The Bell Tolls for No One (18 page)

And they started laughing in this slow, subdued laughter, and Harry found the right key, got the door open, threw the beer from the roof into the far seat, right front, some of the bottles dropping out and onto the floorboard, and then he looked at the girls, gave a slow evil wink, bowed like a quiet and holy man, got in, started it, and drove off.

He drove over to Carlton Way, parked it, locked it, packed the sixes to the door, got the key on in, and then the phone rang.

I
suppose one of the most amazing and startling acts in the sports world happened in the opening professional football game of the regular season between the New York Razors and the L.A. Wolfhounds in 1977. I was covering the game for one of the local papers, and as the Wolfhounds lined up to receive the kickoff the whole stadium became a babble of incoherent voices as the deep and only receiving back, unknown, became noticed. He appeared to be a good 8 feet tall and was close to 450 pounds. He was announced as Graham Winston. The kick floated down to him and Graham began to move. And he moved quickly and with grace and with that total size New York Razor tacklers hit against him and fell off as if he were a tank. Several actually shied away from contact and Graham Winston crossed over the goal line for a touchdown. The remainder of the game was similar. The Wolfhounds just handed the ball to Graham and he ran up and down the field. At times he was tackled but it usually took three or four men and they had to gang him at once. The final score was L.A. Wolfhounds 84, New York Razors 7.

The reporters had some questions after that one as Graham Winston sat on a rubbing table sucking at quart bottles of beer. Chubby Daniels, the coach, stood beside him rubbing his neck and smiling.

“Where'd you find this?” I asked the same question all the other reporters were wondering about.

“We found him working a rundown farm in the Midwest.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes, one of our scouts happened to be passing through on his way to check out a prospect when he saw all this hunk of size behind a plow.”

“Give me another fucking bottle of beer,” said Graham.

“He's even pretty. The movies might get him.”

“We got him signed, ironclad.”

“As fast and big as he is he could probably whip the heavyweight champ.”

“We got him signed, ironclad.”

“You like football?” one of the reporters asked Graham.

“Shit, yes. All those people screaming, it makes me feel good. Hey, this is Hollywood, isn't it?”

“Yes, I mean we're near it.”

“Well, I wanna get fucked. I wanna fuck a starlet.”

“Take it easy, Graham,” said Chubby Daniels. “You've just been discovered today. You're invincible, it'll all come to you.”

“I wanna get fucked tonight. And gimme another bottle of beer. This one's warm.”

“How they gonna stop this guy, Chubby?”

“That's their problem.”

“It might ruin their whole game.”

“The game was ruined long ago,” said Chubby. “Professional football is like society: win and win any way you can and as big as you can. And let the losers eat candy shit. Now I'm going to ask you boys to leave so my man here can catch a little rest. Also, I've got to make some phone calls.”

It was said that that night with two of his bodyguards watching that Graham Winston mounted Mona St. Claire, the rising starlet in her very own apartment bedroom. That Graham did not slice her apart was the very wonder. Yet it was said that two days later she was up and walking around and eating yoghurt, sour cream, and Winchell's Donuts . . .

The Wolfhounds beat the Bluebirds 94 to 14 and the Mounties 112 to 21. Graham Winston's photo was on the cover of almost everything and there were stories about his life, his wants, his philosophy in scores of magazines. He was seen with Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, and Henry Kissinger. He ran automobiles off of bridges and into rivers drowning his women. He was caught with dope, he was caught molesting a 7-year-old girl, but he remained free and he ran up and down the football fields, breaking tackles and tacklers . . .

