The Legend of Jesse Smoke

by Robert Bausch

  This almost made me laugh.

  There were three lawyers in the room, right then, but the one who mattered was a short, slightly puffy fellow named Benjamin Frail. He had little fat fingers and an iron gray beard along his jaw, and he was soft-spoken, calm, and polite, and he twirled a yellow pencil in his hand like a little baton. I don’t remember the names of the other two, because until registering Ben Frail’s name, I referred to the three of them as Curly, Larry, and Moe. Charley Duncan, our general manager, was a former lawyer, too, so I guess we really had four of them in the room. Anyway it was Frail who did most of the talking. He went through the entire legal ramifications of what he called a temporary restraining order, or “TRO.” He emphasized the word “temporary.” He talked about how things usually moved pretty swiftly with this kind of order. We’d have little time to prepare, and we’d have to show significant reason to have the order quashed.

  “But we can get it squashed, right?” Flores said.

  “The word is quashed, not squashed. The burden of proof is not just on the league office and the players’ union. We’ll have to do a certain amount of homework, too.”

  “Why the hell does a court in New York get to tell us what to do?” Engram wanted to know.

  “The league is based in New York,” Frail said. “It’s a suit filed by the league and enforceable because we are part of the league. It’s binding.”

  “Jesus Christ on a crutch,” I said.

  “There’s something else,” Flores said.

  Now the room got really quiet.

  Flores nodded at Frail and he went on. “The suit claims that she’s actually a man named Robert Ibraham and that he’s in breach of a contract he signed to play in the Canadian League.”

  Engram looked at me. “For Christ’s sake,” I said. “She’s not a fucking man.”

  “Well, it’s part of the suit,” Frail said. “They claim she had a sex change operation. So … we’ll have to deal with it.”

  “Why is it even relevant?” Engram asked. “I mean, if she’s really a man, then doesn’t that tend to eliminate the first part of the complaint?”

  “That’s a very good point,” one of the other lawyers said. “One we may take up in our brief.”

  “That’s not the only problem with that, however,” Frail said. “See, the parties contend that she signed a contract to play for the Montreal Alouettes.”

  “Goddamn,” Engram said. He pushed himself away from the table. His chair made a screech on the floor. Everybody was looking at him and he turned to me. “Do you know anything about this?”

  “What?”

  “This Canadian thing.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “And if she’s a man, then … I must be gay, because … I think she’s beautiful.”

  Somebody let out a little snicker.

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “All right, dammit. Jesse Smoke is not a man.”

  Nobody said anything for a few seconds, then Charley Duncan turned to Flores. “I certainly never thought the commissioner would stoop this far to get at you,” he said.

  “It’s not the commissioner,” Flores said. “He had no choice but to join the suit. It’s labor peace he’s concerned with, not peace with me. He’ll take me on. It’s the players.”

  “It’s not the players either,” I said. “It’s this goddamned benighted culture.”

  “And the lawyers,” Bayne said.

  Eventually we got around to what we were going to do about it.

  “I’m going to handle the legal end of things,” Flores said to Engram. “How about you?”

  “I’ll talk to Jesse,” I said.

  Engram turned to me. “You’re going to have to do a whole lot more than that, Skip. I’ve got to get this team ready to play the Cincinnati Bengals.”

  “I can work out a game plan for the Bengals. They’re not a serious threat.”

  “I’ll take care of the game plan,” Engram said. “What I need from you is help working with Spivey.”

  “Sure,” I said, which is when it hit me that Spivey would be our new starting quarterback. “Only …”

  “Talk to Jesse first.”

  “You want him to do it?” Flores said.

  Engram paid no attention to Flores. Still looking earnestly at me, he said, “Let her know we’re doing everything we can to fight this thing, that we still want her on this team.”

  Flores asked, “Is Corey Ambrose still our player representative for the union?”

  Engram nodded.

  “You think he knew this was coming?”

  “Probably. I don’t know how he could not know it.”

  “Motherfucker,” Flores said. “I don’t want that bastard on the field for any game the rest of this year.”

  “He’s washed up anyway,” Engram said. “Arm’s shot. I wouldn’t play him anyway.”

  This seemed to disappoint Flores. It got quiet for a moment, then he shrugged. “I want film of every play involving Jesse,” he said. “I want you to find out about this Canadian thing, too. Somebody get a birth certificate from Jesse, or her mother. We’ll meet back here tomorrow morning and see where we are.” He and the lawyers got up and started filing out of the room. Engram stopped Charley Duncan. “I might need another kicker. I don’t know if Dever is up to it.” Duncan nodded and went out.

  Engram turned back to me. I was still sitting there, still only half believing everything. I had a million questions. “Talk to Jesse, first thing,” he said. “Go there now. Prepare her. Drill her about the media thing and ask her about Canada.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  He looked at me, considered something, then rejected it.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What? We shouldn’t keep things back now, man.”

  “If we can’t get a birth certificate, do you think you can get her to make an appointment with a gynecologist?”

  “A gynecologist?”

