All-American

by John R. Tunis

  “You’re right they aren’t expecting it. But in this zone, with the score so close, it’s dangerous. If we were trailing by a touchdown, it might be ok. If we were behind two touchdowns, yes, definitely, that would be the play. But an interception right here would put them in a scoring position. One of the things you quarterbacks must learn is when to take chances and when not to. Right now the thing to do is to get out of this hole without giving them a scoring chance.”

  On the first play, Fairchild faked to the right halfback, who went tearing outside tackle without the ball, his arm crooked and his body slightly hunched over as if carrying it. Meanwhile the left halfback, actually tucking the ball under his arm, went through a quick-opening hole for four yards.

  Second down, six. Fairchild went into kick formation. Standing on his own 18-yard line, he got away another good kick, low, as it should have been into the wind, and away from the safety man. It took a lucky bounce and bobbled out of bounds on their 40-yard stripe.

  “Nice kick,” said the coach. “We’re out of that hole for the moment. I don’t know whether Fairchild was aiming for the sidelines or not; but I want you boys to remember that sideline can be an awful big help sometimes. Especially if the other team has a safety man who can run back kicks. We’ll put some time in on that this next week.

  “Now let’s see if we can get hold of that ball. The line’s charging pretty well... all except Jake. Ronny! Tell Meyer to warm up, and get him in there. He goes across that scrimmage line fast, and a recovered fumble or a blocked kick would help a lot now.”

  Ronny ran down to the end of the bench, and Meyer came jogging up and bent down in front of the coach.

  “Jake-boy, I want you to get in there for one reason. I want you to get across that line like a trip-hammer. I don’t believe they’ll try to mousetrap you. If they do, I think you’re big enough and strong enough to do a whole lot of damage anyway.

  “Now look, I’ve noticed one thing about this boy, this passer of theirs. He’s nervous, d’ja see him that last time? I’ve been watching him pretty close, and when he’s going to pass, he wipes his right hand on his jersey... yep, while he’s waiting for the ball. While he’s waiting for it to be snapped, that’s right. When he’s going to run, he doesn’t... there... see, see that? There’s the giveaway! Watch for it and tell the other boys.

  “Another thing, notice that wingback of theirs on the weak side. When there’s a reverse play and he’s going to hit the tackle, he’ll edge up toward the line almost a foot closer than usual. There! There he goes now... see... what’d I tell you! Get it? When the play is going the other way, toward the strong side, he lines up almost a whole yard off the line of scrimmage. I’ve been watching him all afternoon, and you can always depend on it. Now get warmed up, and you’ll be in there in a minute.”

  The boy blurted, “Yes, Coach,” and began to jog up and down the sideline. The man on the bench turned to Ronny.

  “See, Ronny, if you keep your eyes open and your mind clear, you can learn lots of things about the other team. When you’ve found them use ’em. That’s football. That’s the difference between the winning team and the losing one, always.”

  II

  It was a Saturday afternoon and Ronald decided he could treat himself to a picture, only Dad had the car playing golf. Dad always had the car. Or was about to use the car, or take the car to have it greased, or want it whenever he needed it. So Ronny, who might have called Sandra up had he been able to get the car, decided to go down alone on his bike.

  At North Main he was held up by a traffic light. After it went green the cop stationed there still held them to let a long line of people move across. Some of them carried handbags. Above the noise of motors shifting gears, Ronny heard strains of music in the distance.

  He sat with one foot on the curb. “Hey, kid,” he asked a boy running along the sidewalk, “where’s the fire?”

  “The station!” The kid turned his head and yelled back. “The station. They’re leaving on the five-forty.” Ronald didn’t understand at all. Then the music became louder and louder, and at last a band was visible. Why, it’s the High School band! He had always wondered what use a high school band was except to play at football games. Now he wondered more than ever.

  As the band passed, the grins from the windows of parked cars were widespread, and the derisive remarks from the kids on the sidewalks echoed his own feelings. At the head was Vera Clark, the drum major, wearing an absurdly tall white shako with a small green plume on it. She was having great trouble with her headgear because of the wind. First the shako slanted to one side of her head and then the other. White boots came halfway up to her knees, and she wore a white skirt and a thinlooking greenish jacket.

