North Dallas Forty (3 page)

“B.A. wants me in his office at ten tomorrow morning,” I said, remembering.

“He’s probably gonna tell you you’re starting Sunday.”

“I doubt it.” I frowned. “If he was gonna do that he’d just call in Gill and tell him he wasn’t starting. No, I think B.A. just wants to make certain I understand the nonprejudicial, technically flawless way he arrived at the opinion I should sit on the bench.”

“I dunno.” Maxwell gazed out the windshield. “That was a big catch you made yesterday. It put us ahead to stay.”

“Yeah maybe, but it was the only pass I caught.”

“You only played the last quarter. Besides, it was the only one I threw at you.”

“He’ll want to know why you don’t throw at me more.” It frustrated me to use the coach’s logic. I paused. “By the way,” I turned my face from the windshield and frowned at Maxwell, “why don’t you throw to me more?”

“Cause you ain’t been playing that much, asshole.”

“I suppose. After that truly amazing catch, you’ll surely want me as the special guest on your television show. Gimme the opportunity to snuggle my way into the heart of Dallas-Fort Worth. It’s the least you could do.”

“It’s also the most,” Maxwell said. “Besides, I’m having Jo Bob on the show this week.”

“How about a remote interview?” I suggested, smiling widely. “I could tell how I overcame a truly Middlewest upbringing and a childhood case of paralytic ringworm. Maybe they could do some closeup shots of my hands doing something—like picking my nose.”

“Listen, man,” Maxwell interrupted, “it’s a family show.”

I shook my head. “Why can’t there be a football show for the hard-core pervert?”

There was no response from Maxwell. He seemed lost in thought.

“What do you think of the SCA?” Maxwell said finally.

“What?”

“The Society of Christian Athletes.” His voice was deep and halting as he tried to keep the marijuana smoke down in his lungs. “B.A. asked me to make an appearance at the national rally they’re having in May. At the Cotton Bowl.”

“You don’t believe that shit, do you?”

“Sort of.” Maxwell’s voice became submissive. “I mean, when you have a chance to influence people you oughta do some good.”

“Who says that’s good?” I asked. “Besides B.A.”

“What’s wrong with him? For God’s sake, the man’s a Christian. That’s a helluva lot more than you are.”

“Sure, our coach has money, success, his life planned down to the minutest detail. Everything going off like clockwork. He must have God on his side.”

“You sure are bitter,” Maxwell said. “What harm can it do?”

“I don’t care, man. Go ahead, influence people.” I deepened my voice to affect an imitation. “Hi, kids. Seth Maxwell here to give you a little good influence. Don’t get your kicks doping. Get out on the ol’ gridiron and hurt somebody. It’s cleaner and more fun.”

Maxwell stared silently through the windshield. I turned my attention back to the road.

Six Flags Amusement Park flashed by on the right. In all the years I’d lived in Dallas, I’d been to this “Disneyland of the Southwest” only once. I’d spent the entire time, stoned on mescaline, in the Petting Zoo caressing a baby llama. I considered screwing the furry little bugger as a protest against captivity, his and mine. But I decided even if the llama understood, the guards wouldn’t, so I chalked up another sexual and sociological frustration and went home.

Flailing arms and loud coughing brought me out of my thoughts.

“Goddam. Goddam.” Maxwell’s voice was raspy and he was gagging. “Goddam. I swallowed the roach.” He shook his head. “It burned the livin’ shit outta me.”

“I warned you about suckin’ so hard.”

“Fuck,” he said. He leaned over and spit on my floor. “You got another?”

“In the glove compartment.”

Maxwell pulled out a joint rolled in a replica of a one-hundred-dollar bill.

“Shit.” He held the joint out in front of him. “I’ll bet the guy that came up with that made a killing.”

Sir Douglas started into “Seguin.” I pushed the reject button and replaced the tape with the Rolling Stones. They started somewhere in the middle of “Honky Tonk Women.”

“You know,” Maxwell said, staring vacantly at the road, “I’ve always wanted to take about six months and just travel around Texas, going from one honky-tonk to another. Find the best jukeboxes and the women with the saddest stories.”

“The people in honky-tonks,” he continued, “are just like a good country-music jukebox. Full of stories about people who just lost somethin’, or never had anything to start with.” He clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in the seat. The joint dropped from his lips. “We’d go to a different one ever’ night. Just drink, fuck, eat pussy, and listen to country music. You could learn a lot, podnah.”

