The Franchise (13 page)

“Morning.” Taylor stepped to the doorway and gripped the rough wood lintel. Wendy looked up to see him hanging in the doorway like an orangutan, dumbly concentrating on releasing tension from his spine.

“Do you want coffee? Tea?” Wendy looked into the living room at the glowing coals and fresh wood of the morning fire. “Or should I just check you for nits and lice?”

“Coffee first.” Taylor swung from the crosspiece. “Then the complete grooming ritual.”

Letting go of the door frame, Taylor touched his toes and began his stretching exercises.

“I was just sitting here, thinking about my father.” Wendy filled the percolator with coffee and water from the hand pump. “We are
both
his property, the way he sees it. You know what I mean? He looks at me like I’m the Thanksgiving turkey. I think he still believes in feudalism and marriages of state.”

Taylor was doing other stretching exercises as he listened; Wendy watched the coffee pot on the white Kelvinator and talked about her life.

Taylor’s neck was sore. The falling scorpions had added tension to his degenerating cervical vertebrae. He had cracked two in high school, but the coach had pronounced the injury “a stiff neck” and Taylor played the following week in a cervical collar. He threw for two TD’s and ran sixty yards for one. He had no conscious memory of the game or injury. He just knew his neck hurt.

“I met Three because his daddy and Cyrus did business in an oil field named after my mother. Can you imagine?” She frowned. “Is this a boring story?”

“Hardly.” Taylor rolled his head on his shoulders. “It’s giving me a stiff neck. You gonna marry him?”

“Nope. I’m running off with the circus to be a bareback rider.” Wendy glanced at him, her eyes downcast, strangely shy. “I appreciate that you didn’t hit on me last night.”

“I figure everybody else must. I wanted to ... but last night was for creating illusions before I destroy them, contrary to my usual order and style of life. Besides, the scorpions held me prisoner until daylight.”

Wendy laughed, showing her teeth: even, white, delicate, almost translucent.

“All night I kept waiting for you to creep into my room with some lame line.” She covered her mouth with slender fingers.

“I was waiting in my room for you to rescue me,” Taylor said. “A metaphysical standoff.”

“Were you scared? Because I was Cyrus Chandler’s daughter?”

“I was scared of the nickel-plated thirty-eight. I have a fear of technology.”

Wendy led him out into the cool morning air toward the oak motte and blue Cadillac.

They sat on the hood of Terry Dudley’s demonstrator, listened to the birds and watched the sky turn pink. The clouds, dark dirty wads of cotton, bleached whiter as the sky turned from pink to brilliant red. The ridgeline etched clearly against the sky. The hollows and canyon were growing out of darkness into dark green shadows. The creek bubbled, still in the dark.

They kissed when the sun crawled into view.

“Is our romance against the clock with an absolute end?” Wendy asked, “Or is it based on ever-increasing, expanding loving of one another?”

Taylor’s eyes widened in a confused, pleasant surprise. “Choice? You want me to decide?”

Wendy nodded. “It seems pretty life-enhancing to me; love according to your athletic ideal. Dedication ... desire ... commitment ... technique, execution, strategy, tactics, style. They’re all part of loving someone.”

“Don’t forget practice. Hours of practice. I’ll go first.” He moved massively, swiftly. Taylor gripped her shoulders, pulling her to him and she was suddenly aware of his pure physical presence, the grace of motion, the enormous size and inordinate animal elegance of his body. A thoroughbred smelling of sweat, slightly crazed, high-blooded, powerful and erotic.

Thrilled, eager, terrified, Wendy grabbed his thick hair and drew his lips to her mouth. She kissed hard; he slipped his arm across her back and gripped her right thigh gently. His hand encircled her slim leg. He lifted her. She pressed her soft, pliant, moist lips against his chapped flesh. She was soft, gentle, and smelled of crushed rose petals. His lip bled as she mashed her mouth against his.

“This morning your eyes are the most exquisite green I have ever seen,” he said, cradling her face with his hand. “Can you change eye colors?” She leaned away slightly and studied his expression.

“In time,” she said warily, “I will let you see more.” Closing her eyes, parting her lips, Wendy Chandler kissed him again, long and deep, with much urgency and a confused, lingering fear.

Taylor Rusk found choice wrenched from his soul.

