by Peter Gent
“Well, I can’t relax as long as they got the guns.”
“We’ll head back to Fort Worth in a bit.”
“Do I have to ride in the back again?”
Maxwell looked at me and shrugged.
I had to and by the time we reached the Big Boy Restaurant where we had left our cars, I was numb. We returned cold, tired, drunk, and empty-handed. Jo Bob had thrown the remaining doves at passing cars.
“Jo Bob, you take my car,” Maxwell ordered. “I’ll ride with Phil. We’ll catch you at Crawford’s place.”
Jo Bob and Meadows looked quizzically at each other. They didn’t understand Maxwell’s desire to hunt or drink with me. His riding all the way back to Dallas in my car was pure bedevilment. I enjoyed their confusion.
It was late afternoon. In a last gasp the sun had burned away the gray sky and had disappeared into the Panhandle. The air had warmed some and the best part of the day remained. Being in Texas is a skin feeling, strongest this time of day. There is a softness to the twilight. The days could be overpowering in their sun-soaked brightness, not so much now since the smog, but still incredibly vibrant. This afternoon, it was the predark peace that I needed, a quiet power I had never felt in the changing gray of the Midwest or the choking paranoia of New York.
I love Texas, but she drives her people crazy. I’ve wondered whether it’s the heat, or the money, or maybe both. A republic of outlaws loosely allied with the United States, Texas survives, and survives quite well by breaking the rules. Now there is a new generation of Texans who want to do away with the rules. The old resist violently, unable to conceive of that dream of wealth, devoid of any rules to break.
I took out my keys and bent to unlock my car, a brand-new honey-beige Buick Riviera with all the extras, an embarrassing car. Maxwell had sent me to the Buick dealer who sponsors his television show. He swore the guy would give me a great deal. I had wanted a used Opel.
In one hour, the sales manager (the dealer had been too busy to talk to me) showed me how “for practically the same money” I could own a new Riviera and all the accompanying good feelings.
A good salesman knows the purchaser is totally without sense—why else would anyone ask a salesman anything? Once you speak to a salesman you have shown your hole card. I not only spoke, but shook his head and hoped deeply that we could become friends.
On the other side of the lot Jo Bob was getting into Maxwell’s blue-on-blue Cadillac convertible.
“Say er ah babee.” Maxwell fell into a black dialect, which he often did when asking for or talking about drugs. “Ah, let’s have some of what you call your grassss.” He hissed out the last word purposely.
“Hey man, just say grass.”
“Can’t babee. Gots to get in de mood. Now where’s dat killer weed?”
“There’s some in the glove compartment.”
I picked through the cartridge tapes scattered on the floor beneath my feet. I pushed the Sir Douglas Quintet Together After Five into the deck, adjusted the eight-position steering wheel, and pulled out of the lot. Doug Sahm sang about the ill-fated love of two kids in Dallas.
“Seems her father didn’t approve
Of his long hair and far-out groove ...”
Maxwell lit the joint and took a long drag, making the familiar hissing sound that could only come from someone inhaling cannabis.
“So ... that there is what you call yer killer weed.” Maxwell held the joint up for inspection. “Well, it ain’t Cutty and water, but it’ll do.” He passed me the joint, and I sucked on it in short soft puffs, a habit acquired from turning on in airplanes, public restrooms, and dark back yards at straight parties. All getting pretty risky what with the current dope publicity and universal vigilance for peculiar smells.
Three years ago, on the team plane from Washington, Maxwell and I had kept sneaking to the john to smoke dope. The stewardess noticed the smell and thought the galley wiring was smoldering. There was a five-minute panic, both for those who were scared the plane was afire, and for Maxwell and me, who were terrified that it wasn’t. We weren’t caught but we swore a blood oath to never smoke on the team plane again. It was a promise we kept until the next road game.
The lights from the toll plaza appeared up ahead. I eased off the gas and rolled down my window. A fat man, about forty-five, in a sweat-stained gray uniform, stood at the door of the booth. One hand held out the toll ticket, the other was stuffing what appeared to be a peanut butter and lizard sandwich into his face. I slowly coasted the car through the gate, neatly picking the ticket from the outstretched hand. A name tag stenciled Billy Wayne Robinson hung from his shirt-pocket flap.
