Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  On the next play, St. John drove through tackle, made only a couple of yards. On the next, trying left end, St. John got exactly a foot. Then St. John was stopped in its tracks.

  And now, Deep Valley’s cheers had a new note—a spontaneous, excited note. Not because, with the fourth down coming up, St. John must kick. Not because St. John, that invincible, that unstoppable eleven, had been held. But because one Deep Valley player had been in on all three plays, had jammed ruggedly into each St. John ball carrier, hauling him up short as much as to say, “Where do you think you’re going, Bub?” And that player was Maddox.

  “Maddox! Maddox! Maddox! Maddox!” The frenzied repetition lifted into the cold air, rolled across the frozen field, and Maddox waved a hand as though to signal, “Wait till you see what comes next!” Nor did he try to conceal the fact that his lovely underlip, unmarred through all the season, was now as fat as a slab of liver from rude contact with some St. John knee, or hip or shoulder, or maybe even knuckles.

  Betsy, quick with a quotation which would have delighted Miss Bangeter, flung exultant arms about Tib, “Richard is himself again!” And Tib, hugging Betsy in return, shrieked “An eye for an eye!” and thought that she, too, was quoting Shakespeare.

  Well, if it wasn’t an eye for an eye, it was almost exactly Richard, himself, again. Led by a brand new, or perhaps the original, Maddox, as opposed to the one previously on display, Deep Valley did what no other team had been able to do all season. It held St. John’s giants, that irresistible force, to one touchdown and a field goal in the first half.

  The score, according to the point system used in those days, was 8 to 0.

  During the intermission, Deep Valley rooters made the gray sky ring. They talked feverishly, rushed to get information.

  “What’s happened?” Betsy asked Joe. “What’s got into Maddox?”

  He beamed into her face, although she felt sure he hardly saw her.

  “Plenty!” he cried. “Plenty!”

  She couldn’t keep him by her side. He would pause for a moment and then he was gone, shouting, cheering, groaning.

  Lloyd returned from a visit to the team.

  “That lip of Ralph’s is bad.”

  “What’s he going to do? Go out of the game?”

  “Not a bit of it,” he answered, as though the question were absurd. “You couldn’t get Maddox out of this game with a corkscrew.”

  The second half began in an atmosphere of tingling excitement. But in spite of Deep Valley’s furious resistance, St. John made another touchdown. They kicked goal and the score stood 14 to 0. Despite furious struggle it was still 14 to 0, with ten minutes of the final half to play.

  Oddly enough, Deep Valley wasn’t discouraged. It had expected to lose, and it found consolation in the magnificent, unbelievable performance of Maddox. He hadn’t stopped St. John. But no one could stop St. John. Defeat was inevitable. Therefore, the sensible course was to find joy in Maddox and let the score go Gallagher.

  And Maddox was magnificent! No longer was he protecting his profile. He thought nothing today of his ravishing nose. He did not care a hang for his beautiful mouth, his beguiling eyes. The profile was a smear, part red, part mud. The nose was a blob. His mouth had been banged, swatted, slugged, and probably jumped on until it was less mouth than pucker. His left eye was closed tighter than a drum.

  But the right eye of Maddox, the once-again great Maddox, was wide open and full of fire and fight. With the score 14 to 0 and ten minutes to play, it surveyed the battle field with heroic confidence.

  St. John had just scored its second touchdown, and Deep Valley was waiting for the kickoff. Close to his own goal line, Maddox balanced lightly, and his voice charged through his fellow players like an electric shock.

  “Come on, guys! Three touchdowns in ten minutes. Don’t tell me we can’t do it!”

  St. John kicked and Maddox received. And he ran. He ran like a veteran fox. He sliced left from the fifteen-yard line until he was almost out of bounds but twenty yards forward. Thereafter nobody, not even the watchful Joe, could have told how he went. But everybody knew that in a riot of cheers from Deep Valley and groans from St. John he went this way and that, stiff-arming half a dozen tacklers for a touchdown. A moment later he kicked goal.

