The Town and the City: A Novel

  “Dammit, I blew the whistle on that, Magee!” roared the coach across the field. “The play was over!” He turned and muttered something in the assistant’s ear, and they both smiled faintly.

  Magee jumped up and trotted back to his position jubilantly. He was known as the devil of the squad who could never control his own wild viciousness, and on Saturday afternoons at the big games the crowds roared with appreciation at his fiery, colorful, violent antics.

  Peter wasn’t hurt, but he returned to his position slowly, thoughtfully, as though he were dazed again, and incredulous as before.

  “That was nice running, sonny,” said Coach Reed directly to Peter. As they huddled for the next play the boy was suddenly conscious of the old man’s hand resting on his shoulder, and he gulped with fear and amazement. What would his father say if he could see this moment now?

  “See what you can do on the off-tackle seven. You know it?”

  “Yessir,” swallowed the boy.

  “All right!” roared the coach over the field. “This kid’ll give you another chase. Move in there, Bernardi, you’re too far back. On the ball, on the ball! You won’t be able to loaf Saturday! If a kid can run around you what do you think Lynn Classical will do? Stedman, wake up!”

  And thus, in the drowsy hum of the October afternoon, Peter waited panting for the ball to come back to him, his knees trembling, his blood pounding from all the running. And again the play developed explosively. There were violent biffings and scuffings in the line as he waited for the ball to hit his hands. When it did, he was off like a deer once more, running up the backs of his blockers, teasing around them like a dancer, slicing through to the open spaces beyond the line, and opening up more speed. He was fifteen yards beyond the line and still running, arching his back as he flanked around someone’s reaching hand, stopping, jumping over a leg, darting aside to continue along in a forward sprint, and moving towards the open—when suddenly he was confronted by Bobby Stedman the backer-up defense man and someone else, and he veered charging to the left only to see a glimpse of Red Magee come sluicing at him in a flying tackle, which he dodged coyly by stepping back and moving forward again. The whistle blew again as Peter and Red Magee glanced at each other furtively.

  “What’s the matter with you guys!” the coach was roaring. “I want you to wake up!” And in a wheezy confidential whisper in the huddle he said: “All right, try it again, sonny, on the two hole; shift on the left, you kids.” And the old man stepped back thoughtfully.

  And again Peter found himself waiting in the drowsy sun, sweating, panting, grinning with fatigue and joy, pounding his hands impatiently for the ball as the lines met, and biffed, scuffled, opened up for him. He ran sharply to the left, according to the play he knew so well from long lonely memorizing, and then cut back inside straight for the “two hole”: it was wide open, he ran directly through it at top speed, like a scared rabbit into the open. But just as he was emerging, the wiry little figure of Red Magee hurtled through the air straight at him, Peter saw everything, and there was a terrific collision of bone, muscle, and canvas that could be heard in a loud “whap!” clear across the field.

  Peter stood rooted to the ground from the shock of the head-on collision, one leg placed deliberately in front of the other in the frozen act of running, and Red Magee, similarly frozen in the act of tackling, lay sprawled on his knees with both arms around Peter’s hips, moaning: “My neck, my neck, ooh, my neck!”

  And like a limp rag, in a dead silence that followed, the boy rolled over clutching his neck, while Peter stood horrified and dazed, looking down, the ball still hugged to his side.

  Everybody ran up to the injured player. There was a confused minute during which the coach’s car was brought up and Magee was carefully placed in the back seat. He kept moaning and clutching at his neck, and staring about with a white look of fear.

  Peter stood petrified at the back of the crowd with the ball still in his hands.

  “Did he break his neck?” someone whispered.

  “It sounded like something broke!”

  “They’re taking him to the hospital. Holy cow!”

  Peter was standing back there understanding that in some way, somehow, he had cheated the older boy into thinking that he could easily be knocked down, by submitting motionlessly to the first furious tackle on the sidelines and by dodging the second attempt with a meek agility. But just now, seeing Magee coming at him ravenously in one of his famous slashing tackles, he had nevertheless rushed straight at him with driving knees and with all his headlong might, deliberately to deal him the full force of the weight and power he knew he had and that he had so far concealed.

