Her eyes flashed. “And don’t take your disappointments out on me!”
“I’m sorry, baby. I really am.”
“Forgiven, darling.”
He sighed. “Well, now it’s over. We’re out of the running. Maybe I can relax.”
“I hope you can.”
At practice he was bleak and silent. The squad worked out hard, but without spirit. He was standing on the sideline when he saw Ryan Zimmerman look beyond him and smile broadly, then yell, “Look who’s here!”
Jad turned quickly and saw Henry Martinik walk toward him. He saw at once that the left sleeve of Henry’s overcoat swung empty.
Jad shook his hand. “Henry! What are you doing here? What happened to you?”
Henry was tall, with a lean brown face, a certain shyness about him. George Lion had consistently called him Hank in the column, but among people who knew Henry, it had never caught on. The nickname did not fit him. He had a certain shy rustic honesty about him that made him one of the Henrys of this world.
“Coach, I fell right under the basket and two hundred pounds of meat came down on my fingers and busted the middle one. I’ve got it fastened to this here board for a while.”
“Will you get back in this season?”
“They think so. With the money they’re paying me, they’re right anxious to see that I do. How’s Mrs. Harrik?”
“She’s fine, Henry. Where are you staying?”
“I dropped my bag off at the Inn.”
The squad had grouped around them. Henry, grinning from ear to ear, shook hands with his friends and took the joking about how often he had his name in the papers.
When Jad had a chance, he said, “Henry, you’re staying with us. Martha wouldn’t forgive me if I let you stay down at the Inn. No arguments.”
Henry grinned. “You’re the boss, coach.”
Coogan said, “We got some new stuff, Henry.” He spoke eagerly, and then he glanced uncertainly at Jad. “It hasn’t been working so good.”
“Let’s see some of it,” Henry said, “if it won’t upset anything, coach.”
They split into two teams and Paul tossed up the ball. Jad watched in amazement. They slid through the sequences like butter sliding down a hot stove, making the slots, taking advantage of them, holing out. They were five agile hands of one body — a team, anticipating each other’s thoughts, faking, pivoting, passing. “I’ll be damned,” Jad said softly.
They broke it off. Henry said, “Say, now! You got some sharp stuff there!”
“How about some coffee?” Jad asked.
They went and sat in a booth in the coffee shop in the basement of the Fine Arts building.
Henry said, “It isn’t going so good, is it?”
“It isn’t going good at all. Something’s missing. You, maybe.”
“Hell, coach. I wasn’t the team. You know that. There’s five guys on an outfit, and you still got four of ’em.”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“They looked right to me out there.”
“And for those three or four minutes, Henry, they looked the best they’ve looked all season. Well, the season is shot now. I had to play it smart and try for two conference championships in a row so that I could get a better bid to go someplace else. I outsmarted myself. There won’t be any bids after this season.”
Henry frowned. “You giving up? Ohio will have some bad nights. They’ll drop a few. I’ve been checking the records. I don’t see why you couldn’t work it up to a playoff.”
“I could, if I had a squad, Henry. You ought to see them in a game. They try, but it just isn’t there. We’ll drop a lot more games than Ohio will. The season record might even be fair, but Nyeland won’t be in any playoffs.”
Henry grinned. “It could be professional pessimism, huh?”
Jad sadly shook his head. “Not this time. You’ll get a chance to see what I mean Monday night. We’re host to Winebeck Teachers. I’d like to have you on the bench with me. But we’ll skip my problems. How do you like the pro game?”
Henry whistled softly. “I guess I was getting pretty cocky. Those boys can cut you down to size fast. Makes you think, when you try all night to pass around a little fat old guy and he knocks it down every time.”
“Joe Risold?”
“That’s the one.”
“He gave me some bad nights too. I wish I was back playing.”
Henry grinned. “And I wish I was coaching.”
“Maybe you can tell me what’s wrong with the squad, Henry.”
“I can try, coach, but—”
“The name is Jad, Henry.”
“Okay, Jad. Sounds funny to call you that.”
“Sit tight. I’ll phone Martha and tell her you’re coming.”
The Winebecks were fast and strong and hard, but they lacked sharpshooters. Too many of their set shots were wild. They pranced and worked with an endless and tireless energy, and if they had had one man consistent from twenty feet, the game might have ended differently. As it was, it was a close thing.
Jad glanced from time to time at Henry’s frowning face. The Deuces pulled all the old errors from their bag of tricks, and added some new ones. At one point Ryan Zimmerman threw an inadvertent but beautiful body block on Frenchy Ricard and knocked him flat. Later, Coogan and Cohen, cutting in from opposite corners, collided under the basket with force that knocked them both sprawling. The passing was ragged, inaccurate.
But Bobby Lamb and Frenchy Ricard, oddly enough, were having one of those nights when the hoop looks as big around as a bushel basket.
It was 48–42, with a minute and a half left, when Ryan Zimmerman was taken out on personal fouls. The remaining four drew into the tight zone defence established for that contingency, but Winebeck brought it up to 48–45 by game’s end.
Henry was in the squad room listening while Jad gave them a run-through of the game, carefully listing the errors and the reasons, pointing out the defects in count and timing.
Martha sat with her sewing after they got back to the house, while Henry sprawled on the deep couch, and Jad paced back and forth, gesturing, explaining.
“You saw them tonight,” Jad said. “They’re good boys. They’ve got an instinct for the game. They’re not overtrained or undertrained. I’ve given them a bag of tricks that ought to be enough to smother any opponent in the conference. They all want to do well. This is their sport. Ben Cohen is the only one who plays football too. They just don’t dick, and it isn’t my fault.”
“Isn’t it?” Henry asked mildly.
Chapter Three
Two-Point Poison
There silence in the room. “Just what do you mean by that, Martinik?”
“Don’t get sore, coach.”
Martha gave a forced laugh. “He’s pretty sensitive these days, Henry.”
“Henry,” Jad said, “for a minute there you sounded like George Lion.”
“Jad, you want to learn what the trouble is, don’t you?” Henry asked.
“I certainly do.”
“And you’re willing to listen to anybody who might have a reason?”
“Of course, Henry.”
“Then don’t get sore at me, coach. Because if you get sore at me you won’t listen to me, and if you don’t listen, you might never find out why you’ve got wonderful material and no team.”
Jad sat down across the room. “I’m listening.”
“When I first came here to Nyeland, coach, you scared me. Honest, you really gave me the shakes.”
Jad frowned, puzzled. “I don’t get it.”
“Now I got to get personal. You’ve got a tough look, coach. You don’t smile. You’ve got a hard eye on you. To top it off you’ve got a complete knowledge of the game and you can do anything you tell the kids to do, plus a national reputation. Right?”