Interference and Other Football Stories Part 17

Five palpitating seconds of electrifying silence followed Davies'

fervent outburst. Then C. R. D. spoke again, in a voice that was husky with pent-up emotion and the shock of it all.

"Where's your mother? I've been twenty years trying to find her. Oh, G.o.d, this is wonderful! You--my son!"

Still the young man who went by the name of Broadhurst stood, unspeaking, undecided as to what to make of this rabidly serious personage who, not alone satisfied with claiming prestige for performing a gridiron feat similar to his, was now trying to claim a part in his parentage.

"It was twenty years ago," explained Davies appealingly, "almost to the day, when, just before the game with Yale, I met your mother--met her in a secluded spot under the stands. There was a cold rain falling, and I can remember how we pressed up close against the stands to keep from getting soaked. And she took that little crimson bow from about her neck and tied it around my wrist. I can even recall exactly what she said. It was, 'Here, take this--it's your token of good luck.'"

Davies' voice broke at this and tears glazed the eyes of even the Harvard quarterback.

"I--I guess there must be something to it, all right," confessed the youth who had been surnamed Broadhurst, the name his mother had taken.

"That's just what mother did this afternoon--insisted on meeting me under the stands, and--and tied on this bow--and said those same words!"

It was a peculiar sight--had any one been there to see it--a grown-up man and a growing man clasping hands, their faces wet and streaked.

"I'm taking mother to dinner tonight," said the younger man softly, after what seemed like an hour of understanding silence.

"No--you mean that I'm taking mother and you," corrected the old-time player firmly. Then, leaning over, he touched the crimson bow reverently and asked: "I--I wonder if you'd let me wear that to-night?

I want her to see me with it on. I want her to know that Davies played the game!"

"b.u.t.tER FINGERS"

How did "Rus" Lindley get his nickname, "b.u.t.ter Fingers"? Now _I'll_ ask _you_ one! "Why did the guys call six foot Harry Tibbits, 'Shorty'?" Answer that and you've answered your own question about "Rus."

I guess, if you'd go into the science of nicknames far enough you'd find that the name you can pick which comes the furtherest from fitting who you're picking it for is the one that suits the best! There--how's that for getting rid of an involved sentence?

At any rate, if "Rus" really deserved to be dubbed "b.u.t.ter Fingers"

then the moon is really made of green cheese and the cow really did jump over it and all that stuff. Because if there was one thing that "Rus" _wasn't_, it was _b.u.t.ter fingers_.

"Rus" was a lean, lanky, long-armed, awkward, thin-nosed cuss that you'd think, to look at, didn't have an ounce of ambition or a pint of sense. The next minute you'd wake up to find the ounce a hundred pounds of condensed lightning and the pint a couple of gallons of trigger thinking. That's the kind of a surprise package "Rus" was.

And, brother, look out!! If "Rus" ever had occasion to lay hands on you he didn't let go until he got good and ready. Try your _durndest_ and you couldn't shake loose the grip he carried in those long, slender fish hooks of his. "b.u.t.ter Fingers"?

What a laugh! "Rus" was never known to have m.u.f.fed anything in his life!

It was "b.u.t.ter Fingers" who climbed the greased pole and took down the Senior colors his Freshman year. It was "b.u.t.ter Fingers" who untied the wet knots in the fellows' clothes the time we Sophies got caught swimming in the Old Bend, thus saving us from a most embarra.s.sing situation. It was "b.u.t.ter Fingers" who hung by his digits from a window sill on the fourth story of our dorm when she was burning down ... hung there ten minutes till the firemen got a ladder under him after he'd been cut off from the stairs. He saved seven roommates by that sure-grip of his, swinging them from a window where they were trapped and sending them down the stairs ahead of him before the fire put the stairs out of commission.

And who but "b.u.t.ter Fingers" could have "human-fly-ed" it up the front of the old stone chapel, clear up into the belfry? Of course he did it on a dare but those wonder fingers of his just pulled him up, catching hold of places that the ordinary person would tear their finger nails on and cry thirteen b.l.o.o.d.y murders from the strain of hanging to crevices by the finger tips.

That was "b.u.t.ter Fingers"!

But, using the words of Al Jolson, "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" What I've just got through telling you was just practice exercises for the bird with the muscular mitts, the uncanny grip, the steam shovel hands and the never-break-clutch.

Say, I hope you're not getting this "b.u.t.ter Fingers" wrong. He was long, lean, lanky, awkward, thin-nosed and all that ... but he wasn't built like a foundry. His hands weren't extra large, either ...

excepting that the fingers were extra long. He only weighed a hundred and fifty-one pounds which isn't much when you're thinking in terms of football and so much for so tall. That's where "b.u.t.ter Fingers" had you fooled. You had to see him in action before you'd believe what "Rus" Lindley could do.

Was he modest? He was so quiet and una.s.suming that you could hear his watch ticking in his vest pocket! Was he athletic? Don't be ridiculous! If he wasn't athletic anywhere but in his fingers he'd have been athletic enough. As it was, he was the best end that ever played on a football eleven representing Burden High!

What makes you think "b.u.t.ter Fingers" was a freak? He wasn't born strong-fingered. Naw. He had to develop it. What made him do it?

Well, I don't know as I could answer that exactly. I remember "b.u.t.ter Fingers" saying once he'd gotten a kick out of chinning himself ever since he was a baby. Sure! You don't chin yourself with your chin ...

you chin yourself with your ... anyhow it's mostly done with your grip!

