COACH TALBOT MAKES A CALL
It was awfully nice to have Sidney home again. Tom didn’t realise
until now how much he had really missed him. And Mrs. Morris, too;
and Mr. Morris to a lesser extent. They were all three sunburned and
healthy-looking and very glad to be back once more. Mr. Morris left
the carriage at his office and the others went out to Alameda Avenue
together, Sidney rattling off a history of the summer with sparkling
eyes, appealing to his mother every other minute for confirmation. In a
lapse of Sidney’s chatter, Mrs. Morris told Tom how disappointed they
had been when he had written that he could not visit them. “Sidney felt
so badly,” she said, “that he immediately went out and tried to drown
himself!”
Sidney grinned. “The canoe went over,” he explained. “I was only about
two or three hundred feet from shore and Mumsie was on the porch and
she wouldn’t come out for me!”
“But what did you do?” questioned Tom with wide eyes.
“Oh, I sat on the end of the overturned canoe and worked in with my
feet. I’d lost the paddle. The trouble was there was a breeze off shore
and it took me nearly half an hour to get back. And Mumsie just sat
there and watched me!”
“But weren’t you frightened?” asked Tom, turning bewilderedly to Mrs.
Morris.
“Oh, no; I knew he could swim if he had to. And I thought it would
teach him a lesson and make him more careful.” She laughed that little
soft laugh of hers. “Sid was _so_ angry when he got back that his teeth
chattered!”
“I guess your teeth would have chattered if you’d had to sit on the
bottom of that canoe for half an hour with the wind blowing on you?”
Sidney grumbled. “I call it a mean trick, don’t you, Tom?”
“I think----” Tom hesitated, casting a doubtful glance at Mrs. Morris.
“Well?” she demanded, her eyes dancing.
“I think,” he went on boldly, “it must have been terribly hard for your
mother to stay on the porch!”
“It was, Tom,” she confessed. “I’m afraid I’d never have done for a
Spartan mother!”
They wanted Tom to stay and have luncheon with them, but he had to
refuse and hurry back to the store, promising, however, to return
for dinner. That was a very merry affair, that first dinner at home,
and Mr. Morris, usually somewhat grave and abstracted, was so jovial
and flippant that Tom quite lost his awe of him. Afterward the boys
adjourned to Sidney’s room and had a regular “talkfest,” as Sidney
called it. Of course Tom had to tell about the game with Lynton and
Sidney heard it with dancing eyes and wished at intervals he had been
there.
“Think of you pitching against those fellows!” he exclaimed. “Why, they
must have had pretty near their regular line-up, didn’t they? Say, I
guess Thorny is right.”
“About what?” asked Tom.
“About your giving up that job and playing on the team in the spring.
Why, we’ve just got to have you, Tom! Farrar can’t pitch for a cent
and he’s too stuck-up to take advice. We need you, Tom, and that’s all
there is to it!”
“But how can I play?” Tom demanded. “Cummings and Wright aren’t going
to pay me wages for being in the store only about two hours all day
long!”
“We’ll have to think of a way out of it,” Sidney responded untroubledly.
“There’s lots of time. Besides, something may happen. Maybe a wealthy
relative will die before spring and leave you a lot of money.”
Tom smiled. “I haven’t any relatives, wealthy or poor,” he said,
“except Uncle Israel. And he doesn’t intend to die, and I wouldn’t want
him to.”
“Pshaw!” laughed Sidney, “it’s always a relative that you don’t know
about or have forgotten that does that sort of thing. Anyway, that’s
the way it is in the stories!”
School began a few days later and Tom went back to lessons again. He
was a sophomore this year, and Sidney was a junior. Tom had more and
harder work to do than last year, but it went easier, probably because
he had learned how to apply himself to study. With the beginning of the
school year football came into its own again. Sidney was out for his
old place at right-end on the high school eleven and, although now and
then he allowed himself to be beguiled into pitching and catching with
Tom, his visits to the open lot after dinner were usually made with a
football tucked under his arm. He showed Tom how to punt and drop-kick
and catch and throw, but Tom’s heart was not in it and all the time he
was chasing the elusive pigskin his hands were itching for a baseball.
