People all around them laughed, and one man reached down a bottle of whiskey, crying: “Your kid’s playing in this game? Pete Martin? Here, have a drink on me. Can’t say I’m not doing my bit for the Galloway team!” And a small cheer was raised all around them.
The teams returned to the locker rooms for final instructions, the bands paraded on the dark field, there was noise and furor and autumnal excitement everywhere.
In the chilly locker room Peter sat on a bench tightening his shoes and thinking. The old coach prowled in front of the players barking instructions and warnings at them. They could hear the faint music of the bands outside, the clonking of cowbells, crowds roaring—and all of them were swooning with fear, swallowing and gulping, terrified and lost.
“Don’t think you’re gonna have an easy time out there!” barked the old coach. “Oh, no! Don’t think you’re going out there and pick daisies with these Lawton boys. You haven’t noticed how small and dainty they are, have you? You won’t go out there and waltz around a few times, and say thank you, will you now!”
The boys laughed, and gulped.
“You noticed how big they were, didn’t you? You saw that DeGrossa boy who plays center for them, hey? He weighs about two hundred and twenty pounds, stands six feet three inches in his stockings?”
They had also seen the expression of fierceness on his face.
“You saw that line, didn’t you? Solid all the way through and twice as wide, like trucks, hey? And those backs—what did they look like to you?—like demure young girls, perhaps?”
They had looked like leopards, somehow, and the players gulped and swallowed.
The door of the locker rooms burst open and a man in white knickers shouted: “Two minutes, Coach Reed!” With the sound of his urgent cry came the roar of crowds, the music, the bells clanking, the drone of an airplane overhead, and the school cheers raised in vast whistlings and zis-boom-bahs and sudden rousing songs. Above them they heard the stamp of many feet, and the beat of many drums.
The door closed again and a hush of silence prevailed in the gloomy locker rooms. The old coach looked at his young players and said nothing. Everyone held his breath and looked at the old man who had hounded them and fatigued them and driven them all year long through a hundred days of bone-rending football, and suddenly, somehow, they felt a strange affection for him: he had been like a harsh father to them.
“There’s nothing to say,” said old Reed with a shrug of his shoulders. “There’s positively nothing to say,” he said helplessly, and looked at them with bland open eyes.
Everyone waited breathlessly. The old man stalked around once more in woebegone silence. They realized that they loved this gruff old man.
He stopped and stared at them once more with a bland open expression, while his assistants stood behind him, grim, almost panic-stricken, pale and drawn like the players themselves.
“A whole year’s work,” said the old coach. “A whole year pointed to this game. This is the only game that really matters. You were all kids once and you remember other Galloway-Lawton games, you heard them on your radios, you wanted to grow up and play in this game. Well,” he said, staring at them, “here you are.
“I’m gonna slap my hands together in a moment now,” went on the old man, “and what are you gonna do about it?”
There was a pause: and then all the boys cheered the old man and leaped up, he clapped his hands, the assistant threw open the door, and out they swarmed into the cold winds, out to the dark white-striped field, racing furiously in the wind and exulting, and all around them the crowds roared and the bands drummed and blared, something in the air was like thunder and battle and glee.
They saw the Lawton team across the field in a huddle of great captains, standing in the wind in their dark uniforms, helmeted fantastically, all grotesque, wild, and ominous; they saw the officials in white placing the new yellow football on the kickoff line; they saw the whole mob-swarmed terrific stadium in a gray windswept blaze of vision. Whistles were piping in the air, silence was falling over the multitudes, the game was ready to begin.
And then when Peter saw the ball up in the air, wobbling and windswept, and saw it bouncing down before him, he was mortified with fear. Then he lunged for it, picked it up, snarled, and ran straight downfield with all his headlong might, crashing and stamping through a confusion of hard bodies and falling finally on the icy midfield beneath ten others, and the game was on.
“Woohee!” his father was howling way up in the stands. “Did you see that? Thirty yards back he took it! What a runner!”
