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Gorgeous girl? Check. Blonde? Check. Cheerleader? Why even ask?
He grinned. “Bobbi Jill’s behind me a thousand percent. Says to man up and stop letting those
other guys get my goat.”
“Sounds like a sensible young lady.”
“Yeah, she’s the absolute best.”
“Anyway, I suspect a little name-calling isn’t what’s really on your mind.” And when he didn’t
reply: “Mike? Talk to me.”
“I’m gonna get up there in front of all those people and make a fool of myself. Jimmy told me so.”
“Jimmy’s a helluva quarterback, and I know the two of you are pals, but when it comes to acting,
he doesn’t know jack shit.” Mike blinked. In 1961 you usually didn’t hear the word shit from teachers,
even if they had a mouthful. But of course I was only a substitute, and that freed me up some. “I think
you know that. As they say in these parts, you may stagger, but you ain’t stupid.”
“People think I am,” he said in a low voice. “And I’m strictly a C student. Maybe you don’t know
that, maybe subs don’t get to see the records, but I am.”
“I made it a point to see yours after the second week of rehearsals, when I saw what you could do
onstage. You’re a C student because, as a football player, you’re supposed to be a C student. It’s part of
the ethos.”
“The what?”
“Figure it out from the context and save the dumb act for your friends. Not to mention Coach
Borman, who probably has to tie a string on his whistle so he can remember which end to blow.”
Mike snickered at that, red eyes and all.
“Listen to me. People automatically think anyone as big as you is stupid. Tell me different if you
want to; according to what I hear, you’ve been walking around in that body since you were twelve, so
you should know.”
He didn’t tell me different. What he said was, “Everybody on the team tried out for Lennie. It was
a joke. A goof.” He added hastily. “Nothin against you, Mr. A. Everybody on the team likes you. Even
Coach likes you.”
A bunch of players had crashed the tryouts, intimidating the more scholarly aspirants into silence
and all claiming they wanted to read for the part of George Milton’s big dumb friend. Of course it had
been a joke, but Mike’s reading of Lennie had been the farthest thing in the world from funny. What
it had been was a goddam revelation. I would have used an electric cattle prod to keep him in the
room, if that’s what it took, but of course there was no need of such extreme measures. Want to know
the best thing about teaching? Seeing that moment when a kid discovers his or her gift. There’s no
feeling on earth like it. Mike knew his teammates would make fun of him, but he took the part
anyway.
And of course Coach Borman didn’t like it. The Coach Bormans of the world never do. In this case,
however, there wasn’t much he could do about it, especially with Mimi Corcoran on my side. He
certainly couldn’t claim he needed Mike for football practice in April and May. So he was reduced to
calling his best lineman Clark Gable. There are guys who can’t rid themselves of the idea that acting
is for girls and queers who sort of wish they were girls. Gavin Borman was that kind of guy. At Don
Haggarty’s annual April Fool’s keg-party, he had whined to me about “putting ideas in that big
galoot’s head.”
I told him he was certainly welcome to his opinion; like assholes, everybody had one. Then I
walked away, leaving him with a paper cup in his hand and a perplexed look on his face. The Coach
Bormans of the world are also used to getting their way through a kind of jocular intimidation, and he
couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working on the lowly sub who’d stepped into Alfie Norton’s
director’s shoes at the last minute. I could hardly tell Borman that shooting a guy to keep him from