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And Paff asks, 'Fred? Do these people want to buy something? Aren't you selling today, Fred?'
If only Lydia Kindle had hoo-roared at me too I could have stood it. If only she'd been the true compatriot of her Glork, I could somehow have borne up to this. But I felt her there, a sympathetic shiver beside me.
She said, 'Oh, Mr Trumper. You shouldn't be ashamed. Some people have to work, you know, and I think it's very strong of you, really!'
It's such stupid and innocent pity that hurts me.
Paff says, 'My God, Fred, get hold of yourself.' Even Paff! That he should care about what's wrong. (In our orientation meeting he told us he looked out for all his 'boys', but I never believed he meant it!) It's too much.
They're around me, Paff and Lydia, and out in front of my board is that leering Glork. Him I can understand! And behind him, I swear, is a gathering throng. Seeing this drama before the game, better than a half-time show. The crowd is thinking, after a crowd's fashion. Now if they would only put on something like this during the half. If only they displayed the venders, fed them to Iowa hogs, let them humbly try to defend themselves with their goofy snowboards - that would be genuine half-time entertainment!
I bolt.
I tackle my tray of wares and batter myself and my board into and over the wailing Glork. Off into the vile crowd, then; I shift the board, carrying it like a broad knife through the masses. I shift again; I bear it on my back, stooped and pitched forward; my shield protects me from rear attack. I see terror-struck faces loom up ahead of me, veer out of my charging path; insults are hurled after me. Sometimes my shield is struck or, more often, picked at. I am being picked clean from behind! I feel them like predatory birds, snaring a button here, a pennant there. There is a terrible jangle: all my cowbells are gone in a swoop.
Rounding the last edge of the end-zone gate, I see - too late to avoid him - an awestruck campus cop. I can only lower my head; I hear his breath sucked right out of him, and I watch his blue face dipping away from me, floating down between my pumping knees. Somehow I avoid stepping on his chest badge. Running on, I wait for his bullet to pierce my shield and shatter my spine. But I'm safely at the home-team gate and nothing happens. Perhaps, I think with dread, my board decapitated him; perhaps, when I saw his head falling, it was falling unattached.
I batter into the stadium concession room, sagging to my knees under the board. Someone is kind enough to lift it off me. It's No. 368, wearing his football tie. 'God! 501!' he says, looking at my bare board. 'You really cleaned up! Where was your stand?'
Others mill around me. The head counter starts to tally up my board, determining sales and percentage. I'm too weak to explain. He discovers I've 'sold' all but one pennant, all but four of the big go hawks! buttons, every one of the little Iowa pins with the little gold footballs attached, and all my cowbells. He announces, then, that I've 'sold' more than three hundred dollars' worth of wares. He's tallying up the mathematical wonder which is to be my 'commission' when I hand over my actual earnings: $12.75.
'I was picked clean,' I confess. 'They got me.'
'They?' says 368, shocked.
'The mob,' I groan, and struggle off my knees. 'Mad fans,' I tell them. They steady me; their concern destroys me.
'501,' says 368, 'you mean they took all your things?' And I weakly gesture to my ragged board, and to my tattered, gravel-embedded knees.
But feeling my wind return, I realize I should be moving along. Fred Paff will no doubt be here in a jiffy. There's a roar above me; kickoff time. Most of the other venders scatter; even 368, an avid fan, is tempted to leave me. In fact, I gesture that I'm all right, that he needn't stay to support me.
'We've got to do something about this,' he mumbles, but his mind is really on the kickoff return. If I weren't so weary, I'd tell him that we must unionize all hawkers. I'd speak to him about profit sharing and the victimization of the proletariat. Give a primer to the man in the football tie! Freshman Marx! Hawkers of the world, unite!
But at this moment, five yards deep in his own end zone, the Notre Dame kickoff and punt-return specialist - fleet No. 25 - receives the ball like a solid touch from a magic wand. And 368 says, 'We should have two men with every board.'
'Then you'd have to split the commission,' says the head counter.
'Hell, no,' says 368. 'You'd double the commission. Don't tell me someone's not making any money off this junk ...' No doubt 368 is a business major who picked up his football tie dirt-cheap.
But this speculation is cut off. The stadium above us gives off an animal din. No. 25 of Notre Dame has burst up the middle, over his own 40, a very solid and gold-helmeted patron saint blocking in front of him. And our own 368 takes off down the sidelines of the stadium underground, heading for the nearest ramp, while the head counter dashes to a dungeonlike portal in the back of the concession room.
Wishing I had the speed of 25 of Notre Dame, I make my timely escape. This time the traffic is heavier. The masses who've missed the kickoff are flooding the gates. A cross-body block on a soft man swaddled in blankets squirts me loose from the underground panic, out the press-box gate, as free as No. 25 of Notre Dame who now finds himself all alone, across midfield, one Iowa lineman lagging behind and nothing but the Iowa end zone in front of him. The hometown roar stifles to a death rattle and a shrill fringe cheer goes up from the rabid Catholics in the stands. The Fighting Irish Band sends out a bright green note.
I simply run away, down toward the other end zone - away from where No. 25 is drawing first blood, away from where I suspect the campus cop lies headless, and where an army of ROTC volunteers is mustering to rout me out. I cross the intramural soccer field successfully, except for whacking my knees on the bumpers of all the parked cars and having to avoid the stare of the ROTC car-parker, wearing his suspicious eyes low, barely showing under his white MP helmet. Why do they wear 'MP' just to park a car?
Then I'm weaving through the deserted upper campus, wending down to the Iowa River, past the appalling quiet university hospitals. In front of the Children's Hospital entrance, several farmers sprawl on the hoods and front fenders of their pickups, waiting for their wives and kids who've gone inside for this social service the university offers. Treating pigbite and miscarriages and co
untless strange animal diseases that somehow are communicated to the farmers and their families.
I run blindly for an instant, struck with an awful, senseless image of Colm mauled by one of those demented sows who gobble up their own piglets.
Past the quadrangle of boys' dorms now. I hear only one phonograph in operation, playing a Scarlatti harpsichord piece defiantly - harsher and more religious than shattered stained glass. Obviously not a football fan. There's no one to see me stop and listen, or see me take up my pace again when I hear steps behind me.
They're scuffed steps, all tired out. Perhaps the upended campus cop, with his precarious head held by a sinew. Even so, he couldn't be as tired as I am. I stop. I wait for the steps coming up behind me and when a hand lights gently on my arm, I kneel; I touch my forehead to the sun-warmed cement in the dorm quadrangle and feel the Scarlatti play up and down my spine - as this hand does, too. I see one fine, fragile pair of legs. When the legs see that I'm looking at them, they draw together; two knees come down, like the bright cheeks of a baby's fine bottom. A weak hand tries to lift my head; I help. I lay my gravel-pocked chin in the hem of her skirt.
And Lydia Kindle says, 'Oh, Mr Trumper,' in a sad little voice. And brightening her tone, she adds, 'Wie gehts dir jetzt? Hoffentlich gut ...'
But I can hardly match her songster German. I revert to Old Low Norse. 'Klegwoerum,' I tell her thickly. She slips her cold, brittle hand under the collar of my parka, down the back of my neck, and squeezes as best as she can.
