Left Tackle Thayer

CHAPTER XXI

THE LET­TER THAT WASN'T WRIT­TEN

The Cher­ry Val­ley game came off the next af­ter­noon, and the school turned out with songs and cheers and marched across to the grid­iron to watch the last con­test be­fore the fi­nal and supreme test. It was a cold, cloudy day, with a bit­ing north­east wind sweep­ing down the field. Most of the as­sist­ing coach­es had gone away over the week-​end, Mr. Robey and Andy Miller had jour­neyed to Claflin to see the game there and Mr. De­tweil­er was left in charge at home. Cher­ry Val­ley had been de­feat­ed 27-6 last year and was not looked on as at all dan­ger­ous. Her team was light in weight and looked even less com­pe­tent than it proved, since what­ev­er might have been said in crit­icism of it, it was fast. Brim­field start­ed the game with her best foot for­ward. With the ex­cep­tion of Clint at left tack­le, the line-​up con­sist­ed of first-​string play­ers. Tyler played in his old place at right tack­le. Brim­field was not to show any­thing in the way of new plays, in case Claflin had thought it worth while to send scouts, and to that ex­tent the Ma­roon-​and-​Grey was hand­icapped.

The first pe­ri­od ran along with­out a score on ei­ther side. Brim­field couldn't seem to get start­ed. There was more fum­bling on both sides than was nec­es­sary, even when the wind was tak­en in­to con­sid­er­ation, and each team lost the ball twice at crit­ical mo­ments. Brim­field worked down to the Cher­ry-​Red twen­ty-​two yards, lost a cou­ple of yards by a fum­ble, tried the left end for no gain and es­sayed a goal from the field. But dis­tance and wind were too much for Har­ris. Af­ter that there was much punt­ing on Cher­ry Val­ley's part, ev­ident­ly in the hope that a Brim­field back would fum­ble. And Brim­field backs did fum­ble, for the wind made cer­tain judg­ment of kicks im­pos­si­ble, but for­tu­nate­ly the ball was re­cov­ered each time with­out much loss. The first pe­ri­od end­ed with the ball in mid­field in Cher­ry Val­ley's pos­ses­sion.

Carmine went in for Mar­vin, since, with the wind against her, Cher­ry Val­ley would not be like­ly to do much punt­ing and Carmine's back­field un­steadi­ness would not count. He man­aged to get more speed in­to the Ma­roon-​and-​Grey and to­ward the end of the pe­ri­od two long punts, poor­ly re­turned, put her with­in scor­ing dis­tance. On the thir­ty yards Brim­field un­corked her re­al of­fence and Kendall and Har­ris and St. Clair ham­mered the line and skirt­ed the ends and fi­nal­ly plugged through for a hard-​earned touch­down. The punt-​out was missed and so Brim­field was not able to add a 1 to the 6.

Thir­ty sec­onds af­ter the kick-​off Carmine faked a for­ward pass and start­ed around his own left end and, elud­ing most of the Cher­ry Val­ley team by some of the best dodg­ing that had been seen that sea­son, put the pigskin back on the Red's twen­ty-​four yards. A for­ward pass, Har­ris to Ed­wards, gained eight, and Har­ris made it first down past left tack­le. Kendall worked the cen­tre for three and Har­ris romped around the right for six more. Carmine plunged through cen­tre for the dis­tance. Har­ris went back as if to kick and the ball shot to St. Clair and that elu­sive youth fair­ly streaked across the field and, find­ing a hole, shot through and over the line for the sec­ond score. This time Innes kicked the goal and the tal­ly was 13-0. There was no more scor­ing in that pe­ri­od, al­though Cher­ry Val­ley sent the spec­ta­tors' hearts in­to their throats by get­ting a back off away on a long run down the side of the field which, but for a splen­did tack­le by Kendall, would have re­sult­ed in a touch­down. With the pigskin in Cher­ry Val­ley's pos­ses­sion on the home team's six­teen yards the half end­ed.

Mr. De­tweil­er and “Boots” scold­ed and threat­ened dur­ing half-​time. The team had played, de­clared the lat­ter, like a lot of help­less id­iots. What was the mat­ter with them? Did they think they were there to loaf? For two cents Mr. Boutelle would yank the whole sil­ly bunch off the field and fin­ish the game with the sec­ond team! He would, by Gin­ger!

Af­ter that Mr. De­tweil­er more qui­et­ly point­ed out some dozen or fif­teen of the most glar­ing faults dis­played and read a new line-​up. With the ex­cep­tion of Clint, Hall, Carmine and Tyler ev­ery fel­low was new. “And now,” said Mr. De­tweil­er, “let's see what you can do this half. Do some­thing, any­way! Stop loaf­ing! If you can't play foot­ball, wave your arms and make a noise!”

