Damon Knight - Orbit 15

About an hour before the first game of the football season, Sam sat in front of her locker, having her wrists and hands taped. Willie’s locker was next to hers, but they rarely spoke before a game. She was generally too nervous and tense, and Willie hated having to coddle her feelings. Instead, they just pretended to concentrate on their game plans; once they got out onto the field and started their warmup exercises, everything was all right. Sam’s anxiety disappeared as soon as she ran through the tunnel and saw the coffee-colored field and the vivid, frosty-white yard-lines. She kept up a chatty stream of conversation from then until the end of the game, with Willie, with Mac, with the assistant coaches on the sidelines, with the other players. She liked to taunt the people on the other team.

A woman named Kath stopped by Sam’s locker. She was a new member of the team, a large woman, a defensive end replacing a man named Sherman who had not been seen since the middle of baseball season. “What you think?” asked Kath.

“That depends,” said Sam, her voice hoarse and croaking. She would feel the jitteriness and sour stomach until they left the locker room. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean Jennings,” said Kath.

“Jennings is all right,” said Sam warily. The assistant coaches were Jennings’ men, the uniformed trusties were Jennings’ men, probably most of the other people were, too. Sometimes Willie hinted that he thought Sam was spying for Jennings. Sam never bothered to reply to that. She knew that Willie was serious.

“Sure,” said Kath, staring at her cleated shoes. “You know what I mean. I mean, well, he’s been acting so damn crazy lately. And I don’t know what he expects. In the game. If it was only like it used to be, I could understand. Mac was telling me—”

Sam held up one hand, unwrapped yet by the clubhouse man. “You don’t have to pay strict attention to Mac. You’ll learn that, if you stay with the team. Mac will repeat everything for you anyway, sooner or later. And he gets these theories of his. You’ll see.”

“Still, he said that Jennings was just using us,” said Kath. “The crazy act is just another way of getting what he wants out of us, and that we shouldn’t fall for it.”

“Can you suggest something else we can do in the meantime?” asked Willie, in a sullen voice.

“I want to finish getting taped,” said Sam. “And you better be damn sure you got your assignments straight,” she said to Kath, “because I’m in no mood to save your skin all afternoon if you get trapped to the outside.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Kath, with a forced laugh. There was silence, an uncomfortable amount of it; finally Kath shook her head and went back to her own locker. Willie had never looked at her, and he said nothing more. Sam had never looked up at Kath, either. She watched the man winding tape around her wrist and palm.

One of the men on the punting team stood up and spoke. “Before we get on with the usual pre-game prayer and stuff,” he said, “I want to welcome the new members of the team and wish them luck. I don’t mean I wish them luck in the game. We don’t need luck. We need teamwork. I mean I wish them luck after the game if they mess up.” There were a few meager laughs. “Now I’m going to ask Danielle to lead us in our—” The man was interrupted by the rodentlike squeak of the door to the coach’s office. Everyone fell silent, looking in that direction. Jennings entered the room.

He wore gray trousers and a maroon sport coat, a dark blue shirt, and a black tie. He had a gray snap-brim hat on his head, and he carried a clipboard. He handed this to one of his assistants who followed him from the office. “I want to say something,” said Jennings. He needed nothing to gather the attention of the team members. Jennings paused for a tiny instant. “None of you ever met a young man who used to be on this team. His name was Bo. That’s what we all called him. Bo. But you’ve heard of him, you know what a reputation he had and what he meant to this team. Some of the other people, on other teams, called him ‘the Trog.’ He was big, and he was fierce. But he was a gentle person, and that was why I and his teammates called him Bo, instead of the nickname he had earned. Still, he was proud of ’the Trog.’ One day he said to me, ‘Coach,’ he said, ‘if ever the team is in a close one, and the breaks are beating our boys, tell them to give it all they’ve got, and go out and win just one for “the Trog.” I don’t know where I’ll be then, Coach, but I’ll know, and I’ll be happy.’ Those were about the last words he ever spoke to me. That’s something I’ve never told anyone before. Well, this is the beginning of a new season. We had a damn good season last year. But this is a new season. Last year’s scores are in the record books, not on the scoreboard outside. But if you can find just a particle of the devotion, just a minute scrap of the love and determination of that kid Bo, well, all I can say is, I know he’d be happy. Well. That’s all I have to say.” Jennings’ voice had begun clear and forceful, but as he recounted his story, it changed. It grew slower and thicker, choked with emotions that he had never shown until recently. Under other circumstances, his audience might have been moved. Instead, they were seized with fear. Jennings’ words and tortured expressions left them feeling helpless, leaderless. Their great source of constancy and security faltered before their eyes. He turned, one hand raised to his eyes. His shoulders shook as though he were sobbing.

“Goddamn it,” said Sam softly. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“We’re going to make them eat the ball, that’s what,” said Willie. “And not because of some damn good old boy named Bo, neither. Because if we don’t, we’ll spend Sevenday evening twisting on our bunks trying to keep from swallowing our tongues.”

“But what about Jennings?”

“Are you all right, Coach?” asked one of the other players. Jennings didn’t answer.

One of the assistant coaches leaned close to Jennings’ ear. Sam watched carefully, hearing some of the man’s words, lip-reading the rest. “Where we going now, sir?” he asked.

Jennings’ reply was low but audible, his voice steady. “Gotta give the speech to the other team,” he said. Sam was sure that she was the only one of the players who heard. The others were too involved in shouting promises of dedication and valor.

“The trouble with real life,” said Sam to herself, “is you never really have the option to punt.”

Mac sat in his seat in the lecture hall, waiting for Jennings to arrive, wondering how the man was going to act. Jennings’ performances seemed too theatrical to Mac, too transparent. Now that Mac believed that he had a secret insight into Jennings’ manipulative practices, other details that he had previously taken for granted acquired new significance. The lecture hall itself was no longer unsettling; it had evidently been designed to make the audience feel vulnerable, the low, oppressive ceiling having that psychological effect. Mac leaned back in his chair and smiled. He no longer felt vulnerable. He was only amused by Jennings and his rather juvenile tricks.

The muttering voices in the audience quieted when Jennings walked into the lecture hall. Mac studied the man, as well as he could from the distance of nearly fifty ranks. Jennings did not seem particularly distracted, as he had been on several recent occasions. He walked quickly to his podium, shuffled a few papers, then stared briefly across the vast, ordered collection of faces. His voice, when he spoke, was steady, deep, and as full of authority as ever. Mac smiled again; he was delighted that Jennings was in such control, that the intellectual puzzle which Jennings seemed determined to develop was of the most complex variety.