John D. MacDonald

Glory Blaster

1

When Ralph Wandelle — “Rafe” — was playing in your city, keeping his Roman-coin profile toward the expensive seats while daintily booming service aces at your local tennis stars, I was the dark and sullen-looking citizen who trotted around with the bats and did everything except run out with a bit of lace to dab the nasty old sweat off Wandelle’s classic brow.

Not that Wandelle is a bad guy. He is just a thoroughgoing, triple-plated stinker.

In the tennis world, you have never heard of Joe Patton. That’s me. Prior to the international fracas, I was a tennis bum — albeit a young one. Long hours in a bunk, wall-type, navy issue, gave birth to a dream for yours truly. It started with a bit of cruel self-evaluation, wherein I said to myself, “Joe, you’ll never be really big time in tennis. You will clean up minor tournaments until your legs give out and then you can settle down and be a bore the rest of your life.”

But that didn’t please me. It seemed as if there ought to be some way wherein even a citizen such as myself could make a lifetime living out of a well-loved game.

And I do love it. Tennis is as psychological as poker, as fast as hockey and, in the top-flight brackets, as rough a game as man has devised.

So aboard that tanker in the Pacific, a plump gal which we called the Baggety Ann, my dream took shape. A neat little professional club. Perfect courts. A little bar. A pool. Instruction by the noted Joe Patton. Exhibitions now and then. A stiff fee for lessons. The whole layout to be in California.

It was a fine dream, but it required that old green stuff which is so elusive and is laughingly called cash.

It cost me three hundred bucks for the plans alone. And the contractor’s estimate was one-five-zero thousand, including the land.

And that’s how I ended up nursemaiding Ralph-pronounced Rafe — Wandelle on his pro tours for one hundred a week plus expenses.

About the Wandelle — the only thing not wrong with him is his tennis. When he was booming up through the amateur ratings they accused him of being a picture boy, all style and no fight in the clutch.

The first time he got his name in the papers was when he was winning all the junior medals in California. In the pictures you saw his laughing lean face, with the curly blonde hair on top. “Nice kid,” you said.

Not if you knew him.

I had run up against him just before the war. Competitively. He had that stroke on his forehand drive that turns the ball into a heavy lump of putty. You get your bat on it and it feels like hitting a concrete post.

Volley with the guy and you begin to feel as though you’re under artillery fire. Muff one just a little, give it a shade too much height, and he’s up to the net and creaming it so hard with a smash that all you see is a puff of dust — but you get to hear the whistle as the ball goes by.

And he plays a ball with legs, the kind that hits the tape, clings, crawls over and falls dead.

He brushed me aside just before the war with a 6–3, 6–1, 6–3, and I trudged off the court wishing I’d never heard of the game.

Anyway, I was around loose and got a call from Hal Gorder who was agenting Wandelle’s pro venture, and Hal had somehow heard that I was looking for cash. Hal is a tubby, naive-looking little man with a deft feeling for double-entry bookkeeping. I left my fleabag room and trotted over to the deluxe hotel to have breakfast with the two of them.

They had a suite with one of those little walled-terrace effects and the sun was very pleasantly bright on the orange-juice.

Hal Gorder took me out on the terrace and there was the Wandelle, tanned, blonde and beautiful. He wore egg-shell slacks, a lemon-yellow jacket and a powder-blue scarf at his throat. He looked like a retouched color photo of himself.

“You remember Joe Patton, Rafe?” Hal said cheerily.

The Wandelle gave me a long, cool appraisal. “Vaguely,” he said in a liquid, purring baritone.

“I’ve heard of you, too,” I said, pulling back the hand he didn’t seem to wish to shake. My tone of voice made not the slightest dent in the Wandelle armor.

With his build, I might have played better tennis. Six-one, about one-seventy, with hands and wrists like a blacksmith.

Hal had me sit down and in a minute the waiter came and took my breakfast order. “We can offer you a job,” Hal said cheerfully.

“One minute!” Wandelle snapped. “The money he gets will come out of my cut, you know. I’m willing to pay him, but I don’t want to sit here and listen to you dicker with him. I’ll be through here in a minute.”

“Maybe I don’t want to work for you,” I said, knowing that. I was flushing with anger.

He looked at me coldly and I was suddenly very conscious that the shirt I had put on when I got up a frayed collar. His smile was small, almost tender. He dabbed his classic lips with the napkin, stood up and said softly, “I think you will, Patton.”

He walked into the apartment. A few seconds later the corridor door slammed.

Hal sighed. “To me, kid, he’s a property. I don’t have to like him. Tell me: right now if you need money bad enough so you can keep from busting him in the mouth.”

I thought of the architect’s plans back in my room. “How much money?” I asked.

He smiled. “One hundred a week and expenses. Expenses include all your meals, rooms, train and plane fares, wear and tear on your work clothes and equipment.”

“I’m single,” I said. “Taxes will be steep. I better have you pay the taxes, too, so the hundred is net.”

He thought it over. “Okay, we’ll do that too. Johnny Post had the job until yesterday.”

“I don’t see any bruises on Wandelle.”

“Johnny led with his right. There’s a tiny bruise on Ralph’s middle knuckle on his right hand. Too small to notice.”

“Oh. What do I have to do?”

