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[Illustration: “These flowers remind me of a barber shop,” he
explained.]
FLIGHT
An Epic of The Air
by
IRWIN R. FRANKLYN
Adapted from
Columbia’S All-Talking Picture by Ralph Graves
A Frank R. Capra Production
Produced by Harry Cohn
Illustrated with Scenes from the Photoplay
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers : : New York
Copyright, 1929, by
Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.
Made in the United States of America
TO
HAZELE HARMON
WITHOUT WHOSE GENEROUS ASSISTANCE THE STORY OF THE BOY WHO RAN BACKWARD
WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN
FLIGHT
CHAPTER I
On this particular chilly November afternoon, the famous Yale Bowl was
packed to its upmost tier with seething humanity, there for the purpose
of witnessing the classic football event of the season, between Old Eli
and Harvard.
Though the score was nothing to nothing, with only two minutes to play
in the last quarter, the Harvard side were jubilant, for Roger Baer, the
Yale star and Massachusetts’ only menace, had just injured his ankle and
was forced to leave the field.
These thousands of men and women, cramped into the great stadium,
represented an army of interested, pulsating humanity divided into
sides, with each faction placing their faith in the ability of the team
for which they had come to root.
Whether it was to be Yale or Harvard who would emerge from the game,
showered in the glory of victory, was a question of time, but whether or
not the men and women, whose eyes were fascinated by the action of the
teams in the field, were really alive with interest, could be told by
the expressions registered upon their tense faces—the faces of all but
one man.
Panama Williams had been dragged to the Yale Bowl by two of his buddies
from the Marine Aviation Base at San Diego, who were also on a leave of
absence in the East.
Williams’ busy life had been cramped with so many things that sports had
never found a place in his heart.
Why he had consented to go to the game, he couldn’t explain,
nevertheless he was there, in a box on the Yale side, entirely devoid of
interest or enthusiasm.
This man, attired in the uniform of the United States Marine Corps, with
the emblems of a top sergeant emblazoned upon each sleeve, was a
taciturn, hard-boiled individual who had passed through four enlistments
in the service of his country’s sea soldiers.
With the government’s aviation expansion program came a desire to win
new glories as a pilot, so Sergeant Williams, who had served his country
in the four corners of the globe, on land and sea, took to the air and
again made good.
This soldier, who found keen enjoyment in the coquetry of a tropical
native girl, the roar of a sixteen-inch gun or the intricacies of a
Wright motor, lounged in a box at the Yale Bowl, visibly bored with the
activities going on about him, and completely unresponsive to the spirit
of the play; a direct contrast to the Marine beside him, who sat,
seething with emotion.
Over by the Yale bench, the worried coach, now confronted with the
reality that his star player was lost to this game, entered into a
hurried conference with his assistants.
Each man viewed the row of players sprawled on the bench before them
until the eyes of the coach fell upon the tall, gaunt figure of a
fair-haired youth who sat, wrapped in a blanket, twitching his large
fingers from nervousness.
“I’m going to send in Phelps as Baer’s substitute,” the coach announced
at length, his words almost deafened by the roars of objections raised
by his assistants.
“Lefty Phelps?” Scotty, the coach’s chief aid, questioned, “Why, he’s
never been in a big game in his life!”
“If you put him in as quarter,” another assistant ventured, “we’re bound
to take plenty of punishment.”
“Why?” the coach asked, visibly determined in having his own way.
“Well, for one thing, he’s the nervous type,” Scotty explained, “and
it’s just that failing that may break up the game.”
The coach smiled broadly as if his assistant had grasped the very
purpose behind his idea in selecting Lefty.
“Nervous is right. His over-anxiety may get him so rattled that he’ll
come through with a touchdown!”
Lefty, of course, could not help but overhear this discourse on his
failings and, at the words uttered by the coach, leaped to his feet and
joined the little group of men.
“You have been itching for a chance to win your ‘Y’,” the coach
explained as Lefty confronted him. “Get in there as quarter. Carry the
ball around left end. You’ve only got time for two plays. Now get that
ball and come through with a touchdown! Do you hear?”
Lefty didn’t stop to reply, but darted off to the umpire with the words
of the coach still ringing in his ears: “A touchdown, do you hear?”
The whistle blew for time up as Lefty announced his substitution. Over
in the grand stand, on the Yale side, a white-haired man and woman rose
with pride. There were smiles of triumph written over their aged faces
as their boy entered the field for Yale and victory.
“Mother, it’s our boy!” cried the man. “He’s going in!”
The old lady’s eyes were moist with tears of joy. “God bless him—and
Yale!” she murmured softly.
“God help him!” bellowed the father. “Come on, Son. Touchdown! Come on!”
In the box occupied by the Marines, enthusiasm had reached its peak with
all the occupants save Panama.
“Oh, boy! A substitution,” roared one of the noncommissioned officers,
hitting Panama a resounding blow upon the back, “Number Forty-one. Let’s
see. That’s Lefty Phelps, a newcomer, replacing the best man on the Yale
team. I’ll bet that coach’s got something up his sweater. Come on,
Yale!”
At this announcement, the taciturn Panama shifted idly in his seat, for
the first time showing some sign of interest.
“I hope that egg can do something,” Panama muttered, biting off a chew
of tobacco, just as the ball was shot to Lefty, who made a terrific
drive over the left tackle, gaining twenty yards, with the ball now on
the Harvard thirty-yard line.
