At the outpost they were delayed while a message went to Red Weed; word came to pass them through. Arrived at the chief’s wigwam Dr. Pilgrim, accompanied by an interpreter, stepped inside.
Five minutes later a triumphant yell arose from the squaws and children who lined the street—the Fargo stage, surrounded by braves in war paint, drove up with four disarmed soldiers and half a dozen civilians inside.
VI
Instinctively Tib ran to the side of the stage but at Josie’s expression his throat choked up and no words came. He turned to the cavalry corporal.
“Dr. Pilgrim is safe. At this moment he’s in the chief’s wigwam working on him. If we sit tight we’ll all get out of this.”
“What’s it all mean?”
Ben Cary answered him:
“It means things are about to break here but your Colonel wouldn’t listen to us because we’re Virginians.”
“I’m in this now,” Tib said to Josie, “but I didn’t know anything about it that night.”
From the wigwam issued a stream of groans followed by a wailing cry and the warriors crowded in around the tepee.
“He’d better be good,” said Cary grimly.
Ten minutes passed. The complaining moans rose and fell. The face of the interpreter appeared in a flap of the tent and he said something rapidly in Sioux, translating it for the benefit of the whites.
“Him got two teeth.”
And then to Tib’s wonder Josie’s voice called to him out of the dusk.
“It’s all right, isn’t it?” she said.
“We don’t know yet.”
“I mean everything’s all right. It doesn’t even seem strange to be here.”
“You believe me then?”
“I believe you, Tib—but it doesn’t seem to matter now.”
Her eyes with that bright yet veiled expression, described as starry, looked past the wailing Indians, the anxious whites, the ominous black triangle of the tepee, at some vision of her own against the sky.
“Whenever we’re together,” she said, “one place is as good as any other. See—they know it, they’re looking at us. We’re not strangers here—they won’t harm us. They know we’re at home.”
Hand in hand Tib and Josie waited and a cool wind blew the curls around her forehead. From time to time the light moved inside the wigwam and they could distinguish the doctor’s voice and the guttural of the interpreter. One by one the Indians had squatted on the ground and a soldier was taking a food hamper from the wagon. The village was quiet and there was suddenly a flag of stars in the bright sky. Josie was the only person there who knew that there was nothing to worry about now, because she and Tib owned everything around them now further than their eyes could see. She felt very safe and warm with her hand on his shoulder while Dr. Pilgrim kept his appointment across the still darkness.
Newman School football photo: FSF front row, third from the left.
Fitzgerald started “Offside Play” in North Carolina in March 1937, telling Harold Ober, “Anyhow I’ve begun the football story but God knows where the next two weeks rent come from. . . . What in hell shall I do? I want to write the football story unworried + uninterrupted.” He sent Ober a draft in April under the title “Athletic Interview,” asking for money in advance. It is something of a throwback—perhaps a reminder of better and happier times, as its writer sat broke in a hotel in the Smoky Mountains, creating for himself the company of blue-eyed, blonde Kiki, watching a game at the Yale Bowl. However, it also contains cheating, lying, sex, and corruptions of various kinds against its glittery Ivy League backdrop. It is an example of Fitzgerald trying to turn out what he himself called “identical product”—the sort of story people still associated with him—but managing to make his pretty characters gritty and even dirty instead. He also envisaged this as a story to be sold for a screenplay, calling it “a football story for the coast.”
Ober liked it, telling him “you are back in your stride.” Fitzgerald agreed: “I feel the stuff coming back as my health improves.” However, the Saturday Evening Post declined the story, now titled “Athletic Interval,” because it was too long. Ober reported, “They say it lacks the warmth of your best work and it hasn’t the ‘incandescent’ quality your readers expect. This gives me a pain. The story may not be your very best—no author can be his very best all the time; but it is so much better than 9/10 of the stories they buy that their criticism is absurd.” Ober did suggest, however, “perhaps you can do something to Kiki or Considine that will make them more likable.”
Fitzgerald left these two central characters as they were. However, he worried over naming actual colleges, making the school Van Kamp had attended a fictional one, and considered changing Yale to Prince-ton, his own alma mater. He worked on the story in June 1937, but then put it aside when he arrived in Los Angeles with his new MGM contract and immediately set to work on screenplays. In October 1937, he was still thinking about the story, now called “Offside Play,” and about “Dentist Appointment,” writing to Ober: “In regard to the stories, I am going to do something about them but have definitely postponed it until after THREE COMRADES is in the bag—as I told you which is a matter of three weeks more. Then I will either take a week off or simply find time some way in the early morning. So tell Colliers not to fret about it. The longer I wait the more I am liable to get a fresh point of view. . . . Both of them come so near to being right that I am sure the actual writing won’t be any trouble.” Ober’s card files note that he never sent them another draft, and that the office ultimately returned all their copies of the versions of the story to Fitzgerald.
Written in Fitzgerald’s hand at the top: “Change to Princeton.”
Offside Play
The sun shone bright on Kiki, a brisk November sun, blue in the drifting cigarettes of the crowd. It rendered her full justice as a lovely person radiantly happy, but she assured herself such a state of things couldn’t last.