C
YRUS
C
HANDLER HAD
several phone lines in the Pit of his den. The room showed the signs of the hectic work done the past days, building the Franchise. Cyrus, Dick Conly and Red Kilroy seldom left the Pit during days of negotiations, five-way conference calls and secret deals. The Franchise purchased most of the players they wanted from the player pool; the worn-out, used-up, cast-off human capital of the League. Fifty players, for approximately $750,000 apiece, totaling the $38 million price for the Franchise.

By the end of Water Carnival, Wendy Chandler and Taylor Rusk were conspicuously missing. Junie, Lem Three and Lem’s mother, Pearl Mae Carleton, connected them, and Junie told Cyrus.

Cyrus called security.

Taylor and Wendy were sitting outside the stone house on the Cadillac’s hood when a white four-door Ford with a whip antenna drove up. There were two men in the front seat in narrow-brim cowboy hats and gray Western suits.

The window on the right side hummed down.

“Everything all right, Miss Chandler?” Bob Travers, the passenger, asked. The driver looked Taylor over.

“Everything is perfect, Bob.”

“Toby and I’ll be around,” Bob nodded.

“Fine. Tell Momma not to worry,” Wendy replied.

“Wilco.” Bob rolled up the window. The white Ford drove back across Dead Man Creek, up Coon Ridge, and disappeared over the top, leaving a billowing white cloud trail of caliche dust.

“Who is Bob?” Taylor watched the car disappear.

“Security.” Wendy’s face hardened, tiny lines eroding the brightness from her eyes.

“Who is Toby?”

“Security.”

“Whose security?”

“Not yours.”

“I would just like to own a new Ford,” Taylor finally said.

“I’m sure my daddy will help you get one.” Wendy tossed the dregs from her coffee cup into the small patch of prickly pear and walked into the stone house through the kitchcn door.

“Anything I can do? You seem upset.”

“Choose.” She took his hand and pulled him toward the bed. “You can choose.”

They made love slowly, searching each other out in soft, tender places, taking a long time. Wendy felt so small beneath him as she shuddered and heaved.

“Please” she began to cry, her tears mingling with his sweat. “Please.” Wendy convulsed and thrashed, clawing his shoulders. “Please ... choose me.”

A
T THE EAST
edge of Coon Ridge the land falls away to the north and the creek makes a turn following the slope of the ground. In flood this sudden turn becomes a churning, boiling, grinding whirlpool. The violent currents, eddies and torrents have, over the last several thousand years, carved out a deep hole in the limestone canyon wall and riverbed. The much harder granite outcrops form a perfect swimming hole about twenty feet deep. Above are boulders, good places to sunbathe and dive into the cold clear water.

Taylor and Wendy spent the last afternoon at the swimming hole, doing both and watching the bass swim around the rocks.

Panther Hole was deep blue compared to the shallower water running along most of the creek. It was called Panther Hole because the old rancher who sold the place to Doc Webster swore he saw a jaguar there on Easter 1902. He called it “a Meskin panther.”

Wendy and Taylor were stretched out on an oblong granite chunk stuck out over the water when Doc Webster appeared on the opposite bank. At his side was a short, dark, kinky-haired young man.

“People are laying bets all over campus on where you are and if you’re together. I’m right proud that you chose my scrabbly ranch to consummate this notorious liaison. The Franchise and the daughter—it has the sound of a stage play. A hill-country drama. This is Tommy McNamara.” Doc Webster ruffled his hand through the dark, curly hair. “Tommy is a soon-to-be-famous Texas author financing his first novel by doing a government study of the effects of sleep deprivation on chickens.”

Wendy and Taylor turned over on the rock, watching the two wretched men on the far bank. The dark young man with the tight curly hair kept hopping from foot to foot like the ground was hot; then he would shiver all over. Doc Webster drank from a bottle of vodka and handed it to his friend, who gulped it down like water. They hadn’t slept in days.

“Oh, Doctor,” Taylor said, “please tell us how Tommy deprives those government chickens of their sleep. Wendy and I really really want to know.”

Wendy elbowed him in the ribs. “Don’t encourage them.”

“At first I yelled at the chickens a lot,” Tommy said, “but they took it personal, so now it’s rock ‘n’ roll music twenty-four hours a day.” Doc took the bottle. Tommy stumbled backward, then caught his balance and continued. “Plus all the amphetamines in the chicken feed. Keep a bunch of chickens awake three, four days on speed and rock ‘n’ roll and you will really see them pushing back the frontiers of science.”

