Right Tackle Todd
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“Friend Harland (Clem read): I guess you’ll be surprised to get a letter from me and will wonder what in tuck I am writing about. I just heard last week that Mart Gray’s folks have taken him to Europe and that he will not be back to school this next year. I’m right sorry he don’t pick up faster, but that’s the way it is with typhoid lots of times. What I’m writing about is whether you have made any arrangement with any other fellow to room in with you. You see, Harland, it is like this. I wasn’t very well fixed where I was last year. Judson is all right, I guess, only I don’t cotton to him much. And I was thinking that perhaps if you didn’t have any fellow in view to room in with you now that Gray won’t be back, perhaps you wouldn’t mind me. Of course, you may have some other in mind. I guess likely you have, but I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in asking.
“I’m right easy to get along with and I’m neat about the place. I guess that’s about all I can say for myself, but you know me well enough to know that we would likely get along pretty well together if you thought well of the notion. Anyway, I’d like you to answer this when you get time and let me know. It will be all right just the same if you don’t like the notion or have made other arrangements. I just thought I’d take a chance.
“I’m up here at this place guiding. I’m just a local guide. I’m having a right good time and the pay is pretty fair. There are about seventy folks here this month and lots of women and children. Mostly I look after the women and kids, take them out in the boats or canoes and fishing. There’s good fishing here all right, and if you ever want to catch some good bass you come to this camp some time. I guess you wouldn’t be able to come up for a spell this summer. I would show you where you could catch them up to three pounds and no joking. The regular guides here are a fine lot of fellows, and we have some pretty good times. They eat you well, too, here. I’d like for you to come on up if you could, if only for a week. I would guarantee you to catch more fish here in a week than you would most anywhere else in a month. Well, let me hear from you, please, pretty soon, because whatever way you say I’m going to see if I can’t make a change this fall. I hope you are having a pleasant summer. Yours sincerely, James H. Todd.”
Clem smiled when he had finished the letter. Then he frowned. It was going to be rather awkward. How could he tell Jim that he didn’t want him for a room-mate without hurting the chap’s feelings? “It will be all right just the same if you don’t like the notion or have made other arrangements.” Clem reread the sentence and smiled wryly. It was all well enough for Jim Todd to say that, but Clem knew very well that it wouldn’t be “just the same.” The difficulty was that he hadn’t made other arrangements. He might tell Jim that he had, but that would be a lie, and Clem didn’t like lies. Besides, Jim would find out he had lied, and be a lot more hurt than if he had been told the unflattering truth! Clem wished mightily that he could have foreseen this situation and written to Mr. Wharton, the school secretary, as soon as the tidings of Mart’s withdrawal had come. Wharton would have arranged things for him in a minute. Instead, though, he had kept putting the matter off, and now this had happened. Gosh!
Clem recalled the fantastic figure that had wandered into Number 15 that afternoon. If the fellow would only dress less like a – a backwoodsman – it would be something. Then Clem recalled the fact that toward the end of the Spring term Jim had looked a great deal more normal as to attire. Clem sighed perplexedly. He liked Jim, too, he reflected. There were lots of nice traits in the fellow. In fact, after Mart had gone home he had preferred Jim’s society to that of most of the other chaps he knew in school; and he knew a good many, too. Then what was wrong with having Jim for a room-mate? Clem pondered that for some time. “Raw” appeared to be the most damaging charge he could bring against the applicant, and that didn’t seem to him an altogether sufficient indictment. Clem had never suspected himself of being a snob, but just now the possibility occurred to him abruptly and unpleasantly. To get away from the idea he reread Jim’s letter, and this time he read as much between the lines as in them.
It had taken courage to write that letter, he told himself. He would wager that Jim had put it off more than once and had made more than one false start. There was a humility all through it that was almost pathetic when one remembered that the writer wasn’t much under six feet in height! Yes, and he wasn’t so small other ways, Clem reflected. Considering that he had entered Alton without knowing a soul there, and had burst smack into the junior year, too, Jim had done pretty well. He was no pill, even if he did wear queer things and could be held accountable for the epidemic of loud-plaid mackinaws that had raged violently throughout the school in the late Winter! He had flivvered at football, to be sure, but he had won momentary fame as a skater, and he had organized the Maine-and-Vermont Club. That last feat proved pretty conclusively, thought Clem, that the fellow had something in him. After all, then, the worst you could say of him was that he was – Clem searched diligently for the word he wanted and found it – uncouth!
