The Boy Grew Older Part 26

"Charles K. Bullitt, quarterback, who weighs 156 pounds, earned most of the glory. In the past this slight young man has been valued chiefly for his head work. He is rather a delicate piece of thinking machinery and it has been the custom to guard him a little from the b.u.mps of the game.

His role has been like that of a chief of staff.

"The customary procedure is for Bullitt to peer calmly over the opposing lines and then make a suggestion to one of the bigger backs as to where it might be advisable for him to go. In general his acquaintance with the ball has been only a pa.s.sing one. He is expected merely to fair catch punts and not to run them back. Indeed for the last two years Bullitt has fairly thought his way into a place on the Harvard team.

"But today the scholar in football suddenly became the man of action. He proved that he could function from the neck down. Standing at midfield, late in the third period, Bullitt received a punt from Aldrich. He switched his tactics. Instead of playing safe he began to run. Leaving his philosophic cloister, he plunged headlong into life. And it was life of the roughest sort, for Yale men were all about him. Fortunately for the little anchorite of the football field he had achieved a theory during his sheltered meditations and it worked. Whenever a Yale tackler approached him he thrust out one foot. And then, just to fool the foe, he took it away again.

"The zest of living gripped him and he went on and on over the chalk marks. It seemed to him that the rigors of existence had been overstated. Drunk with achievement he set no limit on his journey. But the Yale tacklers did.

"In the end the world was too much with him. Disillusion came in the form of two tacklers in blue who hurled themselves upon him. Their hands touched him and held tight. Down went Bullitt. The big stadium turned three complete revolutions before his eyes. Pinwheels danced. From a distance of approximately one million miles he heard thousands of people crying 'Harvard! Harvard! Harvard!' Curiously enough they were all whispering. And then he lost consciousness. After several quarts of water had been poured over Bullitt he came to. Dr. Nichols the physician of the Harvard team was standing over him. The doctor waited while Bullitt blinked a couple of times and then he propounded his stock questions which he always uses after a player has been knocked out. The test of rationality was, 'What day is it? Whom are you playing? And what's the score?' Dr. Nichols was gravity itself but Bullitt grinned and answered, 'It's Sat.u.r.day, November nineteenth. We're playing Yale and the score is three to nothing against us but Harvard's going to get a touchdown d.a.m.n soon.'

"Dr. Nichols gave it as his professional opinion that Bullitt was rational. Four minutes later as the Crimson swept over the line for a touchdown, he knew it."

Just as he finished rereading his story the wire chief came in and announced that he had the Bulletin looped up. Before Peter could hand him the copy Pat walked into the office. Peter felt just as he had done at the pier. He wanted to throw his arms around Pat. "It was wonderful, wasn't it?" he cried. "That's the greatest game I ever saw in my life."

"Yes," said Pat, "I guess it was a good game. Have you finished your story?"

"Just the lead. Do you want to see it?"

"All right."

"The wire's waiting for me. Hand it over a sheet at a time as soon as you get done."

Peter turned to his typewriter, but he couldn't go on. He kept watching Pat. He waited to hear him say something. Pat read on to the end without comment. Then he looked up. "Where did you get that story about Charlie Bullitt and Doc Nichols?"

"I didn't get it. I knew that they said something to each other and I thought that would be about it."

"The part about Nichols is all right. Those are the questions he always asks, but Charlie Bullitt wouldn't have said anything like that. Don't you know how serious they take football. They'd put a man off the squad for making jokes like that. He winked, did he? They shook him up a long ways beyond winking. I don't believe he said it at all. Who told you anyway?"

"I've said n.o.body told me. It's just one of those things that might have happened."

"Don't stand there holding on to that copy," Peter added in exasperation. "The wire's waiting."

"But you're not going to send it, are you? It's not true. It doesn't even sound true."

"I'm writing this story," said Peter. "Hand it in."

"All right."

Pat carried it to the operator in the next room. Peter began to write again but all the zest and excitement of it was gone. He had to fumble around and look at his notes. Nothing went right. It was almost three quarters of an hour before he got to the last page. Pat sat across the table from him saying nothing.

"All done," said Peter at last. "Where shall we go?"

"I don't care."

"Maybe there's a party for the team that you've got to go to."

"I don't have to go. I'm not going."

"What's the matter with you, Pat. You'd think Yale had licked us. Are you sore because you didn't get into the game?"

"No, I knew I wouldn't get in. Pretty near the whole squad would have to be struck by lightning before I got in. That wasn't it. I found out this afternoon that Copeland was right. The thing doesn't matter. It's silly to get so worked up about it."

"What made you think that?"

"You remember that man that dropped the punt in the first quarter, that fumble that gave the Elis the chance for their field goal."

"Yes, I remember. He had it square in his hands and m.u.f.fed it."

"Well, that was Bill French. I know him better than anybody else on the squad. He's a corker. They hauled him out right after that m.u.f.f and as he came off one of the coaches said something to him. I don't know what, but he flopped down on the seat right beside me and began blubbering like a kid. He was trying not to, you understand, but just bawling away."

"Oh, he'll forget about all that by tomorrow."

"No, he won't and n.o.body else will. They won't let him forget. He'll be 'the man that dropped the punt.' If we hadn't won he'd be around thinking of committing suicide. It's just rotten. There oughtn't to be things like that."

"Well, you can't have any kind of a real struggle without somebody suffering."

"Then let 'em suffer for something worth while. The thing's all dolled up in the newspaper stories. You come along with that yarn about Bullitt saying, 'We're going to get a touchdown d.a.m.n soon' and all that stuff about his getting knocked out."

"Well, he did get knocked out, didn't he?"

"You bet your life he did but it wasn't all nice and pretty. Pinwheels and whispering cheers in his ears and all that. You weren't close enough to see what happened when Jim came out with the sponge."

"What did happen?"

"He put his lunch, but that isn't pretty enough to get in your story."

"That's not going to disable him for life."

"I didn't say it would. He was just a sick pup and he would have liked to go off some place and lie down. But you can't. I'd die for dear old Harvard and all that. He had to get up and go on with it. If you don't you're a quitter and you haven't got any guts. I tell you I think it's d.a.m.n rot. It's phoney like your story."

"Maybe you'll have a chance to write a better one some day," said Peter.

He had hard work to steady himself. He didn't believe Bullitt had been hurt any worse than he was at that moment. Pat didn't answer.

"Wasn't there anything that gave you any kick all afternoon?" asked Peter after a pause.

"Sure, just one thing. It was the Yale stands singing 'Die Wacht Am Rhein.' I know they've got terribly silly words, but there is something that has got guts. I think that's just about ten times as exciting as all the football games ever played. There was our crowd tooting away, 'Hit the line for Harvard, for Harvard wins today' and that big song with all those marching feet in it throbbing over across the field."

"German feet," objected Peter.

"Well, but they are feet and you can't take the beat and the sweep out of it. Maybe we did win the game but they did sing the heads off us."

"Another moral victory for Yale," suggested Peter.

CHAPTER VIII