The Legend of Jesse Smoke

by Robert Bausch

  The only people who regularly avoided him were Charley Duncan and me. Charley didn’t like him because he was always criticizing the Redskins organization for letting Coach Engram have the last word on players, and Charley resented being referred to as a general manager “in name only.” Me, I stayed away from Roddy because I didn’t think he could write a damn story without looking for the worm in the apple. His angle was always such that something is not what it seems, you know? Something is rotten in Denmark. He didn’t often find much to exploit along those lines, but he was always looking, and it was the angle of just about every question he’d ask. A young player would be striving to catch on with the team and another player would get injured and rather than ask the young player how he felt about getting an opportunity to play, Roddy would wonder if it wasn’t a cause for secret celebration that the other player got hurt. He once asked Coach Engram if he thought I’d make a good replacement for him; if it wasn’t pretty clear that I wanted to supplant him and manage the team my way. That kind of thing.

  One other fellow, it turned out, didn’t like Roddy much either. Our number one draft choice, Orlando Brown, said to me one day that he had to avoid all members of the press, and Roddy especially, because reporters seemed to incite his natural homicidal tendencies. “If I have to listen to that dude for five minutes, I’ll kill the son of a bitch,” Orlando said. I believed him.

  But everybody else at Redskins Park tolerated Roddy; some even enjoyed having him around. He was easy to tease and he had a kind of charm and humor that put a lot of people at ease. Coach Engram said he was harmless enough and I think he even got a kick out of having Roddy there at his press conferences. He told me once that he sometimes called on Roddy for a question simply because he knew it would be fun to answer and would be sure to distract everybody from the day’s hot issues.

  Anyway, Roddy wrote in the Sunday Post, in a column he called “It Has Occurred to Me,” that the Redskins might be interested in a new quarterback who not only threw the ball better than anybody on the roster but could also probably charm the opposing players into letting the Redskins have their way. “I’m talking real charm,” he wrote, “the kind that causes Trojan Wars and Greek tragedies. In short, I’m talking about a woman.” Then he named me. He wrote,

  I have it from a good source that offensive assistant Skip Granger is working with a young phenom who is really phenomenal: the starting quarterback for the Washington Divas, a (believe it or not) women’s professional football team. This source also says that Granger is working behind the scenes to sign this player and bring her to Redskins training camp late this summer. Except somebody ought to tell Coach Granger that women are not allowed to play in the National Football League, charm or no charm.

  I knew I had Andy to thank for that one. He really was looking out after his own interests, and clearly didn’t care if he hurt Jesse or me in the process.

  The funny thing was, Coach Engram just thought it was a joke; he didn’t call me in or anything. We were in a meeting with one of the offensive-quality-control guys, looking at film of all our offensive plays from the year before and mapping out our tendencies in various down and distance situations, when he seemed to recall it suddenly. Stopping the video machine midplay, he looked over at me. “You see Roddy’s column Sunday?”

  I nodded. I’d been toying with the idea of bringing it up myself, uncertain how to handle this latest development.

  “What the hell happened to that guy? Has he lost his mind?”

  “No.”

  It was quiet a moment as he reached over to reset the video back to where we’d just been. Then he said, “That son of a bitch’ll write anything to get attention.”

  I was silent, couldn’t think quite how to begin.

  Then Coach Engram laughed. It was a good solid laugh, as though he remembered a great joke. “I swear,” he said, “you don’t let anything bother you, do you? He wrote something like that about me, I’d kick his ass.”

  “Only it’s true,” I said.

  But that just got him laughing harder. He really thought I was kidding. He pressed play and started studying our offense again.

  Others, though, did believe it. A few reporters asked me if it was true—I said I had no comment—and worse, some tried to get in touch with Jesse herself. It wasn’t like hundreds of them descended on her. One reporter telephoned her on Monday afternoon. He wasn’t even a Redskins beat reporter. He worked for the Post, though, helped write some sports stories as well as interviews and features for the Style section. He wanted to know if she was the starting quarterback of the Washington Divas. She talked to him for a few minutes and then, since he appeared only to be interested in the women’s professional football leagues, Jesse agreed to an interview, at which a photographer would be present. It never occurred to the reporter that Roddy was telling the truth. He didn’t even try to talk to me. I just horned in on the interview when I heard about it. Not that I forced myself on Jesse that way. She asked me if I could be there for it and it turned out I could.

  The interview was on Wednesday night at a restaurant in Washington called Iron Mike’s. I got there a little early, carrying Jesse’s Redskins contract in my coat pocket.

  Jesse was sitting at the bar sipping on a beer, dressed in a long blue dress and blue sandals. She wore a white pearl necklace and pearl earrings. She had a small, black purse in her lap. Leaning slightly forward on the stool, one long leg sort of crossed over the other, she looked like a fashion model. I sat down next to her. She flashed a bright smile and said she was glad to see me.

  “Where’s Nate?” I said.

  “I didn’t invite him.”