  All the girls wore green jackets and sheer white skirts which fluttered in the wind; the boys had on green peaked caps, green blazers, and thin white trousers. A good costume for the Fourth of July or even for the Academy game. But not that day. That day their faces were red. They looked cold. They undoubtedly were cold, and the uneven sounds from their instruments betrayed their feelings plainly. One small, pale boy whom Ronny had seen around the corridors at school stuck his clarinet under his arm and tried to blow his nose. The clarinet dropped to the street with a clatter that sounded even above the thin pipings of the band. He stooped over to rescue it and was promptly run down by the two bass drummers who marched unseeing up his back. The crowd roared. Ronny laughed, too. Was there ever anything more useless than the High School band!

  For it was all so funny; the kids in their summer pants and coats, the tottering white shako on Vera’s head, the little clarinet player, and the uneven, straggling lines. Ronald followed along to see where they were going. As the head of the crowd turned into Harrison Avenue, he saw autos pouring toward the station driveway. Then he realized the whole big parking space back of the building was blocked with cars. Never seen it like this. Never.

  The platforms, too, were crowded, so full you had to push and squeeze to get through. Inside a window he saw that the waiting room, a large barren place which usually contained half a dozen bored passengers, was completely jammed. Jake Stein, the baggage master, stood beside his door, unable to work, watching. The band now silent, holding their instruments under their arms, their hands in their pockets, managed to worm their way through the mob to a position beside the tracks. They all had a curious stork-like appearance as they stood forlornly around.

  Leaving his bicycle with several others against the wall, Ronny pushed into the waiting room. Instantly he realized. The men were leaving for camp. It seemed at first as if everyone in town had some relation departing. Milt Ziegler, Goldman’s first cousin, was there surrounded by his family, and Meyer, too.

  “Hey, Meyer.”

  “Hullo, Ronny.” They stood watching the crowd. At one side was Ed Swift with his dad, the president of the Trust Company, and Doc Rheinstein, standing with an arm around a boy’s neck. Beyond was a black-haired Italian in a leather windbreaker whom Ronny sort of remembered having seen before. He was an island in a sea of emotional relatives. His father, old, bent, needing a shave, his mother, short, fat, with a shawl over her head, and two girls, evidently his sisters, stood beside him. In the center of the room was a bunch of Negroes with their girls, all laughing and joking. They called across the packed room, shouting and kidding. Nearly everyone else, especially the older people, was solemn and quiet.

  “Let’s us get out of this,” said Meyer. They edged their way through the crowd. There, bang in front of them, was Jim Stacey.

  “Hey, guys! Say, this is something, isn’t it?” The three of them together stood watching. The platform was jammed with people, everyone holding to their hat with one hand and the arm of some boy with the other. You could easily tell the ones who were leaving. They all carried small handbags. Then Ronny noticed two colored people who weren’t so happy.

  “Gosh, it’s Ned! Ned LeRoy. Is that Ned LeRoy?” Stacey shook his head and shouted in the confu
sion.

  “Naw, it’s Tom, his brother. Looks like him, doesn’t he?”

  Another look made Ronald realize his mistake. Tom also had been a school football star, and he had worked since graduation in the school cafeteria. In fact Ronny had confused him with Ned one of his first days at Abraham Lincoln.

  So Tom was leaving! Tom had played against the Academy the year Ronald made the team as a sub; a darn good end, too. Shutting his eyes he could see that square Negro face on the end of the line, could picture him adjusting his headgear and waiting on his knees for the coming play. Now Tom was going to be a soldier. He was going into the army. It brought everything close to Ronny, made him feel a participant and not a spectator of what was taking place. The platform of noisy jostling people became real to him.

  The colored boy’s face was serious. He wasn’t laughing. By his side was a good-looking, light-skinned girl without a hat. Apparently she had put on her best clothes to see him off. Edging nearer with Jim and Meyer beside him, Ronny could see she was close to Tom, right up against him, and he held her tight with one arm. In the other he carried a worn old handbag.