“Maybe. But we could get the shit beat outta us in a lotta those places. Like the Jacksboro Highway.”

The Jacksboro Highway was a honky-tonk-lined road leading from Fort Worth to Jacksboro. The Old West still lived in the bars along this particular stretch and there were shootings and knifings every night.

Maxwell thought for a moment, then turned slowly to look at me. “What are you so scared of?” he asked.

“Pain, man. Nothing flashy or existential. Just plain old pain. I don’t like it, never have. I can’t even stand the thought of my skin splitting open and my bodily fluids spilling onto the Astroturf in front of millions of screaming fans—for money. Do you think I wanna do it for free? Alone? And in the dark?”

“But it’s all part of being alive, man. The pleasure and the pain. You can’t have one without the other.”

“It’s an age of specialists.”

We were both silent. I was reminded of another car trip we had made back in the early spring. On a dull Wednesday in March we had gotten high, filled the car with gasoline, whiskey, speed, and grass and driven to Santa Fe nonstop. We spent two nights at an old hotel, until at 3
A.M.
the second morning Maxwell finally seduced the night clerk on a brown leather couch in the lobby. I alternated between standing guard and watching them fuck. She was a heavyset woman, about forty-five, and all the time Maxwell humped away at her, she babbled endlessly about him being her son’s favorite football star, and how pleased the boy would be to learn she and Maxwell had met and become friends.

The return took eighteen hours. All the way back we took speed, smoked dope, drank Pepsi, and ate pork rinds. Beginning ten minutes outside of Santa Fe and continuing to the outskirts of Dallas, Maxwell described in detail every sex act he had ever committed. Except for gas and piss, we stopped only once, in Odessa, to see the World’s Largest Statue of a Jackrabbit.

“You know,” Maxwell began talking, “I’m actually getting to where I don’t think I mind pain. You know what I mean? Remember when I dislocated my elbow? For a minute there it hurt so bad I thought I’d go crazy. There was no way I could stand it. Then all of a sudden ... Well, I can’t explain it.” His face screwed up in an attempt to find words. “Except that it hurt. And it didn’t hurt. I mean, it still really hurt bad, but I could stand it and actually sort of liked it, in a different sort of way.”

“I’m not sure I get it,” I said, nonetheless feeling a nebulous sense of identity with the feelings he was trying to describe.

“Well, it’s sorta like pain makes me think I’m doin’ something. Nothing occupies my mind but the pain, it’s all I care about. I feel secure in it. When the pain is the worst I’m the most relaxed. Weird, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know if
weird
is a strong enough word.”

I gripped the wheel tighter and looked ahead to the approaching Dallas toll plaza. The Dallas skyline was directly ahead. I paid the toll and headed for the Trinity River Bridge and I-35 beyond. Crossing Commerce, Main, and Elm of the I-35 overpass, I read the giant Hertz sign atop the School-book Depository. I looked to the spot on Elm Street where Kennedy was shot. I had seen the historic place hundreds of times, but I still couldn’t actually picture it happening. Now the country had another President who liked guys like me and football and attended the Washington practices to call screen passes. What was more perfect? A President who liked deceptive plays. He was B.A.’s favorite.

I turned into the Motor Street exit, followed Motor past the hospital that had received the mangled Kennedy and onto Maple, then right again to The Apartments. The parking lot was jammed. The only open spot was adjacent to a fire hydrant I parked there.

“Lock your door, Seth,” I said. “If they can’t take a joke, fuck ’em.”

Maxwell stepped out, leaned over and took the last drag on the joint. Taking long, slow strides and throwing his arms and head back, he broke into song.

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”

He walked around the hedge into the passageway that led down a flight of stairs to the pool. The song faded off.

I leaned back hands on my hips, and stretched, looking up at the sky, wishing I would witness a supernova. No such luck.

As I walked around the pool and toward Andy Crawford’s apartment. I watched Maxwell make his entrance to the party. Standing bowlegged in the doorway, his knees flexed, Maxwell hopped from one foot to another, fingers held over his head in peace signs.

“Peace God Bless. Peace God Bless,” he cried. “Peace God Bless.”

“Peace on you,” someone yelled from inside.

Everyone laughed.