His thoughts went back to the afternoon when Jim Todd had first edged into view and to Mart’s almost impassioned utterances just previous thereto. Clem smiled. Mart had been hankering for new types and then Jim had walked in quite as if he had been awaiting his cue off-stage! Clem’s smile, though, was caused by the recollection that Mart hadn’t been nearly so enthusiastic about “new blood” in the concrete – meaning Jim Todd – as he had been in “new blood” in the abstract! Mart had tolerated Jim, but had never derived much pleasure from the acquaintanceship. Old Mart was a heap more conservative than he had thought himself!
Then, thinking of Mart, Clem remembered how perfectly corking Jim had been during Mart’s illness. If he hadn’t done a great deal to help it was only because there had been so little he could do. He had always been ready, always eager, always sympathetic. Yes, and there were those two days when poor old Mart had been so beastly sick, and Clem had worried himself miserable, or would have if Jim hadn’t sort of stuck around and kept telling him that folks could be awfully ill with typhoid and yet pull out all hunky; that he’d seen it more’n once. Why, come to think of it, there had been three or four days when Jim had been with him half the time! How had he done it? He must have missed class more than once, and as for studying – well, he just couldn’t have studied!
Clem got up very suddenly, stuffed Jim’s letter in a pocket of his white flannels and stared savagely at an inoffensive palm in a gray stone jar. But though he looked at the palm he didn’t seem to be addressing it when he spoke, for what he said was: “Clem, you’re a low-lived yellow pup! Get it?”
CHAPTER V
A NEW TERM BEGINS
Clem returned to school the day before the beginning of the Fall term to find Alton looking sun-smitten and feeling exceedingly hot. The air, after the fresh, sweet breezes of the Berkshires, seemed stale and stifling, although when the cab had borne him past the business section of the town and residences surrounded by lawns and gardens and shaded by trees had taken the place of brick blocks there was a perceptible change for the better. It had been a dry summer and the campus showed it as Clem was hurried up Meadow street. The trees looked droopy and the grass parched. The buildings lined across the brow of the campus had a deserted appearance, with only here and there a window open to the faint stir of air. He almost wished he had waited until to-morrow.
The cab swerved to the right, proceeded a short distance along the gravel and stopped with a sudden setting of squeaking brakes in front of the first building. Clem helped the driver upstairs with the trunk, their feet echoing hollowly in the empty corridors. Number 15 was hot and close, and Clem sent the two windows banging up even before he paid the cabman. When the latter had gone clattering down again Clem removed his jacket and looked speculatively about him. The old room looked sort of homelike, after all, he concluded. He was glad that Mart had decided to leave his furnishings and pictures for the present. Jim Todd’s possessions up in Number 29, as Clem recalled them, were few and more useful than ornamental! Of course, Clem could have spread his own pictures and things about a bit more, but they’d probably have looked sort of thin. He opened the door of Mart’s closet and the drawers of his chiffonier and sighed as he saw what a deal of truck there was to be packed. However, he had the rest of the afternoon and most of the morning for his task. He routed a packing-case of Mart’s from the basement store-room, tugged it up to the room and started to work.
At five o’clock he had made the disconcerting discovery that Mart’s clothing and books and small possessions, which had seemed to bulk so large before, wouldn’t fill the big box more than three-quarters full, and had thrown himself into a chair to consider the fact and cool off when footsteps sounded below the window and then came nearer up the stairs. Then a voice sounded.
“You up there, Clem?”
“Yes! Come on up!”
“Saw your window open,” panted Lowell Woodruff as he came in, looking very warm, “and thought you must be up here. How are you?” The two shook hands, and Lowell subsided on the window-seat. “What’s brought you back so early?”
Clem pointed to the packing-case. “Mart’s not coming back this fall, and I’ve got the job of getting his stuff packed up and shipped home to him.”
“Oh! Yes, I heard he was off to the Continong, lucky brute! What price a winter on the Riviera, eh? Some guys get it soft! Who’s coming in here with you?”
“A chap named Todd. You know him, I guess. He’s in our class.”
“Jim Todd? Sure I know him! And I’d like to meet up with the silly ass, too. He got notice to report for early practice, and he hasn’t shown hide nor hair.”
“Football?” Clem laughed. “I don’t believe you’ll catch him, Woodie. Didn’t you know he tried it last year and resigned?”