“Hey, Billy Wayne.” Maxwell leaned toward the open window. “How’s yer mom and them?”
The attendant looked startled, then confused, then, recognized the famous smiling face. Like a true Texas football fan he went completely berserk. Waving and trying to speak as we glided through, he spat half his sandwich on the trunk.
“Did you know that guy?”
“Naw, just a little of the ol’ instant humble. I shoulda offered him some of this here maryjawana.”
“Show ’em you can straddle the old generation gap,” I said.
I accelerated into the main lanes of the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike, heading for Dallas at about ninety miles an hour, a high-speed island of increased awareness and stereophonic sound heading back to the future. The turnpike was twenty-eight straight miles of concrete laid on rolling hills, connecting the two cities for anyone with sixty cents and a Class A automobile. Factories, warehouses, and two medium cities smother the land the length of the highway. Back in the early sixties, five minutes past the toll gate, heading for either end, you were out in the West. That was when Braniffs planes were gray. Jack Ruby ran a burlesque house. And the School Book Depository was a place they kept schoolbooks.
“Smoke will rise
In the Dallas skies
Coming back to you
Dallas Alice ...”
“Here.”
“Huh?”
“Here!” Maxwell was thrusting the joint at me. His eyes and cheeks and neck were bulging. He was trying to stifle a cough. His face was crimson. I took the joint. Maxwell exhaled, coughing and clearing his throat. He looked and sounded like a four-pack-a-day man getting out of bed in the morning.
“B.A. wants me in his office at ten tomorrow morning,” I said, remembering.
“He’s probably gonna tell you you’re starting Sunday.”
“I doubt it.” I frowned. “If he was gonna do that he’d just call in Gill and tell him he wasn’t starting. No, I think B.A. just wants to make certain I understand the nonprejudicial, technically flawless way he arrived at the opinion I should sit on the bench.”
“I dunno.” Maxwell gazed out the windshield. “That was a big catch you made yesterday. It put us ahead to stay.”
“Yeah maybe, but it was the only pass I caught.”
“You only played the last quarter. Besides, it was the only one I threw at you.”
“He’ll want to know why you don’t throw at me more.” It frustrated me to use the coach’s logic. I paused. “By the way,” I turned my face from the windshield and frowned at Maxwell, “why don’t you throw to me more?”
“Cause you ain’t been playing that much, asshole.”
“I suppose. After that truly amazing catch, you’ll surely want me as the special guest on your television show. Gimme the opportunity to snuggle my way into the heart of Dallas-Fort Worth. It’s the least you could do.”
“It’s also the most,” Maxwell said. “Besides, I’m having Jo Bob on the show this week.”
“How about a remote interview?” I suggested, smiling widely. “I could tell how I overcame a truly Middlewest upbringing and a childhood case of paralytic ringworm. Maybe they could do some closeup shots of my hands doing something—like picking my nose.”
“Listen, man,” Maxwell interrupted, “it’s a family show.”
&nbs
p; I shook my head. “Why can’t there be a football show for the hard-core pervert?”
There was no response from Maxwell. He seemed lost in thought.
“What do you think of the SCA?” Maxwell said finally.
“What?”
“The Society of Christian Athletes.” His voice was deep and halting as he tried to keep the marijuana smoke down in his lungs. “B.A. asked me to make an appearance at the national rally they’re having in May. At the Cotton Bowl.”
“You don’t believe that shit, do you?”
“Sort of.” Maxwell’s voice became submissive. “I mean, when you have a chance to influence people you oughta do some good.”
“Who says that’s good?” I asked. “Besides B.A.”
“What’s wrong with him? For God’s sake, the man’s a Christian. That’s a helluva lot more than you are.”
“Sure, our coach has money, success, his life planned down to the minutest detail. Everything going off like clockwork. He must have God on his side.”
“You sure are bitter,” Maxwell said. “What harm can it do?”
