Philip Wylie - Sporting Blood

Sporting Blood

by

Philip Wylie

"Crunch," said the girl.

"Present," the skipper replied, without looking up from his work.

"Hello!"

He took a turn with a wrench. "Hello, Marylin."

There was a brief silence on the Gulf Stream Dock. The sun of early autumn shone fiercely on the city of Miami and its grey-green Bay. Sandals tapped. The Poseidon rocked minutely as the girl came aboard.

"Aren't you glad to see me?"

Crunch grinned in the relative gloom. "All I can see in here is machinery."

Marylin Brush was one of his favorite female fishermen. But you couldn't let Marylin dominate a situation--quite. She had a tendency to try to do so.

"We just got back."

"That's great."

"Aren't you going to leap up and hug me, or anything?"

"You'd have to spend the weekend at a dry cleaner's."

"Oh." She came closer. A blonde who wore her locks in long natural waves. A tall girl, strong looking, dressed in what is called a play suit--a garment separated amidships by a sun-tanned stretch of no garment at all. It would have caused Marylin's grandmother (who had been presented by the American Ambassador to Queen Victoria) to fan the air with her kerchief and fall in a. quick swoon.

Crunch spun the wrench. "How's the family?"

"Wonderful. As usual." She sounded lugubrious.

"Excepting you."

Her voice was startled. "How'd you know that?"

"Elementary, my dear--"

She interrupted. "Crunch! I'm in love! And it's ghastly!"

"What's happened between you and Roge?"

"It isn't Roger."

Crunch put down the wrench. He wiped his hands on some overused waste. He stood-bringing above the deck level a face, shoulders and chest clad in honest perspiration and much black grease. Marylin Brush and Roger Benton had been "one of those things" ever since he'd been the captain of his prep school football team and she'd been a swimming star at Miss Wainwright's Florida Academy for Girls. Brush-Benton.

The nuptial headlines had waited only upon their graduation from the University of Miami. Then their two families would unite as naturally as the confluence of rivers and life among the elite would go on--re-inforced in strength and impressiveness.

"Not Roger?" His eyes--bluer, clearer, for the dark streaks around them--took in the tall girl, from painted toenails to the matching bow on the top of her head. Everybody liked Marylin. He smiled. "Hello, again."

"I guess I hadn't better shake hands, at that. Crunch, you old such-and-such, I'm glad to see you! How's fishing?"

He swung himself on deck. "Good. Who's the unfortunate guy?"

"Everything's wrong with him," she answered dolefully, sitting on one of the daybeds. "For instance. His name's Ramsay. And not only that--but Ramsay Binney. Isn't that silly?"

"Is it?"

"The family thinks so. They keep referring to him as Rusty Penny and Dopey Benny and Rumsey Bunny and names like that--as if they couldn't remember. All my brothers--and Dad and Mother, too."

"What else?"

"His parents were medical missionaries."

"Hardy lot. The best."

"He grew up with them--they tutored him till he was ready to come to America for college."

"Very enterprising."

"I think so," she said, nodding. "But it was on Poaki."

"Poaki?"

"There!" She jumped to her feet, rummaged amongst some charts and spools of line, found a package of cigarettes, put one in Crunch's mouth and one in her own, and lighted both. "You don't know, either. And you're a ship's captain! Nobody--positively nobody--ever recognizes Poaki. That's where Ramsay came from-and it's simply unheard-of!"

"What's Poaki?"

"It's an island in the South Pacific. Copra and pearls and the natives were head-hunters when the Binneys landed there--"

"Had you heard of it before you met--uh--Ramsay?"

She sat again. "No. Not even me. But that's not all. He's a research epidemiologist."

"Certainly your folks can't complain about that. After all--with the Brush Foundation--"

"Can't they! That's where I met him-at our Foundation this summer. We went to Cincinnati to dedicate a new wing--and he made a little speech--and I met him afterward.

1 saw to it that I did. But you should hear my family! He's only interested in tropical epidemics. And they keep telling me if I marry him I'll spend my life in places like--well

-Poaki. Catching things--eastern sprue and filariasis and so on. It's practically unbearable!"

"The guy in love with you?"

"How do I know?" she asked.

Crunch started to say, "Oh," and changed it to, "I see."

"When they noticed I was getting a crush on Ramsay, they yanked me places. The Adirondacks in July and Maine in August and I didn't catch up with him again till six weeks ago in New York. But he's coming down here soon." She said it with firm satisfaction. "He's going to do some work on Brill's disease. Isn't that marvelous?"

Crunch smoked.

The girl's lovingly shaped mouth became somewhat straight and possibly even hostile. "Don't say you're against me, too! Crunch. I'm going to marry Ramsay--and that's final."

"What about Roge?"

"He'll still have football--and polo, when he graduates." She gave Crunch no opportunity to comment upon games as a solace for her graceful, sun-tanned hand.

"Which brings me to the worst thing of all. You know how athletic my family is."

Who didn't? Crunch thought.

Wherever there were amateur sports, there were Brushes. Wherever the Great Outdoors beckoned, Brushes--father and four sons--cousins and nephews--responded.

When Olympic Games were held--the name of Brush was read off, usually in first place, in this event or that. The Brushes were rich-they had been for generations. And the Brushes were interested in science as well as the subsidy of science. But the Brushes were also interested in every known physical challenge--and they seemed to be born with a uniform aptitude for taking up any gage. High mountains, square with cliffs, had been first scaled by Brushes. Track records had repeatedly collapsed under Brush assault.

College coaches yearned for the matriculation of Brushes. Princeton once had three enrolled at the same time. A great year for sports at Princeton. Two worlds records for deep-sea fishing bore the name of Marylin's father--and of these, one had been established on board the Poseidon.

The picture occupied the skipper's mind for a moment. "Yes," he said. "Your folks are sure athletic."

"Ramsay isn't."

Crunch allowed himself the, "Oh." He pronounced it flatly.

The girl ground out her cigarette. Her eyes flashed greenly--and in this case, the color was a signal of danger. "Is that all that matters in a man? Beef? Brawn? How far he can throw a discus? How high he can toss himself with a pole? How big a mountain goat he can shoot how far away? How hard he can swat a ball with a stick? Is that the only important thing?"

"You're a little bit athletic, yourself. And your family--"

"--eats and sleeps physical culture! So what! Ramsay grew up on a tropical island.

He never saw a game--a sport--till he was eighteen. He doesn't like physical competition.

He's serious minded--and very bright. He has an I.Q.--alone--of a hundred and sixty-seven! He has a B.S., an M.A., a Ph.D., and an M.D.--and some of my brothers had to beat their brains out to get merely a lousy A.B. Ramsay can talk seven languages, including Malay and Chinese, and my family can't even shop in Paris without being gypped. He likes me because he said so and he told me he wished he was good at something so the family would think better of him."

Crunch began to see light. "Is he--healthy? I mean--?"

"Of course he's healthy! He's no weight lifter, like Clayton. No Hercules, like Dodson. No born blacksmith, like Pierce and Davidson. But my brothers make me sick!