MAGIC by William Goldman Read Free Book Online Page A

he’s got the good speed. He can catch punts, kickoffs, give him a shot.”
    “Later,” Tyler said, and he jogged back to his team.
    “Gonna work out just fine for all concerned,” Mutt said, coming back to the boy. “Sit awhile.” They walked to the old wooden grandstand, took seats alone on the front row. “Still nervous?”
    Corky made a nod.
    “No one expects miracles.”
    Corky nodded again.
    Mutt watched Tyler with his players. “Best years he ever had he owes to me—I brought him the best, didn’t I?”
    “Willie was sure wonderful,” Corky said.
    “He was a pal all right.”
    “Daddy, I’m not like him.”
    “No one expects miracles, I said that, just listen to Mutt and that’s all you have to do. What are you gonna do when they kick to you?”
    “Catch it.”
    “How come you won’t drop it?”
    “I’m gonna see the ball into my hands.”
    “That’s all there is to it—
ya see the ball into your hands
—never take your eyes off it no matter what till you got it cradled. Then what do you do?”
    “Run fast.”
    “Why do you think you can do that?”
    “ ’Cause you said I got the good speed.”
    “And with that good speed, do you run at ’em?”
    “No, you juke ’em, you give ’em the leg and then take it away.”
    “I’m really proud of you,” Mutt said.
    The heat was terrible and Corky contemplated fainting.
    “But that don’t matter,” Mutt said then.
    Corky wondered how much it would hurt, being slammed around. And what did you do with the pain? Where did you put it—you couldn’t cry, not on the football field, but the pain had to drain off someplace, where though? I got the good speed, he told himself. Maybe they won’t hit me at all. Give ’em the leg, take it away, juke ’em, fake, then run for safety. He looked at Mutt then. “Huh? What do you mean, it doesn’t matter if you’re proud. I want you to be proud.”
    “No,” Mutt told him. “
You
got to want
you
to be proud. You want me to be pleased, sure; but you’re the only one you can be proud of.”
    “Daddy—listen—please, I don’t want to try this—I’mjust gonna goof it up—let’s go home, maybe there’s a baseball game on the tv.”
    “You got to go through the caldron, Pal. You got to come out the other side. Willie was scared worse than you. And he didn’t just have the speed and the hands, he had the size and the strength working for him. And he said over and over again, ‘Take me home, Mutt.’ Until I told him about Nagurski.”
    “Nagurski?”
    “This was the best thing ever happened to me, the high point of my life, y’understand? And I was there, I saw it all, and I cried, so you pay mind.”
    Corky stared at his father.
    “I’ve read about ’em all and I’ve seen ’em all, every man ever run with a football, you name ’em, I made it my business to be there. Only not Nagurski. Bronko Nagurski and they said he was the greatest ever tucked a football under an arm. He was from Minnesota, went to school there, played pro in Chicago, I never got my chance to really check him out. But he was so great that when he wasn’t runnin’, they couldn’t just let him sit on the bench so they played him in the line, played him at tackle, and to this day he is the only one in the history of the world ever made All-American at
two
positions in
one
year—do you realize how great that man must have been? No one else ever dreamed of being All-American at two positions all the same year, and he
done
it. Nagurski. Weighed two thirty-five. Fast they said. Couldn’t be brought down, they said. No one ever came close, they said.
    “But I never got my shot to really see. I was east and he was out there. He played pro, tore the league apart, then went back to Minnesota and I never saw him. Well, you get over things, I got over that.
    “Then one Sunday I was passing through Chicago on my way back east—I did a lot of truckin’ during the war, driving valuable stuff all over, good work,