Halfway through the season he announced that he was quitting football and going into “acting.” The Wolfhounds began court action and the cameras rolled. They got him on a television series:
Big Cowboy Heart
. He was the good, good tough boy. He straightened out every mess in the prairie and a few in the cities too. Meanwhile professional football returned to normal, which meant that the murderous abilities of the teams were just about equal. Graham Winston was seen on all the commercials. The superman of every man's and woman's imagination had actually come down to earth and inherited it. It was the closest thing to the second coming of Christ imaginable, although nobody ever put it that way: he was less sacred and therefore more interesting, more apt to err, and he had the $6 Million Man beat by 46 million. In fact, that's what they began to call him: the $50 Million Man. They began calling him that with my help, that is. I lucked it and became his press agent. So it helps me tell this story . . .

I was sitting with him one night in his New York City penthouse. He was caught up, ahead on his series
Big Cowboy Heart
and was having a party. Graham loved parties. He loved to dance and sing and get drunk. So there we were sitting this particular night. Graham was at the piano, he had just beaten it bloody. He was drinking Scotch, vodka, beer and wine and smoking $5 cigars. He was a little bored.

“Oh, everbody's here, Graham. There's Truman Capote, John Wayne, Sammy Davis Jr., Cal Worthington, Billy Graham, Liz Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Henry Kissinger, Richard Burton, Cher, Charo, Earl Wilson, Nick the Greek, Linda Lovelace, Marlon Brando, and some Indians.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“I'm bored with all this, Charlie.”

“I've got a saying, Graham. ‘Only boring people get bored.' ”

“Shit, that don't help me none.”

Graham got up from the piano. He walked over to this very lovely slim blonde dressed in this long glittering white dress. He took out his pecker and began pissing all over her dress. It put her in a state of shock and Graham just stood there spraying her, up and down and over. Finally the girl screamed and ran off. Graham put his pecker back in and zipped up. He walked to the bar and poured his own drink, Scotch mixed with port wine. Then he turned around and screamed at the crowd: “I HATE YOU ALL! YOU'RE AS PHONY AS I AM!”

All the talking stopped and people sat and stood grinning, sipping at their drinks. “Phoniness is the state of the universe,” said Truman Capote. “We are just the more excellent of the phonies.”

“Why don't you suck shit through a straw?” asked Graham.

He walked back to the bar and poured himself another special. Then he looked at his audience again: “I often wondered what the top of the world looked like. Now I'm here and I wish I were back behind a plow following a mule's bunghole.”

“You can take a boy away from the bunghole but you can't take the bunghole away from the boy,” said a young Jewish comedian who was working his way up in Vegas nightclubs.

Graham Winston downed his drink and walked over to Billy Graham. “Hey, hey, your first name is just like my last name!”

“God bless us,” said Billy.

“Why should God bless us?”

“We do not demand his blessing we only ask them.”

“It's all so drab. You're just saying words.”

“God's words of love.”

“How come you're not drinking?”

“I abstain.”

“My friends drink with me. You're gonna drink with me, else you're my enemy.”

“The only enemy is the devil and evil.”

“You stand around here eating my olives and chickens legs and looking at all these women's asses and tits and legs and eyes and movements and you're not going to
drink
with me?”

“No, my son.”

“Well, shit,” said Graham Winston, “I guess that's the way it goes.”

He picked up Billy Graham and holding him high above his head he walked between Joe Namath and Norman Mailer, and then he kept walking until he came up against this window overlooking the street. We were 40 floors up. He threw Billy Graham through the glass and Billy Graham dropped down. Graham Winston walked back to the piano, sat down, and tried to beat out a tune.

“I never could play the piano,” he told me.

Graham Winston got life. And I was looking for another job. It was in the exercise yard one day. Graham wouldn't join the groups. Some didn't, most had to. But it was one day the White Supremacy and the Black Supremacy and the Brown and the Yellow Supremacy groups got in a fight in the exercise yard, and men in prison who can't get knives somehow find them or make them, and Graham Winston was big enough to get in the way. Nobody knew who got him, which group. But there he was in the sunlight, 8 feet tall and 452 pounds dying, the blood coming out of three holes in his belly. Then the $50 Million Man was dead. But I'll remember him best as taking that football down the field, especially after the kickoff, and seeing him go. It was wondrous beyond all wonder. It made me feel great inside as if there were really chances for miracles in a world overextended and finally flat and tired. I should have known better. And like I said, now I'm looking for a job, but so are a lot of other people.