“Crazy nut!” said Lowell disgustedly. “Sure, I knew it, but that’s got nothing to do with this year. Listen, that guy ought to be able to play football, Clem. He was all right for a fellow who didn’t know anything about it, but he didn’t get handled right, see? He’s queer. Stubborn, too, sort of. And Dolf Chapin wouldn’t see it. You know Dolf. Thinks every one’s got to dance when he fiddles. Todd got discouraged and told Dolf so and Dolf laughed at him and told him to quit his kidding. Bet you I could have kept Todd going and made him like it.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Clem.
“What chance? You know Dolf. Nice guy and all that, but no one else must say a word when he’s around. An assistant coach here hasn’t any say about anything. All he does is run errands and pick up things that the players throw down. I could see that Todd was getting tired and – ”
“You really think he could play?” asked Clem incredulously.
“Jim Todd? Sure he could! Why not? Put twenty pounds on him – ”
“How would you do it?”
“Feed him up, of course. Pshaw, fellows like him don’t know what to eat. Three weeks at training table would put the tallow on him so you wouldn’t know him!”
“Wasn’t he at table last Fall?”
“No. He would have been if he’d stuck a few days longer, I guess, but there were six or eight fellows who didn’t come to the table until after the Hillsport game. That was another of Dolf’s fool notions.”
“How many fellows have you got here now?”
“Fourteen. Billy Frost didn’t show up; missed a steamer or something; and a couple more failed us. Your friend Todd was one. He didn’t even write and tell us to chase ourselves, drat him! And we need another tackle like thunder.”
“Tackle!” Clem whistled. Then he chuckled. “Gosh, Woodie, I can’t see Jim Todd playing tackle! How’d you happen to send him a call, anyway? Thought you only had the old players back for this early season stunt.”
“We needed tackles, like I’m telling you, and both Johnny and I liked Todd’s looks last season, and there weren’t many fellows for the position. Doggone it, Clem, you don’t realize that we lost most of the team last June!”
“How come? Billy Frost, Charley Levering, Fingal, Whittier – ”
“Oh, sure! And ‘Pep’ Kinsey and ‘Rolls’ Roice; but outside of Billy and Gus Fingal and Pep Kinsey they’re all new men, aren’t they? Sure, they played against Kenly, but that don’t make ’em veterans! We’ve got to build a whole new team – pretty near, Clem. That’s why I want all the fellows I can get who happen to know a football from a chocolate sundae, and that’s why I’d like to see this here Jim Long-legged Todd and tell him what I think of him!”
“Stick around until to-morrow and you’ll get a chance. But I don’t believe you’ll dent him any. I guess he’s through with football, if he ever began.”
“Can’t help that, old son. We’ve got to have him; him and two or three others who quit last year for one reason or another; usually on account of trouble with the office. I’m gunning for ’em. Say, Clem, you might help a bit, you know.”
“How?”
“Well, you and Todd are sort of thick, I suppose. He’d listen to you, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe. Meaning you want me to talk him around to going back? Any inducements?”
“How do you mean inducements?” asked Lowell suspiciously.
“Well, a banana royal at The Mirror, for instikance.”
“Sure! Just the same, it’s Johnny who ought to pay for it. It isn’t my funeral whether any one plays or doesn’t play, is it?”
“Well, you’re manager, aren’t you?” laughed Clem. “What’s the manager for if not to do the dirty work and foot the bills? Besides, you’ll work that banana royal into the expense account somehow!”
“A fat chance!” scoffed Lowell. “Why, you can’t buy a pair of shoe-laces without showing a voucher for it! Oh, well, I’ll stand for your drink.”
“No, I’ll let you off, Woodie. But don’t bank too much on seeing Todd out there. I’ll do what I can, but when you said he was a nut you spoke a mouthful. By the way, who’s your trusty lieutenant this year?”
“A fellow named Barr, Johnny Barr. Know him? Not a bad sort, Johnny. There’s likely to be some confusion, though. Some day I’ll yell ‘Johnny’ and Johnny Cade will think I’m getting fresh and crown me!”
“I hope I’m there,” laughed Clem. “Where are you eating to-night?”
“Anywhere you say, if you’re host.”
“Nothing doing. I’m talking Dutch. How about the Beanery?”
“All right. What time? I’m going to get under a shower before I’m ten minutes older. It was as hot as Tophet on that field to-day!”
“Say half-past six. I’ll meet you in front of Upton.”
“You will not. I’m in Lykes this year. Got the room Spence Halliday had; Number 9; hot stuff!”
“No! Who’s with you? Billy Frost?”
