Chapter 6 — Tigers
T
he faculty was sitting at coffee in the Common Room after dinner; drawing breath at the end of a long day. Mr. Johnson, who had the study hall duty, put out his cigarette, drained his coffee cup, picked up his clipboard and, holding it over his head as if sheltering himself from a storm, shut the hall door behind him. Mr. Henderson, varsity soccer coach, tall, grey athletic, a living example of the young man who never grows up, asked, “Gus, how did you ever draw XY soccer for a fall sport? I thought you were a crosscountry man.” “He is.” said Mr. Allbright, “I saw him the first day of school running the Ancient History class around the driveway to shake the devil out of them. He did it, too.” “I guess,” said Gus Cunningham, “that I was odd man out. It seems everyone wants to coach crosscountry and tennis these days and no one wants XY soccer.” “Sure don’t,” said Henderson, “It’s the pit of perdition and a sink hole of athletic iniquity. It is the last refuge of the incompetent and apathetic. Every mother’s son of them has two left feet and couldn’t hit the butt end of a cow with a shovel.” “They aren’t all that bad,” said Gus, “It’s true that there are some pretty clumsy boys there. Little Joe Manson runs like a duck. I put him in the Allagash game when we were seven goals behind. When I called him off the bench, he looked alarmed and confused. “Little Joe, take out Sandy at left inside on the next whistle. Do you know what to do?” “Run.” said Little Joe. “Which way?” I asked, and he had it wrong. But he tried. The ball came to him once. He took a swing at it. It spun off his foot and he fell down, but he had a foot on the leather.” “Has Sandy been out to practice in the last two weeks? He keeps hanging around the infirmary asking for excuse notes, or he has an extra help session, or he falls asleep in the dorm.” “No,” admitted Gus, “he hasn’t done much and neither have several others.” “It must have been a long season,” said Mr. Henderson. “What is your record, coach of the year?” “We are three and four right now. We wouldn’t be that good except that Fairfield and Naples have the same problem we do with a bottom team and we got lucky for 30 seconds with Hastings.” “Big game Saturday, Gus?” “Yep, Penobscot.” “You’ll get slaughtered.” “Probably, but we’re going to have fun doing it.” “How do you figure that? Those guys, if you can round up eleven of them, won’t do anything. They are intellectuals who would rather do something else, or dead beats who would rather do nothing.” “Just let me use your Varsity locker room for ten minutes before the game, OK?” During the study hall break Little Joe Manson and Sandy were arguing about a geometry problem. Well how would you find the height of the flagpole and measure the rope?” said Little Joe. “Stupid duck foot,” said Sandy “Yeah, well if you’re so smart, how are you going to get out of playing in that moldy soccer game tomorrow? It’s a fool’s game.” “I’ll find a way.” But neither boy found a way. Indeed, all fifteen of the team answered the roll call when Coach 29