“—because at present I’m one of those dreadful people who have everything.”
She exaggerated, of course—other heads grew the same golden thatch to brighten northern winters, other eyes had been steeped in the same blue smoke of enchantment. [and hers was by no means the only rakish mouth in the Yale Bowl. Also there were doubtlessly other hearts around that had stopped being like hotels. But here at the beginning picture Kiki as the happiest girl on earth.]
And as the moment endured, glittered, then slipped into eternity—the man beside her, the infinitely desired, the infinitely admirable Considine, said something which disturbed her balance on the pinnacle.
“I want to talk to you very seriously after the game,” was what he said. But he did not press her hand or look at her as he said it—he simply gazed straight ahead at the teams on the field, yet not staring at something, only staring away.
“What is it?” she demanded. “Tell me now.”
“Not now.” A scrimmage came to earth and his eyes dropped to the program. “Number 16 again—that little guard Van Kamp. Weighs a hundred and fifty-nine and he’s stopping every line play by himself.”
“Is he on our side?” she asked absently.
“No, he’s on the Yale team, and he ought not to be,” he said indignantly. “They bought him, by Heavens! They purchased him body and soul.”
“That’s too bad,” she said politely. “Why didn’t Harvard make an offer for just the body?”
“We don’t do things like that, but these people haven’t any conscience. Here they go—look! See him jump over that play—heads up, never gets buried.”
Kiki was not paying much attention—she had guessed that there was trouble on the sunny air. But if things were wrong there was nothing she wouldn’t do to right them. Alex Considine “had everything,” he had been the Man of Promise at Cambridge the year before—also she adored him.
Between the halves big drums beat and the sun went out and people pushed past them, shouting from row to row.
“I’ve never
seen a lineman dominate a game like this Van Kamp,” said Considine. “If he had on a crimson jersey he’d be beautiful.”
In the third quarter the paragon blocked a punt and recovered it himself—within a few plays his team scored, and the rest of the game was a breathless flight of long passes through a stratosphere of frantic sound. Suddenly it was over; Kiki and Alex moved with the hushed defeated half of the crowd out of the stadium, met friends for a hurried half hour and rushed to the train. They should be alone now, but they found only a single place and Considine sat half on the arm, half in the crowded aisle.
“I’ve got to know what’s on your mind,” she said.
“Wait till we get to New York.”
“Oh, what is it?” she demanded, “you’ve got to tell me—is it about us?”
“Well—yes.”
“What about us—aren’t we all right? Aren’t we on the crest? I simply won’t wait two hours to find out.” Lightly she added, “I know what it is—you’re throwing me over and you don’t want to do it in public.”
“Please, Kiki.”
“Well, then let me ask you questions. First question—do you love me? No, I won’t ask that—I’m a little afraid to. I’ll tell you something instead—I love you, no matter if it’s something awful you’re going to tell me.”
She saw him sigh without a sound.
“Then it is awful,” she said. “Then maybe it is what I thought—” She broke off; there was no gaiety left in the suspense. Close to tears she had to change the subject.
“See the man across the aisle,” she whispered, “the people behind me say it’s Van Kamp, the Yale player.”
He glanced around.
“I don’t think so—he wouldn’t be going to New York so soon. Still it looks like him.”
“It must be, with those awful scratches—if it wasn’t for that he’d be beautiful.”
“That’s because he plays heads up.”
“He’s beautiful anyhow—really one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen. You might introduce me.”
“I don’t know him. Anyhow, he doesn’t understand any words—just signals.”
It was the first light remark he had made all afternoon and she had a flash of hope but immediately the gravity came back reinforced into his face, as though he had laughed at a funeral.
“Maybe he’s a great mathematician and thinks in numbers,” she rambled on unhappily. “Maybe Einstein teaches him—but he’s at Prince-ton.”
“I’ll bet he had a full time tutor to get him through.”
“I had one myself when young. You can’t convince me that man’s stupid.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“You like all kinds, don’t you?”
She gave up trying to talk and borrowing his program turned to the players’ statistics.
Left Guard Eubert G. Van Kamp Newton H.S. 5'11" 159 Age 21
He was Considine’s age but only a sophomore in college. At twenty-one men had written masterpieces, commanded armies.
—at eighteen girls had killed themselves for unrequited love—or gotten over it or pretended that it had never been love in the first place.
At the next station people debarked and Considine could at last drop into the seat beside her.
“Now can you talk?” she said.
“Yes, and it’s going to be very frank. Kiki, I’m fonder of you than of any girl I know. Last summer when we—”
“Did you see him play last summer?”
“See who play?”
“That man Van Kamp. I mean if you saw him play last summer why didn’t you just offer him more money than they did?”
He looked her unsmilingly.
“Seriously, this is something that has to be faced—”
“Oh, shut up.”
“What do you mean, Kiki?”
“Go and face it yourself. I’ve known what you were going to say for two hours.”
