Touchdown for Tommy (4 page)

Tommy dried himself and got into David’s clothes. Mrs. Warren gave him a blanket to put around him while he sat in the living
room.

David had dried Wag. Now Wag was lying on Tommy’s lap, wrapped inside a dry towel. His head was down between his paws. His
large brown eyes kept looking around. Every once in a while his shiny nose quivered. His ears jerked. His tail tossed back
and forth.

“Tell us what happened,” Mrs. Warren said. Mr. Warren was there, too. They listened as Tommy told them about falling into
the creek.

“Maybe we’d better telephone Mrs. Powell and tell her you’re here,” she suggested when Tommy finished. “They must be worried
by now, wondering where you are.”

Tommy’s lips trembled. “Maybe you should.”

He was scared, though. Mr. and Mrs. Powell would never forgive him for what had happened. The fall into the creek was an accident,
but he had no business going
down there in the first place. Just wait till Betty heard about Wag falling into the icy water. What would
she
say?

Mrs. Warren went to make the phone call.

“What do you call Mr. and Mrs. Powell, Tommy?” asked David. “Mom and Dad?”

Tommy shook his head. “No. I call them Mr. and Mrs. Powell.”

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, he thought, to call them Mom and Dad.

Mrs. Warren returned from telephoning. “Mr. Powell is driving his car over to take you home, Tommy,” she said.

“I — I could walk,” murmured Tommy. His voice shook. “I’m all right. And so is Wag. We’re both dried and warm now.”

He took the towel off Wag and put Wag down on the floor. He removed the blanket from around himself and placed it on the chair.
He stood up.

“I’m all right, Mrs. Warren,” he said
pleadingly. “Please get my pants if they’re dried. And my coat. I’ll put them back on. I’ll carry Wag and walk home. It isn’t
far.”

“Don’t be foolish, Tommy. It’s quite dark out now. Anyway, you wear David’s pants tonight. Yours aren’t quite dry. Mr. Powell
will be here in a minute. He’ll take you home. And don’t be afraid. He won’t be angry. Neither will Mrs. Powell. They’re both
very nice, understanding folks.”

They
will
be angry, thought Tommy. Just wait and see. They’ll never forgive me this time.

W
hat happened, Tommy?” said Mr. Powell quietly.

They were home, sitting in the living room. Usually the TV set would be turned on at this time of the evening. It was off
now. Betty wasn’t home yet. Tommy was thankful for that. But she would learn the bad news when she came home, so it didn’t
make any difference. No matter how he looked at it, he was in a fix.

Why hadn’t he stayed in the house and played with Wag? Why?

Tommy looked at the floor. He blinked his eyes and swallowed.

“Maybe you’d rather wait and tell us tomorrow,” said Mr. Powell.

Tommy nodded. He didn’t take his eyes from the floor. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, I think I would, Mr. Powell.”

“In that case, you should probably go to bed, Tommy,” said Mr. Powell. “Get a good night’s rest. There’s football practice
tomorrow, remember.”

Tommy raised his head. “Yes, sir,” he said. As he got up from the chair, a car drove in the driveway.

“I think that’s Betty now,” Mrs. Powell said.

A moment later, Betty came into the house.

“Hello, Mom, Dad, Tommy!” she cried excitedly. She ran forward and kissed her
mother and father. “I had a great time! Kathy can’t wait to come here!”

“Well, that’s nice,” said Mrs. Powell with a smile.

“Where’s Wag?” Betty asked suddenly. She looked around.

“In his house,” said Mrs. Powell. “Don’t worry about Wag. He’s fine.”

Betty turned to Tommy. Her eyes searched his closely. “Did you play with him a lot?”

Tommy turned away. His heart began to pound. All at once he felt very lonely again. He wished he had somebody to turn to.
He needed help. He needed someone to tell him what to do. What
should
he do? Should he tell the whole story now? Or should he wait till tomorrow?

But why wait till tomorrow? What difference would a day make?

He looked up. He swallowed the ache in
his throat. He would tell them. He would tell them everything.

“Yes, I played with Wag,” he said. “I took him outside with me. I played with him on the lawn for a while. Then I took him
down to the creek. That’s — that’s where the accident happened.”