“I don’t care, man. Go ahead, influence people.” I deepened my voice to affect an imitation. “Hi, kids. Seth Maxwell here to give you a little good influence. Don’t get your kicks doping. Get out on the ol’ gridiron and hurt somebody. It’s cleaner and more fun.”
Maxwell stared silently through the windshield. I turned my attention back to the road.
Six Flags Amusement Park flashed by on the right. In all the years I’d lived in Dallas, I’d been to this “Disneyland of the Southwest” only once. I’d spent the entire time, stoned on mescaline, in the Petting Zoo caressing a baby llama. I considered screwing the furry little bugger as a protest against captivity, his and mine. But I decided even if the llama understood, the guards wouldn’t, so I chalked up another sexual and sociological frustration and went home.
Flailing arms and loud coughing brought me out of my thoughts.
“Goddam. Goddam.” Maxwell’s voice was raspy and he was gagging. “Goddam. I swallowed the roach.” He shook his head. “It burned the livin’ shit outta me.”
“I warned you about suckin’ so hard.”
“Fuck,” he said. He leaned over and spit on my floor. “You got another?”
“In the glove compartment.”
Maxwell pulled out a joint rolled in a replica of a one-hundred-dollar bill.
“Shit.” He held the joint out in front of him. “I’ll bet the guy that came up with that made a killing.”
Sir Douglas started into “Seguin.” I pushed the reject button and replaced the tape with the Rolling Stones. They started somewhere in the middle of “Honky Tonk Women.”
“You know,” Maxwell said, staring vacantly at the road, “I’ve always wanted to take about six months and just travel around Texas, going from one honky-tonk to another. Find the best jukeboxes and the women with the saddest stories.”
“The people in honky-tonks,” he continued, “are just like a good country-music jukebox. Full of stories about people who just lost somethin’, or never had anything to start with.” He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in the seat. The joint dropped from his lips. “We’d go to a different one ever’ night. Just drink, fuck, eat pussy, and listen to country music. You could learn a lot, podnah.”
“Maybe. But we could get the shit beat outta us in a lotta those places. Like the Jacksboro Highway.”
The Jacksboro Highway was a honky-tonk-lined road leading from Fort Worth to Jacksboro. The Old West still lived in the bars along this particular stretch and there were shootings and knifings every night.
Maxwell thought for a moment, then turned slowly to look at me. “What are you so scared of?” he asked.
“Pain, man. Nothing flashy or existential. Just plain old pain. I don’t like it, never have. I can’t even stand the thought of my skin splitting open and my bodily fluids spilling onto the Astroturf in front of millions of screaming fans—for money. Do you think I wanna do it for free? Alone? And in the dark?”
“But it’s all part of being alive, man. The pleasure and the pain. You can’t have one without the other.”
“It’s an age of specialists.”
We were both silent. I was reminded of another car trip we had made back in the early spring. On a dull Wednesday in March we had gotten high, filled the car with gasoline, whiskey, speed, and grass and driven to Santa Fe nonstop. We spent two nights at an old hotel, until at 3 A.M. the second morning Maxwell finally seduced the night clerk on a brown leather couch in the lobby. I alternated between standing guard and watching them fuck. She was a heavyset woman, about forty-five, and all the time Maxwell humped away at her, she babbled endlessly about him being her son’s favorite football star, and how pleased the boy would be to learn she and Maxwell had met and become friends.
The return took eighteen hours. All the way back we took speed, smoked dope, drank Pepsi, and ate pork rinds. Beginning ten minutes outside of Santa Fe and continuing to the outskirts of Dallas, Maxwell described in detail every sex act he had ever committed. Except for gas and piss, we stopped only once, in Odessa, to see the World’s Largest Statue of a Jackrabbit.
“You know,” Maxwell began talking, “I’m actually getting to where I don’t think I mind pain. You know what I mean? Remember when I dislocated my elbow? For a minute there it hurt so bad I thought I’d go crazy. There was no way I could stand it. Then all of a sudden ... Well, I can’t explain it.” His face screwed up in an attempt to find words. “Except that it hurt. And it didn’t hurt. I mean, it still really hurt bad, but I could stand it and actually sort of liked it, in a different sort of way.”
