A Fan's Notes (55 page)

Believing the Counselor the most honest man I
’
d ever known, and made heavy with the knowledge that the money I had accepted from him over the years would have more than tripled the amount in question, I took the disbarment harder than the Counselor did and on the streets of home collared every attorney I knew to tell him as much. One with whom both the Counselor and I had grown up, a handsome, brilliant, self-assertive man, said,
“
Look, Ex, these goofy bastards wanted the Counselor to grovel about their un washed behinds, and he didn
’
t do it. And that
’
s his
tough luck
.
”
It was this man
’
s way to make such curt statements and then walk abruptly away, leaving one to ponder his succinctness for subtle ironies and recondite meanings. On this day, though, he stopped after two hurried steps, turned, and said,
“
Pity these guys, Ex. Believe me, they didn
’
t even know what they were doing and were more frightened of the whole business than the Counselor. I doubt there was one guy involved who thought that the Counselor would get any more than a sixty-day suspension.
”
“
They
thought
wrong,
”
I said. We laughed.
“
Had the Counselor been an out-of-town boy practicing here,
”
he said,
“
he would have got off with a slap on the wrist. Believe me, subconsciously or otherwise, and aside from the issues, those Appellate justices must have believed that being one of our own the Counselor was some intractable prick so that we couldn
’
t handle it, chastisement and all, right here at home where it damn well should have been handled.
”
And here, thinking of something, he laughed heartily.
“
The worst of it is,
”
he said,
“
instead of being embarrassed, these goofy bastards have found out how easy a disbarment is and half the names on the bar association are popping up before the grievance committee. They
’
ve gone power-loony!
”
He laughed again, placed his forefinger against his temple and made a bang, bang.

That any more could be said on the matter was unlikely, and my persistence in bringing it up was pure churlishness. The last time I did so I was seated in a booth drinking beer with a lawyer whom my mother as a teen-ager had wheeled in his carriage. I was raving loudly, and the lawyer, suddenly interrupting, told me to shut up about it.
“
Why shut up?
”
I said, surprised at his abruptness.
“
Because,
”
he said,
“
the statute of limitations on the felonious forgery you committed
is a long way from expiring
.
”
Dumfounded, I said,
“
You don
’
t think they
’
d be foolish enough to bring my part in this before a grand jury?
”
“
Why not?
”
he said.
“
Well,
”
I snapped,
“
for the
obvious
reason that I gained nothing from the check
’
s being cashed. Nor for that matter did the Counselor. Never once during all of this was there a suggestion on anybody
’
s part that the Counselor was attempting to divert funds to his own use. It was all rather like bringing a
Hausfrau
before a grand jury for endorsing her husband
’
s-pay check.
”
“
You still committed forgery,
”
the lawyer assured me blandly. Very steadily I stared at him for many moments, then I said,
“
Why, you fucking chicken-shit son of a bitch: I suppose you
’
re embarrassed even sitting with me!
”
Then I rose and, flatulent with rage, fled out of the barroom. I did so because it had suddenly occurred to me that my home town would have disbarred me from something if it could, preferably the human race.

One mid-August day at the farm the wind came out of the north, and such is the character of the country here that in on the wind came both the chill and the odor of autumn. When these harbingers of fall signaled my imminent departure, I became very distraught because I knew that where other men look home with longing and affection, I would look home with loathing and rage, and that that loathing would bind me to home as fiercely as ever love does. More sobering, on leaving I would be once more
“
on the move,
”
be a part of the bewildering and stultifying movement that America has become; and the curse of movement is that during it one is never doing one
’
s own work but that of the world. I yearned for something essentially Miltonian or Emersonian, and something so apparently little understood today that it makes me feel antiquated and musty to mention it: I wanted to await my call. To where that call would summon me I didn
’
t know, but I thought that in a certain pretty milieu, under the right stars or in some clapboarded, sunny, forever verdant New England hamlet, I might yet discover myself a teacher. Unexpectedly, and at what luckily was my last possible decision-making moment, I was offered a contract to teach at one of the resort towns that lies along the St. Lawrence and whose economy is greatly bolstered by the summer people who come to gaze at the wonder of our islands. I accepted gratefully, feeling that given a year
’
s time I might come to a kind of peace with home. Were I forced finally to flee, I didn
’
t want the memory of that disbarment tying me so despondently to place.

The principal was in his third and final year. He wasn
’
t —I didn
’
t know the reason, nor did I bother to ask—to be given another contract or tenure and would not be there come another autumn. Whatever the school
’
s grading policy, under the circumstances he hadn
’
t the authority to enforce it, and I set a standard that though rigid seemed fair. During the year the principal and I met a dozen or so times in the corridors, two solitary figures smiling discreetly and nodding abstractedly at one another. Once I caught him picking his nose, he caught me twice, and this put me one gaucherie up on him. By the sophomores I was asked to be class adviser, an invitation which gave me an unwarrantable pride: tenure teachers shunned such activities. As adviser, my overruling task was supervising the class
’
s attempts to raise money which, on the students
’
arrival as seniors, would be used—oh, joy!—for a trip to New York City. The outing, I gathered, was to be a kind of initiation into the bewilderment of adulthood; and I had visions of leading my charges through a sunlit Sheridan Square and of pointing at the grotesque apartment house. Prefacing my re mark with a sigh, I imagined saying,
“
There used to be a little bar there—a long time ago.
”
We crossed the Rubicon with a
“
slave
”
dance. In a first-period assembly, members of the class were sold at auction, after which they were used by the buyer to carry his books to and from class, that kind of thing. Pretty girls, football players, and the class dunderheads, in that order, brought in the most money. Between the auction and the evening dance we earned a hundred and fifty dollars, an amount my
“
sponsor
”
teacher informed me was surprisingly high for such a function. I beamed modestly.

