John D. MacDonald

Fight, Scrub, Fight!

Chapter One

One Man’s Way

Anthony Strega stood tall and straight at the edge of the practice field, where the grass was autumn tarnished and torn with cleats. Sunrise, behind him, cast a long and brooding shadow that bisected the faded white lines.

In the end it all came down to a question of mathematics and dimension. Take eleven men and train them so that each would act as an extension of his own body, then place them on a rigidly defined area, carefully instructed in a series of maneuvers that would inexorably carry the ball the length of the field.

It was the welling red line made by the surgeon’s scalpel, the dividers against the navigator’s chart — it was real and understandable, and thus a satisfying occupation, uncomplicated by emotional perplexities, by sloppy thinking.

He stood and felt the power that was in him, the determination and the coldness, and at last he turned and walked with long strides back to the small frame house they had given him at the far end of faculty row.

As he walked back he thought of Jackson’s report about the Greely ends playing too wide and in his mind he made various compensations for that defect, selected the one most likely to take the best advantage. And he smiled tightly as he thought of the quality of the Greely coaching staff, a staff that would permit the ends to play too wide.

If he were back with the pro team he would look with suspicion on the wide ends and he would sense a trap. But in this small college league, this younger brother of the Ivy League, traps were not so devious.

His destiny was as clear in his mind as though it had been charted. His square brown hands were tight on the helm and there would be no deviation.

He entered the house by the back door. Loren, her eyes still misted with sleep, smiled at him, lifted her lips to be kissed. She was Irish and her dark hair was black as a raven’s wing, her blue eyes warm and tender and gently mocking.

After eight months of marriage she was the only segment of his life that contained the unexpected, that consistently remained unpredictable.

Her lips were warm and, as he sat down, she got up and went over to the stove to start his breakfast.

“Walking and worrying?” she asked.

“Just walking, Loren. You don’t have to worry when you know what you can do.”

“Two and two is always four, huh?” Her warm voice held laughter.

He felt the rising sharpness of his tone. “Always!”

She set the orange juice in front of him, rumpled his hair. “Not always, darling,” she said softly.

The anger faded. “Not always for you, you Irish mystic. Just for me. I know what I can do and what I can’t do. Life gives you a full return on the investment.”

She sat down suddenly, cocked her head on one side, her chin resting on her fist. “Tony, lad,” she said. “You are a nice guy and I love you. But you can’t measure everything and weigh it and tie it down. Don’t you know that?”

He grinned. “No, I don’t.”

“You’ll learn it one day.”

“Or you’ll learn my way.”

They left it at that. In their eight months of marriage it had become a fixed gambit, the grooves worn deep.

He had told her of the way life had forced his philosophy down his throat. He had been born a year after his parents had arrived in New York from the north of Italy. When he was five his father had fallen to his death from the steel framework of a new building. When he was seven he was a runny-nosed kid, ragged and sharp and scrawny, toting a shoe-shine box around Times Square and the Public Library, chased by cops, beaten by the older kids, contemptuous of the squalid apathy into which his mother had sunk.

Then an uncle had come on the scene, a jovial but miserly man who had gotten hold of truck-farm acreage in New Jersey, who was looking for cheap labor, who brought pale little Tony Strega out to work exhausting hours on the land.

He had begun to grow then, to fill out. When he was fourteen he was nearly six feet tall and weighed a hundred and seventy. On his fifteenth birthday he thrashed his uncle and won the right to continue with school.

Life had begun to pay dividends. He became an All New Jersey high-school back, and received bids from half a dozen colleges. He cannily selected the college on the basis of the kind of football played there. He liked tough, hard, competent ball.

Two years of All American play got him a berth on a pro team. They called him the “Mechanical Man.” Tall, tough, hard, merciless and exact. In the Army he played on service teams. When he was discharged he was twenty-nine. Though he was flat-bellied, wide-shouldered, hard as a slab of granite, he knew that the rate of muscle regeneration was fading. Split-second timing was gone for good; powerful legs lacked the spring they had once had.

In college he had been careful to wipe out the last traces of his beginnings by learning to speak with care, to balance a tea cup if necessary, keep his mouth shut when there was nothing to be gained by speaking. He was handsome in a dour way, impressive in the way he carried himself — slowly, carefully, but with a hint of power.

And so he made a circuit of high schools and in 1946 he took over the coaching job at a school which had a poor record. After three defeats he built up a string of twenty-two victories in a row. On the basis of that record, Adams College hired him.

Two days after the contract was signed in January, he had married Loren Quinn.

The road ahead was clear. He would make his record at Adams as impressive as the record at the high school. There would be other offers. Bigger offers. And in the end there would be a top-flight school, an impressive contract, a national reputation.

He knew that he would achieve all those things by doing what he knew how to do in the way he knew best how to do it. Tight, hard, competent football. Dimensional mathematics. Plays that snapped like a bull whip handled by boys who had been given so many hours in fundamentals that they could block, tackle, handle the ball with the precision of professionals.

He put a sketch pad beside his plate and, as he ate awkwardly with his left hand, he outlined the play variations which would take advantage of those wide ends on the Greely team.

Adams was a small school. The alumni group wanted a good team. They had financed Tony Strega’s intensive travel from January to June, had backed up his offers of scholarships and jobs to the boys he wanted.

Adams was in a sleepy little town, and it had been a college almost since the nation had been free. Once it had had great football teams. Tradition hung over the college like a proud banner, and Anthony Strega was mildly amused at the poorly concealed scorn of ancient faculty professors who privately decried the “descent into commercialism.”

