by Peter Gent
“Fuck their goddam shirts,” Red said. “Fuck their pants too.”
The doorbell rang.
“That’s the coffee.” Bob was already there with his right hand in his coat pocket. It was the same waiter Randall had attacked earlier in the week with his Light Saber. The man looked nervously around the room as he set down the tray and then scurried back out.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Red asked.
“You look like a border patrolman.”
“He was running like it was Judgment Day. Hey!” The coach looked down at his bare wrist to check the time on a watch he hadn’t had since his last year at the University, when he had skipped a flat rock on the river, then stood slack-jawed, watching his six-thousand-dollar Rolex chasing the rock into the swift water.
“It must be getting close to time for pregame chapel.” Red kept looking at his bare wrist.
“It’s early yet. Have some coffee, get really nervous.” Taylor saw no reason to remind the coach that he had not had a pregame chapel since the year Red beat up the team chaplain for performing oral sex on a sophomore defensive tackle from Houston. By daylight, Red would forget he forgot and also remember he no longer had a watch.
Red sat back on the edge of the couch, but his legs continued to jiggle and his hand shook, spilling his coffee on the low table, staining the pages of the visitor’s guide with the cover shot of the Pistol Dome. Red pointed at the magazine. “By God, one day we’ll have a domed stadium like that.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, Coach.”
“How do you think Hendrix’ll do today?” Red asked in all seriousness.
The question hit like a fist, sinking Taylor down into his chair.
“I was thinking that if we concentrated on getting him deep while the defense is doubling and tripling Speedo ...” Red’s voice trailed off in confusion. Something was amiss, a basic truth that even in his game-day madness would not be denied. The coach’s face went white. Suddenly nauseous, he jumped to his feet.
“The bathroom?” Red gagged.
Taylor pointed across the room, but the coach was already hurrying down the hall toward Randall’s room, hands over his mouth, shirttail flapping.
“No. Red! No! This way!”
It was too late. Red burst into Randall’s bedroom. Taylor was on his feet, chasing his coach.
“Toby! Toby!” Taylor yelled. “It’s all right, don’t hurt him. He’s just lost! Boy, is he lost.”
Toby had spent several years as a cattle ranger and slept on the floor across the entrance to the boy’s room. When he felt the footsteps coming down the hall, he was instantly awake.
Red Kilroy came sailing backward out of the room as fast as he went in, slamming against the opposite side of the hallway and sliding slowly to a sitting position on the floor. Toby came out behind him with a trench knife in his hand and his revolver shoved in his belt. Toby preferred the knife; a wild shot could accidentally strike the boy.
“I’m sorry, Taylor.” Toby stood over Red as the quarterback ran up. “It all happened so fast. I didn’t hear you until it was over.”
“Holy Christ!” Taylor’s heart began to hammer. The quarterback knelt beside his coach, searching for the knife wound. “Did you stab him?”
“No. But I don’t think hitting that wall did him a whole lot of good. I think I felt his arm break when I tossed him.”
Red Kilroy’s eyes fluttered open and he looked at Taylor. “Jimmy! Jimmy! I’m glad you’re here.” The coach smiled and then threw up all over himself.
Taylor jumped away. “He’s all right. Puking is a vital sign for him.”
Toby slipped his fingers out of the brass-knuckle grip and slid the knife back into its leather sheath.
“Who’s Jimmy?”
Taylor shrugged and watched his coach heaving on the floor.
Randall stirred in his bed and mumbled in his sleep. Taylor went to the boy’s bed, untangled him from the bedclothes and wondered at the soft unlined face. He ran a hand across the sleep-tossed hair and kissed his son gently on his soft, pink lips. The Light Saber stood against the bedstead, at the ready.
“Red was lucky he didn’t get past you,” Taylor whispered to Toby when he returned to the hallway, where the bodyguard was crouched, checking Red for broken bones and making certain he didn’t strangle on his own vomit. “If Randall had gotten his Light Saber this man would look like a Salisbury steak.”
