Life Its Ownself (39 page)

"Joggaphy," he said. "Joggaphy be tellin' you what's Eas' and Wes'. I like to look at pictures and maps and shit."

T.J. was asked if he would allow Tonsillitis to wear his headband at TCU. The reporter pointed out to T. J. that many black athletes wear headbands. It gave them a sense of pride in their ancestry.

"I got no problem with that," said T.J. "He can wear his headband... or his helmet."

When the proceedings were over, Big Ed took me aside.

"What are you going to do about my daughter?" he said.

The answer was that I would wait and hope she came to her senses, realize she was still in love with me, and make some overture about getting back together.

"She says you're having an affair. You say you're not. Who do I believe?"

"Ask Shake."

Big Ed chuckled. "Shake Tiller hasn't answered a question seriously since he was ten!"

"I'm not having an affair, Ed. The girl's good-looking, that's the problem. That's why nobody believes me. We're just friends."

"Some friend. She broke up your home."

"Kathy didn't break up my home. Barbara Jane broke up my home. What about that director your daughter's always with: does he bother you?"

"The faggot?"

"Jack Sullivan's not a fag. I wish he was."

"He could fool me at a costume party."

"Does Barb talk about him?"

"She says he's considerate."

"That's trouble."

"I know," said Big Ed. "Between you and me, Billy Clyde, that's the worst God-damn word women ever learned the meaning of."

"I've got supportive up there."

Big Ed lit a Sherman. "The director's a faggot whether he knows it or not. At least you been going around with a normal person."

"There is that," I said, looking away. "What do you hear from the swami, Ed?"

It was more than an effort to change the subject. I wondered if Big Ed realized, or cared to admit, that Darnell and Tonsillitis had worked a scam on him.

"Gone," he said. "If I had to guess, I'd say the Hindu son-of-a-bitch has moved on to the Big Eight or the Pac-10."

So Big Ed didn't know. Maybe I'd tell him someday after Tonsillitis made All-America, or won the conference for him, or scored so many touchdowns he turned white.

"By the way, thanks for the Horny Toad," I said. "T.J. told me."

"It's a real fine award. The trustees wanted to give it to me. I said naw, they didn't. They wanted to
trade
it to me for some more of my dinosaur wine. Go on and build your new library, I said. I'll pay for the damn thing."

"Tell your daughter I love her," I said.

On the way to the airport, Shake and I stopped off for a drink with Jim Tom Pinch at Herb's. Jim Tom wanted us to stay over another night so he could take us to Honey Bun's, Fort Worth's newest tit joint.

"Can't do it," Shake said. "Fun's about worn my ass out."

On the flight back to New York, Shake made literary notes to himself. I listened to tapes on my Aiwa recorder and thought about crawling to Los Angeles on my elbows and knees. Happily for my wardrobe, I had rejected the idea by the time the plane landed.

A simple smile from Barbara Jane and my whole life was a highlight film. For a moment, I was nine years old and we were back in elementary school together. Then I was joking with her in a hallway at Paschal. In another instant, we were sitting under a tree outside a dorm at TCU. Finally it was that night in New York when we had kissed like sex-starved teenagers and fallen into love its ownself.

All this happened because our eyes met in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf before the Emmy Awards began.

Kathy and I had walked in and were looking for our CBS friends and suddenly there was Barb. She was sitting at the Rita table with Jack Sullivan, Carolyn Barnes, Sheldon Gurtz, Kitty Feldman, and a handful of bicoastals.

Because there had been a sweetness in Barbara Jane's smile, I ushered Kathy over to my wife's table. Barb stood up and gave me a hug and a friendly kiss. Just the touch and smell of her would have shattered me if I hadn't been an all- pro.

"You're handsome in a tux," Barb said.

"I had to go for the slick."

"You should wear it more often."

"Well," I said, "the band doesn't play that many formal dances."

Barbara Jane and Kathy were both wearing plunging gowns. They looked sensational. Standing between them, I felt like the emcee of the Miss Universe contest.

"Hello, Kathy," Barb said, nicely.

"Hi," Kathy replied. "God, you look neat!"

Kathy smiled at me and said, "There's our table. I'll go on."

Kathy walked away to the CBS table where Richard Marks was seated with Larry Hoage, Teddy Cole, Mike Rash, Brent Musburger, others.

Feeling the stares of the gang at the
Rita
table, I nodded a hello at everyone.

Jack Sullivan said, "Billy Clyde, you're excellent on the air. Don't let them change your style."

I thanked him.

"Are you going to win an Emmy?" I said to Barbara Jane.

"No," she said. "We hear Shirley Foster's a mortal lock for best actress."

"Who's Shirley Foster?"

"The star of
Cruds
.'"

"Call me Biff," I said.

I lit a cigarette for Barbara Jane and said, "I'm not with Kathy, Barb. I mean, we came together tonight, but... she's involved with someone."

"A lawyer," Barb said. "Shake told me."

"I would have told you but I never get to talk to anybody but Ying."

"We'd better take our seats."

"I want you back, Barb. We can work it out. Can I see you tomorrow?"

"We're going back to L.A. in the morning. I'll be busy all summer. I'm renting a house in Santa Monica. Our ratings are through the roof. They've ordered twenty-six shows for next year. And... there's some movie talk."

"My wife, the movie star. Who would have thought in the fifth grade that—"

"Ex-wife."

"We're still married."

"It's a state of mind, isn't it?"

I let that slide and said, "They want me to do golf tournaments."

