A Fan's Notes (5 page)

Dr. D. was a fine-looking man. In his middle or late forties, he was over six feet, graying, and he had an extremely handsome, open, and masculine-looking face. He seemed the kind of man to whom one would readily entrust one
’
s diseased and weary body. Dressed in a sport shirt, he looked anxious to get back to the easy comfort of his Sunday afternoon. He confirmed Mrs. C.
’
s diagnosis and came directly to the point. I was, he said, suffering from malnutrition aggravated by the alcohol which I had consumed the past two days. Did I, he wanted to know, have relatives in Watertown? I could not imagine why he wanted to know and said that I hadn
’
t.
“
That
’
s too bad,
”
he said, explaining that the alternatives were being released in the custody of a relative or his admitting me to the hospital for acute alcoholism. I said something to the effect that I doubted his authority to do this. His tone was firm, his manner unwavering, a kind of
“
try-me
”
posture. I gave Mrs. C. my sister
’
s telephone number.
“
That
’
s more like it,
”
he said, and smiled. Telling Mrs. C. that he wanted me to have sweet orange juice and to remain on the table until the arrival of my sister, he started for the door, stopped as though he meant to say something else, started again, stopped, and turned back to me.

“
Earl Exley your father?
”
he said.

In Watertown it was a question that came to me frequently. Though my father had been dead for eighteen years, he had in his day been a superb athlete, as good, some say, as any who ever came out of northern New York—certainly no great distinction but not without its effect on a son who had never been permitted to forget it. Still, the question put in that place, at that time, struck me as funny, damned near hilarious, and I thought I was going to laugh aloud. I thought I was going to laugh from anticipation. Invariably the question was followed by the disclosure that the inquirer and my father,
“
Old Ex,
”
had played ball
“
together.
”
Certain that Dr. D.
’
s query was leading to this revelation, and trying not to smile, I said that Earl Exley had most certainly been my father. The doctor fooled me, though. All he said was,
“
He was a good fellow—a hell of a good fellow.
”
And, just before he went out the door
,
“
And tough too!
”

It was this latter that got to me, said as it was in such a way as to indicate that my father
’
s son
might not be
so tough. That got me thinking about having to face my sister, my kid sister at that. I tried to feel embarrassment. But it was no good. My life had been one long series of things imposed upon those closest to me; having faced the reproachful and pained eyes of relatives so many times before, I couldn
’
t really summon up the shame I thought I ought to feel at such a confrontation with her.

My brother-in-law came for me. He was a good guy and tried to make it easy. Laughing uncertainly, he said,
“
What the hell
’
s going on? You don
’
t look stinko to me.
”
I said,
“
I
’
m not.
”
Rising, I put on my shirt and jacket and turned to Mrs. C. She looked directly at me.
“
You think over what I told you,
”
she said. I promised I would, and then I apologized again, mumbling the words. She said,
“
Oh,
posh
,
”
and waved me off. I wanted to say something else, something definite, but it eluded me. In the embarrassing lapse my brother-in-law said,
“
C
’
mon, c
’
mon, we
’
re missing the Giants game!
”
To which I laughed and exclaimed,
“
Jesus, yes
,
”
though for the first time in years I didn
’
t at all care.

2/ Cheers for Stout Steve Owen

When Steve Owen, who coached the New York Giants from 1931 through 1953, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Oneida, New York, I debated for a day whether to make the trip south for the funeral. For a long time I had felt that I owed Owen such homage, and I
’
d never again be able to pay it. Envisioning the scene, I saw myself a kind of Owl-Eyes come to Gatsby
’
s wake, a little aloof, sequestered from the one or two mourners, a curiosity weeping great, excited tears in the blue shade of funereal elms. The vision was as close as I came to such demonstrativeness.

