North Dallas Forty (37 page)

“Everything all right?” Mary Jane Woodley slipped into the row of seats behind Maxwell and me.

The question was directed at me, but her attention seemed to be on the sleeping quarterback. Leaning on the back of his seat, she was looking wistfully at her fingers as they trailed gently through his thick brown hair.

“As good as can be expected, the quadruple amputee replied trying to rise and shake hands,” I said. “Thanks for the drinks.”

She didn’t reply and I looked back to see if she had heard me. Her eyes were still focused on the top of Maxwell’s head as she combed the hair away from his eyes with her red-brown fingernails.

“How’s he feeling?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess,” I answered, without really considering the question. Besides, I never knew how Maxwell really felt. “A little depressed ... and really smashed,” I added, to give her something to work with.

“He played a great game,” she said, disappointed but not surprised by the thought that Maxwell was despondent.

“We didn’t win,” I pointed out

“Does it matter that much?”

“To him it does.”

“Not to you?” She seemed surprised.

“A little, I suppose. Mostly I’m just trying to survive.” I was a little embarrassed by the drama in my statement.

“I’m just trying to get the job,” I explained. “He worries about getting it done right, or what he thinks is right.”

I paused for a minute and watched her fooling absently with his hair.

“You really like him, don’t you?” I observed.

“I really do,” she said, keeping her eyes on Maxwell. There was a tone of hopelessness in her voice.

“Why?”

“Because he’s a man,” she said. “What I thought all men were supposed to be like.”

“What about me?” I asked with mock indignity.

“You,”
she said, turning to look at me and smiling wryly. “You. You’re what men really are. Like you said, just trying to survive.”

I started to protest, but she was approximately right and my defense could, at best, be termed extenuating circumstances.

“I brung ya a drank.” Seymour Scoop Zolinzowsky stood in the aisle in front of me holding out a styrofoam cup with the club insignia silk-screened on the side.

“What is it?” I asked, making no move to accept the drink.

“Vodka and Alka-Seltzer. They didn’t have no tonic water.” Scoop was weaving perceptibly and his face was ruddy. He called it his amphetamine flush.

I waved the drink off, not only nauseated by the idea of vodka and Alka-Seltzer but also knowing there were strings attached to almost any outright gift from this newspaperman.

“How ’bout you?” Scoop offered the drink to Mary Jane, who had stepped into the aisle and was trying to edge by him to get to the front. She shook her head and he stepped aside and bowed, waving her by with a flourish. He turned back to me.

“Well, what happened?” He tried vainly to focus his eyes on me.

“No comment, Scoop.”

“Come on, man, quit movin’ and tell me what happened. I missed the whole goddam thing.”

“Didn’t you even go to the game?” I was astonished that even Scoop would fail to attend at least part of the game.

“I went awright, I jus’ don’t ’member any of it.” Suddenly he fell to the floor as if he had been struck dead by the hand of God. I leaned over to look at him. “Did you see that guy push me?” he said as he grabbed onto my chair arm and pulled himself rather shakily to his feet.

The seat in front of me was empty, so Scoop pushed the seat back forward until it lay flat, then crawled up on it and assumed the lotus position.

“C’mon, man, tell me what happened.”

“We lost.”

“Good,” he said, nodding his head, then looking around absently. “I forgot my pencil ’n pad. You gotta pencil ’n pad?” I shook my head. “Never min’, I’ll ’member.” He winked at me and tapped the side of his head. He offered me a drink from his cup. I leaned forward and peered into it. It looked like vodka and Alka-Seltzer. I shook my head and waved it away.

“Say,” Scoop said, snapping his fingers soundlessly, “did the nigger really lose the game?” I winced at the volume that he used on the word
nigger
.

“What nigger?” I asked, too loudly. I looked around but didn’t see any black faces or glaring eyes.

“I dunno,” he continued, reeling and almost falling backward off the seat. “Clinton jes’ said that the dumb nigger dropped the ball.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Down the aisle Monsignor Twill made his way rather clumsily from first class back to tourist. He was quite drunk, as he always was on return flights, and stopped by various players to offer his condolences and pat them on the shoulder. Twice as he leaned over to talk to players the plane hit light air pockets and he sprawled into their laps. When he reached us, Scoop had noticed my gaze and was also watching him.

