by Peter Gent
Bobby Hendrix looked over at the rookie quarterback. The Franchise. Red had already talked to the creaky, wise outside receiver. “Take Rusk and make him a passer, watch his doses of Kimball Adams ... and teach him to read. Bobby, teach him to read those defenses!” Red had pleaded. He was on a tight schedule to the Super Bowl.
“Kid”—Bobby Hendrix put down the phone,—“come on with me. It’s time you met life from the Old League, two real dinosaurs. You have the rare privilege to learn at their feet,” Hendrix drawled, slowly moving the toothpick around in his mouth. “You just got to be careful it don’t kill you.”
The television was still playing.
The Billy Joe Hardesty All-American Evangelical Hour began. Hendrix turned up the volume. It opened on a medium close-up of Billy Joe, his fat red lips, wattle-strewn face and neck. Billy Joe pointed a short, thick finger at the two football players.
“I want to save you from eternal damnation,” Billy Joe announced. The camera pulled back. “And I am going to do it tonight.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Hendrix said. The All-American Youth Choir was humming softly, and the camera continued to pull back, showing Billy Joe resplendent in a dark-blue polyester suit with a red tie, white belt and white loafers with gold buckles.
“The End Time is near,” Billy Joe ranted. “The anti-Christ walks among us! The economy is collapsing and a giant computer called The Beast is preparing to fulfill the prophecy of Revelations Thirteen, verses sixteen to eighteen ... coming up right after this message!”
“I grew up with Billy Joe Hardesty in Orange,” Bobby said. “When he was in high school, he stabbed my friend’s dog, set several of his sister’s cats on fire, and just after he strangled a goose at the golf course, he found Jesus.” Bobby Hendrix talked as they walked through the silent dormitory. “It seems to keep him happy.”
“It must have pleased all the small animals on the upper Texas Gulf Coast too,” Taylor said.
KIMBALL ADAMS’S DRINKING PLACE
“WHEN KIMBALL ADAMS found out that he and I had both gone to Texas in the expansion, he came down here and searched out a drinkin’ place.” Bobby Hendrix steered Red Kilroy’s car down a two-lane caliche road. “He insists on one that’s too mean for the local law. I think he outdid himself this time.”
Taylor Rusk slouched against the door, fascinated by the deodorizer that hung from the rearview mirror of the head coach’s car. It was a cutout of a nude woman. The car smelled like a clean public restroom.
“Kimball always calls it a drinkin’ place, like Br’er Rabbit had his laughin’ place, but Jesus, a cedar-chopper bar ...” Hendrix glanced at Taylor. The young quarterback was listening and looking at the erotic stinking car deodorizer.
“I know.” Hendrix frowned and nodded. “It’s weird, ain’t it? Red’s a good man. He’s a player’s coach.” Hendrix absently put his eyes back on the caliche road. The high country twilight was quickly turning dark.
“Yeah, I know.” Taylor nodded. “He doesn’t fuck with your head much unless you don’t produce. Then he just hits it.”
“Kimball finds him a drinkin’ place and that’s where he spends his time. He tries to find one close to camp on low-traffic-density roads. He went to insurance school for a while, and the drunk driving deaths and/or loss of a major limb percentages really shook him up. He found this place after three intensive days of looking. He’ll stay drunk most of camp.”
Hendrix steered the car up to a crossroads, both roads leading nowhere into the canyons clotted with cedar brakes.
On one corner was a limestone block building with a tin roof and a screened-in porch, OLD LEADVILLE was painted in black on a white sign that hung from the porch, POST OFFICE, BEER AND WINE was painted in smaller black letters.
Kimball Adams’s convertible was parked alongside a couple of ancient pickup trucks, one brand-new welding truck and three flatbed trucks stacked high with fresh-cut cedar posts. Big double-bit axes and large McCullouch chain saws were piled on the cedar logs.
Bobby Hendrix pointed at the white Lincoln with the blue leather interior, covered in a fine glaze of caliche dust. It was a beautiful car, top peeled back to let in the night sky.
“Kimball has rented a Lincoln convertible every year for camp and never has once put the top up,” Hendrix said affectionately. “That is the Old League—lots of lunatics in Lincoln convertibles. Now rookies got Porsches and Mercedeses. Used to be no self-respecting football player would buy a small car. ‘Park it like a ball player’ was our motto. These new cars are like driving your watch.”
