Life Its Ownself

by Dan Jenkins

  As we edged toward the bar, we watched Kim slip out of her nun's habit and get down to her G-string and pasties. She then began to co-exist erotically with a religious cross that was covered in rhinestones.

  "The Medicis never got enough credit," Shake said. "Where would art be today?"

  We ordered enough Scotch to see us through a gloomy winter. Kim continued to save souls in the audience. When our eyes adjusted to the light, Shake was the first to spot Charlie Teasdale. The zebra was sitting at a table with three other men.

  "I'll be damned," I said, as Shake pointed him out.

  Seeing the zebra in The Blessed Virgin relieved my mind about the elegy to pro football that Shake had coming out in Playboy.

  Until that moment, I hadn't been a hundred percent convinced that Kim Cooze had told him the truth about Charlie Teasdale.

  There was enough youngster in my veins to make me want to wander over and say hello to the zebra.

  "Go ahead," Shake said. "I'm curious to know what he says."

  I carried a fresh Scotch with me and pulled up a chair at Charlie's table.

  "What do you say, Charlie?" I smiled. "I didn't know you were a fan of the ballet."

  Charlie looked surprised to see me, but he didn't seem overly embarrassed to be caught in The Blessed Virgin.

  "Why, Billy Clyde Puckett," he said, "how in the world are you? How's your knee?"

  He introduced me to his companions, Roy, Wayne, and Hank. There was a homebuilders' convention going on in Dallas, Charlie let me know quickly. He had thought his friends, Roy, Wayne, and Hank, should get a taste of Fort Worth nightlife, too. Fort Worth was more fun than Dallas in some ways, he said. They were going to leave in a minute. Maybe they'd go out to the stockyards area and hear some Western music at the White Elephant or Billy Bob's.

  "You're doing real good on TV, Billy Clyde," Charlie said. "I don't get to see you, of course. I'm always working, but people tell me you're not a bad announcer. Don't talk too much."

  Roy wanted me to autograph a napkin for him. I did. Then Wayne decided he better have an autograph for his eight-year-old boy.

  "What's his name?" I asked.

  "Wayne."

  "Wayne junior?"

  "Naw, just Wayne."

  Roy directed our attention to the stage, where Kim Cooze writhed on the floor and tantalized her tummy with rosary beads. The jukebox had progressed to a Dixieland version of "Who's Sorry Now?"

  At an opportune moment, I said to Charlie, "I know you guys don't like to talk to journalists, but can I ask you a question?"

  He said, "Hell, Billy Clyde, I don't mind talking to anybody, but the league has these rules."

  "I kind of thought since I was Establishment, it wouldn't hurt."

  "Go ahead," Charlie said, taking a drink of his draft beer.

  "Why do you throw so fucking many flags in a game, Charlie?"

  "I knew you were going to ask me that," he cackled.

  Roy, Wayne, and Hank weren't listening to us, preoccupied as they were with the entertainer on the stage.

  Charlie said, "I want to tell you something, Billy Clyde. You don't have any idea what a hard job we have. Nobody does. You can't have a thin skin and wear a whistle around your neck in the National Football League. I'm a purist, I suppose. I don't like to see a player get away with anything. Our job is to see that a team doesn't get an unfair advantage over another team. There's too much at stake. Shoot, I'm just like everybody else. I like to see the best team win because of the skills of their players and coaches, not because of a judgment call. But I'm not going to let a team win because they're getting away with something, not if I can help it."

  Charlie had gone into officiating like most zebras—as a hobby, a sideline. And like most zebras, he had come out of the ranks of collegiate officials. He had refereed in the Southwest Conference before he had joined the NFL.

  The way it worked was, a college zebra would apply for a job in the NFL on the sly. He wouldn't want his conference to know he was thinking about going into the pros. The NFL would watch him for a couple of seasons. If the league liked his work, he would be accepted, pending a physical, an eye test, and a rules test.

  The zebras in the NFL were required to take these tests regularly. I often wondered how Charlie passed the eye test every year.

  The referee was the boss zebra in a football game. He could overrule the field judge, the back judge, the umpire, or the head linesman. They all made the same amount of money, but the referee had power. No zebra had ever used his power like Charlie Teasdale, according to Shake Tiller.

