All-American (3 page)

“Through?”

“Through? You leaving school?”

“Nope. I’m just not playing football anymore.”

B
ONG. BONG. BONG
went the bell as the boys swarmed into chapel. At the Academy you had to wear a necktie to chapel and a necktie to dinner in the evening; otherwise you dressed as you pleased. They poured across the Quad from Main and Belding and Hargreaves. Lower Formers and Second Formers, Third Formers, Fourth Formers, and Upper Formers. A few of them wore black sweaters with the letter in orange on it, inside out as customary. Anyone who wore a varsity sweater right side out or front side to was looked on with disapproval at the Academy. He was said to be “chucking himself around.”

It was a beautiful November morning, clear, crisp, and sunny. A few boys had turned the collars of their jackets up, others had put on fawn-colored polo coats, and everyone wore saddle shoes. Spike, the Duke’s airedale, pranced along as he always did when he heard the chapel bell. Bong. Bong. Bong-bong. He paused beside one group, frisked across the grass of the Quad, bounced back and followed them gravely to the steps of the chapel, seating himself on the topmost step. His usual procedure.

The Academy had many customs. One custom was the foot-stamping after a football victory. Whenever the stars of the game entered chapel on the Monday morning, there would be a low stamping of feet. That day they stamped for Tony, they stamped for Rog, they stamped loudly for Keith. But news spread rapidly over the small world which was the Academy, and the news of Ronny’s decision to give up football was news no more. When he came in there was a moment of hesitation. The stamp became a shuffle and then died away. The silent treatment. They were giving him the silent treatment.

Hey, Ronny’s quit football! The boys whispered to one another. D’ja hear? He wouldn’t take the captaincy for next season. Yeah, I know. That mean he isn’t gonna play anymore? Guess so. He’s upset. He says he’s through.

The noise subsided as Ronny came down the aisle and took his seat in the second pew up front.

Usually the Duke made a kind of talk the morning after the High School game. He always found something to comment upon, and words of praise for the team, winning or losing. They waited, the whole school waited, wondering whether he’d mention the game or Goldman’s injury. Goldman was hurt. So what? Football’s tough. They thought we’d be a bunch of pushovers this year. They thought we were softies because we didn’t play Madison High or Franklin High or teams from towns upstate. Because we preferred to play University School and Quaker Heights. Ok, now they found out. They got fooled. Served them right. As for Goldman, he happened to go down under a good block. Well, football’s a tough game.

That’s what the Academy thought while the opening hymn was being sung, and the Lesson for the day read and at last the Duke got up and stepped forward. As usual he had three or four slips of white paper in his hand. They were notices given him to read by different boys connected with school organizations. He adjusted his glasses.

“Candidates for the Monthly are requested to report to Gerald Staines in his room, 45 Hargreaves, this afternoon at five.”

“Mr. Morrison wants the whole glee club to report at three sharp at Main. He says that means the whole club.” Titters from the youngsters of the Lower Form in the balcony.

“The swimming team will begin practice at three this afternoon in the pool.” Everyone sat up. The Academy had the best swimming team in the State, in fact anywhere in the region. Why, our men even made the Yale team, lots of them. No one could beat us at swimming.

The Duke continued. “Keith Davidson hopes...” there was a sudden insistent stamping of feet, and the Duke looked up quickly with a kind of frown on his face. “Keith Davidson, the captain, hopes for a good turnout. He wants new men to report, especially from the Second and Third Forms.” His face turned down toward the last slip of paper in his hand.

“Found at the game, Saturday. Two fountain pens, one green, one black. Six notebooks... without any names in them.” He lifted his eyebrows and looked at the school over his glasses. There were titters. Putting your name in your books was a fetish of the Duke’s. Every year he mentioned it at the start of the term, insisted on everyone doing it, and every year a dozen boys forgot to do so. He waited a minute and then continued. “A silver cigarette case marked M. B.” The entire school laughed openly. Smoking was strictly forbidden at the Academy. “If the boy whose father owns this case will call at Mr. Sullivan’s office in the gym, he can have it.” Now the school roared. That was the Duke’s way of saying the boy wouldn’t be punished. A grand guy, the Duke.

