The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

“I’ve seen a lot of football games, and I’ve seen lots of rooters, but this is the goddamndest gang of yellow-bellied quitters that I’ve ever seen. What happened last Saturday when we were behind? I’m asking you; what happened? You quit! Quit like a bunch of whipped curs. God! you’re yellow, yellow as hell. But the team went on fighting⁠—and it won, won in spite of you, won for a bunch of yellow pups. And why? Because the team’s got guts. And when it was all over, you cheered and howled and serpentined and felt big as hell. Lord Almighty! you acted as if you’d done something.”

His right hand came out of his pocket with a jerk, and he extended a fighting, clenched fist toward his breathless audience. “I’ll tell you something,” he said slowly, viciously; “the team can’t win alone day after tomorrow. It can’t win alone! You’ve got to fight. Damn it! You’ve got to fight! Raleigh’s good, damn good; it hasn’t lost a game this season⁠—and we’ve got to win, win! Do you hear? We’ve got to win! And there’s only one way that we can win, and that’s with every man back of the team. Every goddamned mother’s son of you. The team’s good, but it can’t win unless you fight⁠—fight!”

Suddenly his voice grew softer, almost gentle. He held out both hands to the boys, who had become so tense that they had forgotten to smoke. “We’ve got to win, fellows, for old Sanford. Are you back of us?”

“Yes!” The tension shattered into a thousand yells. The boys leaped on the chairs and shouted until they could shout no more. When Gifford called for “a regular cheer for Jack Price” and then one for the team⁠—“Make it the biggest you ever gave”⁠—they could respond with only a hoarse croak.

Finally the hymn was sung⁠—at least, the boys tried loyally to sing it⁠—and they stood silent and almost reverent as the team filed out of the gymnasium.

Hugh walked back to Surrey Hall with several men. No one said a word except a quiet good night as they parted. Carl was in the room when he arrived. He sank into a chair and was silent for a few minutes.

Finally he said in a happy whisper, “Wasn’t it wonderful, Carl?”

“Un-huh. Damn good.”

“Gosh, I hope we win. We’ve got to!”

Carl looked up, his cheeks redder than usual, his eyes glittering. “God, yes!” he breathed piously.

The football season lasted from the first of October to the latter part of November, and during those weeks little was talked about, or even thought about, on the campus but football. There were undergraduates who knew the personnel of virtually every football team in the country, the teams that had played against each other, their relative merits, the various scores, the outstanding players of each position. Half the students at Sanford regularly made out “All American” teams, and each man was more than willing to debate the quality of his team against that of any other. Night after night the students gathered in groups in dormitory rooms and fraternity houses, discussing football, football, football; even religion and sex, the favorite topics for “bull sessions,” could not compete with football, especially when someone mentioned Raleigh College. Raleigh was Sanford’s ancient rival; to defeat her was of cosmic importance.

There was a game every Saturday. About half the time the team played at home; the other games were played on the rivals’ fields. No matter how far away the team traveled, the college traveled with it. The men who had the necessary money went by train; a few owned automobiles: but most of the undergraduates had neither an automobile nor money for train fare. They “bummed” their way. Some of them emulated professional tramps, and “rode the beams,” but most of them started out walking, trusting that kindhearted motorists would pick them up and carry them at least part way to their destination. Although the distances were sometimes great, and although many motorists are not kind, there is no record of any man who ever started for a game not arriving in time for the referee’s first whistle. Somehow, by hook or by crook⁠—and it was often by crook⁠—the boys got there, and, what is more astonishing, they got back. On Monday morning at 8:45 they were in chapel, usually worn and tired, it is true, ready to bluff their way through the day’s assignments, and damning any instructor who was heartless enough to give them a quiz. Some of them were worn out from really harsh traveling experiences; some of them had more exciting adventures to relate behind closed doors to selected groups of confidants.

Football! Nothing else mattered. And as the weeks passed, the excitement grew, especially as the day drew near for the Raleigh game, which this year was to be played on the Sanford field. What were Sanford’s chances? Would Harry Slade, Sanford’s great halfback, make All American? “Damn it to hell, he ought to. It’ll be a stinkin’ shame if he don’t.” Would Raleigh’s line be able to stop Slade’s end runs? Slade! Slade! He was the team, the hope and adoration of the whole college.

Three days before the “big game” the alumni began to pour into town, most of them fairly recent graduates, but many of them gray-haired men who boasted that they hadn’t missed a Sanford-Raleigh game in thirty years. Hundreds of alumni arrived, filling the two hotels to capacity and overrunning the fraternity houses, the students doubling up or seeking hospitality from a friend in a dormitory.

In the little room in the rear of the Sanford Pool and Billiard Parlors there was almost continual excitement. Jim McCarty, the proprietor, a big, jovial, red-faced man whom all the students called Mac, was the official stakeholder for the college. Bets for any amount could be placed with him. Money from Raleigh flowed into his pudgy hands, and he placed it at the odds offered with eager