Brim­field wise­ly chose to play a kick­ing game at the be­gin­ning of the third pe­ri­od, since, with the wind be­hind her, Freer's high corkscrews were par­tic­ular­ly ef­fec­tive. Freer didn't try for much dis­tance with his punts. What he did was to send them well in­to the air and let the wind do the rest. The re­sult was that the pigskin sailed down the field for any­where from thir­ty-​five to fifty yards and came down in the most un­ex­pect­ed places. Cher­ry Val­ley very sen­si­bly made no ef­fort to run back punts, but sig­nalled a fair-​catch ev­ery time, which made it eas­ier for the Brim­field ends and tack­les, since they, no more than the en­emy, could tell where the er­rat­ic ball was go­ing to de­scend. Cher­ry Val­ley at­tempt­ed to run the ends and suc­ceed­ed now and then, punt­ing on­ly on fourth down when ev­ery­thing else had failed. Af­ter a dozen plays Brim­field had gained half the dis­tance to the Red's goal with­out hav­ing put her new back­field to the test. There, how­ev­er, a fum­ble by Still changed the com­plex­ion of things, for the ball was re­cov­ered by a tall Cher­ry Val­ley guard and that youth elud­ed the op­po­nents and car­ried the pigskin past the cen­tre of the field and was pulled down on Brim­field's forty-​two yards by Carmine.

That seemed to give the vis­itors the en­cour­age­ment they had lacked, for they at once start­ed in with a be­wil­der­ing set of fast criss-​cross­es and dou­ble-​pass­es and so de­ceived the sub­sti­tute back­field that they made two first downs be­fore a halt was called. Then, with six yards to go on third down, the Red pulled off a for­ward pass of startling length and pre­ci­sion and the catch­er was run out at the Ma­roon-​and-​Grey's twen­ty-​five-​yard line. Cher­ry Val­ley tried Brim­field's left end and gained four, slid off Clint for three more, tried the same place again and was stopped for no gain and punt­ed short and across field to Carmine on his eight yards.

Carmine slipped past the Red's left end and start­ed on a wide run, look­ing for a chance to cut in. But ad­vance was blocked thor­ough­ly and he was fi­nal­ly down on his ten-​yard line. A plunge by Rollins gained two and Freer got past the right tack­le for three more. Then Freer was sent back to his goal line to punt. Thurs­by, at cen­tre, passed low, and Freer was hur­ried, with the re­sult that the ball went al­most straight in­to the air, was caught by the wind and land­ed out of bounds at Brim­field's eigh­teen yards. Cher­ry Val­ley start­ed in again with grim de­ter­mi­na­tion. A weak spot was dis­cov­ered at right guard, where Gaffer­ty was in Hall's place, and two gains were made there, bring­ing the pigskin to the twelve yards. An­oth­er at­tempt, this time on Tyler, pro­duced two more. With two to go on fourth down, Cher­ry Val­ley elect­ed to kick and her right half-​back, who per­formed the drop-​kick­ing, fell back to the eigh­teen yards.

The ball was op­po­site the left-​hand goal post and a three-​point tal­ly ap­peared in­evitable. Carmine and Still, the lat­ter act­ing-​cap­tain in Jack Innes's ab­sence, im­plored the for­wards to block the kick. There was an in­stant of com­par­ative si­lence, bro­ken on­ly by the quar­ter's hoarse voice as he gave the sig­nal, and then the two lines heaved at each oth­er and the ball sped back to the kick­er. His eyes sought the goal, the ball dropped, his leg swung and through the din of cries and the rasp­ing of can­vas came the thud of foot and ball. But it was fol­lowed by an­oth­er thud, the hol­low sound of the pigskin strik­ing the chest of the Ma­roon-​and-​Grey's left tack­le, and back up the field bound­ed the ball. Clint had cho­sen the op­pos­ing tack­le as his prey, had swung him out and bro­ken through some­how be­tween him and guard. A half-​back had thrown him­self in his way, but Clint had stag­gered over or past him and leaped des­per­ate­ly in­to the path of the as­cend­ing ball. He had felt the re­sound­ing smack of it un­der his chin and, re­cov­er­ing from the force of the im­pact, had, even as he found his feet again, seen it bound away past the fran­tic kick­er, seen that youth go down un­der the stur­dy Holt, and had start­ed in­stant­ly in pur­suit. Be­hind him thud­ded friend and foe, from one side dart­ed the Cher­ry Val­ley quar­ter-​back. The ball was wob­bling left and right a dozen yards away. Clint strove to put him­self in the way of the quar­ter, but that play­er, with a burst of speed, ran free and dived for the ball. Clint top­pled on top of the quar­ter. And then, just how he nev­er knew, he had the ball snug­gled un­der his chest, the quar­ter in­ef­fec­tu­al­ly seek­ing a hold on it!