“You get the schedule of the matches from me. You get cash for the traveling expenses. You travel with Wandelle, make the reservations, check the playing surface and court markings, give out the local publicity releases, take care of his bats, practice with him every chance you get and make like you’re the guy he’s going to meet next — and keep the women away from him.”

“Do I light his cigarettes, too?”

“He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t drink. He saves his money.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, and this is what browned Johnny off. Wandelle will not consider you his social equal. He won’t want to eat with you or even sit with you on the train and so on. You’ll have to act like an employee.”

I took a deep breath. I thought of the sixteen thousand bucks in the bank, the money my pop had left me. The Los Angeles bank had said that if I could come to them with twenty-five thousand free and clear they’d talk about financing the rest of the layout. Nine thousand short. Ninety weeks of being a serf. Call it a hundred and ten weeks. Two years. Hmmm.

“A deal,” I said.

We shook hands solemnly. He pulled a typewritten list out of his pocket and handed it to me.

“Here’s the schedule, Joe. Have fun.”

Within a month I was beginning to get over the quick flashes of anger that were so extreme as to make me almost sick to my stomach. It had all settled down to a low bum. A constant, dull, red anger, distilled with hate and seasoned with contempt.

If he had been sharp and sarcastic with me at all times, it wouldn’t have been so had. But when there were strangers around, he flashed his wide, friendly grin at me, too, included me in the conversations and acted like we were partners in the enterprise. Behind a closed door the grin would melt in a fraction of a second. He would say, “Damn you, Patton! See that we have adequate ball boys at the stop, and a judge that isn’t blind.”

But his game was ripe and wonderful. It was a take-on-all-comers tour, with once in a while a three or four-day layover to take on some other pro for a series. Wandelle always lost the first day’s play, barely won during the second, and trompled all over the opposition on the third, so that he would be the loved underdog, coming from behind to win.

It made me sick to my stomach.

But I could afford to be sick. I was paid twice a month. Usually I just endorsed the check for deposit and mailed it to the bank. The balance, steadily growing, was a delight to the tired old Patton eyes.

The practice sessions were the worst. He would stand and say, “Play to my backhand, Patton.” And I would have to pop them to his backhand while he laboriously ironed out some real or imagined flaw. Every practice session ended with his snowing me under with those high velocity boomers that had so little bounce I kept whamming the bat rim on the court surface trying to get under them.

Maybe it was spite, but I kept a little of my stuff to myself. I never opened up with everything I had. And maybe, instead of spite, it was just a sop to my pride. I could always tell myself that maybe I could lick him if I let go with everything. But I knew I couldn’t. He could cover more court than I could and his timing was better and his ball sense was better and those lean brown arms of his had as much snap as a bull-whip.

The women were the worst problem. Something about the tame Viking brought them around in droves, panting to get their chubby little mitts on him. He played up to them, using knowing little looks and remarks that could be taken two, an sometimes three, ways.

I hazed them away from him the way you drive cattle.

And once the Great Man unbent enough to let me into one of the secrets of his wrinkled little heart.

“Patton,” he said, one morning, “I can’t keep on with this game forever. Once they start to lick me, I’m through. And then I’m going to find myself a lush little gal who has enough money to gold-plate all the tracks in the Pennsy Railroad. From then on I’m going to be landed gentry. When I was eleven years old, my family was on relief. It made quite an impression on me.”

I couldn’t resist the dig. “The way that new kid, Buddy Kingsley, is coming up trough the amateurs ratings, Ralph, you may have to look for the lush little gal sooner than you think.”

He looked at me calmly and almost sneered. “Don’t talk rot, Patton! I’ll be able to take him for the next four years, anyway.”

“I’m glad you’re sure,” I said.

His laugh sounded as though he really meant it. But his eyes were chips off Lake Superior in February.

That was three days before we hit Atlanta. And at Atlanta I saw the little dish sitting in of the expensive seats. She didn’t look as if she belonged there. I thought at first she was about fourteen. Her rusty hair was tied with a faded blue ribbon and she wore a cotton dress that looked as faded as the ribbon.

I noticed her when I glanced over and saw all the heads moving back forth as they followed the ball. Hers didn’t. She didn’t take her eyes off the Wandelle.

To be honest, I’ve got to admit that he is good to look at. He never makes an awkward move on the court. He’s as smooth as oiled glass.

I forgot the little redhead until afterward. I was snapping the trick frames onto Wandelle’s bats when she came over to me, moving almost shyly.

“Hey, you’re Joe Patton, aren’t you?”

I straightened up and looked her over. Fourteen was a bad guess, close up. Twenty would be about right. She was about six inches shorter than my five-eight, and her gray eyes were about one and a half times too big for her face, and her nose tilted up and she filled out that cotton dress in the way the Vogue girls should, but don’t. A big alarm bell went off somewhere inside my head and cold feet walked up my spine and something whispered in my ear, “Joe, lad! Here’s that girl! Remember? At twelve you were riding white horses and rescuing her from towers.”

“Hey, that’s right,” I said.

“Seeded number nine in ’forty-one, weren’t you?”

“In my youth. Uh-huh. You must follow the game.”

“Sure do. I’m Mitch January.”

“That’s a cold name for a redhead.”

“And that’s an old gag, Joe. Hey, I want to meet the man.”

“And that’s an old gag too. So does everybody.”

“But you could fix, Joe. Huh?” She gave me wistful look number 18-B.

