good to see---- Oh, hang it! Signals over! What I mean to say is
that I've followed Harvard football for over twenty years. You see, my
name's Carrington R. Davies."
The Harvard quarterback continued shaking the stranger's hand politely;
but there was no sign of recognition at mention of the name, only a
slight frowning of the eyebrows.
C. R. D. noted this and his stammering became several degrees worse.
"I--I--used to play quarterback on the Crimson, too."
The other's eyebrows lifted at this.
"And I--and I---- Well, of course you wouldn't remember; but it was
just such a day as this--twenty years ago--that I---- Perhaps you've
heard tell of it?" C. R. D. brought up lamely, loath to relate the
entire incident and hoping that Broadhurst would recall hearing of it.
The Harvard quarterback shook his head, but there was an interested
gleam in his eyes. "Why, no. I'm sorry, sir; but I----"
"Well," the former All-American quarterback broke in desperately, "I
made a ninety-five-yard run for a touchdown in the last minute of play
and won the game against Yale, much as you did--to-day."
There was a deep-throated chuckle from young Broadhurst. "Then it's
you, sir, who deserve congratulations!"
"No, no. That's not the point," insisted Davies, with a sense of giddy
bungling. "That's really not the point. I just mentioned it because
I--because I couldn't help thinking of it, that's all. I couldn't help
thinking of myself from the moment I saw you out there, free, with the
game at stake, making for the Yale goal. It was just like looking at a
moving picture of myself--twenty years ago. You'll pardon me,
Broadhurst, I know. Nothing's ever gripped me like that run of yours
this afternoon. Nothing!"
Davies was in the swing of things now. He had recovered from his
embarrassment and was pouring out his feelings in a flow of words which
tumbled over themselves to get expressed. Broadhurst was the one who
was embarrassed this time. He looked down at the floor and shifted his
feet awkwardly and tried to draw away his hand, but the stranger only
gripped it the tighter.
The Harvard quarterback shot a glance about the locker room, relieved
to see that no one appeared to be noticing them. Every one was
interested in his own business, anxious to get outside and join the
victory-crazed celebrators.
"I was with you every step of the way," Davies went on. "When you
slipped, I slipped. When you straight-armed the Yale man, I
straight-armed him, too. Everything you did all the way to the goal
line, I did. It was almost uncanny. Even when they tackled you as you
went over for a touchdown and pounded you into the mud--that's just
what happened to me. So I have you to thank more than to congratulate,
Broadhurst, for we both know what it means to have done our best for
the good old Crimson. And you have helped me to live over one of the
happiest, most thrilling moments of my life!"
The Harvard quarterback withdrew his hand. The stranger turned away to
hide eyes which brimmed with tears.
"I--I'm glad, sir," was all that Broadhurst could think of to say.
Davies stiffened, chagrined at himself for his show of feeling. He was
a silly, sentimental old fool, inflicting his childishness upon a
gentlemanly young fellow who was too kind and sportsmanlike to show
distaste or offense. But why should any one else be interested in his,
Carrington R. Davies' feelings, or the fact that, twenty years before,
he had scored a touchdown?
"Well, I'm keeping you from going out. I'll be taking leave," remarked
the All-American quarterback, backing off apologetically.
"Don't be in a hurry," Broadhurst said, reaching out for his dress
shirt, but obviously glad to be about his business. "I'll be through
in a minute and then----"
Whatever else the Harvard quarterback may have said was lost upon
Davies. He was quite instantly, unexpectedly, and acutely made
conscious of something extremely coincidental. The arm that reached
out to take the shirt from the locker had the slip of a crimson bow
tied about the wrist.
Davies rubbed a hand across his eyes and looked again. How he had
missed seeing that bow before he could not understand. But it was
certainly there. Infernally peculiar! It was certainly there.
Broadhurst, noting the stranger's stunned expression, stopped, his
shirt half on, to inquire what was the matter.
"Why--why nothing--only that bow. You--you'll probably think me
odd--but, do you mind my--my taking a good look at it?"
The Harvard quarterback held out his arm with a slight gesture of
impatience. Davies took the hand and studied the bit of ribbon. Of
course, it wasn't--but didn't it beat the devil how everything had
worked out this day? Either that or he was suddenly losing his mind.
Perhaps that was it. He had brooded so long over the affair of his
youth that at last it had affected his brain.
