Life Its Ownself

by Dan Jenkins

  "Do you eat the cracker when you answer the phone?"

  Barb's reaction to my question—a hearty laugh—assured me that Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman had brought out the Texan in her.

  Yesterday on the set, Kitty had said to my wife, "Barbara Jane, we just can't have an impasse like this every day. Eating the cracker may not seem important to you, but certain stage business can help develop a character, and in some circles, they call it acting. You've heard of that? You might also try to keep in mind that it is Sheldon and I—not you—who happen to be responsible for making this show homogenous."

  "Aw, gee, I didn't know about the homogenous part," Barbara Jane had said. "Homogenize this, motherfucker!"

  EIGHT

  In the week that passed I saw Barbara Jane about as often as she saw the staff in our hotel lobby, but I did get updates on the wounded who were littering the alleys around the studio as the taping of the Rita pilot crept nearer. That event was now only twenty-four hours away.

  I wasn't worried about the job my wife would do in the leading role. She could play Barbara Jane better than anybody.

  And there were other matters to keep me occupied.

  October had arrived and I had begun to get a little nervous about my own television career, a career that would be launched in a week's time.

  I hadn't gone into television with the idea of winning an Emmy. It had just been something to do—something to keep me from playing in the streets. But like Barb, I didn't want to look foolish on the air, and yet I wasn't sure how I was going to avoid it working with Larry Hoage. Somehow, I had the horrible, sneaking suspicion I would be found guilty of stupidity through association. Was there life after stupidity? There was for Larry Hoage, but there might not be for me.

  I was relieved of some of the worry after Richard Marks came to town. The head of CBS Sports called from the Bel Air Hotel to say he was on the Coast for a few days to "doll up an affiliate." He wanted to have a drink at my convenience. We discussed his crowded business calendar and worked out a time at his convenience.

  He came by the Marquis late one afternoon. We sat in the lounge at one of those round tables where he could see into the lobby and not miss Willie Nelson, Mick Jagger, John Denver, Jack Nicklaus, or any other celeb who might arrive to check in.

  In the first five minutes of our meeting, Richard Marks complained about the food he'd eaten at Chasen's the night before, the food he'd tried to eat at The Palm at lunch, and the fact that he had only been able to hire a stretched white limo. He had preferred something smaller.

  He only stayed long enough to have a Perrier and lime, sign a few papers in his briefcase, and let drop the news that he had fired Don Avery, the color man who had been working with Larry Hoage.

  "I had to cut him loose" was the way he put it.

  For a disturbing moment, I was fearful Don Avery had been fired to make room for me, but that wasn't the case.

  "He made two very tasteless comments on the air," said Richard Marks. "Did you catch the Redskins-Rams game a week ago?"

  Only the fourth quarter, I said.

  "You must have heard them, then."

  Not that I recalled.

  "First, he said there had been a lot of 'mistakes' in the game. Then he said it was an 'off day' for Washington. Larry Hoage's enthusiasm counterbalanced it. Larry has drawbacks, but he's a positive guy. He gave the Rams the credit they deserved. Bob Cameron called me at home before the telecast was even over. I can tell you the Commissioner wasn't very happy. He reminded me that NFL teams don't have off days, their opponents have good days. He wasn't pleased that the number of penalties was mentioned, either, but I reminded him that we're broadcast journalists. We have a job to do."

  I was beginning to wonder if I would last fifteen minutes as a color man.

  "Was it all that bad?" I asked. "What Don Avery said?"

  "It's a question of credibility," Richard Marks revealed, checking the time of day on his 400-pound Rolex. "You, for instance, can say what you please."

  "I can?"

  "You're Billy Clyde Puckett. You've had a marvelous career. Viewers have been programmed to accept you as an authority. Who's Don Avery, anyhow? He was a journeyman linebacker at best."

  "I can say somebody fucked up? The zebras blew it?"

  "If that's how you see the game. I'll back you up on your content every step of the way. I would hope you'll watch your language."

  "I'm not Alistair Cooke."

  "Clean is all I meant."

  "I can do clean."