He paused. He remembered the whole thing very clearly. He could even feel the coldness of the water on his body again.

“I slipped on a flat rock. I didn’t know it was covered with ice. I fell. And then Wag fell, too. We both got wet. Then I
picked up Wag and ran to David Warren’s house, because it was the closest. And because I was scared to come home.”

Betty stared at him. “You fell into the water? And Wag fell, too?”

Tommy nodded. “Yes. The Warrens dried us off. They — they were nice.”

Then he turned. He walked quickly toward the stairs. He stumbled on the first step, then caught himself.

“Good night!” he yelled over his shoulder, and hurried up the stairs to his room.

T
he Saturday morning sunlight was bright. It poured down on the crowd at the football field. But the air was cold. People were
huddled in coats and blankets. The Bullets and the Pirates were lined up, ready for the signal to start. The Bullets wore
yellow-and-black jerseys. They were kicking off to the Pirates.

The signal came. A toe met the football a Bullet player held slanted on the ground. The ball rose swiftly and whizzed end
over end through the air.

David caught it. He rushed down the field. He dodged, spun, twisted. And then he was tackled on his own twenty-eight-yard
line.

The Pirates went into a huddle.

“Get ready, Fred,” said David. “We’ll try number fourteen.”

They broke out of the huddle and trotted to the line of scrimmage. The backfield lined up in T-formation. The quarterback
stood behind the center. The fullback stood behind the quarterback, with the two halfbacks on either side of the fullback.
Tommy Fletcher was at left end, Nicky Toma at right.

David called signals. “Eighteen! Twenty-two! Six! Fourteen!”

The ball snapped from the center. It thudded into David’s hands. David quickly spun around and shoved the ball into Fred Wilkins’s
hands. Fred raced toward the left
end. Tommy blocked his man. Then he charged ahead to block the backfield man running in to get Fred. He lost his breath a
moment as a Bullet player blocked him. Fred was tackled.

“We gained three yards on that play,” said David breathlessly. “Let’s try a pass to Tommy.”

The teams lined up.

“Four! Twenty-one! Sixteen!”

The ball snapped from the center. Tommy pushed past his man and raced down the field. His rubber cleats kicked up sod.

Then Tommy turned. The ball was curving down at him. Close by, running with their legs pumping hard, were two Bullet players.

Tommy reached for the ball. He caught it! He brought it against his chest — then fumbled it! The ball bounced wildly on the
ground.

The referee picked it up and returned it to the thirty-one.

“Third and seven,” said David in the huddle. “Let’s make this one good. Number eight! I’ll take the ball around the left end.”

The Pirates formed a single-wing back formation. The quarterback stood behind center a little farther back than he did when
the team was in T-formation. The fullback and the two halfbacks stood at his right.

The ball snapped from the center. Tommy charged forward and held his man with a shoulder block. David swept around the left
end. He ran eleven yards and was tackled.

The crowd cheered. First down!

Substitutes replaced men on both sides. Steve Marcham took Nicky’s place at right end. A whole new backfield came in. David
and the others went out. But Tommy stayed in.

The ball was in the Bullets’ territory, on the thirty-eight-yard line.

“Let’s get ’em,” said quarterback Jerry Miller, who had replaced David. “Let’s try number four.”

They lined up on the scrimmage line. Jerry called the signals and took the snap from center. Jerry pressed the ball against
his stomach and rushed through the right tackle. A two-yard gain.

Second down and eight yards to go. Jerry hurled a pass to halfback Henry Collins. It was intercepted! The Bullet player who
caught the ball pivoted and started to run crosswise on the field. Then he charged straight forward. He headed toward Tommy.
Tommy went after him. Suddenly a man swept in front of Tommy, blocking him so that he couldn’t reach the runner.

Tommy stuck out his foot. The runner tripped and fell.

Shr-e-e-e-k!

The referee shoved out an arm, palm down. A personal foul!

Tommy hung his head. He hadn’t thought of what he was doing. He had forgotten about rules. Kids back home used to trip runners
a lot, even though they knew it wasn’t right.

The referee picked up the ball, stood on the line of scrimmage, and pointed toward the Pirates’ goal posts.

“Fifteen-yard penalty for tripping!” he shouted.