The ribbon was wet--and soiled--and--this, he thought, could easily be
his imagination--it was actually a trifle faded. But it did look
strangely familiar, strangely like the one that a dear, trusting girl
had tied about his wrist, and that he had sealed there with a kiss
twenty years before. It was infernally peculiar. That was all there
was to it. Infernally peculiar!
Davies straightened up, to find the Harvard quarterback at the point of
exasperation.
"I don't blame you for thinking me out of my mind," sympathized C. R.
D. "And I may be, for all I know. So many ungodly things have
happened to me to-day. But--if it's not being too personal--where did
you get that bow? From your sweetheart?"
There was almost a contemptuous note in Broadhurst's voice as he
started to button his shirt. "No! My mother."
Davies felt his knees give way beneath him and he dropped down heavily
upon the bench, staring up at the Harvard quarterback, unbelievingly.
"Your--your mother?"
"Yes. What's wrong with that?" demanded Broadhurst, picking up collar
and tie. "It's a good-luck charm," he explained curtly; then he added
with a smile: "And it sure worked to-day!"
"A--a good-luck charm?" echoed Davies weakly. "A good-luck---- Say!
Your mother--I mean, is your father--living?"
The Harvard quarterback paused in his tying of a four-in-hand to shoot
a puzzled glance at the evidently insane stranger. "No, sir. He died
before I was born."
"Oh, I see," Davies mumbled, conscious of his heart thumping in his
ears. "But your name--Broadhurst? Was that your father's?"
This question was almost too much for the latest Harvard hero. He spun
his locker door shut with a bang. "Why certainly!" Then, wheeling
upon his questioner, he asked: "Why wouldn't it be?"
"I--I thought perhaps your mother might have married again and that
you--you took the name of your--your stepfather," hazarded Davies.
"See here. I don't know what you're driving at, but I don't like your
insinuations. My mother was married only once, and she----"
"Listen!" broke in Davies excitedly. "If I'm not badly mistaken, your
real name's Carrington R. Davies. I mean--perhaps not Carrington
R.--but Davies anyway!"
"You don't know what you're talking about. My name's Carrington
Nubbins Broadhurst!"
"Carrington Nubbins. It is! Well, why didn't you say so? But you're
all wrong on the last name. Where's your mother? I've got to see her.
Why, confound it, old boy, I'm your father!"
Five palpitating seconds of electrifying silence followed Davies'
fervent outburst. Then C. R. D. spoke again, in a voice that was husky
with pent-up emotion and the shock of it all.
"Where's your mother? I've been twenty years trying to find her. Oh,
God, this is wonderful! You--my son!"
Still the young man who went by the name of Broadhurst stood,
unspeaking, undecided as to what to make of this rabidly serious
personage who, not alone satisfied with claiming prestige for
performing a gridiron feat similar to his, was now trying to claim a
part in his parentage.
"It was twenty years ago," explained Davies appealingly, "almost to the
day, when, just before the game with Yale, I met your mother--met her
in a secluded spot under the stands. There was a cold rain falling,
and I can remember how we pressed up close against the stands to keep
from getting soaked. And she took that little crimson bow from about
her neck and tied it around my wrist. I can even recall exactly what
she said. It was, 'Here, take this--it's your token of good luck.'"
Davies' voice broke at this and tears glazed the eyes of even the
Harvard quarterback.
"I--I guess there must be something to it, all right," confessed the
youth who had been surnamed Broadhurst, the name his mother had taken.
"That's just what mother did this afternoon--insisted on meeting me
under the stands, and--and tied on this bow--and said those same words!"
It was a peculiar sight--had any one been there to see it--a grown-up
man and a growing man clasping hands, their faces wet and streaked.
"I'm taking mother to dinner tonight," said the younger man softly,
after what seemed like an hour of understanding silence.
"No--you mean that I'm taking mother and you," corrected the old-time
player firmly. Then, leaning over, he touched the crimson bow
reverently and asked: "I--I wonder if you'd let me wear that to-night?
I want her to see me with it on. I want her to know that Davies played
the game!"
"BUTTER FINGERS"
How did "Rus" Lindley get his nickname, "Butter Fingers"? Now _I'll_
ask _you_ one! "Why did the guys call six foot Harry Tibbits,
'Shorty'?" Answer that and you've answered your own question about
"Rus."