I waited outside until the crowd greeting Seth moved away from the door. Then I slipped unnoticed into the kitchen. I hopped my butt up onto the drainboard and sat watching the party through a hole in the kitchen-dining room wall that served as a bar. There were about thirty people milling around. I recognized most of them from other parties. Except for the other players, however, I didn’t know the names of more than a half-dozen.

Jo Bob and Meadows had already arrived and were sitting on either side of a big redhead with huge breasts. Both were grabbing at her giant tits, laughing and calling her Booger Red. Vainly her outnumbered hands tried to keep the grinning men from becoming too obscene.

Thomas Richardson, the handsome black running back from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was squatting Indian-style against the far wall, observing his teammates in action. He was an incredible athlete, but he was considered peculiar and unapproachable by management, the coaches, and most of his teammates. His attitude stemmed in part from an intensely personal contract dispute. As a result he seldom played. The club seemed reluctant to trade or release him. Instead they buried him, hoping he would fade from memory. He was always outstanding when he played, but he refused to deal in anything but profoundly relevant and personal terms. He insisted that management meet him on a man-to-man basis. Not even the most confident of football general managers or head coaches is willing to meet an angry 225-pound black on a man-to-man basis.

Probably sometime soon
Richardson
would appear in six-point type on the waiver list and few, if any, would notice.

I was alone in the kitchen, except for a couple standing near the refrigerator. The man was wearing wide-stripe bell bottoms and a hot-pink silk shirt open to the waist. He was sporting a tan, the kind you get from executive sunlamps. The girl was cute, blonde, about twenty, and crying.

“Come on, relax, honey, he’s not such a bad guy,” the man was saying, trying to calm her.

“He shouldn’t have done that,” she cried. “I don’t like him at all.”

“Come on now.”

“That bastard, who does he think he is?” She was angry. “No more of this blind-date shit, Steve. I mean it.” She looked at me and noticed I was staring. He followed her eyes.

“Hey.” He moved in my direction. “Phil, how ya’ doin’ man?” He extended his hand. “Steve Peterson, we met at Andy’s last party.”

I took his hand but continued to watch the girl, who was further infuriated. I nodded a greeting at the man and said nothing.

“Oh, that’s Brenda.” He had noticed my gaze. “She’s pissed off at Andy about something.”

Hearing her name, Brenda turned her back to us and faced the refrigerator.

“Hey man, you played a fantastic game.” Steve Peterson slapped me on the shoulder and left his hand there, rubbing my collarbone gently. “That was a great catch. You have got to be my favorite receiver, man. You can have Billy Gill and Delma Huddle.”

I nodded and looked at the floor.

“Listen,” he said, still rubbing my clavicle. “I gotta get back to her.” He stopped rubbing my neck, and fumbled in his back pocket for his wallet. “Gimme a call when you come to town. We’ll go to lunch. I’ve got some things you might be interested in.” He handed me his card and I set it on the drainboard without looking at it.

“I’ll be seein’ you.” He turned to Brenda, then back to me. “Don’t forget to call, we’ll get some dollies.”

I looked out of the kitchen without acknowledging his good-bye.

The host, last year’s Rookie of the Year, Andy Crawford, was leaning against the wrought-iron lattice that separated the living room from the dining room. He was talking to a rookie defensive back from Texas named Alan Claridge. Both were powerful, good-looking men, weighing around two twenty and standing well over six foot three. They were well tanned and muscular and often mistaken for brothers. Crawford was pointing to the front of Claridge’s shirt. When Claridge looked down, Crawford brought his hand up into Claridge’s nose. Crawford doubled up with laughter while his victim jumped back.

When Crawford straightened up, Claridge pounced and grabbed him by his biceps. Soon they were reeling around in a friendly pushing match, each gripping the other’s arms. Laughter and groans punctuated the contest as both men strained mightily against each other. From the color of their faces and the cords standing out on their necks, I could see they were exerting fiercely. Crawford suddenly lost his footing and Claridge stumbled forward on top of him, both of them crashing through the dining room table and chairs. Crawford had ripped off Claridge’s shirt, and they lay gasping. I leaned across the bar and looked at them lying directly below. They were sweating profusely, looking at each other and laughing. Claridge whispered something to Crawford, then carefully held Crawford’s face with both hands and planted an open-mouthed kiss full on the lips. Crawford responded and their tongues strained against each other. The embrace lasted about ten seconds.