“Hooray! hooray!” Mickey was screaming.
“What happened?” cried the mother. “Was Peter down there? Everybody fell down!”
“I’ll say he was!” shouted Joe. “He was down on the bottom!”
“Have another drink, Mister Martin!” called the man with the bottle. “That runback was worth a nip. Have another drink, Mister Martin!”
Down on the field the teams lined up, the linemen digging in low and glaring at each other, the backs crouching, the quarterback calling out numbers with his whole body jerking behind each shout, the officials waiting expectantly nearby, and all of it windswept on the dark field to which all eyes were fastened excitedly. The lines collided, biffed, scattered, long rangy youths sprawled, someone ran and ducked into a pileup of bodies, and it was no gain. The cowbells clanked, someone shouted: “Come awnnn, Gallo-wayyy!”
“What’s happening? What’s happening?” demanded the Martin mother with furious innocence.
The crowd suddenly roared as someone ran wide around end, around reaching hands, arching his back and waving one arm, cutting back suddenly on dancing feet, wavering, darting aside, plunging on a few yards and pulling along to a stop under a pile of bodies. The crowd’s roar surged away into droning chattering sounds, cowbells and drums rang in the sharp air, someone whistled.
“What was that?” cried the mother, tugging at Joe’s sleeve.
“Petey! Gained five yards!”
“Come on, sonny!” howled the father. “Keep it up, boy!”
Suddenly the crowd was on its feet again with a sharp roar as someone darted through hugging a ball and ran straight ahead and then to one side sprinting, wide, arcing towards the sidelines, and running out of bounds.
“Petey ran up a first down!” shouted Joe to his mother. “Did you see him?”
“No, no, I don’t see anything.”
“Hooray, hooray!” yelled Liz, waving her school flag.
And thus the game carried on in the grayness, both teams digging in deep and plunging and scrambling, and to the Martin mother nothing seemed to happen whatever. Indeed, as the first half wore on, Peter was brought to a standstill in his running, as well as his running teammates, and the Lawton team just fought and plunged and gained nothing either, and the half ended without a score in a game that depended on the defensive ability of the team lines.
“Well,” said the old coach back in the dank locker rooms, “I told you it would be like that. I told you, and now you know.”
The players lay sprawled on the floor panting, looking up at the old man with helpless weary eyes.
“I want you to try more passes. I want you to try the forty-seven in their end zone and try the trick pass over the end’s head. And you linemen: you’re getting fooled on their mousetrap every damn time! Every damn time! I never saw the beat of it! Magee here is playing the best defensive game in the backfield; you other backs are loafing. MacReady’s doing fine covering their offtackle plays. The rest of you are just a bunch of dummies!” And he went on like that for fifteen minutes, stalking around the gray damp room, looking at them fiercely, and then wearily, and staring at his assistants dumbfoundedly as though he had never seen them before.
“It’s like I told you fellows. This is the game. Go out there and bring yourself some pillows, why don’t you, so the ground won’t be so hard! Or why don’t you bring out some poetry books and read them some poet
ry? See how they’ll take to that! Huh?” he barked, and glared at them. And yet they knew they loved this old man.
They went back for the second half.
“Come on, boy!” howled old man Martin in the stands.
Again the teams dug in deep, glaring at each other, smashing at each other, scattering and scrambling in tremendous bone-bruising collisions that were not heard high in the stands. And on the field itself the roars descended to the thudding field like one vast whispering sigh, like vague distant commotions of sad excited humanity.
“Come on, you guys!” the little quarterback piped in the huddles. “Let’s go, let’s go! Time’s running out! The offtackle six! Martin!”
And up in the stands the crowds roared and saw Peter swing wide with the ball in one hand gripped like a big egg, and turn in swiftly towards the scuffing lines and break through at headlong speed, and go breakneck up the field with his legs twinkling in the gloom, pursued by dark figures, smashed down by dark figures on the white chalk-stripes.
