The Franchise (12 page)

“It was empty,” Junie moaned. “
No one
sat on the throne. I asked some of the girls when I went over to take pictures; they hadn’t seen her since Tuesday’s rehearsal. She had a fight with Lem.” Junie was anxious and unhappy. “I saw Lem.” Now Junie’s voice quivered. “They have broken their engagement. She threw that perfectly lovely five-carat diamond away.”

Conly laughed and caught Red’s eye; both grinned and continued to scan the lists of available players.

“It’s not funny, Dick,” Junie moaned. “The poor boy spent all night in the riverbottom, looking for it.” Junie sighed. “Luckily he found it.”

“Wait until he tries to sell it,” Dick Conly said. “That’ll really break his heart.”

Wanda June Chandler looked around the room at all the dead animals and shuddered involuntarily. She hated the mounts; that was one reason why Cyrus filled his den with dead animals. Junie would not stay long in a room with glass-eyed and sawdust-filled carcasses. This revulsion did not carry over to the cedar closet where she kept her dozen or so fur coats. Questioned once about the contradiction, Junie didn’t see any connection.

“They don’t have faces on them, darlin’,” Junie explained.

“I’m worried, Cyrus,” Junie whined. “She’s never done
anything
like this before.”

“She does it all the time.” Cyrus’s eyes moved back to the Chicago list and he made a mark next to a wide receiver. “Have you forgotten the time she went to Paris on my American Express card because she got pissed off at Lem?” Cyrus looked at Conly. “She brought back that frog clothes designer. I had to throw the fag bastard out.”

“As I recall”—Junie turned snotty—“Dick threw him out.” She glanced at Conly, who kept his eyes on the player list, and she continued with urgency, “But that wasn’t during Water Carnival.” Junie’s eyes welled with tears. “The president of the Pi Phi house just doesn’t do that. I’m so embarrassed. I’m going to call Lem’s mother and see what she knows.”

“That’s fine, dear.” Cyrus looked over at a name that Red Kilroy had circled on the Cleveland list. “Tell her to have young Lem call me. We have business. Tell him to call anytime; we’ll be up here all night. He might as well start earning a living. His father never did.”

Junie nodded and disappeared down the hall to the master bedroom. Dick Conly watched her go, her forty-year-old-plus body still firm and supple. Cyrus watched Dick watch Junie. It pleased him to have things Dick Conly wanted.

Red Kilroy tapped his pencil on the name that he had circled on the Cleveland list. “This Bobby Hendrix son of a bitch is trouble, a regular clubhouse lawyer. But he can catch a football. I swear his peripheral vision is so good, he can see his goddam ears.”

“Do you want him?” Conly asked.

“As a receiver, you bet, but he’s a Union man, a real pain in the ass. The commissioner wants to blacklist him. He was one of the ones who threatened the antitrust suit, and now he’s after Charlie Stillman.”

“Can he play football?” Conly asked.

“He and Speedo Smith are about the best there are around,” Red said. “But Smith’s on the Blacklist too. He was Dallas’s player representative. Hendrix got to him at all the Pro Bowl games, I figure. They say he was a lot of trouble.”

“Do you want them?” Conly watched his head coach’s eyes.

“I sure do.” Red didn’t pause. “Team them with Taylor Rusk in a couple years ...” Red whistled and grinned. “These guys are player’s players. They know
how
to play and win and they can teach the young guys. We could make a big move here ...
cheap.”
Red glanced at Cyrus.

“Don’t worry about finance,” Conly warned. “Do you want them as players?”

Red nodded, his eyes cutting from Conly to Chandler.

“Hold on, now, do we want troublemakers on our team?” Cyrus interrupted, directing the question to Conly.

“Cyrus,” Dick Conly said patiently, softly, “you will cause more trouble before dawn than these two niggers will in their whole careers.”

That seemed to satisfy Cyrus momentarily.

“Hendrix is a white guy,” Red Kilroy said.

“They are all niggers, Red,” Conly replied. “Fuck their blacklist, we’ll get them both.”

“It’ll make Cleveland and Dallas mad,” Cyrus warned.

“I’ll worry about Dallas,” Dick Conly said. “Nobody worries about Cleveland.”

