Semi-Tough (6 page)

"Clyde," he said, "I would like to know if you studs are gonna win that big old sports event on Sunday."

I said, "We are if the Pope ain't a nigger."

Elroy said, "Now, Clyde, you know what I mean. I want to know for sure if you folks think you can handle them other folks. Hell, you've seen all them old films and all. Son, I just know you must have seen something in them films that'll help my confidence. I got to have my confidence helped before I go runnin' off to bet Mamma and Papa and Sister Marvene and the kids and the trailer rent and all."

"They're a good team," I said.

"Aw, shit, Clyde. That don't tell me nothing. I know they're a good team. Hell, everybody's a good team," he said.

I asked him what the price was now, just out of curiosity.

Elroy said, "They come three and a half but it's down to pick because one of their niggers got hurt or something."

I said, "Those dog-asses don't have anybody hurt."

"Well, then, the New York Jews done bet it down to pick," Elroy said.

"They did open three and a half, didn't they?" I said, mostly to myself.

"Just as if it was Texas playin' Oklahoma," he said.

"Looks to me like a Super Bowl ought to be considered even," I said.

"It's even now. Them Jews done bet it down," he said.

"But they opened up on top," I said.

"Well, hell yeah," Elroy said. "Clyde, they been in this old Super Bowl before. Two or three times. But you ain't. That's why I got to know something."

"We haven't found out much," I said.

Elroy said, "Clyde, that's a lot of cheap shit and you and me both know it. All I want to know, son, is which one of them old defensive backs of theirs is a fag or has the clap or can't cover the outs. You know what I mean."

I said, "Gambling is sinful."

"Clyde, I got to know somethin'," Elroy said. "Now looky here. I want to bet my chest and lungs and kidneys and my future heart transplant on this thing. I got me some old Jet fans that want to give me three, four, five and six and I'm just about to lap it up. But I got to know a thing or two. You gonna get 'em?"

"I want to hear some more singing," I said.

Elroy whooped and said, "Clyde, I'm gonna let you be the first to listen to my new golden record."

I tilted the phone over toward Cissy, who was getting tangled up on my body. We heard Elroy sing "I'd Give a Dollar for a Dime to Put in This Machine and Play the Song That Brings You Back to Me."

It was pretty good.

"Don't that mother knock your dicks in the dirt?" Elroy said.

I laughed a yes.

Then I asked Elroy where on Earth he was calling from, and he said he thought he was in Atlanta but then it might be Seattle.

"Why don't you look out the window and find out?" I said.

"There ain't nothin' out the window but a cruel world, Clyde. There's ambulances and fire engines and insurance salesmen and data computers and all kinds of things out there," he said.

"Probably some police, too," I said.

"Naw," said Elroy. "There ain't none of them. Didn't you hear? The niggers got 'em all fired."

I said, "The police might be wearing plain clothes."

"Hell, no," Elroy said. "If there was any cops around they'd be wearin' their blue. You know how they like that blue. I'm gonna write me a song about the cops one of these days. I'm gonna call it 'Blue.' "

I told Elroy I had to get up and go to a squad meeting pretty soon.

"Clyde, listen," he said. "There's one other thing. Old Elroy Blunt is gonna be out there day after tomorrow."

"Oh, shit," I said.

"Sure enough gonna be there," he said. "Got me a big old house rented for the weekend in Bel Air. I'm bringin' in more pounds of barbecue and Scotch and them funny little old cigarettes than you have ever dreamed about, and I am also bringin' me an ensemble of horny little old debutantes that I'm sure you and your pals will want to say hello to."

I said, "Elroy, this isn't exactly a party weekend for us."

Elroy said, "You tell old Shake and
T.J.
about it. Saturday night's gonna be the night."

"That's the night before the game," I said. "No way you'll see any of us that night."

"We'll start early," Elroy said. "Now, Clyde, I know you well enough to know that you don't sit around and draw circles and X's the night before a game."

"I don't intentionally destroy myself either," I said.