"That'll be fun for you."

"I don't know anything about golf."

"Your stage manager can research it for you."

"You don't know how to let up, do you?"

She said, "I've been hurt, Billy C. I don't know how long I'll feel this way."

"Well, if you ever get over it, I'm findable," I said, and went to the CBS table.

Which was where I got intolerably drunk.

The awards dinner lasted four hours. The middle two hours constituted the telecast when all of the important Emmys were presented.

I bribed a waiter to bring me youngsters by the threes and fours while everyone else at our table drank champagne or wine and poked around on their plates at the green peas and slivers of mystery meat.

During the two-hour telecast, I watched an endless procession of actors and actresses and producers accept Emmys for an endless list of shows I had never heard of.

Barb had guessed right. She didn't win the Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy. But neither did Shirley Foster for
Cruds!
The award went to an actress named Diane Connors for a show called
Goose and Bomber
.

Rita
was honored in another category. Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman won for best writing of a comedy series— for a script in which every line had been changed by Barb and Jack Sullivan.

When they made their acceptance speeches, Kitty spoke first, although she had trouble reaching the mike.

"I accept this award on behalf of the entire cast and crew," she said. "It's a great team."

"We're a family," said Sheldon. "It's the happiest show I've ever been a part of."

The sports awards came after the telecast was off the air, very late in the evening.

My category, Outstanding Analyst, which should have gone to John Madden, was taken by Laird Rinker, the twenty-two-year-old ex-surfing champion who did water sports for ABC.

At first, I wasn't sure why Larry Hoage had leaped up at our table and hollered, "Yippy-ty-yi-yee," but then I realized he had won the Emmy as the Outstanding Sports Host.

As Larry Hoage walked up to the stage and the mike, I tried to comfort Kathy Montgomery, who was in shock.

"This is the profession I've chosen," she said with sorrow in her voice.

"Only in America," I said to her. "It's a great country."

Larry Hoage's acceptance speech ran to such length that it practically cleared the grand ballroom. I only recall the beginning of it.

"Back in Orange County, California," he said, "the year was 1937 and a baby boy was born to the humble, hardworking couple of Bertha and Fred Hoage. This country was slowly digging its way out of a wingding of a financial depression. It was a hopeful year. Nobody could have known we were on the brink of another calamity—a gut-bustin' sidewinder of a shootin' war. Well, sir, that little curly-haired boy..."

From April through August I went to so many golf tournaments I felt like an alligator on a shirt pocket. CBS did tournaments in Augusta, Georgia; Hilton Head, South Carolina; Memphis; Columbus, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Chicago; Philadelphia; Hartford; and Akron.

They were all the same event to me. Our cameras would point at the clouds because somebody said a golf ball was up there, and then our cameras would point at something rolling across the ground and going off the screen.

I learned to recognize a dramatic moment. That was when a golfer punched the air with his fist.

My job on the telecasts was relatively easy. I would sit up on a tower behind a green and try to guess which sets of tits in the gallery were following which golfers.

Every so often, the producer, a guy named Frank, would talk to me on the headset. He would say something like "Billy Clyde, holler down at the one in the green shorts. Tell her to turn around."

Occasionally, he would even tell me to say something on the air.

All I would have time to say was "Here's Ben Crenshaw. There are some other guys with him. They're all gonna walk around on the green a while. Let's go to Sixteen."

Kathy Montgomery was promoted to associate producer at the first of the summer. She was assigned to golf, which pleased her because it was live.

She worked in the main control truck with the producer and director. Her responsibility was to cuss out the graphics person for getting scores wrong and to count everyone down to commercials.

At times by accident I would hear Kathy over my headset. She would be spun. "Thirty seconds till Ideal commercial!" she would sing out. "Twenty-five...twenty...fifteen!" That was before I heard Frank say to her, "Kathy, if you want to stay in this business, take a Demerol."

Kathy was just another one of the guys now. She was still a good friend, somebody to drink with, eat dinner with, loaf around with on the road. She still looked great. But all I saw when I looked at her was another eager electronic journalist in faded jeans and a sweatshirt.

One evening in July we were in Chicago and Kathy asked if the two of us could go out to dinner, somewhere quaint and expensive, and talk about life its ownself the way we used to.

She took us to a restaurant where there was nothing on the menu for me to eat but the ice in my Scotch glass— Chicago's version of Enjolie's. That was the night she confessed that it was all over with Denise.

She said Denise had verbally attacked her for not being committed to their way of life. Denise had always been insanely jealous of me. And Denise had broken it off and moved to Eugene, Oregon, with a middle-distance runner named Janet.

"Denise was right," Kathy said. "I wasn't committed. I don't know why I got into that life. I'm a
girl
, Billy Clyde. I really am! I can't tell you what a relief it is to know it, to have a good feeling about it. You know what? I've never stopped thinking about you. You're probably the reason I'm back to normal."

"What are you saying, Kathy?" I couldn't avoid a grin. "Does this mean you want to have an affair with me now? I'm therapy?"

She said, "I just want to tell you how much I love you. You're about the most important person in the world to me."

"Kathy, I love Barbara Jane," I said. "One of these days I intend to get her back."

"You will. You two belong together. I can't imagine you and Barbara Jane with anyone but each other. All I want to be is your friend."

"You are."

"You mean it?"

"Of course."

"Can we be close like this after you and Barbara Jane are back together?"

"We'll be friends."

"Could we be sitting here like this?"

"Similar, I suppose."

"Promise we'll stay good friends, Billy Clyde."