  “What did I do?” he asked himself in terror and wonder.

  They drove Magee to the hospital, but in ten minutes word was received that he had not broken his neck, that he had only suffered from shock and would recover overnight.

  “That was like a couple of locomotives meeting on the same track!” said Coach Reed gruffly and the whole squad laughed.

  Thereafter for the rest of the afternoon Peter was the center of interest. He was taken aside by one of the assistant coaches and the long onerous task of learning all the refinements of play was begun for him. He spinned, reversed, faked, shifted, learned all the rudimentary motions of the subtle powerful backfield action. He was awkward, bashful, foolishly nervous—but something exulted in him, and the coaches were watching him carefully, with a kind of scowling pride. Old Coach Reed himself sauntered over and watched impassively, turning occasionally to a curious newspaperman at his elbow and talking in a low voice. Then he would turn again towards Peter and roar:

  “Relax! relax! When you spin don’t think of anything else but the spin, and then start running. Just think of the ball and your three steps, understand?”

  After practice, when the raw October gloom gathered around the field and all the players had run in for their showers, Peter was still running and spinning and handing the ball on reverses while Coach Reed and his assistant stood by, barking at him in the sharp frosty air.

  “No! no! no! Make your pause, and then turn!”

  “And when you turn, pivot on the right foot, the right foot!”

  Thus, sweating and panting and joyful, young Peter was sent in to the showers: and there, in the steaming clatter of the shower rooms and the lockers, everybody was coming over to talk to him, the varsity men themselves—Mike Bernardi, even Bobby Stedman—on down to the lowest subs. Where yesterday he had sat dressing in a dark corner of the noisy rooms, today he was the center of the whole raucous exciting scene that he had been watching so long in lonesomeness. He danced under the steaming showers, dried himself vigorously, dressed, combed his hair, and waddled about with the limp of a bonafide athlete at last, proud and battered and fatigued.

  And then in a whirling confusion of events he was given a regulation football uniform with a huge numeral on it, his picture was taken by a local news photographer, Coach Reed came over and asked him about his school grades, the team manager hurried over with two pairs of brand-new shining backfield shoes, and Peter thought he would go out of his senses from all the excitement and tumult that suddenly surrounded him and filled his heart with dizzy unbelief.

  He hurried home, striding along joyfully in the dusk, gloating over what his father would say and what the whole family would say, thinking all the feverish thoughts of youthful glory and triumph, he gazed into the faces of everyone passing him on the dark streets and wondered if they knew about this, or what they would think when they heard, and the whole raw October darkness of the evening with its flying leaves and powerful winds and flares of fire from somewhere was all his. In his deepest soul, deeper than the regret of his heart, he gloated and boasted because he had almost broken Red Magee’s neck: for Red Magee had tried to smash Peter Martin to a pulp and everybody had seen the result, everybody knew Peter Martin was the vanquisher.

  In the strong autumnal winds he rushed along ignoring the new
dark knowledge he now half-understood—that to triumph was also to wreak havoc.

  The smoke was whipping from the chimney of his house, he leaped up the steps with glee, smote the side of the house with delight, walked around the porch taking deep breaths of air and looking up jubilantly at the stars, and then he plunged into the house to tell them all the news, to sit down at his mother’s table and tear at another great meal of meat and bread and potatoes in hungering rout.

  During the remainder of that season Peter was sent through the paces of grueling interminable backfield drills, spinning, faking, reversing, ducking and weaving through all the hundred intricate movements of the play, growing so painfully, brutally fatigued sometimes that he wished he could just fall on the ground and give it all up. But the moment he was off the field, once more he would start weaving and spinning with a mad urgency, even while walking home; or in his room he would stand in the middle of the floor and start all over again, holding the football to his stomach, handing it out, spinning, stepping. If he could have carried his football into the classroom, he would have done it. He slept with the football on a chair beside his bed, and in the morning he would pick it up and turn it over and over in his hands before breakfast.

