After Francis Z. Ketch was gone, Candy said, “Well, that was a close shave, Junior, and it’s damn lucky you had a sucker,” and I said, “It seems to me that I was the sucker, not getting a damn cent for this game in spite of trying my best, and it seems like the least you could do to make up for it would be to put me on the schedule for tonight,” and she said, “Well, you may get slapped down now and then, but you sure bounce up in a hurry, I’ll have to admit, and it might be a good idea to put you on the schedule, at that, because the way things are looking at the moment, it could damn well be your last turn,”, and as it happened, that’s the way it turned out, and I wish it hadn’t.
The next afternoon, Micky wasn’t at practice, and I wondered about it but didn’t say anything. I was feeling nervous as a whore in church, to tell the truth, and after practice was over I went and got something to eat in a joint and walked around some and wound up in a stinking movie, and when I finally got back to the frat house it was pretty late, and no one but old Umplett himself was sitting in my room waiting for me. It scared the hell out of me to come onto him like that all of a sudden without any warning, him just sitting and looking at me with his God-damn sick eyes full of that damn unreasonable hate of his, and I said, “Well, hello, Coach,” and he said, “Don’t bother pretending to be glad to see me, and in fact don’t even talk to me any more than’s absolutely necessary,” and I said, “What the hell’s the matter?” and he said, “You know damn well what’s the matter,” and I said, “Like hell I do,” and he said, “Well, in that case, just come along with me and I’ll damn well show you.”
I followed the sour son of a bitch downstairs and out to his car, and I didn’t like it, and as a matter of fact I was a hell of a lot more worried than I’d ever been or intend to be again. He didn’t say another damn word, and I didn’t, either, and we rode downtown to a hell of a big building with a drive going up in front of it to a parking area, and we went up the drive and parked and got out, and I could see the building was a hospital. Well, I knew damn well what had happened then, that Francis Z. Ketch had had the pleasure of meeting Micky Spicer, though maybe it was more or less by proxy, as they put it, and whatever way they put it, it sure hadn’t been any God-damn pleasure for Micky.
Old Umplett and I went inside and up in the elevator and down a hall to the room where they’d put old Micky, and I wouldn’t even have recognized him if I hadn’t known damn well who it was, and he was in bed with his head all in bandages like one of these God-damn sultans or something, and one arm in a cast and lying on top of the sheet that covered him, and I could see that he was in a hell of a bad way and wasn’t even conscious, in fact. We stopped just inside the door and looked at him, and a nurse was beside the bed and came over and said, “No one is allowed in here for the present. I’m sorry but you’ll have to leave,” so we backed out in the hall, and I said, “What the hell happened to him?” and he looked at me with these damn eyes of his and said in this soft, sarcastic voice, “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know anything about it yet, do you? Well, I know Spicer was a buddy of yours and that you’re naturally worried all to hell about him, so I’ll explain it to you. He was in an accident. He was wandering around down in one of those narrow streets near the river for some crazy reason or other, and he got smeared by a hit and run driver. The cops had a wild idea he’d been beaten up and thrown out of a car, but I managed to convince them it couldn’t have been anything like that.”
He stopped and stood looking down at the floor, and for a minute I had an idea he was going to spit, which would have been a hell of a thing to do in a hospital, but he didn’t and then he looked up at me again and said very softly, “You see, it’s like this. This year I got the national champs. This year I got the champs as sure as hell, and nothing, nothing in the God-damn world, is going to get in the way or stop us or keep us from being champs. It’ll be tougher now than it might have been otherwise, because Spicer’s got a busted arm and a fractured skull and won’t play another game this season, but we’ll be national champs just the same, and I’ll tell you why. We’ll be champs because of you, Scaggs. We’ll be champs because you’re a sharpshooting, ball-hawking natural, whatever else you are or aren’t, and from now on you’ll play basketball each game and every game like you never played it before, and if I get the idea you’re letting me down one little bit, God save your soul!”
After he’d said that, he turned around and walked off down the hall, and damned if he didn’t get in his lousy car and drive back to Pipskill and leave me to get back by myself the best way I could, and a taxi was the best way and cost me over two bucks. I’ll have to admit I was in a damn sweat, and the truth is, I never met a guy who got under my skin any more than he did, not even Francis Z. Ketch. I was pretty sure he didn’t know exactly what had happened, and didn’t even want to know, but he damn well knew what had happened in a general kind of way, I wasn’t kidding myself about that, and mostly what put me in a sweat was, it looked to me like I was in a crack between him and Ketch. I worried about it for three damn days, and finally I decided I’d talk to Candy about it, so I called her and said, “Hello, Candy, this is Skimmer,” and she said, “Who?” and I said, “Skimmer, God-damn it. Skimmer Scaggs,” and she said, “Look, Buster, you better get a new routine. I don’t know anyone named Skimmer Scaggs and never have.”
Well, I was so God-damn surprised I couldn’t find my damn tongue for a minute, and by the time I’d found it she’d hung up. I thought about it quite a while, until after basketball practice that afternoon, as a matter of fact, and the more I thought about it, her trying to kick me out of bed that way, the madder I got, and that evening I got in the Crosley and went downtown to the Gay Gander. It was still about twenty minutes before time for Candy’s spot, so I climbed on a stool at the bar and ordered a highball and was just about to take a swallow when someone said, “Sorry, sonny, we don’t serve minors in this bar,” and I set the highball down on the bar and turned around on the stool, and it was Hershell Goans who had said it.
“What the hell you mean, minor?” I said, and he said, “A minor is a kid under twenty-one, sonny,” and I said, “Well I’ve drunk about fifty gallons of your God-damn slop in here, and you never worried about how old I was before, and besides, I’m over twenty-one, and you know it damn well, and to be exact I’m twenty-three,” and he said, “How the hell would I know how old you are? I don’t know you from Adam’s off ox. You got a birth certificate on you?” and I said, “Oh, sure, I carry a God-damn birth certificate around with me all the time, and don’t give me any crap about not knowing me, either, because that’s the same runaround Candy’s trying to give me, and I’m here to find out why.”
He showed his stinking teeth to me and said, “Look, sonny, don’t” try to tell me you’re a personal friend of Candy Caldwell’s,” and I said, “Well, if I’m not, she’s sure been giving a lot of good stuff to a stranger,” and he clucked his crummy tongue against his teeth and said, “Shame on you, sonny, saying things like that about a nice girl like Candy Caldwell. Don’t you know you could be sued for slander for saying things like that?” and I was getting pretty sick of his snotty attitude and said, “Well, I don’t know a God-damn thing about being sued for slander, but I’ll tell you what I do know. I know you’re going to lose a handful of your God-damn teeth if you don’t get off my back.”