Joe Talmadge came to Hollins from some fresh-water college out in Wisconsin. Anyway, they called it a college, but Joe had hard work getting into the upper middle class at Hollins, and Hollins is only a prep school, so it seems that his college, which was called Eureka or Excelsior or something like that, couldn’t have ranked with Yale or Princeton. His father had died the spring before. He had been in the lumber business in a place called Green Bay and had made a pile of money, I guess. They had opened an office or agency or something in Philadelphia a year or so before and when Mr. Talmadge died the other men in the company decided that Joe was to finish getting an education right away and take charge of the Philadelphia end of the business. It was Joe’s idea to finish up somewhere in the East, because, as he said, folks back East were different and he’d ought to learn their ways. That’s how he came to duck his Excelsior place and come to Hollins.
The first time I saw him was the evening of the day before the Fall term began. They’d made me proctor on the third floor of Hyde Hall and after supper that night I was unpacking in number forty-three when I heard a beast of a rumpus down the corridor and hiked out to see what was doing. It seemed that they’d put Joe in thirty-seven with a fellow named Prentice, who hails from Detroit. Prentice was all right except that his dad had made money too quickly. He had invented a patent brake lining or something for automobiles and everyone wanted it and he had made a pile of money in about six years and it had sort of gone to Tom Prentice’s head. He wasn’t a bad sort, Tom wasn’t, but he could be beastly offensive if he set out to. When I knocked at thirty-seven no one inside heard me because there was too much noise. So I just walked in. The study table was lying on its side and the gas drop light—we didn’t have electricity in Hyde then—was dangling a couple of inches from the floor at the end of its green tube. Tom Prentice was lying on his neck on one of the beds with his heels near the ceiling and Joe was standing over him waiting for him to come back to earth. Joe didn’t look mad, but he looked mighty earnest.
He was seventeen, but big for his years, wide-shouldered and powerful looking. He had a nice sort of face, with gray eyes and very dark hair and a good deal of sunburn. His hair needed trimming and some of it was dangling down over his forehead, making him look sort of desperate, and I wondered what would happen to me if I had to step in between them. But I didn’t. Joe stopped knocking Tom around for a minute and I explained that I was proctor and accountable for the peace and quiet of that floor. By that time Tom was sitting on the bed looking dazed and holding one hand to his jaw. I never did find out what had actually started the riot, but it was something that Tom had said about the sovereign State of Wisconsin, I think. I persuaded them to shake hands and forget it and Tom said he hadn’t meant whatever it was just the way Joe had taken it, and when I went out Joe was fussing around Tom with arnica and wet towels.
They got on all right together after that first show-down. Maybe Tom realized that he was no match for Joe. Tom wasn’t any frail lad, either. He weighed about a hundred and sixty and was eighteen years old and played left guard on the Eleven. It was Tom who induced Joe to go out for football. Joe had played a little out West, but had never taken it seriously, and didn’t show any enthusiasm for it now, only Tom kept at him, I guess. Anyway, I saw Joe working with the dubs a day or two after the term began. They had him going through the motions at center on the fourth or fifth scrub. I remember saying to Larry Keets, who was assistant manager that Fall, that “that guy Talmadge was built for the part, all right.” Keets looked across and grinned.
“Yeah, he’s built for it, maybe, but he handles the ball like it was a basket of eggs. Morgan”—Morgan was our coach—“was eying him yesterday, but he’s still where he is. Anyway, we’ve got centers and guards and tackles to burn. It’s back field men we need, Zach, and a couple of good ends.”
Which was all true. We’d lost seven out of the fifteen men who had played in the big game last Fall, and all but two were backs. Of the two, one was an end and the other was a guard. Coach Morgan and Truitt, our right tackle and captain, were raking the whole school for halfback material and not having much success in finding any.
I ought to say here that Hollins had been having a run of perfectly rotten luck for four years. Enwright Academy was our big rival and Enwright had beaten us three times and played us to a scoreless tie once in those four years. It had got so that a win over the blue and gold was something mythical, like the dodo or the dope about Hercules and the Nemean lion. No one in school when I was there had ever seen Hollins beat Enwright at football and we’d got so that we’d stopped hoping, or at least expecting, anything like that to happen. And along about the middle of October, by which time we had been licked three times, we had resigned ourselves to the regular programme: mass meetings, secret practice, plenty of cheering, bluffing to the last minute and—defeat.
We played a ten game schedule that year. The week before the Enwright game we had Gloversville coming back for a return engagement, Gloversville being calculated to give us good practice and no risk of injuries to our players.
