End Zone

"Coach wants to see you," he said.

Everybody stood around watching. I went over and found my coat. I put it over my head and followed Veech into the dimness and silence. We went over to Staley Hall. Veech didn't say anything. We went downstairs and he simply nodded toward the closed door at the end of the isometrics room. I left my coat bundled on a scale. Then I blew my nose, walked to the door and knocked. The room was small and barely furnished, just an army cot, a small folding table, two folding chairs. There were no windows. On the wall was a page torn from a book, a blackandwhite plate of a girl praying in a medieval cell, an upper corner of the page loose and casting a limp shadow. Near the door, at my shoulder, a whistle hung from a string looped over a bent nail. Emmett Creed was in a wheelchair. His legs were covered with a heavy blanket, gray and white, not quite the school colors. Ten or twelve looseleaf binders were stacked neatly on the floor.

"Sit down, Gary."

"Yes sir."

"I'm told it's a near buzzard out there."

"We were going at it," I said. "We were playing. We were ignoring the weather and going right at it."

"So I'm told."

"How are you feeling, Coach? A lot of the guys have tried to get in to see you. I'm sure they'd appreciate it if I brought back word."

"Everything is progressing as anticipated."

"Yes sir. Very good. I know they'd appreciate hearing that."

"A near blizzard is what they tell me."

"It's really snowing," I said. "It's coming down thick and steady. Visibility must be zero feet."

"Maybe that's the kind of weather we needed over at Centrex."

"None of us can forget that game, Coach."

"We learned a lot of humility on that field."

"It was hard to accept. We had worked too hard to lose, going all the way back to last summer, scrimmaging in that heat. We had worked too hard. It was impossible to believe that anybody had worked harder than we had. We had sacrificed. We had put ourselves through a series of really strenuous ordeals. And then to step out on that field and be overwhelmed the way we were."

"It takes character to win," he said. "It's not just the amount of mileage you put in. The insults to the body. The humiliation and fear. It's dedication, it's character, it's pride. We've got a ways to go yet before we develop these qualities on a team basis."

"Yes sir."

"I've never seen a good football player who didn't know the value of selfsacrifice."

"Yes sir."

"I've never seen a good football player who wanted to learn a foreign language."

"Yes."

"I've been married three times but I was never blessed with children. A son. So maybe I don't know as much about young men as I think I do. But I've managed to get some good results through the years. I've tried to extract the maximal effort from every boy I've ever coached. Or near as possible. Football is a complex of systems. It's like no other sport. When the game is played properly, it's an interlocking of a number of systems. The individual. The small cluster he's part of. The larger unit, the eleven. People stress the violence. That's the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there's a calm, a tranquillity. The players accept pain. There's a sense of order even at the end of a ru

"Absolutely," I said.

"But I didn't intend getting into that. You know all that. A boy of your intelligence doesn't have to be told what this game is all about."

"Thank you," I said.

"No boy of mine has ever broken the same rule twice."

"Yes sir."

"No boy in all my years of coaching has ever placed his personal welfare above the welfare of the aggregate unit."

"Yes sir."

"Our i

I said nothing.

"What I called you in here for," Creed said.

"Yes sir."

"Do you know the reason?"

"Why I'm here? I assume because I walked off the field."

"I knew that exploit was coming," he said. "In one form or another it had to come. It was just a matter of time. I knew about Pe

"I never expected anything like this," I said. "I'm not a senior. Doesn't it go to seniors?"

"Never mind that."

"Frankly I thought I was here to be disciplined."

"Maybe that's what it all amounts to. I'll be demanding extra. I'll be after you every minute. As team leader you'll be setting an example for the rest of them. You'll have to give it everything you've got and then some."

"I'll be ready," I said.

"I know you will, son. You'll find Oscar Veech in the training room. Send him in here."

"One thing I've been meaning to ask since the minute I walked in. What's that picture taped to the wall? Who is that in the picture? Is it anybody in particular?"

"Somebody sent that picture to me many years ago. Looks like it came from some kind of religious book for kids. People were always sending me things. Good luck things or prayers or all kinds of advice. Not so much now. They've been keeping pretty quiet of late. But that's a Catholic saint. I've kept that picture with me for many years now. Teresa of Ávila. She was a remarkable woman. A saint of the church. Do you know what she used to do in order to remind herself of final things?"

"Something to do with a skull, I think."

"She used to eat food out of a human skull."

"I'll go find Veech," I said.

In my room later I became depressed. No American accepts the deputy's badge without misgivings; centuriesof heroic lawlessness have captured our blood. I felt responsible for a vague betrayal of some local code or lore. I was now part of the apparatus. No longer did I circle and watch, content enough to be outside the center and even sufficiently cu