Sidney, however, declared that there was plenty of time for baseball
when spring came again and was so full of football that he had time for
little else.
At the store Tom had stocked up thoroughly with all the implements and
apparel of the game and the sporting goods department did a rushing
business in footballs, head-guards, shoes, canvas suits, shirts, and
sweaters. The grammar school outfitted its team anew and Tom secured
the contract for the togs, while from neighbouring towns mail-orders
came in every day. In October he sent in his orders for winter goods:
sleds, toboggans, skiis, snowshoes, skates, and hockey supplies. When,
shortly after Thanksgiving, Amesville had its first snowstorm, Tom,
with Mr. Cummings’s sanction, took possession of one entire window and
stayed up half of the night dressing it.
With packing cases and boards from the basement he built up an
elevation at one back corner and covered it and the floor of the
window as well with sheets of cotton-batting. Over this he sprinkled
powdered mica. Four evergreen shrubs in tubs were borrowed and placed
at the back. (“Evergreens from Davis the Florist, 163 Main Street,” was
the inscription which adorned them.) Then Tom arranged his exhibit.
A toboggan with a stunning red cushion was tilted down the incline,
skiis and sleds were displayed enticingly, at the back, hockey sticks
were crossed and pucks laid at the intersections, and a row of skates
made a border along the front. Snow-shoes with brave scarlet tassels
were there, too, while more colour was supplied to the frosty scene by
gaudy toboggan caps, madly-hued Mackinaw jackets, and high-school and
grammar-school pennants. Tom had had the idea of that window in mind
a long time and so there was no hesitation when the opportunity came.
Even so, however, it was after one o’clock when he went outside to
stand in the snowstorm and take a final, admiring view of the result.
It was, he decided, well worth the trouble and the loss of slumber,
and he put the lights out, locked up, and trudged home, through four
inches of feathery snow, well content. That window display caused much
interest and comment. Even the papers called attention to it, and as
long as the snow lasted rows of small red noses were pressed daily
against the panes while the eager eyes of small boys gazed covetously
on the contents and youthful hearts doubtless longed for the advent of
Christmas.
Meanwhile the High School Football Team was doing brave deeds and
winning many laurels. Tom got an afternoon off when the final and most
important game of the year was played and had his first real experience
of football from the spectator’s viewpoint. He got awfully excited
when, at the end of the second period, Petersburg was four points
ahead, and far more excited when, just as the game was drawing to its
close and defeat for Amesville seemed certain, there came a forward
pass, a final desperate attempt on the part of the Brown-and-Blue, and
Sidney, taking the ball far over on the side of the field, raced and
dodged and tore his way through the Petersburg army and landed the
pigskin seven yards from the goal-line! Nothing could stop Amesville
then! Three downs took her across, Captain Neely kicked the goal, and
victory perched on the waving brown-and-blue banners of Amesville!
Once through with football, Sidney went as enthusiastically into
hockey, mourning the period of inactivity that must elapse before Jack
Frost took possession of the world and froze the ponds and streams.
Sidney fulfilled his promise to show Tom how to use a hockey stick
that winter, for the High School Athletic Association built by popular
subscription a rink on a piece of vacant ground across the street from
the school. Tom’s instruction usually took place at lunch hour, when
the surface was so congested that real skating or hockey was out of the
question. Tom learned quickly and Sidney declared flatteringly that he
could make the team if he had the time for it.
Christmas came and went. It was a very busy season for Tom and the
sporting goods department did a wonderful business. A year ago he would
have laughed at the idea of there being as many sweaters in the world
as Cummings and Wright sold that year in the holidays! Tom had had a
factory turn out a brown coat-sweater with a broad blue band around the
middle, and those went like hot cakes.