“I can’t stan’ drunks,” Scoop said, as the Monsignor came to a halt beside us. The Monsignor was noticeably offended by the remark.

“Don’t mind him, Father,” I soothed. “He’s upset by the loss.”

“I can understand your feelings, Seymour,” the Monsignor said, “but that is still no reason to be disrespectful.”

“Don’t call me Seymour.”

“Should I call you Mr. Zolinzowsky?” The Monsignor straightened up, angry at Scoop’s abrupt and rude manner. Scoop didn’t answer and the Monsignor tried to calm himself and right the situation. “Isn’t that a Polish name?”

“Why do you wanna know?” Scoop demanded, taking a long swig of his drink. “You selling bowling shirts?”

The Monsignor glared momentarily at Scoop, then shifted his eyes to me as if expecting an explanation. I shrugged. He shook his head and turned around to tell Andy Crawford he played a great game and he hoped the leg wasn’t too long in healing because “we” needed him next week. Then he moved on down the aisle and disappeared into one of the two rest rooms.

“I hate Catholics,” Scoop said.

“I thought you were Catholic.”

“Tha’s what I hate ’bout ’em.”

Art Hartman slid into the seat next to Scoop.

“Hey, guys.” He smiled. “Played a great game, Phil.”

Scoop perked up at the comment.

“He did?” the reporter asked, grabbing at his ear for the nonexistent pencil. He turned to Hartman. “You gotta pencil ’n pad?” Hartman shook his head and then looked at me. His eyes wide, he rolled them in the direction of Scoop. I smiled and nodded.

“I gotta go talk to the losin’ coach,” Scoop announced, sliding from the seat back to a kneeling position on the floor. As he pulled himself upright, he sloshed his drink all over his hand. He saluted Hartman and me and moved back up toward the front.

“That oughta be a great interview,” Hartman observed.

Scoop missed the doorway between sections by about six inches and banged his shoulders into the bulkhead. Backing away, the determined newsman made another run and shot through into first class only slightly scathed.

“How’s the King feeling?” Hartman asked, looking around the seat at the sleeping Maxwell.

“Older, I think.”

“He’ll never get any older.”

“That an observation or a complaint?”

“Just a statement, guy. I don’t need him to grow old before I get that job. I’ll get it when I deserve it.”

“Some people thought you deserved it this year.”

“Well, it just didn’t work out”

“Doesn’t that piss you off?”

“Naw.” He shook his head. “I’d like to have started this year but B.A. doesn’t think I’m ready and I can see his point. I need seasoning. And listen, guy, I love that man,” he said, looking at the unconscious quarterback. “He’s one of the best in the business. He’s taught me a lot. We’re good friends.”

“You really believe that?”

“Sure, our friendship has nothing to do with competition on the field. We respect each other. When I’m playing, I work my butt off to beat him out, to take that job, but when we step off the field we’re still friends.”

“Don’t you think you’re better than he is?”

The question stopped the former All American and he chewed thoughtfully on his upper lip, his eyes squeezing into slits. He thought for a long time.

“Well,” he finally said, hesitantly, “that’s hard to say. I mean sure I think I’m better than he is. I have to if I ever hope to win the job. But it’s B.A.’s decision as to who starts.”

“What if B.A. makes the wrong decision. Or the right one and you don’t start?”

“That won’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause it just won’t. I concentrate. I follow directions. I work hard. When my chance comes I’ll be ready.”

“What if it doesn’t come?”

“It will come. It has to. I mean if I do everything right, it just has to.”

“What if Maxwell’s better than you?”

“He’s not.”

“Then why aren’t you playing?”

“Look, I told you, that’s B.A.’s decision. I wouldn’t have done some of the things Maxwell did today and when my chance comes that’ll be the difference between us.”

“If you say so,” I said, leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes.

“Whattaya mean by that? We lost, didn’t we?”

“I don’t think the loss was his fault.”

“It’s always the quarterback’s fault when you lose.”

“Okay,” I said, pushing my feet against the floor, feeling the strangely delicious ache in the muscles. “If you say so.” I dug my head into the seat back and fell asleep.

