by Don DeLillo
“Shrapnel,” Billy said.
“What about Jessup? Jessup was running around half-mad. Signs of violence were rife.”
“He bit his tongue. Fat lip too. Swelling under both eyes. No further comment at this time.”
“Who else got what?”
“Bobby Iselin, pulled hamstring. Terry Madden, broken nose. Ron Steeples, mild concussion. Len Skink, worms. Everybody else, assorted contusions and lacerations.”
“What about Fallon? I saw them working on Fallon in the training room.”
“Fallon. An oversight on my part. Fallon. They got his middle finger.”
“What did they do with it?”
“They broke it.”
We rode in silence for a while. Jerry Fallon came back and showed us his finger. One of his teeth had been knocked out and he showed us the blank space. I had slept ten hours the night before but I was getting sleepy. Fallon went away and I settled down in the seat. Up front Andy Chudko started strumming his silver guitar. Dennis Smee, the defensive captain, was moving slowly up the aisle, stopping at every seat and saying something to the occupants. As he got closer he took a stick of gum out of his breast pocket and put it in his mouth. Every few seconds his tongue would appear, wrapped in transparent spearmint, and he’d produce a perfect little bubble and then snap it with his front teeth. He was leaning over Chudko now. A sentence entered my mind. I spoke the words with a monotonous intonation.
“Uh, this is maxcom, robomat.”
Billy Mast looked at me.
“Robomat, this is maxcom. Do you read?”
“Uh, roger, maxcom,” he said.
“You’re looking real good, robomat. Is that affirm?”
“Uh, roger. We’re looking real good.”
“What is your thermal passive mode control?”
“Vector five and locking.”
“Uh, what is your inertial thrust correction on fourth and long?”
“We read circularize and nonadjust.”
“That is affirm, robomat. You are looking real super on the inset retro deployment thing. We read three one niner five niner. Twelve seconds to adapter vent circuit cutoff.”
“Affirmative, maxcom. Three one niner five niner. Twelve seconds to vent cut. There is God. We have just seen God. He is all around us.”
“Uh, roger, robomat. Suggest braking burn and mid-course tracking profile. Auto-path is trans-tandem. Blue and holding.”
Dennis Smee reached us now. He looked very sincere. The chewing gum crackled between his teeth. He whispered to us.
“We didn’t give it enough. We didn’t let it all hang out. But it’s over now and we still have two games to play. Next week we find out what we’re made of. We have to be big out there. A lot of the guys are hurting. Practically everybody’s hurting. But we have to shake it off and come back. We have to guard against a letdown. You can suffer a letdown by winning big or a letdown by losing big. Either way it’s dangerous. Kimbrough’s over in the other bus saying the exact same thing. We worked it out at breakfast, word for word. That’s our function as co-captains. To work for the good of the team.”
“Function,” Billy said. “A rule of correspondence between two sets related in value and nature to the extent that there is a unique element in one set assigned to each element in the corresponding set, given the respective value differences.”
I stepped out of the bus under a strange silverwhite sky. It was awful to be back. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to look forward to. I went searching for Myna. She was wearing an Icelandic sheep coat, a visored butterscotch cap, her 1930 celluloid bracelet, and tricolored hockey socks.
“I’m trying to be honest here,” I said. “I don’t know whether I’m serious about liking you or not. Maybe I just like you because it’s an odd thing to do. Sometimes I like to do odd things.”
“Gary, don’t fool around. You know the way I am.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
“Did they hurt you, baby?”
“They killed me,” I said.
21
THE NEXT DAY we learned that the athletic department, meaning Creed, had hired a sports information director. Immediately I fashioned a theory based on the relationship between defeat and the need for publicity, or anti-publicity, the elevation of evasive news to the level of literature. The man’s name was Wally Pippich, formerly of Wally Pippich Creative Promotion Associates — Reno, Nevada. Later that week he sent word that he wanted to see me. His office was located in the basement of Staley Hall, near the boiler room, in a small corridor where mops and buckets were kept.
Wally was a stubby man with a crew cut and long side-burns. He shook my hand and told me to have a seat. There were cartons and stacks of photographs everywhere. On the floor near my chair were color photos of a roller derby team, a chimpanzee riding a motorcycle through a naming hoop, and a girl in a bikini surrounded by a bunch of paraplegics holding bowling balls in their laps. In another picture Wally stood with his arm around a young man who wore a gold lamé jumpsuit and held an accordion. Wally wore a straw hat in the picture. The word WHAMO was lettered across the hatband.