“I’ll make a stab at it, Mitch. Come along with me and we’ll see.”

I had her stay down in the lobby of the hotel and I went up to the room. Wandelle was in the shower. When he out I said, “A little old gal is downstairs. She wants to meet you, Ralph.”

He glared. “Your job is to keep them away, not bring them around.”

“She softened me up.”

“Nice looking?”

I wanted to say that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Because, of course, she was. Beyond a doubt. But I said, “Pretty good.”

“The hell with it,” he said.

I thought of going down and confessing failure. That wouldn’t be fun. “She might give you a bad press here, Ralph. I told her that I’d fix it.”

He buttoned his shirt. “I sure wish you knew your job, Patton. Okay. Bring heron up.”

When I opened the door and held it aside so she could go in, Ralph bounded up from the couch, came over to the door wearing his famous grin and took her hand in both of his.

“Awfully glad to meet you, Miss January,” he said in that rich baritone.

I saw by the rapt look on her face that she had taken a full broadside amidships and had been sunk with all hands.

“You were... you were wonderful!” she said, almost in a whisper.

He turned and gave me that grin. “A lot of the credit goes to good old Joe,” he said. “We work on my game every chance we get.”

I echoed with a sick smile.

She didn’t know what to say next. She shifted from one foot to the other and he gently steered her toward the door, saying jovially, “It’s been great meeting you, Mitch. Just great! Hope I’ll run into you again.”

Mesmerized, she drifted out the door. I counted slowly to twenty and followed her. Wandelle gave me a knowing look. “Take good care of your shabby little friend,” he said.

She was drifting through the lobby when I caught up with her. Her gray eyes were far away and she looked as though she were listening to soft music.

“Gosh!” she said.

“Sit down and recover,” I said. I steered her over to a chair in the lobby.

“Gosh!” she said.

“This is where I came in,” I said, sitting beside her.

She came out of the fog, put her hand on my arm and said, with a grin, “Hey, I must sound stupid. Sorry, Joe.”

I took one of her cigarettes and she me to the light.

“Thanks, Joe,” she said.

“It was nothing, really,” I said. I meant it. It was less than nothing.

Minutes later I watched her walk out the lobby door and out of my life. I stood there like a fool. Then I suddenly realized that I didn’t have her address. I ran out but she was gone in the crowd.

The phone book listed no Januarys. Not a one.

Nor did the city directory. Joe Patton, the practicing genius. Love walks in and love walks out and he doesn’t do anything but shift nervously from foot to foot.

But Ralph found the address for me. He came roaring into my bedroom the next morning and shoved the paper in my face. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

When I could focus my eyes, I saw that the paper was open to the society page. On the page was a picture of a very trim little aircraft. Walking away from the aircraft and toward the camera was the little red-headed light o’ my life.

Underneath it said, “Miss Mitchell January, Texas oil heiress, as she arrived yesterday in her plane. Miss January stated that she was in Atlanta to see the tennis matches.”

I couldn’t held the grin back. “Hell, Ralph,” I said. “You called her shabby.”

He glared down at me. “You could have told me.”

“I didn’t know, myself,” I said blandly. “So how could I tell you?”

To me it was wonderful that he hadn’t known when he met her. With the big dollar sign hanging over her head, he would have really swung all guns into action.

“Okay,” he said in a grumbling tone. “But I’m telling you right now, Joe, that she is what I want.”

That worried me. But not for long. I was too busy to be worried. Until the long wire arrived from Hal Gorder.

SCHEDULE CHANGED STOP AFTER TAMPA FLY TO SAN ANTONIO ARRIVING APRIL ELEVENTH AND TAKE FEEDER LINE TO KERRVILLE WIRING TIME OF ARRIVAL AHEAD TO MARTIN JANUARY, KERRVILLE STOP ONE WEEK OF EXHIBITIONS AND LESSONS AT JANUARY ESTATE IN HILL COUNTRY FOR FAT FEE.

After the wire was delivered in Daytona, I never saw the Wandelle so gay. He was almost friendly to me while we were alone. He began to sing in the shower, and once he almost took pity on the opposition in Tampa, feeding the guy a few easy lobs.

I was sour and depressed. I knew I was going to see Mitch again, but so was the Wandelle. And his was the snow job. To her, I was furniture.

Ten minutes before the little five-passenger job left San Antonio for Kerrville, I sent the wire ahead to Martin January.

2. Special Delivery

Kerrville turned out to be right up in the Texas hill country, where already there was a little touch of the green of spring. We landed on a lumpy field three miles outside town and a dust-caked station wagon came bounding over toward the plane.

Mitch was driving the station wagon.

She looked through me, marched up to Ralph and said, “Remember me?”

“Of course. Of course, Mitch,” he said warmly. I started to grab the luggage to heave it into the back end of the station wagon when Ralph held up his hand and said, “Hold it, Joe.” He turned to Mitch and his voice was very serious. “Mitch, it was kind of you to arrange all this for me. But I won’t do it. Not for pay. If you’ll let me be your house guest for a. week, me and Joe Patton, that will be adequate payment. But I won’t do it for money.”

I lifted my sagging chin back into position. That was a new angle. I realized that Ralph had lost none of his deep affection for cash. He was merely playing for higher stakes. Oil stakes.

“Anything you say, Ralph,” she said warmly.