“Adams is a real country-clubber,” Taylor observed, staring at the limestone building. “And Old Leadville looks like a helluva town.”
They went in, stooping down to enter the low stone building. The floor was cedar blocks and sawdust. A bar ran along one wall, and a shuffleboard game was in progress along the opposite wall. The jukebox was silent, an ancient tall round Wurlitzer dead in the corner next to the cold rock hearth. The shuffleboard game produced most of the sounds. The hiss of the puck sliding along the highly polished wood. The click of metal. The muffled thumps of too much strength.
It was a warm night and the room was hot and stifled. There were three men at the bar, all dirty and sweat-stained, with heavy arms and broad backs. They were big-bodied men with dull, flat eyes, suspicious faces. They had spent the day filling the flatbed trucks with cedar posts. They were cedar cutters.
Kimball Adams sat at the corner table opposite the dead jukebox and next to the cold fireplace. There was a purple and white Texas Pistols duffel bag at the ancient quarterback’s feet. Sitting at the table with Kimball was Darryl “Ox” Wood. Wood had played in college at the University of Michigan, had been an all-pro guard in Philadelphia for two years and had been traded to Cleveland to protect Kimball. Which he did well. Ox, covered with tattoos and scars from surgery and combat, stood about six-foot-nine and weighed 320. He ran the forty in 4.6 as a rookie and refused to ever do it again. Ox was smart and studied at his trade. He greased his jersey with Vaseline so the defensive lineman couldn’t jerk him around, and he sharpened the screw heads on his headgear so that anybody that head-slapped him would come away with hand lacerations.
“The last zeuglodon, a fine example of prehistoric whale,” Hendrix called him. “The man is a different species.”
“I have two rules,” Ox said to anyone who listened. And when Ox spoke, everyone listened. “First, protect the quarterback; second, avoid any sort of repression or negative vibes. All you need is love, but if you got an extra pocket and it doesn’t hurt the drape of your coat, go ahead and drop a thirty-eight in there. What the hell.”
Red advised Ox to avoid the press and police whenever possible.
Ox came to the Texas Pistols to protect Kimball Adams. “Unless you get me Ox Wood’s protection, you’ll have to play Taylor Rusk,” Kimball had said. “Be a terrible thing to happen to a young quarterback to have to play behind that line, particularly a thoroughbred like Rusk, one you want around long enough to build the Franchise. A once-in-a-lifetimer who does not drink or believe in God, can run the hundred in 9.5, is built like Time and throws from end zone to end zone.”
Red had been waiting twenty years for a good bird dog; he wasn’t going to waste a quarterback. Red traded for Ox.
“Let’s go out on the porch, Kimball,” Bobby Hendrix said as he and Taylor approached the table. “It’s too hot in here.”
“You ain’t here two seconds”—the old quarterback’s voice was a deep growl—“and you are trying to organize something.” Kimball slouched in the heavy wooden chair. Ox smiled at both Hendrix and Taylor.
“Siddown a second.” Kimball kicked a chair toward Hendrix. Hendrix shook his head and pointed toward the porch.
Kimball, the forty-year-old quarterback, wore a sweat-stained and crushed silver-belly Resistol, severely creased, down on his forehead, shading his eyes. A cigarette burned unfiltered from the corner of his mouth. The smo
ke curled up past the burst blood vessels of his nose and cheeks and eyes. Kimball Adams looked at Taylor by cocking his head slightly and peering from beneath the brim of the dirty, sweaty hat through the cigarette smoke.
“Hey, Ox, lemme have your tongue.” Kimball jerked the short cigarette butt from his lips. “I imagine ol’ Bobby here’s been givin’ you his union speech. Well, take it from me, the Union will just elbow up to the trough with the owners, and the players will still suck hind tit. Nothin’ will really change but the split.”
Ox made a sound like “Ahhhh” and Kimball ground out the glowing cigarette on Darryl “Ox” Wood’s tongue. Ox did not flinch. Taylor Rusk did. Hendrix grinned. It was an old trick.
