The Judge Is Reversed

by Frances Lockridge

  “Stripes?” Jerry enquired, loudly.

  “Belly stripes,” Pam said. “Although I don’t know that we care, do we? Do you know a Mr. John Blanchard? It seems everybody ought to. He judges cats.”

  “When we get out of this,” Jerry said. Jerry yelled.

  They got out of it. In time, they got to Queens Boulevard.

  “There was a Blanchard wrote a book about cats,” Jerry said. “That’s about all I know. Very good book, they say. Compared it to Van Vechten, some did.”

  “Nonsense,” Pam said firmly. “How ridiculous. A tall, thin man, in his late fifties? Gray hair? I suppose you’d have to call him distinguished-looking?”

  “All I know about him,” Jerry said, “is that he wrote a book about cats. Nothing about his dimensions. If it’s the same man. And, why, Pam?”

  Pam didn’t know. It had seemed an odd thing for a man to be doing. Naturally, she had wondered, mildly, about the man. It was unimportant. “We turn left at the next corner,” she said.

  A canvas sign which crossed the boulevard told them they turned left at the next corner. They turned left; they found a parking area; they climbed concrete steps into the concrete oval of the stadium, came out into bright sunlight; were shown places on a ribbed bench. Far below, on tattered turf, young men in white ran and leaped. “Game, Mr. Mears,” a loudspeaker told them. “He leads, five games to four, first set.”

  The young men in white met, and mopped, behind the umpire’s chair. They went back on court, the courts reversed. Now the player nearest the Norths was a rangy man, his close-cropped blond hair shining in the sun.

  “Mears,” Jerry said. “The one Laney’s cross with.”

  Mears raised a hand which held two tennis balls.

  “New balls,” Jerry said. “And, he’s obviously got a break through. And—”

  “Shhh,” Pam said.

  Mears’s long body seemed to lash like a whip, with a whip’s snap at the end. The ball fled.

  “Wow!” Pam North said, in appreciation. The dark-haired man on the far side of the net shook his head, waggled his racket in doleful appreciation. “Fifteen—love,” the umpire said, through the public-address system.

  Doug Mears served again. This time the ball came back, drifting high. Mears smashed. “Thirty—love,” the public-address system said.

  The crowd was very silent. Somewhere, off to the side, a typewriter clicked. The dark-haired man went back to position, waited to receive. He moved lithely as he waited, shifting weight, like a cat tensing for a spring.

  Mears served again. The ball was a white streak into court, breaking wide. The dark-haired man lunged and missed.

  “Foot fault,” a voice said, and was loud in the silence. “Foot fault,” the loudspeaker repeated.

  Everybody looked at the base-line judge. Mears looked at him in apparent astonishment, disbelief. He looked at him for seconds which seemed minutes. The linesman did not seem to look at him.

  Mears shook his head, in resignation, yet with anger.

  “Third one this set,” a man next Pam said to her, in a hushed voice. “Upsets the kid.”

  Mears served again. The ball, this time, hit the net cord, bounced high. “Let,” the net judge called. “Out,” a linesman called, and made a sweeping gesture of the left hand. “Double fault,” the umpire’s amplified voice told a crowd of some eight thousand. “Thirty—fifteen.”

  Mears served again, but the whip of his body seemed less certain. He went in behind service. The ball from the dark-haired man’s racket streaked past him, deep down the line. The silence was palpable. It was unbroken. Mears turned and looked at the base linesman—the same linesman. The linesman did not look at him.

  “Thirty—all,” the umpire said, and Jerry said, “Looked out from here.”

  “Looked out to Mears, too,” said the man on the other side of Pam, across her. “But John knows his job.”

  Pam had looked at the linesman quickly, without really looking. She looked again.

  He wore slacks and a dark jacket. He was sitting, now on the hardness of a folding wooden chair. He was lean and elegant still; his hair was thick and gray.

  “Jerry!” Pam North said, and Jerry, this time, said “Shhh!”

