The Fires of Spring (17 page)

In that first summer at Paradise Park David had every opportunity to become a cheap thief, a hanger-on, a whoremonger, or a bum; but at every deciding point an inner voice of conscience kept him clear of the vilest entanglements.

This voice was a very real thing! It actually spoke to him, and he could hear its stern command: “Come on, Harper! Get going!” It was not the voice of his aunt, nor of Old
Daniel, nor of any minister, nor of his own inner light. It was the very solid voice of Bobby Creighton crying, “Come on Harper!” and it was by all odds the most imperative voice David would ever hear.

Bobby Creighton had come to Doylestown some years before. He was a dumpy, round, quick-eyed man and looked completely unlike any other teacher David had known. He was the basketball coach and while David was still in grammar school Bobby Creighton had spotted him. “You got a fine natural shot,” the coach had said. David could remember the precise inflection of Bobby’s voice. There was hope in it, for the coach saw that with quick, rangy kids like David coming along, Doylestown would have more championship teams. He had smiled at David and added, “How would you like to scrimmage against the varsity some afternoon?” David had swallowed hard and said he’d like it. That night he lay in bed and held his breath for two-minute spells so as to get his lungs in training. He could not sleep and imagined himself slipping under Fred Baker’s arms for shot after shot.

Three days later Bobby had stopped by the grammar school and asked, in an off-hand way, “Why don’t you drop down tonight?” and David had twisted his shoulders indifferently and replied, “OK, I may do that.” He stayed in after school and cleaned the blackboards. He did tomorrow’s arithmetic, dusted the desks and finally could think of nothing else to waste time. Slowly he sauntered down to the gym.

“You fellows know Dave Harper,” Bobby said, standing with his pudgy arm on David’s shoulder. “He’s small, like the Hatboro forwards. I asked him to drop down.” David nodded at the big men on Doylestown’s championship team and loafed into the dressing room. When he returned in uniform Bobby studied his strong legs and long arms. “How’s about stepping in at forward?” he asked.

“Now?” David inquired.

“Sure!” Bobby said, but suddenly David was attacked with the athlete’s urge. He felt that his kidneys must burst—that very minute—if he didn’t run to the urinal. He got red in the face.

“Excuse me?” he asked. “Just for a second?” The big men laughed and waited. He was furious and muttered to himself, “You wait! You wait!”

The scrimmage started, and it was very rough. The big
men passed far too swiftly for him to handle, and he looked bad. Bobby took him out. “You’re pretty nervous, kid.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Sure you will!” Bobby said. He threw his arm about David’s shoulder and whispered, “Now watch how Gulick leaves that spot open. Hang there and then cut like mad. Think you can do it?”

“Sure,” David replied, and Bobby had sent him back in. He hung back toward the open spot and suddenly caught the ball winging toward him. With two fast dribbles he swivel-hipped his way into the goal and laid the ball up mechanically, his left elbow jabbing a guard in the face, his right leg pushing high in the air.

“Come on, Harper!” Bobby Creighton yelled, and that afternoon David hung up three more goals.

“You’re all right!” Gulick and the big men said in the dressing room, but it was Bobby Creighton’s comment that David would never forget. “Practice, practice, practice!” Bobby said. “I’ll be waitin’ for you.”

More than religion or school or all that his friends had taught him, basketball kept David hard and clean. The game was sheer magic. Many words are wasted about high-school athletics:
body-building
,
character formation
,
sportsmanship
. Rarely do sports achieve those flowery ends; but what they do achieve is something even finer. They help boys find a place in society, especially boys who might otherwise live on the fringes of the world. In games, such boys can be momentary heroes and win the wild approval of their community. Young fellows who wear ill-fitting clothes, whose fathers lie drunk in the town gutters, or whose mothers rouse whispers on street corners, boys whose entire future is nothingness can have their day of glory; and some of them like the taste of that glory and determine that the town gutters are not for them.

Fortunately for David, Doylestown was basketball crazy. There was a tradition that its teams, playing against those of much larger schools, should win most of the championships. As early as David could remember he had known that he would be on the championship teams. Toothless Tom had built him a basket in the poorhouse barn. The truck driver had found him an old basketball. He learned to dribble with either hand, pivot, pass from the chest, and fake break. But most of all he learned to shoot baskets. Some Saturday mornings he would practice a single shot
four or five hundred times. He became a master of english and a precisionist from any spot within the foul circle.