“I’m not sure I get it,” I said, nonetheless feeling a nebulous sense of identity with the feelings he was trying to describe.
“Well, it’s sorta like pain makes me think I’m doin’ something. Nothing occupies my mind but the pain, it’s all I care about. I feel secure in it. When the pain is the worst I’m the most relaxed. Weird, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if weird is a strong enough word.”
I gripped the wheel tighter and looked ahead to the approaching Dallas toll plaza. The Dallas skyline was directly ahead. I paid the toll and headed for the Trinity River Bridge and I-35 beyond. Crossing Commerce, Main, and Elm of the I-35 overpass, I read the giant Hertz sign atop the School-book Depository. I looked to the spot on Elm Street where Kennedy was shot. I had seen the historic place hundreds of times, but I still couldn’t actually picture it happening. Now the country had another President who liked guys like me and football and attended the Washington practices to call screen passes. What was more perfect? A President who liked deceptive plays. He was B.A.’s favorite.
I turned into the Motor Street exit, followed Motor past the hospital that had received the mangled Kennedy and onto Maple, then right again to The Apartments. The parking lot was jammed. The only open spot was adjacent to a fire hydrant I parked there.
“Lock your door, Seth,” I said. “If they can’t take a joke, fuck ’em.”
Maxwell stepped out, leaned over and took the last drag on the joint. Taking long, slow strides and throwing his arms and head back, he broke into song.
“Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”
He walked around the hedge into the passageway that led down a flight of stairs to the pool. The song faded off.
I leaned back hands on my hips, and stretched, looking up at the sky, wishing I would witness a supernova. No such luck.
As I walked around the pool and toward Andy Crawford’s apartment. I watched Maxwell make his entrance to the party. Standing bowlegged in the doorway, his knees flexed, Maxwell hopped from one foot to another, fingers held over his head in peace signs.
“Peace God Bless. Peace God Bless,” he cried. “Peace God Bless.”
“Peace on you,” someone yelled from inside.
Everyone laughed.
I waited outside until the crowd
greeting Seth moved away from the door. Then I slipped unnoticed into the kitchen. I hopped my butt up onto the drainboard and sat watching the party through a hole in the kitchen-dining room wall that served as a bar. There were about thirty people milling around. I recognized most of them from other parties. Except for the other players, however, I didn’t know the names of more than a half-dozen.
Jo Bob and Meadows had already arrived and were sitting on either side of a big redhead with huge breasts. Both were grabbing at her giant tits, laughing and calling her Booger Red. Vainly her outnumbered hands tried to keep the grinning men from becoming too obscene.
Thomas Richardson, the handsome black running back from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was squatting Indian-style against the far wall, observing his teammates in action. He was an incredible athlete, but he was considered peculiar and unapproachable by management, the coaches, and most of his teammates. His attitude stemmed in part from an intensely personal contract dispute. As a result he seldom played. The club seemed reluctant to trade or release him. Instead they buried him, hoping he would fade from memory. He was always outstanding when he played, but he refused to deal in anything but profoundly relevant and personal terms. He insisted that management meet him on a man-to-man basis. Not even the most confident of football general managers or head coaches is willing to meet an angry 225-pound black on a man-to-man basis.
Probably sometime soon Richardson would appear in six-point type on the waiver list and few, if any, would notice.
I was alone in the kitchen, except for a couple standing near the refrigerator. The man was wearing wide-stripe bell bottoms and a hot-pink silk shirt open to the waist. He was sporting a tan, the kind you get from executive sunlamps. The girl was cute, blonde, about twenty, and crying.
“Come on, relax, honey, he’s not such a bad guy,” the man was saying, trying to calm her.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” she cried. “I don’t like him at all.”
“Come on now.”
“That bastard, who does he think he is?” She was angry. “No more of this blind-date shit, Steve. I mean it.” She looked at me and noticed I was staring. He followed her eyes.