Soccer Halfback (8 page)

But Mrs. Morris had her heart in her plants, trees,
and flower garden, and didn’t mind when the boys chided her about them.

Both their father and mother had loved the garden. Since their father had died she had continued taking care of it herself,
not minding it because she loved it so, and because, she had once admitted to the children, it kept her “close to Dad.”

Jabber thought it was a bit silly of her, but didn’t say so. If she was happy with that thought, let her be.

Tony drove up at noon, his hang-glider strapped to the roof of his car.

“We haven’t eaten yet,” said Pete, when Tony came to the door.

“I brought some sandwiches and a Thermos jug of hot coffee,” said Tony. “I thought we’d eat at the hill.”

“Hey! You’re thinking, man!” cried Pete. “Got enough for the three of us? Jabber’s coming, too.”

“Got plenty,” answered Tony. “Besides, I had my mother stick an extra half a loaf of Italian bread and a hunk of salami into
a bag. You ready?”

“In that case, we’re ready!” said Pete, laughing.

The conversation in the car on the way to Knob
Hill touched on a sensitive topic for Jabber. It surprised and embarrassed him. It was Tony who brought it up.

“I heard that you might quit soccer and play football, Jabber,” he said. “That true?”

He looked at Jabber in the rearview mirror, and must have noticed the surprised expression come over the younger boy’s face.
The sudden confusion.

“I said that?” said Jabber, frowning.

When? he wondered to himself. When did I say a thing like that? And to whom?

Then he remembered. He had said it to Mose Borman at the soccer game. In a fit of disgust. Oh, man!

Pete turned in the front seat and looked at him, his eyes brightening. “Hey! How come I hadn’t heard of this?” he demanded.

Jabber smiled weakly. How could he tell Pete that he hadn’t really meant it? That it was just something he had said off the
top of his head?

“Where did you hear the scuttlebutt, friend?” Pete asked Tony when he received no answer from his brother.

“Mose Borman. Jabber’s friend.”

Mose ought to be hung, thought Jabber. I just said that because I was disgusted for playing so lousy. Why didn’t Mose keep
his mouth shut?

“Smart move, Jabber!” exclaimed Tony. “As a matter of fact, I was surprised you went out for soccer instead of football. After
the big name your father made for himself I couldn’t see for beans why you went out for a different sport. Right, Pete?”

“I’ve been telling him that all along,” said Pete. “Hey, man, I’m pleased! This is good news!”

He extended his hand, and Jabber found himself shaking it. He felt in a dreamlike state. Why am I doing this? he asked himself.
I don’t want to play football! I want to play soccer!

On the other hand, Jabber saw how happy it had made Pete to think that he had changed his mind. And, if there were a lingering
doubt in Pete’s mind about Jabber’s stealing his money, Jabber’s shift to football would undoubtedly erase that, too.

“You tell Mom about this and she’ll be happier than if you got her a hundred plants and flowers for her birthday,” said Pete.
“She’s always wanted both of us to follow in Dad’s footsteps in football, you know.”

“She really likes football that much, does she?” asked Tony.

“Likes it? She never missed a game Dad played in,” replied Pete enthusiastically.

“Does she go to your games?”

“Well, no. She doesn’t have the time. She works all week, and on weekends she washes clothes, cleans up the house, et cetera,
et cetera. Even with all of us helping out, my mother’s a real busy woman.”

She could find the time to go if she wanted to, thought Jabber. But if she went to see Pete play, she would have to make the
time to see me play. It would be easier on everybody if I played football.

As they approached Knob Hill they saw a hang-glider already in the air. It was shifting briskly. Either the pilot was new
at the controls, or the wind was unusually strong.

They drove up the hill and parked a few yards away from the only other car there. A girl was leaning against its front bumper,
watching the hang-glider with more concern than interest. She glanced briefly at the newcomers, then shifted her attention
back to the glider.

“That’s Jane Wallace,” said Tony. “And that’s Tom
Miller flying the wing. He’s not bad, but that wind is giving him a rough time. What do you think, Pete?”

“I’ve flown in stronger winds than this,” replied Pete boldly. “Anyway, if Miller isn’t scared, we’re not going to chicken
out, are we?”

Tony shrugged. “Okay.”

