Tackle Without a Team Read online

  “How about the kid in a pith helmet and sunglasses sitting behind Kear Nguyen at the game?” Scott asked. “Know who he was?”

  “Sure. Rick Seaver,” Monk said. “Hey, man, what is this? The third degree?” He tapped Elmo’s arm and started to head down the aisle. “Let’s go. I’m thirsty. See you guys.”

  “Yeah,” Scott said.

  After the boys were gone, Scott looked at Jerilea and said absently, “Rick. Rick and Sid. It adds up.”

  Jerilea’s eyes widened. “You think Rick stole Kear’s wallet?”

  “He could have. He was sitting behind Kear, and a guy could get so wrapped up in a game he’d never know somebody was picking his pocket.” He watched her remove the tape recorder from her purse. “You had it on?”

  She nodded, smiling, and pressed a button. There was a whirring sound as the tape rewound. Then she pressed another button, and a moment later they heard the conversation among Monk, Elmo, and Scott.

  “He’s so arrogant I wouldn’t be surprised if he had pulled off that dirty trick himself,” Jerilea said caustically.

  Scott shrugged. “Monk? Maybe. But why would he do it? I’ve never done anything to him.”

  “But you’ve never done anything to anybody, Scott,” Jerilea said, reaching out and taking his hand. “You’re considerate. A lot of kids aren’t.” She smiled. “That’s why I like you.”

  “Hey, I’m no saint.”

  “No. But you’re far from being a devil.”

  “I wish more people felt that way about me. Like my father,” Scott said with a sigh. Then he squeezed her hand. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “I thought I smelled rubber burning.” She laughed.

  “I’m going to ask Coach Zacks if he can schedule a practice game with the Greyhawks.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve given me an idea,” Scott replied. “Could I borrow your tape recorder for a few days?”

  “Oh, I think I know what you’re up to. You can keep it for as long as you need to.”

  He grinned. “Thanks, Jeri.”

  They wadded up their napkins, dumped them into the trash container, then waved to Monk and Elmo as they headed for the door.

  “I’ll walk you home, then get my bike and ride over to Coach Zacks’s house,” Scott said.

  “Okay.”

  It was about twenty minutes later when Scott pulled up into Coach Zacks’s driveway on Cornwall Lane. He set his bike up on the stand and went up the front porch steps to the white-paneled door. He knocked, and a few seconds later a tall, dark-haired woman with glasses answered.

  “Hi. I’m Scott Kramer,” Scott said. “I’m one of Coach Zacks’s football players. Is he in?”

  She looked at him a moment before she said, “Yes, he is. Just a minute.”

  She left, and in a moment the coach appeared. “Hi, Scott,” he greeted. “Come on in.” Coach Zacks led him into a spacious living room.

  “Sit down, Scott,” Coach Zacks said, easing himself into an armchair. “What can I do for you?”

  “I just wondered if we ah … if we can get a practice game with the Greyhawks,” Scott said, feeling a trifle nervous.

  Coach Zacks smiled. “The team you used to play on? That’s an idea. As a matter of fact, it’s a good idea. Why? You have any special reason why you’d like to play against them?”

  Scott shrugged. “Yeah. A very special reason,” he answered and took a deep breath. “I just can’t tell you what it is right now,” he added quietly.

  TWELVE

  At Tuesday’s practice session, Coach Zacks informed the Cougars that they would be playing the Greyhawks the next day. Not even Scott knew before then that a game had definitely been arranged.

  Scott had felt nervous about it ever since he had talked with Coach Zacks. Now that the game was ready to be played, he felt more nervous than ever. He was glad Coach Zacks hadn’t pressed him into explaining why he’d like the Cougars to play against his former team. That was a secret he couldn’t tell anyone. Not until the right moment came, anyway — and he hoped it would be sometime during the game.

  Kickoff time was six o’clock. The Cougars won the toss and chose to receive.

  Monk Robertson kicked off at the thirty-five, a low, shallow kick that went for thirty yards. Arnie Patch caught it and advanced it to the Cougars’ forty-four, where Bill Lowry brought him down.

  “Hey! You finally did it!” Scott heard Monk yell at Bill.

  Bill looked at him not too pleasantly. “What do you mean … I finally did it?”