  My first game would be in Green Bay. The Packers against the Redskins. Richard Marks had assigned me to a Washington game on purpose. He wanted me to conduct a thoughtful, incisive interview with Dreamer Tatum, the man who had put me in television.

  "It'll make a fantastic insert," he said. "Now, that is broadcast journalism!"

  An insert was one of those pre-recorded interviews a network liked to put on the air in the middle of a touchdown drive. Instead of getting to see a 30-yard pass completion, you got to watch Phyllis George talk to a rotund lineman about his off-season interest in needlepoint.

  Shake wandered down to the Marquis lounge after Richard Marks left. For a week, Shake had hardly been out of his room. He was finishing up his Playboy piece on the wonderful sport of pro football. He was nearing his deadline. The magazine wanted to publish the article in its January issue, which would be on the newsstands in December when the NFL playoffs would be starting.

  Perfect timing. The public's interest in pro football would be at a fever pitch while Shake would be telling America the game was a fraud.

  I passed along elements of my conversation with Richard Marks to Shake as we turned our backs to others in the room, mostly agents watching their clients have sneezing fits.

  "You've got it made," Shake said. "You know why he fired Don Avery? Because he didn't hire Don Avery. His predecessor did. He has to back you up on everything you say on the air or admit he's made a tragic error in judgment. You know the likelihood of a network mogul admitting a mistake? You're golden, man."

  T.J. Lambert put us on a conference call. It was later that night and T. J. wanted to speak to Shake and me at the same time. We picked up separate phones in Shake's room and heard the joyous news. TCU was going to win a national championship next season. Not the conference championship, the national championship, the one that puts a coach in a class with "all them Darrell Royals." The Horned Frogs were going to be No. 1 in so many polls, the mascot might have to be changed to a Trojan or a Cornhusker.

  T. J. was a little drunk, but he said he had good reason to be. And he just wanted to share this happy moment with a couple of old friends and stalwart Horned Frogs.

  He said, "It looks like I'm gonna have me a Tonsillitis Johnson and a Artis Toothis in the same backfield!"

  T.J. coughed, then belched. We heard him holler at Donna, his wife, "Damn, honey, I done cheated my ass out of a fart!"

  Now he came back to us on the phone to explain how this recruiting miracle was going to happen.

  "I got Tonsillitis in my pocket," he said. "Ain't no question about that. Big Ed Bookman gimme a blank check and said, 'Here, T.J., throw a net over that nigger and haul him in.' I done laid a Datsun 280 on his ass, and six charge cards. My coaches has talked to our sororities. Tonsillitis has got so much white pussy waitin' for him in Fort Worth, he's gonna have to get Riddell to make him a wooden dick!"

  Artis Toothis was another story, a bit more complicated. Artis Toothis, the speedster from the Big Thicket, last year's most-wanted blue-chipper, had wound up at SMU all right, but he had dropped out of school. His explanation to the press was that he had been lonely and unhappy in Dallas, which was to say that he had been forced to enroll in a freshman English class, and he had heard a rumor that his meal allowance of $3,000 a month was far below the figure a running back at the University of Texas was getting.

  Artis had gone home to Willow Neck in the sleek white Jaguar he had decided to ke
ep. He was mostly just lolling around the house now, playing with the cur dogs and watching one of the 240 TV channels he could pick up from the satellite dish an SMU alum had had installed in the yard.

  SMU's coaches couldn't very well complain about Artis' keeping the Jaguar. It would be an admission that he had received an under-the-table gift in the first place.

  But the vital thing was that Artis Toothis hadn't played a single down of football for the SMU Mustangs. From the start of two-a-days, he had complained of a pinched ankle, thereby giving himself time to shop around for better opportunities. Under the rules, therefore, he could lay out a season—this one—and be eligible to play for another school next year. And the other school was going to be TCU.

  I asked T. J. why he was so certain of it.

  Big Ed Bookman was arranging it, the coach said. Big Ed had come to the conclusion that looking for chaparrals was more challenging than looking for dinosaurs. Big Ed had already proved himself in the oil bidness. Big Ed had realized that if he could bring the No. 1 college team to Fort Worth, it would be the crowning accomplishment of his life. They would probably re-name River Crest Country Club after him.