In the hours after his death the newspapers began to name the many sports dignitaries who were to make their own pilgrimages to Oneida, the funeral began to assume the hues of an obligatorily festive occasion, and I sensed that genuine grief would be distasteful in such surroundings. I did write a note to Owen
’
s widow. Quoting Brutus on Cassius (I have said that I teach English—pedagogically, I might add), I wrote with a tense, forced hand,
I owe more tears to this dead man than you shall see me pay.
Appearing over a signature she wouldn
’
t recognize, the message, it occurred to me, was not only pretentious but might bewilder and embarrass Mrs. Owen. In the end I did nothing to help put the ghost on its way. I had wanted to make the pilgrimage because it was Owen, as much as any other, who had brought me round to the Giants and made me a fan. Unable to conceive what my life would have been without football to cushion the knocks, I was sure I owed him sorrow. It occurs to me now that my enthusiasms might better have been placed with God or Literature or Humanity; but in the penumbra of such upper-case pieties I have always experienced an excessive timidity rendering me tongue-tied or forcing me to emit the brutal cynicisms with which the illiterate confront things they do not understand.

In the hot summer of 1953, after spending three unrewarding years (popping
Benzedrine
tablets into my mouth, I recall the shiver-inducing snap and crack of new texts opened for the first time on the eve of final examinations) at the University of Southern California, I returned east to New York, an A.B. in English my portfolio, a longing in the heart the clue to my countenance. What did I long for? At twenty-three, I of course longed for fame. Not only did I long for it, I suffered myself the singular notion that fame was an heirloom passed on from my father. Dead at forty, which never obviates the stuff of myths, my father acquired over the years a nostalgic eminence in Watertown; and, like him, I wanted to have my name one day called back and bantered about in consecrated whispers. Perhaps unfairly to him (I have his scrapbooks and know what admirable feats are inventoried there), I
’
m not sure my father
’
s legend was as attributable to his athletic prowess as to his personality. The tales men selected to pass on about him were never so much about a ninety-yard run as about an authentically colorful man having a ball and in an amiable way thumbing his nose at life.

In 1938, the day before President Roosevelt snipped the ceremonial ribbon opening the International Bridge spanning the Thousand Islands and uniting the U.S. with Canada, it is told, apocryphally or otherwise, that my father beat that exemplary poseur to the punch, with wire cutters severed the cable which had been strung across the bridge
’
s entrance to bar
hoi polloi
, climbed into the back seat of a convertible roadster, and had himself driven over the arcing, sky-rising span, while in imitation of F.D.R. he sat magnificently in the back seat, his jaw thrust grandly out, and, hand aflutter, bestowed his benedictions on the lovely and (one somehow imagines) startled islands.

In the way of timorous women everywhere, my mother
’
s life with my father was one of trepidation that some such shenanigan would eventually get him arrested, land his name on the back page of the
Watertown Daily Times
, and disgrace the family. The back page of our newspaper is the one Methodist ministers, old maids, and city councilmen turn to for forbidden transports; my mother viewed it as a source of eternal ruination for our local sinners; it never occurred to her that to an adult or jaded mentality such items might be viewed with tolerant or jolly sympathy; and for many years, whenever one of my acquaintances made that page, she had a distressing habit of reading the articles aloud to me, by way of object lessons. One man was arrested for drunken driving, challenged the arresting officer, and it eventually took three state policemen, using their billies, to get him into custody.
“
Good,
”
I said.
“
I hope he busted all three of those fascist pigs in the nose.
”
Another man I knew was indicted for the statutory rape of a fourteen-year-old girl.
“
Lovely age, fourteen,
”
I remarked.
“
Same as Romeo
’
s Juliet.
”
In a Thousand Islands restaurant, still another acquaintance expectorated into a locally prominent attorney
’
s spaghetti dinner.
“
Marvelous!
”
I exclaimed gleefully.
“
Remind me to
buy
that
guy
a drink!
”
That was the last object lesson my mother ever tried on me. In fairness to her, two years before my father
’
s death there were sibilant and awful rumors of an intemperate fist fight in a barroom involving broken noses, bits of marrow, rich red blood, and many troopers; but if the newspaper
’
s editors ever heard of it, in deference to my father they never printed it.