  “Legally we can compel it, but I’d rather she went on her own.”

  “You mean to prove she’s a woman?”

  “If she can’t produce a birth certificate, we may have to,” he said. “Just to prove she hasn’t—er, you know—that she’s not … transgender. It should be easy enough. We have to put to rest all this bullshit about her being a man, or, hell, under contract to somebody else. It’s going to be one of the first things the lawyers will want. Fact, I can’t believe they didn’t mention it today.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said.

  “And then get a hold of Spivey.”

  “You want to see him today?”

  “You’re going to be studying film. Lots of it.”

  I must have looked puzzled, because he got this impatient look on his face. “What?” I said.

  “You’re going to collect the film. Every time Jesse’s dropped back to pass. Study the rush. Isolate every time she got knocked down. She hasn’t been sacked much, but she’s been knocked down enough after she let go of the ball.”

  “They’ve almost killed her on more than one occasion,” I said.

  “Which is how we’ll prove she wasn’t treated any different from any other quarterback in the league.”

  “We don’t have to do that,” I said. “We got film of Ambrose and Spivey in there. They didn’t get sacked very much either, right? So … all we have to do is show that all of our quarterbacks got the same treatment on the field.”

  I wasn’t worried overmuch about that business of players not going all out when they faced her. I didn’t see how that could be her fault, nor how that could impact the “integrity” of a game that regularly touted the “success” of coaches and players who didn’t get caught bending the rules. Our main concern was that business about her being under contract to the Montreal Alouettes. It didn’t matter if she was really a man, if she’d had a sex change operation or not. What mattered was that alleged contract. If it was true, Jesse’s career in the NFL was over.

 
; I left the big meeting on Monday and went right to Jesse’s apartment. Of course I had to fight my way through a mob of reporters and journalists and microphones and cameras when I got there. I called her from my cell to tell her I was standing on her front porch. She let the machine get it but when she heard my voice, she picked up right away. When I told her where I was she opened the door a crack so I could slip through. The yelling was almost as loud as inside a stadium. Everybody asking questions at once—as if any living being could understand a single sentence in so many droning voices. You might as well have tried to discern the buzzing of one bee in a frigging hive.

  Thirty-Four

  Jesse appeared to have been stunned into a kind of angry trance. When I got my way through the door and forced it closed against all those invading microphones and cameras and hands, she had already retreated into the kitchen of her apartment—the only place in there with windows one would have needed a ladder to look into—where she had barricaded herself behind the center island, right in front of the refrigerator. She had her hands tucked into her waist, but she could not stand still. She still had the bandage on her forehead. The phone was ringing, bleating relentlessly.

  “Jesse,” I said. “We’re taking care of this, okay? I want you to know that.” Thinking she needed me to be near her, I approached the other side of the island, but she recoiled. In her sweatshirt and jeans, she looked like somebody’s teenage daughter, her physical presence diminished to nearly nothing. Each time I moved toward her, she backed farther away.

  “What?” I said.

  “Don’t. Somebody might … get the wrong fucking idea.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Jess. We’ll work something out.”

  “How?” She cast her eyes down. She could throw herself into such a pure sadness, it was almost frightening. Not to mention deeply feminine. In spite of those husky, well-formed shoulders—because she had very capable upper-body strength, just like she had good solid legs—she just radiated it, womanliness, almost softly feminine at times. I’m no expert on these things, but she always seemed to have this kind of nurturing quality—a strange amalgam of kindness and care. She wasn’t the new woman, as just about everybody wanted her to be. She was a true woman—the kind that has defined the sex for thousands of years. She was not a temptress, or a Madonna, or an innocent child-like virgin—the only three possibilities in the minds of most men—she was a woman, a person. You know what I mean? And right at that moment, she was a person who was awful confused, pissed off, and clearly feeling cornered.

  “I asked Nate to come over,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “He’s bringing Dan, and I think Darius is coming, too. I told him not to, but … he insisted.”

  “Hell, the whole team might show up, Jesse. They can clear your front porch for you.” I took a chair by the kitchen table. By this time she had filled the apartment with furniture. It was a home now, of sorts, a comfortable place, warm and neatly arranged. She had two couches, a recliner, and bookcases full of neatly stacked books. Sunlight broke in lovely angles through drapes in the dining room and crossed the room in a diagonal toward the living room. Her bike was still leaning against the far wall by the fireplace.

  “It’s nice here,” I said.

  “Yeah … my mother did all this. Before I kicked her out.”

  “She’s got nice taste.”

  Jesse made this sound in the back of her throat, and I wasn’t sure if she was getting ready to cry or laugh. Only, when her eyes met mine, I saw something I’d never seen there before. Her mouth was a straight line, and her wide-eyed look now suggested stark, agonizing fear.

  “You all right?” I said.

  She didn’t look away, but her head gave a very slight shake, from side to side. Then she said, “Right. We should be getting ready for Cincinnati. Hell, I knew somebody would keep me from playing.”

