MAGIC (6 page)

Why were they crucifying him?

Jail? Was that even a remote possibility? Corky could not stop his imagination. At school it was relentless, coming up with torments and humiliations. His mind dogged him day and night; for the first time, school was perplexing, he couldn’t concentrate and one of his teachers even admonished him, which had never come close to happening before.

But how could you think about adverbs or percentages when the world’s most perfectly developed man was pissed off at you?

He wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, but there wasn’t anybody. He knew people; everybody knew people, it wasn’t that he was unpopular. But it was hard for him,
people
were hard for him. He was able
to stay by himself and he did, he whittled, made figures, dogs and horses and cows and faces and that had been enough to get him through.

All he ever really wanted was to please people
. His mother had liked whittling and while she was around that was fine, and after she was gone he kept it up because at least he knew how to do it and do it well.

He began to wonder if they ever came in groups, the Atlas men, traveling in pairs in case they ran into tough customers. Except he wasn’t a tough customer, he was just a kid,
leave kids alone
.

When the offer reached $8.00 he waited till very late and then he told his father. Mutt was lying propped in bed watching wrestling on the tube. When Corky started, Mutt’s eyes were on the falling figures, but after a while they began flicking back and forth, from his son to the fighters; finally he focused on the boy. “Pal, you gotta watch that imagination of yours.”

Corky nodded.

“Quit the crying and listen now.”

“… listening …”

“IBM hasn’t got that many field representatives, you get me? There’s no way some bimbo with muscles is gonna come up here after you, now stop the crying like I said.”

“… they said a man would be in the area …”

“Forget what they said, just remember Mutt says don’t be afraid. Tell me that.”

“… not afraid …”

“And you really mean it?”

Corky decided it would be best to nod.

“Sleep good.”

Corky headed for the door.

“Hey Pal? Remember something huh? God gave you the brains. The muscles leave to Willie.”

Corky did that very thing till Willie was killed.

Stupidly. Drunkenly. In a car crash. At the age of eighteen. Corky had been having dinner alone with Mutt in front of the tv when the call came. Mutt answered,
nodded, muttered a few words, hung up. “They got Willie” was all he said, and Corky knew he was talking of the Gods, they pissed on you, but if you were tough, you survived, and Mutt was tough, he hobbled when he walked, but you didn’t mock him about it, and no matter what they did to you, you had to fight back until you died.

Which was why, the week after they put Willie in the ground, Mutt began teaching Corky football …

“He’s got the good hands, he’s got the good speed,” Mutt was saying to the coach. “I’m not saying he’s another Willie, but the kid can help you, that’s a guarantee.”

Coach Tyler looked across the field at Corky. It was a steaming August day and Corky stood awkwardly in his brother’s old football uniform, holding tight to the helmet. “Not much size,” Tyler said.

“Did I say he was big?”

“I don’t know, Mutt—he’s way behind. We’ve been working out all summer.” He turned, gestured to the rest of the freshman team who were running through the heat, getting their wind sprints done.

“I been working with the kid myself, Tyler. I been devoting myself. I would never bring him over if he wasn’t ready.”

Tyler shrugged. “I owe you, Mutt; what do you want from me?”

“Just a chance for my pal over there.”

“As a what?”

“Goddammit, he’s got the good speed. He can catch punts, kickoffs, give him a shot.”

“Later,” Tyler said, and he jogged back to his team.

“Gonna work out just fine for all concerned,” Mutt said, coming back to the boy. “Sit awhile.” They walked to the old wooden grandstand, took seats alone on the front row. “Still nervous?”

Corky made a nod.

“No one expects miracles.”

Corky nodded again.

Mutt watched Tyler with his players. “Best years he ever had he owes to me—I brought him the best, didn’t I?”

“Willie was sure wonderful,” Corky said.

“He was a pal all right.”

“Daddy, I’m not like him.”

“No one expects miracles, I said that, just listen to Mutt and that’s all you have to do. What are you gonna do when they kick to you?”

“Catch it.”

“How come you won’t drop it?”

“I’m gonna see the ball into my hands.”

“That’s all there is to it—
ya see the ball into your hands
—never take your eyes off it no matter what till you got it cradled. Then what do you do?”

“Run fast.”

“Why do you think you can do that?”

“ ’Cause you said I got the good speed.”

“And with that good speed, do you run at ’em?”

“No, you juke ’em, you give ’em the leg and then take it away.”

“I’m really proud of you,” Mutt said.

The heat was terrible and Corky contemplated fainting.