“No, ‘Hick’ Powers. Come and see our magnificence. Should think you’d have changed, Clem.”
“What for? You’ve got nothing in your dive the Lykes of this!”
“Oh, good night! I’m off! Six-thirty, eh? If I’m not there, step inside and yell. So long!”
“Wait a minute! Listen, Woodie. What would you do with this junk? There’s only enough stuff to fill that case about three-quarters full, and if I ship it like that it’ll be an awful mess when it arrives, I guess. What’s the answer?”
“Stick in some of your own things.”
“No, but really! No joking, Woodie. What would – ”
“Have a heart! Have a heart!” Lowell waved his hands protestingly at the doorway. “Boy, I’ve got problems! Don’t pester me with trifles like that!”
The football manager was off, taking the stairs four at a time. Clem went to the window and leaned over the sill. When Lowell emerged from the doorway below he hailed him.
“Oh, Woodie!”
“Yeah, what you want?” Lowell peered up blinkingly through the sunlight.
“Listen, Woodie,” went on Clem earnestly. “Haven’t you got half a dozen old footballs over at the gym that you can’t use?”
“Old foot – Say, what’s your trouble? What do you want ’em for?”
“To fill up this box,” jeered Clem. “Run along, sonny!”
Clem didn’t pass a very restful night. For one thing, Number 15 Haylow was hot and stuffy. Then, too, Clem and Lowell Woodruff and two other fellows had sought to mitigate the heat of the evening by partaking of many and various concoctions of ice cream and syrups, and his stomach had faintly protested for some time. He awoke in the morning, scandalously late, from what seemed to have been a night-long succession of unpleasant dreams. But a bath and breakfast set him right, and afterwards he completed the packing of Mart’s belongings. By rummaging about in the store-room he collected enough pieces of corrugated straw-board and excelsior and old newspapers to fill the top of the packing-case after a fashion, and he hammered the lid down with vast relief, addressed it with a paper spill dipped in the ink bottle and pushed it into the corridor. A visit to the express office completed his responsibilities, and, since it was then only a little after ten, he returned to school and took the path that led, between Academy and Upton Hall, and past the gymnasium, to the athletic field.
Morning practice was already in full swing when he reached the gridiron, and the small squad of perspiring youths were throwing and catching, punting and chasing half a dozen pigskins about the field. Clem greeted the trainer, whose real name was Jakin but who was never called anything but Jake, was introduced by Lowell to Johnny Barr, the assistant manager, and exchanged long-distance greetings with several of the players. Then he found a seat on the edge of the green wheelbarrow in which Peter, Jake’s underling, trundled the football paraphernalia back and forth from the gymnasium and looked on. It wasn’t a vastly interesting scene. Clem, who, while he thoroughly enjoyed watching a football contest, had never felt any urge to play the game, wasn’t able to get any thrill from watching practice. He amused himself identifying some of the candidates, not such an easy task when old gray jerseys, ancient khaki pants and disreputable stockings comprised the attire of each and every one and effectually disguised individuality. There, however, was Gus Fingal, the captain, tall, with hair the color of new rope; and Charley Levering, taller and lighter and as black of head as a burnt match; and Pep Kinsey, a solid chunk of a youth slated for quarter-back position. And the big, square fellow was, of course, Hick Powers, and the long-legged chap farther down the field who was trying drop-kicks none too successfully was Steve Whittier. The others Clem couldn’t place until Lowell came to his assistance. Lowell pointed out Roland Roice – it was fated that he should be known as ‘Rolls’! – Sawyer, Crumb, Cheswick, two or three others, but Clem wasn’t greatly interested. Later, Coach Cade came off the field and shook hands. Johnny, as he was called by the fellows, though not to his face, was perspiring freely, and his face was the color of a ripe tomato. The coach was a short man, perhaps twenty-eight years of age, with a broad, solid body, a head of thick, bristle-like black hair and two sharp eyes set wide apart. Clem reflected, not for the first time, that Johnny Cade must have been a bad man to say “Whoa” to on a football field in his playing days! He had a regular fighting chin under that smiling mouth of his. Just now, having exchanged greetings with Clem, he was mopping his face with the sleeve of a tattered jersey.
“Hot, isn’t it?” he asked. “We’ve had nearly a week of it here. Mean weather for football work. We usually get it about like this every Fall, though. Sometimes I doubt that this pays very well; this before-season practice. I don’t know but that we’d get along just as well without it. But as long as the other fellow does it I suppose we’ve got to. You look well, Harland.” Then his smile deepened. “Lucky for you, though, you’re not in my gang. You’d lose about ten pounds on a day like this!”
