Semi-Tough (14 page)

I said, "It was raining pretty hard."

"Yeah, but remember how hot we were when we saw the films later?" said Shake.

I said, "Have you ever felt as bad in your life as we did that night after the game?"

"Just killed is all," Shake said.

"I must have kicked in every door in that locker room," I said. "Hell, I knew I scored."

Shake laughed to himself and said, "Did you ever see your Uncle Kenneth any drunker?"

I laughed,too.

"I don't know what he lost, but I'm sure it was everything in the envelope," I said. "He still carries an envelope, you know. He's still got the old bank and office right there in his coat pocket."

Shake looked off for a minute. Then he said, "Spring Branch. Rotten fucking Spring Branch. And we had those sumbitches down by fourteen at one time."

"Only time I ever saw Barb cry," I said.

"Hell, we all cried," Shake said. "You can take your wars and your starvation and your fires and your floods, but there's no heartbreak in life like losing the big game in high school."

I sat up and folded my hands behind my head.

"Well, it makes you a man," I said.

Shake said, "That's right, boy. Give 'em a few heart
-
breakers along the way. Straighten 'em up."

"Take away their parents," I grinned.

"You bet," Shake said. "Make a lot of 'em poor."

"Turn some of 'em black," I said.

"Mix in some cripples," he said.

"Mostly the black ones," I said.

"That's what the world needs more of," said Shake. "Poor black cripples."

"Who can't get hard-ons," I said.

"Kill some of their mothers, too," my old buddy added.

"Oh, Christ," I said.

And we kind of shook back and forth in laughter, and then sighed, and then didn't say anything for a while.

Shake lit up a cigarette and slouched down in his chair and sipped on his coffee and said, "Billy C., you know what I been thinkin' I might do? If we were to win the Super Bowl this year or next, which I think we got a chance to do?"

"Run for office?" I said, being funny.

"Nope," he said. "I think I might hang old eighty-eight up and let 'em take it on to Canton, Ohio."

"Yeah, me too," I said. "Next case."

"I'm serious," he said, and he was.

"You're serious, aren't you?" I said.

"I believe I am," he said.

"Well, that don't make me feel so great," I said.

"I don't know, really," he said.

"You got a lot of records you can break," I said.

"Records don't mean shit," Shake said.

I lit up a cigarette my own self.

"What the hell would you do if you didn't play any more ball when you're still able?" I wondered.

"Not play ball," he said.

"And then what?" I said.

"Not bust my ass and run my ass off and stay sore all the time from takin' licks," he said. "And not talk to a whole pack of dumb shits all the time. And not have to go to camp. And not look at a bunch of film. And not go to luncheons and dinners. And just not think about it any more."

I shook my head.

"That doesn't make any sense to me," I said.

"Well, that's right," Shake said. "You see, you're gonna play until you drop because you really love it, and then you're gonna be the coach of the Giants some day, and you're gonna be goddamn good at it. But that's not what I want to do, and I'm almost thirty."

I guess I knew that Shake never wanted to be a coach.

And I guess I thought that what he'd do when he quit playing ball would be to take care of our investments and make us even richer, and maybe become a vice-president of the club, or something, and marry Barbara Jane, and we would all just keep on hanging around New York.

I guess that's what I had always thought.

I remember that I sat there for a while and tried to imagine what it would be like to play on a team without Marvin (Shake) Tiller on it. Because I never had.

It didn't sound like fun.

"What about Barb?" I said. "What does she say about it?"

"I don't know," he said. "But it doesn't really matter."

Shake said, "Barb is Barb and she doesn't care what we do as long as it's what we truly want to do."

I said, "O.K., so you hang up old eighty-eight and then you go to Marrakech, or some fuckin' place. Is that
all right with Barb, to leave New York?"

Shake said, "Well, old Barb wouldn't be going where I go, wherever that is."

I must say that this struck old Billy Clyde by surprise and also made him feel sick for a second.

"I just don't believe that," I said. "Or any of the rest of it."

Shake then said that this was the way his head was shaping up at the time being, and that it certainly was true how he felt.

He said that he and Barbara Jane always had agreed that they would probably never get married legally because that would fuck up their friendship as well as their love.

He said that, anyhow, he and Barbara Jane had probably been married, in spirit at least, ever since the fourth grade, and that sure was a long time.

He said that this didn't mean he didn't love Barbara Jane more than almost anything he had ever known but he was just frankly tired of the responsibility of loving anything or doing anything, if I could understand that.

I remember I said, "Owl shit." Or something.

Shake went on and said that, of course, it was perfectly all right for Barbara Jane to accompany him to Istanbul or Marrakech or Tahiti as long as he didn't have any responsibility. As long, he said, as she didn't mind letting him sit in semi-open bars with bamboo curtains and ceiling fans and without a shave and looking for a young Rita Hayworth from the old movies to walk in.

He said that being a pro football stud was probably keeping him from ever doing some of the things which had always intrigued him. Like sitting at a sidewalk cafe in San Sebastian or being a spy in Geneva or a fur trader in the Yukon or getting drunk and painting a picture on a small island near Java and waiting for a tidal wave.

