The Legend of Jesse Smoke (27 page)

Finally I said, “You’ll have to get a better disguise next time, for one thing. And, uh, lose that wig. Didn’t fool anybody.”

She laughed, then got into her car and drove off. I stood there for a while, watching the red of her back lights pass out of view. It seemed like the world had gotten so much bigger on us, all of a sudden, without either of us even noticing it. Or maybe, in a really sad way, the whole thing was getting smaller and we just didn’t know it. I felt sorry for her mother. I’d certainly never failed anybody like that, as fucked up as my own life might have been. Sometimes I wished football had not taken over my life so completely. I was married once—back when I was a player. I thought I was happy. The woman I married was beautiful and smart and kind. She tried really
hard to make it all work. But she wanted children and I didn’t. I used to say to her, “I’m gone most of the time. I can’t be an absentee father. Wait until my career is over.” I bought her a dog, thinking that would do it, but it only made her more determined to change her life. When I retired, life just sort of broke us down. I got into coaching, and with the late hours and moving so frequently, and traveling with the teams I coached, it was pretty easy to let things disintegrate.

Once my wife was gone, I didn’t have time to truly miss her. Oh, I had my moments, but … nothing lasting or crippling. I don’t think I let her down, either. Just like she didn’t let me down. I was glad to be able to say we’d remained friends. On the other hand, what would it have been like to care enough for somebody that betrayal meant something. It’s hard to explain and I shouldn’t talk about it in this venue, but … I guess I’m just trying to describe how it felt that night as I watched Jesse’s car disappear up the dark street.

We had a bye—a week with no game scheduled—after the Aztec game, so the players had the first four days of that next week off. They still came to the complex and worked out and all—some of them checking in with the trainers or the medical staff to work on bumps and bruises. Except for Jimmy Kelso and our first kicker, we’d had no serious injuries thus far. Sure, Jesse had her bruised back, and Orlando had broken several fingers and had a slight hamstring strain that, without treatment, could easily get worse. Darius had a strained knee and Walter Mickens suffered from bruised ribs. And there were a few other minor complaints. But luckily we had made it almost halfway through the season and only Jimmy Kelso was out for the whole year.

We rested the tight end for a week before the bye, fully expecting he’d be back for our next game, which was in Cleveland, against the Browns. I haven’t introduced you to the tight end, but of course you know all about Gayle Glenn Louis. He was only in his second year
back then, so nobody really understood how great he was. Tall, fast, with really quick feet, and strong as a Clydesdale, Louis had hands as good as Anders and Exley. If you got it to within his reach, he caught it, no matter who bounced off him. He absolutely loved playing for Jesse; and he could block like a goddamn bulldozer. For sure he’ll make the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

Jesse, in spite of her back injury, came in every day to run laps and work with the weights. (She could bench 175 pounds, which was almost exactly her weight.)

We were 6 and 3 after nine weeks. The Giants lost their first game of the year to the Raiders, 16 to 10, and they were now 8 and 1. The Cowboys were also 6 and 3, tied with us for second place. Philadelphia was 5 and 4. So the NFC East looked like this:

For those of you who don’t know, PF stands for “points for” and PA stands for “points against.” We’d scored more points than anybody in the conference—193. On the other hand, we’d given up 132 points on defense. Overall, it looked like we were giving up almost as many as we scored, but those numbers were misleading. See, in the games where Jesse didn’t play quarterback, our offense averaged 14.2 points a game and our defense surrendered about 15.2, and we’d won 2 and lost 3. But since she’d taken over, a space of just four games, our offense had come to average 30.5 points a game, with our defense giving up only 14 points a game. And of course we were undefeated.

Everybody was happy except for Coach Engram. “She’s got to run the play that we call,” he said to me again. And then he told me he expected me to make sure Jesse understood it. “She’ll listen to you,”
he said. “At least I hope she will. And I don’t want to take the chance that she
won’t
listen to me.”

