He sent Sven in and Marty and I squatted out where the linesmen would normally be. We both chewed hunks of grass. I knew from the first play that there’d be more trouble. Sven had added what I’d told him to what happened to Jenner. On the first play he left the ground about eight feet in front of Carson. It turned into a rolling block. He bounded up first and Carson had a funny expression on his face.
Marty saw it. I glanced at him and he met my eye and grunted. He spat out the piece of grass and said, “Now I get to find out which is the best man.”
“And if Stockwitz gets what Jenner got?”
“Then Carson’s the best man. Simple.” He pulled another grass heart and we watched the next play. Sven cut way inside his normal position and hit Kelly in another rolling block which filled Sleegal’s face with heels. I wouldn’t have wanted to be any one of the three. Sven had the gift of hitting full speed in about two steps. We could hear him hit. I knew it must feel to Sleegal, Kelly and Carson like trying to catch a burlap bag full of bricks dropped out of a fourth-story window.
I noticed on the next play that Sleegal, Kelly and Carson had a few mumbled words to say to each other before lining up. They glanced guiltily over toward us. I found out afterward that Sven didn’t have a chance to try to rough them up on the next play, as he was supposed to cut wide and go deep for one of the few pass plays in the Dorrence book. As soon as he pulled out and started wide, the unholy three started after him. He was faster, but when he heard them coming he stopped and they closed in on him. Marty didn’t move. He just watched. Sven stood for a second and they were only feet away from him. He wavered and then when it looked as though they could touch him, he turned and ran as fast as he could. He ran off the field.
I heard Marty breathe. “Yellow! I’ll be damned.”
Sleegal, Carson and Kelly came swaggering back to the line. Sven walked a couple of dozen feet behind them. He looked pale. He didn’t glance at Marty. Marty didn’t stop him. On the next play, Sven dropped the second Carson touched him. Carson looked for a second as though he would pile on. Then he put his hands on his hips and looked down at Sven. He spat on the ground near Sven’s feet and ambled back to his own spot.
Marty said, “Stockwitz! Go over and run around the track six times. Then take a shower and knock off for the day.” Sven walked away with his head lowered. No one spoke to him. I felt sick. Marty sent an eager, clumsy kid named Wallace in at right end. The scrimmage continued, but there wasn’t any more rough stuff.
I went from the Message office to dinner and then I went back to the room. I knew somehow that Sven had had his head in his hands. He looked up and nodded at me. I said, “Hi, Sven,” and went over to my own desk. They were arranged so that we sat back to back. I turned around and stared at him. I stared for a long time. He had his head bent over a book, but in fifteen minutes he didn’t turn a page. I turned around and went to work on my books. I’ve seen too many guys yellow out to be foolish enough to try to talk with them when they’re going through that period of hating themselves.
The world didn’t seem like such a good place after that. I couldn’t figure why Marty kept Sven on, why he didn’t tell him he was through, he could turn in his shoes. Instead he kept Sven circling that track every night. I would look up from the field and see his white head going doggedly around the cinder track. It was refined torture. I knew that if it hadn’t been for the dough and Mary Anne, Sven would have quit. He usually waited until the showers were empty before he went in. He didn’t speak at all in the room. Maybe I should have tried to help him out. I felt bad, but I didn’t know what to do.
The team was shaping up. They plunged through the first two teams they met. You remember the scores. They made headlines all over the country. Seventy-seven to six, and an eighty-three to nothing. Marty had no mercy. He didn’t put in the third, fourth and fifth string boys. He kept the best in there, and rolled up a score. They left a string of broken bones and torn cartilage— on the other teams. Sven still plodded around the track. I began to wonder if Marty had forgotten him.
It was in the early part of October that some local gyp outfit began to send out the fancy discharge buttons to the ex-servicemen in the school. Somehow, they had gotten hold of our military records as transcribed on the school records. They made up discharge buttons with little rows of service ribbons below them, the same service ribbons we had been handed by Uncle Sugar. The little row also included decorations. Some kids were handling it in the school for the outfit in town. I got back to the room and saw the two little boxes on the desks. I found mine on Sven’s desk. I went over and unwrapped it. It had my ribbons on it and they wanted three bucks for it. It looked worth about fifty cents. Besides, I don’t like to wear the discharge button.
They told me in a short letter that I could either send them the three bucks or the button back. I tossed the whole works in the basket, and then decided that was sort of small change. I fished it out and stuffed it in my pocket. I planned to return it to the gyp outfit the next time I hit town.
Then I picked the box for Sven off my desk and started to carry it over to his. The seal had broken and the button fell out. I fished it out from under his bed and started to put it on his desk. And then I saw something. I looked closer. Stockwitz had won himself a Navy Cross.
I know about that Cross. They don’t give that out for eating your K-ration or shining your shoes or because you’ve stayed out of the stockade. It’s not one of those “you cite me and I’ll cite you” decorations. It’s the McCoy. You’ve got to have a record of being one hell of a rough kid and then you’ve got to pull something that is a display of pure guts, outside of what they normally expect of you. It’s the nearest thing to the Congressional. Some navy guys say it’s often better than the Congressional.
I laid is gently on Sven’s desk just as he walked in. He walked over and looked down at the pin. He picked it up and shoved it in his pants’ pockets.
“So they give you the Cross?” I said.
“So what if they did?”
“It kind of changes my mind.”
“How?”
“I figured after that Carson deal that you were yellow.”
“Do you figure that’s going to bother me?”
“Doesn’t it?”
He stared at me and his eyes looked smaller than ever. “How would you feel, Western, if you had waited four years to get that engineering degree — if you had it all set so that your wife could move here with you — if you stood on a field and saw three guys running right at you — three guys who could bust enough bones in four seconds to make everything impossible — the degree, living here with your wife? Suppose in the last two seconds you remembered that you weren’t a wild kid any more — that you were risking too much for a bunch of kid stuff?”
“You’re nuts, Sven. I’m going to tell the guys about that Cross. I’m going to tell Marty.”
He grabbed me by the throat and slammed me up against the wall. His nose was an inch from mine and my throat felt like he was crushing it. “I like it this way. I’d rather run around the track than play ball. I don’t need any help and I don’t need any sympathy. You tell anybody on that squad, and, so help me, I’ll fix you so that little dish with the blue car won’t know you.”
He let go. I straightened my collar and said, “You don’t get cooperation out of the Western clan with that kind of stuff, Stockwitz. I won’t tell them because you don’t want me to, not for any other reason.”
He stared at me and gradually a slow grin took over his face. “Cocky little guy, aren’t you?”