After a joke of this kind he usually became serious and gave them the works. They sat waiting for him to turn it on as only the Duke could. Today he stopped. Twisting his head, he made a sign to Mr. Morrison at the organ, and the school hymn began. There was a shuffle of feet while the boys stood and sang.

It was over. They swarmed into the aisles and poured out the door. On the top step Spike was waiting, his tail going thump-thump against the wooden stairs. He stood up as Ronald appeared and greeted him by rubbing his face against his leg.

“’Lo, Spike, Spike old boy.” But all he saw was the row of smoking chimneys on the horizon and the distant roofs of the town where he would have to go in a few days.

He walked alone slowly across the Quad to Mr. Wendell’s class in English. Just ahead was Keith’s familiar figure, a regular halfback’s physique, a short, thickset torso with his head built close to his body. You’d pick him out for a halfback anytime, anyplace. Keith went up the steps two at a time, jumping happily along. Things didn’t seem to bother Keith. He never worried much. As he entered the room to the right on the first floor there was the stamping customary on the Monday following a big game when one of the stars entered the room. Ronny followed Keith and took his usual seat. No one made a sound. He understood; the silent treatment. Rex Heywood came in and sat down next to him. Then, seeing Ronald, he rose quietly and moved across the room.

Ordinarily this would have cut him. But he saw how they felt; to them he was a quitter. He was letting the school down. No one could appreciate it except maybe Keith and one or two members of the team. They could appreciate how he felt. Nope, even they couldn’t. They just didn’t feel the same way about it. Their attitude was different.

Because for the first time, he, Ronald Perry, had deliberately injured an opponent, put him in a plaster cast for life, or worse. In a few days he’d know definitely. After that, after what he’d been through since the game, he had no feelings left to be hurt by the school’s disapproval. Now he was in another world, a world of bigger things than games and schools, a world of surgeons and casts and broken vertebrae, of life and even perhaps of death. He felt old, a million years older than his classmates around, familiar names and familiar faces he knew and liked. But occupied with winning or losing the High School game. To them Goldman was a clunk and his father kept a clothing store on the corner of Main and State, and what did it matter whether he was hurt or not?

That was their point of view. Ronald understood it, in fact he admitted to himself if he hadn’t been the one to go in high on Goldman, it might very well have been his. When you had the responsibility of hitting a man high enough and hard enough to break his neck, or worse, you didn’t care much about victory. You were in a different world. You suddenly became a man.

Keith would have gone, too, actually Keith offered to go. But Ronald wanted to go alone. He said he guessed he could represent the team all right. Keith didn’t insist.

All the way down in the bus it came back to him; Goldman stretched out in pain on the concrete floor of the visitor’s quarters in the basement of the gym. Suppose he was hurt for life. Once Ronald had seen a young man in a wheelchair who’d hurt his spine or something wrestling in college. Suppose Goldman was dead! Did they, could they arrest you for manslaughter in an accident of this kind? Manslaughter! An ugly word. His imagination pictured all sorts of things which could happen to Goldman.

At South Main he changed for a crosstown bus. As he came nearer and nearer the hospital he dreaded it more and more. He got out to walk the three blocks east, seeing the big hospital building ahead. For a second he wished he had Keith or someone of the team beside him. This going alone was not much fun.

It was like an office inside the dark interior. There was a window marked INFORMATION and behind it a girl at a switchboard, dressed all in white. She was busy pushing plugs into the switchboard, and it was some time before she yanked open a small wicket in the window.

“Whodjawannasee?”

“I’d like to see a boy named Meyer Goldman, please.”

She paid no attention and continued putting plugs in and talking. “Orthopaedic. Doctor Thomas? Doctor Penny? His day off. Call Main, four one eight two. That’s right. Orthopaedic. Orthopaedic Hospital. I’ll ring him. I’m still ringing Doctor Thomas. I’ll see if you can go up.” This last to Ronald. “What’s your name?”

“Perry. Ronald Perry.” Maybe he wasn’t allowed to see visitors at all. Must be pretty bad if he couldn’t see any visitors. There was a conversation at the switchboard and she turned to him.

“Elevator at the right. Fourth floor. Room sixteen in the Dennison Ward.”

He took the elevator and went up. This was the way you felt before the kickoff at a big game, before you actually got into it and lost your tenseness, before you got knocked around a little, and others got knocked around, too. The thought came back vividly of the man in the wheelchair, of Goldman stretched on the concrete floor, of Goldman in a wheelchair, a cripple for life.