He pushed the pad aside, looked across the small table. Loren’s eyes were speculative over the white rim of her coffee cup.

“The battle all planned?” she asked.

“All planned. We’ve got a chance. A fair chance to tie. A slim chance to win.”

“They’re good?”

He shrugged. “Greely has been recruiting longer than we have. They’ve had a tougher schedule. We took Barnum seven-six. They made it twenty-nothing. But we’ve been improving with each game. I can’t see that they have.”

“You know, Tony, this Adams is quite a place.”

He raised one eyebrow. “You like it?”

“I like it a lot, hon. It begins to get you after a while.”

“Don’t let it get you too much, baby. It might make it too much of a chore to tear yourself loose.”

“It doesn’t get you, does it, Tony?”

“Get me? I don’t know what you mean. I walked into a tough job here. I’m doing okay. That makes me like the place.”

“Oh, I mean the sense of time, of this school having been here so long. The list of the names of the boys who were killed in the Civil War. The chapel bell and all that.”

Tony looked at her incredulously and then laughed. “Baby, you’re falling for corn. Adams has been here a long time. But so what? You’re falling for a lot of green lawns and ivy and gray-stone buildings.”

“Two and two is always four, huh?” she asked for the second time that morning.

He had no desire to carry on the same old argument. He stood up, tossed his napkin on the table.

“Sit down a minute, Tony, darling. Just for a minute. I went to that tea yesterday at Mrs. Grayson’s. She’s a sweet old gal, Tony.”

“Grayson is the one with the spinach. The old boy who’s as old as the buildings?”

“Yes, and the two of them are fans. Real fans. Mrs. Grayson asked me a lot about the team.”

“So?”

“So are you going to use Mercer and White on Saturday?”

Tony felt the hot flush of anger. “What goes on around this place, anyway? For two weeks I’ve been getting the needle on those boys. Look, baby, I’ve got a small squad. Exactly twenty-four boys. Divide that by eleven and you get two teams with two guys left over. Believe me, those two guys left over are Mercer and White. If I’d been able to do just a little more recruiting, they wouldn’t be on the squad at all.”

“But it’s always been—”

“I know, I know,” he said roughly. “In Nineteen Hundred and One Frank Mercer and Julius White played in the backfield and helped win the Greely game. In Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-five Frank Mercer, Jr. and Julius White, Jr., seniors like their pappies had been, helped win the Greely game. Now I’ve got Frank Mercer, the third, and Julius White, the third, and this is their last year, and so I just naturally put them in and they win the Greely game. Nuts!”

“But don’t you see, Tony, that—”

“I don’t see a thing. My first-string backfield is Forsi. Jabella, Stanisk and Maroney. Frank Mercer is third-string fullback. He’s big and he looks rugged, but I can’t cure him of flinching away from a tackle. He just plain doesn’t go for physicial contact. Julius White is eager as hell, but he’s too frail. He doesn’t go over one-fifty-five. Ten more pounds and I could make a decent scatback out of him. I’m putting winning teams on the field. If they want tradition they can all go climb the chapel tower and beat on the bell.”

“You won’t use them?”

He shrugged. “When there’s two or three minutes to play and we have a lead of at least two touchdowns I could send them in for old time’s sake, I guess.”

“Like a man throwing a dog a bone?”

“Just like a man throwing a dog a bone. I’m thinking of Tony Strega. First, last and all the time. Nobody else but you in this wide world gives a damn about Tony Strega. So I put them in. So we lose the game. Am I the guy who upheld tradition? Not on your life! I’m the guy with a hole in his season record. Believe me.”

“You’re hard, Tony,” she said softly.

His anger was gone. He shrugged. “Maybe. At least not soft in the head. I’m sorry I blew. But I’ve had old grads shoving big bellies up against me for two weeks now, telling me that they’re looking forward to the way the boys are going to lick Greely. To them, the ‘boys’ are Mercer and White. Today is Wednesday. They’ll keep needling me right up until game time, but after we rack up the win they’ll forget all about Mercer and White.”

“But what about the boys themselves, Tony? How are those two boys going to feel?”

He reached over and took her hand, “Honey, if I spent my time worrying about hurting the feelings of the boys on the squad, I might just as well buy a pick and start looking for a construction gang.”

Chapter Two

Diagram for Glory

At the beginning of the afternoon session he instructed Chug Davis, the line coach, in what he wanted done with the fourteen linemen, and he took the ten backfield men down to the far end of the field.

An intense believer in demonstration, Tony Strega trotted along with them in uniform. He looked over the ten men and wished he had more depth.

In Forsi, the alert quarterback, and Stanisk, the fleet left half, he knew that he had two top men. Jabella, fullback, and Maroney, right half, were almost as good.

He had leaned hard on the squad, whipping them with sarcasm when they fluffed, giving them quiet words of praise when they worked well. He had instilled in them the professional spirit, the feeling that they were men doing men’s work capably and well, without foolishness, without wildness.

They gathered round. “Forsi, Jabella, Stanisk and Maroney. I’ll center. I want the sixty-series run, Stanisk the man in motion. Greely ends are playing wide. So, Maroney, in the sixty-series you play a yard deeper and a few feet wider. Got it?”

Maroney nodded.

“The rest of you watch close.”

The backfield lined up with snap and, at the call, Strega rifled the ball back. Forsi faked a hand-off to Stanisk, faded back. Stanisk ran straight out, cut back sharply toward the line, turned and gathered in the jump pass that Forsi fed him. Maroney had come in just beyond Stanisk.

“That should do it,” Strega said. “If the end is wide you can block him off quicker from the deeper position. Run it twice more, and we’ll work our way up the series.”