Everyone in the village remarked the fall as the warmest in memory. Promptly on the school
’
s dismissal bell I left the building and walked north along the town
’
s tree-shaded main street to the river. Buying the New York newspapers at a drugstore, I went to a river-front saloon, where, sitting
“
over the water
”
at the far end of the bar, I sipped Schaeffer beer while reading the book reviews and football news, occasion ally lifting my eyes from the tiring newsprint to look through the wide picture windows and watch the St. Lawrence flow by. Across the way, I saw the hues of the islands go from green to yellow to brown to almost black, the waters from deep blue to slate gray. When by the last days in November the river had gone to the latter color, such was the unseasonal warmth of the weather that one could still see a frequent boat under sail, its flying jib and spanker hard, taut, and lovely to the wind, its bow cutting effortlessly through the slate waters and throwing up a furious white spray that spat itself to pieces. At six I walked to my apartment, where, against a thousand resolutions to begin cultivating a more delicate palate, I invariably dined on broiled Delmonico steak and butter-pecan ice cream, sometimes just topping the meat with the cream. A pleasant bachelor
’
s apartment, its living room had once been an upstairs sun porch. On three sides its walls were made up entirely of muslin-curtained windows which brought to the room a continuously felicitous light. Tastefully furnished, it had beige carpeting; weighty, comfortable leather chairs; and the inevitable television set, to whose flickering image and drone I used—as other people use music—to fall asleep. To the room I added a Degas print framed in gold leaf and depicting a middle-aged beatnik and his long-suffering,
“
milk-imbibing
”
spouse (Patience and me?); a half-dozen prints of Paris street scenes rendered by a sentimental Scandinavian; a clear-finished pine bookcase I had made from an old china cabinet; and my cynosure and source of pride: a much-knotted pine coffee table made from an ancient ironing board. One night I picked up the telephone, dialed information, and asked the girl if there were a phone listed for F. E. Exley. The girl told me there was, gave me the number, and I felt fine. At thirty-three, it was the first telephone listed in my own name. Serenely content, I believed my dream of coming to terms with home was being realized.

In late September Frank Gifford once again began to en gage me. Having dropped his pugnacity by admitting that
“
it
”
—on his back on a stretcher—
“
had been a hard way to go out,
”
he had the year before come out of retirement; after a year
’
s layoff spent nursing his concussion, he had had a better year than anyone had a right to expect, a season which had encouraged him to play still another. When it came time for him to leave finally, if not to the adulatory roar of the crowd, I was sure he wanted to walk out of the stadium with his legs under him and his wits functioning. In the same way that I yearned to be able to go from this place without rage, he wanted to go out without the bitter memory of that Bednarik tackle. He was thirty-three now; at times his speed and his timing seemed unreservedly gone; and watching him began to wonder if it weren
’
t his destiny to go out on his back, more remembered for having been the victim of that Tartarian tackle than for anything else. Because he was so ungraciously trying to negate time
’
s passing, I couldn
’
t feel all that distressed for him. What did distress and send me back to him with a passion was the glibness with which fans dismissed him. As the season got into its third and fourth weeks, from down the bar I heard strangers in what came to be a continual conversation about the Giants, and whenever Gilford
’
s name came up, I immediately heard, spoken with disarming and chilling certainty,
“
He
’
s had it!
”
Had I known any of the men and had they not been such rugged-looking bastards, fishing guides and farmers and construction workers, I would have turned to them and snapped,
“
Aw, for Christ
’
s sake, let him be. He wants to go out like a man!
”
I
’
m sorry now I hadn
’
t the guts to say as much.

The following Sunday, weaving full speed down the middle of the field, Gifford reached back between the two defenders flanking him, even as he was losing his balance took a Tittle pass over his left shoulder, toppled furiously over in a forward somersault, and ended flat on his back in the end zone, the ball still clutched precariously to his stomach. It was an artful, an astounding, a humbling catch; and I can
’
t say whether it or the studied avoidance of his name at the bar the next week pleased me more. Hunched up on the edge of one of the apartment
’
s leather chairs, I watched him intently from that week on. The story became somewhat absurd. Week after week he made one after another catch more incredible than its predecessor; and in the final week of the season he made that one-handed catch against the Pittsburgh Steelers which gave the Giants their divisional title and sent them into the NFL championship game. I laughed with glee. Oh, how I laughed and jumped up and down, exclaiming,
“
Oh, good, Frank! Good! Very good indeed! I mean, swell! Really swell!
”