Semi-Tough Read online

  Shake Tiller has said that if I was black I would not be thought of so much as any kind of hell and it would hurt me in the pocketbook. He's probably right. I wish that I was black sometimes, not because it would make me any faster, but because a lot of my buddies on the Giants are spooks who don't really enjoy being spooks. I don't think I'd let the world jack me around so much if I was a spook, but then I can't actually say.

  This has just reminded me of the first time me and Shake ever realized, deep down, that spooks weren't so bad. It was when we were freshmen at Paschal High and we were showering one afternoon after practice with some spooks.

  Where we grew up, you never came in contact very often with many cats. Only at track meets, or in ball games, and never very many even then. You never said much to any of them, except, "Good lick," or something like that.

  In Fort Worth the spooks all lived somewhere other than where your friends did. They certainly hung out at different drive-ins. I suppose we grew up thinking that a spook who could mow the lawn or get a job caddying had a better deal than most spooks could expect.

  Something like that.

  Anyhow, me and Shake were showering one afternoon and these cats came into the squad shower room with us. We just nodded to each other. We didn't know their names, only that they got bused in and played basketball pretty good.

  If anybody had asked us — a couple of fifteen-year-old smart-asses — what their names were, we'd have probably said they were Isiah T. Washington and Clarence Er-Ah Teague.

  After a few minutes, Shake said, loud enough for the spooks to hear, "Hey, Billy C., we been under this sprinkler for a long time and there ain't no smoke come off these Indians yet."

  I said, "I guess that means we can't get contaminated or anything."

  We were grinning.

  One of the spooks looked over at us and said to his buddy, "Coach he say he promise this soap wash this grease right off me. Shit."

  The other one said, "Yeah, Coach he say to scrub hod. I say er-uh I scrubbin' hod as I kin."

  And they laughed.

  Nobody said anything else.

  We turned out to be pretty good pals with those two cats before we got out of high school. One of them had a hell of a fallaway jump shot.

  I think it's fair for me to say that me and Shake never had anything against a spook of any kind — except for the ones which raised so much hell on the TV news. Everybody hates any shit-ass that raises so much crap on TV that it knocks off your favorite show because a network thinks it has to do a special on all the hell that's being raised.

  A spook that didn't raise any hell was O.K. with us, we thought.

  And that's really no joke that you hear. They can solid fuckin' dance, I'll tell you that. Nearly every one.

  I have been so carried away trying to begin this book that I've forgotten to tell anybody why I'm writing it, or how it is getting itself written. I guess I ought to explain it so it will give me a semi-clear conscience with my teammates.

  The main reason I'm writing the book is because I got talked into it by an old newspaper friend in Texas. His name is Jim Tom Pinch and if you've ever poked through a garbage can in Fort Worth, you may have seen his daily column, "Pinch's Palaver."

  Jim Tom persuaded me that it might be good for a pro football stud to have a book which might have a healthy influence on kids. He also said he would help me with it.

  People keep saying that kids are the hope of the world, and maybe even Texas. If that's true — and they're not all a bunch of vagrants — then I suppose I'm doing something worthwhile. Not to get too serious about it, but it might be true what Jim Tom says. That my ideas on football and relationships between athletes could help change the minds of several little old Southern motherfuckers whose families have taught them to hate niggers, hebes, Catholics and whores.

  The other reason for the book is that I happened to scare up a publisher in New York who was enthusiastic enough about it to give me a whole lot of what you call your up-front whip-out. Which is a shitpot full of cash, is what it is.

  I hope the publishing company of LaGuerre & Koming won't mind me mentioning their generosity. All I did was, I asked Shake Tiller if he knew a book publisher that liked to win Nobel prizes. He told me LaGuerre & Koming had published a lot of great authors, so I phoned them up. I asked them for the editor they had with the most hyphens in his name.

  I got hold of a real nice fellow who drew up the deal in exchange for nothing more than an autographed football and a promise.

  I'm sure I don't need to be telling anybody this. It just helped me to say it out loud, because of the team.