  Any project this big had to have a solid foundation. Big Ed had begun laying the groundwork for it by hiring Tonsillitis' brother, Darnell, as his personal assistant at Bookman Oil & Gas. He was paying Darnell a whopping salary and he had given him a big office next door to his own. Darnell's job had nothing to do with oil or gas, of course. Darnell's job was to put Tonsillitis Johnson and Artis Toothis in TCU's backfield.

  Only today, T.J. reported, Darnell had visited with Artis Toothis down in Willow Neck and it looked like they weren't that far apart in the negotiations. It was nothing Big Ed couldn't handle with Grovers. Grover Clevelands. Thousand- dollar bills.

  "You know Big Ed," T.J. said. "Ain't nobody gonna out-Grover Big Ed when he gets that look in his eye."

  T.J. let out a delirious hoot. Then he said:

  "Can you imagine what it's gonna be like to have them two burners in my backfield? Good God a-mighty! I won't have to do nothin' but get out of their way and mastrebate!"

  The head coach of the Horned Frogs couldn't wait for the present season to be over so he could start putting in his two-back offense for next year. Since the victory I had witnessed over Rice, the Frogs had beaten only one other foe, UT-Arlington. They were 2-and-4, and they still had to face Ohio State in an intersectional game along with the strongest teams in the conference, Houston, Baylor, Texas, and Texas A&M.

  It looked like another 2-9 record for T.J.

  "I done writ this sumbitch off," he said.

  Of the gloomy prospect of having to go to Columbus, Ohio, T. J. said, "I don't know what pea-brain scheduled that cocksucker!"

  Shake and I congratulated T.J. on his re-building job. We had never dreamed the day would come when TCU would start to operate like a big-league school. Now it was upon us.

  "This thing could snowball," said the coach. "Big Ed wants Darnell to keep representin' athletes as a sideline."

  "Sideline to what?" I said, laughing.

  T.J. said, "Darnell is a geologist, in case anybody wants to know. We got a fuckin' scroll hangin' on his wall."

  Shake said, "Coach, it looks like we could be good for years to come if we don't go to jail."

  "I ain't worried about them NCAA phonies," said T. J. "They can come down here and sniff around all they want to. We'll strap some perjury on they ass and send 'em home!"

  I owned up to T. J. that a thought was making me dizzy but giving me considerable pleasure at the same time. I said it was not easy for me to envision a black man—Darnell Johnson—sitting in an office in Big Ed Bookman's oil-and-gas building, not far from River Crest Country Club, right there on the fashionable West Side of Fort Worth, Texas, USA.

  "Big Ed don't give a shit if he's polka-dot. All Big Ed wants is a winner."

  Barbara Jane was a little edgy the following morning, but she had good reasons. The grand final Rita taping was set for that night at eight o'clock, and even before the cameras would roll, she faced a busy day. Something had to be done about her hair. Decisions had to be made about her costumes. Two dress rehearsals were scheduled during the day. And why had it turned into a Broadway opening?

  No longer was the show going to be taped before an ordinary TV audience, the usual vagrants and loons they swept up off the sidewalks in front of the studio. I would be there. Shake would be there. A throng of bicoastal network executives would be there. Big Ed and Big Barb were flying out for it in their Lear. Burt Danby and Veronica were flying out for it in their Lear. And who could say how many real actors and actresses might be in the audience?

  Barbara Jane had known it was going to be like this, but she had put it out of her mind until now. Other things had been more urgent, like stamping out the hated moi, and letting Sheldon Gurtz and Kitty Feldman know who had the fastest gun.

  Now she was thinking about it as she changed the contents of a purse into another purse, and had cigarettes going in three different ashtrays.

  "I'm not sure I could get through it without Jack," she said.

  "Nicholson?" I was looking up from the sports section of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

  "Sullivan, Biff. My director."

  Biff was an old joke between us. Biff was how Barbara Jane addressed me on those occasions when I would get something wrong, say something dumb, or do something forgetful, like not stub a check or lose a dinner receipt.

  By calling me Biff, it kept her from getting angry, but it also reminded me that I had been semi-negligent in some way.

  Her use of Biff dated back to college days when we had only been friends.