When he was satisfied with performance, he gave the four men a break, put in Newcomb, Laddis, Sharma and Brankoff. He said, “We haven’t got enough men to make a clean split on offensive and defensive. So you boys have to know this just as well as Forsi and his mob does. Take it away, Newcomb.”

It took longer to polish the second group. Then, sighing inwardly, he gave Laddis, the second-string fullback, a rest and put in Mercer. Mercer was a rugged looking boy who betrayed his lack of confidence by the way he kept licking his lips and wiping sweaty palms on his thighs.

Strega hauled Forsi in to act as center, and said, “Okay, Mercer. Your assignment is to give the quarter protection as he fades. This play I’m a lineman coming through into your lap.”

The ball was snapped. Strega pounded in, headed directly for Newcomb who had faded back. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Frank Mercer start a reluctant block. With his hand on Mercer’s helmet, he drove the block down into the ground, levering himself around the prostrate fullback, leaping high to smack the pass off into the flat.

Mercer got up, flushing. “Boy, you didn’t want to block me. You wanted to flinch off that block. When you flinch you could do better throwing feathers at me. I come in hard and your flinch slows you down, gives me a chance. This time you play the lineman coming through.”

Mercer came in hard and fast. Strega drove at his thighs, sensing that Mercer went limp a split second before impact.

He got up, said, “You should be trying to run right through me, boy, not trying to ease the shock. Oh, skip it. Take a rest. Jabella come in. White, you come in for Brankoff.”

On the sixty-series, White, as right half, had to block out the opposition end as the left half cut back toward the line to take the jump pass.

As they lined up, Julius White’s thin face was eager, his eyes bright. “Damn it, White. Don’t prance like that. You just waste energy. Get in position fast and get ready to move, but don’t bounce around.”

White nodded and tried to steady down, but his body was still filled with restless motion.

“Stanisk, you play the opposition end. And play wide. See if you can nail Sharma who’s playing your position as the receiver?”

They lined up. Sharma came jogging over and Newcomb’s fake was well done. Newcomb faded back with Jabella protecting him. Sharma cut back toward the line with White running outside him. Stanisk came in. White, too eager, outran Sharma, saw his error, slowed and tried to fall back against Stanisk. Stanisk, moving fast, bumped White eight feet away, got his hands on Sharma and pulled him down.

White got up, slightly groggy, shook his head a few times and grinned ruefully.

Strega said, “White, a little man’s timing has to be perfect. Otherwise he takes a hell of a beating. You were off balance then. You’re too tight. Try again.”

The second time White moved well, slammed his body across Stanisk’s knees and brought him down. Stanisk, wearing a mildly amused expression, got off White, helped him up.

Strega yelled across the field to Chug. Chug brought the linemen over and from then on the practice was on a scrimmage basis, limited to the sixty-series, designed to make Greely sorry that Jackson had gotten a look at their ends.

When Tony Strega went home that evening Loren was amiable, polite and faintly distant. No mention was made of the morning argument. He beat her at three straight games of cribbage and then they went to bed. Somehow there was a tiny wall between them. He could neither define it nor understand it. And it made him feel ineffectual.

Thursday he made the squad walk through every play in the book, not wishing to risk any minor injuries in scrimmage because of his lack of depth at all positions.

At dusk he called a halt and said, “Okay. Tomorrow we flip the ball around for an hour and call it a day.”

He showered and dressed slowly. As he was lacing his shoes, the last few members of the squad left the dressing room. He was alone in the silence, in the glare of a naked bulb, in the smell of sweat and leather and alcohol. He wondered idly how much of his life had been spent in locker rooms. When the contract with the big school came along, he’d have a complete staff. There’d be no more climbing in and out of uniform. He’d wear tweeds and a topcoat and he’d stand with his hands in his topcoat pockets and watch four or five complete teams work out on a vast field.

When he saw something wrong there’d be a P.A. system with the mike handy so that he could holler out what he’d seen that he didn’t like. The sports reporters would hang around for interviews and he’d always be pessimistic about his chances. That was good psychology.

He and Loren would have a big house and a bankroll and when he was interviewed on the radio or on television, she’d be waiting when he got home.

All the breaks. Every one. And gotten the hard way. Gotten by a tough little kid who had once been kicked in the face by a well-dressed drunk who didn’t like the way his shoes had been shined. He remembered how he’d taken the shine box by the strap and slung it low, cracking the man’s kneecap, leaving him yelling on the sidewalk while the police whistle shrilled and the cop came running.

“Pardon me,” the voice broke into his thoughts.

He glanced up quickly. He hadn’t seen the man come in. The man was big, thick through the shoulders, wide through the middle. He stood with his legs braced and looked around the locker room.

“Better layout than we used to have,” he said. He stuck out his hand. “I recognized you from your pictures, son. I’m Frank Mercer.”

Tony stood up and took the man’s hand. “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said. He forced himself to smile amiably. The old squeeze play. Confidential request. Let the boy play, son. Give him a chance, son.

Frank Mercer exuded an air of confidence, money, security. He had heavy jowls, and a small gold football hung from his watch chain.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Mr. Mercer asked.

It was pointless to refuse. There was no need to antagonize the man any further than he’d be antagonized if he ferreted out the truth about his son.

“Sure thing. Let me phone first.”

Mercer’s long black sedan was outside. They went down into town, to the small men’s bar in the basement of the big frame hotel.

They got their drinks at the bar and took them over to a table. As Tony was about to sit down, Mercer said, “Want to show you something. Over here.”