H
e came into town one night dressed all in black. His horse was black and the stars weren't even out. He wore a gun and a straggly beard. He walked into the bar and ordered a whiskey. He drank it down and ordered another. Everybody became very quiet. One of the girls walked by and he grabbed her by the wrist. “How much, honey? My horn's standing tall.”

“You don't carry that much money,” said Minnie.

“I got a dollar, baby.”

She pulled away. “You probably got the clap anyhow,” he said, finishing the second whiskey.

“Where's the head?” he asked the crowd. Nobody answered.

“So you won't tell me where the head is, huh?”

There was no answer. He took out his cock and pissed on the barroom floor.

“We don't rightly like that, stranger,” said the bartender.

“Well, next time I ask, I expect an answer. I rightly feel a bowel movement coming on.”

“What's your name, stranger?” asked the bartender.

“Put and Tame. Fuck the first Dame.”

“You're looking for trouble?”

“Yeah, well, pussy's trouble. Any man knows that.”

The stranger walked over to the poker game at the far table, drew up a chair, and sat down.

“Did we ask you to sit?” asked one of the boys.

“Piss on your dead mother's tits,” said the stranger. “Deal me in.”

“All right. Ante.”

The cards went around. The stranger held three, asked for two. Billy Culp held four, asked for one. The others dropped out. Culp and the stranger kept raising. The pot got to 75 cents and Culp called. Then the cards were laid down. The stranger kicked the table over and knocked Billy Culp to the floor. “There's only one ace of hearts in a deck, son of a bitch!” The stranger had his gun out. “Son of a bitch, I've a good mind to connect your bellybutton up to your asshole!”

“Listen, stranger, I swear I'll never cheat again! Take all my money but spare my life.”

“O.K, shitass,” said the stranger and he gathered up all the money and walked back to the bar.

“I'm buying a bottle,” he told the bartender. The stranger stood there swigging from the bottle. He took a mouthful and spit it on the bartender's shirt. “This seems a goddamn dull town,” the stranger said, “don't seem to be a man in the carload of you all. But,” he winked, “lots of women.” And as Stardust Lil walked by he reached out and ripped the top of her dress and her tits spilled out.

“Lovely,” he said, “lovely.”

A cowboy in a red shirt stood across the room. “That's my woman, stranger.”

“Kid,” said the stranger, “no man owns a woman. Some women own men, yet there are some men who can never be owned. Women have hearts like rattlesnakes. They'll tear your guts out and then squat over you and piss right into them.”

“You're saying that men are better than women?”

“No different than.”

“I don't appreciate your showing my woman's breasts to the whole bar.”

“Christ, kid, learn the female. That bit made her happier than anything that's happened to her for years.”

“I ought to blow your balls off!”

“O.K., fine. Wait until my dick gets hard.”

The kid reached. The stranger reached. Then the kid had extra red in his red shirt and Stardust Lil had lost her 17th lover. She wept over him, then let out a little fart, and ran to the back room.

“Son of a bitchin' male chauv pig,” breathed a tiny voice from somewhere in the room.

“By god,” said the stranger, “by god, that gits it!” He picked up the whisky bottle and drained one quarter of it. “What the hell do you people do for entertainment, fall back into your dull limpness? If God created you, He was sure as hell in need of better instruction.”

The doors swung open and there was the sheriff. “My name's Billy Budd and I'm the sheriff of this here goddamned town and I draw me a salary to maintain law and order. My father ran away when I was 6 and my mother became the town whore but I grew up righteous and I believe in right and I hear what you been doing ain't exactly right, so one of us is going to have to leave town. I'm calling your card, stranger, I'm calling your whole goddamned hand!”