  The origin of it was a Jim Tom Pinch column in The Fort Worth Light & Shopper. My name had appeared in the opening paragraph of Jim Tom's column as "Biffy Clyde Puckett."

  I was slightly surprised by the change in her attitude about the director, Jack Sullivan.

  "I thought the director had to die?" I said to Barb as she snuffed out one of the three cigarettes.

  "He did, but now he doesn't. He's been wonderful. He has taste... a great sense of timing. He's terrific."

  "Why was he keeping it hidden?"

  "It's his style," she said. "He was getting to know the people. He likes me—and he likes Carolyn Barnes. He knows how to work around all the crap, make it seem more intelligent."

  "What's he ever done?"

  "A ton of things. Features in England. He's directed on the stage. TV movies. All kinds of stuff."

  "Why is he fooling around with a sitcom?"

  "Money, Biff." A look sometimes went with Biff, too. "Mondo scratcho, as Burt Danby would say."

  I saw Barb to the door.

  "What does Jack Sullivan look like?"

  "Oh, nothing special."

  "I guess his crooked arm and clubbed foot only make him more sensitive, huh?"

  Barbara Jane said, "He's handsomer than you, as a matter of fact. He's far more thoughtful, much better educated, and dynamite in bed!"

  She kissed me and left.

  That afternoon I kept an appointment with a bone specialist in Beverly Hills. It was time to see how my knee was getting along.

  Dr. Tim Hayes was supposed to be the top bone guy on the Coast. Burt Danby couldn't have recommended him more strongly. "Hell of a guy," Burt had said over the phone. "Member at Bel Air... ranch in Santa Barbara. Married to a juicy broad I'd love to nail. Jesus, is she something! She used to pull the curtain on one of those giveaway shows. All legs and teeth. Tim'll take care of you, ace. He did Jimmy Caan's shoulder and I think he did Lee Majors' elbow."

  I went to see Dr. Hayes anyhow.

  His office was in the heart of the Beverly Hills shopping district. It was on the second floor of a narrow space in a block where the discerning ornament seeker could buy a silver-plated tennis ball for only $1,700, where the anorexic wife of a studio boss could find the $8,000 jumpsuit she had been trying to buy, and where arde
nt music lovers could spend up to $32,000 to correct the sound on their stereos.

  In Dr. Hayes's wood-paneled anteroom I announced myself to Joan Collins, the receptionist. She was whispering into a phone as she pointed me toward a glass partition, behind which sat two nurses, the Linda Evans twins. They were both snickering into phones. One of the Linda Evans twins pressed a buzzer, a door opened, and I was met by Victoria Principal, another nurse. She led me around a corner, where I exchanged a hello with the Dyan Cannon nurse. Victoria Principal then rapped on a door, turned the knob, and I entered a room in which Tom Selleck held an old Tommy Armour putter and was stroking golf balls across the carpet.

  "Billy Clyde!" the man smiled. "You are some kind of football player, fellow!"

  "Dr. Hayes?"

  We talked about the par-4s at Bel Air for a while, then about the Rams, Dodgers, and Lakers. He finally got around to giving me an examination.

  The doddering old clowns in New York had done a pretty fair job on my operation, he said. My cast could be removed in about ten more days. I could stow the crutches. Just don't overexert myself. Too bad it hadn't been a cartilage. These days, they could zap a cartilage back into shape like magic. Put you right back in the lineup. Ligaments were different. Ligaments took time—and rehabilitation.

  The doctor said, "Billy Clyde, it's a damn shame, but I wouldn't even consider playing football again, if I were you. Another bad blow on that knee and you'll be a mess."

  "I'll just have to see how it goes."

  "I'm quite serious," he said. "You want to ride on a rim the rest of your life? You don't need that. I know what I would do. If I were Billy Clyde Puckett? A guy your age? With your reputation? I'd rest on my laurels and ball myself into a stupor! I guess you have to beat 'em off with a machete, right?"

  "I was thinking the same thing about you," I said. "I noticed one or two distractions when I came in here."

  Dr. Hayes reacted with a look of pain. "The staff? Not hardly. I only keep those bitches around to dress up the office. No, sir. I learned my lesson about war babies a long time ago."