At the conclusion of this perfect play, the roars of the Yale rooters
echoed and reechoed through the vast stadium, with every man, woman and
child on the New Haven side up and on their toes, tingling with
excitement and shouting themselves hoarse.
“What did I tell you?” shrieked the enthusiastic noncom, again whacking
Panama across the back. “He went through that line like a sieve!”
Yale then went into a huddle, with every mother’s son among them tense
with action and nerves on edge.
Lefty gave the signal for the next play. The ball was snapped at him as
he made a sweeping left end run.
Harvard was not to be taken by surprise again. As Lefty made for their
goal and victory, he was partly tackled, knocked to the ground, rolling
over in the tussle.
In a moment, he regained his feet, but the tackle and the excitement all
about him muffled his direction and he faced the Yale side, continuing
to run toward the wrong goal in his eagerness for victory.
As he shot out swiftly on his way in the opposite direction, he wondered
why there was a clear field ahead of him, but with less than a minute to
play, he felt that this was no time to stop and consider Harvard’s
inefficiency.
One of the Yale men was close upon Lefty’s heels, shouting to him for
dear life to either turn and run toward the right goal or pass him the
hall, but the nervous, overanxious boy was deaf to everything.
Back in the stands, both the Yale and Harvard rooters were wild with
excitement, with the New Haven side roaring instructions to Lefty and
offering a prayer for aid from a Divine Providence.
To the boy, running clear across the field, the cries of the Yale
rooters were received as shouts of victory, egging him on to finish the
game for the glory of Old Eli.
With grim determination, the boy put more effort behind his race for
victory, completely oblivious to the calls of his fellow players and the
pleas of those in the stands.
The words of the coach, “Touchdown, Touchdown,” still filled Lefty’s
ears, keeping his brain and feet active and his eyes blind to all else
but the goal line just ahead of him.
Just one yard from the goal line now, Lefty’s team mate, determined to
stop him at all costs, made a flying tackle at the nervous boy’s heels,
bringing Lefty down to the ground.
Unaware that the tackle was made by his own team mate, and still blind
to the fact that he was on the verge of making a victory for Harvard,
thus defeating his own college, Lefty, with every bit of strength he
possessed, squirmed and struggled from the tightening grasp of his
fellow player, triumphantly placing the ball just over the line as the
referee’s whistle ended the game.
Lefty rose with a triumphant smile of victory beaming upon his face,
yet, not quite understanding why the Harvard men should be shouting
hilariously, throwing their helmets in the air and slapping each other
on the back.
He walked over to where his team mates stood in a group silently with
the brand of defeat plainly visible upon the faces of each man. “Well, I
made it!” he announced jovially. “You made it, all right,” one of the
men answered, eyeing the boy with a look of disgust. “You ran the wrong
way and won the game for Harvard!”
“Take a look at the score board, two for Harvard, nothing for Yale, and
you gave them the two!” said another.
Lefty, who had been beaming over with exultation and self-satisfaction,
now stood motionless, his eyes glued upon the score board and his face
bearing a miserable, abject look of stupidity and failure.
Up in the stands, a rancorous Yale freshman seemed to take unusual
delight in the misery that had befallen Lefty’s mother and father and
the tears that filled the old lady’s eyes.
“It’s Okay, pop,” he shouted, “Harvard is going to give your son a nice
big ‘H’ for his grand play!”
Phelps, senior, did not venture to reply. His heart was breaking within
him. Slowly he lifted his arm and gently placed it around the slim
shoulders of his wife, managing to choke back the lump in his throat and
say, “Let’s go to him, Mother, I guess he needs us!” Maintaining their
wounded dignity, this fine old couple made their way from the stands,
passed the Yale men and their girls who boisterously flung taunts at
them.
In the box that had been occupied by the Marines, Panama sat in
convulsions of laughter, chiding his two buddies, hilarious over their
apparent discomfort.
“Say, that guy Phelps must be a Harvard man in disguise,” Panama roared,
literally doubled in two.
“Go on and laugh, you big punk,” retorted one of the other sergeants.
“Have a good time, but remember, I bet ten bucks on Yale and five of it
was yours!”
As Phelps and his team mates made their way to the Yale Dugout, a
battalion of reporters and cameramen followed closely upon their heels,
striving to get photographs of the disgraced player.
“Come on, take the air,” the Yale coach warned the news photographers,
as he kicked over one of their tripods; then addressing Lefty, spoke
kindly: “Forget it, kid; we’ll beat ’em next year, sure!”
The coach’s generosity only tended to heighten Lefty’s misery. He ran
and buried his head on his waiting mother’s shoulder, the shoulder that
had always been a haven of comfort to him in the past.
Once outside of the great Yale Bowl, Panama stopped to roll a cigarette
as his fellow noncoms followed suit.
“I wonder what is going to become of that poor guy?” he said, somewhat
absently.
“You mean, Phelps?” asked the noncom who lost the money on the game.
Panama nodded his head and proceeded to light his handmade weed.
“I don’t know what’ll happen to him,” the third Marine added, “but if it
was me, I’d blow my brains out.”
Williams again was overcome with a fit of laughter, managing to add as a
final retort: “That’s impossible, Red. That guy ain’t got no brains!”