Football Fugitive (3 page)

Larry followed Greg’s gaze to a man standing beside the bleachers. For a second his pace slowed down as the size of the man
struck him. The man was wearing dark sunglasses and Larry’s heart pounded as he felt the man’s eyes focused directly on him.

The stranger was over six feet tall, had long sideburns, an inch-long beard, was broad-shouldered and wore a hat and a brown
jacket.

Something in Larry’s bones told him that he had seen the man somewhere before.

w
hy was the man watching them play? “Could it be he knew someone on the team?” wondered Larry. “If so, why was he staring at
me?”

They reached the street and Greg asked, “Did you ever see him before?”

“Never,” answered Larry.

He looked over his shoulder, wondering if the stranger might be walking behind them. Sure enough, he was. But he was by himself
among all the uniformed players and spectators, a giant among Lilliputians.

Larry and Greg turned left on Catherine
Street. After a while they saw the crowd, including the stranger, continue up Elm Street. Just for a moment Larry hoped that
the man would look in his direction, but the stranger kept looking straight ahead.

“I guess he wasn’t really looking at me,” thought Larry. A spark of hope — that someone had taken a keen interest in his playing
— flickered and died.

He tried to push the thought of the stranger out of his mind, and forced a smile. “After a few plays I wasn’t scared anymore.
Were you, Greg?”

“Scared of what?”

“Oh. Getting banged up.”

Greg laughed. “Not me. I loved it!”

The bright, happy smile on his face was additional proof that he had.

“Didn’t you?” he asked.

Larry shrugged. “Oh, sure. I loved it, too.”

He wasn’t sure that he did, though. And
he had lied a little when he said that he wasn’t scared anymore.

He thought of something else.

“Why didn’t your parents come to the game?” he asked.

Greg looked at him with raised eyebrows, and he had to repeat the question.

“Oh,” said Greg. “Dad works out of town. It takes him an hour to get home.”

“Does he like football? Is he interested in your playing?”

“Is he? He’s crazy about it. I bet he’ll ask me to tell him about the game before I even sit down to eat!”

“That’s great,” said Larry.

“Does your father like football?” Greg asked.

“Yes. He likes it,” said Larry, looking straight ahead.

“What?”

“I said he likes it,” said Larry, looking at Greg now. “He’s crazy about it, too.”

“Then why didn’t he come to the game?”

“He’s a lawyer,” said Larry. “He works crazy hours. Some clients call him up even at night. I bet the minute I get inside
he’ll want to know all about the game, too. That is, if he’s not busy with a client.”

“I guess your father must be a great guy, too, Larry,” Greg said.

“Yeah, sure,” Larry replied softly.

It wasn’t like what Larry had said when he entered the house. The first thing Mom said was, “Don’t come into the house with
those dirty shoes. Take them off on the porch.”

He took them off, left them on the porch and walked into the house in his dirty socks. He strode past his mother and headed
for his bedroom.

“Get your clothes and change in the bathroom,” she said.

Not “Who won the game? Did you play? How well did you play?” Just “Get your clothes and change in the bathroom.”

He glanced into the living room before going up the stairs and saw his father sitting by the window, his legs stretched out
and crossed at the ankles. He was asleep.

Larry thought about what he had told Greg would happen the instant he entered the house, and felt a lump rise in his throat.
Well, Dad couldn’t sleep and ask him questions about the football game at the same time, could he?

He got his clean clothes out of the bedroom, stripped off his uniform, showered, and dressed. As he came out and headed for
the kitchen his father surprisingly called to him, “Well, who won?”

His heart thumped. “They did,” he answered.

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“The Whips.”

“What was the score?”

“Twenty to ten.”

“Good game,” said his father.

That’s all he said as he rattled his newspaper and started to read.

“Come on,” said Larry’s mother. “Your dinner’s ready.”

Before going to bed that night he wrote a letter to Yancey Foote, hoping that this time Yancey would receive it.

Dear Yancey,

We played our first game today and lost, 20 to 10. It was a battle, although the Whips were ahead of us all the time.