"Ain't no destroy, Clyde. Just some barbecue and a couple of drinks, and some little old debutantes. It'll help you relax. You'll still grab your ten or twelve hours. You tell old Shake and
T.J.
now, you hear?" he said.

"Yeah, O.K.," I said. "Now I got to get moving."

"Clyde," said Elroy. "Just tell me what you think about all them old Jet linebackers and corners. Can you run on 'em at all?"

"We'll run," I said.

"Serious? Can you?" he said.

"I think we'll get outside, away from Dreamer," I said.

"Can you really?" he said.

I said, "Yeah, that dog-ass Buford on the other side
don't show me a lot of want-to."

"And what about old Dream Street his own self?" he said.

"He cheats," I said.

"Goddamn holy fornicate Christmas bundle of fried chicken!" Elroy hollered. "I just done won me a new air
-
o-plane. You lure them sumbitches up tight with the sweep and the slant, and then you go wide at Dreamer and option his black ass with the halfback pass to old Marvin Tiller! Shithouse mouse, we'll have their dog
-
asses on Sunday!"

"Say good-bye to my little old Cambodian friend," I said.

Elroy Blunt sang something semi-filthy to Cissy Walford and we hung up.

She said, "Was that important what you told him about the game? About being able to run away from the Dog
-
Asses?"

I pulled Cissy over on top of me and spoke into her long, yellow hair.

"Could be," I said. "Except for one thing. The danged old football's just not round. That sumbitch'll bounce funny on you."

Your special delivery letter arrived today, Jim Tom, and I just can't resist sharing it with the general population.

It says:

I-Slot, Fake Sweep, on two:

Any time you want to start sending me some
tapes, I'm ready to try to make you sound like you got out of a sixth-grade spelling test with a D
-
. Remember to keep an eye out for detail. Try to recall the color of the wool you're chewing.

The
Fort Worth Light & Shopper
, a newspaper noted for its relentless crusades, found City Councilman C.T. Badger double-parked yesterday in front of the Mutual Savings & Loan building and ran sequence pictures of the automobile on Page One.

Earlene the Blimp wants to know if our book is going to make us rich enough to buy a Volks camper so we can take some wonderful trips to Benbrook Lake.

After the first edition closed this morning, I went to breakfast at the Picadilly Cafeteria and watched Big-un pour cream gravy on his cantaloupe.

I hope your book has a lot of dirty words in it, a couple of rapes on the first few pages, some pirates, dope smugglers, Indians, a revolution, a gaggle of orgies, and a heroine who's oversexed, deaf and dumb, and whose father owns a liquor store.

By the way, I have a title if you haven't thought of one. I think you ought to call
it If Niggers Are Tough, How Come You Never See One on a Motorcycle?

Earlene wants me home early tonight because she plans to fix her famous pinto bean pie. I hope so. It's a whole lot better than her famous can of salmon, jar of salad dressing and box of Premium crackers.

We thank thee, Lord, for this food for the nourishment of our bodies.

I can face it if I stop by Reba's first and feel around on Crazy Iris or Earth Mother Fudge.

Crazy Iris is a nasty little bubble-gummer who works for Mid-Plains Oil Supply and makes a man want to run away with her and rob filling stations. Earth Mother Fudge knows quite a bit about journalism from the point of view of a spade hooker with lungs like shoulder pads on a lineman.

Enclosed is a copy of a recent "Palaver" in which you seem to turn out being greater than Bronko Grange or Doak Rockne.

Stay with the tape recorder. Fuck the game. Games have a way of ruining a perfectly good week.

Tryin' one, Astronaut Jones

We all giggled at your letter, Jim Tom. But we talked about what a shame it was that your columns aren't ever as funny as you talk or write letters. Shake said it was the paper's fault.

"Football is serious," he said. "If you let a man start getting funny about football, the next thing you know he'll start getting funny about your department stores and your tire dealers, and then where would your newspaper be?"

Puddin Patterson stopped by our palatial suite a while ago to sit down and laugh.

Puddin was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and shower slippers, and Cissy Walford had never seen anybody that big out of street clothes. Puddin is six feet eight and goes about two seventy.