“Was that Peter?” the mother cried. “I saw him fall down, number five! Oh, my goodness!”
Again there were milling plays in the November gloom, scatterings, dodgings, pileups of bodies, and the pipe of a whistle in the keen air.
“It’s such a funny game,” said the Martin mother, turning to Ruth. “Nothing happens, everybody falls down. My goodness!”
“Come on, my boy!” shouted Martin in a powerful voice. “Come on, son!”
“Ten minutes left to play!” someone shouted. A cowbell clanked wearily, the cheering section whistled vastly, sighed, said zis-boom-bah; and there was a roll of drums. Again the teams collided on the field below and the players reassembled slowly, meditatively.
“Mickey,” said the mother, tugging at the little boy’s coat, “tell your mommy what the score is.”
“Zero to zero!”
“Tell your mommy what that means!” she demanded.
And now suddenly the crowd rose to its feet with one roaring cry of surprise, explosive and vast, as a Galloway player swept wide around the end, leaped into the air, twisted, and shot the ball several yards over dark helmeted heads, as another Galloway player paused, twisted, reached out for the ball, barely grasped it in his fingers, turned and went plummeting downfield along the sidelines. The roaring of the crowd surged and grew thunderous, the Martin mother jumped up on her seat to see, and she saw a figure racing down the sidelines, shaking off tacklers with a squirming motion, plunging through others with a striding determination, tripping, stumbling, staggering on half fallen and half running, straightening out once more, plodding, faking, yet suddenly approaching the goal line in a drunken weary run, staggered aside by another lunging figure, momentarily stopping, then carrying on again, striding to the line falling, with a dark figure smashing into it, now wavering on bent knees, now finally diving over and rolling in the end zone triumphantly.
It was a touchdown at last.
“Petey! Petey! Petey!” screamed Ruth and Elizabeth in unison as they jumped up and down on the seats, as the great crowd roared everywhere around in tremendous jubilation.
“What happened?” cried the Martin mother in despair.
“He did it!” howled the Martin father with indescribable amazement and excitement. “By God he went and did it!”
“He did what?” the mother cried.
“He scored, mommy, he scored!” little Mickey screamed.
And there was a tremendous bedlam of sounds and noises and cries everywhere, confusion and drumming, and the Martin mother suddenly sat down plunk on the seat and stared straight ahead at people’s backs.
“Don’t you understand, Ma?” cried Ruth, bending down to her mother. “Petey scored a touchdown, we’re winning the game!”
“On account of Petey?”
“Yes! yes!”
“Hooray!” cried the mother, leaping up on the seat, and she grabbed Ruth’s flag and began waving it with wild excitement, and hugged her husband and kissed him furiously on the cheek, while he hugged her and lifted her up and down shouting. And the man with the bottle stumbled drunkenly down to him and thrust the bottle in his hand.
“Finish it!” he shouted. “It’s all yours, by gum, it’s all yours, the whole damned quart!”
After the game was over, the cheers of the crowd subsided into one vast excited murmuring and laughing, everyone began to mill towards the exits, music sighed in the wind behind them, desultory drums beat sadly over the battered field.…
Martin stood alone looking over the stadium while his family called to him from the exit ramps. He stood motionlessly, with tears in his eyes, and he spoke to Joe who waited silently beside him:
“By God, Joe, I’ll never forget this day as long as I live. That boy—Well, I just don’t know how to say it.”
“He pulled one right out of the hat, all right!” chuckled Joe.
“He did more than that! I just don’t know how to put it—I mean I knew he was going to do something. You know? It’s the kind of kid he is, he’s capable of doing almost anything.”
“Well, let’s go home, Pa, and we’ll see him at the house.”
“That kid! I remember when he was just so high, just like little Mickey, just a shy awkward little tyke. By gosh!”
