On the following Thursday night we all went down to the station and climbed onto the train for our traditional intersectional game deep in the heart of you-know what.
And we didn’t climb on the train like a group going down there to trim the Big Green. It was like going to a wake. The Big Green had been burning up the sports sections of the papers. According to the starry-eyed sportswriters we were going down there to play tag with such a collection of supermen that we half expected them to soar onto the field wearing capes, their feet two yards off the ground. According to what we read every man on the team weighed 220, could do the hundred in 9.5 and ate a raw steak for breakfast, preferably chewing it off the steer on the run. It was enough to scare you.
The previous year, with Steen, we had lucked out a one-point victory. And now they were stronger and Steen was out.
Henninger wandered around and talked to us in small groups. He looked tired. Louie DeJohn, the offensive right end, John Staik, right tackle, and I were talking when he came up and slid into the seat with us. He smiled and said, “Win, lose or draw, I’m proud of the line. They might run around you boys, but not through you. We’ll talk it up a little tonight and take a light workout tomorrow morning. From then on we’ll forget ball until game time.”
We hashed over plays and he passed around, the stills he’d had made from the movies we’d watched of the Big Green in action, stills that illustrated specific weaknesses in fine play.
The big glaring white stadium was packed with sixty thousand leather-throated fans. The lightweight uniforms were right for the sun glare, for the heat that seemed to bounce off the banked fans and settle across the line markers.
From a distance the Big Green looked like an aggregation of giants. But from close up they turned into people. It was just a good design job on the uniform that made them look so enormous. But they were sun-darkened, hard and used to the heat.
After bouncing out a few of the nervous kinks, the eleven of us, the first-string offense, went into the team room under the stands behind our bench. Everybody seemed to have learned Juan Procuna’s deadpan expression. The atmosphere in the room was heavy.
Henninger walked over to Juan Procuna and looked at him for a long moment. The rest of us couldn’t figure out what was up. Henninger said, “I can use Tillotson, Juan. That is, if you think it would be a better idea.”
For the first time I saw Procuna smile. It was a nervous smile, but warm. “I’d like to play,” he said.
Henninger slapped his shoulder. “Good boy.”
He turned and looked at us. He said, “Make ’em go home tonight and read over their scrapbooks.” Then he walked to the door and shook hands with each of us as we piled out.
As we went out I raised my eyebrows and shrugged at Stan Blount and said, “Can you figure that?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” he said.
We received. My stomach was a big frozen sponge wedged too tightly against my heart until I saw the ball lift, saw the Big Green, spread wide, racing down toward us. The hard endless hours of practice paid off. I feinted and nailed my man, hitting him solidly across the thighs; glancing back as I rolled to my feet, I saw Les cutting toward my right. I angled in and dumped a man for the second block, and it gave Les another good eight yards. He brought it all the way out to our thirty-eight. Then was when we should have been talking it up, when the back-field should have been on their toes. But the moody silence of the last games persisted.
We use a tip number and a count on the T. Like this. Suppose it’s part of the twenty-six series. Chris starts the signal with the twenty-six, followed by the number of the play. Suppose it’s number eight in the twenty-six series. At the moment he says the eight, every man starts a metronome count in his head. You say to yourself, “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four.” As you say four, you dive into your assignment, and it comes perfectly on the snap of the ball. At the same time the back in motion is counting and judging his stride to be exactly at the right spot at the four count.
Junior Temple took the ball in a straight handoff for a direct line smash to pull in their defensive backfield. He smacked through for three.
As we lined up, the guard opposite me gave me a nasty grin and said, “Now send me that greaser you got back there.”
The line-backer behind him said, “Yeah, we got presents for your Mex star, boy.”
Procuna was the man in motion on the next one. He jogged from his position, crossing behind Chris MacLay at the count. Chris faked the handoff to Procuna, continued his spin around and flipped it to Les Schuman who had faded back six feet. Les jumped and rifled a short pass into the flat to Anson Redlo, the left end. Anson made it for a first down and three more.
Procuna climbed out from under the pile-up. He flexed his knees and trotted back to his position.
“See what I mean?” the lineman facing me said. “We’ll show you how fast those Mex wonder boys come apart at the seams.”
“Try it through me, Greaser!” their right tackle yelled.
And I knew then what Henninger had been talking to Juan Procuna about. Chris took the ball, fed it to Schuman who slipped it to Procuna as he went by. Juan dropped back and pegged a beauty into the hands of Louie DeJohn before he was smothered. The penalty against them was roughing the passer.
We called a time out and everybody was looking out of the corners of their eyes at Juan Procuna. If anything, he was more impassive. But his eyes seemed a bit narrowed, with a dangerous glint in their liquid depths. A bruise on his cheek was beginning to purple.
Chris said, “That left eyes is going to swell shut, kid. How’d you get the bump?”
“Fist,” Juan said shortly.
We had lugged the ball well down into their territory. They had to forget Juan for a while and concentrate on smart defence. But when they got a chance to pile into him, they did it right. It was funny, somehow. Usually if the opposition is roughing somebody on your team you take care of them. We seemed to be waiting for something. We didn’t know what.
I think the reason for the waiting was because Juan had held himself so aloof from the rest of us. He did his job and did it well, but he didn’t waste time on any gestures of friendliness.
They took the ball away from us on downs on their eighteen. I stayed in and the offensive backfield trotted off. One of their boys yelled, “Come back for some more, Greaser. Or have you had enough already?”
Juan didn’t turn around or give any indication that he’d heard. The guy opposite me said, “How come you let one of them on your team, chump. We’d never let that happen in this school.”
I said, “I’ll show you something else that shouldn’t happen in your school, Tex.”
At their snap of the ball I handed him a body feint and went over him into their backfield as he sprawled on his face to push me aside. Once I got into the back-field I grabbed the first pair of thighs I could find and rolled through with the tackle, slinging my heels high and feeling them thud into somebody. On my hands and knees I watched the ball bound free, watched their end swing back to down the fumble on their nine.
As I lined up again I said, “You like that, Tex?”
He called me two names that wouldn’t fit in a drawing room. I smelled a kick coming, but I had a hunch the Big Green would try a play on the ground first. The play was run from kick formation. I kept my head up and let Tex push me back a little, but I kept my feet under me. When I saw the play form up and swing to the left, I pulled away from Tex. The linebacker and I raced down. The defensive left end blocked out one of the interference and the line-backer and I slid through and cut down the other two. We knew one of them had to have the ball. He did. That put it on the seven and they kicked, the kicker standing a foot or so behind the goal line.