Our next opponent, the Browns, were leading their division with a 7 and 2 record. They were fast, hard-hitting, and prided themselves on their defense. Still, we looked forward to playing them. Our schemes were working on both sides of the ball, and it would be a real test for the whole team. Of course the offensive line was under intense scrutiny because of who they had to protect. The Browns made a point of telling the press that their defense did not have any “gentlemen” on it and they were looking forward to making Jesse’s acquaintance. (Sometimes, football players demonstrate an appalling lack of originality. The standing joke, of course, was that Jesse was not going to get any special treatment just because she was a lady. Just about every team made some remark like that. Or somebody would say something about “Big Mama” and her “brood.” Of all the names she garnered that year, that was the one she hated most, “Big Mama.”)

Coach Engram was unhappy about Jesse’s “autonomy,” as he called it—but, hell, he was always unhappy about something, except for the first few minutes after a good win as he was walking off the field. He hated the world when he was preparing to play another team, and above all, he hated the other team. He always saw the potential for disaster and tried to plan against it, but of course life does not let you get away with too much of that, so most of the time he was frustrated and pissed off. As for those things he
could
control? Or ought to have been able to? By god, he’d better have control over them. All of this just to say: He was not about to let this thing with Jesse get out of hand.

I’d forgotten to reason with her about it at the restaurant, or even to ask her about the insurance or what she was planning to do about the new contract, so I knew I had some unfinished business that I had to take care of during the bye week. But that wasn’t the only thing I had to do.

Jesse’s mother flew into Dulles Airport at a little past six in the morning on the Thursday after the Mexico City game. I met her at
the entrance gate, having been handed the responsibility by Coach Engram and Mr. Flores. I stood by the gate in a big Washington Redskins sweatshirt, holding a sign that said, LIZ CARLSON. When she saw me, she raised her arm and strode across the flow of people like somebody intending to choreograph a dance. She was tall—even taller than Jesse—with the same curly black hair, the same blue eyes. She was similar in form, too, with athletic legs, a thin waist, and a fairly slim-figured upper body. Her arms had real definition, I saw, like a bodybuilder’s, and the effect was astonishing. She looked basically like a sinewy tall guy in a curly wig.

“You Mr. Granger?” she said.

“Hello.” I don’t know what my face might have been giving away right then, but whatever it was, she noticed it.

“You the only one here to meet me?”

“Jesse isn’t …” I didn’t know what to say. I almost said that Jesse isn’t ready for this yet, but I couldn’t do that. Finally, as Liz just stood there staring at me, I said, “Jesse isn’t here.”

She looked puzzled, and then crestfallen.

“She said she wants to take it slow,” I said. But that was a lie. I hadn’t heard from her about any of it. When Flores told me Liz was coming I couldn’t get in touch with Jesse. It was Flores who told me Jesse had okayed the thing.

“What’s she afraid of?” Liz asked.

“Jesse Smoke? Nothing
I
know of,” I said.

She shook her head but smiled sweetly.

“Shall we get your luggage?”

“Sure,” she said. Her eyes were definitely Jesse’s. Or I should say you could see Jesse’s eyes in her face. Also the same flat nose, same full lips.

No one was at Redskins Park except a few of the permanent staff and one or two workers from building and grounds. I took Liz to my office—where, only four hours before, I had been watching films and getting ready to install a game plan for the Browns. I told her to sit
down and she took a chair across from my desk. “Would you like some coffee?” I asked.

“Had some on the plane.”

“You hungry?”

“Where’s Jesse?”

“She’ll be along.” It was a lie, but I was told to keep Ms. Carlson as happy as possible. I picked up the phone and called Mr. Flores. Liz stared at the film disk on my desk, but she didn’t touch anything.

“Good morning, sir,” I said when Flores answered the phone.

“She here?”

“Yes.”

“And Jesse?”

“Not yet.”

“You’ve talked to her about coming?”

“I will today.”

“Put her mother in the Hyatt. The top-floor suite.”

“That’s done. But, they won’t let her check in until after two. So—I thought you might want to meet this morning,”

“Sure,” Flores said. “We’ll have lunch together.”

“Yesterday you said breakfast. I’ve got her here right now, in my office.”

“I mean breakfast. Of course. I’ll be right over there. Call Engram.”

I hung up the phone. “Wouldn’t you like to meet the owner and Coach Engram over breakfast?”

“I want to see Jesse.”

“I’m going to try …” I said. “She may be able to join us.”

She brushed a wisp of hair off of her forehead. “Does Jesse know I … Did she know I was coming?”

“Yes.”

“But the team—I mean, you had to arrange everything?”

“Well, the team’s paying for it.”

She seemed to nod a bit and then we both fell silent. I stood behind my desk, flipping through the papers lying there, not looking at her.
She got a compact and some lipstick out of her purse and touched up her lips. Jesus, how I wanted somebody to knock on the door. Outside the sun had just started to peer over the rim of trees next to the practice field.

Then Liz snapped her compact closed, threw it and the lipstick back in her purse. “Jesse doesn’t really want me here,” she said. “Does she?”

“Pardon?”

“She didn’t arrange any of this, did she?”

“I’m sure she knows about it.”

Liz stared out my window. Her eyes looked kind of sad. “Does she make a lot of money?”

“You better ask her.”

“I will if I ever get to talk to her.”

“Well,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll come around.”

“What’s this funny-looking thing for?” She pointed to the deck for the film disk.

“It’s a kind of projector. We use it to show game films.” I walked over to the bookcase behind my desk and drew down the screen.

“Doesn’t
look
like a projector.”

“Well, it’s a little more technically advanced than your average. Uses disks and digital projection. I can manipulate film frame by frame with it.” She seemed truly interested, so I said, “You want to see a demonstration?”

“I want to see Jesse.” She was calm and said this without malice or
any
affect, really. She might as well have said she preferred tea to coffee.

“Look, she may meet us for breakfast,” I said. “But even if not, she’ll be here in a few hours to work out. She has to.”

She smiled. “I can’t wait to see her. Only she doesn’t look healthy in the photos I’ve seen.”

“Oh,” I said. “She’s healthy.”

“Can I see this thing work?” she said, pointing to the film disk projector.

I turned it on. It’s a flat device with control knobs on top, and the film projects from a small aperture on the front of it that you can zoom in with. I’d been going over the film of our offense in the last game, so that is what I showed Liz. I let it run through a few offensive formations and running plays, but she seemed to be studying Jesse’s movements.

“She’s so light on her feet,” she said.

“I know.”

“Don’t you have film of her throwing it?”

“Sure. This was just set up so I could look at our running plays.”

I shifted the machine to pass plays and as soon as I did, Liz said, “That’s an offset I- formation, isn’t it?”

“You know football?”

“My husband was a coach. I’ve seen probably as much football as you.”

“I doubt that,” I said, chuckling.

“Well. I’ve seen a lot, anyway. That,” she pointed to the screen as the film switched to another play, “that’s a single back, three-wide formation.”

I nodded, impressed. “Sometimes we run the tight end in the slot on that play,” I said. “He’s real shifty.”

After a while I was talking with her about football. She knew a lot. I shouldn’t have been all that surprised, because most women had gotten into it by then—but still, Liz knew the game intimately. She knew the names of defenses and formations and a lot of the less obvious plays.

“You learn about football through Mr. Carlson?”

“God, no.” She laughed. She had really white teeth and I liked her laugh. “Anyway, there’s no Mr. Carlson. I took my name back after the divorce. No, I learned all I know from twelve years with Kevin Smoke.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Well, he was devoted to football, and to Jesse.”

I waited.

“That’s it, though. That was everything for him. I was not a real part of his life once Jesse got to quarterback age.”

“And how old was that?”

“Oh, she was throwing the football with him when she was just a little thing. He gave her a full-size ball when she was maybe six or seven. That football was almost bigger than
she
was,” Liz said this with a slight, soft kind of sadness in her voice. It was a pleasant memory, you could tell, but she was clearly feeling sad about how long ago that all was. “They spent every day together, and all that time,” she said, nodding, “he was teaching her.”