“No broken bones as far as I can tell, but he may have a concussion, the way he was vomiting.”
“He always vomits that way.”
“You tell ’em, Jimmy.”
Toby looked at Taylor, then down at Red. “Jimmy?” He stepped back into Randall’s room and closed the door.
Taylor helped Red to his feet and into the bathroom.
“I’ll get another sweat suit from the bedroom, Red. You are a mess.”
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” Red stuck his head in the shower cabinet and turned the cold water on full, soaking his head and shoulders and splattering the mirrors and walls.
“You stink. I’ll get you one of my other sweat suits.”
“So we can look like goddam twin faggots? This is game day, buddy-boy.”
“And you want to look like a wino and smell like a dead cat?” Taylor walked out of the bathroom. “You might as well piss in your pants while you’re at it.”
“Thanks, buddy-boy, I goddam just might do it.”
Taylor returned to his chair, drank coffee and looked out the window. The southeastern sky was beginning to color.
“Every day is Judgment Day, but Super Sunday comes only once a year,” Taylor said.
“Usually the Sunday after Robert E. Lee’s birthday.” Red walked out of the bathroom, drying himself with a towel. His face was red and his hair plastered flat from the cold water. His shirt and pants were horribly stained.
“You ought to send those clothes to the laundry with you in them.”
“Taylor, let us not waste our creativity on trite jokes. I expect some magic from you today. We’re going to need it.”
“If you can remember my name, Red, the least I can do is pull a few elephants out of the old headgear.”
“That’s my boy.” Red smiled and looked around. He was a different man since Toby bounced him off the wall. It would be short-lived. Game day was Red’s hell. “Now, where’s the rolls and coffee?”
Taylor pointed and Red attacked the food.
“Okay, I figure you’ll have up to three and a half seconds to throw on certain types of protection: straight dropbacks with both backs in, half rolls with the offside seal and even cup protection with both backs out, as long as they don’t blitz.” Red started on his second roll. He would vomit it all back up on the way to the game. “You got one hell of a line. They don’t make ’em like Ox Wood anymore, and the younger boys are real Nazis. They do what they’re told and they enjoy it. What kind of drugs do they use?”
“What kind you got?”
“What kind do they need?”
“Fuck them, what about me?”
“You don’t need drugs. You are a magician, remember?”
“Who says magicians don’t use drugs?”
“What do the linemen need?” Red started his third roll and Taylor resolved to stay clear of Red the remainder of the day. “I know Ox uses amphetamines and cocaine,” the coach continued, “but what about the baby Nazis?”
“They do everything Ox does except fuck Ox’s wife.”
“God, is that a great-looking woman?” Red followed the weird tangent. “You think they want to fuck her? I think about fucking her all the time. It’s hard to believe she’s forty and they been married over twenty years,” Red rambled. “Hey. Now, don’t go telling Ox.”
“Don’t worry, I live in the same huddle with the man.”
“We got to beat their pass rush, so keep them off balance with quick counts and don’t set too deep. Let the tackles push their defensive ends past you.” Red
paused. “Are you sure they have everything they need?”
“Who?”
“Your pass blockers, asshole.”
“If they don’t, I’ll help you find it for them.”
“The Butazolidin Blues,” Red said slowly, absently. He was beginning to drift again. “Listen,” he suddenly snapped back. “I need a favor. I kept those media scumbag slime off you all week and I’m taking a lot of heat for it. You could get me off the griddle if you’d do a pregame interview with the network’s greaseball bookie.”
“Will you leave me alone at the stadium?” Taylor asked. “No last-minute suggestions?”
The momentary battle raged on Red’s face. “Completely alone?”
Taylor nodded. Red hesitated. It was a painful, humiliating decision.
“Goddammit, all right!” he said finally. Red’s eyes unfocused and he leaned back, wet hair plastered down and his clothes stained with vomit.
And there on the couch in the penthouse sitting room with Taylor Jefferson Rusk watching the sun rising, Red Kilroy slipped away again into the personal purgatory that was his mind on game day.