“M
Y FIRST COUPLE
of years at the University, I used to schedule my classes two hours apart. Then I could walk back to my apartment and be alone for at least one hour.” Taylor watched Wendy Chandler’s face. They were back inside; the fire had knocked the chill out of the rock house. “I was in culture shock, but I knew I’d make it.”

“What made you so sure?” she asked.

“No choice,” Taylor said. “I’m an athlete.”

“And you can’t fail?” Wendy was not being inquisitive.

“No.” Taylor tossed a chunk of mesquite on the fire. “Failure is inevitable, but an athlete can’t quit.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“The difference is academic. The General Rule of Life says anyone can get whatever he wants out of life if he is willing to work unceasingly with discipline and dedication. If he refuses to accept defeat, he will achieve his goal.”

“Sounds frighteningly familiar,” Wendy said. “Very American. It certainly supports the Protestant work ethic. Dreadfully middle-class.”

“It is.” Taylor nodded. “More dreadful for those of us in the lower classes. What’s worse is The Specific Rule of Life.”

The mesquite chunks began to pop and burn in blues and greens, he stared at the fire.

“Well?” Wendy was impatient. “What’s the Specific Rule say?”

“That ...” Taylor nodded; his face vacant, enchanted by the varieties of color that consumed the mesquite. “Everybody is an exception to the General Rule.”

“That’s it?” Wendy was slightly astonished. “That’s all? But you said ...”

“That I
knew
I would make it at the University,” Taylor interrupted, “because I was an athlete.”

“Yeah.” Wendy’s sarcasm changed to confusion. “I believe this is an exercise in sophistry.”

“Everything is an exercise in something. Just don’t quit,” Taylor said. “But I should point out that I
did
make it ... just like I
knew
I would.”

“Because you’re an athlete.” Scorn tinged Wendy’s voice.

“I’m a poor white agnostic American post-industrial border warrior ... just waiting on the broadsword and family crest. I am an athlete, I do not
quit
, that’s all I know. Everything else I work out daily.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“You
should know
before we get too deeply involved.” Taylor’s voice was soft, strangely distant. He kept his eyes on the blue-green flames and the mesquite, and he spoke as if by rote. “My life is intense, boring, violent, temperate, creative, destructive, vital and irrelevant ... and I am indestructible, frail, competitive, cooperative, selfish and generous.” Taylor paused for breath and Wendy’s comments, but she only stared at him silently, her face enigmatic.

“My fate is determined by meticulous planning and heedless happenstance,” he went on, “ingenious strategies and wild swings of the pendulum. I flip for both sides of the coin and get the edge.”

The mesquite popped and snapped, crumbling to glowing coals. Taylor was rambling, entranced.

“Every day I confront unlimited contradictions with limited skills. I
must
succeed, though failure is inevitable. I keep on, each day expecting victory in the face of insurmountable problems, ever-increasing humiliations. I accept pain, fear, defeat as due. I do not expect any luck but bad and know that if gods or spirits exist, they are arrayed against me. But each time I’m beaten down I get up and start over, reinforced only by my ignorance.”

Wendy was stunned by his passionate words, spoken in a passionless monotone like a pubescent Boy Scout reciting the Gettysburg Address.

“I refuse to quit the hopeless battle against chaos and darkness. My commitment is to life and man’s place in an endless war with death. I never quit and will die hard.”

He looked up from the fire and saw her watching him. His face was drawn but calm, his eyes black.

“I’m an athlete.” He spoke with the resignation of a man facing the gallows. “It’s my curse, my hope, my dream, my nightmare ... my
excuse.
”

His eyes, black holes in his face, radiated intensity from a spectrum beyond the visible. Wendy could feel his energy converging on her, exhilarating, electrifying, galvanizing, full of life and power. Terrifying.

“I thought you should know,” Taylor said, “I’m just waiting for my broadsword.”

“Thanks.” Wendy’s voice was weak, cracked, dry.

“I’ll tell you one thing.” Taylor watched her profile against the stone. “If that sword does show up? I don’t have a thing to wear with it. The damn cleaners lost my chain mail.”

Wendy laughed with relief and a new humor. “My poor little warrior. You have to dress impeccably to wear a broadsword. Slacks and a sweater won’t do.”

Taylor watched the changing shadows and angles of firelight on her face. She continually looked different and the same. It wasn’t the fire. It was her.