“I—”
“—and I’m very particular about the way I’m thrown over. Here’s your ring—put it in your archeological collection—put it in your pocket. The man over the way is looking at us—this is a picture that tells a story.”
“Kiki, I—”
“Shut up—up—up—up!”
“All right,” he said grimly.
“Write me a letter instead and I’ll give it to my husband. I may marry Van Kamp. As a matter of fact I’m glad you spoke, or didn’t speak, just when you did—or didn’t. I’m stepping out with a new number tonight, and I want to feel free. And here’s the station—”
The second they were on their feet she left him, threading her way up the aisle swiftly, desperately, running against people, finally with a passionate intention of eluding him at any cost, catching at the arm of a swiftly moving passenger who seemed to have the right of way, and being borne with his momentum out the door and on to the station quay.
“I’m sorry,” she panted, “I beg—”
It was Van Kamp. Confused she ran along beside him, returning his smile.
“Really you played the most gorgeous game,” she panted, “and there’s someone after me, the most frightening person. Will you walk with me to a taxi? I really haven’t been drinking but he’s broken my heart and all that and the symptoms are much the same effect.”
They hurried up the runway into the hushed marbled tomb of the Grand Central.
“Can’t you win him back?” His question was half serious but Kiki disregarded it.
“Your poor face!” she exclaimed. “Really you were wonderful. I was with a Harvard man and he was simply overwhelmed. No, I’m not going to try to win him back. I thought at first I would, but at the last minute I decided not to.”
They reached the taxi stand. He was going uptown—could he take her?
“Oh, please do!”
In the cab they looked at each other by the exciting first lights that twinkled in the window. Van Kamp was blue of eye, made of wrought iron and painted ash gold. He was shy and in that sense awkward but he had most certainly never made a clumsy movement in his life.
And seeing this, Kiki, who had been plunged into a sudden vacuum, made herself over suddenly into his kind of girl. She was alone with him with no plan except such plans as they would make together. He had a date but after a few minutes there seemed to be no hurry about it—she was calling him Rip before they ordered dinner.
“I almost went to Harvard,” he told her. “For a while I thought I’d play pro football, but I decided to get an education.”
“How much do they pay you?”
“Pay me? They don’t pay me anything.”
“I thought that was the idea.”
“I wish it was. Some boys I know get a hundred a month at a college out West. All I got was a loan. And of course I eat at training table, but I have to work too—I’ve got half a dozen jobs around the campus.”
“That isn’t right,” she said, “they ought to pay you; you draw people to the games to watch you. You have something valuable to sell, just like—like—”
“Just like brains. Go on, say it. Sometimes I wonder why I went to college.”
“Anyhow they should pay you for staying there.”
“Would you mind telling them that?”
Every few minutes Kiki thought of Alex Considine with a start, wondering if he were sorry now, wondering what it was that made him not love her, something she had done or some way she was, or if there was another girl. But each time she looked very hard at Eubert G. (“Rip”) Van Kamp, weight 159, height 5'11", and thought that no one had ever been so beautiful.
They went dancing and when the orchestra played “Gone” or “Lost” she felt empty and frightened inside, for last month she had danced to those pieces with Considine. But when they played “Goody-Goody,” it was all right because dancing with Van Kamp was very odd and fine in quite another way. Then in the taxi she kissed him, completely, almost with abandon, as much as he wanted her to. She played the whole game until
within a few hours he had become that strange dreamy figure of one whom we have been very close to and who is neither a stranger nor quite a friend.
II
At four o’clock next day he called at Kiki’s house, shy at its splendor.
“What do you suppose I’ve been doing all day,” she said. “Reading the papers—the sporting section. Have you seen this?
David was a lineman. And there was not one Goliath but seven. That’s what they are saying at New Haven today after one of the hardest fought games in the sixty years of the Yale-Harvard series. A one hundred and fifty-nine pound guard stole the spotlight from the fleet backs—
“It can’t be me,” he said lightly, “I weighed a hundred and fifty-seven. And let’s not play that. I came to see you—I spent all morning explaining to someone where I was last night.”
—He must have many girls, she thought. Aloud she said:
“I’m interested in what we talked about at dinner. It’s ridiculous that they don’t pay you money for what you can do.”
“The bowl would be full whether I was there or not—they’ve managed to carry on without me for sixty years.”
“Full for the big games, yes—but not for every game. I’ll bet you’ll make them thousands of dollars extra.”
“Oh no, I’m just one man out of eleven.”
“The papers say you were the whole team.”
“Oh no—it just looks that way because after the first plays I can usually tell where they’re going.”
Then suddenly, to Kiki’s eyes, Rip’s corporeal person began to grow dim, literally to fade away to the end of a long perspective. And she was alone there with Considine who had just walked into the room.
For a moment she was numb, and so controlled by her most intimate instincts that if he had come up to her she would have risen and walked like a stunned fighter into his arms. But the indirect consequences of yesterday decided the matter—he was overwrought and desperate and even more unfit than Kiki to cope with the situation. Not perceiving himself the wild relief that sprang into her eyes he talked words, words that were like bricks, building up a wall between them.
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