“Gary Harkness. Good name. Promotable. I like it. I even love it.”
“Thank you.”
“Relax and call me Wally.”
“Right,” I said.
“Tough loss you’re coming off. Emmett gave me the whole scoop. Scoopation. I’ve known Emmett for seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven years. When my boy gets to be your age, I’m sending him right to Emmett. I don’t care if Emmett’s coaching in the Arctic Circle — up he goes. Emmett Creed is one hell of a human being. Nothing short of sensational. Am I exaggerating, Gary?”
“Not one iota.”
“Let’s get down to basics. I’ve been spending the last few days finding my way around. I’ve talked to the coaches. I’ve talked to Emmett. I’ve even talked to Mrs. Tom. Here’s the approach as I conceive it. Taft Robinson and Gary Harkness. The T and G backfield. Taft and Gary. Touch and Go. Thunder and Gore.”
“A little word-play. A thing with letters.”
“We get the vital stats. We get action photos. We get background stuff. The T and G backfield. We release to newspapers, to sports pubs, to local radio and TV, to the networks. The whole enchilada. Taft Robinson and Gary Harkness. I like the sound of those names. Some names produce a negative gut reaction in my mind. Cyd Charisse. Mohandas K. Gandhi. Xerxes. But Taft-and-Gary has a cute little ring to it. I know I like it and I may even love it.”
“So what you’re doing then, if I understand you correctly, is a public relations thing, based on football, using Taft and me as spearheads, for the good of the school, more or less.”
“Gary, that’s as good a capsule summary as I could give myself. See that big carton over there? That carton arrived this morning. Know what’s in there? The files of two hundred high school football players. These boys have definite market value. These are C-minus boys or better who are top football prospects. Now we’ll get maybe thirty-five of these boys and give them each a grant. With Emmett’s nationwide charisma we’ll get a few out-of-state boys as well. Maybe another Taft Robinson or Gary Harkness. And then this tiny little grasshopper institute has a chance to make it big. Bigation. Gary, I’ll tell you the honest truth. What I know about football you can inscribe with a blunt crayon around the rim of a shot glass.”
“You’re not a fan, Wally?”
“I don’t know squat about football. I’m an indoors man. But I know the whys and wherefores of the entertainment dollar. People want spectacle plus personality. I’ve handled country rock freaks. I’ve handled midget wrestlers. Once I handled a song stylist named Mary Boots Weldon who had her goddamn throat removed because of cancer and kept right on singing out of the little voice box they put in there, croaking out these tearful ballads and drawing bigger crowds than ever. Mary Boots Weldon. Jesus, what an act. I lost my drift. What was I getting at?”
“Wally, I don’t understand why you need me as part of this thing
. I’m a pretty fair runner and blocker and receiver. Better than average. But Taft is on another level.”
“Gary, let me shake your hand. Handation. You’re a modest lad and I like that kind of attitude in a business like mine. But you’re talking football and I don’t know squat about football. I’m talking human interest. I’m talking dramatic balance. I’m talking bang bang — the one-two punch. Look, you’ve had your problems at schools in the past. I know all about that. I also know you’ve settled down to become one of the real reliables. Speaking just from the football angle and from all I could gather from the various sources I’ve been in touch with around here, it’s frankly pretty obvious that you know how to comport yourself in every aspect of the game.”
“Well,” I said.
“No, I’m serious, Gary. You can do it all.”
“Thank you.”
“No, I mean it. You can really do it all.”
“Thanks, Wally.”
“No, I really mean it. You’re one of the team leaders.”
“Right.”
“No, I wouldn’t lie to you, Gary. The word on you is the same everywhere I turn. Gary Harkness? Gary Harkness can do it all.”
“I think you’d be better off concentrating on Taft.”
“I like your attitude, Gary. I like the way you comport yourself. This thing’s going to work out real fine. Emmett’s behind me one hundred and ten percent. That’s the kind of man he is. I’d stand up and speak out for Emmett Creed in any public place in the country. And I’m sure you’d do the same. Gary, you’re everything they told me you were. Let me shake your goddamn hand.”
22
AFTER OUR EIGHTH game, which we won easily, I finished showering and went to my cubicle to get dressed. Lloyd Philpot Jr., wearing a jockstrap and red socks, was waiting for me.