  Deep Valley called time out. The smear on Maddox’s face was more crimson than ever. Somewhere in his eighty-five-yard run Maddox had hit something with his face. Something almost beyond belief had happened to that underlip. Stewie trotted onto the field and Joe ran after him. The crowd watched the conference, saw Dennie swing a fond hand across Maddox’s muddy shoulder.

  Joe came back for a breathless moment later to report the conversation.

  “Better come out, son,” Stewie had said.

  Maddox had laughed. If there was a touch of histrionics in the laugh he was entitled to it.

  “Tape me up,” he said. “I’ll hold together. But,” he added, grinning at Dennie, “don’t bother to bring any comb.”

  That was when Dennie had hugged him.

  Dennie kicked off. It was a beautiful kick, high and deep into a corner. A St. John player took it on the four-yard line, ran into destruction, and the ball exploded out of his arms and bobbled sidewise, free and more inviting than a star sapphire.

  It was Maddox who had made the tackle, and it was Maddox, scrambling like a frog, who recovered the fumble. It was Maddox who carried the ball on the next play, with head lowered, like a frantic bull, to plough over for a second touchdown. This time he missed the kick and the score stood St. John 14, Deep Valley 11.

  Once again he refused to go out of the game when Stewie came trotting onto the field to worry over that lip.

  “How much more time have we got?” Maddox asked (and Joe repeated).

  “Six minutes.”

  “I can do it,” Maddox said, and although earlier that season the whole team would have resented the first person singular, now everyone conceded his right to it.

  “He said it as calmly as he might have said, ‘Give me a malted milk,’” Joe reported, and the whole Deep Valley rooting section was sure he would make another touchdown.

  But not calmly sure. The Deep Valley rooting section now was made up entirely of maniacs. These banged one another on the head, beat one another on the shoulders, stamped, waved arms and blankets, even tossed overshoes in the air, although any rooter with any sense must have realized that in a little while overshoeless feet would turn to five-toed icicles.

  “Maddox! Maddox! Maddox!” The urgent yell—mingled treble and bass—soared up and up.

  Deep Valley kicked off again. This time Dennie did less well. A St. John player took the kick behind nice interference on the twenty-yard line and moved to the thirty. And on three plays, the big, bold St. John backfield, aided by the big, bold St. John line, moved twelve yards more. On the next three plays, the same combination made a second first down. On the next three, a third, then a fourth.

  Now with the ball on Deep Valley’s twenty-two, St. John struck again, off tackle; but this time Deep Valley gave only a yard. Rather, Maddox gave. He was in on the runner like a heavy, tired battering ram. Nor did St. John gain much on the next play or the next; only a yard each time. So it was Deep Valley’s ball, on Deep Valley’s nineteen-yard line. It was eighty-one yards to go for a touchdown. And once again Maddox asked his same question.

  “How much time?”

  “Four minutes.”

  Joe came back with the story.

  “I can’t run with the ball any more,” Maddox said. “Not a long run. My legs are giving out. But look! We’ll do it this way. Listen!”

  They listened, and agreed, and to the confusion of St. John’s followers and the delight of the Deep Valley rooters, hoarse now, but still able to rasp out some sort of roar, they did it Maddox’s way.

  Maddox smashed six yards through center, his lip crimson, bare of tape because he would not stop to patch it. Stan made three off tackle, because St. John was set t
o stop not him, but Maddox. Dennie made a first down, loping wide around left end for the same reason. That brought Deep Valley to its own thirty-five-yard line.

  Maddox smashed through center, and lost his helmet but would not bother to pick it up. Dave, long, light, and swift, duplicated Dennie’s earlier lope. It was first down again on Deep Valley’s forty-seven. And so, with Maddox smashing just often enough to make St. John watch him, while Stan, Dennie, or Dave loped the needed distance, Deep Valley got to St. John’s forty-yard line, to the twenty-five, and the twelve, and finally the two.

  Off on the side line, Betsy and Tacy were screaming, but Tib was standing as stiffly silent as a triumphant little blond school teacher who had succeeded in larruping her class’s biggest boy. Joe was watching coolly on the flank, his penciled notes accurate and precise, but his eyes flashing. And all around, Deep Valley rooters even in advance of victory were taunting the sons and daughters of St. John, dejected now even in advance of defeat.