  I ordered a glass of bourbon. Jesse kept watching over my shoulder at the door and front windows. It wasn’t so noisy in the place that you couldn’t talk, but music was piped in through speakers in the corners and people were talking fairly loudly. “You know this is Andy’s doing,” I said.

  “Well, it wasn’t Nate, I know that. I asked him if he told anybody.”

  “Are you sure of him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think maybe he wants to be your boyfriend.”

  She laughed. “No. We’re just friends. Nate’s got a girlfriend. He’s engaged to be married.”

  I took out the contract. “Here,” I said. “I want you to sign this.”

  She took the contract from me and unfolded it on the bar in front of her. She set her drink down and studied it, looking as if she planned on reading the damned thing cover to cover. The print was pretty compact and there wasn’t a lot of light. “It’s a standard contract,” I said. “Promises a $70,000 bonus. Which you get to keep no matter what. And it pays you $515,000 a year, prorated for however many weeks you stay with the team.”

  She looked at me. I wanted her to sign it before the reporter got there, and I told her so.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t be suspicious, Jess.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m trying to give you a lot of money here, okay? But I don’t want the reporter to know you’ve signed it until after your audition.”

  “That’s what you’re calling it? An ‘audition’?”

  I handed her a pen.

  “So this is some big secret, then?”

  “It’s the best day of your life so far,” I said. “That’s what it is. I know plenty of young men who would give everything they have for this one little moment in their lives.”

  Her eyes looked misty in the low light of the bar; like lake water on a windless morning. I don’t think she was sad, or tearing up, but she seemed then just as moved as I’d hoped she would be. She gazed into my eyes, and I could see her thinking, wondering … Perhaps she didn’t yet fully trust me.

  I took out a check from the team, wrote it out for $70,000, and slid it over to her. “Starting today, you will be paid $9,903 a week. You get to keep that, too. As long as you’re on the roster.”

  “Nobody has to approve this first
?”

  “I have the authority to make this decision, Jess, and I’ve just made it.” I sipped my bourbon, raised my glass slightly toward her. “Congratulations.”

  And then she signed the thing—the original agreement and all four copies—and gave it back to me. I handed her back one and put the rest in my pocket. “Put that in your purse. This is a famous day. A remarkable day,” I said. “I feel good.”

  “Me too.” She stuffed the check and the contract into her purse, laid it up on the bar, then took a big drink of her beer. “When do I report?”

  “You can’t tell anybody yet.”

  “I can’t?”

  “The time will come, don’t worry, but for now this has to be our secret a little while longer.”

  “How long do I have to wait for the money?”

  “You don’t. That check right there is good. Put it in the bank. Your salary won’t begin for at least two pay periods, but they’ll make it up with the first check.”

  The music stopped just then, and people quieted down a bit, before it picked up again. I ordered another glass of bourbon.

  She watched me. There was something less innocent about her expression. “You’re a pro now,” I said. It was just beginning to sink in, what I had done, and my own old heart was beating like a revved-up engine.

  “I was already a pro.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m nervous,” she said.

  She didn’t look nervous and I told her that. I said she looked as calm as she ever looked in a game.

  “I’ll be calm when I play,” she said.

  “Well, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

  After a while, she said, “Are folks going to hate me?”

  “Why would anybody hate you?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe some of the men on the team? You know, people don’t like things to change and … this is definitely gonna change a few things.”

  “You’ll get paid a lot of money. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “Far as I know, the worst thing that can happen’s we won’t get permission to put you on the field in a game. Even then, you’ll turn a few heads, that’s for damn sure. And some folks will learn a few things about themselves, maybe.”

  “That’s it?” She put her hands around her half-empty glass of beer, studied it for a minute, then looked at me—looked right through me as a matter of fact.

  “I don’t want to mislead you, Jesse,” I said. “You probably will never really get a chance to play. But if that turns out to be the case, it certainly won’t be for any lack of talent, that’s for sure.” As soon as I finished talking, I wished I hadn’t gotten so sensible and matter-of-fact on her. She cast her eyes down a bit, then took another gulp of her beer.

  “I don’t want to be some kind of sideshow,” she said. “Not for any amount of money.”

  “You won’t be.”

  “I’m going to earn this money, or I give it back.”

  “Don’t even say such a thing, Jesse, you hear? You don’t give back one red cent of it.”

  “Then they’ll have to let me play,” she said. “That’s all.” And then she turned back to me and the steely look in her eyes sent a chill down through me. “Somebody’s going to have to tell me why I can’t—that I’m not good enough.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and so just gave a chuckle at this marvel of a woman I was sitting beside.

  “You get me on the field, Skip.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll do the rest.”

  This woman was a quarterback right down to her toes. I found myself chuckling again.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “No, it’s just—you remind me of a quarterback I played with.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s just the way he used to talk. They all have confidence; if they lose it, the game is over for them. But some, you’d have to amputate an arm or a foot to get their belief to sag even a little bit.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Jonathon Engram,” I said. “The head coach of the Washington Redskins.”

