Semi-Tough (8 page)

Big Barb has always been in charge of who got to be a Fort Worth debutante, as if there ever was such a thing. She's in charge of all kinds of charities and theaters. She's in charge of redecorating the country club. She's
always
in charge of everybody's party and vacation and clothes and schools and voting.

She's also some kind of history nut. I mean in the sense that she's always tracing the Bookmans back to Henry the Fuckin' Eighth or Sam the Fuckin' Houston.

I've got to say that they're still handsome people. Big Ed is tall and most of his hair he's still got. It's gray but thick. He always has a tan and he wears a whole pile of cashmere and double knits and tricky loafers.

Big Barb is pretty scenic her own self. She's still slender and fairly elegant of eyes and teeth. She can lay some hairdos on you, and some heavyweight jewelry. She goes around smiling most of the time and looking at herself in hubcaps, or whatever she can find that will cause a reflection.

She's a semi-brunette.

But I started out to say how Shake can imitate Big Ed, who has a deep, important voice.

Shake's favorite line to imitate is Big Ed in a restaurant.

"Uh, little lady," Big Ed will say, "I'll have one of your sixteen-ounce T-bones medium rare."

This is Shake doing his Big Ed routine:

"The thing that bothers the world today is a bunch of goddamn kids who don't have any respect for what made this the greatest goddamn country in the world.

"This country is great because of what the white man did with it. There wasn't a goddamn thing but savages around one time, and they didn't know anything about schools or golf courses or any other goddamn thing.

"But the white man came in and kicked the shit out of the blacks and the browns and the yellows and made the world a decent place that smelled better and had johns that flushed.

"It was the white man who invented the electric light and the airplane and the television and the air conditioning and every other goddamn thing worth having.

"If the white man had left it up to the black man or the brown man, we wouldn't have anything but a bunch of goddamn disease and lice and probably a hell of a lot of Communism.

"Kids today ought to look at the white man and stop lookin' at niggers and spicks. That's where they find out about dope and screwing off.

"If you don't mind me saying so, it's people like me
—
Big Ed Bookman
—
that made this country what it is. I employ about ten thousand people, one way or another, and I pay 'em good, too, as long as they work their ass off.

"Hard work never hurt anybody. I've worked hard ever since my daddy found oil in Scogie County. I could have

I list let our family fortune go to hell and played golf all the time, but I didn't. I only played part of the time, and there's not a goddamn thing wrong with recreation. It's American.

"Let me give you an equation that affects today's kids. ()nc nigger plus one spick equals Communism and dope. It's all tied in together.

"Uh, little lady, I'll have one of your sixteen-ounce I-bones, medium rare."

I had to stop to answer the phone. It was Barbara Jane calling up to say that the place where they were at, something called the Macadamia Nut, had a comedian who was about as funny as a late night talk show and a singer who was at least as good as
T.J.
Lambert. She said they were leaving.

I said for them to go on, and call me again. I was still writing.

"I'm talking about your folks," I said.

Barbara Jane said, "Oh, shit. Did you put in there that Big Barb's ancestors invented the spinning wheel and the hunting dog?"

"And the hundred-dollar bill," I said.

'Say, luv, this place is a wrap," she said. "We think we'll go take a look at a new club called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It's right there on Rodeo where everything else is. You can't miss it."

"Is it near the caviar joint?" I asked.

"Right," said Barb. "A block down from Nicholas and Alexandra's Caviarteria, and across the street from that sandwich shop where the out-of-work actors hang out. Poopoo and Ricky's Suede Cadillac. You'll see it."

"I'll find it," I said. "Sure sounds like a swell name for a club. You can expect a vertical assault from old Twenty-three within an hour or so."

"O.K.," Barb said. "You write that old book now, boy. You write that old book real good and we'll get you some quail and some brown gravy and some biscuits. That ain't no bad way to start off the day, is it?"

"Got to go now," I said. "Bye."

"Billy Clyde Puckett, you get down off that roof!" Barb said.

"See you in a while," I said.

"You come in this house right now before I take a switch to you," Barb said.

"Bye," I said.

"Love, luv," she said, and hung up.

