Section One: Young Tom
Chapter 1
November 1910
The twenty three young men who made up
the varsity squad of Butte
High School
“Good thing this is our last game
for the season,” one lad grumbled.
“Aw, come on. Don’t let a little
snow get you down,” Tom Calhoun joked. “Aren’t we all tough Montana boys?”
“Yeah,” another teammate put in.
“We don’t let a little thing like a blizzard slow us down.”
Just then the coach’s whistle
called them out to start the game. As quarterback, Tom led the Butte
Broncos onto the field. Not only was it
the last game of the season, it was also homecoming, and the final game for the
seniors, such as he.
Two rosy-cheeked girls warmly clad
in black coats with orange mufflers around their necks and heads held a hoop
framing a likeness of a bald eagle, the mascot of the opposing team. Tom
charged through, ripping the damp paper to shreds, tearing the eagle asunder.
The rest of the team followed.
“Give ‘em hell, Tom,” one of the
girls said, saucily.
Glenda Crocker was the only
daughter of the city’s widowed bank president. She’d grown up motherless and
most of Butte ’s
society matrons derided her as a fast minx. She did not have many girl friends,
but the boys thronged to her.
Even if there had not been a ratio
of at least five boys to every girl in the last two classes of the high school,
she would have been popular. She had already promised every dance on the
program for the after game festivities but there was no question which boy
would see her home.
The Broncos formed up to receive
the Eagle’s kick off as the game got underway. Tom called for a fair catch and
moved in under the ball as it arced downward. The other ten players fell into
place and they all charged down the field in a flying wedge. They were finally
stopped at the twenty-five yard line in a melee of tangled bodies.
The Eagles proved to be a worthy
opponent and made it a hard-fought game. The final score was 24-21 in the
Bronco’s favor. Tom’s strong passes were responsible for two of the touchdowns
and he made one himself with an interception.
The locker room reverberated with
post game jubilation. The Broncos had fought to an impressive nine and one
record for the season. It was thus no real surprise that the head coach of the University of Montana
“I’ll think about it,” Tom
promised, too cagey to commit himself so early.
“You do that, young man. You have
the makings of a fine athlete, a real star. With the right coaching and
exposure…” But Tom had already wandered away, more interested for now in the
charms of Glenda Crocker than a vague future as a college football hero. He
knew he had no need for a scholarship. He had no doubt his father had already
arranged to pay his way to any university he might choose to include Harvard,
Yale or the newer Leland Stanford.
The Homecoming dinner and dance
were to be held in the Lodestar Hotel, Butte ’s
newest and most luxurious. Before the dance, Tom would escort Glenda to dinner
at the Chez Louis, indisputably Butte ’s
finest restaurant. Then they would move to the ballroom to dance until
midnight.
***
The orchestra began to play “After
The Ball” as the hands on the large clock at one end of the ballroom edged
toward twelve o’clock. There was a momentary flurry as couples paired off for
the last dance of the 1910 Homecoming celebration. Tom, who had just been to
the men’s room to share a nip with his friend Justin Everhart, emerged from the
corridor to glance around the room, seeking Glenda.
In a moment her blazing hair and
bright azure blue gown caught his eye. Almost at the same moment she saw him
and started around the edge of the ballroom his way. When they met at the end,
she stepped into his arms. There was nothing coy about Glenda. She met his blue
gaze frankly and smiled, a very warm and inviting smile.
“After the ball is over, I intend
to go right on having a wonderful night,” she declared.
“Count me in,” Tom replied. Though
far from intoxicated, he felt a pleasant warm, relaxed and anticipatory glow.
Although it was only a few blocks to the elegant house Glenda shared with her
widowed father, he had rented a neat little buggy in which to take her home,
and if the snow had not gotten too bad, they might take a round about route to
get there.
They waltzed around the room as the
gas lights slowly dimmed. Most of the young couples on the dance floor took
advantage of the crush of people and the reduced illumination to press more
closely together and those farthest from the group of teacher and parent
chaperones stole eager kisses as the orchestra played the final refrain.
Glenda’s modish gown, straight from
Paris she’d
been told, was cut to enhance her fine figure, making her waist appear even
smaller and her bosom fuller than they actually were. It might have been deemed
a bit daring and overly mature for a young lady of high school age, but without
a mother to advise her, perhaps she did not know or so some of the more
generous among the chaperones allowed.
None of the speculation disturbed
her enjoyment of the masculine appreciation it won for her, though. Even Mr.
Perleman, the dapper, young, bachelor English teacher danced with her once and
surreptitiously ogled the lush white expanse of flesh bared by the deep cut
sweetheart neckline.
She tossed her head and made the
dangling ringlet curls dance against her neck. So what if some of the girls
whispered behind her back and used terms like hoyden and even harlot to refer
to her. Her father could buy and sell theirs by the half dozen any day and she
could steal a beau from the prettiest one without half trying.
