Klupper was up even with him then, running in the clear. Only Coco Lewis between him and the goal. Dan put on a sudden, terrific burst of speed.
“Wait for pop!” He pulled ahead of the racing ball-carrier.
He left his feet in a flying, sidewise roll. Coco stiff-armed him away, but the quarter had to sidestep to do it. Klupper tore past. Only the whistle stopped him.
Marla let out her breath in a long, pent-up “Whee-you! If that’s a sample of Mister Webb when he’s just kidding, I’d sure like to see him when he really gets excited about something!”
On his way to the shower, Dan paused at the mirror beside the locker room door. The features in the glass were clean, lean and well-freckled under the California bronze. But he paid no attention to his long, straight nose, the solemn gray eyes or the short-cropped thatch of rusty red.
What he scowled at was the swollen mouth. It felt as if somebody’d shoved a frankfurter between his gums and his upper lip. It didn’t look that bad, but it wouldn’t be any bonus, meeting a girl for the first time.
Of course there was always the possibility he wouldn’t run into her — though he’d found out from Klupper Smith who she was and that she was working her way through the university, stenographing for Lin Hollet in the Athletic Director’s office.
Also, it might not make any difference how he looked if he did meet her. There was no guarantee about anything — not even that he’d still be around the field house at all after the new squad list was posted today.
“An’ if you aren’t,” he asked the reflection accusingly, “whose fault is that?”
The face in the mirror returned a mocking prop smile.
He nodded agreement, sauntered into the shower room. His own fault. Nobody else to blame.
So far as Yokum was concerned, Dan was, at best, a somewhat clumsy comer. Maybe the coach saw possibilities in him, for next year. Only next year would be nokay for Dan.
He had to make the grade now. All he asked was one good season of football before they found out about things back there in Michigan.
It was just the breaks that this fall Southern was three deep in big, fast-charging linemen… with plenty of experience in Stoney Hart’s celebrated system.
Stop kiddin’ yourself, he told himself, amiably. You made your own breaks. Comin’ out here as Joe No-Name, with a blank record. What’d you expect ’em to do? Throw their arms around you an’ escort you to a place in the first-string lineup? Nuts!
He balanced a piece of soap on the biceps of his outstretched arm, tightened the muscle suddenly so the soap flipped into the air.
If you’d told ’em what happened, with the Wolverines — maybe things would have been different! He flipped the soap high again, caught it on his chin, as it fell. Yeah! I’ll say they’d have been different! He grinned sourly at the idea.
Coco Lawis emerged from an ice-cold, spray.
“Hey, where’d you learn that?”
Dan rotated his head, the soap still balanced on his chin. “Runs in th’ family.” He touched his throat. “We all got a jugular vein.”
Coco snapped a towel-end at him. “I meant that standing-up block you threw at Piet.”
“Ah — just lumberjack stuff.” Dan hollered over the sound of the needle spray. “Some those top loaders get a few beers in ’em, they put on a Saginaw bull fight. Stick their fists in their pockets, stand up and butt each other — chest to chest — until somebody gets knocked on his can.”
“Yeah?” Coco appraised his keg-chested build. “Might not work on Piet the second time. But it sure put the whammy on him then. Maybe Yokum’ll have you teach th’ rest of th’ class how it’s done.”
“Maybe I won’t be among those present when the class is called to order, tomorrow.”
“That’d be terrible,” Coco shook his head despondently. “What would we ever do, without that git-gat-giddle of yours, to relieve the dull monotony of practice!”
“If they cut me off the squad,” Dan’s voice was muffled by the shower, “I’ll try not to take it quiet-like.”
Marla couldn’t keep her mind on the list. The head coach’s incisive voice, issuing from the office down the corridor, was too distracting.
“…not setting our sights for the Rose Bowl just yet… few other little items on our schedule to think about first… we’re using the regulation leather ball, you know, not a crystal one… ought to do pretty fair… wealth of rugged material…” Stoney Hart, giving out to the sport writers.
Marla’s fingers made the keys clatter. Cheyne. Cominski. Callahan. Dominque.
She called to Lin Hollet:
“Those blase birds from the newspapers. They’ll see right through Stoney.”
Hollet frowned. “In what way, my passion flower?”
“It’s so obvious. They know him like a book. Chapter One: if we have a team that’s a world-beater, Stoney’s a pool of gloom. Chapter Two: when things don’t look too rosy, he’s bubbling over with confidence. Just listen to him fizz…”
The publicity man scratched his nose delicately. “Can you keep a secret?”
She stuck her nose in the air, indignantly. “What’s our weakness, now?”
“You know Stoney’s formulae.” Hollet came over to sit on the edge of her desk. “For the line, seven bulldozers who can double as whippet tanks. We’ve got the material for that, two or three times over.”
She typed more names on the Revised Football Squad list, waiting.
“In the backfield,” Hollet went on, “one who can punt and one who can pass.”
“Everson, for the kicking,” she nodded. “In a pinch) Quayley. Everson and My’ Blumenthal, for the passing.”
“One who can run and one who can block.”
“Blumenthal can broken-field like nobody’s business. And Dominque’s even faster…”
“Three from four leaves…?”
Marla stared up at him. “Blocking? Where would you go — except to the pros — to find a better blocking back than Ken Quayley?”
“A long way,” Hollet admitted. “Quayley was sensational last year. He’d be a cold-riveted cinch for the big, black type and the four-color cuts in the magazines, come time for picking the All American crop this year… except for one very small thing.”
Marla’s eyes widened. “An injury! He didn’t show up for practice today!”
“At the hospital. Having X-rays. Showing a slight, not-to-be-mentioned fracture of the fourth lumbar vertebrase. That’s what a cow pony can do to a two hundred and twenty pound fullback.”
“So that’s it.” She made the typewriter hum for a moment. “Stoney’s pride and joy, the big batter and lug man from San Antone is on the infirmary list!”
“It isn’t fatal, you know.” He patted her shoulder, soothingly. “Isn’t necessarily too damn serious, either. There’s Klupper Smith. There’s Bill Prender…”
Prender. Vardeman, she typed. The next name was Wielaski, F.
“What about Webb?” Marla asked.
Hollet walked back to his desk, sat down, cocked his feet up. “I told you he’d been cut from the squad.”
She spun around to face him. “He’s a blocker! You can’t deny that, after the way he—”
“He’s a guard, Marla. Remember?”
“What’s the difference, if he can hit ’em so they stay down! Wouldn’t be the first time a man had been shifted from one position to another!”
He smiled gently. “Trying to tell the coaches how to run their squad?”