by Dan Jenkins
"This here's Call Shot," he said. "It's five dollars a man to them what beats you. The six is wild. It's call ball, call pocket, call kiss, call bank and press when you feel lucky."
He gave me a wave as I stood at the door.
"Take care, Billy," he said. "How you like these two geese I got here? Goddamned if ever day ain't a holiday and ever meal ain't a banquet."
I knew there wasn't any getting around dinner with Big Ed and Big Barb out at River Crest. I had hoped it might just be the two of them but Big Ed insisted on inviting some friends along. He brought along one of his partners, Jake Ealey, and Jake Ealey brought along his wife, Georgene. And there were two other couples who had familiar names from the dynamic world of Fort Worth money.
Their names don't matter.
They all congratulated me on the game and they said they guessed I was sure happy to be back in "God's country," if only for a few days.
"Good for you to be back where you can breathe some air you don't have to count," said Jake Ealey, being humorous.
They all discussed some of their more bitter experiences with New York waiters, cab drivers, hotel clerks and shopkeepers. One of them said he understood New York was "closed until further notice," and everybody laughed. Another one said he understood New York was "for sale."
"What I do," said Jake Ealey, "is get the hell in there, conduct my bidness, and get the hell out as fast as possible."
I wish I didn't always find myself listening and smiling in conversations like that, as if I agreed.
Big Ed got me in a brief conversation about Shake Tiller.
"Marvin, Sr., hasn't heard from him since he called him after the game," Big Ed said. "Barbara Jane tells me you and she haven't either. What the hell's he up to?"
I said, "He just wanted to go off on a vacation by himself. Travel around. You know."
Big Ed said, "No, I don't know. And I'm worried. He's off over there in one of those parts of the world where a bunch of goddamn chinks and gooks can stab him and rob him and kill him and feed him opium and everything else."
Jake Ealey said, "If we'd dropped the bomb on them goddamn bugs when we had the chance, the world would be in a lot finer fix."
I had to grin.
"When you think Shake will be back?" Big Ed asked.
I said, "Well, I don't know. But I'd sure be surprised if it wasn't before training camp starts. One thing about our old buddy. He likes to find some time for himself when he wants it, and not when somebody allows it."
Big Ed said, "That's fine, but what the hell is Barbara Jane supposed to do?"
I thought for a minute while they all looked at me.
"Understand," I said.
There was a pause and Big Ed said, "Well, that's just goddamn great, isn't it? What do you think of that, Jake? How would you like to run your goddamn bidness that way?"
Jake Ealey said, "If I did, I'd have a goddamn dry hole bigger than Arizona."
Big Barb said, "I just wish Barbara were married and settled down to some normal person and lived down here over on Westover Terrace, or something, and was raising children. Honestly, when I think of how difficult you all make your lives. Living in New York. Some of the friends you have. Well, I don't know."
She gazed across the dining room into a large mirror on the wall to see if her hairdo was O.K.
Big Ed said, "Some people know the goddamned art of fine living and some people don't."
I said I sure agreed with that. And that I ought to be going.
Jake Ealey said, "You tell Barbara Jane that she's too pretty a thing to be wasting away up in that jungle. Tell her we've got some eligible young men down here with a hell of a lot of oil production and low handicaps. She can take her choice."
I wished for a second that Barb was around to reply to that.
"Enjoyed the dinner and the talk," I said, shaking hands all around. And touching my face to Big Barb's, and giving her a hug which wouldn't wrinkle her outfit.
"If any of you see Shake Tiller before I do," I said, "tell him the Giants have drafted a spook who can run the forty in four-four, uphill, and catch anything in the air that doesn't sting."
Big Ed walked out of the dining room with me, with his arm around my shoulders.
I had to stop at a couple of other tables and write something on the menus in the way of autographs.
"He's Fort Worth's own," said Big Ed to the people. "And, by God, we're proud of him, aren't we?"
We walked down the staircase to the front lobby.
Big Ed said, "You and Barbara Jane can take this for what it's worth, but I've got quite a bit of influence, you know, and if you two kids want me to, I can track Shake Tiller down and have his butt dragged home."
I thanked Big Ed but impressed on him that it certainly wouldn't be necessary. I said Barb and I agreed that Shake had a right to do whatever he damn well pleased.
"If you hear he's in any kind of real trouble," said Big Ed, "you let me know and I'll go to the top. You understand? I mean the goddamn top."
I said it sure was a comfort to have friends in high places, and Big Ed said, "As high as we goddamn need to go," and I smiled and left.
Reba's Lounge was the new name of an old place out on White Settlement Road. It used to be the B-52 Grill, I remembered, in honor of all the Carswell Air Base heroes who drank there between red alerts.
It looks like every other place that Fort Worth ever called a lounge or night spot. There was a bar with stools down one side of the room. Behind it was a barmaid who had left her youth in a trailer camp and who had gone out and managed to get somebody to make her hair turn the color of a log fire.
There were tables through the middle of the room, and booths stretched along the wall opposite the bar. A juke box was up by the front door, and a puck bowling machine was down at the other end, by a piano stand and a small dance floor.