But most of all he liked to hang around with Bobby Creighton. The fat coach seemed to know what boys were interested in. More than a hundred times David listened to Bobby as the pudgy man stood with his right leg on a bench and told some new gang of kids about the Dedham-Swarthmore game. “It was the big game of the season! Swarthmore won about eighteen games that year. We were the underdogs. Coach said before the game, ‘Bobby? Are you hot tonight?’ I said, ‘Yes, Coach, I am.’ ‘Well,’ Coach said, ‘Bobby, we’re goin’ to start you at guard. We’ll let Lemons run wild. If he can score, let him. Don’t worry about him. You, Bobby, keep down the floor and shoot.’ That’s what Coach said. So at half time I had six baskets, we were only two points behind, and the crowd was crazy wild. Second half, Swarthmore kept two points ahead. All the way. It was truly heart-breakin’. Right down to the last minute, two points ahead. On a jump we got the ball. They passed back court to me. I was goin’ to dribble and shoot when I saw the pistol go up in the air. So I just twisted to one side and let ’er ride.”

At such moments there would be a solemn hush among the listening boys. “How did you shoot it, Bobby?” someone would always ask.

“Well,” Bobby would reply, “I figured I was too far away to make the basket, so I leaned way down and shot it from between my legs, underhand. Just in chance it might
get that
far.” At this point some boy would toss Bobby a basketball. Bouncing it once or twice the chunky fellow would blush and apologize.

“Of course, I’m out of practice,” he would say. Then he would pat his belly and add, “And now I got a spare tire, too.” Holding the ball low, he would shoot it underhand. Once in ten the ball would spin through the air and pass accurately through the hoop, the way it had done that night long ago in the Dedham-Swarthmore game.

“So the score was tied! 41-41,” Bobby would say, his eyes aglow. “You know, they had to get the police to clear the floor so we could play an extra period. Swarthmore got the lead. They held it till right at the end, then I busted loose with another long shot. This time everybody really did go wild. So the police came out again and we waited till the
ropes were stretched tight. In the second extra period it was murder. I made three baskets. Swarthmore none!”

It was part of the mythology of Doylestown, that Dedham-Swarthmore game. Moerman’s barbershop had a framed clipping from the Philadelphia
North American
and a picture from the
Press
: “Dedham Miracle Man Topples Swarthmore.” Bobby got his hair cut at Moerman’s, and once or twice a month he would tell the older men of the town about that fabulous game. The story never grew tedious, for when fat, unpretentious Bobby started to talk, old men and young enjoyed his eager words, as if they were part of a beautiful world far, far away in space.

It was in the fall after David’s first year at Paradise that Bobby announced in the barbershop that whether the kids were young or not he was starting David Harper and Harry Moomaugh at forward that year! “This kid Harper’s got an absolute lust for the basket!” Bobby explained. “And Moomaugh’s a big, tough guy. Good in a roughhouse. Confidentially,” Bobby said in a whisper which the barber relayed to David, also confidentially, “if those two kids can stand up, we’ve got another championship!”

The word sped about Doylestown that Bobby Creighton thought his team was in. And then David experienced the sweet subtle thrill of athletics! Men watched him as he walked to school. Important men like the policeman and the head of the National Guard would stop him and chat idly with him, slipping in hints here and there: “Hoagey always shoots from the right corner. Watch Smoot! He’s got a fake start. Moyer’s good, but keep jabbing your elbow in his belly.” And the young fellows—in the fifth and sixth grades—who imagined themselves as stars one day began to mimic the way David walked with his right arm crooked as if waiting for a fast cut to the basket. So in a town where education and religion and every other possible aspect of society had failed to make David Harper feel that he was important—that he belonged—basketball succeeded; and it was this sense of belonging that David defended when he turned his back on Max Volo. Going to jail as a crook would be evil. David could see that in the terror the cashiers showed when they were finally caught; but to bring disgrace upon the shaded streets of Doylestown, to humiliate a team of one’s own friends—that would be terrible indeed!