Cissy looked at Puddin and quietly said, "Oh, wow!"

Puddin asked if I had realized that
T.J.
Lambert broke his all-time chili cheeseburger record this morning at the squad meeting.

I didn't know it.

Puddin pointed out that
T.J.
must have stayed out all night somewhere and came straight to the meeting with eight chili cheeseburgers from Tommy's Drive-In over on Beverly and Rampart.

"Eight of 'em," said Puddin. "And he inhaled ever one of them cats before we got through fifteen minutes of film."

The phone just rang and it was Commissioner Cameron, who said he was calling up both team captains to wish us luck and also to remind us that both teams are expected to be at a Friday luncheon at the Century Plaza.

At the Friday luncheon, I'm told, everybody on the two teams is supposed to meet a lot of governors and retired generals and movie stars and get a bunch of gifts, like watches and rings and blankets.

I may have neglected to mention that I'm the Giants' captain.

Commissioner Cameron said he had already called up the dog-ass Jets' captain, which is Andy Odom, who is not a bad tight end.

"Did you remind him that his ass is in deep water on Sunday?" I said.

Commissioner Cameron laughed.

He's a good old boy who's really helped all the players in the league get a lot of money out of their owners, most of whom are a pack of spoiled rich kids who give you bad stock tips.

Commissioner Cameron also likes a cocktail now and then, which I think is good. And besides that, it may not hurt to mention that on certain occasions around New York, Commissioner Cameron has been known to turn up in places like our apartment when word had circulated that some stewardi and light hooks had come over for an all-skate.

I asked the Commissioner if he'd got any good wool lately.

THE
PHONE RANG AGAIN A WHILE ago but I didn't get mound to answering it because it happened that at the
time
I was in the pleasant process of pulling Cissy
Walford
's wool down over my ears like a helmet.

I'VE BEEN THINKING THAT TRYING to write a book during the week of the biggest week in my life is probably less fun than being next-to-last on a high school gang
-
fuck.

There are parts of it which I don't mind because it helps me relax and take my mind off Dreamer Tatum. These are parts which I think of as being amusing.

It's the other parts that are a pain in the ass. All of the explaining you have to do. Things that Jim Tom says the publishing company, LaGuerre & Koming, will insist on being in the book. A lot of background stuff.

You better not be shitting me, Jim Tom.

I've been at it for over an hour now, telling all about last night and this morning. And I've just realized that I haven't ever begun to tell about people like our coach, Shoat Cooper, or the rest of the team, or in any depth about Shake Tiller or Barbara Jane.

Shake's in his bedroom of our palatial suite, either taking a nap or reading another book that some Russian wrote about God. And Barbara Jane has gone off to have some drinks with some advertising people.

That's another thing. I've forgotten to mention that Barbara Jane models for a lot of commercials on TV and
on
signboards. In the world of modeling she's a stud, is
all she
is. Probably everybody has seen her who has
ever
watched TV or driven a car. She's the girl on the
signboards
—
right now, in fact
—
smoking those
Kentuckians
, those long skinny cigarettes. And she's
the Pacific
Basin Airlines girl looking back over her shoulder
with
just the bikini bottoms on, strolling along Waikiki in Hawaii.

About a year ago she was the girl on TV who
did those
funny imitations o
f a vampire bat, trying to get some
kids to eat the right breakfast cereal. And she was also the girl on TV they dressed up like Cleopatra and put in a Volkswagen floating on a barge down the Nile.

DDD and F did all those.

Barb remembers having quite a time making that airline commercial in Hawaii, mainly because of Burt Danby, who's the head of Doff, Danby, Dendle and
Frederickson
. Ever since Burt Danby thinks he discovered Barbara Jane he's been trying to nail her.

Harb says she had to run a whole lot better than I ever did against the Cardinals or Eagles to keep from getting blitzed by Burt over in Hawaii when we weren't around.

He still tries, now and then. But Shake and me never get hot about it.

I think everybody in New York has been in love with Barbara Jane at one time or another. She's had every known swipe taken at her, but of course she doesn't love anybody but Shake Tiller
—
and maybe me.