“I have to talk to you,” he said.
“Sure.”
“I have some information I want to pass along.”
“Okay.”
“There might be a queer on the squad.”
“A queer,” I said.
“I found out about it just before we left here at half time. Roy Yellin told me about it. He told me to keep it quiet until we can decide what to do.”
“I guess Yellin heard it from Onan. I think I heard Onan mention it once.”
“Yellin heard it from Rush.”
“Who’s Rush?”
“Mike Rush. One of the marginal players. A fringe guy. He’s been out with groin damage.”
“Okay,” I said. “So who’s the queer?”
“I don’t know,” Lloyd said. “I just know there is one.”
“But Yellin didn’t tell you who it is.”
“Yellin doesn’t know either. He told me he just knows somebody on the squad is queer.”
“Does Mike Rush know who it is?”
“Does Mike Rush know who it is. I don’t know. Yellin didn’t say.”
“What did Mike Rush offer as evidence that there’s a queer on the team?”
“What did Mike Rush offer as evidence,” Lloyd said.
“Right.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But Mike’s not the type to make up stories. I know Mike pretty well. Mike’s daddy is a committee vice-chairman.”
“Look, Lloyd, why are you telling me this?”
“To get your thinking on it, Gary. Yellin and I are getting together in his room later on to figure out what to do. I’m for Kimbrough. Go to Kimbrough with it.”
“Because he’s one of the captains.”
“That’s it, that’s it. But Yellin wants to go to Dennis Smee. Yellin can’t stand Kimbrough. He hates Kimbrough’s stinking guts. So he’s leaning toward Smee. Maybe even one of the coaches. But I don’t think we should go to the coaches at this point. You start with the lower-downs. That’s the way it is in anything. Either way we have to figure out what to do and pretty damn soon. There are guys walking around here naked right now. It could be any one of them.”
23
I BEGAN TO WORRY seriously about the fact that the season was nearly over. There would be no more football until spring practice in April. Without football there was nothing, really and absolutely nothing, to look forward to.
In class Major Staley lectured on the first-strike survival capability of our nuclear arsenal, ranging from the landbased Minuteman and Titan missile silos to the nuclear-powered Polaris submarine missile-launching fleet to the more than five hundred combat-ready bombers of the Strategic Air Command. There were about forty-five student cadets in Major Staley’s class and they were all very conscientious. But somehow, without even trying, I was by far the best student in class. I knew the manual almost by heart and I had read everything the school library had to offer on aspects of modern war. I asked the most penetrating questions. I got perfect scores on every quiz. After his talk on survival capability, the major asked me to remain after class for a moment. I walked up front and stood by his desk. He seemed to be looking into my nostrils.
“Gary, you’re wasting your time just auditing this course. You could be getting two credits for it. Join the cadet wing. It’s a good wing. We need your kind of mind in the wing. Two credits. A meaningful future. The Air Force is the most self-actualizing branch of the military. Do one thing for me. Think about joining the wing. Just think about it. No more, no less.”
“The wing,” I said. “You want me to join the wing.”
“You’ve got the mind. You’ve got the good body and the good eyes.”
“I don’t really, sir, think that I want to go that far in my commitment to this interest I have, seem to have, in the subject matter we’ve been involved in here. I’m interested in certain areas of this thing in a purely outside interest kind of way. Extracurricular. I don’t want to drop H-bombs on the Eskimos or somebody. But I’m not necessarily averse to the purely speculative features of the thing. The hypothetical areas.”
“Gary, I’m not asking you to drop bombs on anybody.”
“Major, you join an organization like the United States Air Force and before you know it — ”
“The leg’s been giving me trouble,” he said.
“What leg is that, sir?”
“The right leg. I don’t know what’s the matter with it. I’ll have to have it looked at again. They looked at it once before. But I guess they’ll have to look again.”
“What did they find the first time?”
“Tests were inconclusive.”
“You’d better be sure to have it looked at,” I said.
“Gary, you’ve got the seeking-out kind of mind we need in this branch of the service. This arm of the service. Whatever you want to call it.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“You’ve got the good eyes. You’re an athlete and that’s always a plus factor. You’ve got the body. You’ve got the probing mind.”
“I’m here to play football, major.”
“It won’t interfere very much. Two hours of drills a week. You’re already taking the required classroom work. We’ve got nine football players in the wing.”