The wind was changeable and stronger than any Jabber remembered experiencing before when he and Pete had come here to hang-glide.
Deep inside he wished Pete would reconsider. But he knew his brother. Pete was fearless, proud. If Tom Miller was brave enough
to hang-glide in this wind, Pete would be, too. Tony was just obliging Pete.

They removed the hang-gliders from the roof of the car, opened them, harnessed themselves, and prepared for flight.

“You first,” said Tony.

A grin played across Pete’s face. This was a sport he loved as much as football. He ran a short distance down the steep hill
and took off. Instantly the strong wind caught the underside of his wing and carried him quickly up fifty feet.

Jabber’s heart leaped as he stared frantically at the
yellow wing, at Pete strapped in it, and his dangling legs.

He shifted his attention to Tony. Tony hadn’t moved. He looked worried. Already Pete was having a rough time.

“He shouldn’t have gone,” exclaimed Jabber. “I knew he shouldn’t have gone. But you can’t tell him that. You can’t tell him
anything. Better not go, Tony. That wind is too strong.”

Pete was circling wide over the hill some two hundred yards away, his wing dipping and rising like a ship caught in a wild,
tumultuous sea.

Jabber looked for Tom Miller, saw him down in the valley, gliding in for a landing. He heard clapping and a soft cry of triumph,
and saw the girl, Jane Wallace, standing away from the car and applauding happily.

He glanced back toward Pete, and froze as he saw Pete’s wing skimming the tops of the pine trees in the distance. Suddenly
the yellow wing swooped toward the ground, rose for an instant, then floundered like a wounded bird.

In a moment Pete was on the ground, obscured by the wing.

“Tony! He’s probably hurt!” shouted Jabber anxiously.

“Let’s go!” said Tony, quickly releasing himself from the harness and folding the wing.

They sprinted across the rugged hill toward Pete, Jabber panting with worry. The wing was moving, billowing like a boat sail
in the gusty wind. But Pete was lying still on the ground.

They reached him, and saw the look of pain on his face as he lay there, a hand clutching his left leg.

“Pete!” Tony crouched beside him.

“I think I busted my left leg,” said Pete. “Oh, man, it hurts.”

“The closest house is down in the valley,” said Tony. “I’ll drive down there and phone for an ambulance. Don’t move. Just
stay put.”

He took off like a sprinter in a hundred-meter dash.

Jabber knelt beside his brother. “You shouldn’t have tried it, Pete,” he said, choking with emotion. “You saw the wind blowing
Tom Miller around the sky. It was too strong.”

Pete raised his hand. Jabber took it, squeezing it tenderly.

“It’s spilt milk now, Jabber,” said Pete with a pained smile. “I know I shouldn’t have gone. But I would have been all right
if that wind hadn’t caught me by surprise when I took off. It lifted me so fast that I hurt my right wrist. From then on I
couldn’t control the wing. I’m sure I would’ve flown it without trouble if I hadn’t hurt my wrist.”

Still the sure, arrogant Pete. Hating to admit to failure.

As the minutes passed while they waited for the arrival of the ambulance, Jabber’s mind began to race. What if the injury
was so serious Pete couldn’t finish the football season? Where would that leave Jabber? Would it really clinch his decision
to give up soccer and shift to football?

Right now it looked to him as if it would.

I
t took twenty-seven minutes from the time Tony made the telephone call till the time the ambulance arrived. One of the two
medics apologized for the delay, saying that they’d been on another emergency when the call came in.

They examined Pete’s legs carefully and found that his left leg was fractured. How seriously, only an X ray could tell.

They hustled him off to the hospital, Jabber riding along with him, Tony following in his car.

“It was a stupid accident,” complained Pete. “It burns me to a crisp.”

“Maybe it’s not too serious,” Jabber said, trying to comfort his brother. “Maybe you’ll be flying again before you know it.”

“Well, it all depends,” said Pete. “If I’m a fast healer, I might be back up on that hill tomorrow.”

He laughed, and Jabber laughed with him.

“Don’t bet on it,” said the medic sitting beside Jabber.

It took only minutes before the ambulance, siren going, rolled up to the curb in front of the emergency entrance of the Birch
Valley Hospital. Pete was rushed inside to the emergency ward where a doctor and a nurse were waiting for him. Carefully the
medics moved him from the stretcher to a table.

“I’ll call Mom and tell her,” said Jabber.

“No. Wait a while,” said Pete. “Maybe I won’t have to stay here.”

He lay stiffly, his eyes shut with pain.