  How I am writing the book is sort of funny, I think.

  What I'm doing right now is sitting on my ass in me and Shake's palatial suite here at the Beverly Stars Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. I'm just sitting here on a sofa with my feet propped up on a coffee table. I've got a glass of young Scotch in front of me and this little tape recorder that Barbara Jane Bookman gave me.

  Everybody agreed that if the book was going to get written at all, I would just have to talk into this tape recorder ever chance I got and say whatever was on my mind.

  I asked Jim Tom Pinch who I would be talking to, and he said, "The world in general, your massive public, and your friendly neighborhood typist."

  So that's what I'm in the midst of, World. Hello, World. How you? I only hope the final version isn't too embarrassing for anybody.

  Right now, Shake is down at one of the swimming pools reading the newspapers about us, or reading a book. He does a lot of reading, which is why it was easy for him to tell me about a book publisher. In our apartment on Sixty-fifth and First Avenue in New York there are enough books to support the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge if it ever starts to sag. Shake reads just about everything he can, whether it's politics, novels or something interesting.

  Barbara Jane is down at the pool with him. She's usually wherever we are and has been since about the fifth grade. We're all best friends, only better than that. Really close. Except it's a little different with Shake and Barbara Jane. They're about half in love.

  So, anyhow, here I am writing my book. But don't get to feeling too sorry for me because Shake and Barb are hung up in what you call your romance, and I'm only the cruise director. I happen to be in the pleasant company right now of the lovely Miss Cissy Walford, who has been on the traveling squad for a number of weeks.

  The lovely Miss Cissy Walford is starting to blush as I speak her name.

  She's sprawled out comfortably across the room from me with a vodka tonic and a movie magazine. She has her legs draped over the arm of a big chair and she's wearing a pair of those expensive, crotch-tight, thigh-grabbing pants that must be made out of skin and she also has what obviously is a whole bunch of dandy lungs underneath a silk blouse.

  I guess I don't really need to point out that Miss Cissy Walford is some kind of good-looking, or she wouldn't be with old Billy Clyde. She's right up there in the majors with Barbara Jane Bookman on looks and Barbara Jane, of course, is so damned pretty it makes your eyes blur.

  The only thing wrong with Cissy Walford is that she's about half-Eastern. She's got one of those lispy, semi-stutter, fake-British accents that can really piss you off.

  She's from out on Long Island somewhere with a mamma and daddy who think Princeton still plays good football. They say things like they'd like to "go get a lob for dinner," meaning a goddamned lobster, and her fuckin' daddy wouldn't pick up a thirty-dollar lunch tab if he owned Wall Street, which he does.

  Her daddy can put you into some kind of a snore with stories about his golf game, or how he once played in a pro-am with Lee Trevino. He also goes on and on about where you can get a really good meal in New York and they are always places where nobody has gone in ten years except people from Des Moines or Cleveland.

  Barbara Jane says Cissy went to school somewhere like Briardale in Westchester County and majored in Bloomingdale's and minored in Bonwit Teller. T
hose are stores where women go in New York.

  Well, Cissy likes hanging around with old Billy Clyde, so I guess she can't be all bad. To tell you the truth, I think she's deep down a pretty good wool and if it weren't for the fact that she's such a self-centered, spoiled bitch with that nitwit accent and her shitheel parents, I'd probably marry her.

  She just threw a pillow at me.

  Missed, though. Kid never did have an arm.

  Now I think I'd better get down to why we're all out here in California. The fact is that the New York Giants have got themselves a little old date this coming Sunday in the Super Bowl against none other than the dog-ass New York Jets.

  This is some kind of joke back in New York, of course.

  Here are two New York teams in the Super Bowl, finally, and the game's being played in Los Angeles.

  Naturally, Commissioner Bob Cameron has been taking a lot of kidding about this. There are those who say it wouldn't have happened if Pete Rozelle was still the commissioner instead of becoming a United States Senator.

  I don't know about that. I don't think it's any more unusual for two New York teams to be playing the big game out in California than it was for the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Chiefs (the old Kansas City Chiefs) to play last year's Super Bowl down in Mexico City. Rozelle arranged that, just before he got elected to the Senate.