  Mears’s swinging racket pinged on the ball, and the ball flew. There was a faint sigh from the crowd, even before the linesman called. “Fault,” the loudspeaker said, imperturbable, and Mears served again. He seemed to serve harder than before. The ball streaked down the center of the court, landed on, or near, the center line. “Fault,” the center linesman of the far court said, and the loudspeaker said, “Double fault, thirty—forty.”

  Mears went back to position, shaking his blond head from side to side. He looked, suddenly, tired. He served, and the ball tore into the far court. “Let,” the net judge said. “First service,” the loudspeaker said. Mears served again, and this time the ball, angled toward the side line, went far beyond it. “Fault.” Mears, walking back, moved slowly. The whip of his body coiled again, snapped again.

  “Foot fault,” the man in slacks and dark jacket, the man with thick gray hair, said, clearly in the silence. There was, this time, a pause. It was as if the loudspeaker hesitated. “Double fault,” the loudspeaker said. “Game, Mr. Wilson. The games are five all, first set.”

  And Doug Mears banged his racket on the ground—banged it down twice on the battered turf. He started toward the linesman, and seemed to be talking, although his words were not audible. A kind of moan from the audience drowned the words.

  Mears took two long strides, and the linesman did not look at him. Mears stopped, then, and his shoulders sagged. He went back to receive. He went very slowly, as if each step were an effort.

  “Bad break for the kid,” the man next Pam said. “Sometimes a thing like that’ll—” He did not finish. The dark-haired man had served. The ball bounced crookedly. Mears, obviously off balance, swung awkwardly. The ball hit the net. “Some days it’s not worth while getting up,” the man next Pam said. “What a bounce!”

  Crossing to receive in the backhand court, the blond young man looked fixedly at the linesman in dark jacket, dark slacks. The man did not appear to look at him.

  Mears made the next point on a dipping return of service. But on the point which followed a similar return was lobbed over his head and, from thirty—fifteen, Mears volleyed once into the net and once far beyond the base line.

  “Game, Mr. Wilson. He leads, six games to five, first set.”

  As the players changed courts, Doug Mears stopped at the umpire’s high chair, spoke up to the umpire; spoke with apparent vehemence, once gestured toward the base linesman. The umpire listened. The umpire shook his head.

  Mears won the first point of the twelfth game on a service ace. But he double-faulted the second, dumped a volley—a volley that looked, from the stands, easy—into the net and then, once more, double-faulted. At fifteen—forty, Wilson—Ted Wilson, it turned out to be—put up a long lob off a strong service and Mears smashed.

  He smashed with a kind of fury, angling the ball. It landed inches beyond the side line, bounced hard and true—bounced spitefully toward the base linesman. The linesman moved, moved quickly. He caught the ball and for a moment held it in his hand, looking at it as if it were a strange object, an inimical object. Then he tossed it toward a ballboy and stood up, and looked the length of the court at Doug Mears. He looked for some seconds, and sat down again.

  “Game and first set, Mr. Wilson,” the loudspeaker said, in a silence which was curiously sodden. Then, and only then, the audience applauded, but not as if its heart was in applause.

  “If I can say something now without shush,” Pam said. “Judge not that ye be not judged. In other words, that’s Mr. Blanchard. First cats and then feet. First a woman in fringe, and then poor Mr. Mears.”

  “Thirty—love,” the loudspeaker said.

  “Poor Mr. Mears,” Pam said again, watching Ted Wilson’s third service go for an ace—for
an ace at which Mears lunged with no apparent enthusiasm.

  “I’ve heard about the cats,” the man on Pam’s right said. He had, apparently, joined them. At tennis matches, spectators are comrades under the skin. “Always think of old Johnny as a tennis man, myself. Used to be—”

  “Oh,” Jerry said. “That Blanchard.”

  Pam looked from one to the other.

  “Thirty years ago,” Jerry said, “he was one of the good ones.”

  “Almost,” the other man said.

  “All right, almost. Quarter finals at Wimbledon, wasn’t it?”

  “Semis,” the other man said. “But he was senior champion three years straight not so long ago. Now he’s an umpire, mostly. Filling in on lines today, but he’s usually in the chair. Calls them as he sees them, Johnny does. The kid let it get him. Too bad, because he figured to take—”

  “Game, Mr. Wilson. He leads, one game to love, second set.”