“You know,” Taylor began suddenly out of the quiet crackling of the oak and mesquite, “they have this show on television for old people. They give great advice for football players. I watch it a lot. The other night the subject was learning to cope with the death of your mate.”

Wendy saw the sadness pass from eye to eye, then a smile turned up his mouth and Taylor laughed.

“It was too insane.” He kept up the slight laugh. “They had an expert guest, of course, and the expert told everybody to take time now while your mate is still alive and
practice living alone.
Sort of make a game of it, he advised; every time one leaves the house, the other pretends they are dead.”

“Nawww.” Wendy began to laugh. “That’s a lie ... they wouldn’t....”

“I swear, the expert said it.
Practice living alone.
The guy was an expert, this was television ... Think about it.... It makes sense.”

“Maybe too much sense.”

“Want me to close my eyes and hold my breath? Let you get the feel?”

“No!” Wendy was suddenly angry and hurt and frightened.

“Good. ’Cause the expert is wrong,” Taylor said. “I’ve been practicing living alone almost ten years. It does not get easier. All I get is increasingly numb.”

T
HAP!

It sounded to Taylor like exactly what it was: a scorpion falling off the ceiling and hitting the pillow next to his head. It brought him out of a sound sleep and off the bed in one quick movement. It wasn’t until he got the light on and saw the scorpion scampering off the pillow under the covers that Taylor was certain he had not dreamt the sound.

Thap!
He had heard it a lot when he was a kid.

Taylor killed the scorpion with his shoe, put it in the ashtray and slept the rest of the night on his side.

He dreamt first about the time his brother Billy was stung by a scorpion. Billy was allergic and the flowers were blooming. He slept on his back with his mouth open ... wheezing ... snuffling ... gasping for air.

Thap!

Right off the ceiling into Billy’s mouth, the scorpion stung about ten times before Billy got it spit out. Billy was in a lot of pain for a long time with his tongue torn up and throat swollen almost shut. He almost died. Poor Billy. Taylor dreamt about his little brother. In the dream he cried about Billy’s pain. He hadn’t in life.

Thap!

Another scorpion fell, but this one hit at the foot of the bed and crawled off onto the floor, skittering across the rock and into a crevice in the wall. A big scorpion, a couple of inches long. Taylor barely noticed it.

He was starting a dream about Wendy Cy Chandler.

In the other bedroom Wendy wrote in her diary long after Taylor had killed the first scorpion and gone back to sleep.

It’s like he expects me to like him
, she wrote.

He’s not romantic at all ... he just stands there and expects you to like him and do anything he says ... not that he has any ideas about what to do. If you don’t like it, then it is not simply a matter of taste but evidence that you have a flaw. He is so rough and smells of sweat. His hair is dirty and unkempt ... fingernails are broken and dirty. It would take a lot of work to carry on a relationship. I would have to keep him up, like the yard.

Wendy stopped writing, laughed quietly, then began writing again.

He would be like a favorite dog that was always around, with all the problems attendant to owning a long-haired showdog. If you left it up to him, you never get to the show. He says he is an athlete and that is all. I wonder what my father thinks of him.

She would soon find out.

Taylor would have enjoyed reading the entry. It showed that Wendy understood what he was doing a hell of a lot better than he did, and she put a better gloss on it. Almost made it seem honest and real.

Wendy wrote about Taylor until late that night. She also wrote about herself. Once she thought she heard Taylor at her bedroom door, which she kept open to the fire. He wasn’t there.

“My problem is I’m out of sequence,” he had told her earlier. “I learn the wrong things first. I have my illusions destroyed before they get created. It is less painful but confusing, because everything
isn’t
an illusion or a metaphor; some things
are
real. Apparently I don’t get
to be anything
when I grow up, since we are dragged through life by our illusions, and I won’t have any left by the time I’m thirty. Lately I have been basically motivated by the constant urge to lie down. I would like to perfect the
nap.
”

Wendy fell asleep trying to imagine the perfect nap.

Thap!

Another scorpion woke Taylor at six
A.M.,
and after beating it to death with his shoe, he dressed and found Wendy in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, her face freshly washed in cold water, her hair pulled back severely and pinned. Wearing a loose-fitting chamois cloth shirt, jeans and boots, she was staring into her teacup.