I played center on offense and middle
linebacker on defense, and Coach Ellis had me play most of the game. My best play was tackling the Whips’ quarterback, forcing
him to fumble the ball. Then I recovered it. The only thing that resulted from that play, though, was a field goal. Our only
touchdown came in the fourth quarter.

I hope that you receive this letter, Yancey. I haven’t heard from you lately, but I hope that isn’t because you got tired
of receiving letters from a kid. If that is the reason, I understand.

No matter what the reason is, though, I will always be

Your friend,

Larry

He read the letter over, addressed an envelope, put the letter into it, and sealed it. He considered and reconsidered putting
a stamp on it, then decided to wait till morning.

In the morning the question persisted: Why waste a stamp? If the last two letters came back why wouldn’t this one come back
also?

Nevertheless, he stuck a stamp on it and dropped it in a mailbox on his way to school. There was always hope. And what’s a
stamp?

During the course of the day Yancey Foote popped in and out of his mind like a Jack-in-the-box. It occurred to him that he
might be able to find out about Yancey if he wrote to the Packers football team. Perhaps a letter to the coach would invite
an answer and an explanation as to what happened to Yancey.

There was another possibility. A recent issue of a football magazine might have something about him. It might clear up the
mystery of why the letters to him were returned.

The last period of the school day was
the longest Larry had spent in weeks. He couldn’t wait till the buzzer sounded. When it did he was among the first out of
the room, not even waiting for Greg to accompany him home as he usually did. Right now nothing was more important than to
get to a magazine store.

There was one on Palm Street. Dad stopped there every Sunday after church to pick up the
New York Times.
The store was several blocks out of the way, but — so what?

He arrived there, breathing hard from the long run from school, and started to look for the sports magazines. They were all
on one shelf, practically at his eye level, magazines covering all the major sports: baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis,
football.

He glanced over the featured titles of the football magazines. Familiar names stood
out like neon lights: John Elway, Brett Favre, Emmitt Smith.

And then his heart jumped as he recognized another name, and read the long title:
Yancey Foote
—
Good Guy or Bad Guy?

Good Guy or Bad Guy?
What in the world did that mean?

His heart still jumping, Larry looked for the price of the magazine. It was more than he had in his pocket. Oh, man. He would
have to borrow it from his parents.

He ran all the way home, borrowed some money from his mother, then got back to the store as quickly as he could and purchased
the magazine. He couldn’t wait to get home again to read the article about his friend Yancey Foote.

T
he article started off with a bang.

What happened to that big, bone-crushing guard of the Packers, Yancey Foote? Nobody seems to know.

Could it have something to do with his seriously injuring a citizen in a barroom squabble? There’s no question about the fact
that Foote vanished after posting $5000 in bail.

Although the incident has been hushed up by all concerned, Yancey’s victim still lies in the hospital. But why should Yancey
Foote, a former USC football star and
runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, suddenly disappear? Is it because this tough Packer is afraid he might be found guilty when
his trial comes up in the fall?

Friends of the big guy have begun to wonder about him: What is he — a good guy or a bad guy? Did he really start the fight,
or did the other guy — a man some fifty pounds lighter than the vanished pro? Did the man step too hard on the toes of the
football star whose close friends had always considered him an easy-going, mild-mannered guy?

Larry couldn’t believe it. Was it really Yancey Foote he was reading about? Was he the kind of guy who would beat up a man
fifty pounds lighter than himself?

There must have been a reason behind it. A darn good reason. Yancey wouldn’t beat up anybody unless he was provoked.

But, as the article said, why should he
suddenly disappear? Did he really believe he was guilty and was afraid to face the consequences?

There was more to the article, but Larry just skimmed over the rest of it. A full-page color picture of Yancey bulldozing
through the line after the ball carrier was opposite the title page of the article. The picture was so clear that, with a
little imagination, you could almost hear the grunts and the groans, and the pounding of cleated shoes on the turf.