I got there ahead of Jim Tom at noon and ordered a young Scotch at the bar. It was semi-dark but nobody recognized me anyhow. Not even the barmaid, who told me her name was Edna Mae. That she'd been down on her luck. And that she hadn't seen me in there before.
Most of the tables and booths were occupied by two, three and four girls who could pass for receptionists at a bank, or Hertz clerks, whether they were or not. A few guys were scattered around, looking like they sold lumber or maybe hospital supplies. They wore white shirts, checkered ties and suits that Barbara Jane would call "Chevrolet blue."
I wasn't so sure what a couple of the guys near me at the bar thought of my leather pants and my suede bush jacket.
When Jim Tom got there we sat down in what he said was "his" booth, which was as far away as anybody could get from the juke box, the dance floor or the bowling machine.
"Nobody comes in until five," Jim Tom said, "but if you see anything you like, speak up."
"What'll we do until then?" I asked.
"Hopefully," he said, "we get drunk."
Jim Tom and I talked about the book for a little while. He said that all he would do was break it up into chapters, and maybe move a couple of anecdotes around. And maybe take out a few fucks.
"How much more will there be?" he asked.
I told him just one or two more tapes, which I would do when I go back to New York after I had been on the road for another three weeks or so.
"Shake Tiller's off jacking around somewhere, acting like he's Mr. Mysterious. I'll give him a chance to turn up, but if he doesn't, then I'll just end the book," I said.
Jim Tom asked if I knew what Shake was up to.
I said I had a suspicion or two.
"He's always had a little semi-hippie in him," I said. "And he's told me he's tired of playing ball. Now that we've won the Super Bowl, I'm about to believe he just might hang it up. He's interested in a lot of other things, you know."
Jim Tom motioned for some back-up Scotches.
"Barbara Jane know how to handle all this?" Jim Tom said.
"I think so," I said. "She's not gonna s
it on her ass the rest of her life, wondering whatever happened to old Eighty-eight. She's a perky sumbitch, you know. And she's got a whole pile of pride going for her own self."
"How long will she wait?" Jim Tom said.
"In some moods, as long as it takes," I said. "But in others, about five minutes."
I said, "She's into a lot of stuff. She's working all the time, and she knows everybody in New York. When she's not with us, she's moving around town with TV people and ad guys and agency types and the show biz crowd."
Edna Mae brought two young Scotches to the table and lit Jim Tom's cigarette for him.
"You met my football hero here?" Jim Tom asked her.
"Thought you looked familiar," Edna Mae said. "Billy Clyde Puckett, ain't it?"
I smiled.
"Goddamn, wait'll I tell my sons you was in here," Edna Mae said. "They'll be so excited they'll get constipated."
I thanked Edna Mae for the compliment.
Jim Tom said to her, "If anything comes in that looks good, ask 'em if they'd like to fuck old Billy Clyde Puckett."
Edna Mae said, "I don't see why they wouldn't. They done fucked everything else that walked in here."
I told Jim Tom I wasn't all that interested in getting laid for some reason, but I said for him not to mind me. If he saw something enticing, go right ahead. I'd just drink.
He said, "Stud, I've got to confess something. Once you've had Crazy Iris, it's a close-out on anything else. I'm not lying to you. That crazy sumbitch is Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey and the whole golden age of fucking rolled into one."
His home life sounded about normal, I mentioned.
In the three hours that followed Jim Tom told me some of the great horror tales about marriage. It seems that his wife, Earlene, had come to despise him so much over the past couple of years that she had gotten fairly inventive in displaying her hate.
At first, he said, Earlene did all the predictable things like locking him out of the house and throwing clock radios at him. Also, he said, she developed the habit of running screaming out of restaurants and bars.
Because he hadn't lit her cigarette.
"Stud," Jim Tom said, "believe me when I tell you that there's no terror in the world like being out with a group of friends and being in a conversation with somebody else and then casually looking over at Earlene Padgett — who had seemed to be having a good time, mind you — and seeing in that instant that her cigarette isn't lit and she's glaring at you."
I asked, "What's the punishment for that?"
Jim Tom said, "Oh, that can be anything from your clothes being thrown out in the yard, to all the sleeves cut off your sports coats at the elbow, to a Sunbeam hair-curler being thrown through the screen of your color Zenith."
I said, "Would you mind telling me something else? Why in the fuck don't you get divorced?"
Jim Tom Pinch grinned and lifted his young Scotch up in the manner of a toast.
"Stud," he said. "I don't have a cent to my name, but if I have to sleep in the back of my car and write my column in this booth, that's exactly what I'm about to do."
I clinked my glass against Jim Tom's.
"It took me a while to figure out that I'd rather starve to death than get bitched to death," he said.
I explained to my collaborator that I'd like to drink with him the rest of the evening but I had a lot of phone calls to make, for plane reservations here and there. And I'd promised I'd call Barb.
"Send me the book as soon as you think it looks enough like a book to give the publisher," he said.
In the parking lot of Reba's Lounge, a Volks drove up and a girl jumped out, rather hurriedly. She wriggled toward the front door, carrying an overnight bag that I thought might have had Jim Tom's undershorts in it.