  There was a pause, and once more Joe brought back the story.

  “You take it over, Ralph,” said Stan.

  “That’s right,” said Dave. “You take it, Ralph. We’ll open a hole.” And the breathless line, gathered around, echoed him. “We’ll open a hole.”

  Maddox looked at them with affection, but his smeared face, with its incredible lip, set decisively.

  “Nope,” he said. “I’ll open the hole, with some help from the rest of you. Dennie will go for the touchdown.”

  “No!” cried Dennie. “Say! I’ve just been going along for the ride.”

  “You rode me, kid,” Maddox said. “But I had it coming and now you’re going to get what you wanted.”

  They couldn’t talk him down. That was the way it was. Dennie took the ball, Maddox ran interference, shouldered one tackier out of the way, rammed another full, and, falling, had his nose almost ripped by Dennie’s cleats as Dennie’s feet flashed through the hole Maddox had made to victory. Dave kicked goal. The final score was Deep Valley 17, St. John 14.

  On the St. John side of the field, loyal rooters tried to cheer and didn’t do badly. In the Deep Valley section, the cheers were better than good. Everyone was jumping up and down and screaming. Tib wasn’t only screaming; she was crying. She kept wiping her eyes and blowing her nose but she didn’t seem to know that she was doing it. She kept right on cheering through it all.

  Maddox tried to walk off the field but found himself seized by strong, affectionate, and perhaps apologetic hands. Then he was up on the shoulders of Stan and Dave and three or four more. That was the way he went off the field.

  The Deep Valley rooters cake-walked off behind him. They cake-walked up Main Street and all who could crowd in had supper in a restaurant which was only slightly less noisy than the football field had been. Winona started a game of drop the handkerchief under an arc light, and they waited for their train at the depot in the midst of bedlam, while chaperoning teachers looked on with sympathetic mirth.

  On the return trip, Maddox sat with Tib. His left eye was green, blue, and black, and an enormous bandage covered his lip. Tib’s hand was slipped through his arm. She was preening her yellow head.

  The other girls hung over him. Even Irma came.

  “How did you ever do it?” she asked, her large eyes soft and adoring.

  Tib nudged her and clapped her hands lightly.

  “Shoo!” she whispered. “Shoo!”

  Maddox turned his battered head stiffly to look down at Tib and smile.

  11

  “Cheer Up”

  IT WAS FORTUNATE THAT November was cold, with snow on the ground and an icy bite in the air, for the Rays had to create some early Christmas spirit. Julia’s box must be mailed by the first of December. And it must be crammed with love and fun and the feeling of home, for Julia was homesick.

  In spite of the luxury at the Von Hetternichs’, in spite of her joy at studying in Germany, she was homesick, as she had been at the State University. It was torturing, she said, to be homesick all the time and yet not want to come home.

  She definitely didn’t want to come home. She was studying the role of Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and loved it. But Deep Valley, the green house on High Street, held her more firmly than she had dreamed they would when she went out into the Great World.

  “Oh, dear!” she wrote. “I dread Christmas Day both for you and for me. I’m sorrier for myself, though. You have only me to be lonesome for, but I have each separate one of you to long for and be sorry I was ever bad to.”

  “As though she was ever bad to any of us!” said Mrs. Ray.

  Betsy, feeling weepy, said briskly, “She certainly needs that motto, Margaret.”

  Margaret was embroidering a motto for Julia. “Cheer Up,” it said. Betsy was embroidering one for her father that said, “Don’t Worry,” in black thread tricked out with red French knots. No one ever worried less than Mr. Ray, and Betsy was very poor at sewing. But all the girls were making mottos, and so Betsy was making one. Whether it would be finished in time for Christmas was problematical. She lost her needle, tangled her thread, pricked her finger, and dripped blood.

  “You don’t need to bother with French knots. Just keep on pricking your finger,” Tacy joked.

  Margaret’s motto was a model of neatness. Every day when she came in from school, after she had practised her piano lesson and petted the dog and cat, she sat down in her rocker and embroidered.

  Mrs. Ray was making Julia a waist, silk, of a violet-blue which matched her eyes. Betsy had bought her a set of collar pins. Anna was stuffing dates and making nougat.