Bobby Creighton understood David very well. If the opposing team could be demoralized, everyone passed to
David. The slim wiry boy could easily score four or five baskets in the first half, and the rout would be on. But when the opponents were big and tough—the favorites—Harry Moomaugh got most of the passes. He was rugged and fearless and never wilted under fire; so after he had mauled the guards for three quarters and been ejected on fouls, the team would pass to David, still fresh and springy, and David would shoot from any position and ring up three or four goals in a hurry.

David understood this strategy. He sensed that much as Bobby Creighton liked him, the coach knew that there was only one dependable, utterly fearless competitor on the team, and that one was Harry Moomaugh. The young fighter understood, too, and a warm friendship grew between the two stars. They always rode together when the team played away from home, and when in the distance the enemy city appeared they would share a moment of intense excitement. Each boy would mutter to himself: “They’ll be laying for us tonight. Because we’re the champs!”

At the gymnasium David and Harry would grab their bags and step into the cold air. “That’s them!” the hangers-on would cry. “The big one’s roughneck Moomaugh. Nnnyaaah!” But David was the special butt of jeers, for his habit of staying out of the roughhouses until he got a good pass infuriated the spectators. “There he is! Harper the Sleeper! Nnnyaaah!”

That was the glorious moment! To feel yourself among the hostile crowd, to hear them shouting at you, and to know that later that night when you dropped a couple in from the middle of the floor they would be cheering—that was exciting. At such moments he liked to be near Harry Moomaugh, for he knew that under his breath Harry was swearing: “Wait, you muggs! Wait till the whistle blows!”

But even more cherishable were the games at home when he could hear the last wild shout of obvious pride the people of Doylestown took in their team. At times the cheering became so intoxicating that David began to make impossible shots, as if he were not responsible for them, and the roar would increase; but always underlying it, like the firm beat of the sea beneath spurious waves, came the quiet voice of Bobby Creighton: “Come on, Harper!” It was the strongest voice David had ever known. It was his conscience and his will.

David’s second summer at Paradise was more exciting
than the first. He became known as an important cashier. He began to shave, too, and stood very straight, for word had circulated that he was a star athlete.

After diligent application, he regained his nimbleness in making false change. Once or twice the conscience that had begun to develop in basketball troubled him, and he spoke to Mr. Stone. “Forget it,” the lean gray man advised. “You got to accept the customs of any job. The Company don’t call it stealing, if you concentrate on the customers. You and I are expected to make our salary off the peasants.”

David became known as an incorruptible. He carried himself like a man and discovered with pleasure that he was now taller than Mr. Stone. He went several times to the secret room in the Coal Mine, but Nora had not yet returned from Florida. “She’s a thin little number,” big Betty joked, “but I’ll bet she’s giving that old man the ride of his life.” Then a happy thought came to her. “There’s a new girl here, Dave. You’d like her. Name’s Louise.”

“I was looking for Nora,” David explained.

“I saw you in the Perkasie game,” Betty added. “You were red hot.”

“Thanks,” David replied, retreating through the murky scaffolding.

Paradise was excellent that summer, for that was the year he became friends with Capt. John Philip Sousa, then an old man. For many years Sousa had conducted summer concerts at Paradise, where he was revered and loved. At his table in the big Casino celebrities gathered daily to pay him homage. The March King was modest, quiet, friendly to the young, and courteous to everyone. Mr. Stone said, “This is a young admirer of yours,” and Capt. Sousa nodded gravely. He looked across the white and silvery Casino to where a man stood with a very beautiful woman. David noticed that the man was dark and that he moved with a delicate grace. But he forgot the man when he saw the young woman who that summer was singing for Capt. Sousa. Mary Meigs was then about twenty, slim, blue-eyed, blonde, and lovely in a breath-taking way. David never lost that first image of her, nor did he ever forget his first involuntary thought: “The man’s embarrassed, but she likes to stand there. Look! She’s turning her head so that more people can see her.”

“Klementi!” Capt. Sousa cried. The tall man, blushing at the sound of his name, saluted the great bandmaster by
clicking his heels and bowing stiffly from the waist. Sousa raised his right forefinger and dropped it, quite in the manner he used to start his concerts. The tall visitor led his partner to the table, and she walked with a grace that seemed to be unreal, keeping her head forward in a bored sort of way, but twisting it ever so slightly so that her exquisite profile showed to advantage.