Air pilots -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Unaware that the tackle was made by his own team mate, and still blind
to the fact that he was on the verge of making a victory for Harvard,
thus defeating his own college, Lefty, with every bit of strength he
possessed, squirmed and struggled from the tightening grasp of his
fellow player, triumphantly placing the ball just over the line as the
referee’s whistle ended the game.
Lefty rose with a triumphant smile of victory beaming upon his face,
yet, not quite understanding why the Harvard men should be shouting
hilariously, throwing their helmets in the air and slapping each other
on the back.
He walked over to where his team mates stood in a group silently with
the brand of defeat plainly visible upon the faces of each man. “Well, I
made it!” he announced jovially. “You made it, all right,” one of the
men answered, eyeing the boy with a look of disgust. “You ran the wrong
way and won the game for Harvard!”
“Take a look at the score board, two for Harvard, nothing for Yale, and
you gave them the two!” said another.
Lefty, who had been beaming over with exultation and self-satisfaction,
now stood motionless, his eyes glued upon the score board and his face
bearing a miserable, abject look of stupidity and failure.
Up in the stands, a rancorous Yale freshman seemed to take unusual
delight in the misery that had befallen Lefty’s mother and father and
the tears that filled the old lady’s eyes.
“It’s Okay, pop,” he shouted, “Harvard is going to give your son a nice
big ‘H’ for his grand play!”
Phelps, senior, did not venture to reply. His heart was breaking within
him. Slowly he lifted his arm and gently placed it around the slim
shoulders of his wife, managing to choke back the lump in his throat and
say, “Let’s go to him, Mother, I guess he needs us!” Maintaining their
wounded dignity, this fine old couple made their way from the stands,
passed the Yale men and their girls who boisterously flung taunts at
them.
In the box that had been occupied by the Marines, Panama sat in
convulsions of laughter, chiding his two buddies, hilarious over their
apparent discomfort.
“Say, that guy Phelps must be a Harvard man in disguise,” Panama roared,
literally doubled in two.
“Go on and laugh, you big punk,” retorted one of the other sergeants.
“Have a good time, but remember, I bet ten bucks on Yale and five of it
was yours!”
As Phelps and his team mates made their way to the Yale Dugout, a
battalion of reporters and cameramen followed closely upon their heels,
striving to get photographs of the disgraced player.
“Come on, take the air,” the Yale coach warned the news photographers,
as he kicked over one of their tripods; then addressing Lefty, spoke
kindly: “Forget it, kid; we’ll beat ’em next year, sure!”
The coach’s generosity only tended to heighten Lefty’s misery. He ran
and buried his head on his waiting mother’s shoulder, the shoulder that
had always been a haven of comfort to him in the past.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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