The first of the new year Tom moved from Mrs. Cleary’s to a larger and
more comfortable room on Turner Street. In many ways he was sorry to
leave, as sorry, perhaps, as the Clearys were to have him. But his new
abode was much nearer the store and the school, the house was a better
one, and his new room well furnished. Besides, he could get his meals
under the same roof, which was an advantage. To be sure, it was going
to cost him well over a dollar more to live each week, but now he was
receiving his full wages of five dollars, for the pump had at last
been fully paid for and he held Cummings and Wright’s bill-of-sale for
it. He meant in the spring to take formal possession of it and have
it brought to town and stored in the basement of the store, where,
perhaps, it might find a purchaser. At Christmas his employers had
presented him with a five-dollar gold-piece and Uncle Israel had given
him the same amount, although it was in greasy one- and two-dollar
bills instead of shining metal. So, on the whole, he felt quite
affluent as he took possession of his new room.
It was on the front of the house and looked out into a quiet,
shabby-genteel little street in which boarding-houses and small
shops were indiscriminately mixed. But there were maple trees along
the sidewalk and a good-sized yard at one side of the house, and,
in summer, as he knew, for he had passed the house quite often on
his way to school, beds of geraniums and coleus. The landlady was a
grim-looking but kind-hearted elderly woman who supported a rather
worthless husband. Mr. Tully was always, it seemed to Tom, looking for
work and never finding it. He was a likable sort of little man, for all
his failings, and he and Tom got to be good friends in the course of
time. There were many roomers at Mrs. Tully’s and at dinner the long
table held always a dozen or more boarders. The food was sufficient,
but lacked what Tom called the “filling” qualities of Mrs. Burns’s
viands. He often sighed for one of the latter woman’s beef stews
with dumplings! At Mrs. Tully’s, if they had beef stew it was called
something else and served in dishes so tiny that Tom mentally referred
to them as “sample trays.”
The other members of the household were mostly clerks, many of them
employed at Miller and Tappen’s. There was one, however, Mr. George,
who had a more fascinating occupation. He was a private detective in
the employ of the railroad company, although Tom did not discover this
fact, which was not generally known, until he had been at Mrs. Tully’s
for a month. Then it was Mr. Tully who told him. Mr. Tully liked to
come to Tom’s “third-floor-front” in the evenings when Tom was at home
and, occupying the easy-chair, which he grumblingly declared was the
only comfortable chair in the house, put his feet on the window-ledge
and fill the room with the strong, acrid smoke of his big brown
meerschaum pipe. Somehow Tom didn’t mind his presence in the least and
could study quite as well when Mr. Tully was sitting there in silent
meditation as when he was alone. Mr. Tully was very fond of talking,
especially of Mr. Tully and the things he had done in his time, but he
never interfered with Tom’s studies.
That winter was a mild one in that part of Ohio, although there was
one fierce blizzard in late February which marooned Mr. Cummings, Joe
Gillig, Miss Miller, and Tom in the store all one night! It was not
until five in the morning that the storm abated sufficiently to allow
Miss Miller to get home and the men to wade to the restaurant across
the street and eat what was their first real meal in fifteen hours!
The snow stayed on the ground nearly a week and thereby prolonged
the winter sports considerably. It was one evening at that time that
Tom had his first breath-taking ride down Sumner’s Hill on Sidney’s
toboggan. He didn’t forget it for a long while, for it was as nearly
like flying as anything he ever expected to experience. They made three
trips up the hill that evening and as many down, while a big white
moon sailed overhead and seemed to look down companionably on them.
Tom would have had a perfectly dandy time all the evening had not
Sidney insisted on filling the toboggan to its capacity with girls on
the second trip. Tom tried to escape, but Sidney insisted that he was
needed at the back, and so Tom, with what little grace he could find,
squatted behind May Warner, who was his particular detestation, and
almost dropped off when half-way down the long, steep hill because he
refused to hold on to May and there wasn’t much else he could reach!
March came in like a lion, but soon tamed down, and a week of mild,
sunny days set the boys thinking of baseball. Even before this the
candidates for the high school team had been at work in a desultory
sort of way. There was no real baseball cage at their command, but a
long room in the basement of the school had been converted to their
use by placing wire screens over the high windows, and here a certain
amount of pitching and batting practice was gone through with. Owing,
however, to the poor light down there, this indoor work could hardly be
said to be very beneficial.