The sun was well above the horizon when Wendy walked into the room and found Red and Taylor.
They sat at opposite ends of the couch; Red leaning foward, wringing his hands, tapping his feet to some infernal silent pulse; Taylor laid back, slouched down, with his bare feet up on the low table.
They both stared silently out at the Pistol Dome, the two menhose lives had been joined for a decade of treacherously exhilarating guerrilla warfare against the powers of established authority and corruption.
They now studied the Pistol Dome, the final Bunker.
When Wendy entered, Red spoke, his voice quivering, his control tenuous.
“What do you think it will be like when we win, Taylor?” The coach’s voice broke on the last three words, ending in a raspy squeak. His legs still jiggled, his hands shook.
The coach’s whole body quivered like a cowed dog. He resumed wringing his hands. Taylor looked through the morning haze to the monument celebrating welfare for the rich and corporate socialism.
“It’ll be like winning the state championship at Park City High,” Taylor said. “When I was eighteen years old, you told me you were recruiting me for the University because I was a champion, a proven winner.”
“Well, by God, you were,” Red defended the lie that seemed true, a lie that had worked itself out.
“State champions.” Taylor pronounced it thoughtfully. “You took Simon D’Hanis that year, too, remember?”
“You made me take him,” Red replied, slightly irritated. “But Simon turned out to be a good one.” His mood improved as he ascribed Simon’s unexpected success to himself.
“Simon compared the national championship at the University to the state championship at Park City High School.” Taylor pointed out toward the dome. He purposely seemed to lose track of the conversation because he knew how much it irritated Red. Particularly on game day.
“Well?” Red was exasperated.
“Well what?”
“What did Simon say? How did it compare?”
Taylor pushed up from the couch. “It was almost about the same.” He walked away. “It’ll be almost about the same today.”
Taylor disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. Red gazed after him in quaking confusion.
It’ll be almost about the same.
Wendy returned to the bedroom and, while Taylor lay on the bed, called the defensive coordinator to come take Red away. The man arrived to find Kilroy still staring silently at the Pistol Dome.
Red left without a word. Taylor remained on the bed, lost somewhere deep in himself, his eyes dull, flat, face slack. He was searching for the horror.
It was that time again.
The plans had been laid, the deals made; they had polished their skills, honed their instincts and intuitions, executed the plays to perfection and were bound as a football team by respect forged in pain and fear and joy.
Now it all depended on Taylor’s struggle with the horror of the void. It was his job. The hard part.
Wendy had seen him like this many times as he hunted the vast inside to confront the awe of nothingness. His facial muscles no longer formed a mask of flesh. Taylor appeared a stranger—impassive, expressionless, unfamiliar, absent, empty.
Gone away.
His eyes suddenly flared; he had again found nothing. Thin creases sliced down from his mouth. He winced in pain, trying not to turn from the terror. His face no longer slack, panic drew a mask of heavy lines. His whole body stiffened, he flinched slightly, his eyes sparkled sightlessly, black with fear. He began to flush and sweat. A violent tremor shook his shoulders and a facial tic jerked at the corners of his mouth.
His eyes watered and it was over.
He had his game face.
The rest would be easy.
Whatever it was.
A GOOD SONG TO DANCE TO
BEFORE LEAVING FOR THE stadium, Taylor placed a call to Ginny Hendrix. One of the boys answered.
“Bobby?” Taylor asked.
“Naw, Billy.”
“This is Taylor. Is your mother around?”
“MAAAAA!” Billy squalled into the mouthpiece. “MAAAAAAA!!!!!”
Gus Savas’s huge house absorbed the screams and wails of his grandchild.
“Hello?” Ginny came on the line, breathless.
“Hi, Ginny, this is Taylor. I thought I’d call and say hello. Billy didn’t seem too pleased to hear my voice.”
“Oh, he’s waiting on a call from a boy down the block. They have a big Super Bowl party planned with a six-foot television and two VTR units for their own instant replays.”
“And I’m on the phone interfering with the planning of the party?”