“He your brother?” the doctor asked Jabber.

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you sit in that office? The girl will want to ask you for some information. The hospital will need it for
its records.”

“Okay.”

Jabber entered the office and sat down. The girl
across the desk from him smiled. “Hello,” she greeted him amiably. “Can I help you?”

Jabber wet his lips nervously. He felt hot and uncomfortable. He had never been in a hospital before, except when he was born,
and he certainly couldn’t remember that.

He heard footsteps beside him, and felt a wave of relief as Tony Dranger came alongside him. With Tony as moral support, he
had little difficulty from then on in answering the questions that the girl posed to him as she filled out a hospital form.

Two hours later, his leg in a cast, Pete was lying in a bed in Room 214 on the second floor. There was another bed in his
room. A man was in it, sleeping soundly.

Jabber was there with his mother, Karen, Uncle Jerry, and Aunt Doris.

“Talk about lousy luck,” grumbled Pete, sitting up in bed. “There goes football for the rest of the year. And the season’s
hardly started.”

“You have no one to blame but yourself,” said
Karen, sitting on the edge of the bed. “The wind’s been blowing hard all day. You shouldn’t have risked flying that wing.”

“My other mother,” snorted Pete. “Listen, I’ve flown that wing in stiff winds before. One of those gusts just caught me by
surprise, that’s all.”

He crossed his arms firmly over his chest, and Jabber saw the tape around his right wrist.

“What about the wrist?” he asked.

“Sprained, just like I said,” replied Pete.

“They tell you how long you might be in here?” asked Uncle Jerry.

“Two days at least,” said Pete. “Maybe three or four. I don’t know.”

He sounded disgruntled, angry.

“Take it easy,” said his aunt. She was a tall, stately woman with short-clipped, frosted hair and a warm, tender smile. “There
have been lots of athletes who’ve had injuries much worse than yours, who came back and played in just a few short weeks.
Don’t take it so hard.”

“Right,” said Uncle Jerry. “Heck, it happens all the time.”

He went on to tell how it had once happened
to him, and Jabber wondered if Pete was beginning to feel as he did. Listening to a pile of suggestions on how to ignore
the despairing side of life and capitalize on its positive side was boring him to sleep.

Pete stopped the flow of platitudes with a raise of his hand. “If you’ll pardon my interruption,” he said, “Jabber’s got some
news for you good people. Tell ’em, Jabber.”

Jabber stared at Pete.

“Go on,” insisted Pete. “Tell ’em. Don’t just stand there.”

Jabber felt everyone’s eyes focused on him. They waited, patiently.

Pete had him over a barrel. What could he say? He was trapped.

“I’m thinking of quitting soccer and playing football,” he said, his heart pounding.

“Hey! How about that?” exclaimed Uncle Jerry. “It’s about time!”

“Well!” said Mrs. Morris, her eyes widening. “And when did you decide to do that?”

“Probably when he found out that Pete had broken his leg,” said Karen impudently.

Jabber blushed. “That’s not so,” he said, embarrassed. “I spoke about it to Pete and Tony on the way to Knob Hill.”

“That’s right, he did,” vouched Pete. “But you said the same thing now that you said then, Jabber. You said you’re
thinking
about quitting. Aren’t you sure?”

Jabber met his eyes. “Almost,” he said.

“Well, fine,” said Uncle Jerry. “And on that happy note, what do you say we retreat? It’s almost the end of visiting time,
anyway.”

Jabber was glad to leave. But in the car, on their way home, Karen hardly said a word to him. She was in front with their
mother, who was talking about Pete and his foolish desire to fly hang-gliders; Jabber rode alone in the back seat.

“Someday he’ll grow up and see how crazy it is,” his mother said. “And I think you should quit it, too,” she said over her
shoulder to Jabber. “I know you’re flying Pete’s glider. You can’t keep such secrets from me.”

He forced a grin. “Nobody gets hurt if he learns how to fly those things well and is careful,” he said.

“Careful?” she echoed. “What kid is careful about anything nowadays?”

She can go on and on talking about the skills and the hazards of hang-gliding, thought Jabber. Just as long as we keep away
from the subject of soccer and football.

“It’s your decision to make,” Mose said as they headed for school on Monday morning. “I’m not going to try to influence you
one way or another. Except that I
know
if you quit soccer to play football our future games will go
phttt!
Down the drain.”