  Zebras worked as teams in the NFL. In other words, Charlie always officiated a game with the same field judge, back judge, umpire, and head linesman. The league wanted it this way. If the zebras knew each other's mannerisms, tendencies to be in or out of position on certain plays, thought processes, prejudices, strengths, drawbacks, physical stamina, they could function better. It was supposed to make for a better game.

  Shake had uncovered no evidence that anyone on Charlie's crew was guilty of "doing business." Charlie had been working all year with Bob Stewart, an experienced field judge from Chicago; Ben Kincaid, a good back judge from Terre Haute, Indiana; Sam Pugh, a veteran umpire out of Birmingham; and Raymond (Rat] Farmer, an ex-pass receiver for the Lions who had become a head linesman.

  The fact that Shake had no proof of wrongdoing on the part of Charlie's crew members didn't get them off the hook with him. NFL crews got their game assignments ten days ahead of time and Shake said this left them with plenty of opportunity to tell their friends or business associates which game to put a circle around.

  The league instructed—and trusted—the zebras to keep their assignments a deep, dark secret, even from their families, right up until the opening kickoff. The NFL saw it as a way of safeguarding the officials from the influence of gamblers, death threats, mobsters, and so forth.

  But as Shake said, if the zebras were so good at keeping secrets, how come everybody from Uncle Kenneth to the valet parking guys in Vegas always knew what game Charlie Teasdale and his crew would be working?

  Now in The Blessed Virgin, after Charlie had made his noble speech, I said, "Charlie, you do know you've made more controversial calls than any zebra who ever lived, don't you?"

  "Camera angles," he said.

  "Camera angles? That's where the losers go to file their complaints?"

  He said, "Billy Clyde, television is the worst thing that ever happened to officiating. Oh, I've blown some. I've been out of position. But at the time, I thought I was right—and most of the time, I was. Our league cameras have different angles from the networks. On most of those calls you're thinking about—the Miami fumble, the Cleveland out-of- bounds, the 49er end zone—our league cameras proved I was right."

  "My first broadcast, the Green Bay-Washington game? You had a defensive-holding call that was a beauty."

  "They held up the tight end."

  "It was a God-damn quarterback sneak!"

  "Could have been a quick-out."

  I finished my drink.

  "Charlie, how come every bettor I've ever known thinks the zebras do business?"

  "Well, they have to blame somebody when they lose. The dumb guys have been robbing the smart guys for years, Billy Clyde."

  "I'm a little drunk, Charlie, or I wouldn't say this to you, but the fucking zebras sure turn a lot of games around."

  He said, "You've got it wrong. We don't turn the games around. Players turn the games around by trying to take advantage of the rules. All we do is catch 'em."

  I stood up.

  "Good to meet you," I said to Roy, Wayne, and Hank.

  They glanced at me hastily. Their eyes then returned to the stage, where Kim Cooze was now totally nude. She had discarded her G-string and pasties and was sensually rubbing her whup against a lifesize cardboard statue of Jesus.

  Charlie Teasdale had seen the act before, I presumed. He kept facing me.

  He said, "Billy C
lyde, I'm willing to lay my knowledge and my judgment on the line every time I go out on the field. If I know I'm right, they can burn the stadium down and I won't care. Part of the pleasure of officiating is being able to walk off the field knowing you were right."

  Back at the bar, I reported to Shake that Charlie had made a good case for his integrity.

  "So does Kim," Shake said.

  Kim's routine ended as she faked an orgasm with the statue. Charlie and the homebuilders left.

  It was a good hour before Kim, wearing a peasant blouse, jeans, and boots, came walking past the bar and discovered Shake and me standing there. Jim Tom was still with us, but then again, he wasn't. He was whispering sincerities to a Campfire Girl named Kelly Ann.

  Kim squealed when she saw us. She smothered us with hugs and kisses and demanded that we remain silent for a moment while she said a prayer, thanking God for sending us back to The Blessed Virgin.

  "Have you heard what's happened to me?" Kim said to Shake excitedly. "Playboy took my picture! It's going to be in the magazine with your story!"

  "I saw Charlie here," Shake said.