“But that don’t matter,” Mutt said then.

Corky wondered how much it would hurt, being slammed around. And what did you do with the pain? Where did you put it—you couldn’t cry, not on the football field, but the pain had to drain off someplace, where though? I got the good speed, he told himself. Maybe they won’t hit me at all. Give ’em the leg, take it away, juke ’em, fake, then run for safety. He looked at Mutt then. “Huh? What do you mean, it doesn’t matter if you’re proud. I want you to be proud.”

“No,” Mutt told him. “
You
got to want
you
to be proud. You want me to be pleased, sure; but you’re the only one you can be proud of.”

“Daddy—listen—please, I don’t want to try this—I’m
just gonna goof it up—let’s go home, maybe there’s a baseball game on the tv.”

“You got to go through the caldron, Pal. You got to come out the other side. Willie was scared worse than you. And he didn’t just have the speed and the hands, he had the size and the strength working for him. And he said over and over again, ‘Take me home, Mutt.’ Until I told him about Nagurski.”

“Nagurski?”

“This was the best thing ever happened to me, the high point of my life, y’understand? And I was there, I saw it all, and I cried, so you pay mind.”

Corky stared at his father.

“I’ve read about ’em all and I’ve seen ’em all, every man ever run with a football, you name ’em, I made it my business to be there. Only not Nagurski. Bronko Nagurski and they said he was the greatest ever tucked a football under an arm. He was from Minnesota, went to school there, played pro in Chicago, I never got my chance to really check him out. But he was so great that when he wasn’t runnin’, they couldn’t just let him sit on the bench so they played him in the line, played him at tackle, and to this day he is the only one in the history of the world ever made All-American at
two
positions in
one
year—do you realize how great that man must have been? No one else ever dreamed of being All-American at two positions all the same year, and he
done
it. Nagurski. Weighed two thirty-five. Fast they said. Couldn’t be brought down, they said. No one ever came close, they said.

“But I never got my shot to really see. I was east and he was out there. He played pro, tore the league apart, then went back to Minnesota and I never saw him. Well, you get over things, I got over that.

“Then one Sunday I was passing through Chicago on my way back east—I did a lot of truckin’ during the war, driving valuable stuff all over, good work, hard, but it paid, better’n massagin’ I can promise you that, and I read in the papers that Nagurski was gonna
play. Now that wasn’t the news. See, it was wartime, there wasn’t enough blue chippers around, so to fill out the rosters they brought in what they could get, and I read that Nagurski was coming back, but only to play substitute tackle, not to ever run with the ball.

“But this Sunday in Chicago the papers said maybe,
maybe
they would have to try to let him run, on account of there was only three fullbacks and one was injured and another wasn’t up to snuff. So if the half sick one got hurt and his replacement too, well, they had no choice but to give the ball to Bronko and they asked would he do it if that happened and he said he didn’t much want to but he’d try.

“Fourteen years, Corky. He’d been out of college
fourteen years
. He’d been retired from the pro game for half that long and for an athlete, that’s seven lifetimes. He was old.
Old
I’m telling you. And I’m in Chicago, remember, and I’m due back east, but I thought, I got to see this today, I got to watch, even if it’s a million to one against him ever carrying, I got to be there if the Bronko gets the ball.”

“You said you cried,” Corky said.

“I took the bus out to old Commiskey Park. See, this wasn’t just an ordinary game, this was a city rivalry, the Bears against the Cardinals, and Nagurski, he was with the Bears and it wasn’t even an ordinary city rivalry—the division title was on the line. The Bears had to win to get to the play-offs. The Cardinals were dying to stop ’em. This was something—think of a Normandy-Liberty shoot out and multiply it a hundred times and you got some idea what it was like for the Bears to be going against the Cardinals, two Chicago teams, with everything riding. If you’d have given the players lead pipes, they would have all been dead after the opening kickoff, that’s how hard they hit. And I was there to see it all.

“And the Cardinals slaughtered ’em. Just really took it to ’em. And Nagurski sat on the bench. I tried getting
a look at him but I didn’t have binocs, he just looked like anybody else. Big, sure, but nothing special, and in the second quarter I think it was, the fullback for the Bears who was feeling poorly, he got racked up bad and he was done and I thought omijesus, am I glad I come to this, there’s only one healthy fullback left.

“Then in the third quarter the Cardinals went to town. They were the underdogs, see, but they weren’t going to let the Bears go on to glory and when it got to be twenty-four to fourteen with the Cardinals stopping the Bears cold, well, some people even started getting ready to beat the crowd, and the Bears tried a run and the Cardinals wouldn’t let nobody go nowhere and everybody unpiled—everybody except the Bears’ fullback.