“Ice, glasses, beer!” Kimball yelled. “And bring it out on the porch.” Kimball picked up the duffel bag and headed outside. Ox ate the cold cigarette butt and followed Kimball and Hendrix.
Kimball Adams’s duffel bag was full of bottles of Johnny Walker Scotch. He paid the bartender a hundred dollars a week to make sure he never ran out of glasses of ice.
Kimball fell silently into a chair, glaring angrily off the porch, lighting and smoking Camels. He put out two more on Ox Wood’s tongue for Taylor’s benefit.
“You ever bet on games?” Kimball asked Taylor Rusk.
“No,” Taylor said. “I don’t understand why people gamble.”
“The real gamblers aren’t gambling,” Kimball said. “You think Cyrus Chandler bets on football games?”
“I never thought about it,” Taylor said, embarrassed. He never had thought about it until that moment.
“Well, think about it, kid,” Kimball said, “This is a magic show and we are all involved. Everything is based on making something look like something else. Cyrus Chandler owns racehorses and a track in Florida. You think he knows the difference between us and his ponies?”
A big black Lincoln drove up outside, and Kimball instantly walked off the porch to the parking lot. Taylor Rusk recognized the driver as Johnny Cobianco, the youngest of his landlords at the University.
“Is he talking about fixing games?” Taylor asked Hendrix. He tried not to seem shocked.
“I don’t know if games are fixed or not,” Hendrix said. “I just run the plays that are called.”
“One day I’m gonna have to call those plays,” Taylor said.
“Not right away, I don’t imagine. No matter how much they talk about you being the Franchise, you don’t know anything compared to Kimball.”
“Apparently.” Taylor shook his head in surprise.
“Unless he gets hurt bad, Kimball will play a couple more years; then it’ll be your job and we’ll see if you’re the Franchise or not. No sense getting beat up at the front end of your career. Just hope when you get in there that you have Kimball Adams’s knack.”
“Knack for what?”
“Calling the right play at the right time.”
Kimball returned to the table. Taylor watched through the screen as Johnny Cobianco drove away and was swallowed up in a red glow of caliche dust and taillights.
“Well,” Kimball said, sitting back down and digging into the duffel bag for a fresh bottle of Johnny Walker Red, “I just learned the score of our opening game. We’re gonna almost win.”
And Kimball was right. The Pistols were six-point underdogs and lost by ten. They were as close as a field goal on the twenty going in late in the fourth quarter when Kimball threw an interception. Hit the linebacker right in the chest. The guy caught it in self-defense. Walking up to Taylor on the sidelines, Kimball sang, “Welcome to my world.... Won’t you come on in?”
Kimball Adams told Taylor at the Leadville Bar and Post Office that night that his greatest play with Cleveland had been when they were beating Pittsburgh by more than the spread and he had to throw an interception and then block Ox Wood to keep him from tackling the interceptor. Kimball sprang the defensive back for a touchdown and made the block on Ox look like a missed tackle. Won the game but didn’t beat the spread. Kimball was an old pro from the Old League.
“It’s great moments like that that was what the Old League was about,” Kimball said, holding up his Scotch glass and looking at Taylor. “You’ll never have that. In a few years they’ll have the whole season figured out by computer in advance and have the bets already placed, charging the losers interest. In the Old League they needed a great quarterback to fix a game. Winning and losing meant something. Soon they’ll fix it so they’ll call the plays by satellite and you won’t even know what they are. It’ll be coaches, officials and extraterrestrials. You’ll see I’m right.” Kimball drank his Scotch until the ice clinked against his big, white capped teeth.
Middle linebacker Margene “Meg” Brinkley drove up in his pickup truck. Three-year veteran Margene was also a rodeo cowboy, a calf roper and bulldogger. Backs and receivers tackled by him found themselves in a real wreck. He called it “grabbing their slack.”
“All right!” Margene was chewing a thick wad of Red Man; his bald bullet head shone. “Let’s talk about who is gonna run this here football team.” He spit a thick brown stream on the floor. “I’ll run the defense. Any objections? Good, I’ll get me a beer while you boys fight over the offense.”
“Let’s see what kind of offense we start the regular season with before we argue about who runs it,” Kimball growled. “It might run itself.”