I sat in the back end and bounced around moodily with the luggage while she drove and Ralph sat beside her, making like Prince Charming.

We seemed to be going a few hundred miles. Maybe not quite that far. I heard Ralph ask how far it was to their place.

She laughed. It was a good laugh. Warm and true. “We’re on our land now.”

“Oil land?” Ralph asked.

“Ranch land. Dad’s got a lot of stock through here. And Angora goats over the other side of those hills. The oil land is in the other end of the state. But he likes it here. It’s easier for him to get down to Houston to the directors’ meetings.”

I wanted to tell her that I was in love with her, and would have been if she had been a dime-store clerk.

The house was the approximate size of Grand Central Terminal, with two Pennsy stations as wings. And it was built of native stone. It surrounded gardens and swimming pools and tennis courts- and garages, and there seemed to be a maze of little patios with fountains. The high-ceilinged rooms were full of that dark oak Spanish furniture. Antique.

And the place was loaded with house guests. Big weather-beaten men with their ice-cream hats and awkward out-of-the-saddle walk, and a whole mess of drab little Texas matrons dressed in expensive clothes that couldn’t keep them from looking sun-beaten. Their voices were uniformly soft and drawling.

I liked Martin January on sight. Take Santa Claus, yank out all his whiskers, trim thirty pounds off him, sun-blacken him to a saddle color and dress him in levis and you have your man. It was obvious that he worshipped Mitch and that they were very close.

No Mrs. January put in an appearance and I made the assumption, later proven correct, that she had died. I found out later that she had died in ’forty-three, two months after they got the news of the death of their only son.

The Wandelle went over like vodka behind the iron curtain. He was charming and courtly with the ladies, frank and open with the men, and coated thickly with a modesty that was as phoney as long woolies on Gypsy Rose Lee.

I loathed him quietly, suspecting that if I said one teeny little word agin’ the Man, I’d be mobbed and horsewhipped.

That evening a top-flight band arrived front San Antonio and there was dancing under the Texas stars. I was in no mood to dance. Along about eleven I strolled out a porch and saw the glow of a cigarette. I excused myself and turned to go, but Martin January said, “Mr. Patton? Stick around, son. Just me alone out here.”

He was in a leather chair. I sat on the railing. The music was a faint background.

He had the knack of comfortable silence. After a long time, he rubbed out his cigarette, saying, “Mitch is pretty impressed with Mr. Wandelle.”

“I guess so,” I said.

He sighed. “Now I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Mr. Patton, but patting a little ball around with a paddle seems to be a funny profession for a grown man.”

I laughed. “It all depends on how you say it, Mr. January. Every occupation is funny. How about going around and digging holes in the ground so that black stuff squirts up out of the holes?”

“Can I call you Joe? Good. Maybe you got a point there, Joe. Does this Ralph Wandelle ever mean to do anything else?”

“I think tennis is all he knows. But he knows it as well, or better, than anyone in the country.”

It was a terrific chance to put the blocks to the Wandelle. Martin January was digging for information. I could see that he was worried about his daughter. One little slur dropped into the conversation, and Ralph’s plans would be amputated painlessly. But somehow I couldn’t do it — not while I was taking the guy’s money.

“Pretty good sort?” he asked.

“I just work for him, Mr. January. The way your ranch hands work for you. I wouldn’t ask them what kind of a guy you are.”

He took it all right. “Guess I’m just a nosey old man, Joe. But he’ll be around here for a week. Guess I can find out in a week.” He stood up. “If he’s one-quarter good enough for my Mitch, that’ll suit me.”

“You think she’s really serious?” I asked.

“She hasn’t said anything, Joe. But she’s walked around looking like a dubbed steer ever since she took that trip to Atlanta.”

He went in. I finished my cigarette and then strolled down across the grounds. That was a bad idea. I was walking on the stones and I didn’t make much noise. I ran across them and they didn’t see me. His Roman-coin profile was silhouetted against the distant lights. She was a small warm bundle in his arms. I went back up to my room, feeling sick at heart. I went to bed and wanted to stuff a corner of the pillow in my mouth and bawl like a baby. I had to keep telling myself that I was a big boy now.

At breakfast Ralph had the sleepy look of a big contented cat. Mitch glowed as though there were candles behind her eyes. Breakfast turned into a sodden lump in my middle and I went down to look at the courts. Some men were hammering and sawing, putting up a little wooden grandstand alongside the best court.

One of them spat, looked me over and said, “You fellas all ready to play patty-cake today?”

I was in no mood to be politic. I moved up to him, caught his eye and said, “If it’s okay with you, mister.”

He looked for a minute as though he might flare up, and I mentally practiced my Sunday punch. But be sissied off, mumbled, “I don’t know much about the game.”

I walked to the court and began to measure the markings. It was a cement court, and I knew that would annoy Ralph, as well as wearing the fuzz off the tennis halls as fast as they could be put in play. The net was taut and right and the backstops were far enough back and high enough to be useful.

The competish arrived right after lunch, two nice-looking boys and a lanky gal from San Antonio, all hopped up about displaying their amateur talents in an exhibition against the Man. I knew that each of them was thinking how wonderful it would be to really give the Big Time a drubbing.