  "Every other night," Kim said. "I was just talking to him outside in the car. He won't say what game he's working next week. Claims he doesn't know yet. I said, Well, when you find out, there's an apartment over on Hulen I sure would like to buy. One more game might do it."

  "Thinking about settling down in Fort Worth, are you?" I said.

  "The Lord wouldn't want me to leave at a time like this."

  Shake asked if there was anything new happening to her show-biz career.

  "Yes!" she chimed. "The photographer who took my picture for Playboy? He said after the issue came out, he bet he could sell a whole layout on me to Hustler."

  "The literary quarterly," said Shake. "I've heard of it."

  "I can work here as long as I want to," said Kim. "After the joint gets all that publicity, they'll pay anything to keep me. Listen, I've got two more gigs tonight. What do y'all want to do later?"

  Shake and I traded looks.

  I said, "We have a business meeting in the morning, Kim. I'm going Dixie."

  "So am I," said Shake.

  "We could have a nice party," Kim said.

  "Another time," Shake said.

  "I can get Brandy to go with us," Kim suggested. "You remember Brandy, don't you, Billy Clyde? She went with your friend?"

  "Brandy's a great American," I said.

  Kim said, "She's a wise-mouth little thing, but I pray for her, and I've never heard any complaints about her athletic ability."

  Shake said we really had to leave. Kim wouldn't let us pay the bar check. She hugged and kissed us again, and did something with each of our hands to remind us of her 44s, not that it had been necessary

  I interrupted Jim Tom to see if he was interested in going with us. He wasn't.

  "This here's Kelly Ann," Jim Tom said, introducing us to the Campfire Girl, who was about eighteen, a sleaze-style lookalike for Sandi, the TCU cheerleader.

  Kelly Ann fished around in her handbag, came up with a black capsule, and chased it down with a shot of tequila.

  Jim Tom grinned at us. "Kelly Ann's twelve but she's got the body of a nine-year-old."

  "Why don't you swallow my farts?" Kelly Ann said to

  him.

  Jim Tom fell against the bar rail. "Zing went the strings of my heart," he said.

  Shake and I said goodnight to the lovebirds and went to get some eggs and talk about a swami.

  FOURTEEN

  Through the two glass walls of Big Ed's office on the eighth floor of the Bookman Oil & Gas building, you could almost see every stump, scorpion, and mesquite tree in West Texas.

  On the two wood-paneled walls of the office, you could see a dozen oil paintings of the drilling rigs and producing pumps that had brought immense wealth to Big Ed.

  Some of those holes had been dug by the grandfather Barbara Jane had never known—except through legend. "Deep Salt" Bookman was a rowdy old West Texas wildcatter who earned his nickname by drilling deeper and hitting more saltwater than just about anybody before he finally got lucky and hit oil.

  "Deep Salt" Bookman wasn't in the same league with the greats of the Texas oil bidness. He had never been as revered as Cap Lucas, who hit Spindletop, or Mike Benedum, who brought in the Pecos pool, or Dad Joiner, who discovered the East Texas field when he drilled the Daisy Bradford No. 3. But "Deep Salt" had made and lost three fortunes in the Twenties before anyone had ever heard of Haroldson Lafayette Hunt or Sid Richardson.

  Barb's granddaddy had given Big Ed a leg up in the bidness, which was enough production to see him through college and buy him a '36 Ford roadster. But it was to Big Ed's credit that he had taken big rich on his own.

  Big Ed Bookman, who had lettered as an end at TCU— he was 6-2 and that was considered big in those days— actually amounted to more than a big voice and a drawl he liked to exaggerate when he was in the company of pretentious Easterners. He held a degree in geology from TCU and he had gone through law school at the University of Texas.

  And he had fought a war. Big Ed had flown P-38's in the Fifth Air Force during World War II. He had been a highly decorated fighter pilot who had come out of the Air Corps as a twenty-four-year-old combat major. He had been in the air battle over the Philippines in January of '45 when his friend Tommy McGuire, America's second top ace, had been shot down and killed. Big Ed's war experiences alone would have made him a superpatriot.

  Big Ed had come home from the war and started looking for oil. He had found Big Barb first—Barbara Jane Bender, a pretty girl from a nice, middle-income family in Fort Worth.