You get a hold of a bar or something and pull your body up rigid! All right, then! Why didn't you say you'd tried it? Ain't so easy, is it?

Especially after the tenth time!

Can you imagine what sort of an end a guy with a powerful grip could make? Can you figure what would happen to a football if "b.u.t.ter Fingers" ever laid his grapplers on it? And can you picture a runner trying to get away from a tackle by a bird like "Rus"? A fly might as well try to pull its feet off a sheet of sticky fly paper as a runner to jerk loose from "b.u.t.ter Fingers" once he's got him.

Would you like to hear how "b.u.t.ter Fingers" won his undying fame? Have I got the time? No, but I'll take time. This story's worth it!

Just make yourself as comfortable as possible. You'd better sit on the edge of your chair, though, because that's where you'll be before very long anyway. And I'll start right in at the beginning so you won't miss any of the picture.

First, you got to get a close-up of this fellow, "Rus" Lindley. He's the kind they describe in the movies as "Oliver, who takes everything seriously--including football." Before any of the guys nicknamed him "b.u.t.ter Fingers," "Rus" was just an ordinary, awkward candidate for the team ... but while he was picking up b.u.mps in practice he was likewise putting on b.u.mps of knowledge. "Rus" had one of them scientific slants of mind and he always had to figure why he was supposed to do a certain thing a certain way. Once he'd found out the reason he was satisfied.

Professor Tweedy, our "math" teacher, used to say that "Rus" was a "natural born thinker." But geometry and trigonometry weren't the only subjects that "Rus" approached from all angles. He used his bean at all times and places.

That's why, when "Rus" went out for football, he felt called upon to exercise his gray matter. It was perfectly obvious to him, for instance, after a careful study of the rudiments of the game, that the weather might seriously alter one's style of play.

"Take the difference between a dry field and a wet field," he says to me, one afternoon, "I'm surprised the coach doesn't make us practice with a wet ball and the field soaked down. The almanac indicates rain three Sat.u.r.days this fall and the signs couldn't be any worse for torrential precipitation on the Sat.u.r.day we play Edgewood. What's that going to mean? Simply that the luckiest team wins! But if the coach used the little mechanism inside his bean it might mean that the _smartest team_ would win. What made Napoleon great was his dry land operations. But, oh boy, didn't he get _soaked_ at _Waterloo_! Of course that's a rather far-fetched ill.u.s.tration. Just the same, you've got to know how to handle yourself under all conditions or you're practically sunk before you start!"

I agreed with "Rus" not feeling equal to stacking my brain up against his, and besides he has a way of making things sound darn logical.

Seeing as how the coach seemed to be overlooking a good bet, "Rus"

decides that he's going to get the training he should have anyway. So we meet one night after football practice in his backyard.

"This is what I'd call a laboratory experiment," explains "Rus" as he soaks down the back lawn with the garden hose, "The other boys would probably give us the merry ha ha if they saw what we're going to do but if my theory's right we'll see the day when we can laugh up our own sleeves!"

When the lawn's nice and oozy and slippery from super-saturation, "Rus"

turns the water on the football and gets it just as wet as though it had fallen in a lake.

"All right, Mark," he says to me, "I'll hit the dirt first. This kind of practice isn't exactly going to be pleasant but it has a good chance of proving profitable. Now you stand over there and roll that football across the gra.s.s. I'm going to try to fall on it!"

It's easy enough for me to do what "Rus" directs. But it's not so easy for "Rus" to do what he intends. We're dressed in our football togs, of course, right down to the cleated shoes. But even at that the gra.s.s is so sleek that the footing's as treacherous as a polished ball room floor. On his first try, "Rus" slips and falls flat before he gets to the ball and the pigskin rolls to the fence.

"There went the chance to save the game!" he points out as he gets to his feet. "Let's try her again!"

Honest, you never saw anybody that's such a glutton for punishment!

"Rus" gets sopping wet and all gra.s.s-stained and dog-tired but he keeps me throwing that football in all sorts of zig-zag bounces across the lawn till it's so dark that the street lights come on. And then he apologizes for not having traded off with me so's I could have got some of the same experience. "I'm just as well satisfied," I answers. "You don't need to feel bad about that!"

"We'll do it again, every chance we get," says "Rus," not seeming to notice my lack of enthusiasm, "I'm rotten! I missed at least half my dives. And as for scooping the ball up on the run, wasn't I pitiful?

But that's what an end's got to be able to do and yours truly isn't going to make a bad m.u.f.f in a game if he can help it!"

Being a friend of "Rus's" and practically a next door neighbor as well as a team-mate, I can't really turn the serious-minded bird down.

Besides, I have to admit to myself that it's darn interesting watching the vim that "Rus" puts into this secret practice. Some nights it's mighty chilly and with the gra.s.s wet down it's enough to make your spinal column wriggle, but "Rus" never seems to mind.

"The most annoying part of this thing for me," says "Rus," "is 'Mom's'

objection to my draping these wet togs over her radiators. She claims the house smells like a Chinese laundry every night. I tell her she must be a good sport and put up with it for the good of the team!"

Say, you'd be surprised, after a couple of weeks, to see how "Rus"

improves! It gets to be marvelous the way he can tear across the lawn, reach down with those long fingers, scoop that slippery pigskin up and keep right on going toward what he imagines is the enemy's goal!