Life Its Ownself (34 page)

Kathy accepted Burt's unique flattery with a smile.

"You're Billy Clyde's 'assistant'?" Veronica said to Kathy.

"I'm the stage manager," Kathy said.

"Hmmm," Veronica said, not believing it for a second.

The Danbys were with two couples who had flown to Texas with them on the team plane. Their names weren't worth remembering. They looked as if they could tell you nothing more than where to shop for floral trousers or hand- knitted sweaters in the vicinity of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Burt said to me, "You're good on TV, ace. You don't drill a hole in me like that fucking Larry Hoage. Jesus, can he talk? He can say less in more words than six guys running for governor!"

"I've been thinking about football," I said. "The doctors say I'd be crazy to try to play again. I like television. You were right, it's a souffle. Maybe my playing days are over, is what I'm getting at."

"You want the truth, Billy Clyde? Once a knee, always a knee. You'd never be the same again."

"What about the Gucci knee you promised?"

"I'm an owner," he said. "I lie!"

I asked Burt what he thought about Shake's expose.

"Loved the broad," he said.

"That's it?"

"What else is there? It's print journalism, Billy Clyde. A week from now, it's history. And you know what? Our TV ratings will go up. Who's not going to watch pro football now? Jesus, it's like we've got our own game show. Joe Bob and Martha sit there with their Miller Lites and their Velveeta sandwiches and try to guess who the crooks are. 'There's one!' 'No, it's not!' 'Yes, it is, he dropped a flag!' It's dynamite. When you see Shake, tell him kiss on the lips from the big guy."

"Do the other owners agree with you?"

"We've got some assholes who worry about integrity," Burt said. "I was on a conference call with the Competition Committee. I said relax, guys, how many times have you seen integrity going to the bank?"

"The quality of football doesn't bother you?"

"With my team?" said Burt. "If we'd
tried
this year, we'd still be oh-for-fifteen!"

"So you think the players are laying down—like Shake says?"

"A few pinkos, big deal. It's nothing we can't cure with a checkbook."

Kathy astutely asked Burt who was going to replace Billy Clyde Puckett on the Giants. They surely weren't going to stay with Amos Hixon, the rookie from Prairie View who had been filling in for me.

"He's gone," Burt said. "I'll take any white guy I can get. We'll have the first draft choice. I'd like to get the kid from Illinois, but he's got Count Dracula for an agent. I may trade for the guy at Tampa Bay."

"Ron Tooler?" I said. "He's slow."

"Yeah, but he's white. You want to know the real trouble with pro football, Billy Clyde? Forget the zebras. Too many spookolas, that's our problem."

"Too many what?" said Kathy.

"Mola gomba," Burt said. "We're getting too many. Pal of mine at Y-and-R's been a season-ticket holder for twenty years. He doesn't go to the games anymore. He says, 'Fuck it, I already take
National Geographic
.' I argue with the networks about it. I told 'em one of these days if we aren't careful, we'll be right in the shitter. They say I'm wrong, look at ice hockey. They say ice hockey's an all-white sport but nobody watches ice hockey on TV. You can't give it away. Jesus, I know why nobody watches ice hockey. It's got nothing to do with color. They don't watch ice hockey because it's played on fucking ice! We're gonna be in trouble if we don't cut back on the mogambo, I'm serious. That'll be some great Super Bowl one of these days—Swaziland and Mozambique in the fucking Rose Bowl!"

Before the game started, Kathy went to the broadcast booth to prepare her picnic, and I wandered down on the field to visit with Shoat Cooper and some of the Giants.

The old coacher said, "I sure wish I had you with us today, Billy Clyde."

"Looks like you need more than me," I said.

Shoat said, "This season ain't exactly been my idea of high times. I'm gonna have to get me some lumber and nails and start over, is all I can do."

Where did he intend to start?

"Not a bad place right there," said Shoat. He looked at Dump McKinney, who was flipping passes to receivers. "That withered-arm sumbitch can't spiral it from me to you."

"You need help in the offensive line," I said.

"Tell me about it," the coach said. "Powell there can't spit over his chin. Brooks ain't been off his belly since October. Jackson's so slow, he has to make two trips to haul ass. Burris swapped his brain for a tree stump. I ain't been around so many jewels since the last time I was in Woolworth's."

I spent a moment with Dump McKinney.

I asked the quarterback what the Giants might try to do against the Cowboys today.

"Get out of their way," Dump said.

Larry Hoage welcomed our TV audience to a "bronco- bustin', calf-ropin', steer-wrestlin' wingding of a ro-day-o" that was coming from "deep in the heart of Dallas, Texas, where the deer and the antelope roam."

Larry glanced at me for a comment on the game before the kickoff. I said it had been a while since I had seen an antelope in Dallas, but I'd bet Neiman-Marcus had one in stock.

The Cowboys secured a spot in the playoffs by rolling to a 24-to-Q lead over the Giants in the first quarter. They scored on two intercepted passes for touchdowns, two field goals by their placekicker from Kuwait, and two safeties, which were the result of Dump McKinney slipping down in his own end zone while looking for a receiver.

Larry Hoage gave full credit to Dallas' "Doomsday Defense," which hadn't existed for years.

There was a moment during the first half when we watched a cut-in from the New York studio on our monitor. That day Charlie Teasdale was refereeing a game in San Francisco, and when he had taken the field at Candlestick Park, he had received a standing ovation.

Larry Hoage hadn't read Shake's story, I gathered, or read anything about the expose in the newspapers, or even listened to Brent Musburger on the cut-in, because when New York came back to us, Larry said over the air:

"What a great tribute to a great guy! We don't give the officials enough credit, by golly! Kind of thing you like to see!"

