Gladiator (8 page)

“Saw Marcia just before I left the lake—took her out one night—and got all over the place with her—and then came down—she's coming to the first prom with me—and Marj to the second—got to get some beer in—we'll buzz out and see if old Snorenson has made any wine this summer. Hello, Eddie—glad to see you back—I've elected the dean's physics, though, God knows, I'll never get a first in them and I need it for a key. That damn Frosh we picked up sure must have been a porter—hey, freshmen! Want a rest?”

“No, thanks.”

“Went down to the field this afternoon—looks all right to me. The team, that is. Billings is going to quarter it now—and me after that—hope to Christ I make it—they're going to have Scapper and Dwan back at Yale and we've got a lot of work to do. Frosh! You don't need to drag that all the way in one yank. Put it down, will you?”

“I'm not tired. I don't need a rest.”

“Well, you know best—but you ought to be tired. I would. Where do you come from?”

“Colorado.”

“
Huh! People go to Colorado. Never heard of any one coming from there before. Whereabouts?”

“Indian Creek.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “You aren't an Indian, are you?” It was asked bluntly.

“Scotch Presbyterian for twenty generations.”

“Well, when you get through here, you'll be full of Scotch and emptied of the Presbyterianism. Put the trunk down.”

Their talk of women, of classes, of football, excited Hugo. He was not quite as amazed to find that Lefty Foresman was one of the candidates for the football team as he might have been later when he knew how many students attended the university and how few, relatively, were athletes. He decided at once that he liked Lefty. The sophistication of his talk was unfamiliar to Hugo; much of it he could not understand and only guessed. He wanted Lefty to notice him. When he was told to put the trunk down, he did not obey. Instead, with precision and ease, he swung it up on his shoulder, held it with one hand and said in an unflustered tone: “I'm not tired, honestly. Where do we go from here?”

“Great howling Jesus!” Lefty said, “what have we here? Hey! Put that trunk down.” There was excitement in his voice. “Say, guy, do that again.”

Hugo did it. Lefty squeezed his biceps and grew pale. Those muscles in action lost their feel of flesh and became like stone. Lefty said: “Say, boy, can you play football?”

“Sure,” Hugo said.

“Well, you leave that trunk with Chuck, here, and come with me.”

Hugo did as he had been ordered and they walked side by side to the gymnasium. Hugo had once seen a small gymnasium, ill equipped and badly lighted, and it had appealed mightily to him. Now he stood in a prodigious vaulted room with a shimmering floor, a circular balcony, a varied array of apparatus. His hands clenched. Lefty quit him for a moment
and
came back with a man who wore knickers. “Mr. Woodman, this is—what the hell's your name?”

“Danner. Hugo Danner.”

“Mr. Woodman is the football coach.”

Hugo took the man's hand. Lefty excused himself. Mr. Woodman said: “Young Foresman said you played football.”

“Just on a high-school team in Colorado.”

“Said you were husky. Go in my office and ask Fitzsimmons to give you a gym suit. Come out when you're ready.”

Hugo undressed and put on the suit. Fitzsimmons, the trainer, looked at him with warm admiration. “You're sure built, son.”

“Yeah. That's luck, isn't it?”

Then Hugo was taken to another office. Woodman asked him a number of questions about his weight, his health, his past medical history. He listened to Hugo's heart and then led him to a scale. Hugo had lied about his weight.

“I thought you said one hundred and sixty, Mr. Danner?”

The scales showed two hundred and eleven, but it was impossible for a man of his size and build to weigh that much. Hugo had lied deliberately, hoping that he could avoid the embarrassment of being weighed. “I did, Mr. Woodman. You see—my weight is a sort of freak. I don't show it—no one would believe it—and yet there it is.” He did not go into the details of his construction from a plasm new to biology.

“Huh!” Mr. Woodman said. Together they walked out on the floor of the gymnasium. Woodman called to one of the figures on the track who was making slow, plodding circuits. “Hey, Nellie! Take this bird up and pace him for a lap. Make it fast.”

A little smile came at the corners of Hugo's mouth. Several of the men in the gymnasium stopped work to watch the trial of what was evidently a new candidate. “Ready?” Woodman said, and the runners crouched side by side. “Set? Go!”

