North Dallas Forty (14 page)

“Okay, first we’ll pass out the kicking sheets. You guys on special teams listen up. Buddy will go over the assignments.” B.A. had started talking the instant he stepped into the meeting room.

“All rat, you guys.” Buddy Wilks walked to the front of the room. “I want some asses kicked this week.” He started to write on the blackboard. The chalk broke and made a bone-grinding screech. Buddy held the chalk to his face and inspected it, then tried to write again. The noise made me think of dental drills and surgical saws.

“Goddammit.” Buddy threw the chalk on the floor. Silent grins flashed around the room. The angry man turned and pointed his finger. It was shaking. “Write this down!” he demanded. “Those returns against us last week were five point four yards per carry over our reasonable goal and nine point six yards from our outstanding. You can’t win a championship with a return defense like that.”

Buddy was an ambitious former All-Pro running back who saw a head coaching job as the fitting conclusion to a life well spent in sports. He had started five years ago as our backfield coach and since then had been steadily demoted. Now he was in charge of specialty teams and statistics. Three years ago B.A. had designed a questionnaire to unearth the reasons for a recent team slump. Buddy was named as a major factor in thirty of the thirty-five returned questionnaires. Several players, myself included, didn’t believe B.A.’s promise of anonymity and had refused to return the mailing. That off season saw three unexpected trades and Buddy’s first demotion. It seems the enclosed return envelopes had been coded with pinholes.

“You’ll see,” Buddy continued, his hands clenching and unclenching the front edge of the podium. “I’ve listed their punt return tendencies first, rather than to start with their kickoff return tendencies like we normally do. There’s a reason for that. Their punt return team is one of the best in the league. If you guys ain’t ready they’ll run right down yer throats and out yer assholes.” He raised his voice slightly and slammed a hand down on the podium top. The boom startled even Buddy.

A loud murmur went through the room as players oohed and aahed in mock fear.

“Okay, you guys.” Buddy’s face was crimson. He couldn’t stand to be taken casually. “You better know this stuff,” he warned, “ ’cause we’re having a written test on it, Friday.”

More moans and several distinct snickers floated up to the front. Buddy stared at the papers in front of him as he fought to control his anger. His hands shook noticeably.

“I guess that’s all, B.A.” Buddy’s voice trembled. “These guys don’t wanna win.” He retreated from the front of the room. Several players put their heads down to hide grins and to stifle laughs.

“You fellows better know this stuff,” B.A. said, returning to the front of the room, knowing Buddy was too enraged to finish. “Okay, let’s break up.”

The defensive team shuffled out to another meeting room. The offense stayed. We would get our tendencies where we sat.

B.A. handed a sheaf of papers to the first man in every row, instructing him to take one and pass the rest to the men behind.

“I want to read this to you, so you all know what it says,” B.A.’s voice was grave. “I think it’s pretty important.”

“If you think that you can’t win ... you won’t.” His voice modulated rhythmically. “If you think that you’re losing ... you’re lost.”

It was a poem designed to remind us that winning could be assured and losing made an improbable accident by a positive state of mind. B.A. had clipped it out of some athletic-equipment catalog back when times were leaner and had it reprinted and stuck in the front of every playbook. Apparently he thought it was time to get back to some basic transcendental values.

I looked around the room. Several players frowned to disguise grins. Most of the assembly stared vacantly into their playbooks or drummed their pencils on desk tops, keeping time to some personal rhythm. Alan Claridge sat curled two seats away. The poem was devastating him. He saw me looking at him and put his hands out toward B.A. in a gesture of defense. Ducking his head, he tried to retreat into his chair. My face collapsed into a grin and I immediately put my head down lest I be accused of resisting acculturation.

“... it’s all in a positive mind.” B.A. ground through the fifth and final verse and stopped. He fell silent, looking down at the podium.

“I guess you guys understand what this poem means,” he said finally, looking into our faces. His eyes were strangely blank.

“It means you’ve lost your fuckin’ mind,” Seth Maxwell whispered from directly behind me. I coughed to keep from laughing.

“You guys are all great football players, that’s why you’re here,” B.A. continued. “The difference between good and great is only that much.” He had held up his thumb and forefinger; they were pressed together. “And, it comes from right up here.” He tapped his head above his right ear.

“I thought it came from all those little pills we took,” Maxwell continued to mock in a small voice. I cleared my throat. If I cracked under the incredible tension that filled the room, it might be several minutes before I stopped laughing. It would be disastrous. I coughed again and tried to collect myself.

“You got a cold or somethin’, Elliott?” B.A.’s voice sent a shiver through me. Although terrified, I still wasn’t safe from a laughing fit.