  Commissioner Cameron seems O.K. is all I'm trying to say, even though he sort of lucked into the job as a compromise candidate of the owners on the forty-eighth ballot.

  I think Commissioner Cameron deserves most of the credit for straightening out the Las Vegas situation. Wasn't it Commissioner Cameron who brought in the new owners to take over the Las Vegas Blackjacks (the old San Diego Chargers) after it came out that the franchise was somehow owned by Angie and Tony Mastrioni, who also happened to own the Jets?

  Commissioner Cameron ruled that nobody can own two pro teams, even if they're Italian.

  And wasn't it Commissioner Cameron — back when he was Rozelle's assistant — who helped the Maras sell the Giants for twenty-five million to DDD and F so the ad agency could keep us in New York instead of Bermuda?

  That was a big thing. The Maras would have moved the Giants to Bermuda or Honolulu just as sure as hell if Commissioner Cameron hadn't found a buyer who would pay the price. I think the Giants should have stayed in New York. I don't think New York would be the same without all the spooks and hebes and criminals and pro football teams which make it such a colorful city.

  All I'm trying to say is that Bob Cameron is a good old boy, as far as I'm concerned, and besides everything else, he and Shake and me have chased some wool together.

  Shake just stopped in to get a book and take it back down to the pool. He said T.J. Lambert was down there raising hell and it was kind of funny. He said T.J. had just run a bunch of hebes into their cabanas by putting his hand between the cheeks of his ass and asking a little old lady hebe, "Anybody got a hook I can pry this loose with?"

  Shake said a lot of people at the pool had been asking him and T.J. and some others for their autographs and that T.J. had been writing some interesting things down.

  He said T.J. wrote on a magazine that a little boy had given him, "Hope your old Daddy stays rich and you get yourself lots of cock when you grow up. Yours truly. Torn Jock Lambert."

  Shake said T.J. went over to the pool office where the telephone and the P.A. system are and got on the microphone. He said T.J. made an announcement to everybody at the pool.

  He said T.J. announced: "Telephone call for whatever Jew can get here first."

  Shake also said there was a whole stack of semi-starlets down there that I ought to see.

  I said I'd just as soon get some more writing done and contemplate some of the atrocities I might perform on Cissy Walford.

  "Have you mentioned that we're gonna kick the shit out of the dog-ass Jets?" Shake asked.

  "That's a foregone conclusion," I said.

  "Put in there that I went on record as saying I would play the greatest game of my life," said Shake.

  "Put in there that I'll probably catch two or three balls behind Dreamer Tatum and at least once I'll dough-pop him on his black ass," he said.

  One thing my buddy Shake has never lacked any great amount of is confidence. I don't think anybody has ever truly embarrassed Dreamer Tatum, at least not in all the films I've seen. And I've never heard of anybody bringing him any bodily harm.

  Dreamer Tatum is a roverback for the dog-ass Jets, which means that he plays a combination cornerback and linebacker and sometimes covers deep pass routes. He got his name Dreamer in college at USC because he put guys to sleep when he hit them.

  I'll tell you. Dreamer Tatum is a stud sumbitch on the football field. He's the only defensive specialist who ever won the Heisman Trophy. That's a trophy that's supposed to go to the best college player every year — and almost never does. Seeing as how me and Shake never won it.

  But Dreamer deserved the Heisman the year he got it, which was really an upset over those fuckers who vote in the East and Midwest. And besides that, he's been All-Pro for all three years that he's been with the dog-ass Jets.

  Dreamer Tatum is what we call a pisser. I mean that sumbitch will make your helmet ring when he puts it on you. He's about the best proof I know of that a spook can go around on a football field without any keep-off signs on him.

  All you can see in most any film of the dog-ass Jets is Dreamer Tatum sticking some poor sumbitch in the gizzle when the poor sumbitch has tried to run a sweep.

  All of a sudden the blockers go South and there's Dreamer knocking some poor sumbitch on his butt.