Nelson, one of the best sprinters Webster had had for years, dashed forward. He had covered thirty feet when he heard a voice almost in his ear. “Faster, old man.”

Nelson
increased. “Faster, boy, I'm passing you.” The words were spoken quietly, calmly. A rage filled Nelson. He let every ounce of his strength into his limbs and skimmed the canvas. Half a lap. Hugo ran at his side and Nelson could not lead him. The remaining half was not a race. Hugo finished thirty feet in the lead.

Woodman, standing on the floor, wiped his forehead and bawled: “That the best you can do, Nellie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What in hell have you been doing to yourself?”

Nelson drew a sobbing breath. “I—haven't—done—a thing. Time—that man. He's—faster than the intercollegiate mark.”

Woodman, still dubious, made Hugo run against time. And Hugo, eager to make an impression and unguided by a human runner, broke the world's record for the distance around the track by a second and three-fifths. The watch in Woodman's hands trembled.

“Hey!” he said, uncertain of his voice, “come down here, will you?”

Hugo descended the spiral iron staircase. He was breathing with ease. Woodman stared at him. “Lessee you jump.”

Hugo was familiar with the distances for jumping made in track meets. He was careful not to overdo his effort. His running jump was twenty-eight feet, and his standing jump was eleven feet and some inches. Woodman's face ran water. His eyes gleamed. “Danner,” he said, “where did you get that way?”

“What way?”

“I mean—what have you done all your life?”

“Nothing. Gone to school.”

“Two hundred and eleven pounds,” Woodman muttered, “run like an Olympic champ—jump like a kangaroo—how's your kicking?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Passing?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Come on outside. Hey, Fitz! Bring a ball.”

An
hour later Fitzsimmons found Woodman sitting in his office. Beside him was a bottle of whisky which he kept to revive wounded gladiators. “Fitz,” said Woodman, looking at the trainer with dazed eyes, “did you see what I saw?”

“Yes, I did, Woodie.”

“Tell me about it.”

Fitzsimmons scratched his greying head. “Well, Woodie, I seen a young man—”

“Saw, Fitz.”

“I saw a young man come into the gym an' undress. He looked like an oiled steam engine. I saw him go and knock hell out of three track records without even losing his breath. Then I seen him go out on the field an' kick a football from one end to the other an' pass it back. That's what
I
seen.”

Woodman nodded his head. “So did I. But I don't believe it, do you?”

“I do. That's the man you—an' all the other coaches—have been wantin' to see. The perfect athlete. Better in everything than the best man at any one thing. Just a freak, Woodie—but, God Almighty, how New Haven an' Colgate are goin' to feel it these next years!”

“Mebbe he's dumb, Fitz.”

“Mebbe. Mebbe not.”

“Find out.”

Fitz wasted no time. He telephoned to the registrar's office. “Mr. H. Danner,” said the voice of a secretary, “passed his examinations with the highest honours and was admitted among the first ten.”

“He passed his entrance exams among the first ten,” Fitzsimmons repeated.

“God!” said Woodman, “it's the millennium!” And he took a drink.

Late in the afternoon of that day Hugo found his room in Thompson Dormitory. He unpacked his carpet-bag and his straw suitcase. He checked in his mind the things that he had done. It seemed a great deal for one day—a complete
alteration
of his life. He had seen the dean and arranged his classes: trigonometry, English, French, Latin, biology, physics, economics, hygiene. With a pencil and a ruler he made a schedule, which he pinned on the second-hand desk he had bought.

Then he checked his furniture: a desk, two chairs, a bed, bed-clothes, a rug, sheets and blankets, towels. He hung his clothes in the closet. For a while he looked at them attentively. They were not like the clothes of the other students. He could not quite perceive the difference, but he felt it, and it made him uncomfortable. The room to which he had been assigned was pleasant. It looked over the rolling campus on two sides, and both windows were framed in the leaves of nodding ivy.

