“Here’s the part I don’t quite understand,” said the new coach. He laid aside Mr. Skiles’s notes and leaned back in his chair with his large bronzed hands clasped across his belt line. “ ‘This boy, in my opinion, has the makings of a good football player—not a headline-grabbing star, you understand, but one of those iron horses that every coach builds a team around when he is lucky enough to find one.’ ”
Coach Dorman broke off and tapped the sheaf of notes on the desk with the back of his hand. “But Mr. Skiles reports that this boy—who knew his football fundamentals perfectly—just couldn’t deliver under pressure in a game.”
“I think I know why,” said Andy slowly.
Coach Dorman leaned back in his chair and said, “I promise that anything you tell me about this boy will never be repeated. Now give it to me with the bark off straight, and don’t pull your punches.”
Andy took a long breath and said, “This boy was afraid—maybe yellow is a better word for it.”
Coach Dorman shook his head. “That doesn’t match up with my first impressions of this player. Give me some actual instances to back up your opinion.”
Andy looked down at his hands, then back up again, straight into Coach Dorman’s eyes. “It’s like this, Coach. When he was carrying the ball and a tackier came at him he would ease up a little. Not enough for anybody on the side lines, even Mr. Skiles, to notice, but just enough to keep from getting a hard jolt. And he used to do the same thing when he blocked for another ball carrier. He would bowl over smaller boys than himself, but when he was up against a boy near his own size——”
“Stop right there,” said Coach Dorman, raising his hand. “How do you know all this?”
“Because I’m the boy Mr. Skiles was talking about,” said Andy.
Coach Dorman made a curt movement with his right hand. “Carter, you’re badly mistaken about yourself. I’ve coached football at three different schools, but you’re the first boy I ever interviewed who did not show at least some signs of the jitters during my first interview with him.”
The coach cracked his desk with the palm of his hand emphatically. “You’re not one of those incurable flinchers, Carter! Get that through your head once and for all.”
The coach lifted his hand in a way to indicate that the interview was over. Andy stood up and tucked his new algebra book under his arm and said quietly, “That is how I used to feel. But this summer, when I was working on a construction job, I found out that I was as strong as, or even stronger than, some grown men.” He broke out in a slow grin. “They called me ‘Kid’ the first week; but after I climbed a rope hand over hand during one noon hour just to keep my forward-passing arm in good condition, they started calling me ‘Tarzan.’ ”
“Watch out, or that tendency to flinch at the moment of impact will come back,” was Coach Dorman’s dry comment. “I thought I was something extra-fancy as a triple-threat back during my high school days. But I overlooked the fact that I was playing behind a line of rock-’em-sock-’em teammates and that our competition was below par.
“So, when I showed up at college with my scrapbook loaded with clippings from my county-seat newspaper, I thought I was headed for big time. They played freshmen in our conference those days, and I fully expected to go right on being the star of the game.”
Coach Dorman paused to draw his hand across a smooth-shaven square jaw. “On my very first play in a college game I started out on an end sweep. I made just one yard before a big tackle and a bigger line backer nailed me between their shoulders and slammed me back three yards. When I got back in the huddle I bawled out my upper-class teammates for failing to block for me.
“I lasted just five more minutes in that game,” continued the coach. “My teammates opened up big holes—big, wide holes that let the defensive linemen get a clear shot at me. In those five minutes I became an accomplished flincher . . . It wasn’t until the last game of the season, in my junior year, that I got cured of flinching.”
Coach Dorman suddenly pointed to a framed photograph on the wall, a picture of a white-haired, dignified old Negro. “Uncle Joel, the janitor of our gymnasium, is the man who cured me of flinching after the coaches had given me up in disgust. It was the last game of a tough season, and the first-, second-, and third-string quarterbacks were on the injured list. No one else knew all the plays, so the coach had no one but me to call on.
“Just the night before the game Uncle Joel called me to one side and said, ‘Boy, I have been watching you every minute of every game you have been in. Now if you would only pretend like there was a hundred dollars lying out there on the ground back of the enemy’s goal line and those other boys was trying to keep you from getting it, you would sure go places with a football!’ ”
Coach Dorman broke into a slow smile. “That did it . . . Not a sports writer in the business gave us an outside chance to win that game—especially with a weak sister like me in there as quarterback.
“Queer thing about that game,” the coach continued in a reminiscent drawl, “I carried the ball only on the first and the last running plays of the game; I didn’t throw a single pass, and I punted only three times. When I faced the team in the first huddle of the game I pointed toward the enemy’s goal line and said, ‘Uncle Joel says there is a hundred dollars lying loose on the ground down there. Let’s go after it . . .’ We went there on that very first play,” added the coach.
“Was there actually a hundred dollars down there?” Andy blurted out.
“There was at least eleven hundred dollars down there,” insisted Coach Dorman solemnly. “One hundred apiece for every man on the team. I mean, in satisfaction, you understand. What’s more, we kept on ‘collecting’ all afternoon.”
Coach Dorman glanced at his strap watch and became all business again. “Sorry that I’ve kept you here gabbing longer than I promised. I’ll see you at practice tonight.”
As the coach was reaching for the door to the athletic department property room, where Ted Hall was sorting football shoes, Andy took his father’s note from his shirt pocket and said, “If you’ve got time, sir, I’d like you to read this.”
“Your pet play that you dreamed up all by yourself, eh?” said Coach Dorman good-naturedly, and took the note. He read it, then glanced up with a puzzled look of inquiry. “Is this note to Mr. McCall, the principal, what you intended to show me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Andy. “That’s why I came to school early today. I mean, I promised my father that I’d talk it over with Mr. Stark before I dropped machine shop and took some one-hour subject in its place.”
Coach Dorman handed back the note—almost as if it were burning his fingers, Andy thought, and said, “Sorry, old man, but it is an unbreakable rule with me as a coach never to discuss a boy’s study schedule unless I am asked to do it by the head of the academic department. If you promised your father to talk this over with Mr. Stark, then keep your promise. But you’ll have to excuse me.”
It was one of the hardest things Andy could remember ever having to force himself to do. He looked squarely at his coach and said, “If I don’t report for football practice with the others at the end of the sixth period, sir, it will be because I will be in the machine shop for the seventh and eighth.”
Coach Dorman shook his head, said, “Sorry, no comment,” and left Andy standing there with his father’s note in his hand.
Chapter 4
Andy walked slowly from Coach Dorman’s office to the shop wing of the main building of Riverford High. He went down the steps to the basement and opened the door of the machine shop.
But the thrill that he had been promising himself ever since he was a freshman, that when he was a senior he would be running all those fine machines and