I guess, if you'd go into the science of nicknames far enough you'd
find that the name you can pick which comes the furtherest from fitting
who you're picking it for is the one that suits the best! There--how's
that for getting rid of an involved sentence?
At any rate, if "Rus" really deserved to be dubbed "Butter Fingers"
then the moon is really made of green cheese and the cow really did
jump over it and all that stuff. Because if there was one thing that
"Rus" _wasn't_, it was _butter fingers_.
"Rus" was a lean, lanky, long-armed, awkward, thin-nosed cuss that
you'd think, to look at, didn't have an ounce of ambition or a pint of
sense. The next minute you'd wake up to find the ounce a hundred
pounds of condensed lightning and the pint a couple of gallons of
trigger thinking. That's the kind of a surprise package "Rus" was.
And, brother, look out!! If "Rus" ever had occasion to lay hands on
you he didn't let go until he got good and ready. Try your _durndest_
and you couldn't shake loose the grip he carried in those long, slender
fish hooks of his. "Butter Fingers"?
What a laugh! "Rus" was never known to have muffed anything in his
life!
It was "Butter Fingers" who climbed the greased pole and took down the
Senior colors his Freshman year. It was "Butter Fingers" who untied
the wet knots in the fellows' clothes the time we Sophies got caught
swimming in the Old Bend, thus saving us from a most embarrassing
situation. It was "Butter Fingers" who hung by his digits from a
window sill on the fourth story of our dorm when she was burning down
... hung there ten minutes till the firemen got a ladder under him
after he'd been cut off from the stairs. He saved seven roommates by
that sure-grip of his, swinging them from a window where they were
trapped and sending them down the stairs ahead of him before the fire
put the stairs out of commission.
And who but "Butter Fingers" could have "human-fly-ed" it up the front
of the old stone chapel, clear up into the belfry? Of course he did it
on a dare but those wonder fingers of his just pulled him up, catching
hold of places that the ordinary person would tear their finger nails
on and cry thirteen bloody murders from the strain of hanging to
crevices by the finger tips.
That was "Butter Fingers"!
But, using the words of Al Jolson, "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" What
I've just got through telling you was just practice exercises for the
bird with the muscular mitts, the uncanny grip, the steam shovel hands
and the never-break-clutch.
Say, I hope you're not getting this "Butter Fingers" wrong. He was
long, lean, lanky, awkward, thin-nosed and all that ... but he wasn't
built like a foundry. His hands weren't extra large, either ...
excepting that the fingers were extra long. He only weighed a hundred
and fifty-one pounds which isn't much when you're thinking in terms of
football and so much for so tall. That's where "Butter Fingers" had
you fooled. You had to see him in action before you'd believe what
"Rus" Lindley could do.
Was he modest? He was so quiet and unassuming that you could hear his
watch ticking in his vest pocket! Was he athletic? Don't be
ridiculous! If he wasn't athletic anywhere but in his fingers he'd
have been athletic enough. As it was, he was the best end that ever
played on a football eleven representing Burden High!
What makes you think "Butter Fingers" was a freak? He wasn't born
strong-fingered. Naw. He had to develop it. What made him do it?
Well, I don't know as I could answer that exactly. I remember "Butter
Fingers" saying once he'd gotten a kick out of chinning himself ever
since he was a baby. Sure! You don't chin yourself with your chin ...
you chin yourself with your ... anyhow it's mostly done with your grip!
You get a hold of a bar or something and pull your body up rigid! All
right, then! Why didn't you say you'd tried it? Ain't so easy, is it?
Especially after the tenth time!
Can you imagine what sort of an end a guy with a powerful grip could
make? Can you figure what would happen to a football if "Butter
Fingers" ever laid his grapplers on it? And can you picture a runner
trying to get away from a tackle by a bird like "Rus"? A fly might as
well try to pull its feet off a sheet of sticky fly paper as a runner
to jerk loose from "Butter Fingers" once he's got him.
Would you like to hear how "Butter Fingers" won his undying fame? Have
I got the time? No, but I'll take time. This story's worth it!
Just make yourself as comfortable as possible. You'd better sit on the
edge of your chair, though, because that's where you'll be before very
long anyway. And I'll start right in at the beginning so you won't
miss any of the picture.