  The crowd shoved, pushed, banged its way here, surged through there; men, women, kids, draftees, older men, a few Legionnaires in uniform. The trio stuck together, watching as a man climbed onto a baggage truck and stood with his camera pointed downward, flashing bulbs.

  “Dykes. From the Courier,” remarked Stacey. Then two older men with armbands, most likely draft board members, jammed through.

  “Ray Kelley? Ray Kelley? Anybody here seen Ray Kelley?”

  Several girls in bluish uniforms with packages of cigarettes worked past. They were offering them to all the boys leaving, and held out a couple to Tom. He saw neither the girls in uniform nor the cigarettes. While the crowd was shifting nervously about, he remained motionless, holding the girl to him. At the end of the platform the band started playing badly, out of tune.

  Was there ever anything more useless than a high school band? Or girl drum majors? Vera, waving her baton, stopped suddenly to grab at her white shako which the wind seemed determined to carry away. Even Meyer and Jim snickered. No wonder, for she had thrown on a faded fur coat which hardly came below her knees. With her white boots this made her look more stork-like than ever.

  A sharp whistle rang through the clear air.

  “All right, stand back, please; stand back now, please. Up there, stand back, will you?”

  A railroad official strode up and down the white line along the platform, warning the crowd and waving them back as the shriek of the distant engine came down the track. It was the custom of the train going over the grade crossing at Whistleville. Whistleville was on no map of the town. But if you said Whistleville, everyone knew what you meant. It was the section where the colored people lived.

  Jim nudged him. Ronny turned and saw Tom, who was going off to be a soldier. He was kissing the girl, and she had her arms tight around his neck, so tight that his hat was tilted back from his forehead. Tom was going off to camp, this minute. He was leaving home and Whistleville. For the first time Ronald thought of Whistleville not as a part of town you avoided but as someone’s home. He felt queer in his throat. It was funny when you thought of it; Whistleville, home, soldiers, Tom, that girl.

  Up and down the platform the noise and confusion increased. The band was louder, their lack of harmony more evident. In the excitement those kids in green blazers with puffed-out cheeks and red hands were more ridiculous than ever. They were unnoticed and unheard as the train roared into the station, for nobody was paying the least attention to them or to the stork-like Vera, frantically waving her green and white baton, the fur coat bouncing up and down on her shoulders as she motioned with her stick.

  The train thundered past down the track, the brakes creaked, and it came slowly to a stop. Above the crowd the coaches were empty. There was a movement toward the steps, and Ronny noticed the tall figure of Mr. Swift with one arm round his son, and the fat Italian woman kissing her boy; and then the little man who needed a shave had him. Gosh! He was, yessir, he was kissing him, too. The woman with the black shawl over her head moved away as the boy hopped on the steps. She was supported by a girl on each side, and followed by the little old man who was patting her shoulders. Now Ronald remembered him. It was Crispi. Old Crispi who ran the fruit store on South Main and Gardiner. That boy must have been Crispi’s son.

  “All right there, boys. Everybody on. All aboard, boys.” They were climbing up the steps. Inside they were shoving suitcases into the racks, grinning down from the windows, waving. Ronny saw Ed Swift and Mike Haskell who used to work summers in the A & P. G’bye, Mike. Hey, Mike, g’bye. Mike couldn’t hear. And there was that Polish kid who used to deliver the Courier. Was he really old enough to be a soldier! Meyer was shouting to someone, so was Jim on the other side.

  Suddenly the cop standing beside the step of the nearest coach drew up his hand to his cap. And Mr. Swift took off his hat and placed it over his heart. So did Meyer Goldman at his side.

  The Star-Spangled Banner! You could hardly hear the music, just a bar or two. That useless band; why didn’t they have the Legion band or a good band?

  Inside the car the men had stopped waving. Someone was singing. It was Jim. No, it was Meyer. Now more, lots and lots of people. The band was louder, you could actually hear it plainly, playing pretty well, too.