  Mr. Ray was sending an extra check. It was what Julia had asked for. She had not realized until she went to Europe how many different kinds of lessons were necessary if you were going to be an opera singer.

  By the time the box had gone, Thanksgiving was upon them. This year it was the Slades’ turn to entertain. The Rays alternated Thanksgiving dinner with their friends, the Slades.

  Betsy liked the arrangement, for Tom was just her age. He always came back from Cox Military full of the latest slang. This year he said, “Curses, Jack Dalton! Give me the child!”

  Tom was a large boy, with rough dark hair and thick glasses. In his uniform he was meticulously neat; he had to be. But he didn’t like being neat, and in “civvies” he was always rumpled. He liked to read and play the violin.

  He was a very old friend. He had sat behind Betsy and Tacy in kindergarten. He liked Tacy.

  “Let’s go up to the Kellys’,” he said off-handedly, after Thanksgiving dinner was over.

  The Kelly house was crowded with brothers and sisters home for the holidays. Tom and Betsy were warmly welcomed and offered nuts, chocolates, apples, and spare pieces of pie. But Tacy paid more attention to Betsy than she did to Tom.

  “I don’t seem to get anywhere with Tacy,” Tom burst out, as he and Betsy started home through the gray November dusk.

  “Oh, Tacy’s like that. She doesn’t make a fuss over anybody.”

  “She makes a fuss over you.”

  “With boys, I mean. She likes you a lot, Tom.”

  “Well, she certainly doesn’t act it,” growled Tom. “Not that it matters! The world is full of girls.”

  Betsy couldn’t permit that. “Not redheaded ones with big Irish eyes,” she said.

  Tom burst out laughing. “Curses, Jack Dalton!” he said.

  The next day Betsy was going to have coffee with Tib, but she went to the Kelly house first. She maneuvered to get Tacy alone and with what she considered great tact brought the conversation around to Tom.

  “Dearest Chuck,” she said, “if you don’t mind a suggestion, you ought to be nicer to Tom.”

  “Why, Sweet My Coz?” Tacy inquired.

  “Well, he’s a nice boy. And he likes you. And everybody’s going with somebody.”

  “I don’t want to go with anybody.”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “No
more than I do anybody else,” said Tacy honestly. “I like Cab and Dennie and Tony and Tom…all those boys I know well.”

  Betsy grew earnest. “You’d better look out. Tom is too desirable a boy to keep running after a girl who treats him like a stick of wood.”

  “I don’t treat him like a stick of wood,” said Tacy. “But I certainly don’t feel mushy about him.”

  “He’ll start rushing somebody else.”

  “Let him!”

  “But, Tacy, who would take you to the holiday parties?”

  “Nobody, probably, and I don’t give a hoot,” said Tacy serenely.

  The puzzle was that this was true. Tacy liked the Crowd, she liked fun, but she just didn’t like boys, not in the way the other girls did.

  Betsy and Tib talked it over later at coffee. The Mullers had coffee every afternoon. Betsy had acquired the delicious vice in Milwaukee. There were usually cakes—apple cake or coffee cake sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. At the very least, there were delectable cookies.

  Betsy, who had a sweet tooth, dropped in often, and her visits were mirth-filled occasions, for the Mullers, who took a great interest in her study of German, would allow her to speak no English. She must ask for cream, sugar, cakes, say “please” and “thank you,” tell her news only in German. Fred and Hobbie, choking down laughter at her mistakes, would point to objects on the table and shout their German names. Matilda came in from the kitchen to join the fun.

  But today Betsy and Tib took their coffee upstairs.

  Tib was cutting out a dress. She was making some of her own clothes this year.

  “I was so fussy that Mamma told me I’d better make them myself, and I told her all right I would,” said Tib, running daring scissors through a length of pink silk spread out on the bed.

  “Oh, Tib, how smart you are!” Betsy said. “Is that for the Christmas parties? I’m going to have a white wool, trimmed with gold.”

  “It sounds lovely. I hope there’ll be millions of dances. I hear there’s going to be one at the Melborn Hotel.”

  “Really? How marvelous!”