  “—which would have put him in line for a pro bid,” the informant on Pam’s right said. “Now—but it could be he’ll snap out of it.”

  Mears did not. He was broken through in the second game, and Wilson coasted to six-three. Each time he served from the base line Blanchard watched, as linesman and foot-fault judge; Doug Mears glared at the older man. And from that side, he served badly, seemed uncertain—looked after each service again at Blanchard, and seemed to wait.

  “He’s let it get him,” the authority on Pam’s right said. “He’s sure enough let it get him.”

  Mears played better in the third set, but not enough better. It went to Wilson at seven-five. The match went with it.

  “Mr. Wilson is good,” Pam said, as they went down the concrete steps.

  “Not that good,” Jerry told her. “As our friend said, Mears let it get him.”

  “What, exactly, is a foot fault?”

  “God only knows,” Jerry said.

  “And Mr. Blanchard,” Pam said. “He knows.” They went into the garden bar and found a table. And waited. And continued to wait. When she came, the waitress was sorry, and would bring gins and tonics.

  They waited, without impatience. At Forest Hills in tournament time only the players hurry. They hurry enough for everybody. It was pleasant in the garden bar, at an umbrella-shaded table among other tables scattered on grass—tables now filling during the intermission between stadium matches. Half a dozen men sat at a long table, and gestured tennis as they drank; along a path between the tables and the field courts, brisk young people in white walked back and forth and one could guess whether they were participants in the nationals or merely passive members of the West Side Tennis Club. It was Pam’s theory, advanced while they waited, that people carrying only two tennis rackets were probably not in the tournament. At least not at this stage.

  “It takes,” she said, “three rackets and a serious expression. Here he is again.”

  Jerry looked where she looked.

  “I begin to feel I’m being followed,” Pam said.

  John Blanchard, authority on cats and, it now appeared, tennis, was not alone. With him was a slender and sprightly girl in white shorts and blouse and sweater—a very pretty girl, who seemed to sparkle as she walked beside the much taller, much older man; a girl with deep red hair. They turned from the path and passed quite close to the Norths on their way to a table. “—ought to apologize,” the girl said, smiling up to the man. Blanchard shook his head at her and shrugged slightly, square shoulders moving under dark jacket. As they passed the long table of men who talked tennis with their hands, one of them—who had, as far as one could guess, been demonstrating the proper forehand—broke it off to salute Blanchard and to say “Hiya, Johnny?” At that there was a low chorus of “hiyas” and one “You can lose your head thataway, Johnny,” at which there was general laughter.

  Blanchard waved and did not answer, but his regular features moved into a regular smile. He touched the girl’s brown arm, guiding her to a table under an umbrella.

  The waitress came to the Norths’ table, and said she was sorry to have been so long, and deposited gins and tonics and said “Thank you” for a tip and went. From his table, Blanchard beckoned to her, and she went there. The Norths sipped, sitting in the sun. From beyond the fence—from the grandstand, probably—there was hand clapping. Somebody had done something which could be approved. The Norths sipped on.

  And then a rangy young man in tennis shorts and sweater, carrying rackets, came down the path. He came without looking to either side, his expression set—his expression angry. When he was at a place where he could see all the tables in the garden bar he stopped, and looked at all of them. And then, his face more set than ever, he walked over grass, walked to the table at which Blanchard and the girl were sitting. When he got to it he stopped and glared down at Blanchard. After some seconds, he looked at the girl, and then back at Blanchard.

  Everybody in the small enclosure stopped talking. Somebody put a glass down, and the sound of the glass on the metal table top was like a tiny explosion in the silence.

  “Well,” Doug Mears said, and spoke loudly, with a grating in his voice. “It worked out fine, didn’t it, Blanchard? Mr. Blanchard.”

  There was a peculiar emphasis when he said “Mr.” It was as if he derided the appellation as applied to the man he spoke to.

  Blanchard merely looked up at him, as if he looked through him. He lifted his glass and drank from it, and put it down on the table.

  “Doug!” the girl said. “Doug!”