By now you may have figured out that Barbara Jane Bookman has a bit of a satirical nature. She has always been able to make me laugh, just like Shake Tiller.

In terms of growing up, I'd have to say that Barb was most likely the first smart-ass I ever knew. Before Shake, even.

I could give you a fairly good example by telling about the time the three of us got expelled from Fuller Junior High.

It happened because the three of us were in old lady Murcer's music class one day in the high seventh, and old lady Murcer had to leave the room for a while and she let Barbara Jane, her pet, preside over the class.

Barb's job was to stan
d up at old lady Murcer's desk a
nd lead us in a few songs until old lady Murcer got back.

Everything went along fine for a couple of songs, but I lien Shake Tiller held up his hand.

"Yes, Marvin, what is it?" said Barb, snootily.

Shake said, "Miz Bookman, I was wondering if we could sing something besides this daffodil shit?"

Barb laughed like hell, along with everybody else.

Then she said fine, we could sing whatever we wished, provided Shake and me got up in front of the class with her and helped lead the room.

We got up there and proceeded to lead the class in what we thought was the funniest song we'd ever heard.

What we sang was, "Down, Down, Down with R. E. Turner." R. E. Turner was the principal, naturally.

The song went:

Down, down, down with R. E. Turner.

He's a dirty horse manure,

Horseshit!

They forgot to pull the chain,

Consequently, he'll remain
—

Til they disinfect the Fort Worth city sewers.

I don't recall how many times we sang it, or how far down the corridor anybody could hear it. But R. E. Turner heard it and when we finished it the last time, he appeared in the doorway of our room.

Seems like the three of us sat in R. E. Turner's office for about an hour before Big Ed got there.

Mr. Turner just sat there boiling and looking at some papers on his desk. We tried to sit quietly and not look at each other because we knew we'd giggle if we did.

At one point, Mr. Turner told Barbara Jane, "Young lady, I hope you realize that this may cost you the state spelling championship."

Shake blurted out, "Aw, gee. Not that. Anything but that."

And Barbara Jane bit her lip to keep from breaking up.

Mr. Turner told me, "It's not really your fault, Puckett. You've always been easily led."

When Big Ed came in, he insisted that we be allowed to stay in Mr. Turner's office and listen to their conversation.

"I don't have anything to say that I can't say in front of anybody in this great world. That's what it's like to be totally honest," said Big Ed.

Mr. Turner nodded.

Big Ed said, "Now, R. E., let's you and me try to remember our younger days when we got into scrapes of one kind or another. Thank God there was somebody around to help us out. That's my mission here. I'm here to stand by my daughter and these two young men that Mrs. Bookman and I know to be fine, clean, honest young men."

Mr. Turner said he appreciated Big Ed's concern.

"Now, R. E., I know that your immediate impulse is to expel these youngsters and teach them a lesson. But let's think about that for a minute."

Big Ed leaned forward and said, "You know what that would accomplish? You'd lose a possible state spelling champion, and I know for sure you'd lose the city junior high track and field championship next week."

Mr. Turner said those things weren't so important.

Mr. Turner said what we had done was so bad that we ought to be kicked out for the rest of the semester and made to take the high seventh over again.

Big Ed cleared his throat.

"Now, R. E.," he said. "I think you ought to give some consideration to the fact that if we kick these fine youngsters out for the rest of the semester, they'll fall behind the other kids, and the next thing we know, they'll drop out of school altogether and get involved in dope and start hanging around with undesirables like some of these unfortunates you've been busing in here."

Mr. Turner didn't say anything.

"Now, R. E., you just give some consideration to your own youth," said Big Ed.

Mr. Turner said he had never done anything like we did.

Big Ed then said, "Well, R. E., why don't you give some goddamn consideration to who the hell I am?"

Mr. Turner said we'd be out for three days. That was the best he could do, and Big Ed marched out like a winner.

Big Ed decided to drive all of us over to his house on Bookman Lane, which was Barbara Jane's old home before Big Ed built the new one on River Crest's tenth fairway, which he made the club sell him, even though it left
River Crest with a seventeen-hole golf course.

The drive was fairly quiet until Big Ed said, "Well, Barbara Jane, could you tell me just what you think of these two punks here who got you into all this?"

Barbara Jane said, "Mostly Dad, I think they're pretty rotten singers."

Big Ed fumed the rest of the way.

When we got there, he made us sit down in the den, where we could look at his golf trophies and his stuffed animal heads and his framed letters from various political studs, who thanked him for being for America.

Big Ed said Big Barb would be home in a minute and then we would all talk about our futures. Big Ed then left us alone in the den. I think he went to phone up Wall Street and sell Libya.

Barbara Jane said her mother was probably at a meeting of the Daughters of the Intimate Friends of the Dumb-Asses who stayed at the Alamo, or something.

Shake called his daddy at the store they owned, Tiller Electric, and told him what had happened and where he was.

I remember that listening to Shake on the phone I got the impression that his daddy didn't think any of it was a very big deal.

I remember hearing Shake saying, "Yeah, really, Dad. For singing dirty. Yeah, an old song about Mr. Turner. With a bad word or two in it. Yeah. Yeah. No, sir, it was mainly because Barbara Jane was doing it with us and she's a girl and all. Yes, sir. I'll tell her. Him, too. Yes, sir. O.K. Bye."

I would have called Uncle Kenneth but I knew there
weren't any phones on the fifteenth green at Rockwood Muny. Anyhow, he'd have only been interested in whether we would get back in school in time for the dashes and the broad jump.

Big Barb finally came in wearing big round yellow sunglasses, pants, rings on every finger, her hair pulled straight back like a Flamenco dancer, a short drink in her hand and a long cigarette.

"Well," she said. "This is certainly a new experience for the Bookman family. I'm so ashamed of you three that I'm actually numb."

Shake said, "It was my fault, Miz Bookman."

"Was not," Barbara Jane said.

Big Ed said that if it hadn't been for him we'd all be out for the semester.

Shake said he sure did thank Mr. Bookman for saving us, and he mainly wanted to apologize for getting Barbara Jane in trouble.

I said me too.

Shake said, "My daddy says he feels real bad about Barbara Jane being involved."

"Your father's a very nice man," said Big Barb. "I've shopped in his little store many times. I think that fixture in the hallway came from there."

Shake said it could have.

Barbara Jane said it probably did.

I said I didn't know.

"Is his little store still in the same place, over there by the bridge where the Mexicans have started moving in?" Big Barb asked.

Barbara Jane said, "Oh, terrific, Mom."

"Yes, Ma'am," said Shake. "Over there on Nelson Avenue is where it's still at."

I said that's right. Over on Nelson Avenue.

Big Barb said, "Barbara, I only meant that the town's changing faster than we can keep up with it."

"Sure," Barbara Jane said.

Shake cleared his throat.

So did I.

Nobody said anything for a minute or two, and then Big Barb said, "As a matter of fact, I think those two carriage lamps on the front door came from Tiller Electric."

Might have, said Shake.

Probably did, I said.

Barbara Jane sighed and put her elbows on her knees and put her chin in the cups of her hands and closed her eyes.

Big Ed said, "Uh, honey, these boys and your daughter have promised me that their behavior in the future will be A-O.K. I think these three days out of school will teach them a pretty good lesson."

"Of course, it will be talked about at River Crest," Big Barb said.

"I wouldn't worry much about that," said Big Ed.

"I'm sure you won't," Big Barb said. "You'll be in Houston."

Big Ed said, "River Crest don't talk about a goddamn thing that I don't tell 'em to talk about, so that's that."

Big Barb looked away and smoked.

Shake and me glanced at each other and Barbara Jane blinked.

Big Ed said, "This isn't exactly the end of the goddamn world. It isn't anything that intelligent white people can't handle."

Barbara Jane said, "I wonder how unintelligent black people handle it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Big Ed.

"I was just thinking out loud," Barbara Jane said.

"That wasn't very funny, Barbara," said Big Barb.

Me and Shake looked at each other.

"Let's wrap this up," Big Ed said. "Jake Ealey's gonna stop by in a minute and we've got to talk about what we're gonna do with that goddamn Alaska property."