The baseball leader this year was Frank Warner, brother of May, a
senior-class fellow and not particularly popular. There was nothing
much wrong with him, save that he was what the fellows called “chesty.”
His father was president of the Traders’ National Bank, the largest
institution of the sort in that part of the state, and Frank couldn’t
forget the fact, it seemed. His “chestiness” made him scornful of
advice and impatient of authority. But he _could_ play ball; there was
no doubt about that; and it was to that fact that he owed his election
to the captaincy. He played second base and was the best batsman the
team had possessed in many years. As a leader he was as yet an unknown
quantity, and it was an open secret that the athletic association had
hesitated some time before endorsing his election, which hesitancy
was due to the well-known fact that he took unkindly to advice and
criticism, and the fear that he might not get along well with the coach.
The coach was a former high school boy named Talbot. He was no longer
a boy, being a sturdy young man of twenty-six and a promising lawyer
in Amesville. But Mr. Bennet A. Talbot’s practice was as yet not
large enough to prohibit him from giving much time every spring to
the coaching of the baseball team, an unremunerative task which he
performed for sheer love of the game and loyalty to the school. When
a youngster he had been known as “Bat,” a nickname derived from his
initials, and the appellation still held. A better man to take charge
of a group of boys couldn’t have been found, for he was still very
much of a boy himself in feelings, able to get a boy’s viewpoint,
sympathetic, and enthusiastic. But Mr. Talbot insisted on obedience,
and the school in general awaited with frank interest the first clash
of wills between coach and captain.
Both Thorny and Walter White were gone from the team this spring, but
Walter was still in Amesville and took much interest in the team. It
was Walter who continually insisted that Tom should come out for the
nine and who finally brought the matter to the coach’s attention, with
the result that Mr. Talbot called on Tom in the store one afternoon in
late March.
“Walter White,” he said, “tells me that you can pitch, Pollock. Now, we
need pitchers the worst way this spring. We’re pretty nearly destitute
in that line. What’s the matter with your trying for the job, Pollock?”
Tom explained that his work prevented. Mr. Talbot frowned, just as
Thorny had done, and was inclined to belittle the excuse. When,
however, Tom mildly inquired how he was to earn his board and lodging
if he gave up his position in the hardware store, the coach was at a
loss.
“If we were a professional team,” he replied with a smile, “we could
pay you a salary, but I’m afraid as it is we can’t. But I’m sorry.
White says you’ve got the making of a good pitcher, and it seems too
bad that we can’t get your help. I suppose there is no way that you
could arrange with your employers to get off in the afternoons?”
“I don’t think so, sir. You see, I’m only here, anyway, a few hours a
day--except on Saturdays. Besides, Mr. Talbot, I can’t pitch much. I
guess Walter was sort of--sort of exaggerating.”
The coach went away dissatisfied, and Tom sighed regretfully for what
might have been. An enticing vision of Tom Pollock, attired in the
brown-and-blue of Amesville High School, standing commandingly in the
pitcher’s box and dealing puzzling curves to a bewildered opponent,
came to him, and he sighed again as he folded up a pair of running
trunks and laid them away in their flat pasteboard box.
Sidney evolved all sorts of schemes for Tom’s emancipation from labour,
including a popular subscription to reimburse him for his wages and a
direct appeal by the athletic association, backed up by the school in
general, to Cummings and Wright!
“But I can’t pitch much, anyway!” Tom would declare, at last a bit
impatient. “You seem to think I’m a wonder, but, shucks, I wouldn’t
last two innings against Petersburg! All I’ve got is an out-shoot and a
straight ball!”
“Yes, a straight ball that goes about ninety miles an hour and crosses
the plate so fast you can’t see it until ten minutes after! And you’re
learning the drop, too! Of course, I don’t claim that you’re as good as
Thorny Brooks yet, but I do say that if you came out and let Bat Talbot
get hold of you you’d be a peach by the middle of the season. And I
think it’s a shame you can’t!”
And Tom thought so, too, although he didn’t say it!