Barb came up to New York when we did, just after we had signed with the Giants. We were all really happy to have been chosen by fate to wind up in the big city.

The Giants had told me ahead of time that they were going to draft me. They had the second choice in the first round. I had said that I wouldn't sign unless they drafted Shake Tiller also. We were determined to play for the same team, even if we had to go to the Canadian League. I was taken first, of course, being a "white runner."

The Giants worked it out that Dallas, which had the third choice in the first round, drafted Shake for them.
I
think they had to give up three or four players and some future draft choices to get Dallas to do that.

Anyhow, that's how Shake and me became New York Giants.

Barb hadn't given any thoughts at all to becoming a model when we moved to New York. She immediately got a job at CBS as a secretary. She just strolled into the CBS sports department one day and one of their producers saw her and said, "If you can make coffee, you're hired."

She could have walked into any building in Rockefeller Center and done the same thing. Barb is just so pretty she sometimes frightens people.

Her main job at CBS seemed to be going to lunch for about four hours every day, to places like Mike Manuche's on Fifty-second Street, which is a restaurant with a lot of sports paintings on the walls where Giant fans go to discuss trades.

It
was in Manuche's one day that Burt Danby saw
Barb for
the first time and decided she ought to be a model. I've heard her say that this was her introduction
to the
hip ways of New York. Burt spotted her, walked
over
to the table, unzipped his fly, looked down at his
crotch
, and said, "Now, sir. Would you please stand up, give us your name, and tell us what you do?"

When Barb roared laughing, Burt knew he'd found a
good
chick. He turned her over to his creative department at DDD and F and said, "I want her to be big, big, big."

In those days, even though Burt learned that Barb belonged to us, he high-played her all around town. He would always be thinking up reasons why the two of
them
had to have dinner or cocktails.

I think he just likes to turn up at all of his joints with a winner on his arm. He likes to put on velvet jackets, hot
-
comb his hair, hang a bunch of gold shit around his neck
dogtags and animal heads and the like
—
and prance into Elaine's up on Eighty-eighth and Second Avenue
with
a Hall of Famer in his company.

Burt takes considerable pride in being able to get a
table
anywhere he wants one, even Elaine's, where movie stars and archdukes and shoe company presidents and a grand assortment of born-rich fools have been known to stand in line for hours.

Barb doesn't mind going along occasionally, even now.
Especially
if me and Shake are out of town. It gives her something to do, and of course everybody likes front row center.

"He's harmless," she says. "And he's actually kind of sweet."

To which Shake says, "He wears Gucci underwear."

Well, I can joke about my employer, but I'll tell you how strong he is. One night he took Barb and Shake and me up to Elaine's and the narrow front room up there was packed as usual with all of the semi-artists and spoiled rich pricks who sit there and stare at each other's dates and clothes.

Seeing Burt was there and needed a table instantly, Elaine herself personally cleared out a bevy of brooding poets and eye-shadow junkies so we could sit down.

Burt leaped for the chair with his back against the wall, banged his fist on the table, and said, "Isn't this the
super
-est place in the whole world? Broadway, I'll lick you yet."

So anyhow Barb's off with Burt Danby now and some other advertising nitwits, and Shake is either asleep or reading, and who I basically have on my mind is Shoat Cooper.

I'll tell you something. The great miracle of our age is that the Giants are in the Super Bowl with Shoat Cooper for a head coach. Him being the coach was a stroke of genius on the part of Burt Danby, by the way.

When me and Shake were drafted, the head coach was Doyt Elkins, of course, who had originally been hired by the Maras, the old organization. I thought Doyt was a pretty good coach, considering that he only communicated with the players by memo.

We could have done all right with Doyt. But he went to the Cowboys and took the whole staff with him, except
for
the head scout, which was none other than Shoat
Cooper
.

Burt Danby didn't even look for anybody else. He said the press liked Shoat because they got drunk together. Besides, Burt said, he was sick of coaches who made the game so mysterious.

