“You’re all right, Gregory ... it’ll help me a lot ...  I’ve got a case on her, I’ll admit.”

“Come on!” roared Coach Shaughnessy, “get on the job.”

He began calling letters and numbers for a play.

And just for a joke, he took “Barrel” Way, the two hundred pound fullback, aside, and “Rock-crusher” Morton ... he whispered them, I afterward learned, to give me rough stuff, go through me with a bang....

“Rock-crusher” took the ball, with “Barrel” for interference ... they came flashing my way.

I was so frenzied with joy over the prospect of getting my poems through to Vanna, even if it was in another man’s behalf, that I flung myself forward and brought both stars down with only a yard gained.

Shaughnessy gave a whoop of joyous amazement and the other boys shouted, and kidded “Barrel” and “Rock-crusher,” the latter of whom won his nickname from the gentle way he had of hitting his antagonists with his hard knees as he ran into them, and bowling them over ... he was a recruit from the hurdles, who ran “high.”

Shaughnessy came over to me.

“Gregory, I want to say right here, I wish you took enough studies, and you could make sub on the big team right off.  You’re skinny, but you’ve got the mettle I wish all my boys had.”

No sooner was I out of my football clothes than I hurried to Kuhlman’s, drank three coco-colas to stimulate me, and went to my room, to write my first poem for Vanna....

Nearly every day Billy received a poem from me.  Henceforth, when I passed Vanna, I received a gentle, appreciative smile ... but I was too timid even to speak to her ... and too self-conscious of my clothes, which were worn and frayed....

* * * * *

There were a few negro students at Laurel.  One of them, a girl named Matty Smith, approached me in the library one day, introduced herself as one of the chairmen of the entertainment committee of the First African Methodist Church, and asked me if I would come and give them a talk the following Saturday night....

The night came ...  I found myself on the platform with the preacher by my side.  They had seated me in the chair of honour.

First the congregation prayed and sang ... such singing, so clear and soaring and melodious.  It rocked the very church, burst out through the windows in great surges of melody.

I was introduced as their friend, as the coloured man’s friend.

I spoke.  I read my poems simply and unaffectedly.

Afterward I shook hands all round.

Matty Smith, the negro girl, as black as soot, and thoroughly African, stood by me as introducer.  If I had shut my eyes, her manner of speech might not have been told from that of any cultured white woman’s.  She was as refined and sensitive a human being as I have ever met.

As I walked back to my attic over the plumber shop, it was with head erect and heaving chest.  I deemed myself a champion of the negro race.  I was almost putting myself alongside of Lincoln and John Brown.