About the last week in October I got a surprise. I went down to the field one Thursday afternoon with a couple of the fellows to watch practice. Morgan had started secret sessions, but to-day they had opened the gates. There had been several cuts in the squad by that time and only the first and second teams were left; perhaps thirty-four or five fellows in all. They were scrimmaging when we got there and the second was trying to get over the first’s goal line from the fifteen yards. They made two tries, wide end runs both of them, and didn’t gain an inch, but after each play I noticed that one of the second team men had to trot back about twenty yards to get into position again. Whoever he was, he had just romped through the first’s line and was behind the goal posts each time. Then, when we had got over opposite the play, I saw that it was Joe Talmadge. On the next down the second’s quarter fumbled and after the ball had rolled around awhile the second team’s full-back fell on it. It seemed to me that almost any one of the first team forwards should have broken through and got that pigskin, but they didn’t, and it dawned on me that the reason they didn’t was just because the second’s center had been too stiff for them. After the second had tried a place kick and failed, the ball went back to mid-field, and during the next seven or eight minutes of that scrimmage I watched Joe closely. And what I saw made me wonder if Coach Morgan had lost his eyesight, for Joe simply played Pride to a standstill. Not once did the first make a gain anywhere near the middle of the second team’s line, and when the second finally got the pigskin again, after Stringer had made a mess of a run around left end, it was always Joe who led the way through. He would just spin Pride around like a top, or push him back like he was a straw man, and romp past him. But why Morgan didn’t see it was more than I could figure out, and that evening, after commons, I tackled Captain Truitt. Tru and I were pretty good friends, for I had got him into Arcanium the year before.
“Talmadge?” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I know, Zach. He’s been putting up a corking game on the second right along for two weeks, but when we try him on the first he falls down flat. We’ve had him over twice. The first time we thought it was stage fright, but he was just as bad the next. Sometimes fellows are like that. They’ll work like Trojans for the scrubs and be no earthly good on the first. Coach hauled him over the coals last week about it and all Talmadge could say was that ‘he didn’t know.’ Too bad, for he’d come mighty near to making trouble for Enwright.”
“It doesn’t sound like sense to me,” I said. “If he can play like a whirlwind on one team why can’t he do it on another.”
“Search me,” said Tru, “but some fellows are like that. Coach talks of trying him again Saturday against Wooster High. I don’t know if he will, though, for we can’t afford to take any chances. I’d like mighty well,” he added bitterly, “to win one more game this season.”
“One!” said I. “Oh, run away, Tru! The trouble with you chaps is that you’ve lost faith in yourselves. You’re so used to getting the short end of it that you can’t believe in winning. Buck up!”
“That’s a fact, old man! I believe you’re dead right. We’re so used to being rotten that we don’t know how to be anything else. What we need is one of these psychology sharks to come around and sort of hypnotize us into a new state of mind. Short of that, Zach, we’ll do the same old stunt again.”
“Psychology, your grandmother! Use your beans! Why shouldn’t we win from Enwright? What’s to prevent? Why——”
“Nothing, except that they’ve got the best team they’ve had in three years and we’ve got a worse one than we had last year. And last year they beat us by seventeen——”
“Sure! I know! You needn’t go into the sickening details. But it’s idiotic to think that you’re bound to be licked, Tru. I’m not much on the psychology stuff, but I do think that there’s a whole lot in believing that you’re going to get what you want. Why not try it?”
“Oh, I do. That is, I try to. I don’t talk this way to the fellows, Zach. You’re different. You don’t talk. And it’s a relief to be gloomy once in awhile. On the field I have to be ‘Little Sunshine’ until my mouth aches from grinning.”
“Well, for the love of lemons don’t quit yet, Tru. Keep a stiff upper lip and maybe you’ll pull off a miracle.”
Whether Joe Talmadge got onto the first or not was no affair of mine, but I sort of liked the chap, what little I’d seen of him, and, besides, it looked to me as if the team ought to go up against Enwright with the best players to be found. Anyway, I munched it over going across the yard, and when I got to the third floor of Hyde I stopped at thirty-seven and knocked. Someone said “Come in,” and I opened the door. Joe was alone. Tom, he said, hadn’t come back from supper, and would I wait? I had meant to ask Tom if there wasn’t some way of getting Joe to put up a fight when they got him on the first, thinking that maybe he could talk it over with his roommate and find out what the trouble was. I certainly hadn’t intended talking to Joe himself about it, but that’s just what I found myself doing a few minutes later. Joe was a nice sort and he kind of made you say what you had on your mind. Maybe he had what they call magnetism. Anyway, there I was pretty soon talking it over with him, he lolling back on the window seat, hugging his long legs and looking thoughtful.