“Sir, it’s the hypothetical part of it that interests me. I really wouldn’t want to get too close to it. I wouldn’t want to put on a uniform or anything like that. I wouldn’t want to march or visit air bases. I’m interested in certain provinces, areas, and I don’t want to get any closer than that. I don’t want to get any closer at all.”
“Do one thing for me. Think about it. Just think about it. It’s a damn good wing for a school this size. Do that for me, Gary. Think about it.”
“No,” I said.
“You can’t say I didn’t try. I tried, didn’t I?”
“You were very convincing, major. Really, you almost had me there for a minute.”
We walked across campus together. I had a class in exobiology coming up and I didn’t want to be late. But although I was hurrying right along I had trouble keeping pace with the major. We said good bye to each other and as he tur
ned to head for the barracks his right leg suddenly buckled and he almost went down. I watched him as he regained his balance and then tried to continue on his way, not looking back at me, limping badly, trying to adjust to the burden of his own weight. I turned and saw Myna Corbett fifty yards ahead. I ran to catch up with her, picking up speed the last ten yards and then coming to an abrupt stop in order to frighten her. It worked beautifully: her startled body was lifted an inch off the ground.
Zapalac circled his desk as he spoke.
“It should be interesting to ask what our life on earth owes to all those comets which deposited so many millions of tons of chemical materials when they crashed into us in the formative years of our history, our growing-up years, and it’s probably not too overly poetic to maintain that we were being nourished by the heavens, helped along for our first two billion years or until we could finally do it ourself, synthesize basic materials, take the first step in returning the favor, heading out into space with chow mein dinners fresh from the freezer. But if the truth be known, I’m not really all that fascinated by the carbon content of meteorites or arguing about exactly when the first living organisms appeared on earth. My own feeling is two-seventeen B.C. at Kearney, Nebraska. But what about the last living organisms, the spores and hydrozoans left behind after our protectors protect us into oblivion? We’ll all end as astroplankton, clouds of dusty stuff drifting through space. Let me ask. What’s the strangest thing about this country? It’s that when I wake up tomorrow morning, any morning, the first bit of fear I have doesn’t concern our national enemies, our traditional cold-war or whatever-kind-of-war enemies. I’m not afraid of those people at all. So then who am I afraid of because I’m definitely afraid of somebody. Listen and I’ll tell you. I’m afraid of my own country. I’m afraid of the United States of America. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? But look. Take the Pentagon. If anybody kills us on a grand scale, it’ll be the Pentagon. On a small scale, watch out for your local police. Look at you looking at me that way, some of you. Question. Will two polite college-educated-of-course friendly agents of the brainwash squad knock on my door at three in the morning? You see my winning infectious smile and you know I’m not worried. This is America. We say what we want. I could talk all day, citing chapter and verse. But when the true test comes, I’ll probably go running to a beauty shop, if you can find one in this neck of the world, and I’ll get my hair dyed blond so everybody will think I’m one of those small blondie boys with that faraway look in their eyes who used to be so big on the Himmelplatz three or four decades ago. We’re supposed to be talking about biotic potential in today’s session as it applies to organisms in far-flung environments, far beyond the highways and byways of our own solar system. Man’s biotic potential diminishes as everything else increases. That pithy little formula may well earn me a research grant to study modes of survival on the other side of the atmosphere. The first orbiting fellowship. I have a deep thought for you. Science fiction is just beginning to catch up with the Old Testament. See artificial nitrates run off into the rivers and oceans. See carbon dioxide melt the polar ice caps. See the world’s mineral reserves, dwindle. See war, famine and plague. See barbaric hordes defile the temple of the virgins. See wild stallions mount the prairie dogs. I said science fiction but I guess I meant science. Anyway there’s some kind of mythical and/or historic circle-thing being completed here. But I keep smiling. I keep telling myself there’s nothing to worry about as long as the youth of America knows what’s going on. Brains, brawn, good teeth, tallness. I look at your faces and I have to let out a controversial little grin. Some of you in your nifty blue uniforms here to learn about outer space and how to police it. Uniforms, flags, battle hymns. I offer you my only quotable remark of the entire fall semester. A nation is never more ridiculous than in its patriotic manifestations. Why should I be afraid of my own government? There’s something wrong here. But I’m not worried. Fortunately I’m good at ducking. I can bob and weave with the best of them. It takes a lot to stop a little man. Let’s open to page seventy-eight. The panspermia hypothesis and its heartwarming implications.”