  Barbara Jane's mother had not been called Big Barb until little Barb, their only child, had come along in the early Fifties.

  The early Fifties was when Big Ed had made the strike in Scogie County. Scogie wasn't any Pecos or East Texas field, but it had been almost as big as the Sprayberry discovery out around Midland and Odessa.

  Since then, Big Ed had found more oil and gas in Erath County, Palo Pinto County, in Wyoming, Canada, and Florida. He had also found time to stalk big game in Kenya and Rhodesia—he still called it Rhodesia, none of that Zimbabwe nonsense—to sail the rough waters off the coast of Australia, to play killer tennis, shoot golf in the high 70's, and pilot his own Lear.

  He was a man who loved his country, his state, his city, his family, his friends, and his bidness, and he wouldn't give you a dime for anybody who didn't feel the same way.

  Big Ed said what he damn well thought, did what he damn well pleased.

  "That's what fuck-you money is all about," he took satisfaction in saying.

  The Ed Bookmans were as close to Texas royalty as you could be—Big Ed through birth and performance, Big Barb through marriage. But their daughter and I and Shake still thought they were kind of funny.

  And now in Big Ed's office that morning, I could see on his face the look of a man who wanted to have Swami Muktamananda measured for a cement robe.

  Big Ed, T.J., Darnell, Shake, and myself were all sitting around a conference table, warming up each other's coffee cups, as Big Ed said:

  "You think I can't get it done? I'll call Vegas! I can get it done quicker than that swami can say shish-ka-bob! It won't cost me a wink of sleep, either! Foreign sons-of-bitches are bad enough when they wear their black suits and their mirrored sunglasses and try to tell me how to run the oil bidness! Now I got me a Hindu lunatic who's fucking around with college football! God damn, I wish I had my own hydrogen bomb!"

  "India ain't good for shit," said T.J. "What they got over there? A bunch of fuckers in bedsheets makin' mudpies, is all."

  Shake made the valid point that murder wasn't the answer to the problem. He said that Swami Muktamananda, or Haba, might be the only person through which we could reach Tonsillitis Johnson and get his mind straightened out.

  Darnell said, "Swami's a tough dude. I've had three meetings with him. Mr. Bookman gimme the authori
ty to offer him three hundred thou, but he just sit there cross- legged."

  The number impressed me. So did Darnell. Darnell talked that jive shit that he thought white people expected of him, but his face told me he was no dummy. You know how some guys have a smart look? Darnell had it. I'd found out he'd not only played ball at Texas Southern, he had graduated with a business degree. Until now—until he had become Big Ed's "geologist"—he'd been a bookkeeper for Big Rufus, a fast-food chain that specialized in barbecue, headquarters in Houston.

  Darnell had been determined to get out of Boakum, not to wind up like his daddy—be a handyman the rest of his life. Football had got him out. And football was going to get him somewhere else, you could tell. Football and Tonsillitis.

  All I knew about the mother of Darnell and Tonsillitis was that she still cooked the chicken and dumplings—"C's and D's," Darnell said—for the Boakum High cafeteria.

  "Would you really pay three thundred thousand for Tonsillitis?" I said to my father-in-law.

  "For a national championship?" said Big Ed. "I'd go a lot higher. That's all it'd be. Tonsillitis and that Toothis kid can take us straight to Number One."

  "Where would you max out?"

  While Big Ed was making up his mind about it, Darnell said, "Swami don't care about money. Swami be talkin' about America—how Americans confuse style with substance."

  "Hear that?" T.J. said, a little wild-eyed. "Try that shit on!"

  Shake said it sounded like Big Ed hadn't come up with enough "substance" yet.

  "Half a million," said Big Ed, arriving at a figure. "But I'd damn well want the assurance that Tonsillitis was back to normal and wasn't hangin' upside-down in his bedroom."

  "Upside-down?" I looked at Darnell.

  Darnell said, "Tonsillitis be hangin' upside-down thirty minutes ever day before lunch."

  Tonsillitis was also into incense, meditation, exercises. He was staying in shape—that was one good thing. Darnell didn't know what you called it when Tonsillitis placed his hands on the brick magnets and hummed for an hour.

  "He's chanting," Shake said.