“You’ve got me, Morris,” he said finally. “They’re dead right about it, too. Some way, when they stick me in there on the first I sort o’ lose my pep. I don’t know why. Say, do you believe in—in——”
He stopped and I said “Fairies?”
“No, but atmosphere.”
“Sure, Talmadge! I’m a firm believer in it,” said I earnestly, not knowing what he was driving at.
“Honest?” He seemed pleased and I was glad I’d said the right thing. “Well, sometimes I think it’s atmosphere that does it.”
“Does what?” I asked, puzzled.
“Why, makes me play so dog-gone punk on the first,” he explained gravely. “I’ll tell you, Morris,” he dropped his knees and thrust his big hands into his trousers pockets, “when I’m playing on the second I—I kind of feel like I was doing something that wanted to be done. I feel like the fellows around me wanted to win the scrimmage. But when they put me over in the other line I don’t get that—that feeling at all. I suppose that sounds like silly stuff to you, but——”
“Hold on!” I said. “It doesn’t, Talmadge. I believe you’ve found the answer. I believe you’ve put your thumb right on the—the tack! That’s just what you would feel on the first, I’ll bet. Those chumps have been licked so often they don’t believe in themselves any more.”
“That it? Well, that’s the way I feel, and I don’t seem to be able to get rid of it. I guess that coach thinks I’m an awful dub, but I can’t help it. I try hard enough, but the—whatdoyoucallit—incentive isn’t there. Or something. Atmosphere I’ve called it. Or feeling. Something.”
We talked it over quite a bit. I thought he was right about the trouble, and I still think so. I got him finally to promise to make a good hard bid the next time. “Just try your best to forget the atmosphere,” said I. “Play your own game, Talmadge. Make up your mind that, no matter whether the rest of the team want to win or get licked, you yourself are dead set on winning. Will you do it?”
“Sure! Much obliged. It’s good of you to—to bother.” He insisted on shaking hands. “If he lets me in Saturday I’ll do the best I can. Maybe it won’t be much, though. After all, I don’t know an awful lot about football. Just the rudiments. But I’ll see if I can’t—” he hesitated, smiled and went on—“can’t create my own atmosphere.”
I had planned to go home Saturday after dinner, but I stayed around and saw the game and took the five-twelve instead. I wish I hadn’t, for we got most unmercifully beaten by Wooster. To be sure, Wooster had every bit of luck there was, but even taking that into consideration our fellows played a pretty punk game. The big disappointment to me was Joe. Morgan put him in at the start and let him finish the quarter, but he didn’t put up any sort of a fight. And I could see that he was trying, too. Wooster broke up our center time and again, and the only reason Morgan let Joe stay in was because the play was all in mid-field and I guess he kept on hoping that Joe would find himself. I came across him between the halves. He had dressed and was looking on from the side line. When he saw me he smiled wryly and shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it wasn’t any use, Morris. I’m kiboshed, I guess. They smeared me for fair, didn’t they?”
I nodded. “But what was the trouble?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The same, I guess. I tried to make believe that the whole thing depended on me and that I was the main squeeze, but it didn’t seem to work. Say, do the rest of those fellows really want to win, or—or what?”
“Why, yes, they do, of course,” said I. “But—maybe they don’t know it!”
Joe sighed. “Something’s wrong with them. I had the impression all the time that I was taking a lot of trouble for nothing, that no one cared what happened, and it balled me all up. I’m going to quit football, I guess. Anyhow, I ain’t got time for it.”
I said something polite and beat it back to the stand. It didn’t seem to me to make much difference whether he quit or not.
Things ambled along toward the second Gloversville game. I noticed that Joe was still playing on the second, and gathered from something Tom said that he had wanted to quit and had been overruled by the coaches.
We licked Gloversville thirteen to six, in a glorified practice game in which every substitute had a chance to show his gait. And after that we settled down for the final humiliation of being whipped to a froth by Enwright the following Saturday. Honestly, you couldn’t find ten fellows in school who would say that Hollins was going to win, and you couldn’t have found one who believed it! I didn’t. I’ll say that frankly.
Three of the second team were taken over to the first, and Joe was one of them. Maybe Morgan thought he might need a third center if Enwright played the sort of game she was expected to. Anyway, Joe was huddled up on the bench with the rest of the subs when the game started.
