Short Stories: Five Decades (126 page)

Hugo smiled weakly, hoping to recognize a pleasantry.

“I won’t keep it a secret from you, Pleiss,” the coach went on. “For two years, I’ve been trying to get rid of you. I have made the circuit of every city in this league with my hat in hand, eating the bread of humiliation, trying to beg, borrow or steal another middle linebacker. To no avail.” The coach had an ear for rhetoric, when he was so inclined. “No avail,” he repeated. “They all knew that as long as I had to start you every Sunday, we were never a threat to anybody. I am going to give you an impersonal estimate of your abilities, Pleiss. You’re slow, you have a miserable pair of hands, you don’t hit hard enough to drive my grandmother out of a rocking chair, you close your eyes on contact, you run like a duck with gout, you wouldn’t get angry if a man hit you over the head with an automobile jack and raped your wife in front of your eyes, and you get fooled on plays that would have made a high school cheerleader roar with laughter in 1910. Have I left out anything?”

“Not that I can think of, sir,” Hugo said.

“With all that,” the coach went on, “you have saved three games in a row for us. You make a mockery out of the holy sport of football, but you have saved three games in a row for us and I am hereby increasing your salary by one thousand dollars for the season. If you tell this to anyone else on the team, I will personally nail you by the hands to the locker-room wall.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hugo.

“Now, get out of here,” the coach said.

“Yes, sir,” Hugo said. He stood up.

“Give me that cane,” the coach said.

Hugo gave him the cane. The coach broke it in two, without rising from his chair. “I can’t stand the sight of cripples,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Hugo said. He tried not to limp as he walked Out of the office.

The next Sunday was unsettling.

It started on an audible.

When the opposing team lined up after the huddle, Hugo knew that the play that had been called in the huddle was a short pass to the right flank. But when the quarterback took his position behind the center, Hugo saw him scanning the defensive setup and frowning. The quarterback’s lips didn’t move, but Hugo heard, just as though the man were talking directly tp him, the word “No.” There was a little pause and then, “It won’t work, they’re overshifting on us.”

Hugo didn’t have time to wonder at this new extension of his powers, as the quarterback began to call a set of signals aloud, changing the play he’d picked in the huddle. Everybody could hear the signals, of course, but Hugo was the only one on his team who knew that the quarterback was calling for an end around, from left to right. Just before the snap, when it was too late for the quarterback to call any changes, Hugo broke for the left side. He knew, without thinking about why he knew it, that the end would take two steps to his left, hesitate for one beat, then whirl around and streak for the quarterback and the ball on the way around the opposite end. As the ball was snapped, Hugo was knifing in between the end and the tackle, and when the end, after his two steps, came around, Hugo flattened him with a block. The quarterback was left all alone, holding the ball, like a postman delivering a package to the wrong door, and was downed for a five-yard loss.

But it was an expensive exploit for Hugo. The end’s knee caught him in the head as they went down together and he was stretched out unconscious when the whistle blew.

When he woke up some minutes later, he was lying behind the bench, with the doctor kneeling over him, prodding the back of his neck, for broken vertebrae, and the trainer jamming spirits of ammonia under his nostrils. The jolt had been so severe that when the coach asked him at half time how he had been able to nip the end-around play in the bud, Hugo had to confess that he didn’t remember anything about the play. In fact, he didn’t remember leaving the hotel that morning, and it took him a good ten minutes after the coach had spoken to him to remember the coach’s name.

The doctor wouldn’t let him go back into the game and his value to the team was neatly demonstrated to the coach by the fact that they lost by three touchdowns and a field goal.

The plane was quiet on the flight home. The coach did not appreciate a show of youthful high spirits or resilience in adversity by teams of his when they had lost by three touchdowns and a field goal. And, as usual on such occasions, he had forbidden any drinks to be served, since he didn’t believe the fine, full flavor of defeat should be adulterated by alcohol. So the plane sped through the night sky in a long funereal hush.

Hugo himself was feeling better, although he still didn’t remember anything about the game that afternoon. He had a nagging sensation that something peculiar and fundamentally unwholesome had occurred
before
his injury, but he couldn’t bring it up to the level of consciousness. There was a small poker game going on up front in low whispers- and Hugo decided to sit in, to stop himself from profitless probing into the afternoon’s events. He usually lost in these games, since one glance at his open face by any normally acquisitive poker player showed whether Hugo had a pair, two pairs or was buying to a straight.

