“Why... uh... why, publicity,” he blurted out finally. “That’s all. Publicity. What did you expect?”
By then, the control man had recovered enough to switch to the Number One unit, which had its camera pointed at the crowd, pouring triumphantly out onto the field.
But it didn’t make any difference. Because Bill Cady was giving Murf the cool brushoff anyway:
“Some other time maybe. I got a date tonight, anyhow. Call me up and we’ll talk it over, huh?” He turned and clattered down the runway.
What Murf said wouldn’t have been allowed on the air, in any case.
III
The locker-room echoed to wild howls of victory and rocked with the deafening tempo beaten out by an extemporaneous be-bop band perched on the rubbing table.
Dit Zombrorowski ducked a helmet hurled by one of his celebrating teammates; glanced up at Bill Cady’s sweaty torso:
“What the hell made you crack back at Old Murf like that, you bug brain!”
“The bird with the microphone?” Bill Cady peeled off a wet sock. “Asking him what was in it for me? Why shouldn’t I, you horse’s hacienda!”
“For one thing,” the Stallions’ All-Coast back retorted, “if you did take dough from those broadcast boys to go on a show, it’d wreck your amateur status... disqualify you for the team.”
“I didn’t expect him to wave a wad of bills in my puss. But they could always fix it so I’d win one of those new convertibles or a trip to Honolulu on one of these giveaway programs, couldn’t they? Something I could swap for greenies afterwards?”
Zombie scowled. “Whatsamatter with you! All this yatada yatada about money! You in a jam with a dame or something? That why you need dough so bad?”
“Uh, uh!” Bill wagged his head vigorously. “Not me. Does a guy have to have some special reason around here for wanting to latch onto a quick buck?”
“There’s a general supposition,” the threatback laid the sarcasm on with a trowel, “that any member of this football team is here at the university for the primary purpose of collecting an education — not an annuity!”
“Horseshoes!” said Bill genially. “Show me one member of th’ squad who’ll refuse candy in the nice green wrappers when it’s passed around. And then send him to have his head examined.”
Zomby wrapped a towel around his navel. “Somebody oughta explain the facts of life to you, Buster. You go ’round shooting off your face like that an’ some of these newspapermen’ll hear you. Then there’ll be a stink about the university subsidizing strong backs and overlooking weak minds. An’ that, Snub Garret wouldn’t like!”
“He could like it or lump it, far’s I’m concerned.” Bill padded along behind Zomby toward the shower. “I don’t see why a coach should make twenty-five thou a year, while the guys who do all the work for him out on the field have to scrape along on a free meal-ticket and a pat on the back.”
He edged past a couple of men by the shower-room door, found himself chest to chest with the head coach.
Under his shock of crisp, white hair, Johnny ‘Snub’ Garret had cold, blue eyes set in a pink glass face.
Bill couldn’t tell from the cold eyes whether Garret had heard his question. Evidently the coach had caught the last part of it, at least, because the blue eyes glinted like ice cubes:
“You want a pat on the back? I’ll give you a pat on the back.” He did. “You looked good out there today, Cady.”
Is that all you got to say? Bill remembered that Garret hadn’t let him solo off the field, there at the end of the game, and the slow burn began to sting:
“Nothing to it, coach. Zomby pushed ’em in there so I couldn’t miss.”
“Sure.” Garret nodded. “Only it takes a man on both ends of a pass to make it click.” The ice-cube eyes held Bill’s for a moment before the coach moved away to talk to Hustling Mike.
All right. So what? Suppose the coach had heard everything he said to Murf and to Zomby. Nothing wrong in that, was there?
Bill wouldn’t be here at the University now, if Garret hadn’t wanted him to come after watching him try out with the freshmen, if the coach hadn’t okayed that athletic scholarship.
They weren’t paying his board and tuition because they liked his profile; he was getting those checks because he could go downfield like a scared coyote and go up in the air like a kangaroo. Why make any bones about it? There wasn’t any reason to be ashamed of it. Plainly, he was getting paid for his football skibility, and like any other good workman, he was entitled to as much as he could get, wasn’t he?
He soaped up and joined Zomby under the needlespray.
“Snub answer your question, fella?” The threatback turned on the cold water before Bill was prepared for it.
“In a pig’s whisker.” He levered the handle back to ‘Hot’ and Zomby yelped. “He’d been talking to that Murf guy, I think.”
“Let that be a lesson to you, Willyum. Never pass up a chance to give your coach a boost... especially on the radio.”
“Ah...” Bill wiped the sweat out of his eyes, “I couldn’t have gone to the studio tonight. I got a heavy deal on with the slickest chick this side of M.G.M. No kiddin’...”
“You could have taken her to the studio with you.”
“Oh, yeah? Then nobody’d have paid any attention to me. You get one peek at this pretty, you’d see why.”
Zomby nodded slowly, solemnly and skeptically. “You got a lock on her?”
“Huh? Oh, y’mean engaged?” Bill laughed. “Nah, nah. None of that starry-eyed stuff. Lou Ann’s strictly a knockout but it’s just palsy-walsy with us.”
Zomby smiled with superior wisdom.
“That’s what you think. Wait’ll she makes up your mind for you, bud.”
“Don’t kid yourself. When I get married, — it’s going to be to some chick with checks appeal. One of those five-hundred-a-week starlets, — somebody like that.”
Zomby turned his head sideways and looked at Bill out of the corners of his eyes:
“You’re really hellbent to get up there in the big bucks, aren’t you, screwball?”
“Why not? Aren’t you?”
The big halfback regarded him, thoughtfully. “Well, yes. I guess I am, in a way. But maybe not in the same way you are.”
“Horseshoes,” Bill grinned. “Unless you got a million bucks, already, or your old man has...?”
“My old man,” Zomby said mildly, “is a big oil man. One of the biggest. He weighs close to three hundred... and he’s about the best drill-rig man in the business. He’d be able to put me through the university in fine style, except mom’s been sick for three years and what with the doc and the hospital an’ all, I have to put myself through and send a few bills home every now and then out of what I make tutoring.”
“Oh.” Bill flushed with embarrassment; he hadn’t meant to rib his team-mate about money matters; it was the last thing in the world he’d have wanted to do, because he knew how it was to be part of a family that was forever fighting the uphill battle of unpaid bills. “Well, then prob’ly you’re like me, like everybody else... restless as a worm in hot ashes, trying to get a pile together.”
Zombrorowski accepted the implied apology with a lightly hooked fist to Bill’s short ribs. “I’d pick up a nickle if it was in a pile of manure. Still and all, there are some things I wouldn’t do to make a dollar.”
“Yeah,” Bill agreed, uncomfortably. “That’s about it. Say, you want a lift anywhere?”