“Fourth floor.”

“Oh, yes, thanks.”

A nurse was sitting at a small table. There was the same smell as in the dressing room after a game. Funny how everything went back to football.

“You’re for Mr. Goldman? He can’t talk much. And you aren’t to stay long. But he wants to see you. This way, please.” She preceded him down a wide hallway with doors at each side.

How is he? Will he live d’you think? Will he be a cripple, will he be in a chair all his life? Ronny wanted to question her, but he couldn’t say a word, could only follow her down the hall. She threw open a door. “Visitor for you, Mr. Goldman.”

On the bed was a figure. He didn’t turn his head toward the door. The reason he didn’t turn his head was because he couldn’t. His whole neck was encased in a kind of ruff, a leather collar which came up clean around his chin. Beside the bed a man was standing. He stuck out his hand. The man was short, dark, and wore glasses. “Why, Mr. Perry, it’s mighty good of you to come down here, hey, Meyer?” said Goldman’s father.

Ronald hardly heard him. He saw only the boy in the bed and the collar around his neck.

“’Lo, Goldman, h’are you?”

Ronald wanted to ask had he suffered much, was he going to live, would he have to wear that awful collar all his life, was he ever going to get well?

The lips above the awful collar moved; but Ronald could hear nothing.

One moment he was there, in the backfield, active, dangerous, threatening, the ball in his extended arm, a hated enemy. Then this. And I did it. Keith and I, we did it, we did it on purpose. We’ve maybe killed him, maybe we’ve broken his neck so he won’t live....

“Hullo, Perry.” The voice was faint, the head didn’t move, there was no expression in his face.

“Gee, Goldman, this is terrible... I... I mean the fellows... we all feel mighty...”

The man touched his arm and put his face close to Ronny’s. His breath smelled of stale cigars. “After all, it’s football. Football, ain’t it?”

Despite his dislike of the man, a surge of warmth and relief swept over him. Then Goldman wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t maybe even be a cripple, even have to stay in a wheelchair. “You mean, you think, you hope he’ll come out ok...”

“Sure! Why sure! Two months in here; as good as new. As good as new. He’s tough; can’t kill Meyer, hey, hey, can they, son?”

The face made some kind of an expression, still staring ahead.

“That’s right, as good as new,” said the older man.

“Say, I’m glad. We’re all... we all feel pretty sick about this up at the Academy.” Still the face was immobile, staring straight ahead.

It wasn’t in the least what he had wanted to say, and the words sounded hollow and unconvincing. They were unconvincing. In his ears were the comments of the boys in Hargreaves, comments which hurt as he listened, which almost seemed to alienate him from the school. They were comments in tone and accent different from Mr. Goldman’s. Aw, he had it coming to him, the big lug. He happened to go down under that block; so what? Football’s a tough game.

But the older man kept on. “And the flowers. You never saw such flowers. The principal, that man...”

“Mr. Hetherington...”

“That’s it. He came down with flowers, brought his wife, too. And the school sent ’em, and the team sent ’em. Please thank ’em for Meyer, and me, too. Please thank the gentlemen.”

Somehow Ronald didn’t feel at all like a gentleman. He felt uncomfortable and unhappy and anxious to get out. The face in that ugly collar staring straight ahead showed a sudden spasm of pain. Ronald broke away from the arm on his; as difficult as shaking off a tackler in a broken field. He approached the bed.

“Y’know, Goldman, I feel terribly about this. About that block, I mean. Gee, I haven’t been able to sleep... or do anything. You see we wanted to stop you, to save a touchdown...”

The face murmured something. He couldn’t catch what it was, but the faintest kind of a smile came over the lips. “Ok.” Or something of that sort.

If only they could see him, Ronald thought, if only they could see that awful collar up to his chin, and that set face staring straight ahead, motionless, expressionless. They wouldn’t talk as they did. They couldn’t.

“Guess I’ll hafta be slipping along. Hope you get better, Goldman, and fast, too. The boys all wanted me to tell you how bad they felt about this thing.” Once again, it wasn’t in the least what he wanted to say. The things he wanted to say wouldn’t come, and those he did say had no sincerity and no truth in them. What he wanted to say was: