Semi-Tough (25 page)

I guess I ran where I was supposed to run.

Somewhere along the way, Shake asked me, "You tired, Billy C.?" I remember that. And I remember Hose saying, "I'll tell him when he's tired."

That was a hell of a call Hose came up with when we had fourth fucking down on our own thirty-seven and two to go. I knew we had to go for it, because of the clock. If we punted, we might never see the ball again.

I didn't know what Hose would do. Run me, maybe. Try to hit Shake on a quick sideline, maybe. Just something to get the first down. I didn't expect what he invented and obviously the dog-ass Jets didn't either.

In the huddle Hose said, "Bunch, I got to suck it up and pick a number. This might be the ball game so ever
-
body give me their best shot."

Hose didn't make up a play so much as he made up a change of positions. He put Shake Tiller at tight end and he put Thacker Hubbard into a full-house backfield with me and Booger Sanders. The only guy he split out wide was Randy Juan.

Then he called tight end deep, only man down. This meant that it was going to be a deep pass for Shake Tiller, out of a run formation. It was going to be that or nothing.

"I got to have good boards on this one," Hose told Shake.

"Just throw that sumbitch. I'll get there," said Shake.

If Hose had thrown a real good pass, of course, it would have been a touchdown because the play had everybody fooled, including Shoat Cooper. Nobody was within ten yards of Shake.

As it was, we only got thirty-five yards after Shake jumped up and caught the ball over his head and came down off-balance and toppled out of bounds. Instead of semi-dead, we were down on their twenty-eight.

He caught the ball near our bench, and you would have thought he had just been elected Roman emperor, the way our bunch mobbed him.

I want everybody to know that I was fairly astounded later on when I found out that I carried the ball six straight times from there.

I don't at all remember the ten-yard sweep where they tell me I flat ran over Dreamer Tatum, cunt on cunt. And he had to be helped off the field for the first time in his career.

That last carry wasn't Twenty-three Blast, by the way, like
Sports Illustrated
said. It was what we call Student Body Left, which is a play where everybody pulls left and I run a slant or a sweep, depending on how the blockers clear a path.

We called time out before that last play but I didn't go to the sideline. I just sat down and tried to breathe. I did look up at the clock on the scoreboard behind the goal post and saw that there were only four seconds left in the game.

I sat there and looked all around the stadium at those ninety-two thousand people and although there must have been a lot of roaring, I couldn't hear anything. It was weird. Really eerie. It was like I was swallowed up by this great movie, all around me, but it was a silent movie.

They say I cut inside on the play and pretty much ran over Puddin Patterson's big ass again. All I can say is that I was so tired and numb that those three yards were the longest I ever tried to make.

They say I climbed right up Puddin's big ass and then dived, headfirst like a silly damn swan, over the alumni stripe, and came down on my face-guard to win the game.

What happened for the next few minutes is also pretty much of a blur. Let's see now. They carried me off the field, of course, and I damn near got stripped naked from little kids clawing at me.

I can still hear Elroy Blunt rapping on my helmet and saying, "We done fucked 'em. We done fucked 'em."

T.J.
Lambert lifted me up in the air and said, "Remind me to buy you a sody pop."

Burt Danby had tears streaming down his face and went so far as to kiss me on the goddamn lips.

Shoat Cooper managed the one and only grin of his whole lifetime and said, "What I call what you done out there is
football
."

Big Ed Bookman shook my hand and put ten one hundred dollar bills in it and said, "Spread this around among some of your blockers and tell 'em I don't just appreciate it by myself but the whole goddamned country does."

It was pretty much after all the celebrating had died down in the dressing room
—
after everybody had stuck their heads under bottles of Scotch and champagne
—
that Shake Tiller came over and quietly shook my hand.

"Ate their ass up is all you did, Billy C.," he said.

Well, as happy as I am to be on the winning side in the Super Bowl, I can't brag that thirty-one to twenty
-
eight is much of a whipping. I think if we played them again it wouldn't be so close. And I surely don't agree with
Sports Illustrated
that it was "beyond question the most memorable sporting event of the century, apart from the most recent America's Cup."

I'll say this. I think the sports writers made a good choice when they voted Dreamer Tatum the Player of the Game. I'd like to have had that trophy as well as the cabin cruiser and the year's supply of bubble bath. But Dreamer deserved the award.

There wasn't anything in the newspapers about Dreamer coming over to our dressing room to congratulate us. After he had showered and got dolled up, and after the crowd had thinned out, he came over.

It was semi-big of him, I thought.

Dreamer went around and shook everybody's hand on our team.

He was wearing a leather jacket with a belt, a pair of pink velvet knickers with riding boots that had spurs on them, and a bush hat made out of fur.

"Nice goin'," he said. "Had you cats in the box but we let you out."

I thanked him for coming over.

"It could have been different real easy," I said. "A lot of things could have happened the other way."

Dreamer smiled.

"Say, I learned somethin' a long time ago about football, baby," he said. "What
could
have happened,
did
. That's what I know."

Dreamer also said that me and him ought to get to know each other better in New York. Maybe chase some wool together.

I told Dreamer that when we all got off the banquet circuit we'd sure do that.

"You the champs, baby," said Dreamer, leaving. "Scoreboard done said so."

I thought to myself that Dreamer Tatum was some kind of a stud, all right, and I hoped I could have that much class when I lost a big one.

I think I must be getting pretty close to the end of my book because there isn't much more to tell about right here. I'd like to give Shake Tiller a semi-chance to turn up before I come to Fort Worth, Jim Tom.

I hate to leave Shake hanging out there, wherever that
is.

But maybe the phantom old Eighty-eight will come riding up on a wave before me and Barb run a post pattern to the mainland.

I'll be getting back to you, folks, in a few days. That'll be after I've gone to Fort Worth and met with my collaborator and tried to mend his life.

Right now I got to go stick my toe in the Pacific Ocean. The noted author seems to have worked himself up a
semi-lather here in the sun.

My fellow Americans. I have come before you tonight as your Commander-in-Chief with a message of grave concern for all of us. It has been called to my attention by the head of the Federal Food and Drug Administration that certain professional football players smoke dope and drink whisky.

It has also been called to my attention that there is poverty and rioting in several of our cities. This was called to my attention by television.

I think both of these things are regrettable and I want to assure you this evening that if they don't stop, I'm going to Palm Springs and get in a few rounds of golf.

Now I'm going to dismiss the poverty and rioting issues because poverty is nothing more than a state of mind. And rioting, as I've said many times before, rioting, per se, is not a concern to any of us who don't like spade neighborhoods in the first place.

To get down to the more important subject, I'd like for all of you to meet a good friend of mine, Mr. Billy Clyde Puckett. Say hello to America, Billy.

Hidy.

Billy, you were the hero of the Super Bowl, weren't you?

Semi.

You ran real tough in there, Billy, and I want to congratulate you.

Thankee.

Now then, Billy. As an athlete worshiped by millions of youngsters around this great country of ours, I'd like for you to tell all those watching and listening whether you think it's right to drink whisky or, as they say, to turn

on. Just face the camera, Billy, and tell America what's in your heart.

Is that the camera right there?

Tell it like it is, Billy.

Well, uh, this is Billy Clyde Puckett speaking, and I've got a lot of things on my heart. First of all, I don't think whisky drinking
—
to any excess, anyhow
—
is any good when you're alone.

Excuse me, Billy, but
—

As for dope, I think it's the only thing you ought to use when you turn on.

Uh, Billy, just a min
—

Something else is bothering me, too. I heard the other day that exposing yourself in front of little girls was against the law. I think that's a lot of shit.

Billy Puckett!

It's what I got on my heart. Also, I want to get me some pussy.

Hi, gang. It's the real me this time. I was just having a little fun there, imitating the President and my alter ego. Actually I was trying to entertain a very dear, very warm, very old, very wonderful friend of mine, the lovely and charming Miss Barbara Jane Bookman.

Take a bow, Barb.

The deal is that I'm laying here on a sofa in me and Shake's palatial apartment in New York City, New York, with a young Scotch in my hand and my little old tape recorder.

Miss Barbara Jane Bookman is sitting across the living room from me in her traditional pair of tight, faded Levi's and a whole blouse full of dandy lungs.

Whoops. She just threw a
Sports Illustrated
at me.

Missed though. Kid never did have an arm.

Wait a second. She wants to say something.

It wasn't too funny. She said, "Good tits, no arm."

She's gone now
—
shopping or something
—
so that's good. Won't be any more interruptions while the noted author faces up to the chore of the last remaining paragraphs of one of the great books of the ages.

It's later than I thought it would be when I thought I'd get around to this. It's almost spring in New York, which I think is a pretty stud time of year, especially when a man can walk down the street as the world champion of professional football.

The trees are starting to take on a little green, and almost all the slush is gone. And all the little girlies around town have slipped out of their big old coats and slipped into not too much.

It's kind of a pleasant sight as a fellow takes himself around from bar to bar.

One or two fascinating things have happened since you last heard from me over in Hawaii.

For one thing, it looks as if Barbara Jane was right about Shake Tiller. Right about Shake staying away for quite a while.

It's been so long now that I'm beginning to think the sumbitch might make it a lifetime, but I don't really believe that.

I suppose I'll never know what he finds so stimulating about spies or ceiling fans or mountain tops, but I don't think he'll ever know, either.

Just before we left Hanalei we got another wire at Ching Yung's. This one was from Bangkok and it said:

Pals. Have met a quinine hunter who can play the banjo and an escaped murderer from Hollis, Oklahoma. Have met a rich old stove who used to be married to an Argentinian general before she had him shot. Found a mystic who promises to tell me all the secrets of the Shriners. There are spies here and counter-revolutionaries and we have exchanged chili recipes. Your new split end ought to be a spook. You know of course how fast spooks are. Don't save me any meatloaf. Love both of you more than pickin' and singin'. Love. Eighty-eight.

We weren't very amused.

Barbara Jane said, "The key sentence is, 'Don't save me any meatloaf.' That means he won't be home for supper for a long time. He's really gone, you know. What do you want in the pool? I'll take five years."

She read the wire again, standing out on the board steps of Ching Yung's, just by the road. She looked up at the big mountain with the waterfall, and then over at me.

"Some people say Shake Tiller is a rat bastard prick," she said.

I tried to get Barb to come with me to Fort Worth, and then maybe even go out on the banquet circuit with me. She said she needed to see Big Ed and Big Barb right
then about like she needed a skin rash.

She said she had a couple of jobs in New York, if she wanted to take them.

"If I play my cards right, I think I can be the new Plus
-
White Pick-up Girl," she said, flashing her teeth.

Fort Worth might be kind of fun, I mentioned. See some of the old joints. Some of the people. Eat some decent Mexican food. Get drunk, of course.

"I thought we spent our life trying to get out of there?" Barb said.

"It's only a stopover," I said. "I'll go over the tapes with Jim Tom. Earlene can throw a clock radio at us. And then we'll leave. Might be able to slip in and out without even calling your folks."

Barb said it was tempting at that. But no.

"I'll do my New York number, and you do your Akrons and your Denvers. Listen, I've got plenty to keep me busy for a while. For one thing, I'm a member of an organization which plans to blow up the World Trade Center. I've got meetings to attend."

I guess I grinned.

"After that," she said, "I'm starting a campaign to get all the dead Puerto Ricans and crates of brassieres out of the Hudson River."

I took one of those overnight flights from Honolulu to Dallas, the kind where you can't sleep because you've got to get drunk twice, eat three times, see a movie, and make a run at a stewardess.

We landed at six in the morning and I rented a car. I think I was at the stew's apartment until noon. Her name was either Shirley or Connie. Stovette, Dirty Leg. Not so great.

I drove over to Fort Worth and got into a room out at the Green Oaks Hotel. I called Jim Tom and said he ought to come get the tapes so he could be transcribing them onto paper while I slept for the next day and a half.

Then we could go over them, I said, and he could compliment me on the fine job I'd done.

"Can I bring you a package?" Jim Tom asked. "I can probably scare up a friend of Crazy Iris or somebody."

I said, "If you do, you'd better bring along somebody to fuck her. I'm whipped."

It was the next morning when Jim Tom woke me up on the phone, laughing like hell.

"Hey, Stud," he said, "I want to know a little more about that waitress Carlene at that place called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Sumbitch. She sounds like somebody who ought to be in the Dream Backfield."

I yawned and coughed and groaned.

"I'm about halfway through getting it typed. Sounds good. I guess the publishers don't mind a friendly and natural little
fuck
and
shit
now and then, do they?" he asked.

"They're just words people use," I said.

"Two people have been wanting to know when you're coming to town. Ed Bookman and your uncle. They've called a couple of times in the last few days," Jim Tom said.

I asked how much more time Jim Tom needed to type
up the book, read it, and think about some suggestions.

"With some real good luck, we could meet tomorrow noon at Reba's Lounge and go over the whole thing," he said.

I said that was good. I'd knock out Uncle Kenneth and Big Ed today and tonight, and then I'd be free. I pointed out that I had a luncheon in Akron and a dinner in Denver coming up soon.

"I don't want to have to come back here," I said.

"But Fort Worth loves you," Jim Tom said.

I met Uncle Kenneth that day at Hubert's Recreational Center, a combination pool hall and domino parlor downtown. It's been there for years. You can get a bet on most anything at Hubert's, including the up-to-the-minute price of grain. You can play gin, or moon, or bridge, or eight
-
ball, or six-ball-wild-snooker.

Uncle Kenneth enjoyed showing me off to his pals, some of whom I remembered, like Puny the Stroller and Circus Face and Jawbreaker.

"This here's my nephew that won me five large on the Super Bowl," Uncle Kenneth would say.

Puny the Stroller, who is still fat and walks around town a lot, never looked up from a gin game when Uncle Kenneth took me over to him.

All Puny the Stroller said was, "I don't know nuthin' about it, don't you see, but it looked to me like somebody done reached the zebras in that fuckin' game."

Uncle Kenneth and I sat over in a corner and had us a couple of beers. He was dressed just like always
—
in a golf shirt, a sports coat, a pair of tasseled loafers and a little Tyrolean hat. And he wore his shades.

"Billy, I want you to know that I'm real proud of you," he said. "You strapped it right on 'em there at the last."

I asked Uncle Kenneth how he liked his bet when we were way down at the half.

"Oh, hell, the damned old bet don't mean anything. You winnin' that game is all I cared about," he said. "I believe in winnin', Billy, as I've always tried to tell you about sports and things."

Uncle Kenneth's hat was cocked down over his eyes. His shades, I mean.

"It's like one of them old coaches
—
Bear Bryant or somebody
—
always said. Winnin' ain't the only thing in life but it beats the dog shit out of whatever's next."

We talked on for a while, until Uncle Kenneth decided it was time for him to go to work. At snooker.

As I was leaving, Uncle Kenneth was chalking his cue and explaining the rules of the game to two guys who looked like they sold insurance.

"This here's Call Shot," he said. "It's five dollars a man to them what beats you. The six is wild. It's call ball, call pocket, call kiss, call bank and press when you feel lucky."

He gave me a wave as I stood at the door.

"Take care, Billy," he said. "How you like these two geese I got here? Goddamned if ever day ain't a holiday and ever meal ain't a banquet."

I knew there wasn't any getting around dinner with Big Ed and Big Barb out at River Crest. I had hoped it might just be the two of them but Big Ed insisted on inviting some friends along. He brought along one of his partners, Jake Ealey, and Jake Ealey brought along his wife, Georgene. And there were two other couples who had familiar names from the dynamic world of Fort Worth money.

Their names don't matter.

They all congratulated me on the game and they said they guessed I was sure happy to be back in "God's country," if only for a few days.

"Good for you to be back where you can breathe some air you don't have to
count
," said Jake Ealey, being humorous.

They all discussed some of their more bitter experiences with New York waiters, cab drivers, hotel clerks and shopkeepers. One of them said he understood New York was "closed until further notice," and everybody laughed. Another one said he understood New York was "for sale."

"What I do," said Jake Ealey, "is get the hell in there, conduct my bidness, and get the hell out as fast as possible."

I wish I didn't always find myself listening and smiling in conversations like that, as if I agreed.

Big Ed got me in a brief conversation about Shake Tiller.

"Marvin, Sr., hasn't heard from him since he called him after the game," Big Ed said. "Barbara Jane tells me you and she haven't either. What the hell's he up to?"

I said, "He just wanted to go off on a vacation by himself. Travel around. You know."

