Life Its Ownself (12 page)

I shook my head. "Coach, I guess I don't understand. Has Rice got a Chinese quarterback or something?"

"Naw, they got a nigger. Why?"

"No reason," I said. "I was just trying to pick up the thread of the plot."

T. J. bellowed at the Horned Frogs again.

"Who eats shit?"

"Chinamen!"

"What with?"

"Rice!" It was a group reply.

I refilled the coffee cup. "T.J., you do know where the name comes from, don't you? An old rich guy named William Marsh Rice founded the school. He was a person, like a Duke or a Vanderbilt or a Stanford."

"Them's schools," said T. J. He bit off a chunk of chewing tobacco.

"First, they were people," I said. "Leland Stanford was a robber baron. William Marsh Rice was a cotton-farmer robber baron."

"Billy Clyde," T. J. said to me with a sympathetic expression, "what the fuck's wrong with you? John Brodie and Jim Plunkett and them studs didn't play football for no sissy named Leland."

"You're right," I said.

He said, "Let me explain something to you. Rice pricks is engineers, ain't they? Scientists? Computer technology and all that shit? Well, who knows more about computers than anybody? Chinamen, that's who."

"It's the Japanese, isn't it?"

"Japs, Chinamen. God damn, Billy Clyde, gimme a fuckin' break!"

"I'm beginning to understand."

"Awright, then," T.J. said. "Fuck Rice!"

Out on the field during warmups, I met three of T.J.'s assistant coaches. Like the head coach himself, they were all dressed in purple knit shirts, khaki trousers, and purple baseball caps. They all had a mouthful of gum or tobacco.

It was a warm September afternoon. Being down on the field was a good feeling, a fanciful experience. I was looking around at the crowd that filled only half of the 46,000 seats in TCU's stadium when Mike Homer came up to me. He was the Frogs' offensive coordinator.

I asked Mike if TCU was ready to play a good game.

"You can't ever tell," he said, his eyes fixed on a cute TCU cheerleader who wore a white tank top and a short pleated purple skirt. She had frizzy blond hair and tanned, curvy legs. "Lots of high-class beaver up in New York, huh?"

"Yeah," I admitted, largely to please him. "We got a thrower?"

"Guess you get it lobbed at you from all directions."

"Pretty much. How good's our passer?"

"That there's old Sandi," he said.

Now I was staring at the cheerleader.

Mike Homer said, "Lord, I know she's somebody's daughter, but I'd wet her down."

The assistant coach then raced onto the field to slap a player on the side of his purple helmet for not throwing the ball with enough steam on it.

A few minutes later, I was shaking hands with Red Jeffers, the defensive coordinator.

"We ready?" I asked him.

"God damn, there's old Sandi," he said, feeling around on his crotch.

Sandi was in a huddle with the other TCU cheerleaders. While I wasn't all that fond of midgets, I said:

"Old Sandi's all right."

"You ain't shittin'," Red Jeffers said. "'Course, I reckon she ain't nothin' to compare with New York whup."

"New York whup?"

"They got it up there, don't they?"

"Pretty much."

"Damn." he said, clawing at his balls again. "All them Wops and Jews with big titties. I'm gonna get my ass up there one of these days."

Red Jeffers then raced onto the field to slap a player on the side of his purple helmet for not digging out hard enough on a sprint.

The last assistant coach I met was Ronnie Bob Collins. He was in charge of the defensive secondary.

"Looks like we have some speed in the secondary," I said to Coach Collins. "Will they hit?"

"Not like that little shit over there," he said, looking at Sandi. "How'd you like to get hooked up with her? Tell you one thing. You wouldn't need no kick-starter on your tongue!"

The teams returned to their dressing rooms for last-minute instructions and nervous pisses before the opening kickoff. That was when T. J. formally introduced me to his valiants.

The introduction was moving enough. I was an All-American, an all-pro, a man who had once sneaked out of a hospital where I was recovering from three broken ribs to beat Notre Dame almost single-handedly on a Saturday very much like this one.

T. J. put his hand on my shoulders as he faced the Horned Frogs. "If Billy Clyde Puckett was eligible and I needed him today, he'd drag his butt out there—cast and all—and find some way to win!"

I didn't know what in the name of the Gipper I would say to the TCU players until I sat on the edge of a table and looked out at their farm-kid faces, their street-smart glances, at the white numerals on their purple jerseys.

Like most major college teams, and most NFL teams, T.J.'s current batch of Horned Frogs were predominantly white with certain positions reserved for black athletes.

T. J. went along with the thinking that had clouded the minds of other head coaches throughout the history of integrated football. A quarterback should be white, even if he was a lanky senior like Sonny Plummer, who knelt on the floor in front of me and whose arm reminded T. J. of a seal. A ball-carrier ought to be black, even if he was Webster Davis, a tailback T.J. hoped to replace next year with Tonsillitis Johnson, Davis being a runner T. J. described as having no right to be black because he was "too fuckin' slow." Elsewhere, tight ends were white, wide receivers were black; centers were white; offensive and defensive linemen were both—size was all that mattered; linebackers were white, cornerbacks were black. Safeties could be either shade if they were good outfielders.

There was more country-boy prejudice than scientific logic behind this thinking—the Hall of Fame is littered with exceptions. But nearly every coach is an ex-player who remembers the time some black athlete screwed up in a critical game situation. White players screw up, too, but a coach rationalized this by saying the white players are only trying too hard to win, whereas black players screw up because they aren't trying hard enough, seeing as how they're black, of course. A coach detests careless mistakes.

Coaches don't care if you understand their logic in the matter, and they don't give a shit whether you condemn it or not. All coaches are cautious and conservative by nature, mainly because their jobs often hang on the bounce of a fumble—and most of them spend their careers getting fired for not winning.

A coach creates his own mistakes at times, and he'll frequently do it by assigning his black athletes to the "hot- dog" positions that he insists are best suited to the mind and body of the black athlete, positions in which the blacks themselves are the most "comfortable." These are the positions that require speed, skill, and strength, ideally all three, but don't necessarily require brainwork.

Coaches remind themselves and each other that a quarterback has to call plays or audibilize, a center has to pick up the blitz, a linebacker has to "read" before he reacts, and a tight end has to like the dirty work of blocking more than he likes to catch passes—and you want a coach to trust a black guy to do those things?

A coach in the 1980s had yet to be fooled by any of history's exceptions to his rules. Coaches had yielded to the changes in society but somewhat on their own terms. Coaches still hadn't seen a great black center—that must prove something.

But with the emergence of the black athlete had come another problem. Kids today, white or black, wanted to be told "why" before they jumped in the slop in the name of duty, honor, the old school colors—and that "why" was just too God-damn-much fucking trouble for most coaches to explain to a kid who was getting a free four-year education and all the pussy he could handle.

You jumped in the slop because a coach like T. J. Lambert said so or you got your ass benched or fired.

And now it was to a group of TCU athletes that T.J. wanted to fire—lazy, prideless losers—that I was expected to say something inspirational before they went out to challenge the Rice Owls.

I began by saying how fortunate they were to be playing football for a character-builder like Coach Lambert and his dedicated staff, men like Mike Homer, Red Jeffers, Ronnie Bob Collins.

Fear of losing an audience may have accounted for what I said next.

"Men, I saw something out on the field a while ago that reminded me of another Rice game," I said. "I saw one of your cheerleaders. Cute little girl named Sandi."

"Awwright," said Sonny Plummer, there on the floor in front of me. He and Webster Davis exchanged a high-five and pointed at their crotches.

I acknowledged them soberly and continued.