And then amid innumerable honkings of horns, shouts, sudden small cheers, wild singing, and the sharp whistles of traffic cops, the crowds began to leave the stadium on the jammed highways, their cars fluttering back bright banners and confetti, some cars racing by others with a sudden rout of singing and cheering, a long honk of horns and shouts out the windows. The big game was over and everybody was going home to the turkey dinner, everybody was hungry.
And the November noon sun broke through, great gaps of blue sky appeared, and on the highway the automobiles flashed brilliantly in the sun as they migrated back to Galloway. The silent deserted Square of the town was suddenly flooded with honking victorious cars, flutters of colored paper were thrown out the windows, the young people were shouting: “We won! We won!”
And in the dank locker rooms back at the stadium the victorious Galloway team hooted and hollered in the hot soapy steaming showers, they danced on pink feet, hurled towels about, jumped over benches, slammed locker doors, sang in chorus—while not far away, in another damp room, the Lawton boys sat dejectedly and mumbled to each other and smiled sadly. Thus, not long after, both teams emerged from the dressing rooms limping and battered, combed and sleek and proud, and shook hands before the busses, under the curious stare of rabid football fans who stayed to watch.
“Next year,” the young players told each other, smiling.
“Better luck next time!”
“You played a great game.”
“We were lucky!”
Then the Galloway bus roared home triumphantly with the boys singing loud and lustily—mainly the substitute players who were never too weary and proud, like the regulars, to sing and exult out loud. The bus wheeled into The Square where crowds waved at them, and at the high school mobs of youngsters waited, cheering.
To Peter all this was like a dream, he stared at it wearily, almost indifferently; and although his name was on everyone’s lips, he wanted to duck off by himself and wonder about it. He hurried off the bus, spoke for a while with a few excited admirers, strode through the basement of the school, slipped unnoticed out the back way, and soon found himself walking along a canal near the mills. He could hear the scattered shouts of the young people back at the school. He smiled to think that much of it was due to him, to him alone, to think that so much of that noise was mysteriously his own weary indifferent doing.
He was amazed.
People passed him on the street and Peter stared at them with wonder. Now they knew his name, they knew of him; if they hadn’t been at the game itself they had heard about it on the radio, they would read it in the newspapers or hear about it from others. They did not know who he was, as he passed them on the street. He was only one of them, and h
e would be forgotten in a week.
He hurried on home, and gloated because no one noticed him. He wished suddenly that no one would ever notice him again and that he would walk through the rest of his life like this, wrapped in his own secret mysteries and glories, a prince disguised as a pauper, Orestes returned from distant heroisms and hiding within the land, stalking unknown within the land under powerful autumnal skies. But why was it they did not notice him any more than before?
When he had crossed the White Bridge and struck for home in a hurried stride, people began to notice him on the street, the boys in front of the candy store stared at him in awed and curious silence, some of them yelled out from across the street:
“Great game, Pete!”
“You gave ’em hell, boy!”
And Peter smiled and hurried on beneath great black branches of November. Yet somehow now, he felt that he had almost betrayed everyone he knew by having performed great feats that required their silence and praise, their awe and embarrassment. When old Judge Clough stopped him on the sidewalk in front of his sedate old home of ivied stone at the foot of Galloway Road, shifting his rake from one hand to the other in order to shake hands with him, saying, “Congratulations, my boy!” and smiling a quick twinkling smile, Peter felt a twinge of fearful remorse, that he had brought this venerable white-haired old man of the law to shaking his hand and praising him, that he should stand there and receive his distant magisterial praise.
But running down the street towards him, hooraying and yelping with delight, came his two kid brothers, Mickey and Charley, hurling a football high up in the air and dashing about in emulation of their big brother’s now-famous touchdown, and for the first time Peter was glad that he was a hero. The eyes of all the neighborhood were upon him, he came walking up the street wearily, and here now his own family was coming to him cheering and proud and glad. Mickey climbed up on his back and sat on his shoulders, Charley walked proudly alongside throwing the football back and forth, saying: “What a game! I heard it all on the radio. You shoulda heard the announcer go wild when you made the touchdown! Yow!”