Ralph Barbour - Right Tackle Todd

His thoughts went back to the afternoon when Jim Todd had first edged into view and to Mart’s almost impassioned utterances just previous thereto. Clem smiled. Mart had been hankering for new types and then Jim had walked in quite as if he had been awaiting his cue off-stage! Clem’s smile, though, was caused by the recollection that Mart hadn’t been nearly so enthusiastic about “new blood” in the concrete – meaning Jim Todd – as he had been in “new blood” in the abstract! Mart had tolerated Jim, but had never derived much pleasure from the acquaintanceship. Old Mart was a heap more conservative than he had thought himself!

Then, thinking of Mart, Clem remembered how perfectly corking Jim had been during Mart’s illness. If he hadn’t done a great deal to help it was only because there had been so little he could do. He had always been ready, always eager, always sympathetic. Yes, and there were those two days when poor old Mart had been so beastly sick, and Clem had worried himself miserable, or would have if Jim hadn’t sort of stuck around and kept telling him that folks could be awfully ill with typhoid and yet pull out all hunky; that he’d seen it more’n once. Why, come to think of it, there had been three or four days when Jim had been with him half the time! How had he done it? He must have missed class more than once, and as for studying – well, he just couldn’t have studied!

Clem got up very suddenly, stuffed Jim’s letter in a pocket of his white flannels and stared savagely at an inoffensive palm in a gray stone jar. But though he looked at the palm he didn’t seem to be addressing it when he spoke, for what he said was: “Clem, you’re a low-lived yellow pup! Get it?”

Clem returned to school the day before the beginning of the Fall term to find Alton looking sun-smitten and feeling exceedingly hot. The air, after the fresh, sweet breezes of the Berkshires, seemed stale and stifling, although when the cab had borne him past the business section of the town and residences surrounded by lawns and gardens and shaded by trees had taken the place of brick blocks there was a perceptible change for the better. It had been a dry summer and the campus showed it as Clem was hurried up Meadow street. The trees looked droopy and the grass parched. The buildings lined across the brow of the campus had a deserted appearance, with only here and there a window open to the faint stir of air. He almost wished he had waited until to-morrow.

The cab swerved to the right, proceeded a short distance along the gravel and stopped with a sudden setting of squeaking brakes in front of the first building. Clem helped the driver upstairs with the trunk, their feet echoing hollowly in the empty corridors. Number 15 was hot and close, and Clem sent the two windows banging up even before he paid the cabman. When the latter had gone clattering down again Clem removed his jacket and looked speculatively about him. The old room looked sort of homelike, after all, he concluded. He was glad that Mart had decided to leave his furnishings and pictures for the present. Jim Todd’s possessions up in Number 29, as Clem recalled them, were few and more useful than ornamental! Of course, Clem could have spread his own pictures and things about a bit more, but they’d probably have looked sort of thin. He opened the door of Mart’s closet and the drawers of his chiffonier and sighed as he saw what a deal of truck there was to be packed. However, he had the rest of the afternoon and most of the morning for his task. He routed a packing-case of Mart’s from the basement store-room, tugged it up to the room and started to work.

At five o’clock he had made the disconcerting discovery that Mart’s clothing and books and small possessions, which had seemed to bulk so large before, wouldn’t fill the big box more than three-quarters full, and had thrown himself into a chair to consider the fact and cool off when footsteps sounded below the window and then came nearer up the stairs. Then a voice sounded.

“You up there, Clem?”

“Yes! Come on up!”

“Saw your window open,” panted Lowell Woodruff as he came in, looking very warm, “and thought you must be up here. How are you?” The two shook hands, and Lowell subsided on the window-seat. “What’s brought you back so early?”

Clem pointed to the packing-case. “Mart’s not coming back this fall, and I’ve got the job of getting his stuff packed up and shipped home to him.”

“Oh! Yes, I heard he was off to the Continong, lucky brute! What price a winter on the Riviera, eh? Some guys get it soft! Who’s coming in here with you?”

“A chap named Todd. You know him, I guess. He’s in our class.”

“Jim Todd? Sure I know him! And I’d like to meet up with the silly ass, too. He got notice to report for early practice, and he hasn’t shown hide nor hair.”

“Football?” Clem laughed. “I don’t believe you’ll catch him, Woodie. Didn’t you know he tried it last year and resigned?”

“Crazy nut!” said Lowell disgustedly. “Sure, I knew it, but that’s got nothing to do with this year. Listen, that guy ought to be able to play football, Clem. He was all right for a fellow who didn’t know anything about it, but he didn’t get handled right, see? He’s queer. Stubborn, too, sort of. And Dolf Chapin wouldn’t see it. You know Dolf. Thinks every one’s got to dance when he fiddles. Todd got discouraged and told Dolf so and Dolf laughed at him and told him to quit his kidding. Bet you I could have kept Todd going and made him like it.”

“Why didn’t you?” asked Clem.

“What chance? You know Dolf. Nice guy and all that, but no one else must say a word when he’s around. An assistant coach here hasn’t any say about anything. All he does is run errands and pick up things that the players throw down. I could see that Todd was getting tired and – ”

“You really think he could play?” asked Clem incredulously.

“Jim Todd? Sure he could! Why not? Put twenty pounds on him – ”

“How would you do it?”

“Feed him up, of course. Pshaw, fellows like him don’t know what to eat. Three weeks at training table would put the tallow on him so you wouldn’t know him!”

“Wasn’t he at table last Fall?”

“No. He would have been if he’d stuck a few days longer, I guess, but there were six or eight fellows who didn’t come to the table until after the Hillsport game. That was another of Dolf’s fool notions.”

“How many fellows have you got here now?”

“Fourteen. Billy Frost didn’t show up; missed a steamer or something; and a couple more failed us. Your friend Todd was one. He didn’t even write and tell us to chase ourselves, drat him! And we need another tackle like thunder.”

“Tackle!” Clem whistled. Then he chuckled. “Gosh, Woodie, I can’t see Jim Todd playing tackle! How’d you happen to send him a call, anyway? Thought you only had the old players back for this early season stunt.”

“We needed tackles, like I’m telling you, and both Johnny and I liked Todd’s looks last season, and there weren’t many fellows for the position. Doggone it, Clem, you don’t realize that we lost most of the team last June!”

“How come? Billy Frost, Charley Levering, Fingal, Whittier – ”

“Oh, sure! And ‘Pep’ Kinsey and ‘Rolls’ Roice; but outside of Billy and Gus Fingal and Pep Kinsey they’re all new men, aren’t they? Sure, they played against Kenly, but that don’t make ’em veterans! We’ve got to build a whole new team – pretty near, Clem. That’s why I want all the fellows I can get who happen to know a football from a chocolate sundae, and that’s why I’d like to see this here Jim Long-legged Todd and tell him what I think of him!”