“You got it. You shouldn’t be calling now just before the game. You need to be psyching yourself up, don’t you? Bobby always puked his guts out.”
“I know, I roomed with him,” Taylor replied. “Don’t worry, I’ve done the hard part. I’m just going to the stadium for the roll call and make sure everybody else does what they are told. It’s easy for me from now on.”
“Mr. Automatic,” Ginny teased. “Oh, Taylor, thanks for the rings for the boys. I’ll give ’em to them today. Maybe Billy will forgive you for bothering him on game day.”
“Those are exact scale duplicates of the rings we picked. They’re the least gaudy Super Bowl ring ever designed. Actually those are the only two in existence, plus mine; everybody else has to wait. I already played the game and we won. I just have to go to the Pistol Dome and convince the rest of my teammates and the world.”
“Taylor?” Ginny turned hesitant, embarrassed. “I can’t take this check. I appreciate it, but....”
“That’s just until we get the Union pension problem worked out. I haven’t had the time during the season. Now I know why Speedo quit this job; there’s so much to do. How did Bobby do it?”
“He worked his ass off. He believed in it.” Ginny’s voice dulled. She was not a believer.
“I told Terry that after this game I’d come to the office or talk to the pension board or whatever it took. I’m doing the same thing about Simon for the kid.”
“Where is he?”
“Down in Kingsville with Buffy’s people.”
“In a minute, Billy,” Ginny said. Taylor could hear the boy telling his mother to get off the phone. “In a minute, dear. It’s Uncle Taylor.”
Taylor heard the boy say he didn’t care.
“Taylor ... I ...” Ginny stammered; the boy was badgering her for the phone. “Taylor, I have to go ... but I ... just a minute, Billy.... Taylor, I just wanted to thank you for caring about us and ...” Her voice broke. Billy kept his verbal assault. “I have got to go. Good luck and we all love you.”
The line went dead. Billy had been hovering near and pressed down the disconnect button.
Taylor looked across the bed at Wendy. She was wi
ping tears from her eyes.
Taylor smiled at her. “Billy made her hang up on me so he could call his friends and plan their Super Bowl party.”
Bob Travers rapped on the door.
“Anytime.” Bob had already taken Toby and Randall to the skybox.
Taylor picked up his playbook and followed Wendy out of the bedroom door. They followed Bob to the private elevator.
In the parking garage two uniformed policemen stood by the Ford. Bob left the elevator first, then signaled Wendy and Taylor to follow him into the car. They sat quietly in back.
Bob stuck the flasher on the car roof, waved off the police and hit his siren.
At street level in front of the hotel, about fifty Denver fans were holding a pep rally hanging Taylor Rusk in effigy. They were drunk and loud and all were barechested. Men and women. It was twenty-eight degrees. They were chanting, “Die ... Die ... Die ... Kill ... Kill ... Kill ... Die ... Die ... Kill ... Kill ... Kill ...”
Taylor watched Wendy, who had turned pale at the up-close madness.
“I don’t like the words,” Taylor said, snapping his fingers, “but I like the beat. It’s a good song to dance to.”
Bob hit the siren and hurtled into the gathering storm of traffic flooding toward the Super Bowl at the Pistol Dome.
Wendy turned for a last look at the mob.
“What would they have done if they’d seen you?”
Taylor thought a moment.
“I don’t think they meant everything they were saying.”
Bob laughed and hit the accelerator. With a sucking, roaring sound the car leaped ahead and slid through the traffic like a fish through water.
Kill. Die.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN, SORT OF
ON THE FREEWAY SOUTH of Park City, the traffic slowed and the lanes congested. Since the enthusiastic welcome of the Pistol Dome to town, things had deteriorated, and the city council of Clyde, Texas, lacked the political savvy or clout to convince a majority of voters to pass bond issues necessary to build the exits to get the high-volume traffic off the eight-lane freeway into Clyde and the Pistol Dome.
The construction costs and interest rates were astronomical, and the public learned the price of the tax-free deal Dick Conly had negotiated for the dome.