Once, when I was very small, I actually saw my father play football; but like the propagators of his legend I remember nothing about the game save that at one point in it an opposing player, whose cleats had been removed to expose the sharp steel screws that held them (a customary bit of nastiness among the old-timers), stepped on my father
’
s hand, tearing it rather badly. The field where the game was being played was without bleachers, and what crowd there was stood huddled behind the players
’
benches, the Watertown fans behind ours and those of the opposing team across the field behind theirs. For the first time that day I was to discover that it was a crowd to which my father was very precisely attuned. My father had left the playing field and was standing bent over before our bench, holding the wrist of his right hand with his left, exposing the wound. It was a nasty, jagged tear; it bled profusely, a heavy, brilliant, crimson blood; and the trainer no sooner began pouring iodine into it than my father let out a high, fierce, almost girlish howl, one that—representing, as he did to me, the epitome of strength and courage—immediately induced in me the urge to scream in terror. But then, almost as suddenly, the substitutes on the bench, the crowd behind them, and even the trainer who was ministering to the wound were uproarious with glee, were bellowing and guffawing, slapping their thighs and pounding each other
’
s backs, and I saw that my father was parodying how a lesser man might react to iodine. Suspended between tears and laughter, I stood there listening to the gleeful homage of the crowd; then I, too, began to laugh, hysterically, wildly, until my father looked up at me, surprised and not a little upset, recognizing what had transpired. It was the first time the crowd had come between my father and me, and I became aware that other people understood in him qualities I did not—a knowledge that gave them certain claims on him. It is a terrifying thing to have a wedge driven into one
’
s narrow circle of love.

In later years I was, of course, to become very aware of this wedge, and to learn to despise it, particularly on brilliant autumn Saturdays. Hand in hand, on those fall mornings, we strolled about the Public Square, ostensibly
“
on errands
”
; but the nature of these errands was vague (I don
’
t ever remember bearing home for lunch so much as a lettuce head) and more of a leisurely ceremonial, the supernumerary method through which my father assured himself of his continuing fable. We could not go a hundred feet without being accosted by all manner of men. My father talked with the town elders and the town dregs, with pompous counselors and their least estimable clients, and as likely as not these men revealed to him things of the most distressingly intimate nature. My father was, surprisingly, a
listener
. He had a way of tilting his head plaintively to one side and pursing his lips in a solemn, commiserating way; he always looked directly at his confessors. A baroque fountain commanded the grassy, tree-shaded island at the center of the square; confronted with the contemplative, strong, open, and sympathetic face of my father, men seemed to hurl their fastidiousness, as the fountain did its spray, into the air; and with no furtiveness whatever made public exposure of deluded passions, heartfelt betrayals, and timid sins. Though not an educated man, my father was a man of mercurial intelligence. If he believed the grief to be of a passing nature, he took the man
’
s story and reworded it in a droll way that often left the mourner in helpless and profoundly grateful laughter. On the other hand, he had a singular, unnerving habit with those men past articulating their petulance, their rage, their sorrow. Grotesque, crooked, repulsive, wasted, pitiably drunk, they looked through watery-red eyes and jabbered away in what, to me, might just as well have been Zulu. With his free hand, my father always touched these men. Listening as deferentially as ever he listened to the Mayor, my father gripped them tightly on the upper arm, patted them affectionately on the back, occasionally even put his muscular arm about their bent, emaciated shoulders. Whenever he talked to these men, i always squeezed his free hand fiercely and looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching us. One day my father asked me if I was ashamed to have him talk with these men. The question came unexpectedly, and I stammered,
“
No! No!
”
But when I looked up at my father, I saw that he knew otherwise, and that he was sad.