  “Made the first tackle!” Monk exclaimed, running over and slapping Bill on the back. “Congratulations!”

  Scott grinned. Not every guy on the team received such sparkling accolades from the Greyhawks’ arrogant fullback.

  He saw Kear slap Bill on the hip, and, for a moment, Kear’s and Scott’s eyes met. His mouth opened to say “Hi, Kear,” but Kear looked away before he could. After a few seconds Kear trotted off to join the rest of the Greyhawks.

  Scott had a feeling he couldn’t explain. He had never played against his own team before — or what had once been his team. And, even though Kear was sore at him, playing against him didn’t seem right.

  Somehow I’m going to make him realize I’m not the stinker he thinks I am, Scott promised himself. And with luck I will today.

  “Huddle!” Zane Corbett barked.

  The Cougars quickly gathered.

  “Forty-six … on three!” Zane said.

  They broke out of the huddle and formed on the line of scrimmage. Scott’s heart began to pound the instant he was face-to-face with Sid Seaver. He expected to see some evidence — some telltale sign — in those dark eyes that would reveal Sid’s guilty conscience. But Sid returned his look as if nothing else was on his mind except the matter at hand: the football game.

  I’ll wait until I find the chance to get close to Rick, Scott thought. It’s Rick I want, anyway. He’s the one who framed me. For all I know Sid might be innocent of the whole thing. He’s the quiet one of the two. Rick might not even have told him about framing me. He probably didn’t trust Sid to keep quiet, even though Sid was the reason behind it all. Only Rick had the guts to think up that Seaver Double Threat idea.

  “Down! Set! Hut! Hut! Hut!”

  Carl snapped the ball. Zane grabbed it, pedaled back a few steps, then handed it off to Barney. Barney broke through tackle, sprinting at Scott’s heels as Scott bumped the Greyhawks’ tackle and guard — his old teammates Roy Austin and Chuck Bellini — in an attempt to wedge a hole between them.

  It was a good run. Barney got the ball to the Cougars’ forty-eight.

  Second and six.

  Barney carried again. But this time he fumbled the ball on the Cougars’ forty-nine, and the Greyhawks recovered it.

  “Oh, no!” Zane moaned.

  Barney was angry, too. Scott could read the disgusted look on his face. There was one consolation from the loss of the ball: the opportunity to get face-to-face with Rick Seaver.

  He got his chance on the second down, after he broke through the line and tackled Rick for a two-yard loss.

  “Hi, ol’ buddy,” Scott said, grinning. “Stuck any grass into somebody’s duffel bag lately?”

  Rick stared at him. “What’re you talking about? You nuts?”

  “You only wear your sunglasses and your uncle’s pith helmet when you’re a spectator at football games?”

  “Are you crazy? You’ve lost your buttons, you know that?”

  “I don’t think so,” Scott said, his smile faded.

  “Huddle!” Rick shouted to his men.

  Scott turned his back to him, feeling better now that he had broken the ice. But Rick was a tough nut to crack. What else could I say that would break him? he wondered. How could I get Rick to confess that he had framed me? That was the big job now.

  In four plays the Greyhawks got the ball to the Cougars’ four yard line, and each time Scott had the opportunity to be face-to-face w
ith Rick, he repeated his innuendos but with variations: “Come on, Rick. You know what I’m talking about. You know who put those joints in my duffel bag. And you know —”

  “I don’t know!” Rick shouted, staring at him hotly. “Now stop saying that! Is that why we’re playing this game? So that you can get at me?”

  Scott matched his stare. “I could’ve phoned. But I figured you would hang up on me. This is the best and easiest way.”

  “The best and easiest way, is it? I don’t believe you, you know that?” Rick said, boiling mad. “No matter what I say —”

  “That’s right,” Scott cut in. “No matter what you say, because I know you’re the one.”

  Rick’s fists were clenched. His eyes were like steel.

  “Go ahead, hit me,” Scott said. “That would really prove it, wouldn’t it?”

  The Cougars’ defense held like a brick wall in every way it could, short of causing heavy penalties. As usual, the guys played rough. Seeing the two teams together confirmed Scott’s belief that, despite what had happened, he was still a Greyhawk at heart. Sure, a few of his old teammates got rough at times, too, but they always played fair and for fun.