The uniforms in the old pictures were laughable, as was the look of fearless determination on the faces. Mercer pointed to a mustached youth in the second row. “My father,” he said. “And over here is his roommate. Julius White. About as big as a button. Practically the days of the flying wedge. There was a play where my dad picked up Julius and threw him bodily over the line. That was a great ground gainer.”

Tony evidenced polite interest. Mercer led the way over to another picture, a much more modem picture.

“Me here,” he said pointing. “Julius over there. The general procedure was for me to put my head down and slam the line. Julius used the holes I made — when I made ’em.”

“It’s still a good idea,” Tony said, smiling.

They went back to the table. “Those two pictures are on the wall in my boy’s room at home. He grew up on those pictures. Like a damn fool, I crammed them down his throat.”

Strega looked up in surprise. There had been an elusive bitterness in Frank Mercer’s tone.

Mercer said, “Tony — I hope you don’t mind if I call you by your first name — I came here today to ask a funny favor. I stayed out of sight until my boy went back to the dorm. I don’t want him to know that I’ve seen you.”

Here it comes, Tony thought. The old pressure play.

“Tony, I don’t know what your plans are, but I know you’re a smart coach. I want Frank kept out of the Greely game.”

Tony’s mouth sagged open. “Huh?”

“I know you’re surprised. I guess you thought that I was going to put the bee on you to have him play. I imagine they’ve been putting the arm on you about the old tradition. Maybe they’ve convinced you that you owe it to tradition to have Mercer and White in there for the Greely game. It won’t work, Tony.”

“Mr. Mercer, I don’t quite get it.”

Mercer sighed, waved for another drink. He said, “When he was born I had the stupid idea that he’d be the football flash. You know. Heredity. He was going to be the kind of star I wanted to be. When he was seven I had him out on the grounds running and passing and kicking the ball. He used to hate it. He wanted to be up in his room with his books. He was that kind of a kid.

“Maybe if he resented me, it would be okay. But he likes me and he wants to please me. Like a fool, I twisted his life around so that now he’s doing all this to please me. Tony, he hasn’t got it. He just hasn’t got the temperament for it. But he’s been heading for next Saturday for the past twelve years. He’s a quiet lad, a nice lad. But he’s a scholar. He put meat and muscle on that frame of his through the bitterest kind of labor. And he feels that my respect for him depends on his showing Saturday.”

Mercer leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Tony, it’s this simple. If you don’t put him in, he can’t blame himself. But I’m afraid of what will happen to the boy if you put him in and he flubs it, as I’m sure he will. I’m afraid of the guilt he’ll feel.”

Tony knew that some answer was expected of him. He lit a cigarette, inspected the glowing end for a few moments.

He said, “Mr. Mercer, I’m just a coach. I’m not a psychologist. I get a certain squad to work with. To tell you the truth, I’m hoping that I don’t have to use your boy. I agree with you. He’s got everything but the right mental attitude. I’m only three deep in his position. Jabella is first-string fullback. Laddis is next. Your boy is third. Jabella is in good shape. Laddis had an injury early in the season. He seems to be okay. He may not be. If Jabella is injured and if Laddis can’t stand the pace, Mercer goes in. I can’t help that. I can’t go around knocking myself out over a lot of emotional stuff. Sure, they’ve been needling me about tradition. And I’ve been ignoring them. I have a squad and I’m expected to win games with it. So I’ll use the squad any way I see fit. I’m not running a soul-saving organization. I’m just winning ball games.”

Mercer smiled. “I had a hunch you’d be just like this, Strega.”

His tone was mild but Tony was unaccountably reminded of Loren’s criticism of his attitude.

“And if you see White’s father, tell him the same thing.”

Mercer stood up. “That’s not very likely. White’s father commanded an infantry regiment in the Pacific. A sniper got him.” The coldness faded out of his voice. He said, “Tony, I’m sure you’ll have a successful career as a coach. I just hope that you won’t be too lonesome.”

He tossed a bill on the table and left. Tony sat for several moments, sipping his drink, feeling the warm tide of anger slowly recede.

The dregs of his anger were still with him when he arrived home. Loren kissed him lightly, said, “Stop scowling, hon. Who brought on the mad?”

He considered. He didn’t want to reopen the old argument. He forced a smile. “I just had a drink with an old alumnus. The usual guff. I’m not mad. Just a little weary.”

Greely’s band halted in the middle of the field, made a right face, finished their march, broke for their position across the field. The Greely team, looking big in pale-blue striped with white, broke out onto the field.

Strega smiled happily as he saw that they were running too fast, trying to be too impressive. He turned to Jackson and said, “Okay, you know what to look for.” Jackson, injured early in the season, grinned and walked off, equipped with pad, paper, field glasses and small boy to carry the spotting notes. He was posted high in the end zone.

Tony turned and walked back toward the bench just as the Adams team came out. True to his instruction they ran easily, lifting knees just high enough to take out the kinks, faces impassive.

He liked the looks of his squad, but there was an uneasiness in the back of his mind. Partly because he hadn’t slept well; partly because Loren wasn’t in the stands behind him.

She had said calmly, “Run along and be boss-man, hon. I hope you’ll hatchet the opposition as usual for the sake of the shining record.”

“There wouldn’t be a touch of sarcasm there, Loren?”

Her eyes had widened. “My goodness, no! Sarcastic? Wouldn’t I be wasting it?”

The two squads walked through a few plays, flipped the ball around and all but the two starting line-ups came off the field.

Jabella went over to match with Loots, the agile right half and captain of the Greely outfit. Strega thought, With that Loots kid I could have had a perfect season. Next year I’ll have one like him. Greely wastes him.