There in the article was the answer as to why Larry’s letters to Yancey had come back. It was plain that it wasn’t any use
to write to the Packers. Even they didn’t know where Yancey was — unless it was a secret that they had refused to tell the
writer of the article.

Larry closed the magazine and placed it on a shelf in his room. He tried to avoid
looking at the pictures of Yancey hanging on the walls, but they attracted him like magnets.

‘Where have you disappeared to, Yancey?” he said aloud to one of the pictures in which Yancey was standing, hands on his hips
and a grim look on his face.

With a heavy heart he left the room, intending not to return to it again until bedtime. He didn’t want Yancey’s pictures reminding
him of that question posed by the title in the football magazine:
Yancey Foote
—
Good Guy or Bad Guy?

The next day he told Greg Moore about the article. Although Greg had never written a letter to Yancey Foote, nor to any other
football player, he sympathized with Larry.

“Maybe he’s gone away on a vacation,” he said. “The Caribbean, or someplace like that, where nobody knows him.”

“But why would he want to do that?”

“To get away from reporters,” replied Greg, who was an avid newspaper reader. “Once the story broke, a famous guy in his situation
would be hounded by reporters all the time.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Larry answered thoughtfully.

There was practice after school and Coach Ellis had Larry work out at center. Larry did okay centering the ball, but was poor
at blocking. He couldn’t seem to put his entire effort into it, getting tossed aside like a windblown leaf when, instead,
he should have been doing the tossing.

“C’mon, c’mon, Larry,” Coach Ellis laid into him. “You’re daydreaming. Get with it.”

Daydreaming was right; thinking constantly about Yancey Foote’s plight was what was causing Larry to perform so poorly.

The Digits had been practicing for nearly half an hour when Greg suddenly tapped Larry on the arm and said, “Larry, look who’s
standing there by the bleachers.”

Larry looked, and saw the big man with the sunglasses and short beard. The same man who was at the Whips game last Wednesday.

All at once he felt a cold sensation sweep through him. He felt glued to the spot, his eyes riveted on the man, while a thought
raced through his mind like wildfire.

It can’t be, he told himself. Yet — why not? Why can’t that man be Yancey Foote? The magazine article said that nobody knew
where he was, didn’t it? Well, why couldn’t he be here in Glen Rose, a town where hardly anyone would know him?

Just then the man lifted a hand, and his face broke into a smile. Larry, surprised,
looked around, but saw no one else except Greg looking at the man.

“It’s us he must be waving and smiling at!” Larry thought.

Hesitant at first, he then quickly jerked up his hand and waved back. He saw the man nod, saw the smile broaden just a little.

“He’s waving to
you,
Larry,” said Greg softly. “How about that?”

“Larry! Greg!” Coach Ellis boomed. “If you guys are too tired to play maybe you’d like to sit this one out!”

“Sorry, Coach,” said Larry, and socked Greg lightly on the shoulder. “C’mon, Greg. Let’s get with it.”

They worked on pass plays and line plunges, Larry centering the ball for the offensive team. Then the coach switched the squads,
putting Larry in the middle linebacker position with the first team.

Larry couldn’t get the image of the guy in the brown jacket out of his mind. He was ninety-nine percent sure it was Yancey
Foote, yet why would Yancey be watching
him
play? His concern was reflected in his workout. And Coach Tom Ellis noticed it.

“Larry! You got lead in your feet? George got the ball and had faded back five yards before you had even
budged!”

And another time, “Larry! On a line buck you charge in
after
the ball carrier, not wait for him to come to you!”

“Sorry, Coach,” Larry said, embarrassed in front of all the guys.

He heard Doug’s familiar, mocking chuckle. Somebody else picked it up, but a verbal blast from the coach ended it instantly.

“Cut it out, you guys, and get back on the
line!” he ordered firmly. “Let’s go through that play again! On three!”

As the men hustled to the line of scrimmage, Larry glanced again toward the bleachers. But the man in the brown jacket was
gone.

T
he helmets of the Moon City football team were royal blue, with a picture of the moon on them. Their blue satin, red-striped
uniforms looked fresh out of a laundromat.