First, you got to get a close-up of this fellow, "Rus" Lindley. He's
the kind they describe in the movies as "Oliver, who takes everything
seriously--including football." Before any of the guys nicknamed him
"Butter Fingers," "Rus" was just an ordinary, awkward candidate for the
team ... but while he was picking up bumps in practice he was likewise
putting on bumps of knowledge. "Rus" had one of them scientific slants
of mind and he always had to figure why he was supposed to do a certain
thing a certain way. Once he'd found out the reason he was satisfied.
Professor Tweedy, our "math" teacher, used to say that "Rus" was a
"natural born thinker." But geometry and trigonometry weren't the only
subjects that "Rus" approached from all angles. He used his bean at
all times and places.
That's why, when "Rus" went out for football, he felt called upon to
exercise his gray matter. It was perfectly obvious to him, for
instance, after a careful study of the rudiments of the game, that the
weather might seriously alter one's style of play.
"Take the difference between a dry field and a wet field," he says to
me, one afternoon, "I'm surprised the coach doesn't make us practice
with a wet ball and the field soaked down. The almanac indicates rain
three Saturdays this fall and the signs couldn't be any worse for
torrential precipitation on the Saturday we play Edgewood. What's that
going to mean? Simply that the luckiest team wins! But if the coach
used the little mechanism inside his bean it might mean that the
_smartest team_ would win. What made Napoleon great was his dry land
operations. But, oh boy, didn't he get _soaked_ at _Waterloo_! Of
course that's a rather far-fetched illustration. Just the same, you've
got to know how to handle yourself under all conditions or you're
practically sunk before you start!"
I agreed with "Rus" not feeling equal to stacking my brain up against
his, and besides he has a way of making things sound darn logical.
Seeing as how the coach seemed to be overlooking a good bet, "Rus"
decides that he's going to get the training he should have anyway. So
we meet one night after football practice in his backyard.
"This is what I'd call a laboratory experiment," explains "Rus" as he
soaks down the back lawn with the garden hose, "The other boys would
probably give us the merry ha ha if they saw what we're going to do but
if my theory's right we'll see the day when we can laugh up our own
sleeves!"
When the lawn's nice and oozy and slippery from super-saturation, "Rus"
turns the water on the football and gets it just as wet as though it
had fallen in a lake.
"All right, Mark," he says to me, "I'll hit the dirt first. This kind
of practice isn't exactly going to be pleasant but it has a good chance
of proving profitable. Now you stand over there and roll that football
across the grass. I'm going to try to fall on it!"
It's easy enough for me to do what "Rus" directs. But it's not so easy
for "Rus" to do what he intends. We're dressed in our football togs,
of course, right down to the cleated shoes. But even at that the grass
is so sleek that the footing's as treacherous as a polished ball room
floor. On his first try, "Rus" slips and falls flat before he gets to
the ball and the pigskin rolls to the fence.
"There went the chance to save the game!" he points out as he gets to
his feet. "Let's try her again!"
Honest, you never saw anybody that's such a glutton for punishment!
"Rus" gets sopping wet and all grass-stained and dog-tired but he keeps
me throwing that football in all sorts of zig-zag bounces across the
lawn till it's so dark that the street lights come on. And then he
apologizes for not having traded off with me so's I could have got some
of the same experience. "I'm just as well satisfied," I answers. "You
don't need to feel bad about that!"
"We'll do it again, every chance we get," says "Rus," not seeming to
notice my lack of enthusiasm, "I'm rotten! I missed at least half my
dives. And as for scooping the ball up on the run, wasn't I pitiful?
But that's what an end's got to be able to do and yours truly isn't
going to make a bad muff in a game if he can help it!"
Being a friend of "Rus's" and practically a next door neighbor as well
as a team-mate, I can't really turn the serious-minded bird down.
Besides, I have to admit to myself that it's darn interesting watching
the vim that "Rus" puts into this secret practice. Some nights it's
mighty chilly and with the grass wet down it's enough to make your
spinal column wriggle, but "Rus" never seems to mind.
"The most annoying part of this thing for me," says "Rus," "is 'Mom's'
objection to my draping these wet togs over her radiators. She claims
the house smells like a Chinese laundry every night. I tell her she
must be a good sport and put up with it for the good of the team!"
Say, you'd be surprised, after a couple of weeks, to see how "Rus"
improves! It gets to be marvelous the way he can tear across the lawn,
reach down with those long fingers, scoop that slippery pigskin up and
keep right on going toward what he imagines is the enemy's goal!