Big Ed said, "No, I don't know. And I'm worried. He's off over there in one of those parts of the world where a bunch of goddamn chinks and gooks can stab him and rob him and kill him and feed him opium and everything else."

Jake Ealey said, "If we'd dropped the bomb on them goddamn bugs when we had the chance, the world would be in a lot finer fix."

I had to grin.

"When you think Shake will be back?" Big Ed asked.

I said, "Well, I don't know. But I'd sure be surprised if it wasn't before training camp starts. One thing about our old buddy. He likes to find some time for himself when he wants it, and not when somebody
allows
it."

Big Ed said, "That's fine, but what the hell is Barbara Jane supposed to do?"

I thought for a minute while they all looked at me.

"Understand," I said.

There was a pause and Big Ed said, "Well, that's just goddamn great, isn't it? What do you think of that, Jake? How would you like to run your goddamn bidness that
way?"

Jake Ealey said, "If I did, I'd have a goddamn dry hole bigger than Arizona."

Big Barb said, "I just wish Barbara were married and settled down to some
normal
person and lived down here over on Westover Terrace, or something, and was raising children. Honestly, when I think of how difficult you all make your lives. Living in New York. Some of the friends you have. Well, I don't know."

She gazed across the dining room into a large mirror on the wall to see if her hairdo was O.K.

Big Ed said, "Some people know the goddamned art of fine living and some people don't."

I said I sure agreed with that. And that I ought to be going.

Jake Ealey said, "You tell Barbara Jane that she's too pretty a thing to be wasting away up in that jungle. Tell her we've got some eligible young men down here with a hell of a lot of oil production and low handicaps. She can take her choice."

I wished for a second that Barb was around to reply to that.

"Enjoyed the dinner and the talk," I said, shaking hands all around. And touching my face to Big Barb's, and giving her a hug which wouldn't wrinkle her outfit.

"If any of you see Shake Tiller before I do," I said, "tell him the Giants have drafted a spook who can run the forty in four-four, uphill, and catch anything in the air that doesn't sting."

Big Ed walked out of the dining room with me, with his arm around my shoulders.

I had to stop at a couple of other tables and write something on the menus in the way of autographs.

"He's Fort Worth's own," said Big Ed to the people. "And, by God, we're proud of him, aren't we?"

We walked down the staircase to the front lobby.

Big Ed said, "You and Barbara Jane can take this for what it's worth, but I've got quite a bit of influence, you know, and if you two kids want me to, I can track Shake
Tiller down and have his butt dragged home."

I thanked Big Ed but impressed on him that it certainly wouldn't be necessary. I said Barb and I agreed that Shake had a right to do whatever he damn well pleased.

"If you hear he's in any kind of real trouble," said Big Ed, "you let me know and I'll go to the top. You understand? I mean the goddamn
top
."

I said it sure was a comfort to have friends in high places, and Big Ed said, "As high as we goddamn need to go," and I smiled and left.

Reba's Lounge was the new name of an old place out on White Settlement Road. It used to be the B-52 Grill, I remembered, in honor of all the Carswell Air Base heroes who drank there between red alerts.

It looks like every other place that Fort Worth ever called a lounge or night spot. There was a bar with stools down one side of the room. Behind it was a barmaid who had left her youth in a trailer camp and who had gone out and managed to get somebody to make her hair turn the color of a log fire.

There were tables through the middle of the room, and booths stretched along the wall opposite the bar. A juke box was up by the front door, and a puck bowling machine was down at the other end, by a piano stand and a small dance floor.

I got there ahead of Jim Tom at noon and ordered a young Scotch at the bar. It was semi-dark but nobody recognized me anyhow. Not even the barmaid, who told me her name was Edna Mae. That she'd been down on
her luck. And that she hadn't seen me in there before.

Most of the tables and booths were occupied by two, three and four girls who could pass for receptionists at a bank, or Hertz clerks, whether they were or not. A few guys were scattered around, looking like they sold lumber or maybe hospital supplies. They wore white shirts, checkered ties and suits that Barbara Jane would call "Chevrolet blue."

I wasn't so sure what a couple of the guys near me at the bar thought of my leather pants and my suede bush jacket.

When Jim Tom got there we sat down in what he said was "his" booth, which was as far away as anybody could get from the juke box, the dance floor or the bowling machine.