Jabella won, elected to receive, and Loots picked the south goal to defend, taking advantage of a slight breeze. The day was clear and cold, but the ground was not frozen. All morning the cars had been arriving at Adams. The stands, built to hold twenty thousand, were packed for the first time that season.

Tony Strega sat on the bench, his hat brim low. Stanisk kicked. The ball went high, end over end. It was taken by Sheed, the Greely left half, on the six, barely caught before the Adams’ ends, down fast under the kick, had him hemmed. Sheed started up the middle, flipped the ball back to Loots, but Maroney refused to be fooled, evaded Sheed’s block, nailed Loots on the eleven.

Tony yanked the whole backfield, sent in Newcomb, Laddis, Sharma and Brankoff, along with two defensive linemen, a guard and an end.

Newcomb shifted Laddis well back to guard against a quick kick, shifted the defense to a six-three-one-one, guessed that Greely, pinned so close, would stay on the ground. Greely shifted to a single wing, unbalanced line to the right, and tried to bull their way out of the box with a power sweep around right end.

Loots was knocked out of bounds on the far side of the field on the twelve.

Again they lined up in a single wing and Jeffer, the big fullback, cracked off tackle for four yards before Sharma and Brankoff stopped him.

Third and five. With a little more breathing space Greely moved into a T with Sheed as the man in motion. Garan, the tall thin quarterback took the pass from center, gave it on a hand-off to Sheed who in turn fed it to the big Jeffer on a shovel pass as Jeffer came booming down. Both Newcomb and Sharma had moved too far to the side when they saw Sheed take the hand-off, and when the hole was opened in the line and Jeffer came through, Newcomb spun and dived, but he was late and slow. A Greely end came around fast to take Laddis out of the play, but Laddis feinted him into taking his block too early, cut back and dropped Jeffer on the forty.

Across the field someone thumped the bass drum and the Greely fans went wild.

Tony Strega hunched his shoulders, smiled sourly and decided not to send in anybody to yelp at Newcomb. Newcomb was bright enough to see his own mistake.

On the next play Newcomb spread a wide six-two-two-one, smelled the play, cut back into the flat and batted the short pass out of the arms of the tail end who had climbed up after it.

Greely shifted back into single wing, unbalanced line to the left, and sent Loots around right end on a naked reverse. But the Greely guard missed the block on the Adams end and Loots was dropped before he got to the line of scrimmage. Third and eleven.

The next play started as a combination basketball game and backfield ballet. Maybe it would have gone somewhere. But Blessing, a tough defensive guard, submarined through, emerged in the Greely backfield and slapped Garan, the quarterback, down in the middle of a fake.

Greely kicked and Sharma, taking Laddis’ place as safety, picked it out of the air on a dead run and brought it all the way up to the twenty-eight before he was downed.

Tony sent Forsi, Jabella, Stanisk and Maroney back in, saying to Forsi, “Stay clear of the sixty series until I send you the word.”

Forsi nodded tightly. The impressive results of a full season of intensive effort and training went onto the field in the form of the four backs.

Tony forced himself to draw a deep breath. Each man was an extension of himself. In a sense, the backfield was made up of four Tony Stregas.

There was no waste energy, no rushing around aimlessly, no fumbling or hesitation. Forsi called for a quick-opening play, stabbed at the left side of the line with Maroney. Maroney bucked through into the secondary, was trapped and downed as he tried to cut back.

Second and four. Tony knew what he would have called for. Get the first down. Al Forsi called it, giving a three-quarter spin and a hand-off to “Big Joe” Jabella, who carried the mail for a little over two yards, taking with him the whole center of the Greely line.

Third and less than two.

Forsi called the same play again, only Jabella plunged into the line without the ball, Forsi diving laterally through the hole that Jabella had made. The sticks were called out and the down was racked up. First and ten.

The boy shoved a folded piece of paper into Tony’s hand. He opened it. “Still wide” it said.

“Farmer,” he snapped. The lineman came over and crouched in front of him. “Go in for Blessing. Signal Forsi to run any sixty play.”

First and ten. The ball was snapped. Forsi spun, faked a hand-off to Stanisk, faded back. Jabella slapped down a tackle who had oozed through the line. Stanisk made his cutback and the opposition end, seeing his danger, tried to close in fast. Maroney cut his legs out from under him as the rifled pass thudded snugly against Stanisk’s chest. In the secondary, he cut wide, picked up the interference, pounded down the sidelines, cut back, was dumped on the Greely thirty. The ball squirted out of his arms and a Greely player fell on it. There was shocked silence from the Adams stands, a yell of glee from the Greely side of the field.

Tony Strega muttered curses deep in his throat.

Greely, taking advantage of their gift from nowhere, bucked, plunged and elbowed their way into two first downs that carried them just over the mid-field stripe before they were forced to kick. The kick, angled toward the sidelines, went out at the fourteen.

Forsi took over again, sharp mind clicking, using the judgment that Tony Strega had beaten into him.

Maroney around left end for three. Jabella off tackle for four. A pass into the flat for five. A sneak for three more. End around for six. Jump pass to the end in the flat for seven. Jabella through the middle for two, then three, then eight

A precision march. And the deeper the march went, the tougher it got. Tony watched the ends, and he knew that Forsi watched them also.

Down to the Greely forty-eight. Forty-four. Thirty-eight. Thirty-seven. Thirty-one. Twenty-six.

Each thrust forward into the heart of Greely-land enabled the defense to concentrate their forces.

On a long-delayed buck where a hole opened, was closed, and opened again in the nick of time, Maroney carried it on down to the twenty.