“Brim­field's ball!” an­nounced the ref­er­ee, heel­ing. “First down right here!”

That was Cher­ry Val­ley's last threat. Lat­er, in the fourth quar­ter, she reached the Ma­roon-​and-​Grey's twen­ty-​sev­en yards but was forced to punt af­ter two at­tempt­ed for­ward pass­es had failed. Brim­field se­cured two more touch­downs, one in each pe­ri­od, and twice failed at field-​goals, Rollins's drop-​kick­ing prov­ing far from first-​class. Freer took the ball over for the first score in the sec­ond half, and Mar­vin, who re­placed Carmine to­ward the end of the last pe­ri­od, squirmed through from the four yards for the sec­ond. Freer failed to con­vert his touch­down in­to a goal, but Mar­vin very neat­ly added a point to his, and the fi­nal score read Brim­field, 26; Cher­ry Val­ley, 0; which was a more sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sult than last year's.

The school showed a strong dis­po­si­tion to li­on­ize Clint for his block­ing of Cher­ry Val­ley's drop-​kick, and when he en­tered the din­ing hall that evening he re­ceived more ap­plause than, any of the oth­er play­ers. It was his first ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing clapped to his seat and he found him­self hearti­ly wish­ing that the 'var­si­ty train­ing-​ta­bles had been lo­cat­ed near­er the door!

The foot­ball mass-​meet­ing that night was en­thu­si­as­tic to a de­gree, and even the news that Claflin had beat­en Larchville that af­ter­noon 11 to failed to damp­en the fer­vour of the songs and cheers that rang through the hall. It was re­called that a year ago Larchville, who had then held the same po­si­tion on Claflin's sched­ule, had de­feat­ed the lat­ter 12 to 6, and that sub­se­quent­ly the best Brim­field had been able to do with Claflin was 6 to 0. Con­se­quent­ly it would seem that Claflin was stronger this year than last. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, Brim­field had not played Larchville this sea­son, ow­ing to the fact that Larchville, hav­ing beat­en Brim­field 17 to 3 last year, had in­sist­ed that the next meet­ing should be at Larchville, an ar­range­ment Brim­field had not been will­ing to con­sent to. For this rea­son it was not pos­si­ble to com­pare the strength of Brim­field and Claflin with any cer­tain­ty. Andy Miller, who was pre­vailed on to ad­dress the mass-​meet­ing, de­clared it to be his con­vic­tion that Claflin had a slight­ly stronger team than she had had last Fall.

“I think,” he ex­plained, “that it is a lit­tle more even­ly de­vel­oped. She is sur­er in all de­part­ments than she was a year ago. Like us, the Blue start­ed the sea­son with five of her old men in the line-​up, and, like us, she had a good crowd of sub­sti­tutes to pick from. Her cap­tain and quar­ter-​back, Ain­smith, is one of the best in the game to­day, and in her full-​back, Atkin­son, whom you prob­ably re­mem­ber, she has an­oth­er star. Her halves are new men, but they're fast and hard to stop. In the line, tack­le to tack­le, I think we'll even up with them. As for our ends, I be­lieve we can show bet­ter goods than they can, al­though Mum­ford, who played with them last year, is a very good man. I'm not telling you this to dis­cour­age you, for I firm­ly be­lieve we're go­ing to win, but I don't want you to think that it's go­ing to be a walk-​over, for it isn't, not by any man­ner of means. We've got to work hard and use ev­ery­thing we know if we're to have the long end of the score a week from to­day. That's what our team has got to do. As for you fel­lows, you've got to stand right up be­hind it ev­ery minute and make it feel that you have con­fi­dence in it. I can't be here to see the game my­self; I wish I could; but I ful­ly ex­pect to take up the pa­per a week from to­mor­row morn­ing and read that Brim­field has turned the trick again. And I ex­pect to read, too, that a no­table fea­ture of the con­test was the whole-​souled, hearty sup­port giv­en the Ma­roon-​and-​Grey by their fel­lows! That's all I've got to say to you. The team's go­ing to do its part. You do yours.”