"My junior year we had a cheerleader who looked enough like Sandi to be her older sister—and it was. Her name was Tracy. I guess you could say Tracy was the most popular girl on the campus. Pretty little blond devil...vivacious, outgoing. Well... the Saturday of our game against Rice, right here on this field, she started walking over to the stadium from her room in the Tri-Delt dorm and a terrible thing happened. That great little girl...Sandi's older sister...she got run over and killed by a crazy, drunken Rice student in a sports car. Our team... we didn't find out about it till after the game—a game we lost."

I paused a minute, as if the thought of Tracy's death had made me nauseous all over again; then I went on.

"Maybe you guys know what I'm gonna say next. Sandi's going to be out there yelling her heart out for you this afternoon. She'll be yelling for you to beat the Rice Owls the same way her sister would have cheered us on if she'd lived. So how 'bout it, gang? Let's even the score. Let's win this one for Sandi and her sister!"

T. J.'s voice boomed out. "Get them low-life fuckin' murderers!"

The Horned Frogs tore out of the locker room like maniacs, whooping, cursing, banging on locker doors, aching for the blood of the Rice Owls.

T.J. shook my hand.

"You did real good, son."

"Thanks, Coach."

"Was that a true story?"

"Part of it. We did have a cheerleader who looked a lot like Sandi."

"What'd she do?"

"The main thing she did was give Shake Tiller the clap."

The score was 12-3 at halftime in favor of Rice.

No touchdowns were scored. Rice recovered four fumbles inside TCU's 20-yard line and kicked four field goals to get its 12 points. The Frogs salvaged 3 points on a field goal in the last minute before the half. A 40-yard pass-interference penalty gave TCU the ball on Rice's 1-yard line. Three running plays lost 5 yards, and T.J. settled for the field goal.

In the locker room, T.J. was livid. He wasn't outraged so much at the score, at the fact that his team was down by 9 points, as he was at the indifferent way the Frogs had performed.

They had shown no zip. They weren't hitting. They weren't alert. They didn't even look concerned.

"I'm takin' the blame for the way you puked up them two quarters," T.J. said to the team. "It ain't a question of no guts, it's a plain case of no energy, and it's my fault. Your problem is, you done left your blockin' and tacklin' in a bunch of that sorority whup!"

Girls were the enemy of football players, T.J. said. "If the truth was known, ever damn one of you got spermed out last night. Don't nobody look at me like I'm wrong!"

He spit tobacco juice on his pants leg, wiped off his chin, and said:

"I've give up on this game. Fuck it! You can let them slant-eyed sumbitches embarrass you if you want to, but next week things is gonna be different! The women on this campus is gonna get a lot less football cock on Friday night!

"When I was a young shitass, they said it was bad to mastrebate. Well, it took some time, but we put an end to that myth—and you're gonna do the same thing! Mastre- bation is good for a football player! It's particularly good for a football player on the night before a game. Mastrebation takes the pressure off. Mastrebation has been the secret to more than one football team what kicked somebody's ass!

"You're gonna find out if you mastrebate instead of dippin' your wick, you'll conserve energy. It'll take the pubic hair off your brain. You fuckers done pubed me out in the first half. Embarrassed yourselves in front of Billy Clyde Puckett, a great All-American, and a good many of your mommas and daddys no doubt. If you'd mastrebated last night—right hand fast, left hand slow, don't make a shit— it wouldn't have happened, and it ain't gonna happen again to the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs, you can bust my ass if it does! Now get outta my sight! I ain't got no more time today to watch worms fuckin'."

The Frogs thoroughly dominated the second half. Sonny Plummer flapped his seal-like arm for two touchdown passes—they were end-over-end, but they worked—and Webster Davis plowed 12 yards for another touchdown, the longest run of his career. TCU won the game, 24 to 12. T.J. was triumphantly carried off the field on the shoulders of three beefy linemen.

I may have been the only observer who could appreciate the jubilant gestures the Frogs made with their left and right fists as they trotted past the south goal posts and disappeared into the tunnel leading to the Coliseum dressing room.