"Preparedness!" he'd smile at me. "That's one of the greatest words in
the English language! I want to be ready when the fumble comes!"
Sometimes "Rus" would hit the lawn like an India rubber ball and almost
seem to wrap his lean, lanky frame around the pigskin, bouncing up on
his feet on the roll and untangling his legs from the knot to be
streaking away almost before you could tell what was happening. Once
he put so much steam behind it that he couldn't stop in time and plowed
into the back fence, busting two boards loose and bruising his shoulder.
"Zowie! I ran into some real opposition that time!" he grinned.
It isn't long before all this extra practicing that "Rus" is doing
begins to show up on the football field. In scrimmage he gets the
reputation of being "sure-fingered" because he drags down passes,
recovers fumbles and handles the ball so smoothly that it seems like he
can't miss getting hold of it no matter how wild it goes. In
comparison the rest of us look pretty sick, all excepting me ... and
I'm a little better than average because of my experience with "Rus."
Several times, while I'm playing my position at left half, there's a
poor pass back from center and I have to drop on the ball. Believe me,
I'm mighty thankful then for the special training I've picked up!
"This game of football is just a matter of following the ball," "Rus"
airs to me one night, "I don't care what these wise birds say. There's
breaks in every game that, if we could take advantage of 'em, would do
more than all the fancy plays ever invented. Look at last week when we
played Madison. We have 'em down on their own ten yard line and we
break through and block the punt and two of our fellows dives for it.
Do they get the ball? Yes, they do not! A Madison back, who knows his
onions, shoots in--picks the ball up off his shoe tops after it's
bounced out of our fellows' arms--and runs forty yards before he's
stopped. That's what I call converting good fortune out of disaster!
Either one of our boys ought to have downed the ball on Madison's eight
yard line but both of 'em muffed it. On a dry field, too...!
Inexcusable!"
"But you must realize, Rus," I argues, "that _your_ attitude on this
matter is very exceptional. You can't expect all football players to
pay the attention you've been paying to developing themselves to a fine
point on picking up loose balls!"
"Razzberries!" retorts "Rus," "Then they're not worthy of the name of
football players!"
And there the arbitration rests. But the season doesn't get much older
than "Rus's" mania begins to break out in a new channel. He's so
anxious to see all the boys proficient in the gentle art of falling on
the ball that he takes to ragging them every time they miss out.
"Butter fingers!" he yells, and gets a glare in return for his trouble.
"Butter fingers, yourself!" cries the guy who's just looked foolish.
And the first thing you know, the name that "Rus" has branded his
team-mates with, comes back on him like a boomerang. So, the only
fellow who doesn't deserve the title of "Butter Fingers" is the one who
gets it!
"That's all right," "Rus" says to me. "Let 'em call me 'Butter
Fingers.' I'll make 'em eat that word twenty times a day. And they'll
be trying extra hard to keep from being 'Butter Fingers.' You see!"
Which makes it sound like "Rus" has decided to act the martyr to some
adopted cause! Now right here's where a complication enters my story
in the shape of Mr. Maxwell Tincup, dignified member of the school
board and a political power in the town. Among other things Mr. Tincup
is bitterly opposed to football as a sport that's "absolutely
barbarious." Football, in Mr. Tincup's exalted opinion, is a machine
which manufactures a lot of good-for-nothing rowdies. He's made the
air blue at many board meetings, voicing his protest against
continuance of the sport as an athletic activity at Burden High but
he's never quite been able to get a majority vote against it. Just the
same his attitude has stirred up considerable feeling and hasn't
exactly made him popular with the boys.
"What Tincup needs is a dose of second childhood," "Butter Fingers"
prescribes one day. "He evidently didn't have any the first time!"
Mr. Tincup's home is right on our way to school, a big old-fashioned
house that stands on a corner of the street, surrounded by a high
picket fence. We often see the anti-footballist's three year old son
hanging to the fence and peeking out as though he'd like to investigate
the outer world.
"Look at the poor kid," points out Butter Fingers as we're passing one
afternoon. "They keep him as spic and span as a children's
advertisement. Maxwell Tincup, Junior's sure going to be a chip off
the old block if the old block has anything to say about it! I'll bet
some day he takes the tiddly-winks championship of South America!"
"Are you sure Mr. Tincup won't consider that too strenuous?" I asks,
innocent like.
"Butter Fingers" grins and shrugs his shoulders.