“I don’t see what that’s got to do—”
“Let me tell you in my own way, please, Jad.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you remember my sophomore season?”
“Of course. That was the first year I was here. I thought you’d never live up to what I’d hoped. You played erratic ball, all right,”
“Do you know why? I’ll tell you. Because you scared me and at the same time I had a heck of a lot of respect for you. I wanted so bad to do what you told me to do. I’d pull off something that looked all right, and then I’d look at you. I’d get the old stony eye. So I’d figure it wasn’t good enough for you. So I’d try harder. Next thing I’d know, I’d be falling over my own feet trying to be superman. It got the other guys the same way. We started that year in a pretty sad fashion, and we didn’t end up so well, either.”
“Nobody has any reason to be afraid of me, Henry.”
“Do they know that? In the junior year I got to know you. And it was just by accident, too. That was when my father was here. After he saw you he came all smiles over to my room and told me that you’d told him that I could maybe be the best in the country that season. Then I knew what you were thinking. You still gave me the stony eye all the time, but I knew that underneath you liked the way I was working. It made a difference.”
“When they do a good job, I tell them.”
“Sure you do, coach. You tell them all together and you say it like your mouth hurt. You see, I understand you now. I’ve talked to the pros you played with. You’re a perfectionist. Everything has to be just so. And even if the squad turned in a hundred to nothing game, you’d worry about how Zimmy was slow on a pivot in the second half. You know basketball as well as any guy in the country, but you don’t know to handle the team.”
Jad jumped up. “Don’t know how to handle the team! How do you account for last year?”
Henry gave him a mild, shy smile. “Well, it was like this. When what dad told me made me feel good, I figured it would work with the other guys. I hung around you enough to make it look good, and then I would go to the other guys one at a time and tell them things you said. Some of them you did say. The rest I had to make up. Why, I’d tell Ben Cohen that you said he was one of the toughest defensive men in the conference. Then I’d get Zimmy aside and tell him that you said he was the finest rebound artist you’d ever seen. The same with all the other guys. I made a joke out of it, sort of. You’d peel the squad after every game and then later I’d fix it up by quoting you on the good plays they made, whether you’d said it or not.”
Jad shoved his hands into his pockets and kicked at a log on the fire. “But I don’t... I mean, I recognize the good plays when I see them and—”
“And that’s all you do. The guys are all right. They’re just trying too hard and they don’t hear any compliments any more. The harder they try, the worse they get. It isn’t hard to figure out, once you know what I was doing the past two years. It’s like a good racehorse. The owner feed it perfectly, give it the right exercise, bring it up to a peak — but unless there’s somebody to talk to it and show some affection, that horse is never going to put out the best it has.”
Martha said, “I should have known.”
Jad spun on her. “How would have known?”
Her smile was wry. “Darling, you are not what I would call affectionate. I have to imagine, most of the time, that you’re still in love with me. I’m not complaining. It’s just the way you are.”
“What are you going to do about it, coach?” Henry asked.
“But... I... I can’t go to them and spread a lot of butter around. I can’t hear myself doing anything like that.”
“Why not?”
“Well... I—”
“You’ve got Penn College coming up Wednesday. Ohio nosed them out by a point. Look what Ohio did to you. Penn will do it too unless those guys hear what they’ve been wanting to hear.”
“A player should have confidence in his own ability,” Jad said. “Nothing I do or say should be able to destroy that confidence.”
“One out of a hundred is good, knows it, and doesn’t give a damn how the coach acts. The rest of us have to have a little confidence fed to us with a spoon once in a while. If you hadn’t broken down and told my father what you actually thought of me, Jad, I’d never be playing pro ball right now, and you would never have racked up that conference championship, believe me.”
He wrote it out, corrected it, and then memorized it so well that he could say it as though it were a casual speech. He flushed as he said it to his mirror. He had never had any stomach for flattery, given or received.
The squad room had about it a pre-game flavor of defeat. Coogan was listlessly tightening his shoelaces. Crowd noises filtered into the room, muffled and distant.
Jad Harrik took a deep breath. “Uh — fellows,” he said. They all stared at him in surprise at the forced joviality. Jad flushed. “I... ah... I’ve decided that there’s no point in the usual briefing. This is as good a time as any to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed working with you so far this season. Penn has some able boys. They haven’t any top performers to match you, man for man, Coogan, you’re one of the best. Ben, I know you’ll do your usual outstanding defensive job. And Frenchy, it’s a pleasure to watch you work out there. I don’t know whether I get more kick out of watching you or Zimmerman. Bobby, you’ve got a wonderful knack for smelling out the offensive thrust and getting to the right place at the right time. And the rest of you, Miller, Petrie, Jones, McGuire, Ames — I just want to say that there’s darn little to choose between you and the starting lineup. A lot of you will be my starting lineup next season, and I’ll be proud to put you on the floor. Now let’s make a game of it tonight.”
He turned in the heavy silence and walked out. At the end of the corridor he met Henry. Henry said, “How did it go over?”
“Like a concrete balloon. They just sat there, all of them, with their mouths open. They looked at me as if I were carrying my head under my arm. No, Henry, you guessed wrong. I could tell by the surprise that it wasn’t something they’d been expecting, or needing. Even Paul gaped at me as if I’d gone crazy. This is another slaughter.”
The little red-headed cheer leader went through her gyrations mechanically, without interest. George Lion had predicted a Penn win by eighteen points. Penn’s conference rating was just below Ohio’s, With slippery, agile, six-foot-ten Hoagy Parr at center, with an average so far of 20.6 points per game, and with four fast converted centers from high-school star teams at the other four positions, Penn had hopes of upsetting Ohio in the playoffs. Sam Denver and Cleet Mannis were the forwards with Louis Antonelli and Jack Angelus at guard.
Henry sat beside Jad and said, “They look looser out there tonight.”
“Glad you think so,” Jad said quietly. “Okay, here we go.”
Stalk Coogan and Hoagy Parr went high after the tap, neither getting it away cleanly. Ricard and Jack Angelus jumped for it and Frenchy snatched it away, pivoting and slamming it across to Ryan Zimmerman. Ryan dribbled it down the sideline, weaved his body toward the inside, and as the man on him took a wrong step, Ryan scooted down the sideline on the outside. He crouched, within paydirt distance, faked the set shot and passed it to mid-court to Coogan coming down the middle. Coogan, feeling himself smothered, made a half pivot and hung the ball for Bobby Lamb’s easy push-up.
The ball circled the rim. Louis Antonelli, with a sizzling skyscraper leap, brushed it away with his fingertips. Coogan was close enough for the rebound, but off balance. Hoagy Parr swiped it and slung it downcourt to Sam Denver. Cohen had dropped back. With a burst of speed be passed Denver and turned, arms outspread. Denver, barreling along, had to stop so abruptly to keep from crashing Cohen that the ball slithered out of his hands.