The next day dawned fair and warm, with an al­most im­per­cep­ti­ble haze in the at­mo­sphere, a ver­ita­ble In­di­an sum­mer day if ev­er there was one. Af­ter din­ner, a rather more hearty meal than was served to the foot­ball play­ers on week-​days, Clint went back to his room with the no­ble in­ten­tion of writ­ing a fine long let­ter to his fa­ther and moth­er. There had been com­plaints from Cedar Run of late to the ef­fect that Clint's epis­tles were much too brief. To­day he re­solved to send at least eight pages. He would tell them all about the fine weath­er and yes­ter­day's game--men­tion­ing quite in­ci­den­tal­ly his own part in it--and the foot­ball spir­it that pre­vailed through­out the Acade­my and--and--About this time Clint found him­self smoth­er­ing a yawn and view­ing dis­taste­ful­ly the writ­ing pad in front of him. Through the open win­dows came the sound of voic­es borne on the still, soft air, and he pushed back his chair and wan­dered to the case­ment. Across the field the Au­tumn woods were brown and sun­lit and their depths filled with a pur­ple haze. Boys were strolling in cou­ples and groups across the yel­low­ing turf. Af­ter a minute Clint went back to the ta­ble, looked in­de­ci­sive­ly at the still clean sheet of pa­per await­ing his pen, picked up his cap from the chair and, with a guilty back­ward glance, stole out of the room. He felt very much as though he was play­ing hookey, a feel­ing which per­haps nat­ural­ly in­creased his plea­sure as he ran down the stairs and is­sued forth on the Row.

Pen­ny Durkin was seat­ed on the steps with a text-​book in hand, but Clint not­ed that Pen­ny's gaze was fixed on the dis­tance. The fact act­ed as a salve for Clint's con­science. If Pen­ny couldn't study to­day, Pen­ny who had been known to play his fid­dle even while he stuffed Greek or Latin or math­emat­ics, sure­ly no one else could right­ful­ly be ex­pect­ed to fix his mind on let­ter-​writ­ing! Clint halt­ed a mo­ment on the walk and Pen­ny's gaze and thoughts came back from afar and he blinked up at the oth­er.

“Hi!” said Pen­ny dream­ily.

“Hi,” re­turned Clint.

“Warm, isn't it?”

“Yes, great.”

“I thought I'd study a lit­tle, but I guess I was al­most asleep.”

“Day-​dream­ing,” sug­gest­ed Clint. There was a mo­ment's si­lence, dur­ing which an odd idea oc­curred to Clint. He didn't much care to walk by him­self, and he didn't know where to look for Amy or any of the oth­er fel­lows who might care to join him. Why not, then, ask Pen­ny Durkin? Be­fore he had thor­ough­ly weighed the mer­its of the scheme he found him­self mak­ing the sug­ges­tion.

“Come on for a walk, Durkin,” he said. “Bring your old book along if you like. We'll find a place in the woods and, as Amy says, com­mune with Na­ture.”

Pen­ny looked first sur­prised and then pleased, and, “I'd love to,” he said. So they set off to­geth­er around the cor­ner of Tor­rence and past the lit­tle brick build­ing which held the heat­ing plant and made off across the field. The sun was glo­ri­ous­ly warm and the air was like that of a June day, and af­ter the first minute or two of progress they dis­cov­ered that they had no in­cli­na­tion to­ward hur­ry­ing, that, in short, they felt de­cid­ed­ly lazy and drowsy, and that the soon­er they reached that place in the woods where they were to com­mune with Na­ture the pleas­an­ter it would be.

Con­ver­sa­tion was fit­ful. Pen­ny spoke hes­itant­ly of Clint's good work in yes­ter­day's game, ven­tured a vague pre­dic­tion that Brim­field would win from Claflin on Sat­ur­day and then seemed to fall asleep. Clint made no ef­fort to arouse him and present­ly they climbed over the stone wall that di­vid­ed the school prop­er­ty from the wood­land and made their way through the trees un­til they were half-​way up the slope. There, in the lee of an out­crop­ping grey ledge of weath­ered gran­ite, they sub­sid­ed on a bed of leaves with sighs of con­tent­ment. Through the near­er trees and above the more dis­tant ones, they could see the fur­ther side of the field and the sun­lit build­ings.

“I reck­on,” said Clint, prop­ping his shoul­ders against a con­ve­nient sur­face of the ledge, “this is the place we were look­ing for. Now, bring on your Na­ture and we'll com­mune.”