  The rangy man looked at her again, and looked away again.

  Everybody watched. One of the men at the long table stood up, and started to move around the table toward Doug Mears and Blanchard and the girl.

  “Got just what you went after, didn’t you?” Mears said, and his voice was still loud, harsh. “Think you did, anyway. Got it sitting right here and—”

  Blanchard stood up, then. He moved very quickly when he moved.

  “I’d stop there, Mears,” Blanchard said. His voice was not as loud as the younger man’s—the much younger man’s. But his voice bit in the silence. “I’d stop right there.”

  “You’d like me to,” Mears said. “You’re a prize son of a bitch, Mr. Blanchard. A lousy, creepy old—”

  Blanchard came around the table then. And then the man who had started seconds before from the long table came up behind Doug Mears and put a hand hard on the blond man’s shoulder and said, “I’d knock it off, son.”

  The pretty girl put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, and the dark red hair streamed down around her face.

  Doug Mears wheeled, his face working.

  “I’ll—” he began.

  “You’ll knock it off,” the man who held him said. “You’re off the beam, son. Way off. So far off that—”

  He did not finish, but looked steadily at Doug Mears. And, after some moments, Mears shrugged and the man removed his hand from Mears’s shoulder. He said, “Thata-boy.”

  “What you mean is,” Mears said, but his voice was lower. “What you mean is—be a good boy, take it lying down or—or get suspended. Ruled off the—”

  “Now son,” the man said, and spoke like a father. “Why don’t you just run along? Probably nobody’ll remember hearing anything.” He looked across at Blanchard, still standing, flush showing under the tan of his face. He looked and seemed to wait, and after some moments Blanchard nodded his head briefly, and sat down. The girl did not move, still hid her face in hands and soft, dark-red hair.

  Doug Mears looked for a moment at the man who had intervened. Then he looked once more, his face dark, at Blanchard, who met his gaze; whose face showed no expression of any kind. Mears wrenched free of the restraining hand then, and walked across the grass to the path, looking at nobody, and then walked away along the path. Everybody watched him—everybody except John Blanchard and the girl with him. Blanchard was talking, his voice inaudible, to the girl, who, after a time, began shaking her head slowly, w
ithout moving the hands which hid her face.

  The loudspeaker in the stadium was even louder here, it seemed, than within the enclosure itself. It spoke now. “Linesmen ready?” it inquired, asking the rhetorical question—and, evidently, being greeted by the traditional silence. “Play,” the loudspeaker roared.

  Pam finished her drink and said, “Come on,” and stood, and Jerry finished his and went with her across the grass to the path. “Although,” Pam said, “almost anything will be an anticlimax, won’t it? What’s all this about its being only a game? And I want a hot dog.”

  They stopped under the stadium for hot dogs and carried them up the steep stairway. “Game, Mr. Farthing,” the loudspeaker said. “He leads, one game to love, first set.”

  Again lithe young men raced on green, performing prodigious feats with rackets and with balls. The Norths munched and watched, and then, after wiping mustard from faces, merely watched. It was a better match than the other, and nobody seemed especially enraged, although there was the usual amount of hopeless headshaking over shots gone wrong and, from Dennis Farthing an occasional admiring and audible “Wow!” in appreciation of an opponent’s ace. Mr. Farthing, being an Australian, won, but it took him five sets and only the last was easy.

  John Blanchard did not officiate and, although Pam thought she saw him sitting under the marquee, she could not be sure. If the man was Blanchard, he was alone.

  They stayed for several games of the mixed doubles match which followed, on Pam’s theory that they might learn something. But when the members of one team found themselves simultaneously in a distant corner of the court, imperiling each other with swinging rackets, Pam said she thought they had learned enough. “After all,” she said, “we could do that. And have.”

  “When we could run faster,” Jerry agreed, but agreed also that it was time to go.

  Driving home, Pam North kept remembering young Doug Mears.

  “Grant he was disappointed,” she said. “Grant he was mad. Still—to get as mad as all that? Of course, I suppose the girl is mixed up in it, somehow. They tend to get. Particularly when—did you think she was pretty, Jerry?”