“No sir,” I said, nostrils flaring. I rubbed a hand across my face, trying to stem the ear-to-ear grin. “Something in my throat. Sorry.” I cleared my throat and kept my eyes averted.

“I can’t think of anybody who could use this advice more than you.” B.A. sensed he was being sent up.

“I listened to the poem. I know the goddam thing by heart.”

“We don’t need that kind of language, young man.”

“Yessir.” I dropped my eyes to the desk and doodled nervously.

I kept my head down the remainder of the meeting, intensely studying every sheet of paper in front of me. Several times I could feel B.A. glaring at me, but I never looked up.

When the meeting ended, it was still raining. We climbed aboard a waiting city bus and drove to a nearby recreation-center basketball court to practice. The size of the facility limited the workout to three-quarter speed and ruled out any contact drills.

The pass patterns for the New York game were standard sidelines, turn ins and down and ins with the exception of one sideline and go and a fire pass wing zig out, the only deep routes the flanker had. I was anxious to try them, but the limited space ruled it out.

Pass scrimmage consisted of short routes run against a skeleton defense of linebackers and deep backs. In the confusion of the surroundings, I lost sight of a quick slant in and took the ball on the end of my fingers. There was a loud, hollow thunk and my hand went numb. I could tell by the sound I had dislocated some fingers. I looked down at my right hand. My ring and little finger were perpendicular to the rest. The hand started to throb.

“Goddam ... goddam,” I yelled to John Wilson, who was playing the strong safety. “Pull em out, Jesus ... pull em.”

My face was twisted in pain and there were tears in my eyes. Wilson reached out, grabbed the fingers, and pulled as hard as he could. There was a loud pop, the sharp pain eased, and a dull throb set in.

“Goddam ... shit.” I shook the hand vigorously, walking toward the huddle.

The trainer intercepted me and grabbed the aching hand.

“Which one?” he asked.

“Which do you think?”

The two fingers were already twice the size of any of the others. The trainer took two strips of flesh-colored tape and splintered the sausage-looking fingers to the middle finger.

“How’s that?”

I flexed the fingers a couple of times; the pain was bearable. I nodded and headed back to the huddle.

“That comes from not concentrating, Phil,” B.A. yelled from the bleachers. I waved the two fat fingers at him and shrugged. He smiled and then turned and said something to Buddy Wilks.

“Tell ’em you want a new ball,” Andy Crawford greeted me with a smile as I stepped into the huddle. “And then try the palms of your hands instead of the ends of your fingers.”

“Fuck you.” I made an obscene gesture with my middle finger. The splinted fingers made it look more like a boy scout hello.

“Teflon,” Crawford addressed the huddle and nodded toward me. “His hands are like fryin’ pans and nothin’ ever sticks to ’em.”

“Okay. Okay,” Maxwell said, glancing over to the bleachers and B.A. “Red right. Fire wing down and in on two.” He looked up at me from his one-knee position. “You feel up to it?”

I nodded.

“Well, then, hold onto it this time.”

I set up my break at about three-quarter speed and rounded my cut, weaving by the outside linebacker who was perfunctorily going to his coverage zone. Space was too limited for all-out effort. I looked back for the ball. Maxwell had slipped on his setup and was late on delivery. He lofted the ball gently over the middle. In a game, or on the practice field, it would have been intercepted. The cornerback drove for the ball, pulling back at the last second to allow me to catch it. I was reaching out when the middle linebacker Tony Douglas smacked me in the throat with his forearm. The first thing to hit the floor was the back of my head. Everything went red. I was choking. I felt like I had swallowed an alphabet block. I didn’t want to open my eyes until I was certain my eyeballs wouldn’t fall out. When I finally rolled my eyelids back the trainer was standing over me. B.A. had moved the drill to another part of the floor.

“You okay?” Eddie Rand asked, holding out a hand.

“I guess so,” I answered, swallowing hard. The lump in my throat had shrunk to the size of a domino, nothing felt broken, and there really wasn’t much pain. I was embarrassed and angry. I reached up, took Rand’s hand, pulled myself to my feet, and limped to the bleachers to sit down.

“Phil,” B.A. called from several rows behind me. I turned my head, wincing from a stiffness in my neck. He broke into a big smile and nodded his head. “Now, that’s concentration.” I had to laugh.

I sat out the final twenty minutes of practice. Little was accomplished. It was always that way when practice location changed. Discipline broke down and most of the time was spent just trying to organize drills.