  “Jesse, you have been playing,” I said. “And better than anybody I ever saw.”

  She glanced toward the door where the noise had not in the least subsided. People were calling out her name and pounding on the door; the phone was still ringing. “What’s wrong with them?” she said.

  “They’re crazy.”

  “It’s just a game.” She looked down. Something sweetly majestic radiated from the slight movement of her head and a swirl of dark hair that caressed the side of her face. She hadn’t gotten it cut in a while and it was not as curly now. It was almost a pageboy, except for the way it formed the curlicues on the top of her head. The bandage made her look wounded and sad.

  I told her why I was there. “Do you have a birth certificate, Jesse?”

  “What?” Her eyes seemed to shrink.

  “Just, you know, to deal once and for all with that business about you being a man.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Well, can you get it from your mother?”

  “No.”

  “Jesse, come on—this is too important. You have to call her.”

  “She doesn’t have it either. I used one to get into Japan once, but … I don’t even know where that is.”

  “Your mother wouldn’t know?”

  She shook her head. “I lost it.”

  “Okay, then. Write to get a copy.”

  “I was born in Japan, all right? We’re not gonna get one in time for Cincinnati, or hell—the rest of the season, even.”

  “We’re behind you, Jesse. You have to know that. We’ll fight for you.”

  She seemed to take this in. Then she said, “What have I done?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve sort of disturbed something big, haven’t I?”

  I was not happy to hear her talking like that. “You’ve broken new ground, sure. And … so what? Ever heard of Jackie Robinson? Babe Zaharias?”

  The racket outside really was unbelievable. A crowd had gathered in the parking lot in front of her apartment and they were all shouting against each other. “You don’t have to answer any of their questions,” I said. “But if you want you can make a statement. Once they’ve heard from you, they’ll leave you alone. At least for a while.”

  “Listen to that noise. You think Roddy’s out there?”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “What if I call him?”

  “You’ll make his year, but … go ahead. He can take a statement over the phone.”

  She said nothing, but she didn’t look away. She was thinking.

  “Jesse, there’s something I have to ask of you to help us.”

  Again, she had no response.

  “It’s not much, but it’ll surely help when we go to court.”

  She came around the island and settled herself across from me at the table. I asked her if she’d like something to drink and she said no, and then I rudely got up and poured myself a glass of water.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Jesse, you ever heard of somebody named Robert Ibraham?” I watched her face closely and she revealed nothing. She thought about it for a minute, then shook her head.

  “You’ve never heard that name.”

  “No.”

  “He signed to play football in the Canadian League, for Montreal.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t know anything about him?”

  “No.”

  “We—I didn’t think so. I just wanted to know.”

  “What about him?”

  “Just—Look, if we have trouble getting your birth certificate, we’re going to have to ask you to do one thing to help us in this.”

  She waited, looking directly at me the way she almost always did.

  “This is a temporary restraining order,” I said, looking away for a moment. What was I doing here—bidding for time? “Temporary. That’s all. We’ll deal with it.”

  “But I can’t play. They took that away from me.”

  “We’re fighting this, Jesse. But, like I was saying, we need you to do one thing for us. And—this is
going to be hard to ask—I mean—if it was me I’d never dream of—”

  “What is it?”

  “Do you have a gynecologist you go to regularly?”

  She leaned forward and placed her chin in her hands. “You want me to prove I’m a woman.”

  I was ashamed to nod. “Just that it will simplify all this if we can get a doctor to, you know—”

  “Has any man ever had to prove he was a man?”

  “Some might say they feel like they have to prove that every day.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, the men do get physicals by team physicians every year … ”

  “What about my physical in training camp?”

  “You know how that was. It wasn’t—uh—the doctor didn’t …” She wouldn’t help me out here. “The team doctor is not a gynecologist,” I said finally. “He didn’t really examine you.”

  “He could tell I was a woman.”

  “Well, of course we’ll get him to testify, but … Look, Mr. Flores thought if we got the final say from a gynecologist, who could report unequivocally that …” I stopped. I felt so much like a lawyer now, or Charley Duncan—rather than what I wanted to be, which was Jesse’s friend. There I was, almost begging her, doing my best to manipulate her into doing this thing because I wanted what I wanted—which was for all the bullshit to just go away as soon as possible. I wanted to get Jesse back on the field where she belonged. “It would put to rest all this talk about a sex change.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and stared past me at the bright windows. She never said she would do it, visit a gynecologist, but I had at least put the idea in her head. And was that so wrong?

  Somehow, though, looking into those clouded blue eyes, I got the sensation that she knew what I was thinking, and that something essential between us had just been compromised, and perhaps even destroyed. I felt like the fellow behind the curtain saying, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

  Not long after that, Dan Wilber, Darius Exley, and Nate showed up. As they gently moved folks off the porch, Jesse sat at the kitchen table to write out a statement. The press set up in the parking lot at the bottom of her front steps. People came out of the other apartments and watched. It looked like a mini–Vatican City just before the Pope comes out on the balcony to bless everyone.