  The awkward, shy, shambling movements of the novice on the football field gradually became the movements of a swift and knowing halfback, he began to step about with graceful assurance, impassively, and smoothly, darting off with a thrum of powerful trained speed, his eye considering all obstacles with a crafty deliberation, his whole body swaying one side or the other in quick judgment.

  Before long he appeared in his first big game—considerably awed by the vast excitement of the stadium all around, but successful in making a favorable impression on everyone in the last few plays of the game. His father came to watch him at practice almost three times a week now, standing on the sidelines puffing a cigar in blissful absorption.

  The local sportswriters knew Coach Reed was grooming several young members of the team for future stardom, but it was not until the last practice session of the year, when they were all standing around watching practice for the big Thanksgiving game, that the old coach directed their attention to the other side of the field, to Peter who was making practice runs with the second team on the snowy turf:

  “And there’s your next year’s Bobby Stedman,” announced the old man in his famous impassive way.

  “Pete Martin?” the reporters chorused in surprise.

  “If that’s what they call him,” replied the old coach with his famous twinkle of the eye, “if that’s what they call him, I guess that’s who it is!”

  [9]

  And young Joe Martin at this time was driving great trailer-trucks on the route up to Portland, Maine, over nighttime highways that roared unto dawn from powerful motors and huge revolving hissing tires, along blazing macadams that stretched miles ahead all bright from lights and neon roadhouses, highway lamps, gas stations and diners, rolling on through the coastal night in thundering breakneck speed. He had found a job that suited him wonderfully.

  In the high cab he sat grimly through the night hurling the immense machine along with an exultant feeling of joy and accomplishment. Sometimes, when he had to slow down before country intersections that criss-crossed the great broad speedbelt of the highway, he could feel the massive push of the trailer behind him with its tons of cargo, like a Gargantuan nudge in his back, and then when it was time to pick up speed once more, from first to second to third to fourth speed in a series of straining bucks and bolts, he could feel the powerful motor grinding and pulling with irresistible force until it raced along again in headlong catapultion on the straightaway. He would unleash wild whooping cries of delight. On downgrades the truck would gain a giant momentum, he would jam in the clutch and let the whole mighty bulk roll in silence, and then at the foot of the upgrade he would again step on the gas and send himself roaring uphill in unbelievable glory.

  In the first weeks of his new job he unleashed whoops of joy a hundred times the night. He was twenty years old now and “crazier” than ever.

  Near Portland, in a truckman’s diner, he met a whole covey of waitresses who took to him as fish take to water. He sampled them one after the other: and often, in the gray dawns when it was time for him to drive the truck back to Galloway, he would leave his lady fair and leap up to the high cab of the mighty truck like a gallant mounting his warhorse, and roar off throwing back kisses. It was around this time that he found it expedient to sport a dashing little flick of a mustache, just above the lip in a thin brown line which, together with his laced boots and riding pants and visored cap, contrived to give him the appearance of a first-class ladykiller and handsome libertine. He was trying to save his money; in a few months he was going to be seen on a flashy new motorcycle—and then, as he put it himself: “Here I come!”

  Women loved him because he was boyish, and men slapped him on the back and bought him drinks because he was manly. And all the time he whooped with laughter, told interminable stories, strode about insouciantly, and passed everything off as great fun and good times.

  But in all this whirl of long blazing white highways with their roadhouses and diners, the men and women eating and drinking, the laughter, the love-making, the raucous jokes, the beer, the jukebox music, the miles of smooth macadam through pine woods and the roar and rush of the driving, the huge presence of the truck, the weary ecstatic nights—in all this, the swashbuckling young Joe was also a kind of grim, workaday, lonely Joe. Sometimes he would park his truck along the highway and pause to smoke a cigarette thoughtfully—or at other times, taking leave of his friends in some reeling Portland saloon, he would take solitary walks around the town and stride along in boyish reverie.

  One time he stopped the truck at a diner outside a small Maine village and there met a strange and lovely girl who didn’t seem to pay much attention to him. She was a waitress, and when he got to know her she pointed out her family’s house to him, just a half a mile away on a hill above the highway. It was a charming colonial house surrounded by the stark trees of New England winter. Her name was Patricia. She was going to school days, and earning her spending money by working as a waitress.