Back at the clubhouse, I was pleased with the way my legs felt, although I had a pretty good headache. The workout had been short and the codeine I had taken before the meeting had been more than sufficient. As I walked by the locker occupied by Monroe White, a black rookie defensive lineman, I noticed Jo Bob Williams putting a live toad in the webbing of Monroe’s helmet. Monroe hated scaly, slimy, crawly things at least as much as I hated spiders.

I got into the whirlpool and, at the same time, soaked my hand in ice water. Although the dull ache traveled clear to my shoulder, it was a minor injury, nothing to worry about. It still hurt.

A half hour later I went to the showers.

“Hey, tripod,” O.W. Meadows pointed out the obvious endowment of a black rookie named Sledge. “If that thing gets hard, there ain’t gonna be room in here for the rest of us.”

“There’ll always be room for you, O.W.” Sledge pointed at the tiny white knob peeking out of Meadows’s pubic hair. Everybody laughed.

“It ain’t my dick they love, it’s my pile-drivin’ ass.” Meadows tried to rally his own defense.

I butted in. “I’d bet fucking you is like getting mugged.” I rinsed myself and walked into the locker room.

“Fuck you, Elliott,” Meadows growled. “Fuckin’ queer.”

I was dressed and walking toward the outside door when Monroe White threw his headgear at Jo Bob.

“Goddam you, Williams,” Monroe raged. “I tol’ you, you muthahfuckah, to cut the jive.” He was standing dressed only in a jock, his six-foot-six, two-hundred-sixty-pound frame gleaming black with sweat. One hand on his hip, he was pointing the other at Jo Bob’s face. Jo Bob looked strangely uncertain. The men silently faced each other. The toad was squashed on the floor.

“Sheeit,” Monroe said finally. He spit and turned back to his locker. Jo Bob walked into the training room. I continued on outside.

It had stopping raining. Several players, black and white, were gathered around John Wilson’s Corvette, drinking beer from the ice chest he kept in the trunk. Everyone was laughing and slapping palms. The conversation was pointless and friendly. I was warmed by the camaraderie and disappointed when the beer ran out. Besides myself there was Maxwell, Crawford, Richardson, the rookie Sledge, and Wilson; we made plans to meet later that evening at Rock City, a discotheque in east Dallas.

Maxwell had to speak at a YMCA football banquet and asked me for a joint before he left.

“I can’t spend two hours with those kids and their over-achieving parents, straight,” he said as I handed him two joints. “I’ll see you later,” he called out as he headed for the blue Cadillac convertible.

“Give ’em hell,” I yelled back.

The stash in my glove compartment was running dangerously low, so I decided to head to Harvey’s to buy some dope and catch up on the counterculture.

Harvey Le Roi Belding was a psychology instructor at Southern Methodist. He had been suspended about six months back for participating in unauthorized demonstrations. The ACLU was pursuing his reinstatement; Harvey had confided to me that he wasn’t interested in securing his job, but hoped to get some of his back pay.

Since the suspension, Harvey’s house in a bohemian part of Dallas had become a gathering place for the disgruntled children and dilettante revolutionaries of Southern Methodist University and wealthy north Dallas.

A lot of dope came through the house. More recently the heavier stuff—coke, liquid amphetamine, and meth crystals—had found its way inside. I had known Harvey for years and since I scored directly from him it was the safest place I knew to get grass.

When I first met Harvey, I was the only man on the team, with the possible exception of some blacks, who turned on. But each year a larger percentage of the rookies came into the league with several years of drug experience, often dating back to high school. Marijuana use had become so widespread in professional football that league officials had retreated from their position of antimarijuana enforcement. An internal security division of the league hired ex-FBI agents to work with federal, state, and local authorities to protect the league from scandal. Even so, a careless or unlucky player could find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and get arrested for possession. The league would then categorically deny any knowledge of the player’s felonious habits. Our team was violently split over marijuana. Everybody used drugs of some sort, but players like Jo Bob and Meadows, heavy amphetamine users, were violently opposed to grass. Their main objection was that it was illegal. Their after-the-fact rationalization about brain damage and marijuana leading to harder drugs fell by the wayside the summer I brought a gross of amyl nitrite to training camp. Since Amys could be purchased quite easily and legally without prescription, Jo Bob, Douglas, and several others began carrying loaded Benzedrex inhalers everywhere. It was not unusual to be watching B.A. diagram a play in the nightly meeting and hear a loud gasp and a heavy thump at the back of the room. B.A. seemingly did not notice while everyone else would be acutely aware of Jo Bob or Meadows sprawled face down over his desk, immobilized by a hefty dose of amyl nitrite. Their necks and ears would turn a brilliant crimson while the giant bodies heaved and shook uncontrollably in laughter stimulated by an oxygen overdose. It was great fun.