It was a cloudy, still November day, with a touch of frost in the air, and there was no choice between goals. We won the toss and gave the ball to Enwright. The visitors were a husky lot, all right. They’d won six out of nine games and hadn’t any doubt about winning another to-day. They were a rangy, powerful bunch, and looked fast and keen. As to weight they had it over us by a few pounds in the average, but not enough to worry about. We weren’t worrying about anything, for that matter. We had made up our minds to fight hard and die fighting. Only, we expected to die. And anybody knows that that’s no way to go into a football game. We believed that Fate had everything all doped out for us, so what was the use of worrying? I heard afterwards that Morgan fairly insulted them in the dressing room before the game, but he didn’t get any reaction. They refused to be insulted. They were dogged, but there wasn’t enough vanity in the whole bunch to fit out a Pomeranian lap dog. Then they went out and trotted onto the gridiron, while we waved and cheered them nobly, prepared to die like heroes.
They had an awful surprise in the first ten minutes of that period. Enwright absolutely refused to play football. Whether she was a bit stale or what the trouble was I don’t know, but she fumbled and ran wild and misjudged punts and acted like a bunch of grammar school kids. You could have heard their quarter raving at them as far away as the laboratory, I guess. The first thing anyone knew Hollins had pushed White over for a touchdown and Tru had kicked a pretty goal!
Oh boy! Maybe we didn’t go crazy on the stand! Why, we hadn’t done anything like that to Enwright in four years! We got cocky and crazy-headed and predicted a score something like twenty-eight to nothing! We ought to have known better, but we didn’t. Enwright sort of pulled herself together after that and held us off until the quarter was up. But we were still hopeful and looked for more glory in the second period. The glory was there, too, but it went to Enwright. She came bravely out of her trance and pushed us straight down the field for a touchdown and then, when White misjudged a long corkscrew punt and had to fall on the ball on our twelve yards, she did it again in just three rushes. She missed both goals, though, and we got some comfort from that. Twelve to seven wasn’t so bad, after all. And the game wasn’t half over yet.
But, although the visitors didn’t score again in that quarter, they outplayed us badly. And they kept it up in the third period, too, after we had sung and cheered all during half-time. But they didn’t score. They had three perfectly good chances, and each time some turn of the luck queered them. Of course, our fellows did their bit. They were giving their well-known imitation of Horatius keeping the bridge. But, shucks, if it hadn’t been for a fumble on our three yards, a perfectly punk pass from center to fullback and holding in the line, Enwright would have scored three times in that quarter. The trouble with us was that we never forgot who we were up against. We were whatyoucallems—fatalists. When an Enwright runner was tackled he kept on running and made another yard, maybe two or three. When one of our fellows was tackled he quit cold. Same way in hitting the line. When one of our backs ran up against the defense he eased up. Even our punting showed it. We didn’t mean to quit, but we were doing it. We oozed through the third quarter with the score still twelve to seven, and we began to hope then that we could hold the score where it was. What happened after the whistle blew I got from Tru and Joe.
Coach Morgan called Joe from the bench. “Jones is very bad,” he said in that quiet, crisp way of his, “and they’re making too many gains at our center, Talmadge. It’s too bad we haven’t anyone to stiffen it, isn’t it? If it was only the second team I’d chance putting you in.”
Joe looked troubled. “I’ll try my best, sir,” he said doubtfully.
“We-ell, I don’t know. They’ve got us beaten anyway, and——”
Joe flared up. “They have! Like fun they have! We’ve got ourselves beaten. There isn’t a fellow out there that doesn’t think he’s done for right now. There isn’t one of ’em that really expects to win. There isn’t more than one or two that’s trying. They’re just dying game, that’s all they’re doing! Beaten! Yah, that Enwright bunch would quit cold if someone put up a real fight!”
“Think so?” asked the coach mildly. “I wonder. Too bad someone couldn’t go out there and convince them of that, isn’t it, Talmadge?”
“Yes, but what’s the use? They won’t believe it, Coach.”
“They might—if it was put to them hard enough,” the man mused.
Joe began to pull up his sweater sort of half-heartedly.
“If you think that way, Talmadge, you might get the others to. You might try it. It wouldn’t do any harm. We’re beaten anyway, and——”
“That ain’t so!” cried Joe angrily. “You know it, too!”
“What good does my knowing it do?” asked Morgan gently.
Joe pulled his sweater over his head and flung it behind him.
“Jones?” he asked.
The coach nodded. “And tell Truitt I said I’d changed my plans. Tell him I’ve decided to win the game.”
Joe grinned. Then he ran on just in time and pushed Jones out of the way.
