All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [233]
Jimmy was really crying now.
I followed the Boss back outside, where the band was now playing some brassy march.
When the second half opened up, the boys came out for blood. They made a touchdown early in the third quarter, and kick the point. The Boss felt pretty good, in a grim way, about that. In the fourth quarter Georgia drove down to the danger zone, was held, then kicked a field goal. That was the way it ended, ten to seven.
But we still had a shot at the Conference. If we took everything else in the season. The next Saturday Tom Stark was back out. He was out because the Boss had put the heat on Billie Martin. That was why, all right, for the Boss told me so himself.
“How did Martin take it?” I asked.
“He didn’t, the Boss said. “I crammed it down his throat.”
I didn’t say anything to that, and didn’t even know I was looking anything. But the Boss thrust his head at me and said, “Now look here, I wasn’t going to let him throw it away. We got a chance for the Conference, and the bastard would throw it away.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“It’s not Tom, it’s the championship, by God,” he said. “It’s not Tom. If it weren’t anything but Tom, I wouldn’t say a word. And if he breaks training again, I’ll pound his head on the floor. I’ll beat him with my own hands. I swear it.”
“He’s a pretty good-sized boy,” I remarked.
He swore again he would do it.
So the next Saturday Tom Stark was back out, and he carried the ball, and he was a cross between a ballerina and a locomotive, and the stands cheered, Yea, Tom, Tom, Tom, for he was their darling, and the score was twenty to nothing, and State had the sights back on the championship. There were two more games. There was an easy one with Tech, and then the Thanksgiving pay-off.
Tech was easy. In the third quarter, when State already had a lead, the coach sent Tom in just to give him a canter. Tom put on a little show for the stands. It was casual and beautiful and insolent. There was nothing to it, the way he did his stuff, it looked so easy. But once after he had knifed through for seven yards and had been nailed by the secondary, he didn’t get up right away.
“Just got the breath knocked out,” the Boss said.
And Tiny Duffy, who was with us in the Governor’s box, said, “Sure, but it won’t faze Tom.”
“Hell, no,” the Boss agreed.
But Tom didn’t get up at all. They picked him up and carried him to the field house.
“They sure knocked it out of him,” the Boss said, as though he were commenting on the weather. Then, “Look, they’re putting in Axton. Axton’s pretty good. Give him another season.”
“He’s good, but he ain’t Tom Stark. That Tom Stark is my boy,” Duffy proclaimed.
“They’ll pass now, I bet,” the Boss said judicially, but all the time he was sneaking a look at the procession making for the field house.
“Axton for Stark,” the loud-speaker up above the stands bellowed, and the cheerleader called for the stuff for Stark. They gave Tom his cheer, and the leader and the assistant leaders cart-wheeled and cavorted and flung up their megaphones.
The ball went back into play. It was a pass, just as the Boss had predicted. Nine yards, and first down. “First Down on Tech’s twenty-four-yard line,” the loud-speaker announced. Then added, “Tom Stark, who was stunned on the previous play, shows signs of regaining consciousness.”
“Stunned, huh?” Tiny Duffy echoed. Then he slapped the Boss on the shoulder (he loved to slap the Boss on the shoulder in public to show what buddies they were), and said, “They can’t stun our old Tom, huh?”
The Boss’s face darkened for a moment, but he said nothing.
“Not for long,” Tiny asseverated. “That boy, he is too tough for ’em.”
“He’s tough,” the Boss agreed. Then he gave his attention with the greatest devotion to the game.
The game was dull, but the duller it got, the more devoutly the Boss followed every play, and the more anxious he was to cheer. State ground out the touchdowns like a butcher’s machine making hamburger. There