In the blazing hot sun of two-thirty in the afternoon everybody drifted down to the court. I ponged Ralph’s bats against the heel of my hand and they sang pretty. I lifted the lids off two new cans of balls and gave the two little Mexican ball-boys final instructions. They looked bright enough, but I visions of them getting in the way of one of Ralph’s forehand drives and riding over the net clutching the ball.

Ralph, in white shorts and T shirt, looked crisp and cool. The first kid was named Tony Relando and he was as nervous as a horse on Derby day.

Ralph warmed up lazily and I glanced at the crowd. They were interested. Mitch was up on the tail-chair to call them, and we decided to get along without the rest of the officials.

She was so pretty up on that chair that I wanted to climb up and pull her off into my arms. But that would have created a scene more confusing than amusing.

Ralph won the serve, lazily tossed up one of the balls, went up on his toes and leaned into a screaming service ace. Tony Relando frowned as he changed courts. He managed to get a bat on the second serve, but he plooped up a floater that Ralph killed at the net. The third serve was a net, the second one hummed like a big bee and Relando waved at it as it went by. For forty-love, Ralph sucked him in with a drop-shot and then angled him. Game was on a service ace.

Without apparent effort, Ralph took game after game. Relando was pale and his knuckles were white on the bat handle. Only once did he have a fair shake at a point. But Ralph, almost passed, moved back and slammed a backhand down the foul line with enough cut on it so that Relando, coming in for a kill, drove it into the net.

Mitch called the score in a slightly shaky voice, and I could tell by her voice that she was embarrassed for Relando. So was I. It was his own backyard and Ralph could have made Tony look a lot better without making himself look any worse.

At the six-love set, they changed courts and Ralph polished him off again.

The other boy, Bill Drake, came out, Ralph volleyed with him for a few minutes, and then let him take the server. Drake was painfully weak in the backhand department, but he could cover the court fast enough to move around a lot of them that other people would have had to take on the backhand. And he had a tremendous whistling service with a nasty corkscrew tail on it.

When it hit thirty-love in Drake’s favor on his serve, I saw Ralph begin to move a little faster and a little better. He fought it to deuce and took the game. From then on, he crosscourted every shot to that feeble backhand, and Drake didn’t get a smell of the games. He took the short end of the two love sets.

They took a break, and then played doubles. Ralph and the girl against Relando and Drake.

It was Ralph’s chance to be Prince Charming again. He let her take every one that her way, and put all his lean whip into the ones that hit in his department.

For the first time, the crowd began to enjoy it. Ralph and the girl took the first doubles set seven-five and the second one six-three.

None of the visitors looked too happy, as they had seen their little dreams of triumph go smash against the steel-ribbed game of a canny professional. But their friends gathered ’round and told them they’d done swell and they began to look a little happier, remembering that they’d be able to say, “Ralph Wandelle? Oh yes, I played in a private match against him last spring at the January place near Kerrville.”

In the evening the big silver screen was set up outdoors and we watched one of the better Hollywood attempts as projected by Martin January’s private equipment. The evening was soured for me when I saw, down front, Mitch sitting with her pretty head far too close to the Wandelle’s curly locks.

Maybe the fates were trying to teach me how to be a good loser. I was losing all the way around. Ralph was the lion of the week, and I was part of the yes-sir department.

When I got up the next morning, Ralph and Mitch were already down on the court. He was teaching her how to get her back into a ground stroke and put that overdrive on the ball, the stuff that kills the bounce.

He had his arm around her to show her properly. Her teeth flashed whitely as she looked up into his tanned and smiling face.

Maybe he was getting pretty confident of her. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, when he glanced up and saw me he said, “Come on down here, Patton. Grab a bat and feed her some soft ones until she gets this down right.”

“Good morning, Joe,” Mitch said.

“Hi, Mitch. Let’s make it after breakfast, Ralph,” I said.

“We’ll make it right now,” he snapped.

I shrugged, picked up the bat, slipped it out of the brace, and walked onto the court. Mitch gave me an odd look.

She whispered something to Ralph.

He said firmly, “Darling, he works for me. Not I for him.”

I felt secret glee. Maybe the lid was off and she’d get a look at the inside. But seconds later she was laughing with him, the fond tone back in her voice.

I patted her the soft ones, and chased them when she drove them over my head. They didn’t even know I was there. I was just a machine to return the ball. The Wandelle was making an ass of himself in general. Maybe it was the sun. Maybe it was my empty stomach. Maybe it was being in love with a gal who had no eyes for me. Anyway, some gremlin whispered in my ear and I leaned on one. It made a lovely little thump as it arrowed into Ralph’s middle.

His face was white with anger. He walked to the net and said with dangerous calmness, “What that for, Patton?”

I smiled blandly. “Must have away from me.”

“Apologize!” he ordered. “At once!”

I glanced beyond him and saw Mitch standing there with a funny look on her face. I felt oddly dizzy. Suddenly that big, blonde, good-looking guy was more than I could stomach. And being a slave was a tiresome thing.

“Oh, go comb your locks,” I said, “I’m sick of your pretty face.”

“You’re fired!” he said flatly.

“You can’t fire me. I quit ten seconds before you said that. Get some other boy to buff up your ego.”

“If I have anything to say about it, Patton,” he said, “there’ll never be another job for you in professional tennis.”

“If all the people who hate you line up behind me,” I said, grinning, “they’ll make me their chief of staff.”