  Me and Shake were talking about Dreamer the other day, and I asked my buddy how in the hell Dreamer could keep making plays like that, over and over.

  "Wants to," said Shake.

  We don't know Dreamer so well. Shit, he lives out in Long Island somewhere, like most of the dog-ass Jets, and of course most of the Giants live in Manhattan or Greenwich or Scarsdale.

  You never see many of the dog-ass Jets around the city, even in the off-season, unless you want to go to a bunch of bars where off-duty vice-squad cops hang out.

  We know Dreamer well enough to say hidy but that's about all. He moves up every now and then and falls into a classy place like P. J. Clarke's, which is where we go a lot. Usually it's when Dreamer is with some real estate or insurance phony who only wants to be seen with him.

  I hear Dreamer's really a good spook when he's not making somebody's hat ring, but my only thoughts about him right now is that he's on the other side from me in this game and that means we're at war.

  It's actually sort of like the Giants and dog-ass Jets have never played each other before. All of those exhibitions we've played up in New Haven every August don't mean a damn thing.

  Hell, this season nobody's first units even got in the ball game up there. Last year we only played the first half. And the year before we only played the first quarter.

  The thing about exhibition games is that they ought to be for rookies, and then if the fans are dumb enough to pay to see them, they know what they're getting. All of the owners swear they have to play these fake games to stay in business but that's a pile of crap. They don't have to play seven of the sumbitches. I really agree with the spooks on this.

  I really think the day will come when the veterans won't play in any of these games unless they're scheduled in Paris, Rome, London and Madrid.

  Up in New Haven last August before our exhibition with the dog-ass Jets, I exchanged a few words with Dreamer when we were out on the field warming up. After we'd said hidy, I told Dreamer I didn't think he was apt to see much of my ass in the game.

  "I'm about to think me up a hamstring." I smiled.

  Dreamer said, "Oh, you got it, baby. I can see it hurtin' on you right now. You ought to see this hip-pointer I got. Oooo, it hurt. I may have to limp over and get into my street duds before them cats ever hit that anthem."

 
"Need some help?" I said.

  "No, I believe I can jog," Dreamer said.

  We talked on for a minute or so. I told Dreamer that I had noticed that our entire first unit offense either had suddenly come down with the flu or muscle spasms. He told me it was the same with the dog-ass Jets.

  "Seems like New Haven's just an unlucky town for us," I said.

  "There's lots of others, too," said Dreamer. "Until mid-September anyhow."

  Well, of course, the Super Bowl isn't any exhibition game, and I don't know anybody on either team who wouldn't play Sunday with four or five broken ribs.

  As you might suspect, the newspapers are building it up about what's liable to happen when I run at Dreamer, or when Shake runs a route at him. Yesterday a guy in the LA Times quoted Dreamer as saying we were good in "an inferior league" and that playing the Jets would finally prove how good we really were.

  The Times writer quoted Dreamer as saying, "I hope the Giants have got their hats on Sunday because we want to welcome 'em to pro football."

  You try not to get upset by anything you read, of course. Most of it is bullshit. But you read it. Any football player who claims he doesn't read the papers or the magazines about himself or his team is telling about as much truth, like Shake says, as a President or Senator.

  Anyhow, Shake answered Dreamer in the papers this morning, and we all had a good laugh, even Cissy Walford who doesn't understand any of it.

  The paper quoted Shake as saying, "I just found out that Dreamer Tatum's real name is Obert Kimberly Tatum. The only Obert I ever knew was so dumb he couldn't figure out a ball-point pen. And the only Kimberly I ever knew was an interior decorator. So now that I know Dreamer's straight name, I've got to wonder if he's the little bit of hell he's supposed to be."

  The writer asked Shake if he planned to run his routes differently in Dreamer's direction.

  "I might put a couple of new dance steps on him," Shake said.

  The writer pointed out to Shake that Dreamer seems to read a fake better than any athlete he ever saw.

  "Tell me that after he quits spinnin' like a top on Sunday," said Shake.