I was standing up, my broadcast habit now—and looking down on the field in the third quarter, when I heard Kathy's voice on my headset.

"Wow—Barbara Jane Bookman, it's you!"

My wife was in the broadcast booth.

I took off my headset and started over to give Barb a kiss.

"Nice surprise," I said.

"So is she," said Barb, retreating coldly, telling me with a look that Kathy Montgomery was never going to be her best friend.

I knew there was something I didn't like about Learjets. If your father-in-law owned one, and it happened to be sitting around in Los Angeles on business, and his daughter happened to get on it, she could be in Dallas in two hours, and surprise you in a broadcast booth, and get the wrong impression about your stage manager. Because of the Learjet, a guy could get separated, even divorced, and be miserable the rest of his life. The Learjet had its drawbacks.

Now in the broadcast booth, Barb turned to Kathy, and said:

"Hi, Ken. How's it going?"

"Ken?" Kathy frowned.

I said, "Her name's Kathy, Barb. Kathy Montgomery. She's a good girl and a good friend."

Barbara Jane said, "I see why you leave on Thursdays for a Sunday game. Good luck with your life, asshole!"

With that, Barb whirled out of the booth.

I went after her. Not in a panic, but hurriedly.

Out in the stadium corridor, as Barb was getting on the press elevator, I said, "Come on, honey, it's not what you think—and I'm on the air, damn it!"

"Wrong," she said. "You're on the street."

Leukemia was a butterscotch pie compared to marital discord. My dad had been right all those years ago. Marital discord drove a toothpick up your ass with a sledgehammer and dragged you backwards through a sewer drain. Marital discord could turn you into a knee-crawling, dog-puking drunk, a dope-sick, no-count, sorrier-than-white-trash, store- bought son-of-a-bitch whose ass wasn't worth wiping with notebook paper. Marital discord made you so God-damn tired, you couldn't eat spaghetti.

Marital discord didn't necessarily make you a bad broadcaster, though. I was nominated for an Emmy in December, as the playoffs got underway.

I would have been prouder of it if almost every broadcaster in sports television hadn't been nominated, either as the Outstanding Sports Personality—Host or Outstanding Sports Personality—Analyst.

It wasn't until after the news of the nomination had come in the mail at the New York apartment that I found out the three networks had nominated their own people. The imbecile Larry Hoage was even nominated by Richard Marks, so it wasn't as if we'd been selected by a panel of Walter Cronkites.

I only felt like I deserved an Emmy if you compared me to Larry Hoage, but being separated from Barbara Jane, I kind of wanted to win the thing out of some feeling of vengeance.

None of our friends could believe Barb and I were separated, and neither could I. And none of our friends could do anything about it. Everybody made a plea to Barb in my behalf—Shake, T.J., her parents, Burt Danby, Dreamer, even Kathy, which must have been the briefest conversation of them all, knowing Barb. Shake was as good a friend of Barb's as he was mine, except that when it came to domestic matters, men stuck together. He went out to the Coast, a mercy trip, to try to patch us up. Came back with a bruise.

I had tried once. Pride wouldn't let me go any further.

In a conflict between men and women, pride becomes the adversary of both.

The day after Barbara Jane had turned up in the broadcast booth in Dallas, I had returned to the Westwood Marquis and we'd had one of those debates that never get you anywhere and only infect you with an anger that's hard to get rid of because it burns the lining of your soul.

I began by saying, "Barb, this is the first real problem we've ever had. We've got a chance to show what we're made of here."

"You've done that," she said.

"You're wrong about me and Kathy Montgomery," I said. "I know why you think what you do. I should have told you about her from the start. I was an idiot. I can't really explain it, except that good-looking women don't like to hear about other good-looking women... do they?"

"Good-looking?" said Barb. "She's fucking immortal! You do have good taste."

"Kathy's a kid," I said. "She's a young girl out of Berkeley ... a television junkie. She's ambitious. She thinks I'm a big deal. Girls her age are always into hero-worship, I can't help it."

"Is this going to be the tenor of our conversation?" Barb said, lighting a second cigarette to go with the one in the ashtray. "Are you going to remind me every two minutes that she's younger than I am?"

"Nothing happened between us, that's the point," I said.

"Bullshit."

"It didn't."

"Bullshit!"

"You're wrong," I said. "Why do you think it did?"

"Because I've seen her and I know you. Two months with Ken! How dare you?"

"What the fuck have I done?"

"You lied to me...took advantage of me. How many Kathys have there been? I know you, Billy C.! I've known you all your life! You've got about as much willpower with women as you do with barbecue ribs!"

"Why'd you marry me?"

"I loved you. I thought you had become a grownup."

"Did I hear a past tense?"

"Yes!"

"You don't mean it."

"The hell I don't!"

"You're just hot, Barb. I admit you have a right to be. I misled you—it wasn't really a lie—for some dumb reason I can't explain, but you don't stop loving somebody because of that."

I tried to go near her. She stopped me with a look of "territorial ferocity," as Shake described it in a book. Women were better at it than leopards.

"You'd like Kathy if you knew her," I said.

"Ha!"

Somehow, I had known that was the wrong thing to say, even as the words came out of my mouth.

"She looks up to you," I said, making it worse.

"Good!" said Barbara Jane. "I'll send her an eight-by- ten!"

"While we're on the subject of friends," I said, "what about the suave Jack Sullivan?"

"What about him?"

"What's going on there?"

"Oh, no," said Barb. "Uh-uh, you're not going to turn this around. You're the asshole here, not me. And I want you out of here—now!"

"Jack Sullivan's just a good friend... a director, right?"

"That's right."

"Well, that's all Kathy is—a good friend and a stage manager."

"Did you hear what I said? I want you out of here."

"What the hell will it take to convince you, damn it?"