  I finished my drink and got up. “Look, I’m not staying for the interview. You take it from here.”

  She nodded.

  “Only, remember, it’s—”

  “A secret. I know. I won’t mention it.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  Ten

  “This better be good,” Coach Engram said. “A woman better than I was.”

  “Just follow me.” I led him out to the practice field, where I already had Darius Exley and Rob Anders waiting for me. I had Dan Wilber, our center, out there, too.

  Oddly enough, it wasn’t something I had to work very hard to arrange. I knew the players worked out every Thursday from midmorning to early afternoon, so it was easy to ask them to step out to the field with me when they were done so I could show them something. I had called Jesse that morning and told her to be there at 4 p.m. Now that she’d been officially interviewed by the Washington Post, it was only a matter of time before the whole thing came out anyway. “Besides,” I said. “Coach Engram needs something to perk him up for the coming weeks.”

  She didn’t laugh.

  “You aren’t nervous are you?”

  “No. Well, a little maybe.”

  “How’d the interview go?”

  “He was nice. Wanted to know all about the Divas. Our games, schedules—everything.”

  “Did he ask you about the Redskins?”

  “He mentioned how absurd it would be if what Roddy said was true.”

  I laughed a little, but there was silence from the other end. Then I said, “How’d you manage to keep from showing him your contract?”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I promised you I wouldn’t.”

  “Even so, I don’t know how you resisted it.”

  She drove out to the park around three thirty that afternoon. By the time I had Coach Engram on the way out to the field, she had already thrown several dozen or so passes to Rob and Darius.

  “You warmed up?” I asked.

  She smiled. I introduced her to the coach and he shook her hand. I saw him look at her hand when she let go of his. She was not a limp handshaker. Her hair was a bit matted with sweat. She was wearing a Redskins jersey, black shorts, and high-top tennis shoes. Her eyes looked as if they gave off light.

  “Jesse Smoke,” Engram said. “Where have I heard that name?”

  “I mentioned her to you a while back,” I said.

  “Really?” He looked at me.

  “Well, Jesse,” I said, “how about you show us something, then.”

  She stepped onto the field at the 15-yard line. Darius and Rob lined up about 20 yards on opposite sides of the center, where Dan bent over the ball. She got up under center. I didn’t bother to watch much of the action, my attention fixed on Engram. She’d call out a route for Exley, then one for Anders. She’d been doing that for the past half hour or so and at first both were shocked that she not only knew the terminology but understood the routes she called. By now they were used to it. She’d take the snap, drop back, and fire the ball the way she always did. Neither Exley nor Anders had to break stride. She threw fades, quick outs, quick ins, and hit each receiver where he wanted to be hit. (I had filled her in on that.) The ball never touched the ground, except for when Wilber set it there to hike it again. She hit them from 20, 30, 40, 50 yards. When they got back over to us, they were out of breath. Coach Engram couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Then I said, “From sixty, boys.”

  Exley looked at me.

  “You don’t have to run it if you don’t want to. Walk on down there, and when you’re sixty yards away from her, start running, do a post pattern.”

  But he and Anders both acted like they wanted to see this. They caught their breath, got themselves ready, then stood on the line of scrimmage. Jesse got the snap from center and Darius took off. She dropped back about seven
steps and Darius, running full speed, cut at the 35-yard line all the way on the other side of the field, toward the goalposts, at which point Jesse snapped the ball off and dropped it just over his right shoulder, at about the 18-yard line. It was nearly 70 yards in the air. It should have dropped over his left shoulder, so the pass was off and he had to twist himself to get it, but get it he did.

  “Over the wrong damned shoulder,” she said. She picked up another ball. Then more to herself than anybody else, she said, “Could score on a play like that.”

  Then Anders took off. He could run, too. She hit him at the same distance, but this time she put it out in front of him so that he ran under it. It had to be 70 yards at least. She was really on. Of all the balls she threw, only one of them was even slightly off target, and the receiver had caught it anyway.

  Coach Engram turned to me, smiling. “Goddamn,” he said. “You’re right. She can throw it better than anybody on this team.”

  “You owe me a dinner,” I said.

  “Sign her up.” He was making a joke.

  “I did,” I said.

  It was priceless watching his face change in the silence that ensued. You could see it hit him—first the shock of it, and then the realization. “You actually did?”

  “It’s on me,” I said. “You had nothing to do with it.”

  But he was smiling. “You son of a bitch.”

  I thought I’d won. His smile seemed the satisfied kind—as if he was glad I’d taken care of this thing, glad I’d protected him from ridicule. “Okay. Back to the office,” he said.

  I walked over to the guys. “Not a word of this to anyone. You got it?”

  Exley said, “What’s it all about?” That was four words more than I’d heard him say in a year.

  “Just keep quiet about it until we tell you otherwise.”

  Dan Wilber patted Jesse on the back. “I didn’t hurt your hands did I? Snapping you the ball?”

  She gave him a look.

  “I didn’t do it as hard as we’re supposed to, you know.”