Tommy was taken out. Mr. Powell motioned Tommy to sit beside him. Tommy did. He pulled a blanket around him.

“How come you tripped that runner?” asked Mr. Powell. “You know that’s illegal.”

“I know. I just didn’t think,” said Tommy.

He was sorry. But what good was it to be
sorry now? He had had his chance to make a touchdown when David had thrown him that pass. He had fumbled it. Then, to make
matters worse, he had purposely tripped a runner. He knew that tripping players was a penalty. But when he had realized that
he couldn’t tackle that runner, he just hadn’t thought about penalties. He had played so much football without knowing the
rules that he had forgotten that you were not allowed to trip. He couldn’t tell that to Mr. Powell, though. Mr. Powell would
think that he was just making excuses.

The first quarter ended with the ball in the Bullets’ possession on the Pirates’ sixteen-yard line.

Soon after the second quarter started, more substitutions were made. David and the other backfield starters went in.

“Okay, Tommy,” said Mr. Powell. “Go in and send Jack out.”

A minute later, the Bullets threw a forward pass that went for a touchdown. A kick between the goal posts gave them the extra
point.

The Pirates slumped their shoulders hopelessly.

“Come on!” David Warren shouted. “Let’s look alive!”

The Pirates received. They carried the ball back to their thirty-two. They gained five yards on an off-tackle play, then a
first down on a seven-yard pass to Nicky Toma.

They moved on down the field, then lost the ball on a fumble to the Bullets.

The Bullets brought the ball back up the field. They were within five yards of the Pirates’ end zone when the half ended.

In the third quarter, the Pirates put on power. They played with all the skill they had. They kept moving like a small army
across the white stripes toward the Bullets’
goal line. Slowly. Surely. Then — an end-around run by Tim McCarthy scored a touchdown!

But they missed the conversion.

Score: Bullets 7, Pirates 6.

In the fourth quarter, the Bullets showed that they were not going to let the Pirates run over them. They moved up the field,
making short gains of two yards, four yards, seven yards. Short gains, but they added up to first downs.

The Bullets crossed the halfway mark into the Pirates’ territory. First and ten. Then second and six. Then third and two.
Again a first down. Again first and ten.

Then the Bullets’ quarterback threw a short pass over the line of scrimmage. It was intended for his end. But another pair
of hands reached up to steal the ball. Tommy Fletcher’s!

Tommy pulled the ball against his chest
and galloped like a young colt down the field. The Bullets’ backs chased after him. Tommy kept running, putting more speed
in his legs. The white stripes rolled one by one underneath him. He crossed the twenty, the fifteen, the ten. Close behind
him he heard the hard-running footsteps of a Bullet player. Then he felt the player’s fingers touching his back.

Tommy gave an extra spurt to his running.

He went over! A touchdown!

This time Fred made the extra point. The Pirates won the game — 13 to 7.

Although he was happy to have made the touchdown, Tommy wasn’t as happy as the other members of the team. One touchdown wasn’t
going to make up for all those mistakes he had made.

T
he football field wasn’t the only place where Tommy needed to show improvement. Tommy’s schoolwork was suffering. The report
card he brought home for the quarter period proved it. Most of his marks were C’s. He even had one D. And in the space at
the right, where the teacher wrote her comments, Ms. Bleam’s smooth handwriting said that Tommy had shown a lot of intelligence
in his work at the beginning of the school year, but lately he seemed to lose interest. He could be a good student if he tried.

Mrs. Powell read that and said, “What happened, Tommy? Why have you lost interest in your schoolwork?”

Tommy shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He did know, though. He was worried that the Powells might not want him after
another month or so. How could anybody study and be smart in schoolwork with
that
on his mind?

Mrs. Powell called Ms. Bleam on the telephone. She arranged to talk with Ms. Bleam in person the following evening.

The next night, Mr. and Mrs. Powell left the house after supper. Tommy and Betty stayed home. They watched TV and played with
Wag.

“Do you like Ms. Bleam?” asked Betty.

“Sure, I do,” said Tommy.

“Maybe you should bring home your books to study,” Betty suggested.

“Maybe,” said Tommy.

“I do,” said Betty.

Tommy didn’t answer.

An hour later, Mr. and Mrs. Powell returned. They talked with Tommy in his room.