That touched the quick. He came over the net with a very smooth leap and a great big fist appeared up out of the concrete and tore the top of my head off. Somehow I got up on my hands and knees and I looked through a red mist to see if I could find one of his ankles. If I could find one, I was going to splinter the bone in my teeth and growl.

Somebody helped me up and it turned out to be Mitch.

“Leave him alone,” Ralph said sullenly. “Let him pack and get out of here.”

“You’re not to give me orders,” Mitch said, and I heard a trace of her dad in that tone of voice. “He is a guest here the same as you are, Ralph. And he’ll stay until he’s ready to go.”

Ralph shrugged. “It’s nothing to me. But if he gets in my way, I’ll beat his brains out.”

It seemed undignified to be partially supported by such a frail little gal, so I got my weight over onto my feet instead of hers. She looked up at me and I could see she was close to tears.

“Why don’t you settle your differences like — like gentlemen?” she said. “Why don’t you have it out on the court here this afternoon?”

A slow, delighted grin crept over the Wandelle’s face. “A pleasure,” he said.

She began to get excited. “It’ll be fun. I’ll let everybody know that it’s sort of a grudge match. And Joe will be able to give you more competition than those did yesterday.”

“A little more — maybe,” he said.

“Hold it a minute!” I said. “How about consulting me?”

“Afraid, Patton?” Ralph said, teetering back and forth on toes and heels.

“No. But I want one thing understood. If you win, it has nothing to do with who’s the best man. It just proves who’s the best tennis player.”

“That’s good enough for me,” he said.

I went back to my room and held cold cloths on the lump on my jaw until it felt better. It hurt while I chewed my breakfast bacon. After breakfast I looked up Mitch. For a wonder, she was alone.

“Mitch, I want to apologize for the trouble this morning.”

“Well, you did egg him on, you know,” said severely.

“Sure, but I finally got tired of being ordered around.”

“He’s just a quick-tempered man,” she said softly.

“You mean a quick-tempered louse, don’t you?”

At least she had the thoughtfulness to hit me on the other side of the face. If you cut out the mark her hand made, you’d have half a nice red glove. My ears rang for twenty minutes. I went up to bed. I was going to need every bit of my strength.

I added up my assets as I looked at the ceiling. One — I had never uncorked all my stuff, and maybe I could surprise him. Two — the cement court would put a bounce on even his very flattest drives. Three — he had played six sets the day before.

On the other side of the ledger: One — he could play more tennis than I could. Two — I hadn’t been in training since the war. Three — at twenty-eight, I was two and a half years older than he. My legs were that much older. In tennis that means a great deal. Four — it was going to be so miserably hot out there in the sun that I’d wear down fast. My only chance would be to snag the first three sets. I knew that if it ever went to the fourth, I had no chance at all.

When I went down for my light lunch, I found I was the center of interest. But not exactly friendly interest. Their hero, the Man, was going to battle the crude boor, Joe Patton. I could tell from the speculative glances that they were not going to wish me well. To my surprise, Mitch looked as friendly as anyone.

3. Grass Greenhorn

I had given myself every break. A double layer of wool socks to kill the punishing impact of the concrete. A bat with a handle that would eat up the sweat without getting oily. A loose mesh shirt and a handkerchief that I could knot around my forehead if the perspiration started to sting my eyes.

There was a babble of conversation under the hot sun and when I walked out and faced Ralph, he looked twice life-size. That long arm of his looked strong enough to drive the ball right down my throat.

My little redhead was on the tall chair, a green sunshade shadowing those mammoth gray eyes.

Since he had more stuff, I had to be cagey. Surprise and strategy had to be my weapon. I had to plan on his showing off a little. I knew that if he had any weakness, it was overconfidence.

He tossed up a ball and flipped it over to me, almost contemptuously I stroked it off to his backhand and when he angled it by me, I made no attempt for it. I wanted to save the Patton energy for the clutch. Suddenly, with my little gal looking on — even though she didn’t know she was mine — I wanted to beat the Wandelle more than I had ever wanted anything in my life. Maybe even more than I wanted my hundred and fifty thousand dollar layout on the West Coast.

He took service and I got back to wait for it. I was at that tensed-up point where everything seemed to be going on in slow motion, and though I had my whole attention focused on the Man, I could hear and sense everything going on for a hundred yards around.

To take any set, I had to break his service. That I knew. The ball looped lazily up and his knee with it, the strong brown fingers wrapped on the handle, and the gut mesh of the racket whistled through the air, the ball a white streak that lanced toward me. I made a lazy stop shot, a shade too high, and as he came up fast, I moved over just in time to lunge with my backhand at his crosscourt angle and slam it straight back, inches out of his reach as he crossed over.

On his second service I dropped back and stroked it hard, driving him back. We traded some long boomers and then I left the overspin off one and it bounded higher than he expected. I got to net in time to smash it down so that it bounded over his jump.

I wasn’t going to be able to play his game. So I had to play my own. I dropped a short one over, thinking that this time he would try to pass me on the right as I moved over for the crosscourt. I feinted, came back and got my back into it and slammed it at his head with all the sting I could manage. It hit the rim of his bat and went straight up into the air.

He aced me on the next service, and on the next we got the big guns booming and I fed him a cut he didn’t expect, moved in front of his angle shot, cut it to his feet and killed his lob with one that fell dead before he could get to it.