“You got any next of kin?” asked the stranger.

“None.”

“That's good. I ain't a man who likes to spread extra heartbreak. The world's so cold now. If people would only leave me alone I wouldn't have to do what I have to keep doing.”

The stranger took another good hit from his bottle, put it down and walked over to the sheriff. He reached for the badge and unhooked it from the sheriff's shirt.

“Open your mouth.”

“What?”

“Do you need a motherfuckin' hearing aid? I said, ‘Open your mouth!'”

“What for?”

“Because you're going to chew on this badge until your teeth ache. And if you don't hurry up and git to it I might make you swallow it.”

The sheriff opened up his mouth and the stranger dropped the badge in. “Now come on, bite it! I said, BITE IT!”

The stranger stepped back and pulled out his gun. He fired some shots at the sheriff's feet. “BITE IT!”

The sheriff began to bite the badge. The blood started coming out of his mouth. “BITE IT!” screamed the stranger. “BITE IT HARDER!” He fired some more shots at the lawman's feet.

“O.K.,” said the stranger, “now take that badge out of your mouth, pin it on your shirt and walk the hell out of here!”

The sheriff did just that and was gone just as Stardust Lil walked down the stairway in a new dress, a sexier and prettier dress than the one before.

“Baby,” said the stranger looking up from the bar, “you finally met yourself a man.”

Stardust Lil just kept walking down the stairway, smiling.

“Goddamn, baby, that dress really fits you, it's like you were born into it, shimmering and sliding and slithering. I think I'm going to take you with that dress on. I don't want you to take it off. Of course, we may have to lift the hem a bit.”

Stardust Lil walked up to the stranger and put one hip up against him. “Pour me a drink, killer.”

“You like me, don't you?”

“Sure.”

“Women like winners, I'm a winner, I know how.”

“Sure, stranger, I like winners.”

“I suck too. Titties and pussy. I give the long ride.”

“All the guys say that.”

“How many do it?”

“About one man out of 30 really knows how to make love.”

“That's rough.”

“It's disgusting. I've been finger-fucking myself for the last three years. I'd rather go to bed with a woman because a woman knows what a woman wants.”

“You a lez?”

“No, but what's a woman supposed to do when most men are just apes with stinky crotches and no imagination.”

“Have another drink, baby.”

“Yeah.”

“I can send you way beyond the heavens, baby.”

“What happened to your other women?”

“I've left 50 broken hearts behind me.”

“Why?”

“Oh, they just into such dumb things, like trying to correct your spelling and how you hold your shoulders.”

“Let's go upstairs to my place, stranger, if you're man enough.”

“Man enough I am,” he said.

They mounted the long stairway together with every eye in the bar on them. Lil sparkled in her dress and her movements. There wasn't a man in the bar who wouldn't give up five years of his life to be with her up there.

They waited. Five minutes went by, then 15, then 20. Then the door opened and Stardust Lil walked out. She looked about the same, only her hair was a bit awry and tossed. She walked slowly down the long stairway. Halfway down she gave a little laugh and said, “All right, boys, go on up there and get him, boys.”

Nobody moved and Lil kept walking down the stairway.

“Nobody can make our sheriff bite his badge,” she said. She really looked lovely and redeeming coming down toward the light of the bar. “Go get him, boys,” she repeated.

Nobody moved. Lil reached the bottom of the stairway. “Oh hell, you dogs, I already got him!” She had a brown paper bag in her hand. She threw it. It whisked across the floor. Then the contents rolled out. It was white and weenie-shaped and one end was gnashed raw. The blood began to milk out across the floor. And just as it did some drunk in the church tower began to ring the bell. And Mrs. McConnell's bitch dog whelped a litter of 7.5 female, 2 male. And Stardust Lil walked back to the bar and finished the last of the stranger's bottle, sticking it into her lips and draining it. It had been a better night than most, she thought. Really better than most. God, a woman could really get bored.