Left Tackle Thayer

CHAPTER III

AMY AIRS HIS VIEWS

Clint set­tled down in­to his ap­point­ed niche at Brim­field, one of one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-​two in­di­vid­uals of var­ious ages be­tween twelve and twen­ty. At Brim­field there were six forms, and Clint had, af­ter a brief ex­am­ina­tion, been as­signed to the fourth. He found that he was well up with the class in ev­ery­thing save Greek and Latin, and these, Greek es­pe­cial­ly, soon proved hard sled­ding. The in­struc­tor, Mr. Simkins--or “Un­cle Sim,” as he was called--was no easy taskmas­ter. He en­ter­tained a pro­found rev­er­ence for Aris­to­tle and Vergil and Ci­cero and Homer and all the oth­ers, and failed to un­der­stand why his class­es thought them tire­some and, some­times, dry. His very en­thu­si­asm, how­ev­er, made him easy to im­pose on, and many a fel­low re­ceived good marks mere­ly be­cause he sim­ulat­ed a fer­vid in­ter­est. But Clint was ei­ther too hon­est or pos­sessed too lit­tle histri­on­ic tal­ent to at­tempt that plan, and by the time the Fall term was a week old, he, to­geth­er with many an­oth­er, was just bare­ly keep­ing his head above wa­ter. He con­fessed dis­cour­age­ment to his room-​mate one evening. Amy was sym­pa­thet­ic but scarce­ly help­ful.

“It's tom­my­rot, that's what it is,” Amy said with con­vic­tion. “What good does it do you to know Greek, any­way? I'll bet you any­thing that Un­cle Sim him­self couldn't go to Athens to­mor­row and or­der a cup of cof­fee and a hard-​boiled egg! Or, if he did or­der them, he'd get a morn­ing news­pa­per and tooth­pick. Last Spring I was in the boot-​black­ing em­po­ri­um in the vil­lage one af­ter­noon and Ho­race came in to get his shoes shined. There--”

“Who is Ho­race!” asked Clint de­ject­ed­ly.

“Mr. Da­ley; mod­ern lan­guages; you have him in French. Well, there was a no­tice stuck on the wall across the place. It was in Greek and I couldn't make any­thing out of it at all and I asked Ho­race what it said. Of course he just read it right off, with a mere pass­ing glance; did he not? Yes, he did not! He hemmed and hawed and mut­tered and fi­nal­ly said he couldn't make out the sec­ond word. I told him that was my trou­ble, too. Then we asked the Greek that runs the place and he told us it said that shines on Sun­days and hol­idays were ten cents. Of course, Ho­race isn't a spe­cial­ist in Greek, but still he's been through col­lege, and what I say is--”

“I don't be­lieve the men who wrote the stuff re­al­ly un­der­stood it,” said Clint.

“Oh, they un­der­stood a lit­tle of it, all right. They could sign their names, prob­ably. The on­ly con­so­la­tion I find is this, Clint. A cou­ple of hun­dred years from now, when ev­ery­one is talk­ing Es­peran­to or some oth­er uni­ver­sal lan­guage, the kids will have to study En­glish. Can't you see them grind­ing over the Ora­tions of William Jen­nings Bryan and won­der­ing why the dick­ens any­one ev­er want­ed to talk such a sil­ly lan­guage? That's when we get our re­venge, Clint. We won't be around to see it, but it'll be there.”

Clint had to smile at the pic­ture Amy drew, but he didn't find as much con­so­la­tion as Amy pre­tend­ed to, and Xenophon didn't come any eas­ier. He was hearti­ly glad when the study-​hour came to an end and he could con­sci­en­tious­ly close his books.

The ter­mi­na­tion of that hour was al­most in­vari­ably an­nounced by the dis­mal squawk­ing of Pen­ny Durkin's fid­dle. Some­times it was to be heard in the af­ter­noon, but not al­ways, for Pen­ny was a very busy youth. He was some­thing of a “shark” at lessons, was a lead­ing light in the De­bat­ing Cir­cle and con­duct­ed a sec­ond-​hand busi­ness in all sorts of things from a bro­ken tooth-​mug to a brass bed. Pen­ny bought and sold and trad­ed and, so ru­mour de­clared, made enough to near­ly pay his tu­ition each year. If you want­ed a rug or a ta­ble or a chair or a pic­ture or a bro­ken-​down bi­cy­cle or a pair of foot­ball pants you went to Pen­ny, and it was a dol­lar to a dime that Pen­ny ei­ther had in his pos­ses­sion, or could take you to some­one else who had, the very thing you were look­ing for. If you paid cash you got it rea­son­ably cheap--or you did if you knew enough to bar­gain crafti­ly--and if you want­ed cred­it Pen­ny charged you a whole lot more and wait­ed on you prompt­ly for the in­stal­ment at the first of each month. And be­sides these ac­tiv­ities Pen­ny was a de­vot­ed stu­dent of mu­sic.