  From the car inside Ed Swift was singing, and Mike Haskell, too, and Meyer on one side of him and Jim on the other and Mr. Swift and everyone around. Suddenly his eyes were moist. Darn it all, he thought, this is silly. The band blared out the last bars. They were firm, emphatic. Say! Maybe that band isn’t quite so useless after all.

  “All aboard!” The train gave a jerk.

  Then Tom leaped down. He’d been standing on the steps of the train. He shoved the conductor aside and jumped to the platform. The girl standing beside Meyer threw herself around Tom’s neck. The car was moving now.

  “Hey, hey-there, Tom! You’ll miss the train.”

  They dropped apart. He plunged back through to the steps of the car. The girl was smiling at him.

  The train moved. He waved to Tom. “Good luck, Tom, you tell ’em, Tom-boy, hit ’em hard, Tom, that’s the stuff, that’s the old stuff.” The cars vanished in the dusk at the end of the platform. He felt foolish, he was yelling at empty space.

  Once more there was moisture in his eyes. Doggone, it’s cold, it’s awfully cold! What was he crying for? Keith and Eric and Tommy Gilmore would have roared. Certainly it was a good thing Meyer and Jim Stacey were at his elbow. It was the wind, the cold. Sure it was the wind.

  But in his heart he knew it was not the cold. It was Tom LeRoy leaving his girl and it was the look on her face after the train pulled out that made tears come to his eyes.

  III

  When you win, when passes click, when the interference forms smoothly in front and you cut in for five, ten, twenty yards, when the sun shines and your girl’s sitting up there in the High School stands and the score mounts, yes, then football’s fun. That’s grand, that’s something like.

  But this sort of thing wasn’t fun; it was agony. For almost the first time since he began playing football he longed to hear the sound of the whistle.

  Of all days to have it rain, the day of the Academy game, the one day we want a good dry field and firm footing! The rain pelted down his neck, oozed into his shoes, made each pad a sodden lump of lead. He looked around. The 16-yard line! One more touchdown and we’ll be licked; surely, positively licked. Ruefully he remembered standing on the same spot and saying that same thing to himself before the second touchdown. And the third.

  Then the whistle blew.

  The team picked itself out of the mud and straggled across the mire into the gymnasium. Into the lockers and clean clothes; relief from that incessant pounding, a chance to rest, to stretch out quietly, to pull themselves together.

  The familiar room was warm and dry; in one
corner steam was hissing cheerfully from the pipes, and the sight of those little piles of fresh, clean clothes before every locker was comforting. They trooped in, sodden and dripping, saying nothing because there wasn’t much you could say, chucking their headgears across the benches in disgust, despondent and disappointed. 19-0. What could anybody say about that kind of a score? To think this was the team that had been talked of as possibly playing an Intersectional game!

  “Ok, boys.” The coach brought up the rear, slamming the door on an especially severe gust of wind and rain. If he was distressed by the upset he showed no evidence of it. “Ok now, boys, get those clothes right off. Mike! Give us a hand here. Goldman, I’ll fix that cut up over your eye. Doc, take a look at Jake’s leg.”

  They hauled off their clothes, wet, soggy, disagreeable to touch, and dropped them to the floor. A small pool of water immediately collected about each pile. Mike and the Doc and the assistant coaches went around rubbing them down, repairing them for the second half. Ah, that’s good. Good to be stretched out and relaxed on the hard board while Mike assailed you with the coarse, dry towel. But that score, 19-0. Gee, that’s terrible, you can’t laugh that off. And we were the team mentioned in the papers as going south to play Miami High. Sure, in all the newspapers!

  Slowly they dressed once more. Dry socks, underwear, supporters, pads, pants, jerseys, and shoes. There. That’s better. That’s something like. The coach came past and slipped to the bench where Ronny was leaning over to tie his shoelaces.

  “Ronald!” His voice was low. “What seems to be the trouble out there this afternoon?”

  Ronny knew perfectly well what the trouble was but he didn’t like to say. So he just kept leaning over his shoes. When he didn’t answer, the coach continued in a low voice. “I know it’s wet out there; this kind of weather hurts the T-formation the worst way. But from the bench it kinda looks as if the boys aren’t together.”