When Burt announced that Shoat had the job at a press conference, he said, "God, I'm just so up to
here
with zig-outs and
fly
patterns. I mean, the way they all talk, they just practically make me do a total
face-down
in the old salad. Shoat Cooper keeps its simple. And lake it from an old advertising cock that if no one knows what you're
saying
, you couldn't sell welfare in
Harlem
."

What Burt didn't add was that Shoat Cooper came cheap.

I'm not sure where to begin to describe the country sumbitch.

Shoat's big. He doesn't have much hair left. He looks like he's got about twelve six-packs of Pearl in his belly. And he's always looking around for somewhere to spit.

He's got a slow, deep, country voice. A husky kind of voice, like somebody who just woke up, or like a deputy sheriff talking to a spook who forgot to park his pickup truck between the white lines.

I don't think I've ever seen Shoat act like he's excited.

The one time back during the regular season when we were behind, which was at a halftime when the Redskins had us down by thirty to fourteen on some lucky passes, Shoat Cooper just acted like nothing was any different.

When we all walked into the locker room at Yankee Stadium and slammed our hats down, there was Shoat on a little stool in front of the blackboard, looking down at the floor.

Everybody was bitching and moaning for a few minutes, those that hadn't peed yet or done various things. Finally we plunked down and got quiet and looked at him.

Shoat sat there, chewing on a toothpick, and then he got around to telling us about the first half.

"Well, defense," he groaned slowly. "Seemed to me like you all just kind of stood around and let 'em eat the apple off your head."

Then he spit.

Nobody said anything back for a minute or so and then Puddin Patterson said, "They stuntin', Coach. On Blast and Cutback, that fuckin' Seventy-six is comin' from somewhere and I can't get a piece of him."

Shoat said hmmmmm.

Puddin said, "I believe we can catch 'em, coach. We gonna roll like a big wheel this half."

Shoat said, "Well, we ain't gonna catch nobody unless our defense gets together and decides that they ain't gonna let 'em piss another drop."

Shoat said for the defense to go down to the other end of the locker room and get their problems worked out.

T.J.
Lambert drew himself up and said, "Awright, defense. We got to screw our navels to the ground now and get them tootie fruities."

The defense moved
away as
T.J.
hiked his leg and cut a
big one.

Puddin
Patterson said, "Coach, where that Seventy
-
six
comin' from?"

Shoat looked at the floor for a while and then he said, I
tell
you what let's do, Puddin. Let's you just go out
there
this half and concentrate on tryin' to hit ever
su
mbitch that's wearin' a different colored shirt."

Shoat's idea for the second half was for Hose Manning
to
throw a couple of new patterns in the third quarter, rel something else on the scoreboard, and then "outgut"
the
Redskins in the last quarter.

He
would always go back to the running game if you gave him half a chance.

"If you run the football up somebody's ass," Shoat says, "then it's them that h
as to get their hands dirty try
in'
to pull it out."

Early in that second half against the Redskins, Hose Manning hit Shake for fifty-five yards on a fly, and that brought us up to thirty to twenty-one.
T.J.
recovered a fumble right after that and Hose kicked a field goal to make it thirty to twenty-four. But after that, we didn't do anything but run old Billy Clyde.

I carried the ball twenty-two times in the fourth quarter, and scored two sixes, and we finally won it, thirty
-
eight to thirty.

I was a heavy-breathing sumbitch on the sideline toward the end, but Shoat Cooper put his arm around my shoulder pads and said, "Stud hoss, I ought to buy you

a rubber dolly. That was pure dee football out there."

Shoat Cooper had been a great player in the NFL himself. The old-timers will tell you that there weren't many linebackers any better. Maybe Tommy Nobis was. Or Dick Butkus.

But Shoat in his day was some kind of pisser, they say. They say he craved action so much he would beat his head on the locker room wall until they let him loose for the kickoff.

Shoat came out of Arkansas, like his name suggests. He was from Possum Grape and played ball at the University of Arkansas, where the freshman team is called Shoats.

But they say that's not where he got his name, Shoat. Growing up,
I
hear, Shoat just looked like a baby pig, or a shoat, so somebody started calling him Shoat.