She had short brown hair, a mouthful of gum, and a fairly stout body. She reminded me more than just a little bit of Earlene Padgett five years ago.
"You wouldn't be Crazy Iris, would you?" I said.
The girl stopped, turned, and squinted at me, putting her hand over her eyebrows. She had a voice that was more on the order of a yelp.
"I might be and I might not," she said. "Who the piss wants to know?"
I WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO REPORT THAT I HAD A number of thrilling experiences after I left Fort Worth and went out on the green pea and fat roast beef circuit.
Unfortunately I can't.
In Akron I met a fairly cute brunette who said she worked in public relations for a tire company. I didn't learn much about tires but I got drunk and dimly remember that before the night was over she said she needed $100 for her mother's cancer treatments.
I don't often get fooled like that.
They asked me several questions in Atlanta about the attitude of the spade ball players.
The Jaycees in Charlotte made me go bowling with them.
In Denver I somehow wound up on a TV panel show with a militant fag photographer, a woman psychiatrist and the editor of a teen-age newspaper. They told me that because of football America was in her "sunset years."
In Detroit somebody named Freddie kept calling my hotel room and trying to get me to come out to a certain address in the suburbs. He said I would have a keen time if I asked for Doris, Jackie, Florence or Pam. They were all great guys, he said.
The Elks in Omaha made me go play handball with them.
And the head of the American Legion in Charleston told me all about the games he'd won for Clemson and the Hitler War he'd won for the United States.
It was in Atlanta, about a week and a half ago, when I found out about this letter from our old friend Shake Tiller. I was talking long distance to Barbara Jane and she said we had just gotten it, postmarked from Fez in Morocco.
She said the letter was addressed to both of us but it had been mailed to her New York apartment.
I have it right here, and if it pleases the court, Your Honor, I would like to read it into the record at this time.
Pals —
I am learning much about primitive arts and handicraft, and also about the guesswork of life.
Did either of you know that the Indians who killed George Custer had gone to Little Big Horn as part of a cultural exchange program? A dope peddler from Sioux Falls explained it all to me yesterday in the casbah.
Behind the veil of almost every Arab woman lies a bicuspid with a cavity. And atrocious breath.
In Casablanca I drank with an old Nazi bomber pilot whose hobby is flying over Rotterdam, London and Coventry and singing Auld Lang Syne.
He who snort coke talketh on and on.
Why don't you two get married and have me over for Christmas dinner some year?
Whatever you do, remember: anticipating infinity is a self-canceling thought-form.
Go Giants,
A charter subscriber
After Barb had read me that letter over the phone, I said, "I just hope he doesn't get busted."
Barb said, "Yeah. You know what they say about Arab prisons, don't you?"
"I've forgotten," I said.
And Barb said:
"Well, for one thing, they say you can't get a good cheeseburger, no matter how hard you try."
JUST BEFORE MY LAST SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT, WHICH was in Columbus, Ohio, only a few days ago, I phoned Barbara Jane to tell her I could make a flight back to New York late that night.
"I've loved every minute of it," I said, "but I've got to get my ass back to America."
I asked her to meet me at Clarke's around midnight and I would cheer her up with tales of the great heartland.
It turned out that when I stepped into the terminal at La Guardia, Barb was there at my gate with a young Scotch and water in both hands.
"Here." She smiled, handing me a drink. "I promised the girl in the Admiral's Club that I'd bring these glasses back, but she told me she was a Jet fan. So fuck her, right?"
I laughed and gave her a hug and kissed her on the forehead.
"This is a celebration," said Barb. "It's
a celebration and also the announcement of a grand scheme."
We began walking slowly toward the baggage claim area and Barb took my arm.
"Now don't say anything until I'm finished," she said. "I've been doing some thinking lately. About the world and the economy and the general social upheaval, and I"ve come to a momentous decision."
"Which is," I said.
"Just hush," Barb said. "I've reached the conclusion that you and I, being so much alike, and having shared so many experiences, and having such an immense fondness for each other, are simply going to have to become lovers."
We kept on walking and I didn't respond.
"Like it?" she said. "What do you think?"
"About what?" I said.
She stopped.
"About what?" she said. "Oh, I don't know. About the history of the Colorado River project, I guess."
I looked at her.
"Let me put it a different way," Barb said. "Look. You probably have a perfect right to think that I would make a suggestion like this with an ulterior motive, right? Which would be to get back at Shake Tiller. You do remember Shake Tiller?"
I kept looking.
"That's already entered your mind. But you know me better than that, so you've dismissed it," she said.
And sipped her drink.
"It has also passed through your head very quickly that I've gotten desperately horny and maybe we could somehow work it out to screw and Shake Tiller, if he ever does come back, won't ever have to know about it. As if he'd care. But you've dismissed that, too," she went on.
I reached in my jacket pocket to make sure I had my baggage claim tags.
"Now you've had time to think about the third thing," she said. "That I'm quite serious, but it's only because I've been so hurt that I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm afraid of being lonely because you two guys are the only people I've ever known or been close to."
I said, "When do I get to vote?"
She took my arm again and we walked on. I've never had a close gate in an airline terminal in my life, by the way.