Either because it was too dark in the plane for the other players to get a clear look at Hugo’s face or because the head injury had hurt some nerve and rendered him expressionless, Hugo kept winning a fair proportion of the pots. He was a careless player and didn’t keep track of his winnings and merely felt that it was about time that luck was turning his way.

After about an hour of play, he had a sizable stack of chips in front of him. He was sitting with three aces in his hand, having gotten two of them on a four-card draw, and he was about to raise the man on his left, Krkanius, who had drawn three cards, when somehow, just as though Krkanius had nudged him and whispered the news into his ear, he knew that Krkanius had a full house, jacks and fours. He didn’t raise Krkanius but threw his cards in. Someone else saw Krkanius and Krkanius put his cards down. Full house. Jacks and fours.

“I’m not feeling so well,” Hugo said. “I’m cashing in.”

He stood up and went back to his seat.

It was a miserable night and the plane was bucking through thick cloud and Hugo sat at the window, looking out and feeling horrible. He was a cheat. He could make all sorts of excuses to himself, he could say he had acted out of surprise, without thinking, that it was the first time anything like that had ever happened to him, but he knew that if that weird message hadn’t come through to him from Krkanius, on his left, he’d have raised Krkanius $10 and Krkanius would have raised him and Krkanius would be at least $20 or $30 richer right now. No matter how he tried to wriggle out of it, his conscience told him he was just as guilty as if he had taken $30 out of Krkanius’ wallet.

Then, in a flash, he remembered the afternoon—the moment on the field when he was sure that he knew what the quarterback was thinking on the end-around play and his automatic reaction to it and his blotting out the end. It was another form of cheating, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He could keep from playing poker, but he made his living out of playing football.

He groaned. He came from a deeply religious family, with a stern sense of morality. He didn’t smoke or drink and he believed in hell.

After the plane landed, Hugo didn’t go right home. Sibyl was away in Chicago, attending the wedding of one of her sisters, and he didn’t feel like rattling around in an empty house. Krkanius, who had emerged from the poker game the big winner, invited him and a couple of the other boys to join him for a drink and, while Hugo didn’t drink, he went along for the company.

The bar Krkanius took them to was crowded and noisy. There was a group of men with some girls at the bar, and as Hugo followed Krkanius to the back room, he heard a woman’s voice say, “Uh-huh. That’s for me. That big innocent-looking one.”

Hugo looked around. A round blonde at the bar was staring directly at him, a sweet small smile on her full lips. If you didn’t know what went on in her head, she looked like somebody’s pure young daughter. “I’m going to teach you a few things tonight, baby,” Hugo heard, staring, frozen, at the girl. The girl’s mouth had never shown the slightest tremor of movement.

Hugo wheeled and hurried into the back room. When the waiter asked him what he wanted to drink, he ordered bourbon.

“Man,” Krkanius said, surprised, “you really must’ve got shaken up today.” Nobody had ever seen Hugo drink anything stronger than ginger ale before.

Hugo drank his bourbon quickly. He didn’t like the taste, but it seemed to help his nerves. The blonde girl came into the back room and leaned over a table nearby to talk to somebody she knew. Remembering what she had been thinking as he passed her on the way in, Hugo ordered another bourbon. She glanced, as though by accident, at the table of football players. The way her sweater fit around her bosom made a peculiar ache come up in Hugo’s throat.

“What’re you waiting for, sweets?” he heard her think as her glance swept over him. “The night’s not getting any younger.”

He drank the second bourbon even more quickly than the first. “Oh, God,” he thought, “I’m becoming a drunkard.” The bourbon didn’t seem to do anything for his nerves this time.

“It’s time to go home,” he said, standing up. His voice didn’t sound like his. “I’m not feeling so well.”

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Krkanius said.

“Yeah.” If Krkanius knew that he’d had $30 stolen from him that evening, he wouldn’t have been so solicitous.

Hugo walked quickly past the bar, making sure not to look at the girl. It was raining outside now and all the taxis were taken. He was just about to start walking when he heard the door open behind him. He couldn’t help but turn. The girl was standing there, alone, with her coat on. She was scanning the street for a taxi, too. Then she looked at him. “Your move, baby,” he heard, in a voice that was surprisingly harsh for a girl so young.