Forsi fed a jump pass to the left end at the line of scrimmage. The end flipped it laterally out to Stanisk who, with Jabella running interference, plunged it on down to the twelve as the quarter ended.

First and ten on the twelve. With some beautiful faking, Forsi shook Stanisk loose again. Stanisk was downed on the three, but the horn had blown on the play. Adams had drawn the offside penalty and it was first and fifteen.

First and fifteen. A pass into the end zone was incomplete. A second try at the end around was nailed at the line of scrimmage. Third and fifteen. Tony Strega tensed as he saw the left end wide.

Once again the same play. The end was swept out of the play, the guard was blocked in toward the center of the line and Stanisk was dropped on the two.

Jabella, crashing into the entire center of the Greely line, made it a first down by inches.

Jabella tried twice more for no gain. Third and goal to go. Forsi faded back, evaded a tackier, ducked away from another, moved on back to the ten, the fifteen. There he was nearly trapped. Maroney was running at full speed laterally along the end zone. He moved in front of the man covering him. Forsi got the pass off. It was too far ahead of Maroney. Maroney made a flat dive, gathered in the ball at shoe-top level and the big six was racked up. The kick was good and the Adams band blared the touchdown march as the tired team drifted back into position to kick.

Greely took the ball on the ten and, in four successive downs, brought it up beyond mid-field before a fumble lost them twelve yards and they were forced then to kick.

Forsi gnawed out two first downs before kicking. Greely had it back up to mid-field and the half ended as a long, towering pass was knocked down by Brankoff in the end zone.

Andy Fels, the trainer, was prodding Stanisk’s shoulder as Tony came into the locker room. Men were stretched out on the benches, chests heaving.

“Anybody hurt?” Tony asked.

“Nothing serious, Mr. Strega,” Andy said.

Tony walked slowly through the long low room. He cuffed Forsi on the chest and winked at him. They seemed m fair shape. Weary, but still confident.

Chapter Three

Touchdown Castouts

Back in the center of the room he said, “Nice going, guys. We got one. We might have had two. Sims is over there with them giving them hell. They’ll come out after blood. It’ll be tough holding them off. But I think we can do it. Play it smart and hard and fast. Do your jobs. Remember your assignment. Keep your heads up. They’ll be eager enough to bobble a few. Fall on the ball. This is the last game. With a win we’ve got a good season. A loss and we’re all dogs. A good season and we get the breaks next year. You know what I mean.”

He turned toward the door, found his way unexpectedly blocked by Frank Mercer. Mercer, uncertain and ill at ease, said, “Coach, I—”

“Speak up, boy.”

“I wondered if I was going to get in this game. You see I—”

Strega smiled. It wasn’t a very friendly smile. “I know, kid. The history books say this is your day to be a hero. You talk to Forsi. You ask him to punch another one or two across and I’ll shove you in for the closing moments.”

Mercer drifted away, his eyes hurt, his lips tight Tony Strega left and slammed the door after him.

The first ten minutes of the third quarter turned into a kicking duel, with the educated toe of Greely’s Jeffer providing a slight advantage.

Each team, hot after the ball, smothered the defensive efforts of the other team. Tony, trying to weigh the remaining strength of his men, glanced along the bench. Everybody had been in but Mercer, White and two tackles. Tony sent in the two tackles.

At last Jeffer hit the jackpot with a kick which took an odd bounce, went over the safety man’s head and rolled out inches from the goal line.

The kick by Adams was bad, barely reaching the mid-field stripe. Greely got down to the forty where it became fourth and three. Jeffer kicked magnificently, and the hankerchief was dropped on the two.

Loots went back as safety.

Stanisk got off a beautiful kick, his best of the day. It sailed, wide and handsome, way back over Loots’ head. Loots raced back, picked it up on his own twenty-five, spun away from a driving tackle, angled toward the sidelines. Two men closed in on him. He sidestepped the shot of one, broke through the other with a punishing straight arm. He toe-danced down the sideline until he was blocked. He cut back but he had picked up protection. He moved nicely in back of his interference, racing down the cluttered field. He spun out of another tackle, reversed his field, made it down to the thirty. Sharma and Maroney closed in on him. Sharma was blocked out. Loots feinted but he couldn’t fake Maroney off line. Loots put on a burst of speed and ran Maroney down. It caught Maroney by surprise. He managed to trip Loots. But Loots, after stumbling wildly, managed to stay on his feet.

In the end zone he slowed, stopped, and burlesqued the heaving of a huge sigh.

They tried hard to block the kick, but fingers failed to reach the ball and it sailed through, straight and true.

With the score tied, the quarter ended just as Adams ran the first play from the twenty for a three yard gain, second and seven.

After the first play in the fourth quarter, Maroney tried to hobble back to position. Time was called and he came off, limping badly. It was the first serious loss. Some men had been badly enough bruised to need a rest and several had had the wind knocked out of them, necessitating a time out, but this was the first man out of the game for keeps.

Mercer helped Maroney back to the locker room where his ankle could be tended.

Brankoff was almost as good as Maroney. Just a shade slower on his feet and quite a bit slower in the head. Forsi, with Brankoff in the right-half slot, would have to skim off and discard the top precision layer from the bag of tricks.

Tony wondered if Loren understood his predicament, and then he realized with a deep and heavy sense of loss that she wasn’t there.

Forsi had to slam ahead for the winning points. Jackson sent down a report that one of the Greely guards was too eager and might fall for the old mouse trap.