To my astonishment he put two into the net to give me game and service.

I felt good. My legs felt like steel springs and the court had that small look about it. The time to worry is when the court begins to look like a football field and it is a heartbreaking run from one side of it to the other.

He got my first service back smartly and we smelled out each other’s backhands, with Mitch calling his placement outside. I put a reverse twist on the second serve, but he saw it coming, and I had to move over fast. I was off balance and my shot looked outside to me, but it was called fair.

I made the game good for a two-love lead. I realized that I was playing way over my head, playing with the fury that was born of the scrap we had had. And the little redhead perched up there had something to do with it.

His face was set in hard lines and his lips were tight and thin But he got too eager and tried to kill me off and I broke his service the second time, broke it after it was deuced up twice and it was three-love.

Three — love, then three — one. Four — one. Four — two. Five — two. Five — three. Six — three.

“First set to Mr. Patton,” Mitch called and there was a ripple of applause, not much, but some.

We traded sides and I knew that it wasn’t going to be much fun. I knew him well enough to know what was going on in his mind. I knew that he had realized that, out of anger, I was playing well over my head — maybe well enough to take him if he tried to slam through for a win. And I knew he didn’t want to be taken. I knew that his terrific pride wouldn’t permit anything like that to ever happen.

It was only logical that he should tighten his game and play it safe, play to wear me down, play for the long volley rather than the quick kill.

He knew that I wasn’t in the shape he was in. He knew that he could outlast me. And playing the match for three out of five under that hot sun, he had plenty of time in which to do it.

He stayed way back on the left side, way out in the oat pasture, and angled me, left and right, left and right.

In the second set, I broke his service and then he broke mine. I broke his again and clung to my own. I began to hear a funny slapping noise and wanted to grin when I realized that it was the constant slap of my feet against that hard, hot concrete.

Slowly I began to drift into a dream world. It was as though the ball were on a rubber band. I’d whale it away from me, and back it would come. The very games seemed to become interminable. Many times he did precisely what he wanted to do — get the ball so nearly out of my reach that my return went right to him as though he were a magnet, so that he could angle it over to the other side, just inside my reach.

I couldn’t hear the crowd noises any more. I couldn’t feel the sun. I was just running endlessly in a white, hot inferno, in a hell of my own choosing with a redheaded goddess looking down on my agonies.

A cool voice broke into my desolation saying, “Second set to Mr. Patton, seven games to five.”

I stood, flat-footed, heaving like a broke-horse and then plodded on numb legs around the net to take my position for the serve.

The court was as big as all outdoors. I felt as though I were about eight inches tall, carrying a racket made out of the purest lead, wearing two concrete shoes and displaying a red-hot anvil strapped to my left side under my heart.

Stupid with exhaustion, I was still proud that I had at least given him a battle. Now, out of his greater reserve, he would start moving in for the kill and there was going to be blessed little I could do about it.

The tendons of my arm were raw nerves, rubbed with salt. Suddenly, it began to dawn on me that he wasn’t moving in for the kill. He was still hanging back, shooting across my bows and when I blinked the haze out of my eyes, I could see a small cruel smile on his lips.

Then I knew what he was doing. It was his way of getting even. He was going to give me my chance of resigning the match or collapsing on the court. I wondered why I hadn’t realized before that it was typical of the Wandelle, typical of his thinking and of his entire ruthless philosophy.

Between points I glanced up at Mitch and her face swam in a blinding haze. Doggedly I decided that the only thing I could do was to get the ball back over the net. It required all of my concentration to keep in mind the location of the court limits so that I could let the bad ones go by. And there were a few bad ones.

It was then that I began to stumble. And the blackness came. It was out there where the people had been. A ring of blackness that was like velvet midnight. It was creeping closer and closer. When it got to the limits of the court, it would pause and then swoop in on me and I could sink down into it.

Without conscious volition I was swinging at the ball, and it amazed me to hear the clean sound of the hit, to see the ball streak away from my racket and duck as it got over the net.

It was my serve. I stood and I knew I was swaying, that my chin was dropping down toward my chest. I lifted my head, squinted at Mitch and croaked, “Score?”

“Love-all. Third set. Mr. Wandelle leads, five games to four. You have the first two sets.” Her voice sounded far away and thin.

I shook my head and it felt thick, as though I were drunk. My serve. That meant that I could win my serve and the third set would be five-all.

It seemed like a good thing to do.

I leaned on the serve and his return was outside. I leaned on another for an ace. At least pounding them over gave me a little rest.

He returned the third serve to the far side and I didn’t even bother to go after it. It was tennis played in a nightmare, tennis played in waist-deep water, tennis in delirium.

I was moving in a dream. I started to serve again. “My serve!” he called sharply. I asked the score again. Five-all.

Maybe he lost patience. Maybe he thought it would look bad if I dropped dead. He began to move. He began to cover his side crisply and faster than he had for the first game of the first set.

One of his serves bounced up and hit me in the face. It stung and seemed to wake me up. Out of nowhere Mitch’s voice came, and, unbelievably it said, “Come on! Please, Joe.”

“If you don’t mind!” Ralph said to her with icy politeness.

She — Mitch — had said that to me! To beat-up old Joe Patton!

She wanted me to win!

After you’ve spent the best dream years of your life killing dragons for the girl, what’s a tennis game or two?