“The whole park knew it, Corky. You could tell. The word was whizzing all around the stands. ‘He’s comin’ in. The Bronko. The Bronko.’ And I sat there thinking, omijesus, what a great spot for a legend to be in, coming back after so many years, one quarter to play, the title on the line and ten points behind. You lead your team to victory, you can’t ever die after that.

“And then the crowd started screaming like nothin’ you ever heard because on the bench, he stood up. Nagurski. And he reached for his helmet. And he come onto the field. And right then as I watched him I knew I was the fool of all the world and if there was one place I didn’t want to be it was Commiskey Park in Chicago with Nagurski coming in to play.”

“Why, Daddy?”

“Because you could tell when he lumbered on. He was
slow. Fourteen years since college
. Old. Old. It was gone, every bit of what he had was gone, he was nothing, you could see that when he was to the huddle and I knew they were gonna piss on him, they brought him back from Minnesota just so they could piss on him, it didn’t matter if he was All-American at two
positions in one year, what matters is how are you remembered at the end and this was the end but there was still one chance.”

“Tell me, tell me.”

“Well, everybody knew they were gonna give the ball to Bronko but the Bears, they had this Jew quarterback, Luckman, and I don’t have to tell you he was smart do I, and if you’re smart and everybody knows what you’re gonna do, well you don’t do it, you fake it and do something else and when they came out of the huddle, and when they lined up with Nagurski at fullback and Luckman at quarterback, well, it had to be a decoy thing, they had to pretend to give him the ball and then Luckman could throw one of his long passes and maybe the Bears would be only behind by three with a chance to win it all.”

Mutt leaned back against the row behind him and closed his eyes to the sun.

Corky waited.

“Only it wasn’t no decoy.”

“You mean they gave him the ball?”

Mutt nodded. “They gave it to him and he put it under his arm and just kind of ran slow, straight into the Cardinal line. They were all waiting for him. All these big guys and Nagurski tried, you could see that, but they just picked him up, the Cardinals did, and for one second they just held him on their shoulders.”

“And then they threw him down?”

“Not exactly, they all fell backwards and he gained four yards.”

“He
gained?
—but you said—”

“—I couldn’t believe it either. He kind of got up and shook himself off and went back into the huddle and out the Bears come again and this Luckman, he hands the ball to Nagurski and he lumbers up and they’re waiting only this time he falls forward for eight more. First down.”

“How did he do it?”

“I couldn’t figure it myself. But it was starting to get
a little eerie on the field. You could see all the Cardinal linemen slapping each other on the asses and the Bears come out again and this time they did fake and the pass was good for another first down and the next play was Nagurski kind of slipping down for six. He was like an ax hitting a tree. It doesn’t matter how big the tree is, when the ax starts coming, you better look out.

“Now the Bears were inside the twenty. And there wasn’t any doubt about what was gonna happen. It was gonna be the Bronko up the middle and all these Cards, they bunched, waiting, and sure enough, here he comes, and they hit him and he hits them and for a second they did what they could but then he bursts through and he’s doing five, six, eight, and then they knock him down and he’s crawling—
crating for the goal
, and everybody’s screaming and there’s a Cardinal on his back, trying to make him stop but he can’t, he can’t, and finally about six guys jump him at the one and stop him short of the TD. But they were scared now. They knew he was coming and they knew there wasn’t anything they could do about it, and they waved their fists and tried to get steamed up but old Bronko, he just lined up behind the quarterback and the quarterback give him the ball and they’re all waiting, Corky—eleven fucking Cards are waiting and this old man starts forward and they’re braced and he jumps sideways at them, the old man flies at them and they parted like water and he was through and the rest of the game was nothing, the Bears slaughter them behind the Bronko who gains a hundred yards in one quarter and for a while the Card fans were screaming ‘Stop him,
stop him
’ but after a little they quit that, nothing could stop him, and after it was over I sat there bawling, and I tried to get at it, what
was
it that had happened out there, because it couldn’t happen but it did,
a man pissed back at the Gods
, Corky, and finally I realized you had to be so proud of yourself
that nothing else mattered and that’s what I taught Willie all those years but not good enough because he got taken, and it’s what I’m gonna teach you if you’ll listen long enough, and when you go out there today you just think
‘I’m
proud of
me I’m
proud of
me
’ and then
you’ll
be pissing at the Gods and won’t that be the day.”