the team. Maddox stood close to the coach, speaking to no one. There were bitter creases on either side of his beautiful, unblemished mouth.
Rooters asked one another how yesterday’s joke had affected Maddox. Most people thought it was deserved, but some considered it ill-advised. It might have made him so mad that he would throw the game.
“I doubt that,” said Alice mildly.
“It must have taken all the heart out of him, though,” Betsy insisted, and Tacy agreed. Tib didn’t speak. She still looked grim.
On the train, spirits lifted a little. The car was warm; no one minded smoke or cinders. Rooters ate Cracker Jack and drank at the water cooler. Lolling in the red plush seats, they practised cheers. Someone had brought a banjo and Winona started a song. Only the team remained gloomy, still huddled around Stewie at one end of the car. Maddox’s mouth was still enclosed by bitter parentheses, and he kept his gaze fixed on the window.
Betsy, too, looked out of the window as the train sped along beside the river. Muskrats had built houses at the water’s edge. Willows touched the pale landscape with yellow.
She stole these glances guiltily, aware that she should be thinking only of the game. She knew that her interest in football would always be pretended, not real and burning, like Joe’s or Winona’s. She wanted to win, and she liked the excitement, but she liked the flying landscape more.
St. John was only the second station up the line. Shortly the train was running past small houses and snow-covered gardens. The brakeman looked into the car to bawl, “St. John the ne
xt stop!” and with a shriek of brakes, the train jerked to a halt.
As the crowd spilled out of the train, Tacy took Betsy’s arm and Tib’s. “Just think how often we’ve planned about traveling together, and now we’re doing it!” she said.
Everyone thought it was exciting to be in another town. They walked up and down the Main Street which was so like and yet so unlike Deep Valley’s Front Street. There were the same rows of store fronts; banks, big and impressive on the corners; a hotel and the brand new Motion Picture Palace, and a livery stable down the street. The kinds of stores and shops were just the same, but there wasn’t a familiar name or face until Winona caught sight of a cousin.
“Poor old St. John! Poor old St. John!” she began to chant.
“You’ve got your nerve!” he said. “St. John hasn’t lost a game this year and your team isn’t worth peanuts.”
The Crowd roared defiance, “Poor old St. John! Poor old St. John!” The cousin laughed and turned away, and the Crowd went into a bakery and bought cakes and cookies, cream puffs and jelly roll to take out to the field.
This was swept by a biting wind filled with small sharp flakes. The ground was frozen and looked cruel. Betsy saw Joe moving efficiently about, bareheaded, copy paper handy as usual, his windblown face set.
She ran over to him. “How’s Maddox?”
“He doesn’t talk. I guess it cut him pretty deep.”
“Tib lectured him, too.”
“Well,” said Joe, “he had it coming, but I can’t help feeling sorry for the guy.”
The St. John players looked very big and confident. The Deep Valley players looked unhappy and cold. While the teams warmed up, the Deep Valley rooters cheered, but the cheering was half-hearted.
Deep Valley kicked off, and the St. John receiver jockeyed from his own ten to his own forty-five yard line before Dennie brought him down. Deep Valley cheered again, but still half-heartedly.
“Thirty-five yards on the kick-off!” Winona groaned. “The final score will be a million to nothing.”