  The whistle shrilled with the ball on the one yard line.

  “First down!” the ref shouted. “Cougars’ ball!”

  The Cougars tried an end-around run that went for eleven yards. On another try Don Albright carried again but fumbled. Kear Nguyen scooped it up and sprinted into the end zone for a touchdown.

  For a moment Scott caught Kear’s eye, flashed a hint of a smile, and pumped his fist. No matter what he thinks of me, I’m still his friend, Scott thought. I’m glad he made the touchdown.

  Monk tried the point-after kick and put it straight between the uprights. Greyhawks 7, Cougars 0.

  Before the half was over, the Greyhawks scored again on a pass from Rick to tight end Karl Draper. But this time Monk’s kick missed the uprights by three feet. Greyhawks 13, Cougars 0.

  It seemed, Scott thought, that Coach Zacks’s hope of beating the pants off the Greyhawks wasn’t going to come true today. There was still plenty of time, though, for the Cougars to make a comeback.

  During intermission, Scott couldn’t think about anything except for his brief encounters with Rick Seaver during the first half. It bothered him that he still had no definite proof. What good was it to continually harass Rick if no one had witnessed the crimes — for crimes they were — or if Rick didn’t confess to them? No good at all.

  The second half started off with a bang. Barney Stone kicked off for the Cougars and managed to unleash one of his longest kicks. It sailed to the Greyhawks’ twelve yard line, where Elmo George caught it and carried it back to their nineteen before Scott tackled him.

  Scott wasn’t sure how to judge the expression on Elmo’s face as he put out his hand and helped Elmo to his feet. “Surprised?” he said. “Remember, I’m a Cougar right now.”

  Elmo grinned. “Yeah. I can see that,” he said.

  The Greyhawks tried two running plays, totaling seven yards, then Rick pedaled back and unleashed a long pass intended for split end Karl Draper.

  Karl was about to catch it, when Arnie Patch, the Cougars’ lightning-footed running back, snatched it from his grasp and bolted down the sideline for a touchdown. It was a sixty-eight-yard run, and the Cougars’ fans applauded like crazy.

  Barney booted the ball between the uprights for the extra point. Greyhawks 13, Cougars 7.

  It wasn’t until three minutes before the third quarter ended that Scott found himself staring down into Rick Seaver’s face. Rick’s helmet had been knocked off when Scott tackled him for a six-yard loss on the Cougars’ thirty-eight yard line, and now Rick was down on the ground with Scott on top of him.

  “What did you do with the money you found in Kear’s wallet, Rick?” he whispered harshly. “Spend it on yourself and your girlfriend?”

  “Sure. He took her out to dinner, didn’t you, Rick?”

  The voice came from Bill Lowry, who had fallen on his knees next to Scott and Rick and was slowly rising to his feet.

  “Yeah, sure,” Rick said. “I bought a big dinner for us. Now will you get off my —?”

  “A big dinner for five bucks?” Bill Lowry cut in. “Oh, yeah! Maybe at McDonald’s! Or Burger King!”

  He chuckled as he rose to his feet, shoved Scott aside, and extended a hand to Rick. “You heard him, Scott. Get off his back.”

  Scott, rolling off Rick, looked up into the sweating, masked face of the Greyhawks’ big right guard. His mind was churning rapidly, dredging up all the facts he could remember about his two frame-ups. From the corner of his eye he saw Rick rise to his feet and walk away, casting a cold, hard glance back at him, muttering something Scott couldn’t hear.

  “Wait a minute, Bill,” Scott said, as the burly guard started away, too. “How did you know there was five dollars in Kear’s wallet?”

  Bill’s eyes widened. Then he laughed. “Who doesn’t know it? Everybody knows it.”

  “No, Bill,” Scott said. “Nobody knows it except three people. Four, counting Kear’s mother. Kear, me, and the person who had stolen his wallet.”

  “Baloney!” Bill snorted and started to walk away.

  Scott grabbed his arm, just as the whistle shrilled for the start of the next play. “No. It’s no baloney, Bill,” Scott said. “You took that wallet from Kear while he was watching the Cougars-Tigers game, didn’t you? Then you took the five-dollar bill out of it, went to the clubhouse, and put the wallet in my duffel bag.”