“It might run away,” Hendrix added. “Taylor, we need to stop by the Crystal Palace, check on the rest of the boys.” Bobby Hendrix stood and stretched. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t ever let ’em call your plays for you, kid,” Kimball advised Taylor before he got out the door. “Once they do that, you’re lost.”
THE CRYSTAL PALACE
THE CRYSTAL PALACE was a barnlike pavilion that opened for summer dances when the dude ranches in the river valley were doing peak business. For a century, dances were held every Saturday there on the chalk bluff overlooking the river. A row of unshuttered windows about four feet tall opened the dance hall on all four walls. Kids crawled in and out and sat on the sills, kicking their feet against the unpainted sideboards. The older people danced to the country band while the young couples sat at the long tables and chattered and preened and posed and drank beer and whiskey. Everyone went to the Crystal Palace: local valley ranchers and residents, the young local toughs, the dude-ranch owners and employees, the chamber-of-commerce types, real estate men, developers, the dude-ranch guests from Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. And tonight, for the first time, professional football players from the Texas Pistols’ training camp.
Hendrix pulled Red Kilroy’s car up next to a green Nash Metropolitan. “Is there any curfew tonight?” Hendrix asked. The nude cutout deodorizer twirled and spun from the mirror.
“No, no curfew,” Taylor said, looking at the green Metropolitan. Then he slowly studied the complete outside layout of the Palace and the major characters hanging around. “It seems under control.”
“That is not always a good sign,” Hendrix said.
The young quarterback moved inside the crowded dance hall. Hendrix followed behind, watching Taylor’s intimidating physical presence. The crowd parted; the receiver hobbled pleasantly in the wake.
Inside the Crystal Palace, Suzy sat at a table with Simon D’Hanis and watched A.D. dance with a counselor from El Río Frío Camp for Girls. Taylor and Hendrix joined them. Suzy was watching, looking bored. Simon was strung tight as a drum, tapping on the table and shuffling his feet restlessly. His eyes roamed the building.
Everybody seemed to be paired up, a social system already in place. The football players seemed to stand out in the crowd. They were breaking and bending the Crystal Palace Dance Hall social system. A.D. Koster was leading the charge as he bumped up against the counselor from El Río Frío. This not only pissed off Suzy but also the local bull rider, who had brought the counselor to the Crystal Palace in his new welding truck. He was planning to have himself a couple more drinks of Wild Turkey a
nd then feed the faggot his brown alligator shoes. Taps and all.
Suzy watched A.D. and the counselor for a few more bored seconds, then looked slowly around the table at the pulsating Simon, the redhaired laconic Hendrix and finally at Taylor Rusk. She leaned over and grabbed Taylor firmly by the knee. “C’mon outside and buy me a beer. I’m tired of watching A.D. dry-hump.”
Taylor was again impressed by the strength of her grip.
“I’m staying here to make sure Simon don’t explode,” Hendrix said.
Taylor followed Suzy through the crowd outside to the barbeque stand, where Suzy ordered a chopped-beef sandwich and two beers. Taylor paid and carried the beers while Suzy ate big bites of the sandwich and walked over toward the river. Taylor followed, weaving through the people sprawled out on blankets, watching the tight white shorts and sipping from both beers. They passed two deputy sheriffs and a game warden passing around one cigarette.
Suzy found two outcrops at the bluff edge overlooking the river. They were back in the shadows, out of the lights strung from the beer and barbeque stand.
Taylor handed Suzy her beer. “You drank out of it!” She noticed the light weight of the beer can.
Taylor nodded.
“Jesus, well, goddam help yourself.”
“I bought it,” Taylor defended.
“Nobody held a gun to your head.”
“I couldn’t be sure your shorts weren’t loaded,” Taylor said.
“Hey, sonny, don’t go pulling the pin like that.” Suzy looked at him and sipped her beer, “It could go off in your hand.” She still called him sonny.
Taylor sat on a flat ledge. “Are you serious about A.D.?” he asked.
“About as serious as he is about me. You want to know if my intentions are honorable?” She wadded the barbeque into her cheek and chewed. The last of the sandwich disappeared into her pretty mouth and she crumpled the waxed paper, washing the sandwich down with beer and tossing the waxed paper off the bluff, down into the shallow white-blue water of the river.