Tony sent a tackle in with the information. Forsi slammed Jabella through the hole where the too-eager guard had been. Jabella made eleven yards, running the last three with tacklers hanging all over him.

Brankoff fumbled and suddenly it was third down, eleven to go. Greely drew a roughing-the-kicker penalty. And so the kick wasn’t necessary.

It was that close. Almost inch by inch. A gamble all the way. Tired men snapped into position, lifting sodden legs for that last ounce of energy, that last bit of drive. This was the pay-off and Forsi was in there, throwing his dwindling forces in the best direction, subject only to occasional suggestion from the bench.

Down to the forty, to mid-field, to the Greely forty. Fourth and one on the Greely thirty-five. A desperate gamble that paid off a first down. Down to the thirty, the twenty, the fifteen. Down to the ten and Greely stands rocked with the chant of, “Hold that line!”

Jabella got up more slowly each time. Down to the eight, the five. The three.

And Greely got possession of the ball on downs on their own two yard line.

Tony glanced at the clock. Seven minutes to play.

A Greely team, revitalized by the way they had halted the Adams drive, snapped back and shook Loots loose for forty yards. The next play, a long pass, hauled down by a Greely end, made it a first down on the Adams twenty.

Tony Strega tasted the sourness of defeat. On the next play, Loots went wide, his chunky legs churning, knees high, his speed deceptive.

A man arrowed out of the back and a blocker missed. Brankoff, moving faster than he had moved at any time during the afternoon, hit Loots head on. The ball bounded away. Forsi was there to fall on it.

Loots got up slowly. Brankoff didn’t get up at all.

During the time out they got him on his feet. But he didn’t know what day it was and he didn’t have any idea who they were playing. He came off the field meekly.

“White for Brankoff!” Tony said, his voice cracking like a whip.

Julius White gave Tony a startled look and sped out. There was no other solution. Julius White was the only right half left. It was just hard luck that his injuries had to be both in the right-half slot. And harder luck that he had such a small squad that he couldn’t afford any all-purpose backs who could fill any slot in an emergency.

Halfway to the referee, Julius White, running far too fast, fell over his own feet, fell heavily.

Tony stifled a groan. Julius got up, ran out more slowly and reported.

Five minutes to play.

Five minutes for Forsi to try to exact the impossible from a weary squad. They lined up and Forsi, in the huddle, had called a play from the sixty series.

Once again the fade-back, the jump pass, only this time with Stanisk and White cutting outside the end, White taking the pass, Stanisk blocking. Stanisk nailed his man. White avoided a tackier, ran wide, cut back too sharply. His cleats cut the turf and he went down without a man near him. The play had netted six, but it could have been sixteen.

The rising yell of the Adams stands dwindled off into a moan.

They lined up again and Julius White was prancing in position like a skittish colt. Stanisk took the flip from Forsi, faded back to pass with White and a guard who had pulled out of the line to cover him.

White, not content to drift back and wait for the shot, ran down to the line of scrimmage to block a man who looked like he was coming through. A line-backer and an end stormed back toward Stanisk. The guard got the end, but the line-backer went high and tipped the pass almost straight up. A Greely man made a dive for it and recovered it after it had hit the ground, but it was ruled incomplete.

Third and four.

Tony looked along the bench. Frank Mercer was shifting uneasily, his head sunk between his shoulders. He caught Tony’s glance and his eyes widened as he pointed a finger at his own chest Tony saw the boy’s lips form a word.

“Me?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head from side to side.

On the next play the pass from center was bad. Forsi had to reach high for it. He didn’t have time to pull it down, spin and feed it to Stanisk, but was forced to hang on, continue his spin all the way around, and try his own shot at the line. He was bounced back for a yard loss.

Fourth and five.

The kick went deep and the ends were down to smother Loots on the fifteen.

Three minutes.

Some of the crowd began to chant for Mercer and White. Tony turned in his seat and gave the crowd an angry glare. Often, when looking at a vast crowd of people, the eye will catch a certain individual. His heart gave a surprising and totally unexpected lurch as he saw Loren, her red hat perched at a jaunty angle, her lips unsmiling.

He looked at her for several seconds. He was certain that she looked at him and looked away. When he turned back he gasped. Then he shouted angrily. Mercer ignored him.

Mercer was racing in to report. And without authority.

His angry shout had focused the eyes of the other men on the bench who, up until that moment, had believed that Strega had given Frank Mercer some sort of signal to go in.

His fists clenched, Tony stood up, saw Mercer report, saw Jabella jog tiredly off the field.

Tony turned to Laddis. “Get ready to go in after one play.”

On a hunch he turned, found Loren again. She was looking at him and she was smiling. She touched her fingertips to her lips. Tony Strega sat down heavily.

Laddis warmed up along the sidelines.

The game was gone, and the backfield was shot, and his two clowns were in there. He spat onto the dirt at his feet and hunched over, elbows on his knees. He wanted to strike out at the fate which had robbed him of this win. And he had a hunch that Greely would shake Loots loose again.

Jeffer found a hole on the first play that Greely ran. He loomed up in the backfield. Stanisk missed a shot. Little White bounced off Jeffer’s meaty thighs. Forsi was too far to one side. Frank Mercer had a half-hearted shot at Jeffer. By pure luck his forearm clipped Jeffers across the ankle. Jeffer went down hard.

But it was an eight yard gain right through the middle.

Tony turned to send Laddis in and then he thought. The hell with it. I’ll leave Mercer in for a few more plays. Let Loren see what it does to him. Let it teach her something.

On the next play Loots, on the receiving end of a shovel pass, scooted out into the clear. Julius White angled toward him, dived, got him by one angle and dumped him. But it was a first down for Greely.

