"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 was about as much sporting chance in the process as in betting n whether or not water runs downhill. But the Boss cheered every time we made three yards. He had just cheered a pas which had put State on the six-yard line, when a fellow appeared in front of out box and took of his hat, and said, "Governor Stark–Governor Stark."
"Yeah? the Boss asked.
"The doc–over at the field house–he says can you come over a minute?" the man said.
"Thanks," the Boss said, "you tell him I'll be over in a minute. Soon as I see the boys run this one over." And he put his attention on the game.
"Hell," Tiny began, "I know it ain't nothing. Not old Tom, he–"
"Shut up," the Boss commanded, "can't you see I'm watching the game!"
And when the touchdown had been driven over and the point had been kicked, the Boss turned and said to me, "It's getting on to quitting time here. You let Sugar-Boy drive you to the office and wait for me there. I want to see you and Swinton, if you can get him. I'll take a cab down. Probably beat you there." And he vaulted over the railing to the green, and went toward the field house. But he stopped by the bench for a moment to kid the boys. Then with his hat jammed down over the heavy, outthrust head, he went on toward the field house.
The rest of us in the box didn't wait for the last whistle. We worked out before the rush started, and headed for town. Duffy got off at the Athletic Club, where he kept his wind condition by blowing the froth off beer and bending over pool tables, and I went on to the Capitol.
I could tell even before I put my key to the lock that there wasn't any light in the big reception room. The girls had shut up shop and gone home for Saturday afternoon, off to their movies and bridge games and dates and steaks on sizzling platters at Ye Olde Wagon Wheel roadhouse or dancing at the Dream of Paris where the lights were blue and the saxophone made a sound like the slow, sweet regurgitation of sorghum molasses, off to all the chatter and jabber and giggles and whispers and gasps, off to all the things called having a good time.
For a moment, as I stood there in the big darkened room in the unaccustomed stillness of the place, a kind of sneer flickered along the edge of my mind as I though of all the particular good times they would be having in (Ye Olde Wagon Wheel, Dream of Paris, Capitol City Movie Palace, parked cars, darkened vestibules), the people the would be having the good time with (the college boys with his cocksureness and scarcely concealed air of being on a slumming expedition, the drug clerk with nine hundred dollars saved up in the bank and his hope of buying into the business next year and his notion of getting him a little woman and settling down, the middle-aged sport with hair plastered thinly over the big skull veined like agate and big, damp, brutally manicured hands the color of uncooked pork fat and an odor of bay rum and peppermint chewing gum).
Then as I stood there, the thought changed. But the sneer remained flickering along the edge of the mind, like a little flame nibbling at the edge of a piece of damp paper. Only now it was for myself. What right had I to sneer at them, I demanded. I had had all those good times too. If I wasn't having one tonight it wasn't because I had passed beyond it into a stage of beatitude. Perhaps it was something had passed out of me. Virtue by defect. Abstinence by nausea. When they give you the cure, they put something in your likker to make you puke, and after they have puked you enough you begin to take a distaste to your likker. You are like Pavlov's dog whose saliva starts every time he hears the bell. Only with you the reflex works so that every time you catch a whiff of likker or even think of it, you stomach turns upside down. Somebody must have slipped the stuff into my good times, for now I just didn't want any more good time. Not now, anyway. But I could pinch out the sneer that flickered along the edge of my mind. I didn't have to be proud because a good time wouldn't stay on my stomach.
So I would go into my office and, after sitting there a couple of minutes in the dusk, would flick on the light and get out the tax figures and work on them. I though of the figures with a sense of cleansing and relief.
But as I thought of the figures and resumed my passage across the big room to the door of my office, I heard, or thought I heard, a noise from one of the offices on the other side. I looked over there. There wasn't any light showing under either of the doors. Then I heard the noise again. It was a perfectly real noise. Nobody–certainly nobody without a light–was supposed to be in there. So I went across the room, my feet noiseless on the thick carpet, and pushed open the door.
It was Sadie Burke. She sat in the chair before her desk (it must have been t creaknof t chair I had heard), her arms were laid on the desk, the forearms bent together, and I knew that she had, just that instant, raised her head from them. Not that Sadie had been crying. But she had been sitting in the dusk, in the abandoned office, on Saturday evening when everybody else was out having a hell of a good time, with her head laid on her arms on the desk.
"Hello, Sadie," I said.
She eyed me for a moment. Her back was toward what little light seeped in from the window, on which the Venetian blind was closed, and so I could not make out the expression of her face, just the gleam of the eyes. Then she demanded, "What do you want?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Well, you needn't wait."
I went across to a chair and sat down and looked at her.
"You heard what I said," she commented.
"I heard it."
"Well, you'll hear it again: you needn't wait."
"I find it quite restful here," I replied, making no motion to rise. "Because, Sadie, we've got so much in common. You and me."
"I hope you don't mean that as a compliment," she said.