The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [45]
"Just agreeing that Custer had it coming." The petite binoculars nearly lost in his hand, he watched a Treasure State pass fall flat against the Colorado team. It looked like a long game; he nestled closer to Cass. "I forgot to ask. Do you even like football?"
"I like a certain football guy."
Ben smiled; that was good enough. Among women of his acquaintance only his mother evinced understanding of the contrary grace he'd found in playing the rough-and-tumble sport. "I can hardly ever say so, but you take after me in that, Ben. I loved that same feeling in ballet lessons"—girlhood in Beverly Hills had its advantages—"it stays with you, the right muscles still know the rules. Even square dancing with your father."
Cass was scrabbling in the picnic basket. "Here, Jim Thorpe, have a sandwich. There's Spam or Spam."
"Yum."
"I know, but it's the best I could do." They munched on the manufactured meat and had nips of scotch as the game went along. Cass scanned elsewhere half the time, often to the planes taking off from East Base in the distance, but Ben was not really conscious of that, lost in his private tunnel of vision back to the scrimmage where everything began in the season of 1941.
The play was whistled dead before the ball could be snapped, the shrill echo in the empty stadium halting the practice game sooner than usual, and varsity and second-stringers alike uncoiled from their stances reluctantly.
Animal Angelides spat toward the sideline. "Here it comes. Why the hell can't he stay over there playing pocket pool with Loudon instead of frying our nuts?"
The other interior linemen groaned along with him and Ben at left end held in his own with effort. He watched with the others as their coach and chief tormenter came striding onto the field as if he personally owned Treasure State stadium. In his camel-hair topcoat and snap-brim hat Lionel Bruno could strut standing still, so when he added some swagger to it as he did now, he was practically parting the grass like the Red Sea. It was times like this when Ben wished he had been elected, say, water boy instead of team captain.
Hastily he checked over his shoulder to see how the backfield was taking this development. Moxie Stamper smirked unmercifully behind his quarterback privileges, about as expected. At the left halfback position, Vic sent Ben a private look as if he couldn't believe what was happening to this season either. At right half, Dex was coldly watching the coach's progress onto the field. Bulking between the pair of them, Jake had yanked his helmet off and stood tapping it in agitation against his thigh pads.
As if scripted, Bruno marched straight to the football. He plucked it off the ground and walked back and forth through the players, holding the ball in front of their faces as if all twenty-two of them were nearsighted morons. Ben couldn't even guess which speech it was going to be this time, there were so many.
"If the bunch of you would pull your heads out of your butts," the coach started in on them, "and put aside the lesser things of life to concentrate on the basic game of football—"
Oh oh, that one.
"—then you just possibly might have the makings of a genuine team." At the word might, Bruno squeezed the ball so hard it threatened to pop. "Forget nights on the town. Forget dessert and the cigarette after. Forget about trying to get into your girlfriend's pants," he preached with rising intensity. "This"—he brandished the football higher—"this is the one and only object of your desire from this moment forward, people. You have to want this ball. You have to lust for this ball. You have to love getting this ball and handling it as if you are the only ones on the face of God's green sod it is entrusted