In a dream I was transported to the playing field at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The dream had something to do with being able to throw a football through an old tire. I don’t know what the contest was, but I remember that I was scared to death that I couldn’t do it. The guy in front of me had just missed and they were carrying him toward the tunnel. The crowd was yelling so loud I woke up. I opened my eyes to hear the sounds of an argument between O.W. Meadows and Jim Johnson. Apparently one, and most likely both, of the Dexamyl Spansules the giant defensive tackle had taken at halftime were beginning to work. The argument was typical postgame behavior for Meadows; he didn’t quite grasp the chemistry of time capsules. Standing, screaming at Johnson and inspired by thirty milligrams of Dexedrine and Miltown, he gave vent to a new theory of football that had begun to take shape in his normally fallow brain.

Meadows’s gestures were strangely exaggerated by the ice pack secured to his elbow with Ace Bandages and elastic tape. The elbow had been hyperextended in the second half. I was still in a dreamlike state, watching the ice bag wave in the air. I pictured the gruesome mechanics of Meadows’s hyperextension. He had been knocked to the ground early in the third period and had extended his right arm to cushion the fall. His palm had dug into the soft ground and he had locked the elbow for support when the ball carrier slammed into the joint from the backside. The blow forced the bones the wrong way; ligaments and muscles stretched and tore. The two primary bones rode grinding over each other. For an instant the elbow dislocated, leaving a huge hole where the elbow point used to be. Somehow the remnants of the muscles and ligaments held and the bones popped back into place with a resounding snap.

He had run off the field, the injured arm hanging limply at his side, and had sat out the rest of that series while the doctor and trainers checked the arm and taped it into a half-flexed position. He returned to action the next series and finished the game.

Tomorrow he would go to the hospital and get x-rayed for breaks. Tonight he was high on speed, adrenaline, codeine, and alcohol. He was feeling no pain if one could judge by the ease with which he whipped the arm around to add force to his argument with Johnson.

The defensive coach had the good sense to know that Meadows was too stoned to give obedience to the social nuances of player-coach relationships and might well use physical force to make his point. This left Johnson in a difficult position. Meadows was becoming louder and more specific in his theorizing, dealing generally with the idea that responsibility for losing in the final seconds to an inferior team fell entirely on the coaching staff. Johnson had several choices: he could continue to suffer insults at the hands of this Hercules and have his reputation as a man, already seriously damaged by the Jo Bob-Monroe White fight deteriorate further, or he could stand his ground and confront Meadows physically. He tried for a third alternative.

“Shit,” Meadows was screaming. “You never give us anything to take into a game but fucking facts. I’m sick of goddam tendencies. It’s a goddam business for you but it’s still s’pose’ to be a sport to us.”

“You’re a professional,” Johnson protested. “You should—”

“Professional my ass,” Meadows interrupted. “You mean under contract! Goddam, I’ll work harder than anybody to win. But man, when I’m dead tired in the fourth quarter, winning’s got to mean more than just money. I can make money selling real estate.”

“You’re hired to do a job. If—”

“Job! Job!” Meadows screamed into Johnson’s face. “I don’t want no fucking job, I wanna play football. If I wanted a job I’d go to work for Texas Instruments, you asshole! I want some feelings, some fucking team spirit.”

Johnson’s jaws tightened, but he remained calm out of respect for Meadows’s size and rage.

“Listen,” Johnson continued, “this ain’t high school, you don’t have to love each other for us to play.”

“That’s what I mean, you cocksucker,” Meadows raged. “Every time I try and call it a business you say it’s a game and every time I say it should be a game you call it a business. You and B.A. and the rest want us to be eleven total strangers out there thinkin’ we was a team.”

Johnson’s eyes darted around the cabin. He knew he was in danger and only wanted out.

“Well, I’ll tell you this.” Meadows wagged his finger in the coach’s face, his arm wobbling from the imbalance of the ice pack. “You and B.A. and all the rest are chickenshit cocksuckers, who couldn’t really play and feel this game at all. Oh sure, you’ll win, but what’ll it mean? Just numbers on a scoreboard. Well, that ain’t enough for me.”

Meadows stood in the aisle, his face purple, clenching and unclenching his fists. His breath was coming in heavy gasps.