He was an odd-​look­ing fel­low, tall and thin, with a lean face from which a pair of pale and near-​sight­ed eyes peered forth from be­hind rub­ber-​rimmed spec­ta­cles. His hair was al­most black and was al­ways in need of trim­ming, and his gar­ments--he sel­dom wore trousers, coat and vest that matched--al­ways seemed about to fall off him. Clint's first glimpse of Pen­ny came one af­ter­noon. The door of Num­ber 13 was open as Clint re­turned to his room af­ter foot­ball prac­tice and lugubri­ous sounds is­sued forth. It was very near the sup­per hour and Pen­ny's room was light­ed on­ly by the rays of the sink­ing sun. Against the win­dow Clint saw him in sil­hou­ette, his hair wild­ly ruf­fled, his vi­olin un­der his chin, his bow scrap­ing slow­ly back and forth as he leaned near-​sight­ed­ly over the sheet of mu­sic spread on the rack be­fore him. The strains that is­sued from the in­stru­ment were aw­ful, but there was some­thing fine in the play­er's ab­sorp­tion and ob­vi­ous con­tent, and what had start­ed out as a laugh of amuse­ment changed to a sym­pa­thet­ic smile as Clint tip­toed on to his own door.

The sor­row of Pen­ny's young life was that, al­though he had made in­nu­mer­able at­tempts, he could not suc­ceed in the for­ma­tion of a school or­ches­tra. There was a Glee Club and a Mu­si­cal So­ci­ety, the lat­ter com­posed of per­form­ers on the man­dolin, ban­jo and gui­tar, but no one would take any in­ter­est in Pen­ny's project. Or no one save a fel­low named Pills­bury. Pills­bury played the bass vi­ol, and once a week or so he and Pen­ny got to­geth­er and spent an en­tranced hour. Time was when such meet­ings took place in Pen­ny's room or in Pills­bury's room, but pop­ular in­dig­na­tion put an end to that. Nowa­days they took their in­stru­ments to the gym­na­si­um and held their cham­ber con­certs in the tro­phy room. Amy one day drew Clint's at­ten­tion to a for­tu­nate cir­cum­stance. This was that, while there was a con­nect­ing door be­tween Num­ber 14 and Num­ber 15, there was none be­tween Num­ber 14 and Num­ber 13. That fact, Amy de­clared, ren­dered their room fair­ly hab­it­able when Pen­ny was pour­ing out his soul. “It's lucky in an­oth­er way,” he added, star­ing dark­ly at the buff-​coloured wall that sep­arat­ed them from Num­ber 13. “If that door was on this side I'd have bro­ken it open long ago and done mur­der!”

Clint laughed and in­quired: “Who rooms on the oth­er side?”

“Schu­man and Dreer.” The con­temp­tu­ous tone of his re­ply caused Clint to ask:

“Any­thing wrong with them?”

“Oh, Schu­man's all right, I guess, but Dreer's a pill.” There was a wealth of con­tempt in the word “pill” as Amy pro­nounced it, and Clint asked in­no­cent­ly what a “pill” was.

“A pill,” replied Amy, “is--is--well, there are all sorts of pills. A fel­low who toad­ies to the in­struc­tors is a pill. A fel­low who is too lazy to play foot­ball or base­ball or ten­nis or any­thing else and pre­tends the doc­tor won't let him is a pill. A fel­low who has been to one school and got fired and then goes to an­oth­er and is al­ways shoot­ing off his mouth about how much bet­ter the first school is is the worst kind of pill. And that's the kind Har­mon Dreer is. He went to Claflin for a year and a half and then got in­to some sort of mess and was ex­pelled. Then the next Fall he came here. This is his sec­ond year here and he's still gab­bing about how much high­er class Claflin is and how much bet­ter they do ev­ery­thing there and--oh, all that sort of rot. I told him once that if the fel­lows at Claflin were so much classier than we are I could un­der­stand why they didn't let him stay there. He didn't like it. He doesn't nar­rate his sweet, sad sto­ry to me any more. If he ev­er does I'm like­ly to for­get that I'm a per­fect gen­tle­man.”