“I used to come up here when I was a First For­mer,” said Pen­ny. “Two or three of us kids would sneak stuff from din­ing hall and build a fire back of this rock and pic­nic. One day we went off and for­got about the fire and that night some­one looked over and saw a blaze and they had to fight it for al­most an hour with brooms and buck­ets of wa­ter. We had a fine time! Ev­ery­one turned out. We nev­er told what we knew about it, though!” And Pen­ny smiled rem­inis­cent­ly.

“You're in the sixth form this year, aren't you?” asked Clint.

“Yes, this is my last year.”

“And you've been here five al­ready!” Clint mar­velled. “My, that's a long time, isn't it? You'll feel queer, won't you, when you don't come back next Fall?”

Pen­ny nod­ded sober­ly. “It'll be--fun­ny,” he agreed. “I don't sup­pose you'll quite un­der­stand it, Thay­er, but--well, this school is more like a re­al home than any oth­er place I know. You see, my moth­er died a long while ago; I was just a tod­dler then; and my fa­ther mar­ried again. Then, when I was eleven, he died and now I live with my step­moth­er and her broth­er. He's not a bad sort of man, Un­cle Steve. I just call him un­cle, of course. But my step­moth­er nev­er liked me much, and then, be­sides, fa­ther didn't leave much mon­ey when he died and she sort of feels that she can't af­ford to pay my ed­uca­tion. I've al­ways had to fight to get back here ev­ery year. Un­cle Steve helped me some, but he's kind of scared of ma and doesn't dare say much. That's why school seems like home. When I go back to Park­er­stown it's more like go­ing on a vis­it than go­ing home. And af­ter this year it's go­ing to seem fun­ny, un­less I go to col­lege.”

“But you are go­ing, aren't you?” asked Clint anx­ious­ly.

“If I can. Mr. Fer­nald says he's hop­ing to get me a schol­ar­ship that will pret­ty near­ly see me through my fresh­man year, but there's noth­ing cer­tain about it, be­cause there are al­ways a lot of folks af­ter those schol­ar­ships and there aren't very many of them. I guess that's about the on­ly way I'll man­age it.”

“I do hope you get it,” said Clint with gen­uine sym­pa­thy. “I sup­pose you couldn't--couldn't find any way to work through, Durkin.”

“I've thought of that. I don't know. I've done pret­ty well here, buy­ing and sell­ing all kinds of things. You wouldn't think there'd be much mon­ey in it, would you? But since my sec­ond year I've done a lot of it and made near­ly enough each year to pay my tu­ition. That's the on­ly way I've been able to stay. I guess ma ar­gued that I'd cost her less at school, mak­ing most of the mon­ey my­self, than I would at home. Fel­lows some­times call me a 'Yan­kee' and a 'Shy­lock' and things like that be­cause I try to get all the mon­ey I can for a thing. But I've nev­er cheat­ed any­one; and--and I've re­al­ly need­ed the mon­ey. But I don't be­lieve a fel­low could do that in col­lege. There might be an­oth­er way, though. I've heard of fel­lows mak­ing a lot of mon­ey in col­lege.”

“Seems to me,” said Clint, “it's your step-​moth­er's du­ty to look af­ter you and pay for your school­ing. It's your fa­ther's mon­ey she's us­ing, isn't it?”

“Yes, but there's not a great deal of it, I sup­pose. I nev­er knew how much he did leave. And ma's fond of nice things and it costs a good deal to live, I guess. Oh, if I can get that schol­ar­ship I'll be all right. You see, though, don't you, why I didn't want to scrap with Dreer? It might have just queered ev­ery­thing for me.”

“Yes, I see,” as­sert­ed Clint. “You did the right thing. You'd have been mighty sil­ly to risk it, Durkin. What about play­ing? You--you play pret­ty well, don't you? Couldn't you make any mon­ey that way?”

“No.” Pen­ny shook his head. “I don't play well enough. You see, I've kept think­ing that some day I'd be able to get in­struc­tion, but I nev­er have yet; ex­cept a few lessons a fel­low in Park­er­stown gave me one Sum­mer. I just scrape; that's all.”

“I've al­ways thought,” fibbed Clint stout­ly, “that you played fine­ly!”

“I've al­ways thought I could if I'd had in­struc­tion,” replied Pen­ny wist­ful­ly. “I sort of love it. Maybe some day--” His voice dwin­dled in­to si­lence, and for sev­er­al min­utes the two boys, each busy with their sep­arate thoughts, stared through the bare branch­es up to the blue af­ter­noon sky. They were aroused from their dream­ing by the sound of voic­es and rustling of leaves un­der the feet of the speak­ers. Clint, peer­ing around, saw Har­mon Dreer, and an­oth­er boy whom he didn't know by sight, climb­ing the slope to­ward them.