It was Enwright’s ball on her forty-six yards, second down and five to go when Joe arrived. Tru looked a bit puzzled at the message for a moment, but then he grasped the idea and it seemed to do him a lot of good. “That’s the stuff!” he cried hoarsely. “We’ve got orders from the coach to win this, fellows! What d’ye say now! Everyone into it hard! All we want’s one score. Let’s get it!”
Enwright tried out the new center and made only a yard. Joe jeered at them. “Come again!” he told them. “Always glad to see you!” They got three past left tackle and Joe was on Conners like a ton of bricks, bawling him out. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Trying to chuck this game away? Fight, you big baby! Don’t let ’em walk over you! Fight!”
Conners was so surprised that he forgot to get mad until it was too late. Tru said that having Joe butt in and take things out of his hands like that sort of flabbergasted him, but he was so tired and used up he was glad to have someone else do the bossing. Enwright only needed another yard to make her distance and she tried to shove her way past Conners for it. But Conners was insulted and mad clean through now, and he wouldn’t have it, and blamed if we didn’t take the ball away from them in the middle of the field, and for the first time that day!
After that Joe created his own atmosphere, as he had put it to me, and it was a brand new atmosphere for the rest of the bunch. He kept dinning it into them that they were going to win, that Enwright was a lot of quitters and all tired out, anyway, that they only needed a touchdown and that they were on their way to it. And blessed if they didn’t begin to believe it! And it wasn’t long before Enwright was thinking there might be something in it, too! Tru said you could notice the difference five minutes after the last quarter began. They eased up and didn’t round off their plays. Their quarter began to change signals, and once they went back and put their heads together. When they did that Joe gloated openly and began to show even more pep.
“Sure!” he cried, “Talk it over! Know you’re beaten, don’t you? If you’ve got anything left, show it! Time’s getting short!”
It was, too. There was only about seven minutes left. We had taken the ball back to their twenty-eight and had to punt, and they had run it back to the thirty-six and were shy four yards on the third down. They got two of the four on a delayed pass that fooled every one on our team except Joe, it seemed, and then had to punt. Of course, all they wanted now was to kill time, and they tried every means they knew. But White got away from our thirty-five with a run that landed the pigskin past the middle again and then Morgan sent Presson back into the line-up and Press ate up ten yards in three plunges. It looked like we had them going then, and we were cheering ourselves hoarse on the stand. Joe snarled and bullied, and praised, too, and in those last five minutes he had every fellow on the team working for him like dogs. And they all expected to win, too. That’s the funny part of it. Dobbs told me afterwards that if we’d been beaten he would have cried like a kid. But we weren’t. No, sir, we weren’t. Not that year. We ate them up from their thirty-eight yards right down to their ten. They stiffened then and at first it was like chipping concrete to make gains. There was hardly more than a minute left. We could hear Joe barking and yelping. Even when he sounded the maddest you felt sure that he was going to get what he was after.
And Enwright knew it, too. Yes, sir, Enwright showed it right then. She wasn’t cocky any longer. She was pegged out and nervous and discouraged. You could see it in the way the backs changed positions behind the forwards, not being sure where they’d better stay, and you could see it in the way the line started before the ball twice. We made a yard and a half on the first plunge and lost the half on the second, and it was nine to go on the third down.
We were all off the stand by that time, clustering along the side line and back of the goal, cheering and yelping at one moment and then being so still the quarter’s voice sounded like claps of thunder. Our right end scampered off, Joe passed to the quarter, quarter faked a forward and dropped the ball to Maynard and Maynard shot straight into the center. Joe was clearing the hole out for him, and he did it to the king’s taste. Right through and into the secondary defense plunged Joe, taking them with him as he went, while Maynard, head down, pigskin clutched to his tummy, followed after. They stopped them short of the last line, but not much short, and we still had another down.
The timekeeper was walking nearer and nearer with his eyes on his watch and we fellows looking on almost had heart failure. It seemed to us that our team had never taken longer to line up and that the quarter had never been so slow with his signals. But he got them out finally and—Oh, well, you know what happened. It was Joe again, and Maynard again, and Enwright went down like nine-pins and our whole team broke through her center and went tumbling, streaming over the goal line! And when the whistle blew Joe had to trot back from the other side of the end line, he had been going so hard!
That’s how we broke the hoodoo. Tru failed at goal, but we had won, thirteen to twelve, anyway. They elected Joe captain a week later, and he would have been a corker if the war hadn’t come along. He went over in the spring, and the next thing we heard he was top sergeant. I’m sorry for the Huns in front of Joe’s platoon if he used that psychology stuff!