But Clint's neigh­bours were not of over­pow­er­ing in­ter­est to him those days. There were more ab­sorb­ing mat­ters, pleas­ant and un­pleas­ant, to fill his mind. For one thing, he was try­ing very hard to make a place on one of the foot­ball teams. He hadn't any hope of work­ing in­to the first team. Per­haps when he start­ed he may, in spite of his ex­pressed doubts, have se­cret­ly en­ter­tained some such hope, but by the end of the sec­ond day of prac­tice he had aban­doned it. The brand of foot­ball taught by Coach Robey and played by the 'var­si­ty team was ahead of any Clint had seen out­side a col­lege grid­iron and was a rev­ela­tion to him. Even by the end of the first week the first team was in what seemed to Clint end-​of-​sea­son form, al­though in that Clint was vast­ly mis­tak­en, and his own ef­forts ap­peared to him pret­ty weak and am­ateur­ish. But he held on hard, did his best and hoped to at least re­tain a place on the third squad un­til the fi­nal cut came. And it might just be, he told him­self in op­ti­mistic mo­ments, that he'd make the sec­ond! Mean­while he was en­joy­ing it. It's re­mark­able what a lot of ex­treme­ly hard work a boy will go through if he likes foot­ball, and what a deal of plea­sure he will get out of it! Amy pre­tend­ed to be to­tal­ly un­able to get that point of view. One af­ter­noon when Clint re­turned to pre­pare for sup­per with a low­er lip twice the nor­mal size of that fea­ture Amy in­dulged in sar­casm.

“Oh, the proud day!” he de­claimed, strik­ing an at­ti­tude. “Wound­ed on the field of bat­tle! Glo­ry! Tri­umph! Paeans! My word, old top, but I cer­tain­ly am proud to be the chum of such a hero! I'm so sot-​up I could scream for joy. Foot­ball's a won­der­ful pas­time, isn't it?”

“Sil­ly chump!” mum­bled Clint painful­ly.

“Yes, in­deed, a won­der­ful pas­time,” ru­mi­nat­ed Amy, seat­ing him­self on the win­dow-​seat and hug­ging one knee. “All a fel­low has to do is to go out and work like a dray-​horse and a pile-​driv­er and street-​roller for a cou­ple of hours ev­ery af­ter­noon, get kicked in the shins and biffed in the eye and rolled in the dirt and ragged by one coach, one cap­tain and one quar­ter-​back. That's all he has to do ex­cept learn a lot of sig­nals so he can recog­nise them in the frac­tion of a sec­ond, be able to re­cite the rules front­ward and back­ward and both ways from the mid­dle and live on in­di­gestible things like beef and rice and prunes. For that he gets called a 'mutt' and a 'dub' and a 'dis­grace to the School' and, un­less he's lucky enough to break a leg and get out of it be­fore the big game, he has twen­ty-​fours hours of heart-​dis­ease and six­ty min­utes of glo­ry. And his pic­ture in the pa­per. He knows it's his pic­ture be­cause there's a state­ment un­der­neath that Bill Jones is the third crim­inal from the left in the back row. And it isn't the pho­tog­ra­pher's fault if the good-​look­ing half-​back in the sec­ond row moved his head just as the cam­era went _snap_ and all that shows of Bill Jones is a torn and lac­er­at­ed left ear!”

“For the love of Mike, Amy, shut up!” plead­ed Clint. “You talk so much you don't say any­thing! Be­sides, you told me once you used to play your­self when you first came here.”

“So I did,” agreed Amy calm­ly. “But I saw the er­ror of my ways and quit. In me you see a brand snatched from the burn­ing. Why, gosh, if I'd kept on I'd be a pop­ular hero now! First For­mers would copy my socks and neck­ties and say 'Good morn­ing, _Mis­ter_ Byrd,' and the _Re­view_ would re­fer to me as 'that ster­ling play­er, Full-​back Byrd.' And Har­vard and Yale and Prince­ton scouts would be camp­ing on my trail and of­fer­ing me valu­able presents and tak­ing me to lunch at clubs. Oh, I had a nar­row es­cape, I can tell you! When I think how nar­row I shud­der.” He proved it by hav­ing a sort of con­vul­sion on the win­dow-​seat. “Clint, when it's all said and done, a fel­low's a per­fect, A-​plus fool to play foot­ball when he can en­list in the Ger­man army and die in a trench!”

“I got away for twen­ty yards this af­ter­noon and made a touch­down,” pro­claimed Clint from be­tween swollen lips, try­ing to keep the pride from his voice.

Amy threw up his hands in de­spair.

“I'll say no more,” he de­clared. “You're past help, Clint. You've tast­ed blood. Go on, you poor mis­tak­en hero, and maim your­self for life. I wash my hands of you.”

“You'd bet­ter wash them of some of that dirt I see and come to sup­per,” Clint mum­bled. “Gee, if I'd talked half as much as you have in the last ten min­utes I'd be starved!”