  Something in this little out-of-the-way diner outside a small village attracted Joe, and before long he began to stop there all the time for his meals and relaxation and his weekly flirtation with the handsome Patricia, who received his thrusts with a wise and ladylike charm. She was a tall angular girl, with something gaunt and beautiful in her face, dark serious eyes, long lashes, strong white teeth, and a full-breasted feminine figure. In due time she learned to accept and anticipate Joe’s frequent visits and flirtations, they shoved nickels in the jukebox and danced, she made him great batches of pancakes, strong coffee, special homemade donuts just for him, she waited on him exclusively when he was there, and before long she was taking rides in his truck with him to Portland and back. She was the kind of girl who would wear overalls to go truck-riding and who drank beer prodigiously, danced well, walked in a long loping stride like him, laughed a lot, and was always ready to follow anybody she loved “to hell and back,” as she had learned to say from Joe.

  “When I get my motorcycle,” Joe told her jubilantly, “we’ll ride all over and go everywhere! Hey! Can’t you see us whippin’ along at eighty per under the moonlight? Wahoo!”

  “Yes, but you don’t get drunk till the ride is over, Joey boy.”

  “For that you gotta kiss me!”

  And she kissed him, suddenly, with a powerful surprising passion.

  Joe became a familiar figure in her home, parking the truck in front on the highway and striding up the lawn to play with the dogs and her little brothers and sisters. Patricia’s mother baked cakes for him to take along on the grueling journeys. Her father slapped him on the back and told him jokes. And sometimes, when Joe left for a week’s time and saw Patricia waving sadly at him as he drove off, he could realize all too well that this was “getting ser
ious” and that he liked her “too much.”

  “Ah, but she’s a great kid!” he would laugh, and think with delight about her as he hurled his great truck along the speedways of the night.

  “Where you been hangin’ out, Joe?” his Portland cronies shouted at him when he began coming around again in the wild saloons there.

  “Aw, I found the sweetest kid in the world, no kidding!”

  “What’s her name, Joe? What you holdin’ out for?”

  But Joe was too wild and too young to brood over a woman for any length of time, and gradually he began to neglect the diner where she worked. He returned to his old ways, to the blind routs and drunks and poker games with his truckdriving, happy-go-lucky comrades—half of whom sported the same kind of little mustache, and all of whom were young wildcats and wranglers like himself.

  Those days Joe would sometimes arrive back in Galloway drowsy with fatigue, wheeling the great truck into the garage. He would step down wearily from the cab, smoking a weary cigarette, pausing in the little office-shed to engage in banter with the garage-men and drivers who looked upon him as a great fellow and a good worker, and then trudge on home to go to sleep for twelve hours at a time.

  Joe was indefatigable in his pleasures, wonderfully liked by everyone, coveted by women of all kinds, strong and responsible at his work, spendthrift with his time and money and laughter. Yet in his inmost soul, like every other man, he brooded and was restless and dissatisfied and always looked to the future as a challenge and a sad enigma. He wanted a motorcycle so that he could hurl himself plummeting and roaring along to anywhere, he wanted the camaraderie of his pals, he wanted women and more women, plenty of beer and food and money, he wanted everything that a carefree youngster wants—but at the same time he knew that there was something else he wanted, that he did not know what it was, and that he would never get it. To all his friends and to his family he was just Joe—robust, happy-go-lucky, always up to something. But to himself he was just someone abandoned, lost, really forgotten by something, something majestic and beautiful that he saw in the world. Someday on his motorcycle he wanted to go far out across the U.S.A.—just for the “hell of it” and just for something else, too—to see sublime mountains, massive canyons, great mountain forests drumming in high winds, lakes where he could pitch camp, the deserts and the mesas and the great rivers that somehow had forgotten him, the vast “man’s country” of his boyish dreams. Joe sometimes really believed that he should have been born elsewhere and in another time. He could work with all his energy for fifteen hours a day on some old motor in a garage, and then suddenly gaze off and recall somehow that he was lost and forgotten by that sublime meaningful world that gleamed in his vision: and where he got that vision he did not know.