  “You can’t prove nothing,” Bill snapped, yanking his arm loose and starting to walk away again.

  Again Scott caught his arm. “It was you, then, who put the joints in my duffel bag. Why, Bill? For Pete’s sake, what did I ever do to you? Why did you frame me so that I’d be kicked off the team?”

  Bill looked around furtively as if he wanted to make sure no one else was within listening range. “Because I got fed up being made a fool of all the time, that’s why!” he exclaimed. “No matter what I did, I got bawled out. More than anybody else. Did the coach care that I was trying my best? No! He just kept bugging me … reminding me to get on the stick. Know how many times he’s said that to me? A hundred and one times! Well, I got sick of it.”

  “So you picked me as the scapegoat.”

  “Yeah. I guess I was jealous. You’ve been going big guns, and me …” He shrugged. “I’m just a dumb guard.”

  “Then, to make matters worse, you stole Kear’s wallet,” Scott said. “You knew he’d blame me for it, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I was sitting there, and I saw it sticking out of his pocket,” Bill said, his voice almost a whisper. “It was an easy steal. I figured you’d be blamed because you’d want dough to buy more joints.”

  “Thanks, Bill,” Scott said, trying to keep himself from punching the big tackle in the mouth. “Thanks a bunch. I like you, too.”

  “Bill!” a voice shouted. “Get your tail over here, will you?”

  The whistle shrilled again.

  “Five yards!” the ref shouted, pointing at the Greyhawks. “Delay of game!”

  “Your fault, Bill!” somebody snapped angrily.

  Bill shot a pale glance at Scott. “Too bad you don’t have proof,” he said. He turned and headed toward the line of scrimmage, where the referee had marked off five yards against the Greyhawks.

  Scott smiled. “Ah … but I do, Bill,” he said. “I do.”

  THIRTEEN

  The game ended with the Greyhawks regaining possession of the ball on their own two yard line. Even after a short pass that went awry, and three line plunges, the Cougars couldn’t score, and the game went to the Greyhawks, 13–7.

  “Getcha next time,” Lance Woodlawn said to the Greyhawks team in general, as both clubs walked off the field.

  “Sure you will,” Monk Robertson answered, smiling.

  Scott didn’t care one way or another. He had hoped that the game would b
e a way to solve his problem, and it had. He had found out what he wanted to know: who had framed him. Maybe the next time both teams met, winning or losing would mean something. But not this time.

  He waited outside the clubhouse for the members of the Greyhawks to leave. Almost always Coach Tom Dresso was the last one to depart, making sure that nobody left anything behind, that the place was cleaned up, the lights turned off, and the door locked.

  “Coach!” Scott called to him, as he saw the coach step out and start locking the door.

  Coach Dresso turned his head. “Oh. Scott Kramer. So you’ve found a team who would take you on. Well, I guess their coach isn’t as strict as the coaches in our league.”

  Scott stepped up to him, holding out a hand-sized tape recorder. “I’d like you to listen to this, Coach,” he said.

  Coach Dresso frowned. He took the recorder, examined it a bit, then flicked a switch. After a few seconds voices began to speak. They were slightly muffled, but clear enough to identify the speakers and what they were saying. The coach’s frown deepened.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “That’s Rick Seaver and me talking during the game,” Scott said. “Keep listening.”

  There were sounds of grunts and groans and leather against leather, which the recorder had picked up before Scott had turned it off. He didn’t want all that garbage on tape, but sometimes he hadn’t been able to turn it off in time.

  Suddenly it came to the part where his voice said, “What did you do with the money you found in Kear’s wallet, Rick? Spend it on yourself and your girlfriend?”

  Scott watched the coach’s expression as a new voice chimed in. “Sure. He took her out to dinner, didn’t you, Rick?”

  The coach looked at Scott. “That Bill Lowry?”

  Scott nodded.

  “Yeah, sure,” Rick’s voice came from the tape. “I bought a big dinner for us. Now will you get off my —”

  And then the beginning of the end for Bill Lowry: “A big dinner for five bucks? Oh, yeah! Maybe at McDonald’s! Or Burger King!”