“I guess so,” agreed Clem. “Fact is, Mr. Cade, I’ve been pretty lazy this summer. Played some tennis and a few games of golf, and that’s about all.”
“Tennis? Seems to me tennis ought to have kept you harder than you look.”
“Well, it wasn’t very strenuous, you see. Mixed doubles usually.”
“He can’t keep away from the girls, Coach,” interpolated Lowell, shaking his head sadly. “By the way, Clem here is rooming with that Todd guy that didn’t R. S. V. P. to our invitation, and I told him he’d be held accountable for Todd’s appearance on this here field not later than one day hence.”
“That so? Good idea. We want all the promising material we can get, Harland.”
“You think Todd is promising, then, sir?”
“Why, yes, I’d say so. He gave us a mean deal last year, and I ought to refuse to have anything more to do with him, but I can’t afford to indulge my personal tastes. Todd looked to me like good material last fall, and I told him that if he would buckle down and learn the game I could pretty nearly promise him a job this year. But he got tired of it and quit in the middle of the season. An odd chap. Stubborn, too. He got my goat for fair, and I said some harsh things to him, but he didn’t seem to mind much. About all I could get him to say was ‘I guess I’d rather quit.’”
“Well, as I told Woodie, Coach, I’ll speak to him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t see it.”
“Huh!” said Lowell. “He’s got to see it! I’ll make his life a burden to him until he does! You know me, Clem.”
“Yes, indeed, Woodie, I know what a nuisance you can make of yourself. Go to it, old son.”
Mr. Cade chuckled at Lowell’s look of outrage and said: “Well, I wouldn’t bother with him too much. If he doesn’t want to come out after Harland’s talked with him I guess we’ll be better off without him. After all, a man’s got to have some liking for football before he can play it well.”
Clem, Lowell and Hick Powers went to luncheon together after practice was over and then repaired to Lowell’s room in Lykes and lolled about for an hour or so, by which time the summer-long peacefulness of the school was at an end. Taxi-cabs sped, honking, up Meadow street and swirled into the drive that led along in front of the dormitories, voices awoke echoes in the corridors, feet clattered on the stairs, trunks banged and dust floated in at the window before which the three boys, divested of coats and collars, lounged. “The clans gather,” murmured Lowell. “Another year of beastly grinding begins. Ah, woe is me!”
Hick Powers, big, homely and good-natured, chuckled deeply. “Hear him, Clem. The old four-flusher! Of all the snaps, he’s got it. Four courses, mind you!”
“How do you get that way?” demanded Lowell indignantly. “I’m taking six the first half-year!”
“Yeah, four required and two snaps! Bible History or – or Eskimo Literature, or something! Gee, it doesn’t take much to get you guys through your senior year!”
“But think how we worked to get there!” laughed Clem. “You’re junior, aren’t you, Hick?”
“Sure! Finest class in school! First in war, first in peace, first – ”
“First at table,” ended Lowell. “What time is it?”
“Twelve after two,” answered Clem. “Guess I’d better mosey along and see if Jim Todd’s arrived.”
“Oh, don’t go,” protested Lowell. “We’re just beginning to like you. What time’s he due?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t get in until late. I suppose it takes quite a while to get here from Maine.”
“Sure. Two or three days. You do the first thousand miles on snowshoes. Then you take a dog-sled at the trading post – ”
“You’re a nut,” laughed Clem. “I’m sorry for you, Hick. How do you think you’re going to get through nearly nine months with him?”
“Oh, he won’t get funny with me,” answered Hick comfortably. “I’ll give him a paddling every now and then. I’ll make a new man of him by Spring.”
“You, you big flat tire!” responded Lowell. “It would take three like you to paddle me! If it wasn’t so hot I’d box your ears for making a crack like that right in front of visitors!”
Clem’s progress from Lykes to Haylow was retarded by encounters with several acquaintances, and once, having passed the corner of his own building, he spent ten minutes with his arms on the window-sill of a lower-floor room talking to the inmates of it. But he reached his corridor eventually and found the door of Number 15 ajar. As he had closed it behind him in the morning he reached the conclusion that Jim had arrived, and when he had thrust it farther inward and crossed the threshold he decided that the conclusion was correct. Then, as the occupant of the room straightened up from the business of unpacking a suit-case opened on the window-seat, he was in doubt for an instant. If this was Jim, what had happened to him?