But for tonight, she was quite
content to be seen as Tom’s girl. After all, was he not the hero of the
hard-contested game as well as the handsomest boy in the room? He could have
been Homecoming King hands down except he’d let it be known he didn’t wish the
title. It had gone instead to the other quarterback, Peter Scott, although he’d
sat out over half the season with injuries sustained in the year’s second game.
Tom had even ditched Annabelle
Ryan, who’d been elected queen, for her, the red-headed bad girl Glenda. She
had danced every dance, only two previously with her escort, and she’d flirted
with every partner but not enough to make Tom jealous or cause him a moment’s
worry. Now she felt safe and yet excited in the circle of his strong embrace.
The music stopped at last and the
dancers began to move toward the doors, There they claimed their coats. Tom helped Glenda into
her fur-collared wool lined with eiderdown. She turned the fluffy collar up
around her ears and wound a soft muffler around her neck. Tom shrugged into his
sheepskin lined leather coat before they stepped out into the snow.
While they were inside the wind had
all but died, yet the snow continued to fall, even thicker and faster than it
had during the game. Glenda clutched Tom’s arm. “Oh isn’t it beautiful? I
always love the first real snow of the winter. After that—well, it gets
tiresome but the first big one is magic!”
Tom laughed as he handed her up
into the buggy and tucked the thick lap robe around her. He unclipped the horse
from the iron weight, set it on the floor and then climbed up beside her.
“What’s magic is you right here beside me.” He slipped off one glove to brush a
few snowflakes off her face.
“Straight home or around to look at
the snow a few minutes?”
“What do you think?”
“It’s cold…”
“But I’m a Montana girl, and if we sit close enough
together, we won’t notice the chill now will we?” She slipped over to tuck
herself against his side. He shook out the reins and clucked to the horse. The
beast clearly didn’t relish leaving the relative shelter of the hotel’s
portico.
Once they were moving, Tom put his
arm around Glenda and drew part of the lap robe over his legs. Even so, they
soon had to admit it was cold. Away from the higher buildings along main
street, the wind still blew, swirling snow so that the street lights were all
but obscured and the few windows still lit at midnight looked dim and far away.
Glenda pressed her face against
Tom’s shoulder, ducking away from the stinging flakes.
“Papa is not home,” she murmured.
“He’s back east with your brother in law on business. Mina Bowers, the
housekeeper, sleeps behind the kitchen and with the hot toddy she takes at
bedtime, the dead would wake before she would.”
Her voice was low and muffled but
he heard every word. She knew he did although he did not answer her directly.
At the next corner he twitched the reins and turned the horse toward the
Crocker home. He started to rein in at the front.
“No, the poor horse will freeze,
standing out here in the wind. There’s room in the barn. For the buggy too….”
“I was just going to let you go in
here, save you the walk in the snow.”
“Oh.” She giggled, feeling giddy
and breathless at what she had decided to do. “Oh well, it’s all right then.”
He jumped down, helped her alight and then held her for a moment, kissing
snowflakes off her face.
“Hurry,” she whispered. “I’ll be in
the parlour. Don’t knock. I won’t lock the door.”
He swung back into the buggy and
turned toward the rear of the house. A few minutes later she heard him stamp
the snow off his feet and then he carefully, quietly opened the door and
stepped into the foyer.
“I’m in here,” she called. “To your
right. There’s a bit of a fire still and it’s cozy.”
Glenda had shed her coat and stood
at the fireplace, warming her hands over the glowing coals. Tom hung his coat
beside hers on the bentwood tree at the door and then strode to her side.
“Here, let me build the fire up a
bit.” He gathered a few smaller kindling splits and arranged them on the coals
and then laid two larger logs across them. Within moments, the fire danced
merrily. He turned then and took her hands. His felt warm while hers still
seemed icy. He curled his fingers around hers, leaning closer, his breath sweet
and warm across her face. Fine tremors shook her body. It wasn’t so easy now to
meet his eyes for they had gone from warm to blazing hot, glowing like a barely
banked fire with an urgency she had never seen before.
“I…maybe you should know I’ve never
done this before. Even if Papa was away I never told anyone, never asked them
to come in. I mean, well I know everyone says I’m fast and no better than I
should be, but I never did this before.”
“I didn’t think you had. You
wouldn’t, not with just anyone. I don’t think you’re fast or bad, just not some
starched up prude like most of the girls. I don’t think anything bad at all
about you, Glennie, honest I don’t.” He tugged gently on her hands until she
stepped closer, into the circle of his arms. It was no different than when they
danced, she told herself, but it felt different. It felt very different.
For a time he just held her, one
hand stroking slowly up and down her back while the other rested in the hollow
of her side. She buried her face against his shoulder, feeling the soft
tickly-scratch of the wool in his suit coat. Beneath it the solid warm muscle
of his body—radiating more heat than the fire behind her. Her hands finally
found their way beneath his jacket, slid along his sides over the satiny
broadcloth of his shirt. There at last they grew warm.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Warning: Offensive or spam comments will be deleted promptly!