All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [232]
He knew he was good. So he didn’t have to bother to keep all the rules. Not even the training rules. He could deliver anyway, he told his father, so what the hell? But he did it once too often. He and Thad Mellon, who was a substitute tackle, and Gup Lawson, who was a regular guard, did themselves proud one Saturday night after the game out at a roadhouse. They might have managed very well, if they hadn’t got into a fight with some yokels who didn’t know or care much about football and who resented having their girls fooled with. Gup Lawson took quite a beating from the yokels and went to the hospital and was out of football for several weeks. Tom and Thad didn’t get more than a few punches before the crowd broke up the fight. But the breach of rules was dumped rather dramatically into the lap of Coach Billie Martin. It got into one of the papers. He suspended Tom Stark and Thad Mellon. That definitely changed the betting odds for the Georgia game for the following Saturday, for Georgia was good that year, and Tom Stark was the local edge.
The Boss took it like a man. No kicking and screaming even when Georgia wound up the half with the score seven to nothing. As soon as the whistle blew he was on his feet. “Come on,” he said to me, and I knew he was on his way to the field house. I trailed him down there, and leaned against the doorjamb and watched it. Back off on the field there was the band music now. The band would be parading around with the sunshine (for this was the first of the afternoon games, now that the season was cooling off) glittering on the brass and on the whirling gold baton of the leader. Then the band, way off there, began to tell Dear Old State how we lover her, how we’d fight, fight, fight for her, how we’d die for her, how she was the mother of heroes. Meanwhile the heroes, pretty grimy and winded, lay around and got worked over.
The Boss didn’t say a word at first. He just walked into the place, and looked slowly around the relaxed forms. The atmosphere would have reminded you of a morgue. You could have heard a pin drop. There wasn’t a sound except once the scrape of a cleat on the concrete when somebody surreptitiously moved his foot, once or twice the creak of harness when somebody shifted his position . Coach Billie Martin, standing over across the room with his hat jammed down to his eyes, looked glum and chewed an unlit cigar. The Boss worked his eyes over them all, one by one, while the band made its promises and the old grads in the stands stood up in the beautiful autumn light with their hats over their hearts and felt high and pure.
The Boss’s eyes came to rest on Jimmy Hardwich, who was sitting on a bench. Jimmy was a second-string end. He had been put in at the second quarter because the regular at left end had been performing like a constipated dowager. It was going to be Jimmy’s big chance. The chance came. It was a pass. And he dropped it. So now when the Boss’s eyes fixed on Jimmy, Jimmy stared sullenly back. Then, when the Boss’s eyes lingered a moment, Jimmy burst our, “God damn it–God damn it–go on and say it!”
But the Boss didn’t say it. He didn’t say anything. He just moved slowly over to stand in front of Jimmy. Then, very deliberately, he reached out and laid his right hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He didn’t pat the shoulder. He jus laid it there, the way some men can do to gentle a nervous horse.
He wasn’t looking at Jimmy now, but swept his glance around over all the others. “Boys,” he said, “I just came down to tell you I know you did your best.”
He stood there, with his hand still lying on Jimmy’s shoulder, and let that sink in. Jimmy began to cry.
Then he said, “And I know you will do your best. For I know the stuff you got in you.”
He waited again. Then he took his hand off Jimmy’s shoulder, and turned slowly and moved toward the door. There he paused, and again swept his