Hugo felt himself blush. Just then, a taxi drove up. Both he and the girl started for it.

“Can I give you a lift?” Hugo heard himself saying.

“How kind of you,” the girl said, demurely.

On the way home, in the dawn, many hours later, Hugo wished for the first time in his life that he had been born a Catholic. Then he could have gone directly to a priest, confessed, accepted penance and been absolved of sin.

Sibyl called in the morning to tell him that her parents, who had come East for the wedding, were taking a trip to New York and wanted her to go along with them. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have been able to keep the disappointment at news like that out of his voice. He loved Sibyl dearly and usually felt lost without her. But now a wave of relief swept over him. The moment of confrontation, the moment when he would have to tell his innocent and trusting young wife about his appalling lapse from grace or, even worse, lie to her, was postponed.

“That’s all right, honey,” he said, “you just go along with your mother and dad and have a good time. You deserve a holiday. Stay as long as you like.”

“Hugo,” Sibyl said, “I just could break down and cry, you’re so good to me.”

There was the sound of a kiss over the telephone and Hugo kissed back. When he hung up, he leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes in pain. One thing he was sure of, he wasn’t going to see that girl, that Sylvia, again. Sylvia. Almost the same name as Sibyl. How rotten could a man be?

Passion spent for the moment, he lay in the largest double bed he had ever seen, next to the dazzling body that had opened undreamed-of utopias of pleasure for him. Ashamed of himself even for thinking about it, he was sure that if Sibyl lived to the age of ninety, she wouldn’t know one tenth as much as Sylvia must have known the day she was born.

In the soft glow of a distant lamp, he looked at the bedside clock. It was past four o’clock. He had to report for practice, dressed, at ten o’clock. After a losing game, the coach gave them wind sprints for forty-five minutes every day for a week. He groaned inwardly as he thought of what he was going to feel like at 10:45 that morning. Still, for some reason, he was loath to go.

An hour later, he was finally dressed. He leaned over Sylvia to kiss her good-bye. She lay there, fresh as the morning, smiling, breathing placidly. He wished he were in as good condition as she was. “G’night, sweets,” she said, an arm around his neck. “Don’t let those rough boys hurt you today. And bring Baby a little giftie tonight. Try Myer’s, on Sanford Street. They’re full of goodies.”

Walking home along the dark streets, Hugo thought, “Of course. Girls like little tokens of affection. Flowers, candy. Sentimental creatures.” He didn’t remember any store called Myer’s on Sanford Street, but he supposed it was a confectionery shop that had some specialties that Sylvia had a taste for. He resolved to get her the best five-pound box of candy money could buy.

That afternoon, feeling a little light-headed from lack of sleep and the wind sprints, he walked along Sanford Street, searching for a shop called Myer’s. He stopped short.
MYER
, the thin lettering read on the window. But instead of boxes of candy displayed behind the glass, there was a blaze of gold and diamonds. Myer’s sold jewelry. Expensive jewelry.

Hugo did not go in. Thrift was another of the virtues his excellent family had instilled in him as a boy. He walked along Sanford Street until he found a candyshop and bought a five-pound box of chocolates. It cost $15 and Hugo felt a twinge at his extravagance as the clerk wrapped the box in festive paper.

That night, he didn’t stay more than ten minutes in Sylvia’s apartment. She had a headache, she said. She didn’t bother to unwrap the candy.

The next night, he stayed longer. He had visited Myer’s during the afternoon and bought a gold bracelet for $300. “I like a generous man,” Sylvia said.

The pain Hugo had felt in handing over the $300 to the clerk in Myer’s was considerably mitigated by the fact that the night before, when he had left Sylvia with her headache, he had remembered that every Tuesday there was a poker game at Krkanius’ apartment. Hugo had sat in for three hours and won $416, the record for a single night’s winnings since the inception of the game. During the course of the evening, by twisting his head a little now and then to get a fix with his left ear, he had been warned of lurking straights, one flush and several full houses. He had discarded a nine-high full house himself because Croker, of the taxi squad, was sitting in the hole with a jack-high full house; and Hugo had won with a pair of sevens after Krkanius had bluffed wildly through a hand with a pair of fives. Somehow, he told himself piously, as he stuffed bills and checks into his wallet when the game broke up, he would make it up to his teammates. But not just now. Just now, he couldn’t bear the thought of Sylvia having any more headaches.