“The guy has got values,” Wendy said to Taylor.

“I
knew
you two would be here,” Doc yelled across the water. “When I saw those two empty seats! The vacant throne, the absent Spur. I knew you came out to my ranch and fell to fucking just past the first cattle guard.”

Wendy sighed, laying her head on her arms, while Taylor watched the crazed men.

“A very fecund point, Doctor.” Tommy munched his chicken feed and looked across Panther Hole at Wendy and Taylor. His thick glasses only discerned two separate blurs; his goggle eyes rolled wildly in his head. “Our quest required both of us to unlawfully consume great quantities of the US government’s chicken feed, and to cover our tracks, I’m stepping on the rest with cracked corn. I hate to do it, but the government don’t let people steal chicken feed. Money? murder? okay, but any chicken feed gone and they’ll get your ass.”

“Tommy used to edit
The Iconoclast
,” Doc boasted.

“The Iconoclast
?” Wendy asked. “You were against a lot of stuff, weren’t you?”

“Goddammit, you name it, this boy is against it.” Doc drunkenly bent and hugged the small, dark, kinky-headed boy around the neck. “This is the Kinky-Headed Boy. As my only other client, he’s going to do great things.” The professor pointed a rolled-up paper at Wendy. “I have her father’s absolute final offer for you.”

“Fine, Doc,” Taylor said, “I’ll look it over later. I just want my fair advantage. Six hundred thousand dollars a year in cash.”

The two men stumbled up the path toward the stone house, passing the vodka bottle, munching the government’s chicken feed and singing:

          
If only John Lennon had packed a .44

          
The eighties would not have become such a bore ...

Wendy and Taylor stretched out on the towel on the hot granite and let the sun bake them. They could hear Doc Webster and Tommy McNamara after they went inside the house.

“Doc is your lawyer?”

“Uh-huh. That’s your father’s sixth absolute final offer he’s got.”

“Is Doc any good?”

“Who knows? He’s a lawyer who can still feel shame; that’s something.”

“I’ll bet the Kinky-Headed Boy doesn’t live long enough to do great things,” Wendy said.

“He’s already lived long enough,” Taylor said. “I just wonder what he thinks is a great thing? A rooster that crows for Yellow Sun Records?”

“Is six hundred thousand dollars a great thing?” Wendy asked.

“Six hundred thousand dollars is just a price tag. You’re a great thing.” Taylor pulled Wendy to him. She curled up against his hot chest. He kissed her, liking the taste and feel of her sweat. She placed her fingers behind his neck as Taylor pulled back to gaze at her fine-boned, sun-reddened face.

“I haven’t let you see me at top form yet. Maybe someday ...” Wendy rolled over on her stomach.

Taylor began to massage her neck and shoulders and trace the fine line of tiny blond hairs that followed her spine.

“Maybe ... soon ...” she murmured drowsily. “I’ll let my angels go dancing with your demons ... Then we’ll see if you know a great thing when you see it. We may have a major love affair.
If
you have the nerves to make the just and courageous choice.”

A.D. K
OSTER SPENT
Water Carnival burglarizing sorority and fraternity houses to come up with the money he owed the Cobianco brothers. He got the money, but it took all four nights and by then he was The Water Carnival Burglar, being hunted by the law and “crimestoppers” on the TV news.

The last night, armed frat rats lay in ambush. Two drunken Phi Delts were shot and wounded by a squad of Sigma Chi vigilantes.

Meanwhile, with Suzy Ballard driving, A.D. hit the black and Jewish fraternity houses. The pickings were slimmer but much safer. A.D. knew about people; that was his strength. He just didn’t know about himself; that made him weak and dangerous.

Taylor thought A.D. was The Water Carnival Burglar. Since coming home on Simon’s wedding day with a black eye and stitches in his lip, A.D. had been desperate for money. After Water Carnival he never asked Taylor for money again. Taylor assumed it was for the Cobianco brothers. He never asked. A.D. never volunteered.

After Water Carnival nothing was ever the same. The Sigma Nus dyed the river purple, killing all the fish and amphibians for three miles downstream.

A
T SUN-UP THE
clattering, backfiring rattle of Doc’s old pickup driving round and round in circles in the rocky side yard woke Taylor.