It was as though a chill wind came down out of the north and cooled me off, gave me a chance to drink deeply of it and find strength.

Dimly I realized that he had me forty-love on the game which would make it six-five for him. The springs came back into my legs. I crouched, walked into the ball and belted it through him. I cut the next one, ran to the net and killed the next and somebody dimly announced that it was my ad and then the balls were bounding over to me and I was out in front, six-five.

One lousy little game between me and the big win. I stood, breathing hard. I wanted to tell Mitch that when I was twelve years old we were Christians thrown to the lions and I had saved her from them. I didn’t think she’d understand.

Across the net, not smiling any more, was insult and contempt and arrogance. I pulled him off balance with a soft serve, raced to what seemed to be a good spot and drove a stinging backhand just inside the line. It was too hot for him to handle.

He was playing a shade close, waiting for another soft one. I grunted as I smashed the serve. It bounced into the wrong place for him and he gave me one I could kill. His face was the color of the concrete and I laughed at him, saw the red tide creep up out of his faultless open collar.

“Try this one for size,” I yelled, and smashed another one with everything I had. He slammed it back and I went deep, stroked it. When it came back it was a heavy ball — like lead. It nearly spun the bat out of my hand when I cut it. He brought it back heavy again, and I gave him a luck shot, a tape shot that crawled over and trickled down his side of the net.

I gave him another old-lady serve, catching him off balance. The strength that I had found from Mitch’s words was fading fast.

His lob seemed to float in the air and I was running and running without getting any closer to it. I got around it and smashed it right to him. In his eagerness to cross me up, he was just outside the tape.

“Match point,” Mitch said.

I was dead again and the darkness was closing in. Just one more. But the serve was feeble, a sitter. This was it. If he broke through, I was done. And I knew it. I had scraped the bottom of the barrel.

It flicked the corner and I stumbled to one knee as I got the racket around it, pasted it high enough to give myself a chance to move back into position. He was grinning again. I caught a quick glimpse of his face. It came across like a streak of light. Once again I made a desperate save — right into a perfect angle shot for him. I knew when I started running that I wasn’t going to get to it. I made a running dive, and seemed to float through the air. I got a feeble backhand on it just before I crashed into the concrete and rolled, leaving patches of skin. My shot was a plooper. He moved in on it. My racket was ten feet from my hand.

The ball hit dead on top of the tape, balanced for a moment, and dropped down his side. He made a desperate scoop at it, but it was too close to the net. In the dead silence Mitch said, “Game, set and match to Mr. Patton.”

Just as I climbed up on the dead stalks that I was laughingly considering my legs, Wandelle, the Great, smashed his racket against the concrete, splintering the rim. He threw the shattered racket at my head. It was a shade high. I couldn’t have ducked.

I heard the clatter as it hit the ground far behind me.

Then the crowd was roaring.

Purple, and with fists clenched, the Great Man strode away from the crowd toward-the house. The darkness closed in and with no memory of falling I felt the warm concrete against my cheek.

I had a dim memory of walking up to the house and falling into my bed — with assistance all the way. I knew it was much darker.

The room door opened. Wandelle stood there.

“Hello, hero,” he said bitterly.

“I didn’t know you were such a good loser, Wandelle,” I said.

“There’s one little thing I have to do before I leave here,” he said. He came up to me just as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I ached in every muscle. He grabbed my shirt, pulled me up off the bed and popped me in the mouth. I bounced on the bed and fell over the other side. I got up just as he came around the end of the bed. The right whistled over my shoulder as I stepped inside of it. My fist bounced off his pretty jaw, and the feeling was good. But I didn’t hit him hard enough. Beyond him, just as he began to take my face apart, I saw Mitch slip in and pull off one small moccasin, grasp it by the toe and move in on us.

When she got close enough, the lights went out again. As I fell down the long black tunnel, I was thinking, “This is happening too often, kid. You’re going to end up punchy!”

The room lights were on and I was back on the bed and Martin January was looking down at me. I was wearing somebody else’s face. They should have taken better care of it. It felt lumpy.

“Where’d he go?” I asked in a clear, weak contralto.

“The boys took him and his stuff down to Kerrville and dumped him, son.”

“Good,” I said with a heavy sigh.

His eyes twinkled. “Son, I take back what I said about patting that little tennis ball back and forth over a net. Learned something today. Never too old to learn.”

“What was that?”

“Learned that it don’t matter a damn what a man does with himself. That’s his business. The important part is how he does it. You wore me out just watching you.”

“Mmmm,” I said.

“You did a little talking on the way up from the tennis match, Joe,” he said, his tone suddenly serious. “And you’re out of a job Want me to stake you to that tennis outfit you were babbling about? From watching you out there this afternoon, I think you’re a good risk. Better say yes quick.”

I tried to shake my head in an eager yes, but my head hurt. I felt gingerly for the lump on my head and muttered, “Ow! Your daughter packs a mean moccasin.”

His eyes widened and he said, “Hell, son. She didn’t hit you. She laid him out so cold that they had to slide him into the station wagon like a side of beef.”

“Where... where is she?” I gasped.

He grinned. “Standing on the other side of the bed, son. And from the way she’s looking at that godawful face of yours, I better move along for a spell.”

I didn’t even hear him leave the room.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Glory Blaster

1

2. Special Delivery

3. Grass Greenhorn