It was growing dark. From a dormitory near by came the music of a banjo. Presently the player sang and other voices joined with him. A warm and golden sun touched the high clouds with lingering fire. Voices cried out, young and vigorous. Hugo sighed. He was going to be happy at Webster. His greatness was going to be born here.

At that time Woodman called informally on Chuck and Lefty. They were in a heated argument over the decorative arrangement of various liquor bottles when he knocked. “Come in!” they shouted in unison.

“Hello!”

“Oh, Woodie. Come in. Sit down. Want a drink—you're not in training?”

“No, thanks. Had one. And it would be a damn sight better if you birds didn't keep the stuff around.”

“It's Chuck's.” Lefty grinned.

“All right. I came to see about that bird you brought to me—Danner.”

“Was he any good?”

Woodman hesitated. “Fellows, if I told you how good he was, you wouldn't believe me. He's so good—I'm scared of him.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Just that. He gave Nellie thirty feet in a lap on the track.”

“
Great God!”

“He jumped twenty-eight and eleven feet—running and standing. He kicked half a dozen punts for eighty and ninety yards and he passed the same distance.”

Lefty sat down on the window seat. His voice was hoarse. “That—can't be done, Woodie.”

“I know it. But he did it. But that isn't what makes me frightened. How much do you think he weighs?”

“One fifty-five—or thereabouts.”

Woodie shook his head. “No, Lefty, he weighs two hundred and eleven.”

“Two eleven! He can't, Woodie. There's something wrong with your scales.”

“Not a thing.”

The two students stared at each other and then at the coach. They were able to grasp the facts intellectually, but they could not penetrate the reactions of their emotions. At last Lefty said: “But that isn't—well—it isn't human, Woodie.”

“That's why I'm scared. Something has happened to this bird. He has a disease of some kind—that has toughened him. Like Pott's disease, that turns you to stone. But you wouldn't think it. There's not a trace of anything on the surface. I'm having a blood test made soon. Wait till to-morrow when you see him in action. It'll terrify you. Because you'll have the same damned weird feeling I have—that he isn't doing one tenth of what he can do—that he's really just playing with us all. By God, if I was a bit superstitious, I'd throw up my job and get as much distance between me and that bird as I could. I'm telling you simply to prepare you. There's something mighty funny about him, and the sooner we find out, the better.”

Mr. Woodman left the dormitory. Lefty and Chuck stared at each other for the space of a minute, and then, with one accord, they went together to the registrar's office. There they
found
Hugo's address on the campus, and in a few minutes they were at his door.

“Come in,” Hugo said. He smiled when he saw Lefty and Chuck. “Want some more trunks moved?”

“Maybe—later.” They sat down, eying Hugo speculatively. Lefty acted as spokesman. “Listen here, guy, we've just seen Woodie and he says you're phenomenal—so much so that it isn't right.”

Hugo reddened. He had feared that his exhibition was exaggerated by his eagerness to impress the coach. He said nothing and Lefty continued: “You're going to be here for four years and you're going to love this place. You're going to be willing to die for it. All the rest of your life the fact that you went to old Webster is going to make a difference. But there's one thing that Webster insists on—and that's fair play. And honesty—and courage. You've come from a little town in the West and you're a stranger here. Understand, this is all in a spirit of friendship. So far—we like you. We want you to be one of us. To belong. You have a lot to learn and a long way to go. I'm being frank because I want to like you. For instance, Chuck here is a millionaire. My old man is no dead stick in the Blue Book. Things like that will be different from what you've known before. But the important thing is to be a square shooter. Don't be angry. Do you understand?”

Hugo walked to the window and looked out into the thickened gloom. He had caught the worry, the repression, in Lefty's voice. The youth, his merry blue eyes suddenly grave, his poised self abnormally disturbed, had suggested a criticism of some sort. What was it? Hugo was hurt and a little frightened. Would his college life be a repetition of Indian Creek? Would the athletes and the others in college of his own age fear and detest him—because he was superior? Was that what they meant? He did not know. He was loath to offend Lefty and Chuck. But there seemed no alternative to the risk. No one had talked to him in that way for a long time. He sat on his
bed.
“Fellows,” he said tersely, “I don't think I know what you're driving at. Will you tell me?”