Two minutes left in the game.

Mercer and White walked side by side back toward the backfield. Forsi was calling the defensive shifts. White was saying something to Mercer.

On the next play, Jeffer drove hard at the center of the line. Before he got there, the Greely line opened a hole big enough to take a launch through.

Mercer came toward the hole just as fast from one direction as Jeffer came from the other. Tony’s jaw sagged open as the thud of their sudden meeting echoed all the way back to the bench.

As far as he had been able to see, Frank Mercer had tried hard to break Jeffer into several small pieces.

Second and twelve.

Forsi went high and slapped down a pass.

On the next play Loots tried a hard slant off tackle, but Mercer, his sleeve ripped from wrist to elbow, rose up out of nowhere, gathered Loots up and hurled him back into his own backfield.

Forsi put White and Stanisk back in the safety slot. A minute and thirty seconds. The kick came high, giving the ends time to come down. Stanisk took it, ran dead ahead, flipped it over to White. White tucked it under his left arm, reversed his field brilliantly, angled toward the sidelines, cut back upfield, brought it all the way up to the forty.

Forsi called the play fast.

He fed it to Mercer. Mercer went through the middle on a hard plunge that gained four yards. Stanisk, with Mercer running interference, went around end for three more. Forsi tried a long pass. No dice.

Fourth and three.

Forsi dropped back, rifled one into White’s arms. Mercer was trying to keep ahead of White. But White passed him as Tony Strega groaned. White, apparently blind, ran directly into the arms of two tacklers.

But as he hit the tacklers he twisted and with a totally unexpected toss, he hung the ball dead in front of Mercer.

Mercer took it on the Greely forty. Stanisk managed to knife ahead of him in a desperate block that cut down an immediate threat.

Mercer ran like a bull. He ran with his feet wide, his knees high, all thrusting power. The fleet Loots caught him at the ten. Mercer rocked under the impact, staggered to one side, tore one leg free and with Loots hanging on the other leg he took three more hitching steps. Another man hit him from the side and Mercer fell, but he fell with his face on the goal line, the ball extended ahead of him at arm’s length.

Anthony Strega sat in his small darkened living room, slouched in the chair, his legs straight out, his heels against the carpet. Loren sat on the floor, her cheek against his thigh, his fingers wound in her raven hair.

He said softly, “After the gun, after the mob headed for the goal posts, I saw White drop as though he’d been shot. They bad to carry him into the dressing room. I couldn’t figure it. My two weak sisters had pulled my game out of the fire.

“By the time I fought clear of the mob and got in there, he’d come to. Andy called me over and told me to look at the kid’s hand. It looked more like a foot. As near as we can tell there were three bones broken in that hand.

“The boys were shocked at the way we’d stolen the game. They were just beginning to fill the place with yells. Al Forsi came up to me, grinning and shaking his head. He said, ‘Coach, that big crazy Mercer was charging all over the place blubbering every minute and the tears were running down his face. It beats the hell out of me.’

“Mercer was over in the corner, too weary to unlace his shoes. He grinned up at me and the tears had made dirty marks on his face. He said, ‘Coach, we had to keep those history books accurate.’

“Loren, right then something hit me — something about those crazy, wonderful kids got me by the throat. In another minute I’d have been blubbering like Mercer had been.

“White was getting over his green look and a doc was on the way. He came over. I asked him what the hell happened in there and he grinned at me a little weakly, and said that he saw Frank flinch off a tackle, so when he got a chance he showed Frank his hand and said that if Mercer missed another shot like that, he was going to walk up to him and pop him right in the face with the busted hand, and did Mercer expect him to play all by himself and what good was a lot of meat and muscle if you were afraid to use it.

“I guess Mercer thought White was going to ruin the hand for keeps. Forsi didn’t know a thing about it or he’d have sent White out. White started to kid Mercer about one for the records and how this was his chance to make Ripley’s column.

“That explained some things. It explained why White toted the ball in his left arm and why that heave to Mercer, which wasn’t in the books, had to be done with the left hand.

“But here was the pay-off, baby. I asked White which play busted his hand. He turned bright red and allowed as how he’d fallen on it on the way out to report.”

She said, “I changed my mind and came to see the game. A hunch or something. I spent a lot of the afternoon just walking, and thinking about us.”

“What about us?”

“I don’t think I have to say it now.”

He was silent for a time and then he muttered, “Those crazy, wonderful kids.”

“You had them all taped, darling. All figured down to the T. No pun intended.”

“Maybe some things can’t be figured.”

“Darling?”

“What is it, Loren?”

“Darling, how much is two and two?”

The question shocked him, and suddenly he realized how far he had gone in one day. He knew that never again would things be exactly the same in his mind, and that he was being forced to sacrifice a portion of that drive which had given him his courage and his strength, but in sacrificing it he was gaining something else, which, in its own way was precious and necessary. He felt the collapse of certain values and yet he knew that the void they left would become filled with a warmth he had never known.

“Two and two is usually four, Loren,” he said softly. “Or five, or six or seven.”

She sighed, a small and sleepy sound. “You know, Mr. Strega, this may turn out to be a pretty satisfactory marriage if I give it enough time.”

“Even if we don’t edge into the big dough?”

“Even if we stay right here and get all stupefied with tradition and stuff and never leave.”

Anthony Strega smiled in the darkness. “I don’t know why that should sound good. But in some funny way it does.”

Content

John D. MacDonald
Fight, Scrub, Fight!

Chapter One One Man’s Way

Chapter Two Diagram for Glory

Chapter Three Touchdown Castouts