We stood up.

"Be sure and tell your father hello," said Big Barb.

"He's a goddamn nice fellow," Big Ed said.

Shake said thank you. He would.

Big Barb looked at me and said, "How's your, uh, your Uncle Kermit these days?"

"Kenneth," I said.

"Yes, of course," she said. "Is he getting along fine?"

I guess so, I said. He still plays at scratch.

Big Ed said, "Kenneth Puckett was one hell of a golfer around here a few years ago."

Must have been, I said.

"There was a time when some of us at the club thought seriously about putting him on the goddamn pro tour," said Big Ed. "Probably should have. He'd have probably made us a ton."

"And him, too," Shake said.

"Damn right he would have," Big Ed said. "Well, listen, you hot shots. Mind your damned old singing now.
And keep my daughter out of trouble, all right?"

Shake and me smiled and said we would.

We were walking out the front door when Big Ed said, "What the hell's Kenneth doing these days?"

Shake said, "Near as me and Billy C. can figure out, he's got some kind of position in the Fort Worth underworld."

Big Ed and Big Barb managed a nervous laugh.

Then Big Barb said, "You boys don't be strangers now. You know you're welcome here any time."

"See you, Barb," said Shake.

"Later," I said.

We jogged off through the big yard but before we crossed the circular driveway, right at the iron gates, Shake stopped and looked back.

"Hey, Mrs. Bookman," he hollered. "Next time you're over at the store, don't mind all those Mexicans. All they ever do is go to sleep in the dirt. You can just step over 'em."

We heard Barbara Jane howling as we turned and trotted off. Even then, she had that great laugh.

Jim Tom Pinch has said that there ought to be something in the book about the life that me and Shake lead when we're not playing ball. Something about what we do during the off-season. And as he put it, "Something about your aptitudes and attitudes, other than football."

I think this is a lot of boring crap, Jim Tom, but I'll try to cover it quickly, if aptitude means what I think it does.

Actually, when I stop to think about this, it makes me kind of hot. Not you, Jim
Tom, but the fact that there are
those people who don't think a ball player is anything but a
go-rilla.

I'd like to make it clear that me and Shake lead a very quiet and decent life in the off-season. We pretty much stay in New York through the winter and spring. And by that time, of course, it's getting near the start of another training camp.

Maybe a day or two a week we'll go off somewhere and make a speech at a luncheon or banquet. We get anywhere from three hundred to five hundred a pop, depending on how much the Sioux Falls Quarterback Club
—
or some such thing
—
can afford.

A lot of studs hold down steady jobs in the off-season because they have to in order to feed their families. We're lucky, I think. We make good money and don't have to do that. Work, I mean.

Now and then you have to spend the night somewhere on the banquet circuit. But this doesn't have to be total agony if some of the guys who've invited you out there will lay a kindhearted secretary on you, or maybe even some of their private stock.

I've been known to have me some good times in some surprising places. Akron wore my ass out once, and so did Omaha. And Shake Tiller always speaks fondly of Terre Haute and Oklahoma City.

When it warms up around New York, we try to play some golf.

I suppose that I ought to confess that the only thing
I'd ever be interested in doing besides playing ball would be to run my own restaurant or bar.

That might be all right sometime, after I'm crippled.

I know the kind of place I'd want. It would have to be located in the Fifties on the near East Side so the clientele wouldn't have to worry about getting shot or stabbed. It would serve a big drink and stay open late and there wouldn't be any Frenchmen waiting tables.

I'd encourage a lot of wool to hang around for set decoration. There'd be comfortable chairs and round tables, and none of them very close together so the customers wouldn't have to bore each other with their talk about business or clothes or kids.

Nobody would wear a tie. Elroy Blunt would be on the juke box. And you'd be able to get decent things to eat like chili, real barbecue and black-eyed peas.

I'd probably call it something like the Triple Option and hang some pictures on the wall of Shake Tiller.

But that's a few years off.

As for Shake Tiller, his interests run a little wider than mine.

For one thing, he likes to jack around in the stock market with our money. He likes the action. "There's a new ball game every day," he says.