He said he might want to own and run a bar in Puerto Vallarta or Trinidad or Positano. Or he might want to own and run a fishing boat somewhere around Japan. Or he said he might just want to go sit around a lighthouse in the South China Sea and listen to waves crash against the rocks and think up poetry.

I told him that all of that was very interesting, but that he could go do all of it in the off-season, with Barbara Jane as well. And maybe I would go, too.

"Not the same," Shake said. "I want to disappear for a while, from everything I've ever known. I think that would be fascinating."

"If I couldn't get the scores," I said, "it wouldn't do anything but make me hot."

"In your case, that's right," he said.

I said, "Listen, old buddy. There never has been a more fired-up ball player than you, or a better leader. Don't that tell you something? Don't you know what you really love?"

"What are you gonna tell me I love?" he said.

I said, "You love
—
aside from Barb, I mean
—
you love catchin' balls and stickin' your hat in somebody's gizzle."

Shake said, "Yeah, well, what I'm trying to say, Billy C., is that I'm burnt out. I've been gettin' up for games for fifteen years and playin' my ass off, and I'm gettin' close to that time, I can feel it, when I'm gonna flame out."

Then he said, "I would like to win a Super Bowl though."

"There you are," I said. "Let's go to Clarke's and get on the outside of some bacon cheeseburgers."

Shake said, "You know, the thing that would ruin Barb would be for her to be married legal."

I asked how come.

"Well," he said, "it's because, basically, deep down, and she can't help it, she's a fuckin' woman."

I said I thought that was a pretty lucky break, as a matter of fact.

"Think about this," he said. "None of us have ever had an argument or a fight or hurt the others' feelings, ever, have we?"

I said that's right.

"So, all right, let's say me and Barb got married and lived somewhere and she was happy," he said. "Happy with the place, whether it was Tangier or wherever. And I was happy there, running my bar with the ceiling fans and the bamboo curtains and all the spies coming in and out. Do you know what would happen one day, just as sure as hell?"

I didn't have any notion.

"I would forget something," he said.

He said, "I would forget one day to pick up bread for dinner or maybe I would forget to hang up my clothes. Or I might even forget to fuck her. Well, Barb, now being a legal wife, which would make her an owner of sorts, would say something about it."

Possibly, I agreed.

"She might say something smart-ass, or she might just utter a small complaint. But sooner or later, she would say something. Do you know what would happen then?"

I sure didn't.

Shake said, "Well, what would happen is, she would blow all those years I'd ever known her and loved her. She would piss me off about something that didn't make a shit and it would leave a scar and it would all be ruined."

I thought that over for an interlude and listened to the soft background of Elroy Blunt singing "Tear Me a New One."

"Seems a little harsh," I said.

Shake said, "Naw, that would do it. She'd bitch one time, sooner or later, and the whole thing would be ruined. Women can't help it. It catches up with 'em. At one time or another, they got to bitch about something that don't make a shit."

"Seems like Barb ought to get the privilege of one bitch in a lifetime," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said, honestly.

"Has she ever bitched?" he said.

"Not that I know of," I said.

"Well," he said, "you let her become a legal wife, an owner, and then you would see some dissatisfaction expressed."

"Even Barb?" I said.

"That's the thing, Billy C.," he said. "No matter how great she is
—
and she's the best
—
she can't help the fact that she's a woman. It'll finally catch up with her, and I just don't want to be there when it happens."

I asked my old buddy how he knew all this.

"Books and movies and knowing people," he said.

I busted up laughing.

Then I asked him what about men who bitched.

"Men don't bitch like women and even if they do, you don't take it seriously, and you can tell 'em to go shit in their wallets and they don't get their feelings hurt and they don't hold grudges," he said.

Women were certainly a different problem, I said.

Shake went on, "Women take things personally when they shouldn't. For example, if you forget the loaf of bread, they have a tendency to think that you forgot it because you don't love 'em as much as you did yesterday. And that's not why you forgot the loaf of bread. You forgot the loaf of fuckin' bread because you were drunk, or it wasn't important enough to remember."

I said, "It might have been important to the woman. She might have needed it to cook you something good."

Shake said, "Then she could fix navy bean soup instead. Or enchilladas."

"Oh, that's right." I giggled. "I forgot."

Shake said, "It's too bad about women, and especially Barb, but that's the way it is."

I said I guessed so.

He said, "You were wondering where we're all going and that troubles me a lot more than it does you, like I said. The thing is, you see, where we're going now doesn't lead anywhere."

"We're living," I said, "and laughing."

He said, "Yeah, but it would all be ruined by Barb not getting her loaf of fuckin' bread some day. See, I've known the all-time girl and I've loved her and she's loved me. I've had the all-time pal, which is you. And I've played a game as good as anybody ever played it. Now I think I want to do something else."

"Find some spies," I said.

"Just do something different. It bothers me that all I've ever done is be a split end and fuck around," he said.

"It doesn't matter that you've been loved and happy and famous and rich?" I said.

"Anybody can do all that," he said.

"All you got to do is want to," I said. "I forgot again."

"Right," said Shake.

"In other words," I said, "you want to go see if you can round up some misery somewhere."

Shake said, "Well, I'm not exactly looking for any misery. I've always been dead set against hunger or being thirsty, as you know. I think what I'd like to find is something different to look at and something different to listen to, but I don't know what."